So, the reading. Mo and I hit the highway earlier than originally planned, due to my taking an impromptu half day of vacation. The drive was uneventful and we spent most of it listening to my Songs to Not Panic playlist (I made it prior to traveling to Journalcon DC, but it has come in handy several times since then) and chatting about boys and wine and how I would be absolutely fine during the reading. On the road, I realized that I had not brought my shoes and only had two pairs of athletic shoes (the pair I was wearing and a pair of running shoes for Saturday’s shopping) both of which would seriously not go well with whichever of the three outfits I had brought for the reading. Disaster. I quickly phoned Esteban, who was slated to drive down a few hours later, with his parents, and asked him to return home and grab my black heels. Then, of course, I continued to worry that he would not get there until I was standing at the podium wearing orange and blue tennis skimmers, so Pie devised a plan in which we would find a Payless and buy a generic pair of back up black shoes, just in case. Phew. That was better. She also prescribed that we should drink some wine before going to the reading, not so much to get drunk, but rather to get mildly relaxed. Good plan. We stopped at Sendik’s in Mequon and bought some wine and also some cookies, one of which was shaped like a duck.
I wasn’t sure where the hotel was, but I knew that it was next to the Milwaukee River and also the general location, so I exited the highway early and figured that I would drive by the area where I thought it might be. And I had picked the exact spot I needed to exit, because the hotel was right there. Brilliant. We checked in, dumped all of our stuff, and then headed out in search of a Payless. However, that was a bit more problematic. I wasn’t sure if there was a Payless near the University, but we drove down the more chainy shopping areas, and found nothing. As a last resort, we drove downtown, because I knew that there used to be one in the Grand Avenue Mall, at least before it started to take a nosedive. We didn’t see it at street level, but Mopie pulled an Amazing Race maneuver and asked the concierge of a hotel. He told us exactly where it was, we found a parking spot, ran in and found the Payless. Awesome! I found a very boring pair of black shoes and Mopie found the coolest pair of slingback sparkly teal shoes ever, for ten dollars. Shoe purchases in hand, we left the mall, found the car in the parking garage, and tried to leave. We had only been in the garage for twenty minutes, but were told by the attendant that we needed to pay fifty cents. Mopie handed me a dollar bill, and we waited. And waited. And watched the attendant do some things and then move some papers, ignoring us and the growing line of cars behind us. And then he came back to the window and said ‘What?’ very gruffly. ‘Our change?’ I asked. ‘You gave me fifty cents.’ He said, showing us two coins that were sitting on the window sill of his booth. ‘No we didn’t.’ ‘Yes you did.’ ‘No. We didn’t.’ His whole attitude was so confrontational that my Bullshit detector went off. I looked at Mopie and she made ‘Bitch Crazy!’ eyes back at me, in confirmation. Finally, the guy sighed, gave us fifty cents and then we blew out of there. We aren’t sure what that was about, but we think it was some kind of scam. If he really thought that we had paid our bill, why would our cash have been sitting on his windowsill? Wouldn’t he put it into the cash register? Or was that his take for the scam, so that his register wasn’t off? I suppose most people aren’t paying attention or don’t care enough to argue with the man, but seriously, if you do a car a minute, suddenly a career as a parking lot attendant is pretty profitable.
We tried to hurry back to the hotel, but with I43 all messed up, we were stuck in a line of cars for a half hour, finally getting on the highway two exits before we needed to get back off. Ah well. Mopie grabbed some wine glasses, while I tried on the two shirts I had bought the night before. The first one was too short to wear with my low-rise jeans and the second one was just uncomfortable and looked assy with the grey camisole I had brought to wear under it, so I decided to go with the back up plan of my flowered wrap shirt. However, the problem there is that it actually broke every rule I had laid out: it was black and pink and showed way too much cleavage. My in-laws were going to be there! Mopie loaned me her pajama top, which was a black camisole. I didn’t think it would fit, because it was normal-sized girl clothes from Old Navy, but it did, more or less. Or just enough to hide my cleavage, anyway. Mopie checked her mail and I got ready. I consumed the better portion of a half-bottle of really wonderful dessert wine, and then Mopie was the designated driver and got us to the bookstore in record time. We walked up to get a snack at a nearby restaurant, and I had a weird raspberry Long Island Iced Tea, since my nerves were quickly eating through any relaxing effects of the dessert wine. And then, I was golden. We called Esteban, and he and Ward and June were waiting for us at a nearby Starbucks. I excused myself and had a serious bout of nervous tummy action in the bathroom (I do not know what that’s about) but was more or less enjoying the moment, swathed in the support of my family and friends. Kari arrived and then the Chicago contingent, Poppy and Allie (and Bumpy) arrived with minutes to spare, and bearing a beautiful pitcher filled to bursting with colorful flowers. So pretty! At that moment, between all of Mopie’s caring Mother Hen touches and so many people who had driven from near and far to hear me read for fifteen minutes, I was beginning to feel as though I could do no wrong. But it was probably the Long Island Iced Tea.
