A Jerk, A Jawline, and a Writer without Words

By Jillian Owens

 

I was on this terrible date with this guy (God…I have way too many stories that begin with that sentence!). In retrospect, I don’t even remember why I agreed to it. We had met when I was at some art event or another with friends. After a few glasses of wine, I failed to notice that this overly-boisterous lout was probably the most annoying person I’d ever met, and that having a chiseled jaw and muscular shoulders doesn’t compensate for an offensive and lackluster personality.

But there I was at Hunter Gatherer, sipping a pint of Pale Ale…desperately wanting to be anywhere else but where I was. I found myself calculating the value of consuming their really tasty Tofu Marsala vs. the increasingly real risk of prison time from stabbing this racist, sexist jerk in the forehead with my fork. I then weighed our waiter’s pain and suffering from having to witness two people who were so clearly not hitting it off and the tips he was losing from fellow diners asking to be moved to section where a drunken idiot wasn’t constantly guffawing at his own dick jokes.

I’ve never been very good at math.

 

I don’t feel the need to justify my choices to you.

 

At the time, I was still working in the nonprofit sector doing the work that no one really wants to do but rather has to do. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met anyone who wakes up in the morning declaring, “Huzzah! I’m really going to throw myself into hours of tedious data entry and budgeting today!”

 

Even Vince Vaughn in the background can’t make it fun. Sorry.

 

Or at least I certainly never did.

This was also around the same time that my blog was gaining in popularity – to the point of strangers coming up to me on the street to tell me they liked it. I was also just starting to write theatre reviews for Jasper Magazine as well as a weekly column here at MidlandsLife. But if you ran into me at a cocktail party and asked, “What do you do?”, I would have answered that I was a Grants Manager who did a little sewing on the side for fun.

“So…would you like to come over to my place after this?” my creepy companion asked with an eerie wink/leer combo that made my skin crawl. I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I had been polite for an entire forty minutes with this cretin, and I couldn’t hold back another second.

I started laughing. It was an big incredulous laugh that actually made me tear up a bit.

“I’m sorry,” I said…dabbing my eyes between chortles. “I have…no words,” I ended with a sigh, shaking my head.

Mr. Jerkoff with a Jawline wasn’t amused.

And then he said something that changed my life and career forever:

“I think it’s funny for a writer to be without words.”

We split the check and I went home.

When I got home that night, I updated my the bio on my blog, as well as my resume and LinkedIn profiles to add a title I never allowed myself to have: Writer.

 

 

Since then, my writing career has flourished and I’m lucky enough to do what I love every day for a living. But what if I had never dared to see myself as a writer? What if I had never actually typed that word into my bio, resume, and subconscious.

What if I had one less story that began with, “I was on this terrible date with this guy…”?

 

 

Jillian Owens is a writer, designer, and eco-fashion revolutionary. A Columbia SC transplant, she graduated from the University of South Carolina with a BFA in Theatre and English. When she’s not gallivanting about, she’s busy refashioning ugly thrift store duds into fashionable frocks at ReFashionista.net or creating compelling content for the clients of Riggs Partners, where she works as a digital marketing specialist. She also reviews local theater productions for Jasper Magazine and Onstage Columbia, and is an occasional contributor for The Free Times. Any comments, questions, or crude remarks can be directed to jilliowens@gmail.com.

 

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