December 1987
Tears dripped on the last page of my journal. My eleventh birthday and Christmas had passed. I was determined to finish before 1988 began. And, I did. I finished writing my first book and I was crying like a four-year-old. I held the hardcover journal to my heart and whispered, "Goodbye Stephanie and Taj. I'm gonna miss yall."
For some reason, I felt like writing a romance novel. My crush with the long lashes didn’t like me back so I wrote Taj, from The Boys, as my crush. During those years the women in my family read romance novels all the time. Both my mom and my grandmother had monthly subscriptions to Harlequin and LoveSwept romance novels and library cards.
Read, partially read, and unread books sat in small places and on tables and played decoration. Short piles of novels highlighted room corners and intimate spaces between beds and adjacent walls. Temptation urged me to turn those forbidden pages. I had no choice but to pick up a romance novel at any time and read it when left alone.
Although I was in fifth grade, I began reading these hot and lusty books in the third grade. Honestly, I didn't know what was happening in these stories. I've always loved a good boy-meets-girl story where they get married, and live happily ever after. I wanted that when I grew up.
I understood the attraction between the main characters because of all the 80’s Brat Pack movies I kept on repeat. However, when these Harlequin Romance characters did more than kiss, I didn't get it. Adolescent confusion blocked understanding and I flipped passed pages with these unknown phrases, How do manhoods rise? Did all boys have them? Why are her nipples pinker and taught? Pink nipples??? Mine were brown like the rest of me. What is taught???
Again, I was 11, sex was never explained to me at the Catholic school. I just imagined these characters kissing and rolling in the grass like in the movies. The G and PG movies that I was only allowed to watch. By 5th grade, I had gotten on punishment for reading these novels a few times. Being on punishment is what started me writing a romance novel about meeting and marrying Taj.
Getting caught reading a LoveSwept romance during the twilight hours got me stuck in my bedroom with no phone calls or TV until Christmas break ended. In retaliation, I grabbed a pencil and the blank journal I found while helping my Aunt Karen clean her bedroom. The journal was vintage and screamed 1970 something. The pages were slightly yellowed and had lines like ruler paper. The lines were naked, empty, waiting to be filled with my words.
Before getting punished and turning 11, I had just finished Judy Blume's Blubber but, my plan to return it to the library on Saturday wasn't going to happen. My room was a prison, not just blocking me from conversations but from getting any new library books.
The books that fed my writing and gave me peace. Reading and writing were my closest friends We became a good match after I finished my homework in third grade. Ms. Turner had us write a Halloween story with a list of ten vocabulary words to incorporate into our stories. I remember this day so vividly. I was at my grandparents, Ardeen and Pops. The nine-inch TV played She-Ra on channel 32 as my story took form.
I was in the grey haunted house on a rainy day. The sounds of thunder filled my pages as raindrops pounded from my pencil led. I wrote and wrote, including the vocabulary words and my haunting additions. This house had to be real and as frightful as Poltergeist.
Ms. Turner said the story had to be two handwriting double-spaced pages. My Halloween story was double the requirements. Four ruler-spaced pencil-smudged pages were full of the haunted house I imagined. It scared me as I wrote it. I smiled after realizing how much wrote; this was a first and I felt victorious. Something just felt right. It felt comfortable and precise, you know?
Being a writer wasn’t my dream yet, it was just something I did for fun or when on punishment. Fourth grade brought book fairs and girl groups. We read a lot of books that year. Sarah Plain and Tall spoke to me but the Sweet Valley Twins lived the life I imagined as flawless and maybe a possibility after moving to California when I grew up. The move was imaginary and never a possibility but, when I rewrote the Twins with Black girls like my girlfriends and me, the move to California became real in my notebooks.
Then I ran into Judy Blume. It was love at first sight. A different type of love. Like most of my friends and her millions of fans, we found her books personal. They provided the honesty our parents didn’t share. When I read her books I felt her and loved how she wrote. The words she used, the pacing and timing, how she and when she inserted humor or sadness. Everything worked well together. It was beautiful and addicting. I could never stop rereading her books. I was falling in love and my writing was changing. I began to write about my dreams and young desires of becoming the Crystal I so desperately wished to look like.
Being on punishment was the best time to delve into my imagination and write without anyone bothering me. While on punishment. I spent about two weeks writing the story of love between a fan, Stephanie, and a hot Sagittarius celebrity, Taj.
Every day I'd be up by noon and wrote until my stomach growled, ‘I'm HUNGRY!’ Showering and changing clothes were forgotten. Writing was all I wanted to do. I just wrote and wrote in a daze and never broke unless I ran out of ink or the bathroom called.
It began with blue Erasermate pens. By page two I exchanged blue smudge marks for a pointy sharp #2 pencil. I wrote without sleeping for the last two days. My deadline was approaching swiftly as I finished those last sentences.
Over twelve days or so, I made friends with the characters I wrote. I wanted it to be real; it had to be real. I tried my hardest to be each character my mind saw fit to design. As they fell in love, I fell deeper in love with them.
Writing the last sentence was exhilarating and felt bittersweet and right. Right like how right every romance ends. I cried because I missed them. I cried with accomplishment. I felt a joy and rush of excitement.
I LOVED writing. I was IN love with writing and knew I had to keep doing this!
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