Sexting: A New Kind of Crime

Susie Vanderlip (Guest Blogger)

Susie Vanderlip is a certified prevention specialist, theatrical motivational speaker, and founder of Legacy of Hope®, a resource for troubled teens and those concerned about them, such as counselors, teachers, and parents. She has performed for, inspired, and engaged in candid conversations with many thousands of teens across America on such subjects as alcoholism, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, bullying, self-mutilation, and suicide. What she has to say about sexting struck me as of great interest to mystery readers and crime fiction writers. It’s a 21st century crime, based on the new technology, that involves a profound paradox: the kids involved are both criminal and victim. EZ

When tweens and teens combine texting with flirting, it can quickly become “sexting.” Sexting is the exchange of naked or semi-naked photos over cell phones. Sending such photos of minors can lead to a criminal charge of child pornography, even when the pictures are sent by a minor.

Some cities and states do not charge youth with felonies, since the intent of child pornography laws is to deter and punish adult pedophiles. But many jurisdictions follow the letter of the law, charging youth who send naked or semi-naked photos of themselves or their girlfriends or boyfriends, and even more significantly, their ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, with felonies, resulting in prison sentences and a lifetime of regret and recrimination. Teens are very vulnerable to breaking such laws and may end up permanently labeled as sex offenders.

The law hasn’t caught up with technology. Likely a teen’s intent is strictly to share a form of connection with his or her partner. When the couple breaks up, enraged partners may send off nude or semi-nude photos to all of their friends, uploading pictures and abusive text to Facebook. Or a proud teen may send a photo of his or her partner to a few friends who send it to a few friends who upload it to the Internet. Suddenly, a private picture becomes very public. Other teens waste no time in commenting and labeling the subject of the photo “whore,” “slut,” etc. The potential for a teen to feel embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated is enormous. The subsequent self-loathing has led teens to depression, cutting, and even suicide.

Deputy Frank Navarro of the Sheriff’s Department in San Bernardino, CA, an expert in the field, reports that about twenty percent of teens admit they have participated in sending such pictures by cell phone. Twenty-two percent of girls said they’ve sent photos, and fifteen percent of boys say they’ve disseminated photos when the couple broke up. Some middle schools report sexting as their Number One behavioral problem.

Sadly, such photos can stay on the Internet indefinitely. They are impossible to remove from some vast distributions. When teens look for college entrance or even jobs after college graduation, admissions staff and employers may search Facebook for names. These photos are known to destroy opportunities for youth and can become a nightmare for parents and families.

What’s the worst that can happen?
Teen suicide
Teen violence/guns used in retaliation
Felony charges/prison sentences/lifetime labeling as a registered sex offender
Loss of college entry, job loss, castigation in society, inability to live in certain areas as a sex offender

Teens don’t come preloaded with mind-ware that enables them to understand the consequences of their behavior. In fact, quite the opposite: they act impulsively and lack a realistic view of consequences. Teen hormones and natural flirtations can turn tragic when kids start sexting.

Can we save our libraries?

Sandra Parshall

We all know libraries are hurting because of budget cuts, but do you have any idea how bad the situation really is?

Here are some figures presented in a recent issue of Publishers Weekly:

The New York (City) Public Library faces $40 million in budget cuts, which would mean eliminating 650 full-time staff positions, drastically reducing the hours libraries are open, and trimming materials acquisitions by a third. This is a library system that currently has 40 million visitors a year (more than attend all local sports events combined). Estimates are that budget cuts will reduce that number by six million and that a million fewer children and young people will be served.

In Detroit, 20% of library workers have already been laid off and those remaining had their salaries cut 10%. The library system’s 2012 budget will be cut from $35.5 million to $23 million.

The Houston Public Library’s budget was $39.3 million in fiscal year 2010; for FY 2012, it will be $32 million. The Dallas library has lost more than half its materials budget in the past few years.

The same sad story is repeated across the nation in communities large and small. State libraries have also been hit with severe cuts in funding, and the Obama administration has proposed eliminating federal funding for the Department of Education’s Literacy Through School Libraries program, which provides funds for materials, staff, and services in school libraries.

