New Stories

Modern Love is likely the most popular column in the world, published in The New York Times, the most widely read newspaper in the world. 10,000 submissions a year, many from professional writers, and only 52 are published, as many as there are weeks in the year. I was the chosen one last November/24. I had sent in my essay several weeks earlier (Even His Parents Were Younger), and anticipated a 3 to 4 months wait until I heard back, as they advertise. Although my chance of being accepted was .4%, I wasn’t sending it anywhere else, this revealing story was risque for me and I had decided it was Modern Love or nowhere.

Only a few weeks later, I opened my computer to see an email from ‘modern love, daniel jones’. Everyone who knows about the column knows of Dan Jones, the editor who started it all 21 years ago.

All I could see in the subject line was ‘nice essay’, so I wasn’t too excited. This could merely be a kind rejection letter. When I read further, I felt more secure. Jones wanted to set up a phone conversation, and he called my piece: ‘delightful, fresh, and easy to edit’. I spoke with him several hours later, and the conversation at first seemed to be a verification that my essay was all fact, as opposed to fiction, which is one of the prerequisites, and which it was. “We’re going to do a speedy turnover”, he said, “it will be in next week’s column.” Wow, that was fast.

He did a quick edit, which I even more quickly approved. But then..but then…I started to stew. He had told me on the call how he liked the man I wrote about. And I was glad of that but I realized that although my man was coming across exactly as he was, warm and sweet, I was coming off as well, cold and cavalier, as though all I wanted was to get laid, which wasn’t true at all. I had told Dan in our conversation that when writing about myself, I would often come across as flippant, even though I’m not. Talking to Dan was like a session with my shrink, he awakened and inspired something in me. So I rewrote the piece sometime in the middle of the night. I fired it off to Dan saying, “I changed a lot of the script but this is more what I felt at the time, and I’m sorry that it’s after deadline and has already been edited”. I waited…and waited. I heard nothing..What had I done? Every writer wants to be in Modern Love and I had just changed the script, after the deadline. I waited a day and a night and after not hearing from Dan, I was half crazy. Had he decided to bypass my essay entirely and move on to the next piece? Had he decided not to bother himself with a lunatic? Finally I sent another email and in the subject line I contritely wrote, “don’t worry if you don’t want to change it…”, hoping to hell that was still an option, since we were only a couple of days from print. I immediately heard from Dan, “No, it’s probably a good impulse. Couldn’t get to it yesterday’ (of course he couldn’t, he reads about 150 essays a day). He added, “I’ll make those cuts and see how It reads”. In the end he did use the new version of my story.

During my many years as a writer, I’ve never had an editor let me change a script after deadline. Dan is a star with a star column for a reason. He has such a clear vision of the column, and he did remind me to always be fair to the readers, he knows what they want and he’s going to give it to them. But he also wanted me, the writer, to respect my instincts. Such a pleasure to work with a great editor who is yet so humble. Let’s face it, this is a love column, and all of us who cross his path are in love with Dan Jones. I will admit that when I was worried that my essay was toast, I wrote another one. It was quite out there, obscene really, but I felt safe sending it to Dan, I wouldn’t have sent it to anyone else. He politely declined and I’m sure had to take a long soapy shower after reading, it was that filthy… but he was still very sweet about the rejection. Sigh, Dan Jones – what a star!

from: sharondunnwrites.substack.com

WOMEN AND CARS

 I am a woman who gets passionately attached to her cars. My first was a 1971 red Chevy Vega. Dad got it off the lot for only $400, since the Vega, right from the get go, was not a very popular model. Here’s a description from Hagerty Media: ‘the Vega was not really a bad car, it was a breakthrough domestic small car that was sadly cost-cut, poorly executed, under-developed and hurriedly launched to a sorry result, well beyond Chevrolet’s and GM’s ability to save it’. It had as bad a reputation as the Edsel for unreliability. But still, I loved that car. I would come out from my first job in TV, to the parking lot, and there would often be a red rose thrown across the hood, from my very romantic boyfriend, Ted. The rose looked so good on that little red sports car. If the rose wasn’t on the hood, it would be splayed across the windshield or inside on the dash.  Vega lasted for several years, a lot longer than Ted, actually. Our last trip (me and Vega’s, that is) was a four and a half hour drive home from Halifax to see my parents, which I often did. But this night, the car conked out as we were coming down Oxford St. in Sydney. We coasted to Cottage Rd. I turned right, then left into our driveway. The Vega never started again, but it got me home safely. Even in its final moments, it had taken care of me. The Vega was my first… we learned together, so I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for it. It had an undeserved bad reputation, just like the wild looking boyfriend who you’re not allowed to date when you’re a teenager, even though he’s so good to you….if the Vega ever comes back, I will be the first, and probably the only one, in line to buy it…                           

My second car was an ungodly lime green coloured Volkswagen Beetle. Semi automatic, shift but no clutch, it was fun to drive and it always started, even on the most bitterly cold days. When much better cars weren’t able to turn over, the Beetle hummed, never with heat, mind you, as I don’t think the heater ever worked. And the Blaupunkt radio never functioned either, but the sound would have been really great, if it had, I was told, so that made me feel better. I bought that car for around $500 and painted it a bright yellow. I sold it to an Air Canada stewardess, as we called them back then, who paid me a lofty $850 for it. I got a call from her a few months later, telling me that she was stopped by the police in Toronto, and when she showed them her ownership, it said Vega. Oops. The police weren’t worried though, she was a really cute flight attendant, so they helped her get a new ownership slip.

