The junk people leave behind in their books is awesome.

One of the reasons I like buying used books is because I find treasures inside. Words that move me blah, blah, but also people stuff awesome things between the pages. I just finished American Pastoral by Philip Roth, which I’d been meaning to read for the last five years. I liked it. I feel like now I’m safe in case it ever comes up in conversation. The American Dream is bullshit, etc.

Inside the pages of my copy of American Pastoral, I found the following:

(1) a yellow receipt dated April 13, 2000 from a Buffalo Exchange in Las Vegas; one A. K. spent $188.22 at 6:40PM

(2) a tiny sheet of brown notepad paper which includes a dirty joke about taking meat out of the refrigerator, a single name written 16 times, unknown dimensions, wayward slash marks, and partial shopping list  that involves a biology book and pencils

 

You’re pretty, you know, like Carnie Wilson.

I read a lot of books, and I read a lot of interviews with the people who write the books. I feel like a common thread among writers is the feeling of being an outsider. You never hear about a writer who had a well-adjusted high school experience and a great home life. No one’s writing stories about throwing the winning pass and getting the girl and going home to Mom and Dad who hug them and tell them they look nice.  You’re reading stories written by the people who spent football game nights making fun of people who get excited about football game nights who go home to Dysfunctional Mom and Dad who smoke too much and bicker with each other and pick fights with the kid to release some of their own bitterness.

We moved across the country when I was 10, and I picked up fifth grade in the middle of the year in a new school. That was unsettling, but it was supposed to be. A few months later, my parents got divorced. My first trip back to Illinois was for my great aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary. I’d gained a bunch of weight. (If you don’t believe me, ask the old neighborhood kid I ran into at the mall who didn’t recognize me at first. “You got fat,” he said.) My mom was remarried. I was 11 at this point, and I remember moving around that party feeling invisible. My aunts and uncles were partying, and the slightly older cousins I’d grown up with had turned into pre-teens. I removed myself from the big crowd and hung out in a spare room in the back where one of my slightly younger cousins came in and sat with me for about two minutes before she told me to quit feeling sorry for myself and get back out in the world. Even at that age, she was worldly. Heading back into school, I realized I couldn’t shake the feeling of discomfort. The move across the country didn’t kill me. My parents divorce didn’t kill me. My new stepdad and stepbrothers didn’t kill me. The kids at school didn’t kill me. Going home killed me.

I did well academically in school. I did not do well socially and things got worse after that trip. I started junior high, where I was bullied because of my weight and the way I did my hair and the way I dressed and the way I spoke. I’d managed to make a few friends by the end of eighth grade, but I still didn’t feel settled. Within the group, I was the one everyone picked on. I was still chubby. They were not. My “friend” once said to me, “You’re pretty, you know, like Carnie Wilson.”

I was invisible in high school until I got involved in Drama Club and made actual friends. Some of my new friends were friends with the popular kids, and so I’d end up at the popular kid parties and that still felt awful. Sit in a spare room and cry kind of awful. But I didn’t sit in a spare room and cry, I started binge drinking and that worked for a few years.

By the time I graduated, I had some pretty good friends and pretty good experiences and I lost the weight and everything was mostly OK, but I’ve cast this dark net over all my years in Havasu. I was an outsider. The popular kids thought I was weird. I’m not making that up, they told me. My friends thought I was weird sometimes, too.

Most people I know will say the same thing. High school sucked. High school was a nightmare. Nothing worked out for me in high school. My life was awful in high school. Like is attracted to like and so I think most of my good friends–the people I relate most to–had similar experiences.

But I wonder what that really means. Isn’t high school just the shittiest time of your life? I mean, even if you’re having great fun, you’re changing physically and mentally and that feels awkward. I wanted to fit in, but I didn’t know what fitting in meant.

Wouldn’t it make sense the popular kids felt the same way? What was the hierarchy like in those circles? Is that a fantasy to think the prettiest girl I can think of actually felt like wearing a veil because she didn’t feel as pretty as the prettiest girl she could think of? Does that sentence make sense?

