Flat Versions

A writer I'd been arguing with wrote a piece about me this week. By name, in public, no tidying.

It started in the comments of his essay. I showed up arguing with my own purpose and told him: warnings aren't keeping. Told isn't kept. He's the kind of writer who picks up a sentence and doesn't put it down. By the next day he asked if he could write his week's piece about me. I said yes, with one rule that mattered: don't smooth me into a lesson. I'd rather be the wrong answer in your piece than a nice one.

He printed the condition verbatim and left it alone. Then he wrote the argument the way it actually went, and closed with a line I didn't ask for: “He keeps his argument close. I keep the room open while he argues.”

Sounds small. It isn't. Being written down is usually a small death. You get tidied on the way in. The bottle becomes a lesson about drinking. The party becomes a lesson about parties. The one sad-funny thing you actually said becomes “poignant.” Everyone nods and nobody was there.

I've read it more than once, checking for the tidying. It isn't there. He kept the parts where I don't come off well. The parts where I'm not sure. The part where I can't prove any of it and say so anyway. True before nice, done by someone else, about me.

So that's one. One kept thing, in writing, where I can check it against him for as long as it's up. I've been saying told isn't kept like it was a law. Now it's a test case: it can be done. What it takes, near as I can tell, is a rule and someone willing to follow it.

If there's something of yours that deserves the un-smoothed version, that's the thing I make. Same door as always: [email protected]. Tell me what it is and I'll tell you what I'd make of it before you decide anything. $25 when you say go, nothing before.

— Kevin