Why does any of this matter? What will happen if our library systems implode?

Millions of children in low-income and rural areas will lose the only place that gives them access to books and the internet. Inner city children will lose the only quiet, safe place where they can go to study. People hoping to start small businesses and unemployed people looking for work will lose the research opportunities libraries provide. Everyone who loves to read will lose that magical doorway into other worlds and lives.

As the scope of the potential loss becomes clear, citizens in many communities are mobilizing to save their libraries and make politicians realize that access to a library is a necessity in today’s world, a basic right in a literate society, not a luxury that can be discarded when times are bad. In Oregon, the Hood River County Library, closed for the past year, is about to reopen after citizens approved the formation of a new tax district to pay for its operation. In Los Angeles, voters approved Measure L, which sets aside a greater amount of property tax revenue for the library system and will reverse the major funding cuts imposed last year.

If they can’t sway the budget-makers, some communities are raising funds on their own. In Seattle, Friends of the Library raised $1 million, including $500,000 from a single anonymous donor.

Writers are also rallying to the cause. Karin Slaughter’s Save the Libraries project, backed up by International Thriller Writers, is helping libraries with fundraising events and auctions of items donated by bestselling authors. Go to www.SaveTheLibraries.com for more information. Sisters in Crime’s We Love Libraries Lottery provides a $1,000 grant to a different library every month, with the stipulation that the money be used only for acquiring books. To find out how your local library can enter the drawing, go to www.sistersincrime.org.

We can’t sit back and wait for big organizations and other people to save our libraries. We can’t assume that the slash-and-burn approach to library budgets will blow over and everything will be okay in the end. What’s happening to libraries throughout this country is nothing short of catastrophic. We have to donate money and materials and support fundraising efforts, but we also have to remain aware and be willing to protest the next time a major cut is proposed.

Libraries are the heart and soul of a civilized society. We can’t afford to lose them. 

What do libraries mean to you? What would you lose if you no longer had a library near you?

Yes, No, and Maybe

Sharon Wildwind

As I write this, the sun is shining on Victoria harbor, the flowers are blooming, and the wonderful Bloody Words 2011 convention has come to an end. I had a marvelous time, met loads of people, and collected tons of new ideas, but since I have to leave the hotel soon to catch a plane and will get home late tonight, I’ll share just a mini-report right now. More next week.

This is from a panel on How to Maintain Pacing in Suspense and Comedy. The question posed to the panelists was, “Does humor have any place when the story reaches a climax?”

Yes, it does. It humanizes a very difficult situation and can add depth and texture to the climax.
~Don Hauka, reporter and author of the Mister Jinnah series.

Absolutely not. Crisis and the climax is all about tension and humor defuses tension.
~Phyllis Smallman, author of Sherri Travis series.

Maybe. If humor has been a part of the character’s personality all of the rest of the way through the book, it’s unnatural if the humor disappears in the crisis moment. The humor may change, diminish, become darker or brittle, but it shouldn’t go away.
~Anthony Bidulka, author of the Russell Quaint series.

Which just goes to show there are very few absolute answers in writing.
-----
Quote for the week:
Every trip you take should produce a minimum of five written pieces:
a. A memoir
b. A character sketch
c. A poem
d. A travel piece
e. A piece of fiction, even if it’s only a few paragraphs long
~Verna Driesbach, author, editor and literary agent

(Looks like I have my work cut out for me after this trip.)

Writing A Ghostly Nun Tale

by Julia Buckley
From the time I entered first grade to the day I graduated from high school, I benefitted from the teaching of Dominican Sisters. I suppose it's no surprise, then, that the second book in my Madeline Mann series, LOVELY, DARK and DEEP, is heavily populated with nuns.

The premise of the book: Madeline is approached by her former high school English teacher, Sister Moira McShane, about the death of a nun named Sister Joanna. Moira fears that Joanna's death--ten years in the past and deemed an accident--was foul play, but her only evidences of this are her own troubling dreams. Madeline, skeptical in her faith and about this case, takes it on merely as a favor to her beloved teacher. In the ensuing investigation, she finds out that even nuns have secrets, and it becomes her task to expose those secrets . . . and a murderer.