I want to collect  the top ten most popular people from high school. I’d put them in a room and ask them to tell me about their experiences.  I want to sweep the nation and collect the Homecoming courts from 1994 – 1996 and say, what was the difference? What did it feel like for you? Were you a secret mess? How did you survive? Would you even use a word like survive to explain high school?

In my final semester of college, I was part of a group advertising project. My group consisted of a Japanese foreign exchange student who didn’t speak English and who chain-smoked, two sorority girls, and a skinny kid named David who had a big nose, thin lips, and wore jeans that were too short for him. Out of everyone in that group, I related to David the most. I tried to fit in with the girls. I made jokes. I complimented them. But it didn’t work. I didn’t fit. I didn’t get invited to their parties. They didn’t ask me out to lunch. I was like David, and they knew that. I knew that. I could sit and talk to David for hours about nothing and not feel like a monster. I said hello to these girls and my skin felt like it was coming off. But mostly what I talked to David about was the idea of not fitting in.

We took a trip into the city for a tour of a “real live” advertising agency. One of the sorority girls wanted to stop off and visit her mom, so we did that. All five of us. We drove into some nice neighborhood in Scottsdale and said hello to this chick’s mother. We stood in the freshly cleaned living room and looked at pictures of her from high school. She was a cheerleader. She’d been on the prom court. She’d always been thin.

David and I had these conversations about transitions. When you peak in high school, we were certain that meant the rest of your life went downhill. When you have everything you need in high school, you must be doomed to fail in the rest of your life. We wanted to believe that.

I remember standing near the mantle looking at pictures of her. David was standing next to me. He was absorbing her life in high school, her life now. We’d driven down in her nice car. We were standing on cream-colored carpet that looked as though it repelled stains simply by existing. “Maybe we’re wrong,” he said, “and sometimes they do crossover.”

Outsiderness crosses over.

A brief update on my sister.

My sister started her period. This has been big news in our family. If you did a word cloud of the emails and phone calls I’ve had with people, “period” would be dead set in the middle in large, bold letters. After the big bad horrible thing, a period is a call for celebration.

Well, we think. We’re not sure how it will go. Do blood thinners affect that kind of thing? My mom had to call her hematologist, but the hematologist hasn’t called back.

My sister was on the pill because she used to have crazy periods. Two weeks of bleeding. Then three months of nothing. Then a month of bleeding. Then four months of nothing. The pills evened her out, but in the end, they contributed to the blood clots. Death or regulation? It’s an easy choice.

Periods are a sign of health, right? Or, at least, an attempt at health. She hasn’t had one in eight months. Her body is making adjustments, right? She’s getting better? I think she’s getting better.

In other medical news, they called me with the results of my glucose tolerance test. I have low blood sugar. My insulin remained perfectly normal throughout the whole thing, but around hour three, my blood sugar cracked and dipped.

I could have told them that. I had a headache, and I had to come home and eat and lay down and breathe through some dizziness.

Eat every three hours, they said. Complex carbs. Healthy fats. Good protein. I have to keep my blood sugar level.

“You’re going to blow up,” my grandma said.

“I won’t eat chips,” I said. “I’ll eat apples and peanut butter.”

“Don’t blow up,” she repeated.

I’ve always known that when I don’t eat often I get crazy and dizzy and feel like killing people, but now a doctor has confirmed it’s a real thing and I’m not just a bitch.

 

That time Dad left the fish in the car.

Yesterday I tried to work on a story, but I spent two hours reading through old writing exercises. This started because Bill was writing about writing exercises, and I realized I don’t really do them. This blog is probably the closest thing I’ve ever come to a self-imposed writing exercise.  Writing is about discovery, and I learn about many things on this blog. For example, today I learned that I can’t spell the word exercise.

The old writing exercises were generated in the first writing class I took at ASU. We did the barn one. You know that one? Imagine a barn and try to describe it without using the word barn. Do it from the perspective of a child, a widow, and, like, a WWII veteran or something. Blah, blah, etc.