Things changed after I got married and my husband John brought me home a gift. It was a brown car. With our relationship as passionate as it was, I asked, “Why would you get me a brown car?” 

“Did you notice what kind of car it is?”, he asked. 

“Of course”, I told him,  “it’s brown”. 

“It’s a Mercedes Benz”, he said. It was a 1984, 500 SEC coupe to be exact. List price was then $57,100 US, in today’s dollars, about $174,000 US. 

“But why brown?”, I persisted. John rolled his eyes. A few days later, he was off to the Keeneland horse sale in Kentucky, and I decided to give him a surprise when he got back. 

 I picked him up at the airport a couple of days later (this was when you could just pull up at the curb to wait for a passenger), and when he came out, he looked around and said, “Where’s the Benz?”

“What do you mean, ‘where’s the Benz’?”, I asked, “it’s right here in front of you”, I gesticulated towards the now gold colored car. “I had Bobby the mechanic down the street paint it when you were away to surprise you”. He stopped in his tracks. “Does Bobby work on Benz’s?”, he asked. I shook my head, “no but it’s just paint’. “Are you surprised?”, I wanted to know.

“Help me to the car”, John said weakly, “I don’t feel well”.  He wasn’t kidding, he was trembling and a little ashen. 

“Don’t you like the color?”, I asked, disappointed, “I call him Goldfinger”. John raised his hand, “just let me rest”, he said, closing his eyes. John was quiet as I drove home, but by the end of the trip, he’d almost regained his composure. Trying to accept the new reality, he asked optimistically, “at least Bobby used Mercedes Benz paint, right?”

“Mercedes has their own paint?”, I asked, adding, “I think Bobby got it at Canadian Tire”. John turned a little whiter.

I stayed with Benz, but never bought new and that brings me to my all time favourite car. The steady, and some might say boring, C230. I picked it up on Christmas Eve 2009 after closing on my home, a deal that included all of the furniture and my then current old Benz.  My new car, the 2007 Silver C230 cost me $23 thousand Cdn., and had under twenty thousand miles on it. 

This car and I had a lot in common. We were both kind of cheap and run of the mill, but we were definitely cooler than our reputations, and we were also very reliable. We looked pretty good, as long as you didn’t get too close. And although we both got a bit beaten down and weathered over the years, we still ran just fine. My sons would make fun of Silver, as I called him, “first you put tape on the fender grill, and now the grill is gone”, Luke accused. “A friend of mine pulled it off, it looks better”, I insisted. Getting it fixed hadn’t even dawned on me. “Get rid of that old thing”, Jay would say. “How dare you”, I countered, adding, “Is that what you’ll be saying about me one day? ‘Get rid of that old thing?’” 

 I stayed completely loyal to that car, as it did to me. Oh, I would occasionally eye other cars, but never, ever would I consider making a trade. I didn’t care if another car was faster, sexier, or sleeker, no one was taking me from ol’ Silver. I have never been so loyal in my life. Maybe I should have chosen men the same way I chose that car – steady and boring, with a good pedigree… but alas, I never did. Silver made me understand how people can stay in long term marriages. He was so true, so reliable, so damn good to me, I could never stray. 

In 2022, disaster struck when a deer ran onto the road and leaped onto the hood of Silver. I was fine, the deer was fine, at least I think it was, it ran back into the woods, but the Benz, although it limped home, was a goner, it was totalled. 

“It saved your life”, the cops told me, saying that without the sturdy Benz hood, the deer likely would have landed on my lap, flailing about, and that could have been a really bad scene. 

Ol’ Silver and I were together for almost fourteen years. He was the longest and best relationship of my life, hands down. Teary eyed, I flew back to Toronto after his demise and headed to my mechanic Bobby, “I have an old Benz I think you’ll like”, he said. I shook my head, no one could replace Silver. But lo and behold, there, in his garage, was what seemed to be my old car back from the dead. I couldn’t believe it! 

“Just like your Ol’ Silver ”, Bobby said proudly.

I got in the driver’s seat and turned the key, it hummed nicely. Then the engine light lit up. I turned to Bobby, amazed. “Bobby, is the engine light going to stay on?”, I asked. He smiled and nodded. “Just like your old car”. I sighed, and with misty eyes, told him, “I’ll take it!!”

By the way, you might notice in the photo of me and Silver, below, that I’m not the best parker in the world. 

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the end .