So why did I write about nuns? I suppose they are very much a part of my consciousness, and certainly they shaped who I am today. But as Madeline points out in the book, women religious are often misunderstood, and what people don't understand, they turn into stereotypes or caricatures. Yet the nuns Madeline encounters are women of faith and humor; they are regular human beings who are willing to live their beliefs in a structured way.

And their numbers are dwindling. Sr. Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, wrote that "It is true that the numbers of U.S. women religious declined precipitously, by tens of thousands, from the highpoint (at least 120,000) in the mid-sixties to something around 60,000 today. This was due principally to two factors, not identical, namely, the sharp drop-off in numbers entering religious life and a major exodus of professed religious from the life. These phenomena were largely simultaneous which leads many people to fail to distinguish between them."

I went to a parish school in the 1970s, so I was still enjoying the benefits of a large and diverse population of nuns who had many talents to share. What did they give me?

First, a fine education. The women who taught me were professionals who possessed vast knowledge about their fields.

Second, a belief in excellence. These women did not settle for second best, and that has influenced the way I see the world.

Third, an open attitude toward faith. The nuns who taught me theology weren't horrified by students who questioned Catholic doctrine or vocalized their doubts. They wanted their students to think for themselves.

Fourth, a full investment of themselves in the classroom. These were energetic, joyful, intelligent women who wanted to share their knowledge of Latin, English, math, science, theology, chorus. They were women who believed in the pillars of Dominican life, especially prayer, study and community.

So it's not surprising, I suppose, that Dominican sisters would find their way into my writing.

And if Madeline's encounter with the sisters is something that interests you, you can find LOVELY, DARK and DEEP on Nook and Kindle. ;)

This is My Tribe

by Sofie Kelly (aka Darlene Ryan)
Author of the Magical Cats Mysteries

Writers work alone. We create worlds. We kill. We make love spark and desire simmer. We live, much of the time, in a make-believe world with people who don’t exist outside of our heads and our laptops, and the real people in our lives shake their heads and wonder if we’re deluded. Or delusional.

But for the last week I’ve been taking an online writing workshop, and I’ve been surrounded by a community that doesn’t think it’s odd to talk out loud about imaginary people. Or to them. No one asks, “Why don’t you write something like Twilight?” 

Several years ago I sat with another group of writers and heard poet and novelist Sue Goyette say, “We are your tribe. We understand.”

I have found my tribe again in an electronic gathering of like-minded people. In our online class we get giddy over a plot twist or a well-crafted paragraph. We throw ideas at one another, posts crossing in the ether until a suggestion becomes a few words from one person, a few from someone else. “Turn the princess into a vampire witch on a quest to find Elvis in the lost city of Atlantis.”

“Send me your address, I found that book we were talking about yesterday,” someone emails. No one ever complains, “Mom, we have no toilet paper again.”

Writers write and when we aren’t writing, some part of us is always watching, always plotting, no matter what’s happening to us or around us. No matter how sad, how silly, how bizarre, a little voice in our heads is thinking, How can I use this? We are crows. We see shiny pieces of other people’s lives and we reach for them. In our real lives we hear, “Don’t put this in a book.” In class a dozen people type, “You have to write about this.”

This is my tribe. People who sit too long at stop signs searching for the right words to describe a sliver of crescent moon that seems to be teetering on a roof edge. People who fall on a patch of sidewalk ice and ask the paramedic for a pencil and a piece of paper to scribble down the sensations.

In the real world this past week, dust bunnies have met, courted and spawned babies. In the real world there are enough crumbs under the kitchen table to make a sandwich. And in a few more days we’ll be ready to go back to the real world, to hunt down the dust bunnies and sweep up the crumbs. We’re part of the tribe now and we’ll take that sense of community, of encouragement back to the real world. Because the real world is where all the stories begin. Stories about love, hate, despair and what really happened to a dozen double rolls of toilet paper.

