Raw

"You are out of your goddamn head."

"No, you're too close to it to read it as a final product."

About twenty minutes into the argument, I realize the absurdity of what we're disagreeing about, and acknowledge (to myself) that I am complete shit at taking compliments. Truthfully?

It takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I'm not being teased.

He continues, despite my protests.

"Specifically, you should be writing plays."

"You're sweet, but I'm never going to do that."

"Why not? What you're writing is essentially the same as opening up the fridge and thinking 'Huh. I have all the ingredients to make an excellent Pate de Carnard en Croute.' Not doing something with it is the same as not making the damn duck."

"Yes, well, the difference is that when making a Pate de Carnard en Croute, you're serving up the duck, not your own heart."

***

This was my weekend.

The good part of it anyway.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved comic books. When I was young, I would read X-Men and Captain America when I could get my hands on them. As an adult, it's been Sandman, Watchmen, pretty much anything Brian K. Vaughn has ever written.

I love comics.

I find them soothing, even when they're horrifying.

I have a lot of grown-up reasons for loving comics. I think that because of the interplay between the drawings and the dialogue the storytelling both requires more skill and manages to take you deeper. Comics are allowed to explore darkness in a way that is compelling and evocative. Sometimes (as, in Saga, which every single one of you should read at least the first issue of) they can be, quite simply, stunning.

Frankly, though, the escapism also appeals to me. I like the idea that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, that your life can change dramatically in a flat second, and that you can be different without being wrong. 

So when I came home on Saturday night with my feathers ruffled and pretty close to tears, I pulled a stack of Preacher trade paperbacks out of my backpack, made a pot of tea (despite the humidity), curled up in my red armchair, and read myself to sleep.

***

"Can we hit the reset button on this whole conversation?"

"Um, okay."

"What I should have said was: 'Thank you, I'm flattered.' So if we could just erase my little tirade about Writing and Writers from both of our minds I'd be obliged." 

"Consider it said and unsaid."

"Thanks."

"I still think you need to do it."

"I'm going away now."

***

I am not at all completely embarrassed to admit that The Avengers is one of my favorite movies.

I watch it when I'm home with the flu. I watch it when I'm sad. I watch it and squee. I watch it when I'm at the cabin and it's raining and I want to talk with my younger brother about how much we love Captain America. I watch it the night before major work presentations while I'm painting my nails, and when I can't sleep. 

It may, in fact, be on in the background while I'm writing this entry.  

I love The Avengers. 

The Hulk has never been one of my favorite superheros, and isn't within a stone's throw of my favorite Avenger (Jean Grey and Captain America, for those of you wondering), but I gotta admit that Bruce Banner has my favorite line in the whole movie. In response to Tony Stark's prediction that Banner would be joining the rest of the Avengers, he responds

"Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

Oh, Dr. Banner. You speak to my heart. 

***

"Your writing utterly smacks of a one woman show. Insight, humor, intimacy, titillation, shock. It'd be great." 

"Not happening." 

"Your definition of a play, as I well know, includes one and maybe two intermissions, multiple acts, even more scenes, and likely includes iambic pentameter. Writing doesn't have to be Shakespeare to be good." 

"It's. Not. Happening."

"It's okay to be scared."

***

I hate feeling exposed. 

It's a strange confession, I suppose, for someone who spends her free time as a memoirist, but it's the truth. It's also the reason that I keep my writing almost exclusively to trivia and write for the same thirty people (all of whom are related to me by blood or might as well be) every week. 

Put another way, I feel the same way about writing as Bruce Banner feels about transforming into the Hulk. 

The people who read my writing, the people with whom I share it, regularly, are ones who have slipped in under my guard. They're the ones who understand that when I'm crawling between the covers of a comic, it's not because I'm trying to avoid them, but because my social tank is already overflowing, and I need to justohmygodbealone.

Extroversion, being outgoing, having a drink with a stranger at a bar, just being able to put myself out there, these things I've never been good at. For goodness sake, I have to actively make a decision whether or not a friend is ragging on me when he suggests that I become a playwright, I'm not going to be the person who writes a one-woman show about her life. The ability to be that exposed an vulnerable, it's just not on my utility belt. 

Except. Well, that's the damndest thing about eating and breathing comics. 

Bane breaks your back. You fall in love. You fuse with a half-angel, half-demon. 

You find something in your utility belt that wasn't there before. 

Games

"Just tell me the title."

"I'd rather be flensed."

"It can't be that bad."

"It's horrible. You'll think less of me as a person."

"I thought the smutty parts were the embarrassing part of reading a trashy novel."

"Nope. It's the titles. Far and away. And I am never, ever telling you the name of this one."

I started a new romance novel series. 

They're Regency (of course), they came highly recommended by a friend (who has begged to remain anonymous), they have ludicrous, embarrassing titles, daft plot twists, and feature (among other things) chess, double entendre, fencing, duels, and games of strip dominoes. They're absurd. 

They're also delicious. 

***

Some friends of mine, newly single, are discussing a relationship advice book that they've both read. I'm drinking bourbon and doing the crossword on the other side of the room, eavesdropping and biting my tongue so hard that I'm afraid blood might start spurting out of my mouth. 

They intentionally started the conversation when I was preoccupied with something else. Given that my relationship advice comes almost exclusively from Dan Savage (to wit: communicate clearly about wants, needs, and expectations, be adventurous, treat your partners kindly and respectfully) I don't truck with a lot of books with titles like The Rules. 

The dating advice under discussion is one admonition over the dangers of employing polysyllabic words away from being a real Leave it to Beaver trip back to the 50s. 

Don't dress provocatively. Act like a lady. Don't cuss or make crass jokes. Don't have sex prior to four months into the relationship. 

What the book boils down to is: be an unobjectionable, boring, good girl. 

As a lifelong employer of four-letter words and mini-dress aficionado, I'm infuriated by this advice, and by the fact that two smart, funny women I know are swallowing it. 

Another friend walks in during the midst of an animated discussion between the pair about what exactly counts as provocative dress, overhears fifteen seconds of the conversation, sees the look on my face, and pulls me out of the room, thrusting my Kindle into my hands. 

"Here. You look like you're about to slap someone. Go take a walk and read some of your trashy novels. They can't be anymore antiquated than the advice you're getting in there."

I start to laugh. 

***

I like games.

I'm not talking about the shitty I'm not returning your phone call until forty-eight hours later kind of games. I'm talking when you meet someone who's up for a little one-upsmanship. I like the process of finding something that will make the other person laugh, blush, or shiver. I like the feeling that comes when you know you're on your game and that your middle-of-the-afternoon response to their text was brilliant and a little sassy and just enough to keep them thinking about you until supper.

I like gamesmanship, I suppose. I always have.

It's exactly the kind of thing dating advice books advocate against. Avoid that dress that shows off the freckles on your decolletage. Under no circumstances should you send that coyly worded text. Good girls don't give it away, much less ask for it. 

Phhhhhhhhbt. 

***

I'm usually surprised by how progressive historical romance novels can be. 

I'm serious. They leave those shitty dating advice books in the dust. 

Not only do they celebrate asking for it, but they understand that half of the fun of getting to the smut is getting to play the game. Romance writers understand that there's something to be said for cheeky notes, for besting someone in a fencing bout, for sneaking away in the middle of a party for a little (verbal) harpooning. 

More than that gamesmanship, though, is the progressive secret at the heart of every romance novel: 

There's someone who's going to appreciate you for the person you are. 

Is it a little after-school special and simplistic? Yeah, a bit. But I'd rather think that there's someone out there who appreciates a carefully worded text and a little bit of sass than follow some ridiculous, tried-and-true rules about being a good girl. 

And besides, I've got all these mini-dresses. 