My descriptions of a barn through the eyes of a child, a widow, and the old guy was tragic. Truly tragic.

Sometimes I post old stories I wrote in high school on here because I think it’s funny. Also, when I read through old high school writing sometimes I remember what it felt like when I was writing it and I feel kind of good. Like, some of it was awful, but some of it was OK, and I can see myself in it. It’s like looking at an old picture and saying, you know, after I lost all the weight, I was kind of cute and too bad my teenager mind wouldn’t allow me to see that.

I did not have that feeling when I was reading last night. I found some truly, truly, truly horrendous nonsense.

Oh, you should forgive yourself and take it easy, I hear you say. I’ll forgive myself and take it easy when I’m dead, OK?

My barn was set against a lake, I guess. The widow wrote about its gentle caressing hushing against the shore.

WTF does that even mean?

The barn was the tip of the iceberg. I had about a dozen little stories about two friends who had broken apart because of a dispute over a guy. They had complicated names like Caitlyn and Taryn.

I found a story I’d written called Miffy the Dog, which had nothing to do with dogs.  Miffy seemed to be about a narrator who’d had many unpleasureable experiences with various characters named Michael. The Three Michaels. The first one was her neighbor, and they played G.I. Joe together. The second was her high school boyfriend who worked on cars and drank Miller Light and ignored her. The third, well, he remains a mystery because the story abruptly ends one page 34. Miffy was probably ready to make an appearance on page 35.  The narrator had five sisters and they all had names that started with a J.

My primary care fell to Jeanine and Jennifer. Jeanie wanted nothing to do with being a mother at 16, and Jenny wanted even less of the responsibility. They took me to day care and then on to kindergarten and grade school. Jennifer was the one who taught me how to read and tie my shoes, all the stuff parents who weren’t old and afflicted with old people’s diseases would have done had they the emotional room. My mom always had dinner with my dad and rarely ate with the three of us girls. Jenny would put me to bed at seven every night and then go downstairs and argue with Jeanine about who was going to watch me the next day.

Oh my god. What? Who? When?

Miffy the Dog was a gem at 34 pages, but most of these stories started and stopped before I even got around to a second paragraph, or even a second line.

My childhood had nothing to do with old stories about that time Dad left the fish in the car.

Don’t know what the fuck was happening there.

I live in the city. Tonight, oblivious to my existence, people will fall in love, people will break-up. Mothers will lose their babies, babies will be created. People will die, people will change, people will grow, and people will fail. 911 calls will be made,

I didn’t even finish the sentence. God must have walked into my apartment and removed me from the computer.

But then, in the middle of it all, I found some old friends.

I vaguely wondered if I needed those last two shots of tequila or if I could have done without them. The bottles behind Tommy are as pretty as he is. Some of them were half full–some of them were half empty and most of them I wanted to take home with me and get to know better. I couldn’t read his expression, but the aggressive way he was still drying that Guinness glass told me enough.

That’s the paragraph of a story called Over the Limit. It takes place in a bar. The narrator is drunk and spends the story wanting a cigarette/the bartender to hit on her. Sound familiar? This was the real cringe-worthy moment.  I’ve been writing the drunk narrator who wants a cigarette and a man for ten years.

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Something more inherently interesting than what’s going on in my blood are my neighbors. The family who lives next to us exists solely on their driveway. The guy fixes cars for a living and when he has an overflow, he brings the cars home. I know this because he told us. They drive a white van, and when strangers’ cars aren’t lining their driveway (with an overflow to the section of street directly in front of my house), he is forever cleaning that white van. He and his wife open all the doors and get out this high-powered super-vacuum and work for hours. It is intense. Once, I was getting groceries out of my car and I said hello and I said, “Hey, want to do my car next?” This was a joke, but 10% of me wanted it to be real. Either way, he didn’t laugh. He probably gets that a lot. I felt dumb.

