Wild Sugar (Or: Beast)

I was walking north on Crosby Street in SoHo, saw long line ahead, and thought, no, that's got to be for, I don't know, Patti Smith, even as I'd hoped it was for Cheryl. But it was for Cheryl. The line kept on going and going--(there were former students of mine in that line; we said, hi!)--to the front door of Housing Works.

I'm talking about the event that's now being referred to as the Wild Sugar event, which both celebrated the publication of Cheryl Strayed's beautiful memoir Wild and her Dear Sugar advice column in The Rumpus. I was one of the readers of those letters. It's a night that's already been written about ( read here for Electric Lit's take ), and maybe it's best that I simply pass along the text of what I read, which is about as complicated and generous as the best literature. The letter is in response to a young man with a rare blood disorder, who describes himself as hideously ugly. He sees his looks as getting in the way of his ever finding romantic love. The Ian referred to in the passage below is a friend of Sugar's, who once suffered severe burns all over his body at an earlier point in his life.

***

from #46 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Dear Sugar from The Rumpus

One night after I got off work, Ian and I went to another bar to have a drink. When we sat down he told me it was the anniversary of his accident and I asked him if he would tell me the entire story of that morning and he did. He said he’d just woken up and that he was gazing absently at a sleeve of saltine crackers on the counter the moment his kitchen flashed into blue flame. He was amazed to see the crackers and the sleeve disintegrate and disappear in an instant. It seemed to him a beautiful, almost magical occurrence, and then, in the next moment, he realized that he was engulfed in the blue flame and disintegrating too. He told me about falling down onto the floor and moaning and how his roommate had awakened but been too afraid to come to him, so instead he yelled words of comfort to Ian from another room. It was the people who’d been on the sidewalk down below and seen the windows blow out of his apartment who’d been the first to call 911. He told me about how the paramedics talked to him kindly as they carried him down the stairs on a stretcher and how one of them told him that he might die and how he cried out at the thought of that and how the way he sounded to himself in that cry was the last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness for weeks.

He would never have a lover.

He would be happy. He would be sad. He would be petty and kind. He would be manipulative and generous. He would be cutting and sweet. He would move from one cool loft to another and change all the color schemes. He would drink and stop drinking and start drinking again. He would get a strange kind of slow-growing cancer and a particular breed of dog. He would make a load of money in real estate and lose another load of it on a business endeavor. He would reconcile with people he loved and estrange himself from others. He would not return my phone calls and he would read my book and send me the nicest note. He would give my son a snappy pair of ridiculously expensive baby trousers and sigh and say he loathed children when I told him I was pregnant with my daughter. He would roar at Thanksgiving. He would crouch beneath the bed and say that he was a fire-breathing monster and he would laugh with all the grown ups who got the joke.

And not even a month later — a week before Christmas, when he was 44 — he would kill himself. He wouldn’t even leave a note.

I’ve thought many times about why Ian committed suicide and I thought about it again when I read your letter, Beast. It would be so easy to trace Ian’s death back to that match, the one he said he would not unlight if he could. The one that made him appear to be a monster and therefore unfit for romantic love, while also making him rich and therefore happy. That match is so temptingly symbolic, like something hard and golden in a fairy tale that exacts a price equal to its power.

But I don’t think his death can be traced back to that. I think it goes back to his decision to close himself off to romantic love, to refuse to allow himself even the possibility of something so very essential because of something so superficial as the way he looked. And your question to me — the very core of it — is circling around the same thing. It’s not will I ever find someone who will love me romantically? — (though in fact that question is there and it’s one I will get to) — but rather am I capable of letting someone do so?

This, sweet pea, is where we must dig.

(The photo of Cheryl is by me; the photo of me is by Twitter's Hippiechick68)

Why I Write

I was asked to write a few words on "why I write" for the Fiction Addiction website (see reading schedule in sidebar). I've spoken very versions of my reply over the years. Sometimes it's a paragraph, sometimes it's pages. This came out in all of a few minutes, unfettered and unedited, as true to the person I was sometime last week, in a motel room in Delaware, over spring break.

I write because I don’t feel quite alive unless I’m trying to give shape to what I see and hear and think and feel. In part, I’m trying to make contact with others. I’m trying to feel less alone, and in that, I hope the reader feels less alone along with me. But in part, I’m also trying to make contact with the future. That sounds lofty, I know. But I think of writing as a single hand waving at the future from the past.

Dreaming Dog

Perhaps the hardest thing about being on my own again has been this--this absence. There are some logistical explanations--my building, which I've taken to calling my temporary building, as part of some effort to comfort myself, doesn't allow dogs, or I should say dogs larger than an apple. The people who have dogs are so surreptitious about them that you'd think they were hiding narcotics or contraband in their apartments. I know for a fact that a dog, a small dog, lives across the hall; I've heard the chinking of tags every single morning, from my bed, at 6:20 since late August. Obviously s/he is routinely taken out at that time, though I have not ever seen the dog. I have a feeling that the absurdity of that is going to stand in for the story of my year.