Book Club

"She flirted with the moderator. That's how she got the list."

"I did not! We talked about Neil Gaiman and comics. And science fiction/fantasy." I pause. "And Brian K. Vaughn. Talking isn't always flirting."

"You maintained eye contact with a virtual stranger!"

We're on our way home from book club and I'm getting raked over the coals.

"Listen. It wasn't flirting. It was being articulate and witty and charming. I can do that sometimes. It's like a mutation I haven't learned to control. And besides. If it was flirting, rest assured that's the super power I only use for good."

"Yeah, what good is that?"

"Getting the list of the next year's worth of books ahead of time."

The car groans. Collectively.

I love book club night.

***

I'm thinking a lot about Neil Gaiman these days.

We're reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane for our July book club. It's nearly the one year anniversary of my first reading of it, and it's almost a year since I met Neil Gaiman and told him he saved my life. 

Ufff. I got a little teary just writing that. 

When I say I've been thinking a lot about Neil Gaiman, what I mean is that I've been thinking a lot about The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I have a funny relationship with that book. I've read all of Gaiman's other work (with the exception of Sandman, which I'm just not ready to face again) multiple times. But I haven't been able to pick up Ocean again. It may be that while I was reading it my life was so unsettled and I haven't wanted to revisit that feeling. Maybe I secretly liked it a tiny bit less than his other work. 

Whatever the reason, I never picked it back up. Until it was announced as our book club's July pick and I realized that I couldn't just walk into the room and start enthusing about how wonderful Neil Gaiman is, that I would actually need to say something substantive about the book and the writing. 

I reread it in a day.

***

"I don't think I'll be able to go to book club in July."

"You know your schedule that far in advance? It's May, for godssake."

"No. I mean, I loved Ocean at the End of the Lane so much that I don't think I'd be able to handle a bunch of jerks ripping it apart." He looks in the rear view mirror. "Close your mouth, Kels, you look like a trout." 

I've been surprised to learn that among my immediate circle of friends, a number of them have read at least some Neil Gaiman. Many of them have read Ocean at the End of the Lane, of those who have read Ocean, all of them read it after hearing me gush about it all last summer. 

All of them kept it a secret.

They had varying reasons for keeping it a secret. Some of them didn't like the book. At all. And they didn't want to go thirteen rounds with me over why they didn't like it or listen to me try to convince them they should. Some of them didn't finish it and didn't want a scolding. But by far the biggest number of friends read it and loved it.

They still kept it a secret.

Anyone who has sat next to me during Joss Whedon's  Much Ado About Nothing or taken me to historical site of some personal meaning (sorry for making you tromp through all those cemeteries) knows that I have a hard time keeping it together around things that I love. I have actually jumped up and down and clapped my hands. (Do not do this standing in front of William Tecumseh Sherman's grave. Trust me on this one) On more than one occasion, I've kissed someone out of sheer emotional overflow. Let's call those reactions my baseline enthusiasm. Now multiply that baseline enthusiasm by Neil Gaiman. 

Yeah. Okay. 

***

I have a hard time sleeping on book club nights.

Obviously, it's stimulating for an introvert to be in a room full of a hundred people. It's even more stimulating to ask for the mic and to get into conversations with strangers. By the time I get home I'm usually vibrating and a little bit wild. 

It's not my inner introvert freaking out. 

There are few things in life that I enjoy, that I love as much as talking to people about books. Don't get me wrong, intellectual sparring in any capacity winds me up. Here's the thing, though, books have been my lifelong companions, my way of escaping when things become unpleasant. They've taught me the sheet music of stars and the history of modern medicine. I've cried over the deaths of hundreds of characters and still sigh a little bit when Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth Bennett. 

I'm shy in big groups of people. I have to pep talk myself before dinner parties where I don't know a lot of people. Sometimes when I'm meeting new people or hanging out with people I haven't seen in a long time, I have to go hide in the bathroom for a few minutes because my hands are shaking. And, sure, these things might make me a better candidate for the Mars mission, but they aren't helpful in my real life. 

But ask me about Seamus Heaney? Solicit my opinion on the Sandman Slim series? Question why I think adults can read YA without being embarrassed by it? I forget that I'm shy and (more than) a little bit awkward. I'll have an animated, articulate conversation with you without stuttering once. I love talking about books with strangers and I'll happily chat up someone who asks me about the book I'm reading at a bar or while I'm perusing the shelves at Magers and Quinn. 

As a result, it stings a little when I realize that the same intensity that makes me articulate and funny at my book club is what keeps people from talking about Ocean at the End of the Lane with me. Talking about books makes me feel like the best possible version of myself and I want to be that person around the people who have seen me sick, tired, and crying. I want to share the books (and music and television) I love with them and not have them have to worry that I'm simply going to steamroller over them with excitement and delight. 

I want to use my super powers for good. 

Grown Ups Doing Emotions

"So then you're sad for awhile."

There's a certain "Duh, honey" tone to Michelle's voice.

We've taken the paddle boat to the other, less populated end of the lake. When we're out of earshot of the cabin we take off our sundresses and stop paddling and spend the next two hours lounging in the sun in our bathing suits (Seriously, 85 degrees in the Upper Midwest over Memorial Day?) talking obsessively about everything from our favorite Game of Thrones characters (Littlefinger, of course) to our love lives (despite being non-existent, mine still requires thorough dissection). It's a long, lovely morning and the start to a long, lovely weekend that I need badly.

As the emotional equivalent to a supernova (or a black hole, I suppose, depending on how you look at it) it's helpful to me to have people in my life who are more, um, regulated. Who don't have huge responses to things. People who don't cry when a book by their favorite author arrives on their doorstep or forget to breathe while watching Hamlet. It's good for me to be around people who are a little less emotionally strung out.

After we discuss the finer points of Littlefinger's endgame, she starts in on a few things I said the night before, drunk on sleep deprivation and meteor showers, but didn't elaborate on. They're the kinds of things I don't want to talk about, but should. Those revelations you have about yourself that hit with tremendous force and leave you stunned an thoroughly disgusted. Those moments when you realize that you don't actually love your partner anymore and are with them because it's easier than being alone or that you're keeping someone around as your fall-back plan or for your next orgasm or emotional whipping boy. Or whatever your particular emotional pitfall is.

Mine has me so ashamed of myself that I don't want to tell Michelle a thing and when the words come out they're halting and physically painful to stay aloud. When I finally get them out, I follow up with the extenuating circumstances, the Things That Made Me Act This Way. They're bullshit, of course, I know what I'm doing and who it may hurt, but I'm doing it regardless, because it Makes Me Feel Better and it Keeps Me From Being Sad. I'm trying to use depression as an excuse for (knowingly!) behaving badly and she's one of the few people who can call me out on it.

She does.

***

Of all things, I'm thinking of 1 Corinthians. 

It's the passage that follows the passage everyone knows from every Catholic wedding ever (Love is patient, love is kind . . .). Shortly after that there's a part of Paul's letter that is slightly less well-known and has been running through my head all weekend: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." 

Oddly, the reason that it's on my mind has nothing to do with scripture or theology, but because over the weekend I read Lev Grossman's The Magicians. 

Called "Harry Potter for grown-ups" (a label that seems to be stuck on every fantasy novel that had the misfortune to be published after Harry Potter) it's an interesting, if slightly maddening book. The plot is a little wonky here and there (I get fussy about the rules of fantasy universes being established early in the book and followed throughout it) and there are moments where the editor should have excised whole paragraphs, but it's a book that triumphed despite itself. 

The reason I liked it so much was because it dealt with the idea of getting your childhood fantasy fulfilled as an adult. Stop for a moment and think about what that would mean. Always wanted to go to Narnia? Poof. There. Been waiting for your telekinetic powers to manifest themselves? Bang. Wake up one morning and turn on the shower with your brain. You get bitten by a radioactive spider, find yourself smack in the middle of Diagon Alley, wake up with a harp in your hands in Rivendale. 