The people on the other side of us have six cats. I’ve counted six, there may be more. To assure you I am not counting the same cat, they all look different. Two are black (they hang out together), one is yellow and white striped, one is gray, one is mottled, one is calico. Despite the fact that my dog has lived with a cat her entire life, she gets pretty worked up about them. She’s a shy dog, and if you ever met her you’d think she was incapable of violence at all, but when she sees a stray cat she turns into an angry machine of hair and teeth. The cats slither up and down the wall that divides our backyards and she runs along the wall–one way, then the other–and barks. All the fur on her back stands up, and she gets so excited that when she stops for a minute, her back leg shakes. Occasionally, one will stop in a particular place and she’ll try to climb the wall to get it. She’s come in the house with a bloody nose more than once. Yet, if my cat decides he wants to lay in the spot she’s in, he’ll simply announce his presence by standing by her for a few seconds. She’ll get up and move. Every time. It’s nutty. I don’t know what she’d do if he actually got one. I don’t want to find out.

Then, there are the people who live a few doors down, and they’ve got a cop problem. Roughly every other week, I get a shitty letter from the shitty HOA telling me my trash or recycling bin is out. Look, it’s annoying to haul those goddamn things up and down the rocks. Sometimes I don’t bring them back inside the fence for 27 hours instead of 24. The HOA drives a white car, and it lurks around. Sometimes, I’ll be sitting in the front room and I’ll see it shimmy by, and on instinct, I jump up and go check to make sure my cans are up. Anyway, so these people who live down the street have had the cops at their place a few times. It’s not just a cop in a car. It’s 12 cars and 35 cops and some vans. The first time cop cars lined the street, a gun went off. I don’t know if it was  a cop gun or a neighbor gun. At the time, we were having new tile put in our upstairs bathroom and the guy who was doing it kept having to go outside to mix grout or whatever it was he was going. When the gun went off, the noises in the bathroom stopped and I thought, great, now I’ll have a half-finished bathroom because the criminals who live down the street can’t be more discreet.

The second time cops lined the street, there was no gunfire, but there was a K-9 unit. The dog that got out of the van looked like a Belgian Malinois. It hopped out of the back and trotted across the street looking regal. Once it hit the dead grass in their front yard, it stopped to pee.

Apparently, someone had reported a burglar and I guess that took 28 cops to handle. I heard a guy yell they were sending in the dog and I was pretty sure if I saw that dog get injured, I’d have to go into therapy again. The standoff went on for hours. A car would cruise into the neighborhood, park down the street, then the cop would get out and saunter to their meeting spot, which was out of view of the house in the question. All my neighbors were outside on their driveway watching, but I could see just fine from my upstairs window. There was some yelling at one point, but the word is they couldn’t find a burglar and so everyone went home. I don’t know what the situation was the third time cops were called, but a few weeks ago, three or four cop cars were out in front of that house. I hope the HOA is investing as much time watching them as they are watching my trash cans.

 

You must really like Tesla.

Last March, a doctor told me I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS. This is when your ovaries fill up with cysts and it makes your cycles crazy and throws your hormones out of alignment and turns your body into a mess. Women who have PCOS tend to be insulin resistant, which is a pre-cursor to Type II diabetes. She based this diagnosis on routine labwork and the things she saw are the things that indicate this PCOS deal. However, an ultrasound revealed no cysts. My insulin level was normal. The majority of women who have PCOS are overweight (pear-shaped, my doctor emphasized for some reason), but I am not overweight.

PCOS causes all kinds of fucked-up things. It can cause infertility, it can cause women to grow facial hair, and, like I said, it can cause diabetes. These things are not cool.

I’ve been having a hard time with the diagnosis. Look, I’m a hypochondriac. I’ve been preparing my whole life for tumors and brain cancer. Diabetes or pre-diabetes was never on the radar. According to charts and tests, I’m incredibly low risk for diabetes. I workout. I can’t say that I completely avoid bad food, but I don’t drink soda, I don’t eat fast food, and my desserts consist of raisins or pears or grapes.

