My First AWP: What I don't know now that I thought I knew then

In many ways the AWP (Association of Writing Programs) conference represents the peak of the year for creative writers.  Unlike literature, history--I assume science--we don’t have sub conferences throughout the year for things like lyric poetry or mystery novel writing.  It all happens at once, with AWP, everyone converging in one pass.  Since I had never been to a AWP conference before I had built up many expectations, which would be inevitably ripped asunder.  Here are five ways my expectations were turned at my first go-around. 

1. Wearing a blazer makes you look professional, professorial, and cool.

That was my hope when my parents bought me the brown-tweed jacket I had been eying for my birthday.  I had seen the blazer all over campus, magic with patches sewn on.  Throw a blazer over a polo, a button-down—a T-shirt if you’re rolling Miami Vice style—and it’s instant class.  I assumed a well-placed blazer could ratchet up my status at AWP from first-year noob to seasoned panelist in a snap.

Not so much.  The secret to this magic trick, the one written in fine print, is that the wearer must own it; he must truly own his wearing of the blazer, believe he deserves to wear it.  In fucked up Monkey Paw wish fashion, I have learned that I can not own a blazer, at least not in the direct company of others who own it with such authority, but wearing without confidence exposes me for the fraud I am.  Wearing my birthday blazer on the first day of the conference, I felt like a Bar Mitzvah kid wearing his dad’s old suit that he had yet to grow into.  But at least, just as my Grandma had told me at my Bar Mitzvah, don't I look so cute wearing my big boy jacket?

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have gone with the slender-cut blazer?

2. AWP is all about getting free swag

The thing that I had heard most frequently prior to AWP was that everyone gave out free stuff—like mad free stuff.  Suitcase-busting, knee-knocking-as-you're-walking, overloaded amounts of free stuff.  And I’m all about free shit.  The thing that seemed to have been omitted from this statement was that about 87% of it is shit no one wants.

Most of this figure amounts to literary journals.  Everyone has literary journals at his booth or table.  The good ones cost money and the bad ones are hurled at your head as you pass by.  On the last day of the conference multiple copies are hurled at you in rapid-fire fashion. There are pens, but after about 27 of them, I’m good.  And the booths that are swilling pins—I mean really?  Pins?  Come on, nobody’s trying to build up their flare collection to teach Freshman Comp.  The best thing I picked up was a beer koozie and one or two journals that I’ll actually read.  The remaining 87%?  Hey, meet this dumpster.  I don’t know what AWP's slogan is, or even if it has one, but this should go at the top of the list of considerations; AWP: shipping shit to conference cities so you can throw it away!

3. Hostels are for dirty hippies and foreigners

The only word dirtier than memoir at an AWP conference might be hostel.  This year the conference’s convention center site was connected to a super posh Sheridan, which was right next to an equally posh Hilton, which was just down the street from a couple other semi-posh, grown-up, “I’m a professional going to a professional conference” hotels.  I stayed in a hostel.  I get why the professors and writers and people making over $15,000/ year chose to stay in hotels and one day I hope to be able to make that choice as well.  But how are all these grad students staying in these hotels?  How many of them are in a room?  All of them?

When I told someone I was staying in a hostel, the response was generally the same; a double take where eyes were widened, gulps were swallowed, and words were spoken along the gamut of;

“Really?  Oh, well I heard that one is actually pretty not that bad”

to

“Oh God, do you want to sleep in my bathroom sink or something instead?  I mean—here, I have, I think that’s almost 80 cents.  That can probably get you a Twinkie, right?”

Aside from being my only financial option, the hostel where I stayed was a legitimately great place to stay.  Lounge areas with big screen TV, a good continental breakfast, quiet rooms, Wifi, study areas—it was essentially like living in a nice college dorm on the cheap.  It was close to the conference and was even located in a pretty trendy area of town.  Fuck it, I’m going to schill out for this place—40 Berkley in south Boston, minutes from downtown!  If you don’t stay here while visiting Boston you’re either dumb or rich, which in the case of the latter you’re allowed to be the former. 

Not my room mates (at the hostel).

4. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and there was booze

To say that attending my first AWP conference was an emotional roller coaster would be a sin of the greatest nature in literary laziness, but this is what this conference has reduced me to.  It has drained my life force and my will to write originally. 