The question the book raises is whether or not it's good for us to want those things as adults, if it's not better to exist in the mundane world and struggle through the small trials and tribulations we have here. Sure, we'll never save Middle Earth from immanent peril, but if we continue to pursue childish fantasies as adults, we'll undoubtedly meet a messy, unfortunate end. Maybe.

That question, so central to the book, is the reason why I managed to overlook its structural failings. I mean, let's get real. I still read comic books and YA lit. I've been known to quote the phrase "We're grown-ups now, we get to decide what that means!" I've built forts alone in my apartment and spent the afternoon reading in them. For all of my cultivated adultness (high heels, jazz, scotch) and I can still summon the enthusiasm of an eight year old. 

I'm starting to wonder if it's healthy. 

***

I'm childish when it comes to big emotions. 

I'm not talking the sugar-coated "childlike wonder" at things that we're not supposed to lose. I'm talking temper tantrums and meltdowns. While I don't actually throw temper tantrums when things aren't going my way and tend to keep my meltdowns private (bourbon, gummi bears) emotionally I don't think I'm far off of those little kids who make you roll your eyes in grocery stores. I justify selfish motives with Adult Logic (I'm susceptible to depression and need to be happy and distracted, we both knew what we were getting into, I didn't make any promises) and call it good, even as I know I'm being selfish. When relationships, regardless of whether or not they're platonic or otherwise, start to have actual issues I cut and run. I pull the fade away or say that I'm opting out of the relationship because I really need to do what's best for me, and for now that's not having any contact with you. It's like when an eight year old gives you the silent treatment, pathetic, childish, and irresponsible coming from an adult woman. 

I act this way in an attempt to keep myself from having to feel any big emotions: shame, regret, anger, sadness, anything that isn't the sheer, manic joy that keeps me buoyed up most days. They're the actions and emotions Michelle calls me out on while we're drifting quietly across the lake. And while I recognize that what I'm doing is harmful not only to me but to my relationships in the long run, I don't think I want to stop doing it. It's time to grow up, and like every other overtired child, I'm stomping my foot and pouting. 

But I don't want to. 

Beauty #13

"Am I going to sound weird if I say it's sexy as hell?"

"Kel, when in your writing, when in your life have you ever worried about sounding weird?"

"Point taken. "

One of my favorite feelings in the world is when someone or something gets under your skin. The moment you realize that you've been thinking about a person or a book or a song for hours and that even if you wanted to, you couldn't stop it. Obviously, it's most enjoyable when it's a person who gets under your skin (Correction: it's most enjoyable when it's a person who gets under your skin and you know they feel the same way about you.) but I certainly still appreciate the sensation when it's a song or a book.

Right now, I can't stop thinking about Saga.

Of course I can't stop thinking about Saga. It's exactly the kind of story to catch my attention. It's a love story set in space in the distant future. There's a large puma(ish) cat that can detect when someone is lying and lets its owner know. The spaceships are made out of trees (a change Brian K. Vaughn made because Fiona Staples (*swoon*) hates drawing mechanical things). There's a character named Prince Robot IV who is drawn just like a person except he has a television for a head.

Is this all sounding a little too weirdly grand?

It is. It's a completely mad, brilliant story. Everything that happens is completely improbable and it requires more than a normal comic book suspension of disbelief. But if you allow yourself that suspension of disbelief and crawl into the story (a process made SO much easier by Fiona Staples's art) you wind up with a story that is, well, it could be the plot line to almost any romance novel ever written. Girl meets boy. Girl and boy fall in love. Girl and boy overcome tremendous obstacles to be with one another.

The problem, of course, is that Saga is still in production, and Brian K. Vaughn is second possibly only to Joss Whedon for killing off characters you adore, so I'm certain that at some point I'm going to end up on Nick and Victoria's couch crying like an idiot. 

It'll be worth it. 

There are so many things I adore about this comic. The originality of the characters, the gorgeousness of the artwork, the way Vaughn makes a (let's face it) somewhat tired storyline feel fresh, the fact that ohmygod there are moments when Alana is talking that I feel like he's been poaching things from my brain.

But the best part of the comic (for me) is the relationship between Alana and Marko.

I frequently get sort of frustrated when reading or watching something that depicts couples who have been together for years, or couples who are married, or couples who are anything except just starting out. How often are those couples depicted and either estranged or as madly in love as they were when they first started out?

It's a dichotomy I wouldn't notice if I wasn't surrounded by so many people in long-term relationships (many about to close out their first decade of coupledom) but because my immediate circle of friends is made up primarily of people in long-term relationships (and because we are all ridiculously involved in one another's lives) it's something that stands out to me. None of their relationships are perfect, but they're not miserable either.

It's what I love about Saga, it's what makes Alana and Marko stand out among comic book characters I've encountered over the years. I know how this sounds coming from a self-professed socially awkward nerd, but they have the kind of relationship I want, the kind of relationship I see in the couples I hang out with regularly.

They're a couple that's obviously deeply, crazily in love with one another. They also get pissed at one another, and fight, and fuck and make up and make one another laugh. Their relationship is sexy as hell and not just because of smutty bits (although, Holy Jesus). It's because their relationship is complex and complete. It's a real relationship, drawn and written into comic book form.

It's the kind of relationship, the kind of story that gets under your skin.

Lessons Will be Repeated Until Learned

"The problem is that you want all your relationships to be forever."

Michelle and I are having our weekly check-in. We're at our favorite pho restaurant, and I'm grateful for the spiciness of the jalapenos and Sriracha. They give me a plausible reason for my streaming eyes. 

She gives me that significant best friend look. "Honey, the only person you're allowed to count on forever is me. And that's only because I don't trust you not to poach my life events for your memoir." 

I laugh and start crying again. I'm in what women's magazines call your "mourning period," that really dreadful part of any splitting up when you realize holy shit, I'm never going to see this person again. And, you know, you fall apart. 

And it's fucking awful. 

True to form, I'm having my meltdown about seven months after the fact. It's the reason I spent the last five days in my apartment with the doors closed. I had confided in the people I was going to confide in, aired all the emotional shit, and then tucked in with my emotional reset button and didn't see people again until I felt like I wouldn't be blowing my nose every two minutes.

That's not to say when I emerged I was super-sociable.

***

I've spent most of my weekend with my nose in a book 

I set reading goals. Normally it's simply a number of books that I'd like to read in the course of the year. This year, in addition to wanting to read fifty books I am trying to read significantly more nonfiction than the single book by David Sedaris that I read last year (I don't even know if he counts as nonfiction anymore). I've already made that goal with River of Doubt and The Code Book (both of which I enjoyed tremendously). 

When I say I spent most of the weekend with my nose in a book I mean I spent most of the weekend with my nose in a nonfiction book. I took it to a friend's 30th birthday party (before you get all judgey, it was at a roller rink and I don't rollerskate) and read it while everyone was roller-skating. I spent most of this morning making marginalia and laughing out loud.

The book is Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis. A more correct title would probably be Against Monogamy or Against Teenage Conceptions of Love as an Adult but despite the titular deficiencies, it's been an enjoyable read. 

After getting about a third of the way through I was tempted to ask the person who suggested what the fuck he was thinking. I had to pause and wonder if perhaps I was being baited. I'm a self-professed lover of love and precisely the wrong audience for a polemic against it. 

But, baited or no, I kept reading it in little five to ten page chunks. And this weekend it sucked me in. 