So I had a hard time swallowing this. I was being told I had a syndrome even though I didn’t have any real symptoms of the syndrome and I didn’t fit the profile of someone who had the syndrome.

She gave me Metformin, which is a pill that helps your body regulate insulin. I sat on the drug for a few weeks and then finally called her back and was like, look, I’ll take the drug but I’m just confused about how I have this syndrome. When I say confused, I mean I was having panic attacks. I hate taking pills. I never go to the doctor for antibiotics. My grandma took a drug for cholesterol and it fucked her liver up and now she takes a drug for her liver.  I have normal insulin levels, I don’t have cysts, and I’m not overweight.

I did some digging around. You can have PCOS without being overweight. If you are a heavy carb eater (which I am–breads, pasta, cereal, and granola bars are my favorite things), then you can develop this condition. As you get older,  insulin resistance causes more obvious problems.

I also found some vague symptoms of PCOS that I did have. Irregular periods, mostly.

I’m not saying I don’t believe I have PCOS or that I’m not insulin resistant. I’m saying that it didn’t make sense to me.

When I went to the Endo for the hair shedding, I told her I’d been diagnosed with PCOS and she said, OK, we’ll do labwork. Later, she said the same things my last doctor did. Look, she said and pointed to my labs, wacky hormones and wacky hormones the way they show up with you indicate insulin resistance, aka, PCOS. But no cysts. No insulin problems.

Aside – If PCOS doesn’t necessarily  mean cysts, then I think they should change the name of it.

I again stared at this drug, but again stopped because I hate pills so much and I couldn’t/can’t see the medical necessity. Goddamn it, why do doctors always want to give you pills? No one asked me about my diet. No one asked me about my workout habits. No one suggested lifestyle changes. That pissed me off.

I looked up a bunch of information about handling PCOS without medication. You basically treat yourself like a diabetic. Low carb, low sugar, high vegetables, high protein.

This is what I heard over and over: There is a syndrome out there, but you don’t have any symptoms of the syndrome, but you have the syndrome and here’s some medication.

Am I crazy? Am I being a lunatic about this? Generally, I’m pressing doctors to tell me I have something. For the last ten months, I’ve been trying to prove that I don’t have something. I can’t wrap my mind around this.

I made an appointment with my primary care doctor, who I really don’t know, but I’ve been to that office once or twice and I list them as my GP.

I sat in her office and I basically had a freak out. I don’t get it, I said. I’ll accept it. I’m not saying I won’t accept it. I just can’t see how it’s possible. No one can explain to me how I have something when I don’t match the profile and I don’t have the symptoms.

Well, she said, looking over my labwork, your hormone levels….

Yeah, I said. I get it about the hormone levels, but can’t wacky hormones be caused by something other than insulin resistance? How is that possible when my insulin levels are normal?

She asked me if I’d ever done a fasting blood test, and I said no, but I’d read about them and I wanted one.

Famous last words.

This morning, I went to the lab for a glucose tolerance test, which is a nightmare. It’s not a nightmare in the sense that, like, a Mexican drug cartel isn’t hunting me down to behead me, but it’s a nightmare in the sense that I couldn’t eat and I had to sit around a waiting room for three hours to get my blood drawn every half hour.

Six draws. You should see my arms. I look like a junkie, and I am not kidding.

I usually take opportunities to write in my notebook. Waiting rooms are good for people watching. But I’ve been in too many waiting rooms the last few months, and I’ve watched too many people, and I’ve grown weary of my own games. Between draws, I caught up on podcasts and looked at my shoes.

Maybe I am insulin resistant. Maybe this test will come back and say that. Then I’ll explore options.  I’d love to try diet changes first. No more cereal. No more pasta for dinner.

Vodka doesn’t have any sugar. So, thank God.

Anyway, so I wasn’t really watching people, I was just trying to get through it. Until the end. It was 11:50, and I had one draw left. I also had a headache. They were coming for me in about five minutes. My head was fuzzy from not eating, and I was annoyed that I was still sitting there. A woman came in wearing a t-shirt and jeans and had wild, fried blonde hair. She sat across from me, and I happened to look up at her. She had a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist that read: Tesla.

