Yesterday, I suddenly realised that, for an important meeting in London, I didn’t have a bra to wear.
Or tights.
Give me a break. I’ve been writing my book for the last 18 months, not shlepping to the office. I’ve worn a sports bra since, well … I don’t remember how it feels to leave the house not wearing a sports bra.
Underwire? What is this grief?
And tights? Maniacal cackle.
On examination, every single pair in my drawer had either holes, runs, bobbles or a charming combination of the three.
I haven’t cared, not for months.
But on the eve of The Meeting, I cared.
Sigh. Sometimes, if there is a stressful situation, it feels like everything else will fall into place, if you can just sort out the outfit.
I’m not the only one who feels that way.
A great thinker once said that sartorial streamlining gives one a sense of control in a world full of chaos.
Cher Horowitz.
That’s why, the day before The Meeting, I hauled buns to London where I felt confident there would be tights and bras enough to make sure I was prepared for The Meeting.
[You may have spotted—astutely—that this was all just a proxy-battle to distract me from accomplishing any preparation of actual value for The Meeting. That’s ok. Proxy battles that distract from neuroses and let me invent a task to accomplish with ease, in the face of so many other insurmountable obstacles? Again: control out of chaos.]
If I can just find the right bra and tights, all will be well at The Meeting, I told myself.
To the shops.
In Selfridges, I didn’t know where to go. A woman at a make-up counter waved me away.
“I don’t work for the store, honey.”
Huh?
You give the impression of doing so, I almost said, but stopped myself. It’s not her fault that make-up concessions ate Selfridges.
Next, I stopped another sales assistant, a gentleman wearing a name tag.
“Where are bras?”
“Brahhhze?” He raised an eyebrow. “Is that, like … a brand?”
“What? No.” Words failed me. “You know, bras.” I grabbed my own sports-bra-clad handfuls to demonstrate. “To put your tits in.”
He waved me away. “Third floor.”
Eventually I made it to Lingerie and purchased said bras without further excitement, and also without being arrested for public lewdity.
In the process, I learned a valuable lesson.
If it is this hard to communicate—in the same language, face-to-face and using small words—with another person in real life, is it any wonder that our written words are so often subject to misinterpretation, misconception or—worst of all—indifference?
Is it any wonder that, even if you spend 18 months cranking out a book that means a great deal to you, it can so often land in a void of agent inboxes, never to rise again?
Is it not, then, the greatest wonder, when maybe just maybe, once in a cold, blue moon, every sixth generation, for the seventh son of a seventh son, or whatever, lightning flits down and strikes?
Someone goes: I see you. I get it.
The answer is yes. It is a wonder.
Have you spotted where this is going?
The answer is also yes, I got an agent.
That was what The Meeting was about.
They like the book and want to represent me.1
More soon…
UPDATE: Agency agreement is signed. 🔥
Congratulations!
Way to go! Congrats