I believe firmly that books can rip you apart and build you into a new, better person. I just also happen to believe that the books that do so tend to be fiction. I have a list (of course I have a list) of books that unmade me and forced me to look at the unsavory bits alongside the good parts and come to terms with the whole complete mess (list available upon request, but regular readers could probably guess at least a few). So my reaction to Against Love is remarkable, because I don't typically react this way to nonfiction.

I don't think that Against Love is quite going to be one of those books that remakes me. But it's a book that reads like a conversation with Michelle. It grabbed me and asked if the way that I've always considered something that seems so basic (love and relationships) was the right way. 

It's been enough of a smack upside the head to keep me absorbed all weekend. 

***

In October of last year a band I love came out with a new album. 

The first single off the album, "Shake," was the perfect song for that period in my life. In many ways, it persists as the perfect song for this period in my life.  

I am not good at just being in the present moment. Whether it's a function of anxiety or modernity or simply my personality, I have a tendency to think a week, a month, twenty years in the future. It's a character trait that makes it hard to settle down into relationships, be they romantic or otherwise. 

I am, as a result of a lot of factors, a difficult person to get to know. As a result, when I finally do make new friends or start dating someone (and actually let them in under the enormous, silly defenses I've erected) I want it to be forever. It seems stupid to be to invest all the emotional energy in someone who's only going to be around for a few months or a few years. There's no possible way that I can get anything worthwhile from someone who isn't going to be in my life forever.

It's a stupid, silly way to think about relationships. The one that ended last fall and that I'm finally dealing with now has years worth of memories attached to it that (even if they're making me kind of weepy these days) I wouldn't sacrifice for anything. I regret that it ended, I regret the way that it ended, but to say that I'm not a better, different person as a result of it would be foolish.

It's the lesson Michelle tries to impart to me over our steaming bowls, it's the lesson Against Love, it's the lesson of The Head & The Heart song, and it's the lesson I feel I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to learn.

Things don't have to be forever to be valuable. 

Regency

It will not stop raining here.

The weather, combined with the fact that my landlords have turned the heat off despite the temperature tanking, combined with the fact that I haven't actually had a hug in awhile, combined with the fact that I've been, uh, tense recently, combined with a zillion other things had me trawling the internet for good romance novel suggestions on Sunday afternoon.

Here's the thing. Ms. Proponent-of-Birth-Control, advocate for the Women's Economic Security Act, gets-into-weekly-fights-about-pay-equality has a secret shame.

I love Regency romance novels.

I'm completely unembarrassed by the fact that I occasionally indulge in a trashy book (this is why Kindles were invented, isn't it?). It's the Regency thing (and, ohmygod, the titles) that I find humiliating.

When it comes to romance novels I have intense author loyalty. Unfortunately, my favorite author seems to either be invoking radio silence while finishing a new book or has stopped writing (a thought that actually terrifies me), so I turned to the internet for suggestions. Given my intense mortification over the Regency thing, I read some reviews and decided on a contemporary romance.

Huge mistake.

Let's get past the fact that there were grammatical errors in the book (Yes, my blog is riddled with typos and incorrect grammar, but I'm not a published author. With an editor.) and the fact that the story was totally fucking preposterous (I'm not expecting an Octavia Butler level of plot development) and jump straight into the fact that the romance part of the gorram romance novel was completely unexciting, leaving me to wonder:

Is there anything more disappointing than a disappointing romance novel?

***

I've never received flowers from a boyfriend.  

In fact, the only man in my life to send me flowers has been my father. For years my mother would ask about the men she (with her crazy sixth sense) knew I was seeing. What we did, who paid, if they ever did anything nice for me, when was the last time one of them bought me flowers. 

She could hear me rolling my eyes over the phone. "Ma. I don't need that stuff." 

I could hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. "Yes, honey, but some day you're going to want it."

For most of my 20s I thought she meant that I was going to want those things because I was lady. As a lady, it was pre-determined that I would want my partner to send me flowers and give me Tiffany's. Retrospectively, of course, what she meant had less to do with the trappings and more to do with the idea that it's nice to see someone put forth a little effort, a lesson I only seem to have learned after never having had a date offer to pick up a check. A lesson that sunk in when I was laid up with strep and asked the guy I was dating if he could bring me some soup and he said "Sure, if I'm not too drunk. I'm going to go play poker first." A lesson that finally stayed with me after a paramour announced "Yeah, I know you didn't, but I did and I'm bored so I'm going to bed."

Is there anything more galling than having to admit, years down the line, that your mother was right?

***

As I said, Sunday's romance novel was disappointing for a lot of reasons. The part that gets me the most though is that the whole thing reads too much like an OkCupid date where you both know what the score is before you even leave the house.

I love Regency romance novels because, yeah, the smutty bits are there, but there's a bit of a build-up to it. It's one of the things I love about the constraints of setting the novels in the Regency period. Things are put on a slower timetable. There's lots of character development and because authors are taking cues from Idon'tknowJaneAusten there's lots of verbal sparring and sexy one-upsmanship. Yeah, they're not flowers or paying for a date at Cafe Barbette, but they're the sorts of things that make me swoon (among other things). The characters are putting in a bit of effort prior to taking a tumble. 

Yes, the fact that I read the novels, the fact that I find them so enjoyable is slightly mortifying, but dating can be unromantic and disappointing enough. I don't want to relive it in my romance novels.  So you'll forgive me, but I'm going to go try my luck with The Viscount Who Loved Me. 

Seriously. These titles. 

Fly-Over

"What the hell is a lost Swede town anyway?"

I'm waiting for a friend at a downtown St. Paul bar, taking small sips out of a glass of stout and reading on my Kindle.

The gentleman next to me, wearing a suit and too obviously drunk for 5:00PM on a Tuesday, is trying to strike up a conversation. It takes me a moment to pull myself of out my nonfiction about Elizabethan espionage, to say "Excuse me?"

He gestures to my bag, a clutch that looks like the cover of The Great Gatsby. "I never liked that book."

I bristle. Visibly. 

There are a lot of things I find annoying about this guy in this moment. His drunkenness so early in the evening. The fact that he's talking to me. His suit, which signifies someone who works at Wells Fargo and thinks he's actually the Wolf of Wall Street. 

But what annoys me most is that his opening conversational salvo was a nasty comment about Scott Fitzgerald. 

If there is one place in the world where you don't rag on Fitzgerald it's in St. Paul. It is in St. Paul while sitting at a bar where, if you lean back a few inches, you have a direct line of sight out the windows to Rice Park where Fitzgerald has been memorialized in bronze. It's in a bar where you're less than a five block walk to the Fitzgerald Theater, where Scott's bust reigns aloofly in the hall as you stream into your seats. 

And if there's one girl in the world to whom you don't belittle F. Scott Fitzgerald, it's the one sitting at said bar, on the way to said theater, with a bag that looks like cover of The Great Gatsby.

I'm barely halfway through my beer and feeling more magnanimous than I usually might. I take a deep breath and remind myself that Fitzgerald himself, for all his literary gifts, was a drunk on a barstool annoying someone at some point. 

"I imagine he meant towns with names like Mora, Scandia, or Linstrom." I'm crisp enough that I think I've signaled that our conversation, thank you very much, has come its inevitable conclusion. You will not be buying me a drink. We will not be discussing the finer points of Elizabethan espionage or Midwestern writers. 

"Bah." He sways a little on his seat. "What would he know about the Midwest? He was from . . . New York." 

"New York?" The sharpness of my tone is enough to make the bartender, someone I went to college with, look up and move away. 

"Yeah. Or Paris. Or some place." 

When I suspect someone of intellectually sloppiness, my reaction is always the same. I suck my teeth. I take off my glasses. I recross my legs and lean in, and boy, you better brace yourself. 

My fury is always of the quiet "You may want to reconsider what you've just said" kind rather than the explosive kind. "Have you ever been to Rice Park?" I ask.