There had been some confusion about the time that the reading would start, with the bookstore claiming that it started at 8 pm and the organizer insisting that it was 7:30 pm. Since the organizer wasn’t there, the bookstore was telling everyone that it was at 8 pm. About quarter till, we wandered into the reading area and I was a bit relieved to see that there was a microphone. The reading posse wandered around, browsing at books, and Desmond, one of my buddies from past workshops, came up and made sure that he knew how to pronounce the French title of my story. I gave him the phonetics and then realized that it meant that I was up first, because he was about to get started. Early. Oh shit. At least I had done some creative visualization beforehand. He read my bio, including the parts about the toast, and the crowd laughed lightly, which was a good sign, since it maybe meant that they were going to accept a little irreverence.
I went up and the rest was a blur. My voice shook the tiniest bit, but it helped that I could hear people laughing at my favorite parts, and I think I only stumbled over words two or three times. There was a decent amount of applause when I finished, and then Desmond mentioned that he was proud to helped workshop the story last spring, which was cool.
Next up, was the Birkenstocks guy, who was, true to his pseudonym, wearing Birkenstocks on his winter-chapped calloused feet. His piece was, in Mopie’s opinion, a Hemingway ripoff, but it was probably the best stuff I’ve seen from him so far. He has a decent reading voice and didn’t do the weird lilting thing that some poets do, although he did give the words a lot of weight, reading them slowly and drawing out the most simple of phrases. Maybe I just get impatient with slow talkers but that bugs the shit out of me. When he finished, Desmond asked for a round of applause again, since we were essentially, the warm up act for the established poet/faculty member. I’ve actually registered for and dropped her classes at least twice, if not three times, because it either doesn’t work with my schedule or I see the reading list and can’t bring myself to read Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony again. She’s a friend of my undergrad advisor, though, so I figured that I would have a good rapport with her. But listening to her read, I was really struck by what I used to think was a great reading and how I feel now. Sometimes, I just have to roll my eyes and think ‘Oh my god, we writers are such pretentious assholes.’ I think I was a little embarrassed, actually. I wish it had been Dr. O. Henry reading, rather than all the vibrato and stage performance poetry stuff. At one point, she couldn’t find a poem that she wanted to read and kept saying ‘Fooey’ into the microphone, and then one time, said ‘Fooey! Ooops, can I say that in here?’ which seemed to be a specific comment about my using the word ‘Fuck’ twice in my story, without even worrying about the fact that I was saying ‘FUCK’ into a microphone in a very pretentious book store. Ah well. At least this is the last of the student readings of the year.
After the reading, my workshop buddies came over to talk to me and shake my hand, which was kind of cool, since it was all guys and they brushed past Birkenstocks to come talk to me. I introduced them to Esteban, and then the faculty member who read came over and told me that I had such a great sense of humor. Which is I guess what you say when you can’t say that you enjoyed a story. We chatted a bit about my undergrad advisor and then we decamped. Walking out of the bookstore, someone stopped me and told me how much she enjoyed the story, and then when we got outside where Esteban, Ward and June were waiting, they said that someone had told them to tell me that they really enjoyed the story. Which apparently pleased June quite a bit.
We went out to dinner at Mimma’s (yummy) where our waiter took great pride in heavily accenting all of the Italian dishes, the way that local newscasters suddenly become bilingual with words like ‘Cuba’ and ‘San Juan’. The best part is when he knowingly indicated that a wine was from the California region. The weirdest was at the end of the meal when he lightly slapped me in the face. Bitch, oh no you did not.
We bid adieu to everyone, Paula and Allie heading back to Chicago, Kari going to the west suburbs, and Esteban and the parents traveling north. Mopie and I drove back to our hotel, chatted about the evening, had a hilarious discussion about poop, and then I fell asleep with a smile still on my face.
In the morning, I slept until a little after 8, which is pretty impressive in a hotel room, but the beds were extraordinarily comfortable and I had brought my own pillow, so it felt like home. I jumped in the shower and got dressed and waited for Pie to wake up, which was almost immediately afterward. While waiting for Mopie to finish in the shower, I walked over to the window to call Kari, as my cell had absolutely no reception inside the hotel room. At the window, I peeked out and was pleased to see that we were on the river side of the hotel. I narrated the idyllic scene to Kari, ‘This is really cool’ there’s a Canada goose paddling by and’ and’ are those guys dragging the river for a body?’ Across the river, there was a line of six guys, walking against the current holding a rope. Normally, I would have assumed them environmentalists, or perhaps part of an early Earth Day contingent (and judging by the murky waters of the Milwaukee River, it probably would require an entire month to save it), but for their matching natty outfits. Kari confirmed that they probably were actually dragging the river for bodies, looking for two missing kids.