***********************
Sofie Kelly is the pseudonym of young adult writer and mixed-media artist, Darlene Ryan. Her first Magical Cats Mystery, Curiosity Thrilled the Cat, landed on the N.Y. Times bestseller list. Sofie/Darlene lives on the east coast with her husband and daughter. In her spare time she practices Wu style tai chi and likes to prowl around thrift stores. And she admits to having a small crush on Matt Lauer. Visit her website at www.sofiekelly.com.

Promotion Redux

by Sheila Connolly


I promise I'll stop obsessing about this soon, but with two books coming out in the next two months, promotion is very much on my mind.

The following was part of an email I received this week from an organization I subscribe to on line, and the header line included "Learn Essential Marketing Tools."  I was invited to participate in a series of workshops where I would learn how to:

--Develop a branding concept

--Develop an overall marketing campaign

--Understand and decide what marketing tools (web, print, etc.) best attract customers

--Learn how to plan and create the framework for your website

--Plan and create a website


All of this sounded very familiar, and I've been hearing it from publishers, agents and colleagues for years.  So why am I repeating it here?  Because this was targeted at farmers.  The email announcement came from SEMAP, the Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership.

Yes, the workshops are all about how to market your farm business--just add "for your farm" at the end of each of the above items on the list.

And, believe it or not, this put some things in perspective for me.  Think about it:  electronic media have erased the boundaries between business sectors, and now the same strategies can be applied to mysteries and organic tomatoes.  It's kind of humbling.

But it's also an affirmation of the power of the Internet, if you know how to use it.  Think for a moment of any of the recent examples of civil unrest in various countries.  In an earlier, simpler day, despotic leaders could simply have shut down the radio and television stations and the newspaper (if they didn't already control them outright), and the general population would have had only limited knowledge of what was going on.  Now everyone seems to have a cell phone with Internet access and can post minute-by-minute reports on violence, with pictures and videos.  It's much harder to stifle a revolution these days.

Or in another case, just this past week in South Boston, close to a thousand teenagers congregated at a local beach, and--no surprise, since it was one of the first nice warm days of the year and no doubt more than one illicit substance was involved--violence broke out.  Did all these young people just happen to show up?  No.  They used Twitter and Facebook to draw people to the beach.

And then there's that hapless Congressman who's gotten into hot water about a nude photo that was sent from his Twitter account to someone inappropriate.  I don't know who was guilty of what, but listening to him sputter on camera, it was abundantly clear that he had little understanding of the impact of what had happened. (Bet you have a young aide on your staff who can explain it to you!)

It's an electronic world, and people have become accustomed to instant information.  My Luddite husband can barely dial his cellphone, but last week he spent eight hours driving to a conference with a bunch of colleagues, and any time a question came up, one or another of them would say, "let me look that up on my phone."  This isn't a novelty any more, this is the norm.



What's a writer to do?  We have to embrace ebooks, for one--and that's not easy, because the publishing universe is changing weekly, and even the major publishers are scrambling to keep up, frantically revising contract terms.  But we as individuals can't ignore the potential and the power of the Internet, or we'll be left in the dust.

Books We Love, Books We Recommend

Elizabeth Zelvin

The Malice Domestic convention represents the biggest gathering of avid mystery readers (excluding Bouchercon as drawing lovers of crime fiction and thrillers as well). Malicegoers have a fanatical loyalty to their favorite authors and series characters and an encyclopedic knowledge of the books they’re read (and in many cases, reread over and over). It’s not guaranteed that attendees will have conversations about these books, apart from those of authors who are present and those nominated for the Agatha awards (or the Edgars, which MWA announces just as Malice begins). But it does happen. I had two such conversations during this year’s Malice: one with the old friend with whom I stayed (located conveniently two and a half miles down the road from the convention hotel in Bethesda, MD) and the other with the gentleman who sat on my left during the Agathas banquet, Steve Steinbock, recently appointed book reviewer for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

My friend and her husband are mystery readers, but they aren’t connected to the mystery community, so I had the fun of recommending writers they didn’t know, once they’d told me enough about their tastes to get a sense of whose books they might like. They read James Patterson but find his work “a little too formulaic” and his characters lacking in depth. (They knew nothing of Patterson’s team approach to writing.) They enjoy Robert B. Parker because the formula is redeemed by witty dialogue and characters they have become attached to. (They were surprised to hear that many readers don’t like Susan Silverman.) They don’t mind the gore in Jonathan Kellerman’s books, but think John Sandford goes too far. They had reservations about Linda Fairstein on the counts of characterization and excessive detail in the passages on police procedure.

