when the roundtable is a rhombus

A writing group serial in monologues.

This Month: Ken Talks Independence

They all answered an ad posted in a café. A Xeroxed sheet of paper tacked to a bulletin board: “Want to get feedback on your work? Want the support of a community? Published Writer New to City Seeks Group.” There were even pre-cut tabs with an email and phone number.

Ken. Jenna. Tracy. Petra. James Elliot.

Once again, Ken is at his favorite bar after writing group. This time though, he is with James Elliot. Ken sips a Dewar’s and soda.

That was a shit show. I know I should have gone home with Jenna, but man, thanks for asking me to catch a drink. I care for her, but she’s going to rant about this a long, long(!) time.

How can it be that we’re the only two men in a group of intense women writers and we’ve have never even gone out for a drink?

Oh, you think it’s me and Jenna? We haven’t been hanging out that long.

Just admit it, Petra and Tracy had no right to gang up on Jenna like that. I know they have a point, but how is a writing group the place to attack her and her entitlement issues? We’re all white. So let’s face it, we all suffer (Ken makes air quotes) from entitlement issues.

You’re right. The answer is we shouldn’t drink at group. Ha! And then I’d have to listen to Tracy hate my stuff without the liquored buffer. And yeah, you’re right. Jenna shouldn’t have been bragging about her lack of monthly bills. You’re right, she was acting as if responsible people didn’t have such bills. I get it, she can be annoying.

But Tracy? Is she a lawyer now too? Did you see how she just zoomed right into a cross examination: “Do you or do you not pay your own cell phone bill? Do you or do you not have your own Netflix account?”

Who the fuck cares? Jenna feeds herself, she’s independent enough.

When Jenna answered that she’s been on the family plan since high school and Petra rolled her eyes at Tracy, I knew we were in for a fight. Tracy and Petra, the pragmatic and the flighty, when they agree, well, fuck, shit show ensues.

They said she was pretending to be independent. You were awfully quiet then. Yeah, yeah, so was I. But I’m getting laid. What’s your excuse? You’re like Jenna. You drive that Mercedes C Class and you aren’t even 30.

You haven’t taken anything from anyone? Really? Where do you get your money? You write for websites.

It doesn’t even matter. I mean if you manage your own affairs, aren’t you independent? Even if your parents pay some of your bills? I mean, are we saying that Van Gogh wasn’t independent because his brother Theo took care of costs? And even if it did make him dependent, does that make his artwork somehow less?

Yeah, I know Jenna is not Vincent Van Gogh. But talent doesn’t enter into it, does it?

What about Tracy? She once told me her parents gave her the down payment for her house. Part of a wedding gift or something. Is that independence? Where do you draw the line? Monthly bills, not independent; one-time large cash gift, independent?

I know, Jenna was self-righteous and kinda acting as if she’s earned her upper middle class rank on her own. Is that the difference though? You have to be self-deprecating when you take help from family? You need to wear a scarlet S indicating you get support?

Are you telling me I’m not independent? I’ve not taken a dime from my parents since I turned 18. No family plan, no family health insurance, no hand-me-down car, nothing. But my wife? She had the car, the health plan, and her parents cosigned our first lease. And I got to be honest here, she paid rent while I was in grad school. I didn’t act like I did on my own, but I didn’t advertise that my wife was helping me out either.

Was I dependent on her in a bad way? Did that mean I couldn’t feel like an independent soul? We were married and being a team, right? Is teamwork limited to spouses and not parents?

You’re right, it doesn’t fucking matter. But with Tracy—she’s a Gen Xer, right?—it seems to really, really matter. Like being independent is more important than being loved, or loving, or writing.

That’s why she’s stuck in that fucking job at that college. She’s so driven not to rely on anyone, she’s alone and not finishing that book. It’s a good, fucking book. I wish I could write a book like that. And she’s wasting away being independent. She’s crusted over, man.

Jenna, well, she might step over a homeless person and act like he wanted to be there. But she’s writing.

What can I tell you, James Elliot? It’s why I still love to fuck her.

Alexandra D'Italia grew up in New Jersey, left her heart in San Francisco and lives in Los Angeles. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Red Rock Review, Arcadia, South Loop Review, among others. Love Creek Productions produced her short play, The Fix Up, in New York, New York in 2012. She has a play coming out in NorthNorthwest Anthology of Ten-Minute Plays. One of her stories recently won the Edward W. Moses Graduate Writing Award for fiction. She is an Associate Artist with Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and a member of the Los Angeles Women Playwrights’ Initiative. She has her masters in creative writing from University of Southern California. You can contact her at: alexandra.ditalia@gmail.com.

For more work by Alexandra D'Italia, visit her page at our Online Sundries site.

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