He looks puzzled. "Sure."

"That Rice Park, just down the block?" I'm pointing out the window.

"Yeah. So?"

"Ever, I don't know, seen a bronze statue of a man in a double-breasted suit there?"

"Yeah."

"You know who that is?"

He shakes his head.

I lied when I said my fury is always quiet. I start shouting. 

"It's F. Scott Fitzgerald. You asshole. He was from St. Paul. We have a theater four blocks from here with his portrait painted on the side and his name on the marquee. Anyone with an iota of historical or literary curiosity can do a walking tour of the neighborhood where he used to live. There's a building in Cathedral Hill where he used to walk to buy his cigarettes while writing his first novel. He knew how to write about the goddamn Midwest. He was one of us."

***

I've lived my entire life in fly-over country. 

I rarely think twice about it. Why would I? I live in a state with excellent education, taxes that feel reasonable, and amenities out the roof. My home is in a city where no one lives farther than six blocks from a park. At any point in time I can step out my door and run thirteen miles along the Mississippi, find locally sourced eggs or honey, catch an author reading, see a show. To that same end, I can drive an hour, an hour and a half north and see the Aurora, swim in a pristine lake, or be in the middle of the woods without a soul to talk to me. 

I love fly-over country. 

***

Thursday is the anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby. 

I have sort of a busy day on Thursday, but Friday I'm taking off of work early to do the Fitzgerald walking tour of the city. I'll start in Rice Park, with Scott's statue and then slowly wind my way up the hill, eventually ending at his various childhood homes and a certain old bar in Cathedral Hill with lots of original brickwork and a lovely patio. I'll sip my gin and reread my favorite passage from The Great Gatsby: 

“That's my Middle West-not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters [. . .]”

***

This winter did not to dispel the idea that many of my coastal friends have of the Upper Midwest (cold, flat, and lame). I received quite a few emails during the three Polar Vortexes and again when we had ten inches of snow the first week of April talking about how horrible it must be to be stuck inside all winter, and that there was something wrong in the minds of the people who choose to live like this, and why don't I come to one of the coasts, where the cities are proper cities, the weather is more temperate, there's a real literary scene, people are more scientifically minded. 

My replies were always the same. As I said, I've lived my entire life as a citizen of fly-over country. I can wield politeness and passive-aggression like a rapier. Thank you, but I managed to run twenty-miles outside last week despite the sub zero temperatures, and while it's not as good as the twenty-five I normally average, I'm still managing to get out. Part of the reason its been so chilly is because there's very little cloud cover, which means bone-aching cold, but it also means we've had an exceptional winter for star-gazing. And yes, there are moments when I've thought about moving to a larger city, but I'd really like to see the Aurora again at least once before I die, and St. Paul really does have a fine literary culture. Lots of small presses and interesting work being written by the people who live here.  So, thanks, but no thanks. I'm good where I am. 

The fact of the matter is that I've never seriously considered living anywhere else.

The Midwest has been good to me. Milwaukee is a city full of fellowship, good will, and living there is an exercise in loving things/people who will inevitably disappoint you (I'm looking at you, Milwaukee Brewers). Central Minnesota is place of deep, no-bullshit community and a love for the land that leaves you breathless. Duluth and those lost Swede towns on the Range are a testament to the ability to keep yourself occupied and engaged during long, hard winters. Northern Wisconsin is a guide to self-sufficiency and quiet pleasure in knowing that you built your own shed or caught and butchered your own dinner.

I am a part of that.

These are the secret things that keep me in fly-over country, the aspects of this part of the country that prevent me from considering living anywhere else. I am the games I played as a child (Duck, Duck, Goose instead of Duck, Duck, Grey Duck) and the linguistic ticks I've acquired (it's a bubbler, not a drinking fountain). I am the poems stamped into the St. Paul sidewalks. I am bluegrass on the North Shore and hiphop in Minneapolis.

And yes, as I'm walking through St. Paul on Friday afternoon, I'll think about F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and about this beautiful, complicated place and my equally complicated emotions surrounding it and the experiences I've had here. Because I am as much a part of them as I am anything else.

Feelings

Joel Stein is an idiot.

It's a thought I've had many times over the course of the past two years. I had it the day I read the entirety of Patrick Ness's exceptional Chaos Walking trilogy. Again when I was until four in the morning reading Shipbreaker. My motion sickness kicked in when I couldn't put the Birthmarked series down. When I got off the bus and made myself a cup of ginger tea I repeated the mantra to myself.

Joel Stein is an idiot. 

***

Michelle is the only person with whom I actually enjoy going to history museums.

Scratch that. Michelle is the only person with whom I actually enjoy going to museums. 

Full stop. 

We spent the majority of the day today at the Minnesota History Center at an exhibit about Prohibition. It was incredible. It was infinitely better than I could have imagined. I stood in front of the 21st Amendment. I got my picture taken with a banner saying Votes for Women. I got to tell Michelle that William Jennings Bryan not only supported women's suffrage and the temperance movement, but also prosecuted the Scopes trial. We talked about how people we knew in Milwaukee and Northern Wisconsin had known Al Capone (no joke) and benefited directly from his largess.

It was a good day. 

Because we're both nuts for museums we spent part of the day in the Minnesota's Greatest Generation exhibit. I wandered away from her at some point and started reading the story of a Minnesota veteran who was an incredibly talented jazz musician who worked seven days a week at an laundromat and played gigs in the evenings. The story made me think of how difficult that life must have been--balancing what you love with the financial necessity of having to work and before I knew it I was tearing up in the middle of the museum.

Some people cry when they cross the finish line of a race. Others get a little misty at the top of a mountain they've hiked. Church or books or music can set others off.

I cry in museums. 

Lingering in art museums I will inevitably happen upon a piece (intentionally or otherwise) that I find so lovely I dissolve on the spot. Wandering through science museums, I think about the improbability of our own existence or stand in front of an early prototype of Voyager and consider us reaching out through the stars to find intelligent life and I break down. Perusing history museums I imagine receiving a telegram that my brother  or father or boyfriend will never come home as the result of a war and my heart feels like it's breaking. 

Michelle, being the intrepid best friend of sixteen years, is my ideal museum companion because discovering me wiping my eyes in front of a poster about a long-deceased saxophonist is no longer unusual. It's not even cause for comment. 

***

I read The Fault in Our Stars cover to cover, in about three hours. 

Today, in fact. 

I didn't time it well. I started it before the history center and finished it after, so I was already rubbed a little raw. But once I started it I couldn't put it down. It's an emotional lulu of a book, at times infuriating (No sixteen year old talks like that! What seventeen year old read Waiting for Godot?) at times hysterically funny and at times a real emotional sucker-punch. 

It's the second YA novel I've read in 2014 and while it didn't have quite the same Everyoneneedstoreadthisbookimmediately quality that Eleanor & Park had (Oh, haven't you heard me talk about how much I loved that book?) it was still funny, smart, and deeply moving. I was pleased that I read it. And when I closed the book and went to make myself a cup of tea and find some tissues I thought (again):

Joel Stein is an idiot. 

***

No fewer than six acquaintances have sent me the HuffPost article "16 Habits of Highly Sensitive People." 

It's kindly meant, and I usually send back a quick "Thanks! A couple other folks have emailed this to me too!" 

What I really want to say is "Send me something peer-reviewed, with footnotes, and I might take it seriously."

Have I mentioned I'm a real snot when it comes to things that even come remotely near smelling of pop-science? 

You've probably seen the article Or, at least, if you're not a Luddite you've probably come across it in some capacity. Even without the emails, it's shown up in my Facebook newsfeed at least a zillion times in the past week. It was trending on Twitter. A workshop at a conference I attended recently made reference to it. At first I can't tell what's annoying me about the article but apparently because I'm highly sensitive, I'm more annoyed than the rest of the world.  