I am from a very large small town. Even though it’s doubled in size during my lifetime, it’s filled with people who came from even smaller towns and will be a small town in its heart of hearts for a very long time. So please keep this in mind when I tell you that opening the window shades of my hotel room to see that they are dragging the river for not just A body but MULTIPLE bodies was, well, pretty unusual. It was random and surreal and weirdly cool.
As soon as I got off the phone, I rushed over to the bathroom to tell Mopie, who was in the shower, about the dragging of the river. She rushed over to the window, wearing a towel, and spotted a news crew. I flipped on the television, looking to see if there was a live broadcast, and Mo threatened to moon the television crew if there was, but alas, they were taping rather than coming to you live from the banks of the Milwaukee River. We wondered what you even say when you’re spending your morning, kicking your feet and hoping (not) to hit a dead body. ‘So, didya catch the Final Four game last night?’
We met Kari at the little bistro where I used to have writing workshops with Dr. O. Henry. I had delicious strawberry marscapone-filled crepes, bacon and some very hearty seven-grain toast, while Mo had very sensible steel-cut oatmeal and Kari had bagels, capers and lox. We headed downtown to visit one of my favorite stationery stores , then wandered into a Design within Reach, which had just popped up out of nowhere. I broke their water cooler and then we were off to Mayfair. Our parking karma was a little slow on the draw but we finally scored parking in the rock star row. We wandered in Crate and Barrel (I bought some silicone cupcake liners and also a silicone basting brush that looks, according to Mopie, a bit like a plastic squid) and then Mopie discovered that the one of the prop books in the Crate and Barrel bookshelves was actually the Judith Krantz novel she read when she was twelve and which alerted her to the existence of the love which dare not speak its name. Mopie did a dramatic reading from page 47, in which the heroine was deflowered and dare not to ride her lover with the tight thighs, and then I provided contrast with a more hushed reading from page 245, in which Ms. Krantz apparently copied and pasted the previous scene, replacing key words here and there and turning the lover into a woman named Topsy. We stopped when we realized that there was a never-ending stream of Crate and Barrel employees parading past us, as we giggled about Topsy’s fertile crescent.
We fled Crate and Barrel, fearing the imminent lecture about dramatic readings from their own soft core porn, and went to the mall. We hit Torrid, where I found the little black t-shirt that I’ve been waiting to find for years, featuring Arial from The Little Mermaid, and Mo got a very cute sparkly top and flyaway shrug to wear to an upcoming banquet, and which would match her new sparkly shoes, without being too matchy matchy (very important). We made a quick stop at Sephora, which was packed beyond belief and made me hyperventilate a little bit, and then we grabbed a quick lunch at PF Chang’s. We ran out to the Hootchie Mama store, where the pickings were slim (a little too late in the season for winter clearance but too early for the summer stuff). I didn’t find anything, but Kari got a very cute skirt and Mo snagged a blue and white camo skirt with spangles for $5. She could not be talked into the black wife beater with a giant sequined V on it, despite my assurance that it looked like an emblem for a super hero. Apparently, she didn’t want to be the embodiment of Vagaqua, whose superpower would be the ability to dry the vaginas of her foes with the power of her mind.
We ran Kari back to her car, and then headed out on the highway, stopping once in Mequon to pick up more of that fantastic dessert wine. I was pretty exhausted when I got home, but had some cereal for dinner and then went to bed. On Sunday, Esteban and I lazed around for too long, since it was futhamucking (can I say that in here?) Daylight Saving Foolery day. Around noon (which is really 11 am, except that no, it wasn’t) we went out for coffee and then went directly home so that Esteban could pack for his business trip. He has a pretty awful week ahead of him, with something like 26 meetings in four days. Poor thing. I spent the afternoon working on freelance stuff and also placating the cat. It’s like she knows that he’s leaving and is freaking out ahead of time. Then I made a Target run, since he needed black socks and we needed, well, everything. I totally am done spending money until my next trip. My bank account has become anemic and I am very nervous to see how much we owe the government’s war fund, since our freelance money doesn’t have taxes deducted. I’ve saved a bunch of it in my savings account, but probably not as much as I should, figuring that I’d rather pay off a credit card bill and avoid the interest charges than keep it in my savings account, earning two cents a month or something. Ah well, that will be the excitement for this week!