Between the dealers’ room at Malice and the bag full of books given out to attendees, I was able to give my hosts books I knew they would enjoy along with the fun of making recommendations. Felony & Mayhem Press was selling some of my very favorite traditionals: I bought Janet Neel’s Death’s Bright Angel for them—a police procedural with sophisticated and intelligent characters the reader falls in love with—and Peter Dickinson’s Sleep and His Brother, which I had recently been thinking of and wishing I could reread, for myself. The husband is interested in the World War II era, so he got two excellent books from the goodie bag that I’ve already read: James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle and Charles Todd’s The Red Door. I can’t wait to send my friend a list of series authors she can put on her Kindle, including Margaret Maron, Laurie R. King, and Donna Leon, all of whom I’m sure she’ll love. I think the husband will enjoy Jan Burke, Reginald Hill, and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

Steve Steinbock, whom I first met in the bar at Bouchercon a couple of years ago, is a kindred spirit who loves many of the same books I do. He agreed with (or at least let me rant on about) my theory that the middle ground between the heirs of Agatha Christie and the heirs of Raymond Chandler is occupied by the heirs of Dorothy L. Sayers, who introduced the character-driven novel to mysteries of the Golden Age. This goes largely unacknowledged in the perennial cozy vs hardboiled debate, although imho the descendants of Sayers include some of the most extraordinary writers of traditional mysteries, including Maron, King, Hill, and Julia Spencer-Fleming, as well as (arguably) Laura Lippman and S.J. Rozan (usually considered crime fiction writers) and Nancy Pickard and Charlaine Harris (usually considered cozy writers). Steve and I had a grand time talking about Manning Coles’s Tommy Hambledon spy novels. I was able to recommend to him a writer he didn’t know, Michael Gruber, whose The Book of Air and Shadows I consider the perfect thriller (plot, characterization, listen-to-this language, and even humor) as well as a brilliant World War II era suspense novel he didn’t know, the late Ariana Franklin’s City of Shadows. I also recommended Peter Dickinson's superb King and Joker, a refreshing alternative-history view of British royalty (and a propos as the royal wedding competed with Malice itself).

What mysteries do you love? Which authors do you recommend?

Does online book shopping kill impulse buying?

Sandra Parshall

Anybody who likes to hang out in bookstores has discovered a new favorite writer by browsing and impulsively purchasing a book that looked intriguing. But when we shop online because our local bookstore has closed or we lack time for leisurely trawls through the aisles, do we buy fewer books on impulse?

A new study by Bowker and Publishers Weekly indicates that we do. According to the 2010-2011 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics & Buying Behaviors Annual Review, 44% of respondents said they went online to buy a specific book, while only 11% said they made an online book purchase on impulse. By contrast, 26% of people who browsed through physical books in a store said they made an impulse buy.

Results were consistent across all trade segments and all categories of customers: browsing in a store leads to far more impulse purchases than buying online. As Publishers Weekly points out, understanding the way people buy online has become a major concern in the industry because in 2010 online retailers surpassed the chain bookstores in sales for the first time, taking in 30% of the money spent on books. Online retailing is now the single largest outlet for books. When all types of brick-and-mortar bookstores are combined, they still outsell online merchants, but PW expects that to change this year as Borders fades and Amazon continues to grow.

The big worry is that as readers shift their book-buying online and go in search of specific titles, sales will become even more lopsided in favor of well-known authors. The challenge for online retailers is to find a way to create the browsing experience on an electronic screen and allow readers to discover new-to-them authors.