My feathers, I'll realize eventually, are still a little ruffled by the fallout from one of my recent posts (Note: do not tell men they have the emotional capacity of Peter Pan and that their literary heroes are entitled, passive, egotistic shitheads. Even if both are true). I'm pissed because I've been told a number of times in the past week You're too emotional. You're so sensitive. You have no place commenting on the emotions of men because you have lady feelings. Get on medication because you're clearly bi-polar. 

Here are some things I know about myself. I cry more easily than some people I know, less easily than others. I often cry when thinking about things that have no direct impact on me whatsoever. Books, television (ohmygodthedoomsdayepisodeofwho), music, museums, they all hit me hard, in the emotional solar plexus. I'm wired in such a way that I seem to be more reactive to things, good or bad. It takes me longer to process my emotions, and I'm often not ready to talk about them until weeks later. My default setting is for privacy and pushing people away. 

These things all seem to qualify me as a Highly Sensitive Person. 

***

I try not to be too fussy about the things that people read. 

When I read a book I love, I do have a slight tendency to evangelize about how wonderful and life changing it is, but all in all, I try not to judge people based on what they read. I don't, you know, always succeed (It still find myself flabbergasted when people tell me they haven't read The Great Gatsby) but I make an effort. I think people should try to read omnivorously, but because I believe it both broadens and deepens your relationship with books when you cane make connections across the things you read (if you ever want to see me have an intense geekout ask me about how The Code Book made me understand a throwaway scene in Life After Life). 

All of that said, I love YA books. 

I am an unapologetic reader of YA novels. I stopped reading Moby-Dick so that I could read The Hunger Games. Once, I went to work without sleep so that I could stay up and finish Ender's Game. When I missed Paulo Bacigalupi at the National Book Festival in September I was devastated. 

One of the most frustrating parts of becoming an adult is the feeling that everything about you needs to have a different label slapped on it. You're INTJ, you have anxiety, the results of your StrengthsFinder analysis suggest that you like bran muffins, you're experiencing obsessive-compulsive disorder, that's clinical depression talking. The feeling of constant diagnosis (sought or no) is what gets me so hot about the HuffPost article (that and lack of footnotes. Seriously, guys). There are times when a diagnosis is extremely helpful and necessary (OCD, depression, and anxiety). There are other times when it just feels like one more label. One more way in which you are not being the person you're supposed to be. It's not enough to say "you experience the world in a different way, and that's cool" instead you're a Highly Sensitive Person.

One of the reasons I love YA books is their emotional vulnerability. They're nakedly, hugely emotional in a way that so many adult novels aren't. I suspect it's because as a teenager all of your emotions and reactions to things are so intense, and so it resonates well with them. 

And it resonates with me. Not because I'm emotionally stunted or crazy (Fuck you, Joel Stein). I don't throw fits in public. I can count on one hand the number of times I've raised my voice when I've been upset. I don't smash crockery or throw things across the room. It resonates with me because my emotional hard-wiring is just different. I have a lower threshold for stimulation or reaction. When I experience an emotion (particularly a strong one like love or lust or jealousy) it hits me harder than it hits other people, But, honestly, who the fuck cares?  I read and love YA books because they hit me where I live emotionally and because they take me back to a time when having those emotions and expressing them wasn't something that need to be diagnosed. 

At least, that's what I tell myself as I use the last of my tissues to mop up after the last five pages of The Fault in Our Stars. 

The 2013 Book Post

2013 was a bad year for reading for me. I don't mean to imply that I read bad books. I mean I didn't read much. Over the past few years I've averaged around 35 new books a year (I reread Jane Austen and Scott Fitzgerald a few times a year). Last year I didn't crack 30 (this is pretty embarrassing and I feel like a giant slacker). I can't quite remember why, but I read four books straight off in January and then, excepting John Scalzi's excellent Red Shirts, nothing until April. That long without finishing a new book is virtually unheard of in my life as a reader.

The other sort of, well, surprising thing regarding my reading last year was that I didn't read a single romance novel. Okay, before you get all judge-y (I know you people, you're book snobs) I've read some heavy shit in my lifetime. A Fine Balance. Anna Karenina. I've started Charles Dickens more times than I can count and it's so boring I want to rip my hair out. Last year I suffered through Lady Chatterly's Lover (which, I suppose, if we were just going for smut content could be considered a romance) and wanted to die the whole time I was reading it. Hand to God, sometimes the antidote to modern, single life is crass and immediate retreat into a really good regency romance.

2013 was heavy in science fiction. I read a few novels by Octavia Butler, discovered Sarah Pinborough, destroyed The Shining Girls (which is utterly brilliant and you should pick it up immediately). Writing this, I suddenly realize that in a genre dominated by male authors I managed to read primarily ladies. Wooo, feminism. Or something.

I read a couple fantastical books that I just adored. Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore is the runner-up for my favorite book in 2013. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a holyshityoucouldknockarobberoutwiththis a book and it took me all summer to wind my way through it, but it was absolutely work reading.

Then there were the rip your heart out and do the tarentella on it books. The books that left me a sobbing, shaking mess. The Ocean at the End of the Lane (it seems impossible that this was not my favorite book this year, and I can't tell you exactly why it isn't, only that the other ones just are. I suppose we'll see which books stick with me over time). And then there was my favorite book of the year, Love Minus Eighty. Holy shit. It's based on a short story that appeared in Asimov's in 2006 called "Bridesicles." It is a gem of a book. It's funny, sad, oddly relatable. I think, ultimately, the reason that I loved it was it was a collision between science-fiction, and well, romance (the non-smutty kind). The writing is rock solid, and I completely over-identified with the character Veronika. It's the kind of book that I can't recommend to everyone (as I am doing with my favorite read thus far in 2014) but I know that there are at least a couple people in my life who will adore it. And I'll love them all the more for it.

2013 Reading

Garment of Shadows (Laurie R. King, Mystery, Mary Russell Series)
Wild Seed (Octavia E. Butler, Science Fiction, Patternmaster Series)
Lady Chatterly's Lover (D.H. Lawerence, Classics, Snoozefest)
Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn, Mystery)
Red Shirts (John Scalzi, Science Fiction)
Mind of My Mind (Octavia E. Butler, Science Fiction, Patternmaster Series)
Fledgling (Octavia E. Butler, Horror (?))
Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman, Fantasy, Cried so Hard my Eyes Swelled Up. Seriously)
Sharp Objects (Gillian Flynn, Mystery)
Kushiel's Dart (Jacqueline Carey, Fantasy, Romance (?), Oh My God, is it Warm in Here?)
Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, Historical Fiction)
Mayhem (Sarah Pinborough, Historical Fiction, Horror)
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (David Sedaris, Memoir)
The Silent Wife (S.A. Harrison, Fiction, Forgettable)
A Matter of Blood (Sarah Pinoborough, Science Fiction, Mystery, Horror (?) Dog Faced God's Trilogy)
The Hangman's Daughter (Oliver Potzsch, Historical Fiction)
The Shadow of the Soul (Sarah Pinoborough Science Fiction, Mystery, Horror (?) Dog Faced God's Trilogy)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Suzanne Clark, Fantasy)
Help for the Haunted (John Searles, Fiction, Mystery, Damn you, Kindle)
The Shining Girls (Lauren Beukes, Science Fiction, Holy Shit, Go Buy this Immediately)
Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood, Science Fiction)
Beautiful Ruins (Jess Walters, Fiction)
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloane, Fiction Ohmygodsqueeeeee)
V for Vendetta (Alan Moore, Graphic Novel, I Can't Believe I'm Admitting to Never Having Read this Before Now)
Something Missing (Matthew Dicks, Fiction)
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi, Graphic Novel)
Submergence (J.M. Ledgard, Fiction)
Love Minus Eighty (Will McIntosh, Science Fiction, It's Ok, I Wasn't Using My Heart Anyway)
Vn (Madeline Ashby, Science Fiction)

Verification

"How much breakfast food do you think we've consumed in one another's presence?"