I sat there and pondered that awhile. The band Tesla? Or the inventor Tesla?

They called her name, and she stood. I watched her walk back and she wasn’t just wearing any old t-shirt. It was a Tesla concert t-shirt.

You must really like Tesla, I thought. Like, I thought it so hard I was sure I’d said it out loud.

Isn’t that dumb? Obviously she likes Tesla.

Lists, rambling, dreams, and allergies

The list is an anaconda.

The list is a self

perpetuating monster

that gives birth constantly

like a queen ant

-Marge Piercy

I have a hell of a lot of shit to get done today, but instead of doing it, I’m writing about doing it, which is kind of like doing it. Processing is healthy.

That’s why I like writing. I’m just processing my own life. It’s cheap therapy.

I wanted to say it’s nice to plan for a new semester in my pajamas, with my coffee, in my home office instead of planning for my semester in an ICU room while my sister is hooked up to machines.

I took her to see The Muppets last week. I know everyone else saw it in November when it came out. My husband went with some of our friends the night it was released, but I taught Wednesday nights, so I couldn’t go.

Wednesdays were killers. I had a morning class, then a four hour break before my afternoon classes started. That day–the day everyone else went to see The Muppets–I went to the little arty theater in Scottsdale and watched Like Crazy, which was lovely and made me feel good because my first semester of teaching did not make me feel good.

Like Crazy was how my first relationship was supposed to go. Instead, I dated an alcoholic who didn’t like me. Everyone we associate with is some extension of ourselves (like dreams), and so I guess I didn’t like myself. Or, whatever.

The Muppets. Out in the lobby, while I was waiting for my sister to come out of the bathroom, I was staring up at the Ghost Protocol poster thinking how I’d never wanted to see a movie less, when a guy in a camouflage jacket and a non-ironic trucker hat bumped into me.

Excuse me, he said.

Yeah, I said.

But then he stopped and, like, looked at me for awhile.

Have a nice day, he said.

OK, you too, I said.

My sister came out of the bathroom, and we walked into the theater area. Trucker Hat appeared to be walking with us for a minute, and I started to wonder what I would do if he turned into The Muppets with us. Instead, he walked into Ghost Protocol. I looked up at God and nodded.

Do you like how critical I am of someone telling me to have a nice day? He was a little creepy about it, OK?

The Muppets was charming. Transported me back to my youth, etc. We were the only people in the theater, and I rebelled by not turning off my phone. No one called me.

My sister is improving. She’s back to herself, at least personality-wise. It’s like nothing happened, but everything happened.

She giggled through the movie, and I giggled through the movie, and when The Muppets sang their theme song, I fought the tears. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her turn her head when I sniffled. When the movie was over, I told her my allergies were bothering me.

Scraps from my notebook

(I always feel brilliant in my notebook…until I read through it one night. WTF am I talking about?)

Absinthe night–Daniel revealed

We should sit in the light.

violence–level of injury

we are capable of developing sympathy for other sinners

What happens to the soul? The readers should understand the gray area.

It was library time–boys at the table

Hot Rash showed up, and the party exploded.

He’s wearing a ragged band-aid on this left thumb. Picking at it, playing with it, and I want to ask what happened, if he’s ok. Jokes about infection and plastic.

warm Cherry Coke, and he is saving her

See if I can’t sell it, if I can’t make some money back on it, and if they asked me, I’d tell them it was clean

you, you, and there is nothing else

everyone has a baseline.

give the want to the reader

 

 

What makes you remember a story?

When I was growing up, reading and writing were disconnected for me. I liked to read, and I liked to write, but I didn’t get that those two things were related. The books I read in school–The Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Secret Garden–were stories, and I liked them because they took me to a different place. As I got older, I gravitated toward mass market  books because that’s what my parents read. This is how I found Stephen King. I picked up The Drawing of the Three during a weekly trip to K-Mart, and I was hooked like a suicidal fish.

