"Completely wrong", she says. "Anyway, I'm not buying it, that you don't remember anything. It wasn't that long ago!"
Should I try to placate her? I don't know how. I really don't know much at all anymore.
"I'm sure, I would remember", she says with a hiss, "if my best friend had a black eye. I had to be sewn up. Five f* stitches!"
When she has fallen into the f category, it is definitely too late, to bring something up.
But she has more.
"You quote Irving seven years after reading the stuff. But you can't remember what we were talking about two months ago."
That is true. But I try to call her attention to the fact that no one would be too concerned about a medic memorizing human anatomy, or a lawyer, who does not forget laws and provisions - even if they forgot a certain conversation.
"After all, I'm a scholar of literature", I say.
"Exactly", she says and puts the phone down.
I would like to ask her, why her affirmation made her cut off the conversation. But whenever she is so angry, there is no use in asking for reason.
I had written a story. A funny one, I thought. But since the backgrounds of the story were true and declaredly "not funny at all", I had attracted my friend's resentment.
That's the way it goes with fiction. Kurt Tucholsky knew it then, writers lack imagination. That's a skill of businessmen, he said. When they're not willing to pay their debts, they have a lot of ideas.
Alright. So I have become a member of this guild, eventually. It doesn't matter, whether you're not satisfied with your own writing, or whether you can't even make a living of it, nothing will disqualify you as a writer. As long as your writing annoys someone.