Michelle and I have weekend brunch down to an art. We know when to go out (prior to 10am) in order to get a table without having to wait. We've learned how and when to share food. At this point we could probably order for one another.

It's early-ish (9:30) on a Sunday morning and we're having coffee and Creole inspired brunch and chatting about our next trip to NOLA when, during a comfortable lull in the conversation (the kind that comes with someone who has known you for over a decade), I mentally start to add up all the brunches we've had together since I came back from the North Country. And all the brunches we had when she came to visit me in the North country.

"Oh, God. A Metric ton."

A cinnamon roll the size of Hennepin County gets deposited on our table and she adjusts her answer "Metric tons."

***

I am . . . not great in social situations. Awkward is the word. I am incredibly, embarrassingly awkward in social situations. I don't like being the center of attention under any circumstances. I have been known to go hide in the bathroom when it looks like party games like Celebrity or Charades are immanent so that teams get picked without me. I will happily stay in the kitchen cooking the meal rather than actually interacting with my guests. My favorite way of being with my friends is to all be in the same space reading separate books.

I'm also not great with social cues.

As such, I like independent verification of friendship. Unsolicited invitations to dinner on a weeknight. A text asking if I want to go to the Minnesota History Center. An email saying "Hey, the kids really miss you, when can you come out?"

It's an odd thing, I know, but for a long time the vast majority of my friendships were conducted via text or the internet (thanks, North Country) and I grew to like it when there was something . . . more to those friendships. An offer to go out of the way to pick me up on the way to the cabin. An unexpected delivery of Cafe du Monde to my doorstep when I've been talking about missing New Orleans. A note in the mail. A long videochat on a Saturday night. The kind of stuff that takes just a tiny bit more effort than a "Hey I saw this article and I thought of you" email just knocks me out.

Partially, I suspect, because that's the way I show people they mean something to me. A poem or a pie sent through the mail, a random text on Wednesday after lunch saying "Hey. I'm glad you're a part of my life," handing over my copy of Eleanor & Park immediately after reading it and saying "You're going to love this book and cry."

That's part of it, as I'm sure part of it is just checking to ensure that I've understood the appropriate social cues, and that I haven't misjudge what, if anything, I mean to another person. The larger part is simply social ballast. The knowledge that there are at least some of my relationships that go beyond the casual. People who notice and care when I'm lying in sweat and sickness in the bathroom, who miss me when I'm gone on vacation, who care about me enough to know that I want my birthday to be Great Gatsby themed and what it means when I spend the run-up to Valentine's Day listening exclusively to Billie Holiday. 

***

"Hang on just a sec." 

I pull my angry, disgusted self together for a second and shut my damn mouth. My hair is still wet. My skin is bright pink an a little raw. I've showered four and a half times in the past twelve hours. Michelle and I are at the the breakfast place across the street from my house, a place we've been a million and one times since she started college down the block forever ago. 

"I'll have the breakfast sandwich and home fries."

The waitress takes her menu and turns to me. 

"The largest glass of water and cup of coffee you have. And some oatmeal." As the waitress is walking away I add, under my breath "And possibly some cyanide." 

"It couldn't have been that bad."

"Shell." I take a breath. "He approached oral sex with the same enthusiasm and technique with which he probably approaches a Chipotle burrito." 

Her eyes widen less in shock and more to indicate that our server is standing behind me because she forgot to ask what I wanted on my oatmeal. 

***

"So many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just as a bright haze of loyalty." 

In my copy of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore I've underlined and turned down the page (34) that the above quote came from. We read Penumbra for my bookclub last November and I've rarely geeked out as hard in public as I did when we discussed the book (my bookclub is around 100 people, so raising my hand to take the microphone requires an intense geekout). It was funny and odd and ohmygod preposterously nerdy. It was my second favorite book that I read in 2013 (Love Minus Eighty beat it narrowly because of the sheer holyfuck emotional catharsis of reading it. It beats WHO for ability to make we cry.) 

Returning to the point at hand, I loved every minute of Penumbra because I would never suggest it to Michelle. 

Kindly sit still, I 'm getting there. 

It's a book about geeks and the way we love other people. It's about the kind of fierce loyalty that springs up among people who deeply, passionately, unironically love dorky things, be they D&D or rare books or computers or cryptography. It's about friendship that no longer requires verification. 

I love it because while I can't give it to Michelle to read (too many geek shibboleths and not enough historical drama or evil dictators) it's a book about our friendship. About how my mother's phone number is in her cellphone and we're one another's emergency contacts. About how she knows to pick me up and take me to The Happy Gnome when I'm sad or to widen her eyes and shake her head discreetly when I'm being too loud about an awkward sexual encounter when we're in public together. How she once drove 100 miles to see me while I was in graduate school and we sat outside in chairs on opposite sides of the patio (she in the sun, me in the shade) and read separate books and drank Arnold Palmers without speaking for six hours and at the end of it said "That was really fun."

It's the kind of friendship where I can tell her "I read a book you would hate but it reminds me of us" and describe the whole thing to her anyway and know she won't understand, but will listen anyway. And at the end of the conversation, when eggs and cinnamon rolls and coffee and chicory arrive and I say, a little awkwardly "I want to write a blog about how much I love you, would you mind?" She'll reply "Jesus, it's about time." 

Lists

My life is governed by  lists.

I make a to-do list every single day, whether I'm at work or hanging out around the house. I make them on the weekends. I make them when I go on vacations. I write them down on legal pads, on scrap paper, on checklists on my phone. I get an incredible feeling of satisfaction from crossing things off the lists. I am uneasy when that to-do list still has all of its items listed on it at the end of the day.

I make immense lists of the books I want to read, the historical sites I want to visit, the films I need to watch, the pieces of writing I'd like to do. I keep these lists on my desk at work, with a photo of them on my phone so that if, say, I'm at the library and I can't decide on a book to check out, I can whip the list out of my purse and think Oh yeah, I never did read The Glass Key. Or, Oh God, what was I thinking? I'm never going to read Moby Dick and I have to come to terms with it.

I love lists.

***

This week I crossed something off my bucket list.

I haven't been great about what's on my bucket list. There are the big things I want to achieve: write a book about the Scopes Trial, go to Gettysburg, see The Royal Shakespeare Company perform Hamlet. But as far as the smaller things, things like "Seeing the Dred Scott Courthouse Site" don't occur to me until afterward. I've always wanted to see General Sherman's graveside, but it was never on the bucket list. More than that, I put a ton of things on the list that don't actually matter to me, but are reflections of . . . the people I'm dating? The friends I've made? I don't know, but they don't belong there. So usually when I "cross something off my bucket list" it's because I've decided that it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

This was not one of those. This was an actual ohmygodIcan'tbelievethatactuallyhappened moments. I'm pleased there's photographic evidence of it happening because I'd be tempted to think that I dreamed it otherwise.

I met my favorite author.

I've met a number of authors that I admire throughout the course of my life. It's the gift of going to a college that takes bringing in writers to talk about writing very seriously. I remember all of the questions I asked them, what they said to me as they signed my books. Sarah Vowell and I talked about the Kennedy assassination. I told Billy Collins my mother hated my poetry but loved his. I laughed so loudly from the second row of a David Sedaris reading that he shot me a look. 

This was different. It was, simply, too intense to describe. I can't even remember what this man said to me when I said hello and told him what I had to tell him. I can say that he was very, very kind to a sweaty, shaky, stuttery, earnest young woman. And that when I made it back out to my car I cried. And I walked away deeply grateful for this man and his work. 