In its most brilliant moments, AWP was an event that brought hundreds of current writers, former writers, teachers of writers, friends of writers, great impersonators of writers from around the country and crammed them all into this space where they could all nerd out unabashedly and uncontrollably for a few days.  I had a 45 minute conversation with someone about how to write imagined dialogue of close family members during moments of tragedy in a funny way—yeah.  That was an actual conversation and it was great.  Tons of interesting panels, readings, off-site readings, conversations about shit I didn’t even know was going on.  It was Xanidu for the creative writer and it was marvelous.

At it’s lowest moments it was a giant pissing contest where at any moment someone prowling the corridors might be sizing you up as a writer.  What program are you in?  What have you published?  Where have you published?  Who do you know?  Who are you hanging out with tonight?  Everything was a literary measuring of dicks and I hate measuring dicks.  I hate competition really.  I want to be as good as everyone and no better than anyone.  In my perfect world we’d all be incredible writers published in equally amazing journals and we’d all be best friends who play video games and sleep over at each other's houses.  Okay, maybe some of us would be a little more equal than others at writing, and actually, there are some people I definitely don’t want to be friends with, but I still hate this hierarchical phenomenon that can happen when writers meet each other.  I think even dogs have better manners when meeting.

The other big gut-churner for me was the schmoozing.  More than I hate pissing contests, I suck at networking.  I suck at lying, especially when I have to lie, which is what networking feels like to me.  When I introduce myself to someone explicitly for the reason of furthering my career in some way--which I understand is how the world works, how things must work, get with it or get off--that feels disingenuous to me.  And yeah, at a three day conference where people are crazy busy, to a certain extent, authenticity must be shelved for efficiency, but I'm probably not the guy for the job.  There's this thing where I guess you're supposed to walk up to someone on the fly, smiling--for no real reason and it's assumed that it's not because you're actually deranged--and start talking to them about exactly what you're after, try to cultivate those professional connections.  When I tried this, it was like I made the whole world go awkward, and for what it's worth, I apologize to those folks I tried this on.  It's not you, it's me and you deserve better. 

To the people who I did meet authentically, to the friends I made at AWP camp, you're great, never change, have a neat school year, see you next summer! 

**On a semi-related note, I would just like to say how glad I am that our department is void of hipsters.  They were everywhere in Boston and AWP, and though I know hipsters lurk the PBR stills and suspender shops of Columbia, there are none in Tate's basement, for which I am immensely greatful.

5.  I’ll conclude with this…

One night I was running late to an event at the convention center so I was literally running, sprinting down the still icy street from my hostel to make it on time.  It had been snowing all week, making road conditions nasty, but I figured if I kept my pace, I'd only be 5-10 minutes late.  As I speed-tippy-toed around slosh puddles, picking my spots like I was racing over hot coals, checking my watch every four seconds, I thought of my good friend's creative nonfiction panel from earlier that day.  She had spoke of this idea of "premeditated writing" that CNF writers tend to find themselves doing, this thing where we purposely place ourselves in writable situations, strategically constructing our own nonfiction while narrating our lives as they happen.  Picking up my speed as I tore down the streets clad in button-down and what-used to be good, not soaked shoes, I wondered just how I came to be so late.  Was this a subconscious choice to create a good story?  Was it a conscious one?  If it wasn't premeditated, was there perhaps some internal narration going on as I continued to careen down sloshy lanes, heightening my pace, triangulating the center's neon spire's changing position through falling snow with every turn I took, remembering how my ex-girlfriend had always looked tired and distant, expectantly sad every time I had offered her an excuse for being late?  Nah.  But honestly, I said to myself, I'm always late.  This was no more pre-meditated than it was something write-worthy. And it wasn’t.  At that exact moment millions of people were just as late or later than me for events just as important or more important than mine and there was nothing remarkably writable about my particular situation.  That's when I bit it on the sidewalk, sliding face-first into a tree.  Then some guy bundled up on a road bike by, riding the wrong way down the middle of the street appeared and without pausing or altering his pace shouted,

"Slow down, fuckhead!"

Thank you, Boston, that’s been my time tonight.  Tip your waiter! 

