Some Things I Want to Tell You

Laurie Stone on Leonard Cohen, cake, how to apply for a job, and more.

Michael Putland/Getty Images

The other day on Twitter The Paris Review posted a link to a piece I'd written about “I’m Your Man,” the song by Leonard Cohen. It was part of a series they ran on love songs for Valentine's Day. A man, a Brit I could tell from his spelling and other items I found, commented, “Is this what passes for music criticism at The Paris Review?” I wrote back to him, “I was wondering when the first prick was going to pipe up. Congratulations, you've won.” He wrote a quick apology, and I left it at that.

Did the Brit think he needed to defend Bob Dylan? I had mentioned in the piece that Dylan addresses his songs about women to other men. Dylan does not write with a thought to what women might feel listening to his lyrics. The Brit didn't mention Dylan. He just thought he could be insulting and superior as a way to be. Pretty much the way Bob is insulting and superior as a way to be in many of his songs.

A man, a Brit I could tell from his spelling and other items I found, commented, “Is this what passes for music criticism at the Paris Review?” I wrote back to him, “I was wondering when the first prick was going to pipe up. Congratulations, you've won.”

How many ways are there to tell a woman to shut up because you think no harm will come to you? A woman I know recently said to me, “You write so much!” She didn't say what you write is garbage. She was saying make yourself less visible. She was saying, Your visibility hurts my eyes.

When I started writing to you today, I was going to say something supportive of shared experience on Facebook, Substack, etc. I was going to say something about the sharing of grief, illness, and other hardships or bewilderment, stuckness, aloneness. I remember consciousness raising in the 1970s. I don’t remember what I got out of it except the pleasure of hanging out in a room with other women. Knowing me, I was probably bored with most of what I heard. I was probably critical of the language people used. Fuck me. I’m an idiot.

What I remember in the room with other women is feeling part of something larger than me that also included me. Everything was personal for everyone and therefore everything was also about how the world worked, not just how you worked. I remember the scorn that attached to us like dog hair wherever we assembled. Is this what passes for politics? You say too much about yourself.

How many ways are there to tell a woman to shut up because you think no harm will come to you? A woman I know recently said to me, “You write so much!” She didn't say what you write is garbage. She was saying make yourself less visible.

People post about being sick on social media in order not to feel alone, in order to share information about their symptoms and treatments, in order to make public what we have been told to keep private. More and more, I'm coming to think the word privacy is code for, “You, don't open your mouth, no one cares what you think.” Also, it's code for shame. Privacy isn’t something everyone has access to, even when they want it. The lives of poor people, for example, are seldom lived in privacy. For many people, privacy and invisibility are the last things they need to improve their lives.

Is this what passes for public conversation? Is this what passes for social commentary? It is. Bite me.

Order Laurie Stone’s book, which was long-listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the art of the essay.

In other news, I was recently up for a job, and I was asked to fill out a questionnaire, and one of the questions was about my sex identity, and there was an option to identify that for yourself, and I wrote out a sex fantasy because I thought when they asked what my sex identity was they wanted to know what made me come, and I said what I was wearing, and where I’d applied perfume, and I described the images going through my head, and the bodies of the other people who were there, and I said what I was hoping would happen with your hand, with your mouth, and with other parts of your body, and I got the job.

I remember consciousness raising in the 1970s. I don’t remember what I got out of it except the pleasure of hanging out in a room with other women. Knowing me, I was probably bored with most of what I heard. I was probably critical of the language people used. Fuck me. I’m an idiot.

When I was a teenager, I attended a school called Woodmere Academy, and I didn’t know it was a thing to wait until a certain date in spring to wear white clothes and linen clothes. A girl in my class would say, “Rushing the seasons?” A few weeks ago, I learned I’d made the long list for a prize awarded by PEN. I was in a group of 10, waiting to be narrowed down to 5 before a ceremony, where the winner would be announced. Inside the group of 10 were many famous writers. I didn’t think I had a chance, and I was right. The other day the group of 5 was announced, and I’m not on the list.

I’m going to the ceremony anyway, to cheer on the rest of the pack. For one thing, I was invited. Also, whether at a ceremony or not, inside the literary world I wind up reliving the worst moments of childhood. At a ceremony, at least, there might be cake. The weeks between the two announcements were pot that doesn’t make you paranoid. They were wearing linen in March and not feeling the cold. I want you to know how unbelievably happy and grateful I am for those weeks. I’m still a little buzzed. If you were near me, you’d feel it, too.