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So, I gave a reading tonight. It’s a writers’ conference after all (and a damn good one – Writers at Work – you can look it up) and this is what I’m supposed to do. So I get up at the lectern, which might be the problem to begin with. Lectern is a nun word. It recalls my speech classes from middle school – that and lavatory. The nuns always called the bathroom the lavatory. I don’t know why.
It’s strange though when a reading goes badly. Hard to say why. But I could tell right off, first 30 seconds, that this was the case. I realised in that moment, looking at the crowd, that they didn’t like me. True or not, we could debate, but the feeling was unshakable.
And then it’s only a matter of time before I got nervous and found myself – for no apparent reason known to man – confessing that the night before I had a dream about Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report – behind his news desk in his red necktie with his slicked-back, uptight haircut and his grim comedic delivery – and, I go on to tell them, it was sexual.
This is a wrong move. I can tell immediately. It was a nervous instinct – see day 1 launching into Big Love with a Mormon. (By the way, she’s no longer speaking to me.)
What had I hoped for? To create a more intimate environment, to build a bridge back to them, or at least make them feel sorry for me?
But, worse, it was the truth. My conscious mind has never thought of Colbert as sexy. I don’t think many conscious minds have – though everyone these days has a fetish. There is probably a monstrous cult web following inspired by the sexual magnetism of Ed Asner (too young? Look up the Mary Tyler Moore Show or its unsuccessful sequel the Lou Grant Show.) Now my conscious mind would pick American soccer star Benny Feilhaber. Hands down. But the subconscious is cruel and unwieldy and in charge. (If there isn’t a cult web following devoted to Benny Feilhaber, then the world has gone mad.)
Now it’s not wholly my fault that things went badly for me. I was following heavyweights like – and this is the short list — the hysterical George Singleton and Eileen Pollack, the esteemed and award-winning Tom Sleigh, brilliant memoirist Abigail Thomas … The night before William Giraldi (see the bear blog about his propositioning the NPR reporter) had given a rip-snorting reading about the Death of God. Later, he flipped up the collar of his suede jacket, wrapped a gray scarf around his neck, smoked his American Spirits and looked like James Dean.
I will likely continue to nervously blurt.
I will likely never have a sex dream with Benny Feilhaber.
And I will never stroll from a reading looking like James Dean.
(Right now, all I hear in my head is the word: lectern, lectern, lectern!)
Now here I am thousands of miles from the place I grew up, and I am talking with William Giraldi, a brilliant writer from Boston, discussing the nature of panic attacks – a topic among writers that often bobs to the surface – when a woman pops out of the nearby restaurant and calls my name.
I recognise her immediately – in a deep core reaction. I’m on bear alert out here in Utah. A few days ago I thought I saw the shadow of a bear – something large and hunkering in the shrubbery of the fake Swiss village. It ended up being a squat gas man checking meters. Regardless, there was the shot of adrenaline. It came from something primal. This woman – sunny, thick hair swung back in a ponytail, smiling brightly at me – made me want to run.
But, no, it wasn’t a bear. Three people from my high school – Sherry, Terri, and Barry – went onto the same college that I did. This was Sherry of Sherry, Terri, and Barry.
We chatted. What a coincidence! What are the chances! We give brief exchanges of our lives, talk about kids, friends in common.
I introduce her to Giraldi who doesn’t make any lewd comments – like the way he propositioned the NPR reporter whom he pretended to mistake for a prostitute, “Excuse me, but I think I ordered someone in a kimono?” – which is too bad.
Sherry of Sherry,= 2 0Terri, and Barry and I do not discuss the cultural poverty of our high school education, and we can’t recount our college days because I had no recollection of seeing her in college – which I spent primarily in soggy bars, sometimes in love and sometimes only entangled in brief, weird relationships with young neurotics.
Toward the end of the conversation, I thought, Hey, I like Sherry of Sherry, Terri and Barry. Why hadn’t we ever been friends? Didn’t I dislike her? Why had I ever disliked her? Had I been a judgmental young snot? Maybe I had.
We said our goodbyes and then, just before she slipped back into the restaurant, she tilted her head and smiled at me as if I were a very cute poodle that had managed somehow to jump through a hoop, and said, “Oh and I enjoy your little stories too.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding my head. “Thanks.”
But I was thinking, I was right after all: that was a bear.
A person from Utah is called a Utahan. That is pronounced You-tawn. I’m told this last night while the sun is still up at ten p.m., which is disorienting at best. I’m also oxygen deprived. During this trip, I’ve realized that I’m pro-oxygen. In Park City, Utah, oxygen is rationed like sugar during the Great Depression. Each person is only allotted so much oxygen per day per lung.
“You-tawn?” I say. I explain to the You-tawns that this doesn’t sound quite right – like people from Baltimore calling themselves Baltimorons, which, by the way, they don’t. (As everyone who’s ever watched John Waters’ films knows, they call each other ‘hon’.)
Now, I know on day one here I said I jumped into the Mormon thing way too early, what with Big Love and all. But, honestly, Utahans want to talk about being Mormon or living in Utah and NOT being Mormon. They want to talk about why you can’t write about it, why you have to write about.
Here’s my take. As a writer, you draw from your life. If you try to strip yourself of a defining part of who you are, if you don’t allow yourself to write about your natural obsessions, the work will be false, muted.
My obsessions drive me to matters of the heart, marriage, wifery (and the oddness of being a wife), betrayal, loss, friendship, wise overbearing mothers, love – in small doses as well as the kind that feels like the ocean.
I’ve told people here to write what they need to write, not what they think others want to read. The best stories are the ones that rise up from deep within us. I’ve said this many times here, in many ways, while taking in as much oxygen as I can – maybe more than my share – among the Utahans, Mormon and not, under the persistent sun.
I am now in Utah, staying in a fake Swiss village. This morning I got lost in this fake Swiss village because when Americans build a fake Swiss village, they build fake Swiss condo after fake Swiss condo – no variations on the theme. Wait. That’s not true. There is a statue of a grizzly bear which may not be a variation on fake Swiss stuff, but is a variation worth noting nonetheless.
I’m going to Park City, Utah to work at a week-long writers’ conference. I’ve done no research on Utah. I’ve never been. It’s one of the squarish states – with a little handle up top — in the middle swatch of the U.S., right?
I only know that it’s home to the Sundance Film Festival (which is sadly not in season so no star gazing), and that Salt Lake City, Utah was founded by Mormons and that in Utah, Mormon is a dominant religion. I do like the HBO series Big Love set in Utah, but I do realize that this doesn’t really constitute research.
I leave tomorrow.
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