Scenarios Where I Can Meet Girls

***Preface***

Upon chatting with my roommate about relationships she told me I should turn our conversation into some kind of anti-Valentines Day blog post.  While I really don’t think what we were talking about was “anti-Valentines Day”, it’s definitely not in danger of appearing on a greeting card any time soon.  Be warned.

***


There’s a V-chip implanted in my brain.  I don’t how my parents did it, but at some point in those dawning days of home-television-censorship that percolated through the 90’s, when befuddled politicians urged parents to regulate their kids’ viewing habits with little chips inserted into the backs of their TVs, they must have bypassed the tube all together and lodged the thing right in my brain.  Clever move, Mom and Dad, clever

The genius of the V-chip was while certainly designed to ‘desmutify’ TV of all of its swears and sex stuff directly, it’s more sinister purpose was to push a certain kind of morality on TV by eliminating all programming that even hinted at sexual situation.  This resulted in a saccharine diet of such lost-in-the-woods protagonists as Corey Matthews, Danny Tanner, and Randy Taylor who submitted to a specific code of conduct, particularly when dealing with romance on a weekly basis.   

Can't get no satisfaction.

Randy might like his lab partner, but he can’t just ask her out.  He barely knows her!  What is he, some kind of creep?  He can only ask her out after helping her solve her family issues, and in the process get to know her.  So sayeth the V-chip.

Danny Tanner can’t have a one-night stand.  Are you kidding?  He’s a loving father, which means any romantic interest must have sincere long-term aspirations because as a father he is obviously no longer a real man with real human needs.

And Corey can’t just ask out any girl he sees like Shawn so cavalierly does.  After comical failure after comical failure he is only permitted to ask out a girl with whom he has already cultivated a genuine connection prior to forming romantic feelings for her—Topanga!  And even at this, Corey must wait until he believes that someone else might ask her out first before he is allowed to disturb the status quo of their friendship with his selfish request.

Though this code is seemingly predicated on sincerity, sensitivity, strong moral fiber, and other excerpts from the Boy Scout oath, it’s really about making sure there is no possible way that any of these characters could be ever perceived as creepy.  It often muddles immorality with assertiveness, but hey, who can really sympathize with a protagonist who knows what he wants and goes after it?

And so where your Shawn Hunters and Uncle Jesses can effortlessly approach any girl without censors blaring, my V-chip is calibrated to the Corey Matthews setting where everything needs to be “just so” for a girl to be met. 

Though best friends on the same show, Corey and Shawn were held to vastly different standards.

For example where I’m told a normal person might see someone he’s attracted to at a bar or on the street, and simply go right up and talk to her, such a prospect is simply not an option for me.  The V-chip doesn’t allow it.   From a logical perspective I can clearly understand the reason, even the necessity behind such tactics, but alas the chip is a logic-less master.  

How about in one of Jim Carey’s first movies, Once Bitten where Carey’s last resort of escaping a virgin sacrifice at the hands of a bunch of vampires is to have sex with his girlfriend and lose his viriginity.  Just to be clear, in order to have consensual sex with his longtime girlfriend, Carey must be first threatened with supernatural termination.  These things just don’t make sense, and yet, they’re what the V-chip demands. 

So scenarios where the V-Chip shuts me down;

I see a girl a like at a coffee shop and walk over to say hi and introduce myself.

My V-Chip; “So why are you being such a creeper?  Pff, you don’t know this girl, she doesn’t know you, Stranger-danger.  She’s clearly just here to enjoy some coffee, but you want to come barging in because, why?  Just what are you thinking here?  I know what you’re thinking here, mister, and so does she!

Okay, so that’s completely ridiculous.  Here’s the V-chip acceptable version of meeting a girl in this scenario;

So we’re back in the coffee shop and the power goes out.  Maybe a sudden blizzard strikes, snapping electrical lines, taking out the lights and the heat.  Because the snow has piled so quickly, no one can leave and we’re all trapped in this freezing coffee shop.  We meet to figure out what to do and it’s decided that someone must go into the basement to throw on the back-up generator (in this scenario this coffee shop has a back-up generator).  For some reason the employees who know the basement’s lay out can’t go, because someone has to make the coffee?, so me and this girl I like volunteer—what luck!

