"Intimacy," by Aysegul Savas

"I first became acquainted with the author through mutual friends from our part of the world. Even though they were all well established in the city, they hadn't given up on the old ways. They introduced newcomers to the group, helped them with logistics-finding housing, doctors-whenever they could. I, too, had benefitted from their warm welcome when I moved to the city, even though I was usually suspicious of such generosity-not of receiving it but of offering it up, as if such openhandedness might make a fool of me."

"It was a surprise that the author agreed to meet with me. In fact, he was the one who suggested it. I was far enough along in my career to know that people like him didn't usually have time for such meetings. I could now reëvaluate my disappointment of earlier years when writers I admired had politely declined to read my books, or to meet me following a public event that had brought them to the city."

"That was why it seemed surprising that I would meet the author on such relaxed terms. We had no formal ties, nothing that bound our careers. I doubted that he had even read my work. I'd admired him for nearly two decades, since the days when I first wanted to become a novelist, though my admiration of writers was not what it used to be-that is to say, all-consuming."

A narrator recalls connections made through mutual friends who supported newcomers with housing, doctors, and logistics after moving to the city. The narrator accepted that help while remaining wary of obvious generosity. A prominent, well-established figure unexpectedly proposed a relaxed meeting, surprising the narrator who had assumed such figures lacked time for informal encounters. Earlier disappointments with admired figures' refusals gave way to reciprocal distancing, as the narrator sometimes ignored outreach. Longstanding admiration persisted but softened, allowing the narrator to notice flaws and reduce idealization of previously exalted figures.

Read at The New Yorker