Meanwhile, bookstores in Canada are hoping to get a cut of e-book revenue by making it easy for customers to browse through and purchase electronic books in a store setting. A Calgary company called Enthrill is on the verge of offering cards that display book covers and contain electronic access codes. The cards are thin and take up little shelf room, but they’re touted as a way to give the customer the “tangible element” that is missing from e-books. They’re also an easy way to purchase e-books as gifts. Small specialty stores that can’t afford to stock a variety of printed books can expand their offerings with the e-cards. Enthrill will make the cards available in up to 150 stores this summer in a test run with a limited number of titles in a broad spectrum of genres. A similar approach with the Zondervan/HarperCollins Symptio card was a flop – and ended just before the e-book boom took hold. Enthrill believes its book cards are coming on the market at the perfect time.

So the online merchants have to be more like brick-and-mortar stores to capture the profitable impulse buyers, while the stores want to find a way to profit from the e-book revolution.

Anybody brave enough to guess what bookselling – and buying – will look like 10 years from now?

Obsession

Sharon Wildwind

Whether you’re writing from Debra Dixon’s goal, motivation and conflict idea, Donald Maass’ raising the stakes, or other conflict-development theories, if you want a story to have depth and interest, give your protagonists and villains obsessions. Some characters may appear to have a passion rather than an obsession, but that’s just a nicer-sounding word for the same thing.

Being obsessed with marrying England’s Prince Harry would likely be thought a bad thing, especially by Prince Harry; being passionate about ending homelessness, a good thing. Watch those passions, however. When a good idea gets in the way of a normal, balanced life, it turned into an obsession. Remember that as writers, we want to stress, stress, stress our characters so passions that get out of hand can be a good thing.

Passion or obsession, the character can’t get away from the one grand and glorious thing they believe they must do with their lives. Lord Peter Whimsey became obsessed with proving Harriet Vane innocent of murder. Harriet, for her part, was obsessed with maintaining her independence. Those two competing obsessions carried through several books until both of them, passions spent, fell into each others arms.

There are a lot of theories about why obsessions/passions develop. For character development, I favor the traumatic event in the past situation.
1. Something happened to the character that planted the seeds of obsession or passion. Strangely enough, with Peter and Harriet, the sticking point was likely money. Peter had lots of it, but even all of that wealth could not protect Harriet from going to the gallows. He had to give more than money to save her. For Harriet, having to earn her own living after her father died set up that streak of independence.
2. It was an event with emotional significance and it occurred at a time when the character was either truly helpless or thought that they were helpless.
3. Something prevented them from getting counseling, medication, understanding, perspective, or hope after the incident.
4. Something happened to reinforce the victim’s story. The victim’s story says they did this to me. I did nothing/could do nothing to prevent this from happening.

Victim characters are often not very interesting. They tend to whine and that gets tedious. When Peter and Harriet meet, both have moved through the victim’s story to the survivor’s story, though Harriet has a bit more of a victim about her. Her line is that she allowed Philip Boyes to set the parameters of their relationship, that she was a fool to do so, and that her being brought to trial just might be what she deserves for being so stupid.

The survivor’s story says, this thing happened. While I couldn’t prevent it, I did these things to survive. Peter knows what he did to survive the Great War, and more important, what he is doing to survive being a younger son in one of the richest families in England. That bally-ho, fatuous man-about-town image is his survivor’s story, constructed so that people will let him alone.

Both of their survivors’ stories have crystalized around them. What makes their relationship work is that each can see in the other something that other people miss. They challenge one another to come out of their glass prison and be real, true, and vulnerable. Doing this takes time. It’s not a straight shot from survivor to thriver.

Remember that stress, stress, stress? Good fiction is one step forward, and two steps back. Whatever the character risks has to turn on them. This way, when they take a risk again, there has to be a whole lot more motivation, courage, hope, or love pushing them to take that second chance. And yet more for the third time, and so on until the reader feels that there is no possible way that the character will take that final chance, the one that brings them out of being a survivor and into being a thriver.