At first she says she’d rather go by herself, or “Can’t someone else go?” but then I make some kind of lame joke that she feigns laughter at—we’re such an unlikely pair—and the situation has opened the door for us to get to know each other in a legitimate and non threatening way as we talk to fill the time while searching the dark basement for the generator that will save everyone’s life—so non threatening except for the potentially deadly blizzard outside that has been worsening by the minute. 

In fact maybe the snowstorm has brought in some arctic wolves that are now prowling about the basement.  And then maybe the blizzard and black out are actually the results of a new global ice age that has plunged civilization into chaos, creating a new world order where loosely-allied bands of marauders, who are also somehow mutants, have made their way into the basement along with the wolves.  Also something is on fire. 

 +

+

 =

Unexpectedly thrown together into such a wacky fray, we quickly improvise a plan for survival, relying on her skills as a former high school soccer player and my amateur knowledge of canine biology—wow, we’re really getting to know each other in a totally authentic way now!  Using the bacon bits that we’ve found in the supply closet, she kicks them all over the apocalyptic mutants, thus summoning the artic wolves whose main diet I once read is strikingly similar in aroma to imitation bacon substances. 

The wolves attack the mutants, we find and activate the generator, and are dashing for the upstairs door when one of the road warriors leaps through the fire and grabs her ankle.  We were so close!  Without hesitating I tackle him, taking both of us down the stairs, telling her just to go on without me, but she comes back for me using the ninja katana—so at some point we find a ninja katana—to free me. 

We scramble back upstairs, locking the door behind us.  We’ve made it.  We now have light, heat, and no fire-wolves-apocalyptic mutant army.  Success!  We embrace in our shared victory, knowing that we couldn’t have done it without the other and that our lives will never be the same. This is my opening so I ask her if she’d like to have a cup of coffee with me and then we really kick it off.

This would be an acceptable scenario in which I could meet a girl as per the stipulations of my V-chip.

My V-chip’s concept of romance is a mangled distortion of 90’s TV culture where every boy wears a bowl-cut and every girl a denim jumper.  It didn’t reflect actual 90’s culture and clearly doesn’t reflect today’s.  Our relationship with one another has evolved over the years to where it has achieved some level of sentience that allows us to communicate.  It has clearly stated its programed imperative has no room for re-evaluation and that its half-life is upwards of five thousand years or so.  In response I’ve tried knocking it out of my head with a softball bat, but you know, it’s stuck in there pretty good. 

Adventures in Baby Flying

When I fly, I can't help but to think of the miracle of life.  And when I'm done thinking about bacon-wrapped scallops, flying usually makes me think of kids.  They're everywhere these days, but when they're in the airport, on the airplane, occasionally I'm forced to cohabit with them.

With babies on the plane, I try to be understanding.  Appreciative even.  Logically speaking, we, the human race that is, need babies to keep this whole clown show going.  I mean, I’ve watched the National Geographic Channel.  I know how it works.  Some of us must simply bite the bullet and agree to pump out and wrangle these knee-knockers for the good of mankind.  And I suppose, conceivably, these same people also have cause to fly at times.  So when I see a tired mom plodding down the plane aisle, baby draped about her neck, toddler dragged belligerently behind her, I give her a little nod of appreciation.  She usually seems pretty creeped out by this, but I think she knows what going on.  She’s carrying the load.  She isn't some selfish miscreant totally lacking in social consciousness and self awareness, she's a modern day Frodo Baggins, bearing the ring to Mordor for the good of all Middle Earth.  Thank you Mama Frodo, thank you for your sacrifice.

That being said… there were some seriously annoying-ass babies aboard my recent flights back to school.  For anyone about to take off soon, you might just want to jot down some quick notes here for a rough guide book into Air Baby Land. 

"I've had enough of these mother f^#$@!* babies on this mother f^#$@!* plane!"

First, let's talk about the white tiger of babies on a plane, the rarest of rare, the double pink Starburst in the baby pack that make all the rest look like lemons--the sleeping kid.  I love this kid!  He gets aboard and some combination of recycled air and fat guys grazing his head as they pass through the aisle conks him out.  The same thing happens for me.  This kid should get an award for his valor in service, an accommodation at least.  He should get to fly in the cockpit with the pilot, he should get to be the pilot, he should get to be the president!  Hail to the Chief, of my heart anyway. 