When I got back to my bucket list on Tuesday afternoon I looked at it for a long moment before reaching out to scratch the item off. 

***

I feel like a failure. 

This week has been a messy, emotional one for me. In the space of seven days, I flew to St. Louis, attended one of my good friend's wedding, spent the 4th of July at the site where Dred Scott was tried, visited a ton of Civil War graves, flew back to Minnesota, met this author, came back up to the North Country and packed the rest of my house. I'm not complaining. It was a really good week.

But now that my entire life is in boxes, now that the internet has been disconnected, and my clothes have been sorted into vacation, second vacation, need after first move, can be stored until after second move suitcases, now that I've read literally all the books left in my house I find myself with a little too much time on my hands. 

Of course I would use that time for unproductive self-reflection. 

I feel like a failure. 

I confide this to exactly one person during the course of the week in a moment of profound vulnerability that I hate myself for later. 

***

I'm slinking out of the North Country.

I'll admit it. This place whupped me. The winters were too dark, too cold, too snowy. The summers (ha!) were brief and cool. The people were (with a few notable exceptions) distant. The goddamn roads have potholes that could take off your front wheel. 

When I moved here two years ago, I didn't know if it was permanent, but I anticipated leaving with some indications of success. A boyfriend (or at least, a relationship that lasted longer than my normal six months), a hugely successful professional tenure, I was going to write my book, figure out how to be a spiritually fulfilled adult without being Catholic, finally learn to play my harmonica . . .

I did not succeed here.

More than that, I suspect I could have succeeded here. I could have made this city work, these people open up to me. I could have adapted to snow and darkness and cold. I could have done it. I could have done it if I had gone to see a therapist earlier. I could have done it if I had started taking anti-depressants. I could have done it if I just learned how to be happy. 

But I didn't. I didn't accomplish any of those things on my North Country list. And now instead of leaving amid tearful going away parties, poetic break-ups, and enormously lucrative counter-offers, I am sneaking out of town with as little fanfare as possible. 

***

I feel like a failure. 

I feel like even more of a failure for opening up the way I did this week. For getting shaky and struggling not to cry while I said "This book saved my life." For admitting that this part of the country pushed me right up to the brink and left me mess that I've been slowly sorting out. For saying out loud "I couldn't make this work."

***

Somehow, despite never having added "Surround yourself with kind people" to a list, that is exactly what I've managed to do. When I stutter out what I want to say to the author he pauses and reaches out for my hand and lets me give him a hug. While I'm mentally slapping myself for admitting to failing here in the North, I receive a thoughtful, insightful response that burns me with its compassion.

I'm never going to be able to shake the habit of writing out lists for myself, like I'll never be able to stop measuring success by what I've managed to cross off. But I hope that I've finally managed to learn to put the right things on the list. 

Headache

When I arrived home from work today, the very first thing I did was dash around to the front of the house.

Today, you see, is a very special day. 

Today is Ocean at the End of the Lane Day. 

I came relatively late to the Neil Gaiman party. I'd heard of American Gods, and had friends who mentioned that he lived in Minneapolis and would talk about his books constantly, but I never read him. Because no one ever suggested that I should. When I finally got around to reading him, I was hooked within the first twenty pages. I devoured everything I could get my hands on that he had written. His short stories. His novels. The graphic novels made out of his novels. The audiobooks. His young adult fiction. I read everything of his that I could borrow from the library or steal from one of my friends or find the cash to buy out of my tiny monthly book budget. 

I was late to the Neil Gaiman party, but once I arrived I put on my party hat, threw a fistful of glitter in the air, got wasted, and insisted everyone sing Call Your Girlfriend and dance with me. 

Right. Ocean at the End of the Lane. 

When I skittered around to the front porch there was the box, as promised. I barely responded to my neighbors, sitting out front enjoying the sunshine. I snatched up the box, hurried into my house, and very nearly burst into tears. 

Yup. I was very nearly crying over a new book. A book I hadn't even read yet. A book that was still in the packaging. If anyone saw me, they'd wonder if I needed to have my head examined. 

***

It was, inevitably, a comic book that saved my life.

Depression isn't about sadness. It's not the blues. It's not feeling bummed out. Or morose. Or dispirited. Or just plain old unhappiness. In fact, depression, for me, was never about feeling. We laugh (I laughed) at the depiction in Twilight of Bella Swan sitting spaced out in a chair as months rolled by, but I am deeply ashamed to admit that that is exactly how I experienced depression. 

Depression was never about feeling. It was about not feeling. It was about numbness. About day after day of sheer, grinding, nothingness. If I felt anything it was anxiety or worry.  I think I would have taken getting worked up into a lather about something just for the change. But I just . . . couldn't. Instead I went to work, came home, and sat for hours in front of the television, not reading, not thinking, not writing, not doing anything I enjoyed because if I just sat there I could shut off my brain and not think about why I wasn't feeling anything. 

My mental health issues had been building for years. I was always an anxious kid, and my parents would tell me constantly to just stop worrying. As if it was a choice. As it was, I spent most of my life with gradually building anxiety and depression that were never addressed. They built up so slowly that before I realized it, I had tucked my heart away inside of a glass jar. And it was fine in that jar, no one could hurt me as long as it was in there, but I couldn't feel anything and worse--I couldn't remember a time when I had felt something.

It was, quite simply, terrifying.

I was deeply, borderline desperately, unwell. But I didn't know it. I had never thought of myself as the kind of person who would contemplate suicide, but suddenly there I was, standing on just the other side of the line separating me from that level of despair.  Now, writing this, for the first time I realize how unwell I was and how fucking good I was at hiding it. Depression was insidious. Its onset was so gradual that I couldn't talk about it, couldn't recognize it for what it was. And I couldn't make it better. And I couldn't imagine a future where I felt anything.

So, the winter of 2011 in the North Country. The lack of sunlight is enough to make anyone a little potty, but added to loneliness, depression, and anxiety, and I was a fucking disaster. And I was very, very good at hiding it. On the outside I was a successful, put-together, well-liked, respected young professional. Inside I was just a mess.

And for whatever reason, I decided that the thing to do during that period of my life was read Neil Gaiman's Sandman. 

What a stupid idea. 

Sandman is many things, like all of Gaiman's writing. It is layered and witty and sad and funny and deeply frightening. It is not a wintertime comic. It is not a comic to read while you're suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression. 

I read it anyway. 

I fell apart. 

I went to pieces during the first volume, Preludes and Nocturnes. During a scene in A Hope in Hell I set the comic down and wept. I cried for longer than I had cried at any one time in years. And when I was finished, when the hiccups I had given myself settled down, I picked it up and kept reading. I finished the whole series in the course of a week, more reading than I had done at any one time during the previous year. 

It sounds silly and dramatic and sophomoric to say that a comic book saved my life. I know that. But I also know that when I read that one specific line in A Hope in Hell and started crying during a completely mad, fantastic, absurd story, that I felt something for the first time in months. I wouldn't have my real Come to Jesus moment about my mental health for another nine months but reading Sandman put microscopic cracks in the jar where I was keeping my heart.

***

The highest compliment that I can give a television show, a book, a movie is "I cried so hard I gave myself a headache." It's the experience I had two years ago, sitting on my bed reading A Hope in Hell and feeling something for the first time in months. 

I finished Ocean at the End of the Lane between when I started writing this blog and now. And it was brilliant. And beautiful. And deeply moving. And completely mad and terrifying and a thousand other things that I've come to expect from Neil Gaiman's writing. And I cried so hard I gave myself a headache. Partially, I expect, because it's that good.

It's also, I expect, because these days many more things are making me cry. And that's a hopeful thing.