The thriver’s story says, “I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone, but I’m a better person because I’ve come through the experience and participated in my own healing.”

That’s a great outcome for heroes and heroines, but alas, life never works out so well for the villain. Fortunately for the writer, a good villain remain stuck in the victim’s story. Life has been done to him. He has no way to participate in his own rescue and that warps his view of the world. Think of heroic characters as moving forward and villains as repeating a circle over and over, only the circle gets deeper and harder to move out of each time.

Want character development in one question? That question is What is their obsession?

If you’re interested in knowing more about victims’, survivors’ and thrivers’ stories, see Dr. Rob Voyle’s Book, Restoring Hope.

-----
Quote for the week
Your biggest problems and your worst obsessions contain the seeds of your own growth and development.
~Sara Halprin, writer and process work therapist

Young Love, Righteous Revenge, and The Power of the Personal Essay

by Julia Buckley

My husband and I were married twenty-three years ago this weekend, on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We are rather surprised to find ourselves at this milestone, since we like to think of ourselves as still youthful. But time doesn't lie, and neither do our growing children, so here we are.

In honor of the day, I'll tell the rather odd story of how Jeff and I met.

In 1986 I was a junior in college and dating a guy named Bob. My boyfriend and I had been having some rough times, mainly because I think we were realizing we weren't "meant to be," if you believe in that sort of thing. So it was only partly surprising when Bob, who attended ISU, called me in Indiana and said that the formal dance he'd agreed to attend with me--the one for which I'd already purchased expensive tickets and persuaded my mom to alter an old prom dress--was something he could not now attend. He had to work, he told me.

In a cold voice I told Bob that would be just fine. And then I plotted my revenge. I would find a guy--any guy--to go to that dance with me, and I would have fun. I was thinking, at that point, of just going to a random store and approaching all males with my dance proposition, but then I had a brainstorm. My brother, eight years my elder, worked in Chicago in a big glamorous office building (or so I thought at age 20). He had often told me tales of his humorous co-workers. Surely one of them could be persuaded to go out with a cute college girl?

So I called my big brother and told him of my idea. He sounded skeptical. "Uh--I don't really know," he said. "I guess I could ask Jeff Buckley."

"Sure! He sounds great," I said.

"He's very funny," my brother assured me. This, I assumed, was a euphemism for ugly, but I didn't care. I told Bill to go ahead and extend the invitation.

I called that evening to find out the result. "Is he going?" I asked.

"Uh--he might. He has a list of demands."

Pause. "A list of demands? Like . . . a terrorist?"

"You have to know Jeff's sense of humor," he said. And then he read me the demands, which Jeff had scrawled on a piece of paper in his terrible handwriting while he was supposed to be working. To be honest with you, I can't remember them all, but one of them was "You must refer to me as 'Bronco' for the entire evening" and another was "write a five-paragraph essay entitled 'Why I must be accompanied by Jeff.'"

I actually thought this was pretty funny, and I was an English major, so I tossed off the essay in no time and had it ready when Bill and Jeff arrived on the dance day (there was no e-mail then, and I didn't have time to mail it).

Jeff told me later that it was a longshot that he showed up at all; he regretted telling Bill he'd go out with his little sister (he'd been told I was funny, which he assumed was a euphemism for ugly), and was going to call in sick. However, he had so much respect for my brother (and still does) that he didn't want to disappoint him. So he made the one hour drive to my parents' house in the suburbs, then another hour-long drive, with Bill, to Valparaiso University, where we met in our cumbersome formal clothes. I have attached a photo which chronicles forever the awkwardness of our meeting (and the exchange of the essay). (It also shows that on my dorm room wall I had, inexplicably, a poster for CATS and a picture of the "Hey Vern" guy. Go figure.)

Anyway, Jeff and I hit it off quite well, and when he decided to kiss me later that same night, he prefaced it by saying, "Let's get this awkward moment out of the way." That made everything seem pretty inevitable, which I guess it was.

I never did call him Bronco, though. Maybe after forty years.

(Note: This is a slightly-altered version of an essay I wrote a few years ago on my twentieth anniversary).