Then there is the classic stereo-crier; the kid who sounds like he’s being punched in the face for the entire trip.  The crying kid on my plane never stopped sobbing and screaming, exploding at the mouth with snotty, gurgling discharges.  She sounded like she was drowning, literally drowning in her own tears and snot, crying out in labored pig squeals.  And she was angry about it.  She actually sounded angry, she sounded like an angry pig, like she was trying to express her outrage over being forced into this pressurized metal tube and was pissed off even more because no one was getting that.  Some babies cry out in fear and confusion, but not Baby Angry Pig.  She was straight pissed and wanted everyone know it.

Baby Angry Pig approximation.

I also had a Narrating Kid on one of my flights.  A Narrator Kid isn’t upset like a Crying Kid or unconscious like the harrolded Asleep Kid.   He’s fine, but feels compelled to spend every moment on the plane babbling.  Flying with a Narrating Kid was like flying with a dysfunctional Garmin that tells you exactly where you are at that very moment, every moment. 

“We’re moving!  We’re moving!  We’re moving!  We’re taking off!  We’re taking off!  We’re in the air!  We’re flying! We’re flying! We’re flying! We’re flying! We’re flying! We’re flying!  We’re eating peanuts!  We’re flying!  We’re flying!  We’re flying!  We’re landing!”

The Narrating Kid on my flight was so fucking excited about every moment of his life that I was begrudgingly envious of him.  I wished that I could be as excited about anything as he was about everything.  But mostly, I was annoyed.  Unfortunately, like the Crying Kid, the Narrating Kid’s parents were too busy visualizing the glorious day when they would release their burden into the bowels of Mount Doom (college) to have the social awareness necessary to have asked their kid to just shut up for a second.  Where's a Ring Wraith when you need one?

But again, it’s a small price to pay for the continuation of our species.  I might have to put up with the Angry Pig and Kid Garmin for a few hours, but their parents have years left with these guys who will eventually morph into Biting Kid and then finally Kid Who only visits once or twice a year because he’s just really busy and last week he had this thing, and see, it just makes more sense to wait another two months until Christmas and God, can you just let it go already!  That kid sucks.   

Why You Should Always Give out Fake Numbers

There are some things that you only get the chance to do once; seeing Haley’s Comet, watching a perfect game in baseball, stuff like that.  Answering a ringing payphone is another one.  It's the kind of thing that is only accomplished in movies, movies made prior to 2003 because that’s the last time anyone used a payphone.  Just spotting one on the street is like finding a horse-drawn carriage—ooh, ahh, it’s so weird to think that people once used these.  How quaint!  Seeing someone using a payphone is incredible and hearing a one ring is straight unbelievable.

When I heard one ringing while on the way to the bar with my friends the other night, I had to answer it.  In full disclosure, I did this under the influence of peer pressure and alcohol, but I think this is the gist of my conversation with the payphone;

Me:  Hello?

Payphone: Where are you?

At a payphone outside of a Bank of America.  Were you trying to call a payphone outside of a Bank of America?

Get here.

Did you know that you’re calling a payphone?  You’re calling a payphone.  Are you from 1987?  Are you a time traveler from 1987?  What’s Michael J. Fox really like?

Just get here already and be naked?

(pregnant pause) What?

Get here now with your clothes off, all of them.

And you’re at a bar?  With people there?

C’mon.

Are your clothes off?

C’mon!

Are other people’s clothes off?

They will be if you get here.

Is there some kind of contest going on?  Like some kind of naked contest?  Like the first ten people to get naked at the bar get a free beer?

At this point my friends are wondering just who is on the other end of this phantom payphone call and why I’m still talking to her.  Perhaps I’m buying drugs.  They’d understand if they knew about the naked part.

You promised that you’d come!

Well with that attitude, I won’t.

I’m sorry.

It’s okay.

You promised that you’re coming.

Okay, I guess I promised I'm coming.

And take your clothes off.   

So what, you want me to take my clothes off before getting to the bar?  Like take them off on the way to the bar?  On the street?  See, I’m confused.