But there larger story is one of massive emotional transition. Ned has a new (canine) brother; Mark's with someone new. I've just been trying to get myself back on my feet, as they say. I've been trying to figure out what I want, which takes gigantic attention. I haven't wanted to disrupt, which has both good and not-so-good sides to it. The last time I saw Ned, back before Christmas, he barked in alarm, made an uncharacteristic moan, then peed all over the floor while looking at me with impassive face. That image of him troubled me for weeks, which might have something to do with the fact that i couldn't sleep all Monday night. I was to see Ned the following morning for a three-night trip to Delaware, while Mark and company went to Germany. I was afraid Ned would be angry with me, or worse, that he'd forgotten me, or would be indifferent to me. I never had a doubt that he'd been loved and taken care of, but that didn't stop me from punching a crater into my pillow once an hour, or throwing off covers, or putting on covers, opening the window a crack, and walking to the medicine cabinet for antacids.

Friends had told me that all would be fine. I knew in part that they were probably right, but I was also afraid that it was a little too easy. Dogs are much more complicated and sentient than we ever give them credit for, and if he wanted to resent me, then fine. I guess I don't need to fill in the obvious; I'll let these pictures do the work. I don't want to simplify things or demolish worry in the wake of that long prelude; simplification has a dark, hard, shiny allure. Why is it we want to race to it, especially when we're talking about dogs and their emotional lives? But this day couldn't have been sweeter. 72 degrees, shirt-sleeve weather on the beach. A night outside Asbury Park, a ferry trip across Delaware Bay, two nights in Rehoboth. We're both conked out from breathing in tree pollen. Sun, wind: we're dehydrated, even though we've tried our best to drink water. This morning, I woke to the sounds of robins and song sparrows over the Parkway noise in Tinton Falls. A dreaming dog was pressing hot, sweaty weight into my thigh, and when I heard a stomach rumble, I couldn't tell whether it was his stomach or mine. Then we moved apart.

Spring Break

Here's a little interview I did for Pen Tales last week. I wrote it and sent it in while in a surreal haze post-Chicago. Thus, I'm not quite sure where my advice about hurts comes from. It sounded right at the time, but I've been thinking about it all week, as if those words were phoned in from some outside source.

The houses I talk about in one question? The closest representation I've found of them is at the Rehoboth/Dewey Beach line, where I spent the weekend after Salisbury. I did a little research on their neighborhood. To my amazement, the houses are almost absurdly inexpensive, at least for houses in the pines, within sight and sound of the ocean. It turns out they have a limited life. The land they're built on is leased land--or every homeowner leases his land from some concern. Within--ten years? fifteen? twenty?--the homeowners must cede their land back to the landlord, and the tract will be given over to something else, undoubtedly something much more plush.

Two weeks ago my student Joe put up a story set in Wildwood, New Jersey. We had an interesting discussion about the intensity of the clock, which is the essence of beach town life. You cannot forget time in a beach town. It's always there for you to accede to it, argue with it, worry it, pray to it. Perhaps that's why some of us are drawn to beach towns. About the time the sun hits its apogee, and the renters start shaking out their blankets, we're already sensing the end: the chill, the privacy, the aloneness, the good and bad of it. Pure heat is more precious in such a strategy, and I'd venture to bet that the owners of these loved houses think about time with a tripled intensity. Here are a few pictures of those houses, along with some photos of Assateague wild horses and the Ocean City boardwalk, which might also be titled: how I spent the first weekend of Spring break.






Assateague and Ocean City

Shore

This appears to be the season of shore readings: Chestertown, Maryland; Mays Landing, New Jersey; Salisbury, Maryland. It goes without saying that I'm always happy to read anywhere near/by the ocean. Even better if I get to spend a couple of hours with Kathleen (Kathy) Graber, who's hosting Atlantic Cape Community College's Writing New Jersey Series this spring.




So here's a story. After my reading at Salisbury University Thursday night, a young man comes up to talk to me at the signing table. His face looks oddly familiar--lit, charismatic--as if I've known it somewhere else before. The young man turns out to be my late friend Denise's nephew Mike. (Denise, as some of you know, is central to my memoir The Narrow Door.) Mike had been reading The Burning House in his creative writing workshop and hadn't known till the reading that the Paul who wrote the book was his Aunt Denise's Paul. A strange and startled and sweet moment of mutual recognition. I think there's a picture on the way.

Eye Exam

I tilted my head back as the optometrist squeezed a drop in each eye. There was the usual stinging and burning, but I was pleased with myself for being stoic about it. Even when I looked down at the kleenex I used to dab them. There was a stain the color of lime Gatorade or antifreeze.

