As sometimes happens, a reader of my blog will reach out to me. Some missives are impertinent (read the psychoanalysis one dude gave me here), some are short messages of sympathy/humour/encouragement, some are declarations of the heart. When I first received fan mail, I freaked out. How could my little ramblings inspire such effort on behalf of strangers? Since then, I’ve grown comfortable with receiving unsolicited messages – it is a sign that my stories, although personal, trade on emotions and insecurities that are shared by my readers. My stories are relatable.

Yesterday I went for dinner with a male reader of mine. He was a stranger – meaning he is not part of my circle of existing friends or acquaintances that follow my blog. He’d found my blog via a Google search, and struck up an email correspondence with me that was witty and amusing. Over the weeks he became a faithful reader. His insights are interesting and thought provoking; he was a fan and critic of my writing. He asked that we meet up because he wanted to share his own personal dating trainwreck story, and thought it might prove to be inspiring material for a story – if not for my blog, for a short story that we could collaborate on. He’d long been encouraging me to take my writing more seriously (according to him, I’m “wasted on numbers”), and knew that all I lack is the inspiration or material to try something more substantial than blogging. I therefore accepted to meet him – what did I stand to lose?

We met in a trendy restaurant for drinks and tapas. No more awkward than one of the many blind dates that I’ve been on.

Hi! So happy you agreed to meet up! Nice to meet you. Sorry I am two minutes late – I was printing a non-disclosure agreement.

Ummmm, what?

A non-disclosure agreement. I apologize, my printer was running out of ink, so it doesn’t look very good. There are some striations. And I didn’t have time to modify it, so I just took the standard template. It is legally binding. Would you mind signing?

You know those social situations where you are so shocked, you can’t help but laugh? Yeah, this was one of those situations. Boy, did I laugh, and laugh, and laugh. And giggle as I read carefully all two pages of the NDA.

That’s the end of my post, y’all. I’m legally bound to discretion.

P.S. I can’t help but feel that my street cred as a writer is growing every day. First Strawberry, and now this. What are the odds?!