No, you just need to take them off.  Off, off, all off!

So keep my clothes on?

C’moooooooon!

Okay, you get started now and I’ll catch up.

Love you baby.

I know.

Click.

Han says answer first, shoot questions later.

Score, a total Han Solo “I love you” moment.  I could check off another thing off my once-in--lifetime list.  So what happened here?  Did this girl misdial?  The product of a drunken mashing of keys?  Probably not.  More likely some guy gave her a wrong number, but did he do so knowing it was to a payphone?  Was it just some cosmic luck of the draw, or perhaps even more unlikely, did he actually examine this payphone to use its number for just such an occasion?  Maybe it was the bar randomly calling payphones, hoping passer-byers might pick it up and flock there for the promise of naked people.  Whatever this had been, I was glad to have been a part of it.

My friends and I continued on and when we got to the bar I discovered I had forgotten my ID and thanks to living in a college town, I had to go back to my car to retrieve it, which took me by the payphone again, which was ringing again.  Praying that it might be the same caller from a few minutes ago, letting it ring all this time undaunted by the lack of a voicemail pick-up on this “cell phone”, I ran over to answer it before it stopped.  I picked it up; 

Payphone: Where are you?

Me:  I know, I know, but see I ran into King Arthur on the street, and well, we had a lot of catching up to do.

Oh, okay.  C’mon get here and get naked?

Now have other people gotten naked yet?  Because you said—

You promised!

Hey you promised first!  I think…  

What?

I’m on my way.  Hey, say my name.

Tyler!

Ug, my name would be Tyler.

And say your name.

Kellee!

To me, it just sounded like  Kellee spelled her name with a "double-E", and possibly with a "triple-L".

Well, Kelllee, Tyler is on his way.  He promises.

Yaaaaay! 

And you know that one thing I said and/or did last night? 

Yeah.

I didn’t really mean it.

I know.

Good.

I have to pee.

Hmm, are you sure?

(pause for thinking and/ or urinating) Yes. 

Okay, just checking.

So you promise you’re coming?

Apparently.

Don’t make me cry.

No, you don't make me cry!

Love you.

Hmm, what’s something else Han Solo would say?

Tell Jabba I got his money.

Okay.  See you soon!

Click.

I didn’t pass the payphone again that night or go to Kellee's bar, but I’d like to think that somewhere there’s a really infuriated Kellee yelling at a really confused Tyler in a bar and everybody's naked.  For me, the moral of this story is always give out fake numbers to payphones so that some stranger can be entertained for a few minutes and later write a blog post about it.  It's pretty cliche, I know.  

More of Gravy than of Grave?

So a funny thing happened to me on the way to the end of the semester...

I’m sitting in the back of this coffee shop I like to work in.  The place used to be a bank or a school house or something back in the olden days where the shape isn’t quite right for the shop so it has this one brick annex that kind of juts out from the rest of it.  It’s an island, just two booths and table that most people don’t know exists, or if they do know, they avoid it since it doesn’t get heat from the continental portion of the shop.  That’s why I like to work there, because I can be by myself, not because I don’t get any heat. 

 So I’m sitting here with my coat on reading for class when this middle-aged schlub, sloshing his soup and coffee around on his tray sits down at the table right across from me.  Can you imagine the nerve?  Like we’re just supposed to sit here and acknowledge each other’s existences or something?  Pff! 

Then he starts talking to me.

“Is that literature you’re reading?” he asks like we’re people who talk to one another.  Like this is a movie.  Like this is some fantasy world where perfect strangers (ah, what a great show) strike up conversations like we’re suburban housewives from the ‘50’s—“Hello, Mabel, love your petunias”, “Oh thanks Gladys, now have you heard, just what Ethel put in her garden?!”  This is a coffee shop and like when riding the bus or standing in line at the grocery store, it’s eyes straight ahead and mouths shut. 

Me! but with less books and coffee.

 I’m reading a chapter in A.O.J Cockshut’s (no, that’s really his name) book about Charles Dickens’ autobiographical references in A Christmas Carol (no, I’m actually writing a paper on A Christmas Carol in December).  I don’t feel like debating him on the oh-too-frequent liberal use of literature so I humor this guy believing that doing so will allow me to get back to my icebox reading.