What a color! I said to the doctor, who laughed back, and said it was better than red--or blue.

I was sent back to the waiting room. The sentences in front of me started blurring. Over the next twenty minutes there was the increasing sensation of too much light in the room. I knew what was happening: my pupils were expanding. There was something oddly fitting about experiencing these sensations as I read a story by my student Matt, whose central character was falling into a K hole.

By the time I was called back into the office, I knew my eyes must have been totally black to someone looking at me. No other reason for the fluorescent lights to hurt so much. I could barely keep my head up and I felt the unnerving vulnerability I feel when I'm on the beach, in the ocean, with my glasses off.

From Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse": At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover.

In the examining chair, I was thinking about the fact that a good part of my perception was hundreds of miles away, at AWP, in Chicago, though AWP had been over for two days. When I got overwhelmed by the social maw of it, I stood somewhere central, pulled out my phone, and stared down at its face, as if what was coming in was of great importance. The borders of that face helped to keep me contained. That way I could still be around people, still hear the chuff of shoes against carpet, voices joyful and hoarse from talking too much, and get my privacy back, if just for three minutes. Then I'd feel happy to see someone I knew again. The face of the phone got me through AWP.

I didn't occur to me that pupil dilation was not the best way to follow all that porosity. When the doctor shone a vertical beam of sun against my retina, I flinched, as if someone had poked me, in the side, on a dark street.

I walked out onto the sidewalk with my -8.25 prescription in my hand. At least the doctor was cheerful about it. I can't say how many doctors I've seen over the years, well meaning doctors, but unnerving too--grave in their performance about the intensity of my prescription, as if I might not have a sense that seeing is hard for me. The light struck the pavement, my head, the back of my eye. I pulled off my glasses, pulled on my sunglasses (non prescription) and did my best to walk home. I could certainly follow the sidewalk, especially if it was on the shadow side of the street. I was probably slouching. It was a relief actually not to know too many people in my temporary neighborhood; I didn't have to feel strange about not saying hello to the shapes aiming toward me.

I remembered saying "sorry" several times in the waiting room. Odd, as I remember being annoyed with one panelist at AWP who kept saying sorry at the smallest things, things she didn't have to be sorry for. Sorry, it occurred to me now, had something to do with vulnerability, physical or emotional.

Just another way to say: I'm scared.

When I looked up, I'd walked all the way to Broad Street, overshooting my street by two blocks.

When I got home, I put my old contacts back in. They didn't feel so good. The left dragged across my dry cornea as I blinked. When I took them out to rinse them off, the antifreeze color had seeped into my lenses. I'm sure you would have heard someone curse if you happened to be walking down the hall of my floor at that minute.

By night, there was more blue in my eye, less black. I'd spent the better part of the day--over eight hours--reading three student manuscripts, and I was exhausted and queasy from the work of sight. It was nine o'clock and I was ready for bed. Who knew how hard it was to let light in?

Seaside Room

I'm still simultaneously shredded and friendlier than usual, which is another way of saying that a good part of me is still at AWP, even though I've been back home for over 24 hours. Here's the last passage of the text I read at the Social Media panel with Matt Bell, Kim Addonizio, and others on Saturday morning. And a few photos, which can't even begin to capture the vastness of three days with 9.000+ writers. A Times Square for writers.

from the piece "Mystery Beast"

9) Sometimes it seems as if keeping a blog is the equivalent of playing in a seaside hotel, north of Blackpool, south of Morecambe. It is late August, mysteriously hot in the room. There’s a hint of mildew coming off the pillow case, and the rooms are to be shut down for good in a matter of weeks. Winter is coming. Wind off the Irish Sea, and ice. Why would I think such a thing? I think there’s a pretty good reason why Tumblr holds such appeal. The template is stylish, simple; the text is always subordinate to image. It makes a strong visual impression, especially if you’re coming to it through Twitter, then heading back out again. It signs messages to you with the word “love.” To like a post, you press the heart. There’s so little text. It feels wrong to write more than the shortest paragraph, as if by keeping it short one is resisting all that was ever wrong with blogs: the self-indulgence, the self-regard. But Tumblr is also doomed, because just as we’re settling in, Tumblrites will be rolling on to the next best thing. (Pinterest?) Elegy is the nature of the internet, though we might not be able to see that yet.

Until the next thing comes around, I think I’ll stay in my seaside room. I’m not the type who likes to sprawl so much, but sometimes you need to know you can throw your arms out, and take up the whole bed if you have to.

Cate Marvin in the Hilton lobby

Erin Belieu singing "Superstar" at the VIDA Karaoke benefit at Tamarind

The empty lobby of the Hilton Chicago at 8:30 Saturday morning

Audience gathering for the social media panel

The people at ASU's Superstition Review took this shot of me

Chicago Snowflake in Transit. From the platform of the Red Line at Belmont, 5:35 AM Sunday morning, on the way back to the airport