“Yeah,” I say.  Good humoring.

“Uh huh, see it’s a crock that you have to do that.  I mean what is it even?”

“Just some critique on Victorian lit.”

He takes his coat off and swivels his chair around to me.  Oh God, is this going to be a thing?  Like an actual thing we’re going to do?

“See that’s just the problem with college nowadays, I mean, when are you going to use that?  Why are you going to need    that uh, critique?”

Oh great, a practician is trying to talk to an English grad student—a creative writing grad student—on the lunch-pale merits of studying lit.  Why don’t you and the rest of the world get a table, why don’t you?

Sigh.  This is going to be a thing that we’re going to do.

“Sir, I am a graduate student of English and Creative Writing, and how dare you—how dare you, sir, I say!  Literature and writing are important components to understanding the very civilization which we enjoy today and doing well in it, regardless of profession.  It is the heart and soul of society, sir, its heart and soul, I say!”  I tell him, or something to that effect.

“Oh yeah, I agree,” the soup-slosher says. “I just mean you got to be reading the right stuff, you know, like—you ever read [insert name of some author I  have never heard of, ever]?”

“No.”

“What?  You got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not kidding you.”

“What?  And you say you’re a grad student here?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?  I graduated here in ’78.”

Yeah?  If I had been drinking at that moment I would have done a prolonged spit-take all over his face.  What does this guy mean he “graduated here”?  Like he graduated from using Velcro to shoe laces?  He graduated from this coffee shop when it used to be a school?  Could he have actually received the same degree that I will and then, what?  Now just rambles around town picking fights with coffee shop patrons?

Wait, suck the spit back in.  Maybe he’s a professor at one of the other colleges in town, or maybe even at mine.  It’s a big department and I’ve skipped out on most of the socializing opportunities.  Academic folk can be pretty eccentric.

“So are you a professor around here?”

He takes a long, sorry slurp of his coffee smacks his lips.

“Me?  No.  I thought about it sure, but naw, not me.”

Oh God.  I feel like Scrooge asking the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come about the name on the tombstone now.

“So you teach high school then?”

“I’m night manager at Walmart, three nights a week.”

I think I need to take a drink because this certainly warrants a spit-take.  It warrants like three or seven spit-takes, right in Professor Walmart Nights face.  I knew the job market was tough, but what the hell?  Is this to be my fate?  Drifting through the streets where my dream died, degree in hand, trying warn current grad students from repeating the mistakes of my past?  Was I wearing the chains of my past bad decisions and just didn’t know it?

+

= soup slosher

This Jacob Marley son-of-a-bitch starts going on about [what’s-his-name who wrote what’s-his-book] and I’m just staring at him in horror, slowly positioning myself into the fetal position at my booth.  I’m not even really listening to him anymore as I call out.

“Oh Ghost of Jeremy Yet to Come, are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only? Say it is thus with what you show me!”

“Well, kid, I’m not exactly your future, see I didn’t actually get a grad degree.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I didn’t.  I just got my BA in English from here.”

“Well uh, gee, spirit, that seems like it would have been some useful information.”

“Yeah, I know, but I like people to think I’m more impressive than I really am.”

“I know the feeling, continue.”

“See, I did get my undergrad here—an English major, but that’s about where things stopped for me.  I mean, there’s not a lot you can do with a BA in Englsih—well hey, look who I’m talking to!”

A forced chuckle.  “Uh yes, I’ve heard  But see my case is just a little bit different than--.”

“--Well, I got to get going, floors to wax, puke to clean up.”

“In that order?”

“Ooh, you’re good.  You’re good.  You should work at Walmart.  I bet you could become a full manager in no time.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

“No see, I’m getting my MA in English and Creative Writing, maybe even a PhD in it!”

“Right, well if you ever need a job, you know where to find me.  You could join our book club!  Right now it’s just me, Kirby from home appliances, and a cardboard cut-out of Jeff Gordon.  We could use another keen academic mind like yours.”

“Wait, things can still change!  You’re a shadow of what may be only!  Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead, but if the courses be departed from, the ends will change, yeah? 

“You know where to find me.” 

I have been reading way too much Dickens.