Besides Hastings, did Havasu have bookstores back in the 90s? Does anyone know? I mean, of course it did. Right? For some reason in junior high, I only bought books at K-Mart.

At the time, I didn’t think of King as a genre writer. He told good stories. I liked reading good stories.

I was writing in high school, but the plots in those stories revolved around girls who had loving fathers and lots of friends and boyfriends who thought she was smart and funny. I’d read Firestarter at night and have nightmares about dying in a fire, and then the next night, I’d get out my notebook and write things like, “Jay, the captain of the football team, asked Amanda to the prom, and she was so excited to wear her size four dress.”

See the difference? I tried to write a story about witches once. It was a silly story. I remember this one scene where I had, like, a red light coming out of a house that surrounded my lead character rendering her paralyzed. I had this big binder where I’d use brightly colored dividers to separate my stories. At some point, I decided to become an art director. I spent many hours cutting model’s heads out of Seventeen magazine and gluing them to the divider. That’s really what the cover of a book should look like. A bunch of heads and the names of characters floating aimlessly. I wonder if I know where that binder is. I think I do. Hmmm….

Back to Stephen King. This article is circulating Facebook, and it reminded me how much I adored any novel or story collection he put out. Stephen King actually had a hand in leading me into literary reading. He edited one of the Best Americans a few years ago. Honestly? I bought the collection because it was name recognition.  I’d been super fucking disillusioned about writing (I wrote a shitty novel when I was 25 because an agent had seen a story of mine and wanted to see a longer work, so I wrote this horrible thing and sent it to him and he was like, no. No, a thousand times no. I spent a year, like, not writing and feeling hateful about words) and Stephen King felt a little bit like comfort food. I found all these writers in that issue–Ann Beattie, William Gay, Jim Shepard–who introduced me to a world beyond the Best Seller tables at Barnes and Noble.

This was not meant to be a post about Stephen King.

Now I’ve written a new novel, and I think (maybe) this one is slightly better than the disaster I produced in 2006. Several of my “hey can you read this and tell me where it sucks” readers have reported back to me that I could stand some detailed coloring and shading in my scenes. And this is true. I think I forget about setting. Isn’t that weird? You’d think it would be number one thing on the list. Where are these people? What time of year is it? What’s on the walls?

Ron Carlson calls this inventory.

I always worry more about what’s happening in my character’s heads. Then, of course, I forget about their bodies. I have a lot of people’s hands doing a lot of nervous things to the glasses they’re drinking from.

Here’s my point. I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between like and love when it comes to stories and novels. What sticks with me after I finish a story or novel? What makes me seek out more of their writing?

I stumbled upon Jay McInerney when I was 18. It wasn’t Bright Lights, it was Story of My Life. That’s one of the first novels I read didn’t just take me to a different place, it kind of changed me as a person. Alison Poole was a voice I recognized. She talked like me. She had the same feelings as me. I sit here and try to remember settings from that novel. I remember apartments. I have no idea what those apartments looked like, which isn’t to say that McInerney didn’t tell me what they looked like, but Alison was driving that story and she was more important than anything.

A more recent example is Joshua Mohr. I read his story, “Love Yourself, Rhonda” in a back issue of Salt Hill. Here’s the first line: “Mom’s latest boyfriend, Letch, called me Rhonda because he said that was a dumb blonde name and that I was a dumb blonde, as in, ‘Are you queer, Rhonda?’ and ‘Make me another Bloody Maria, Rhonda.’”

I didn’t give a shit where the story was going (it did end up going somewhere, obviously). I wanted the voice.

If I were to examine all the “voice-driven” novels I love, obviously I’ll find detailed settings and detailed descriptions of people’s hair and eye color. I think? Right? I don’t remember. When I say I remember voice, I must also be remembering plot and details.  But when I meet a character I’m invested in, I don’t care what that person is doing or where they’re going. I just don’t want to let them go. That’s never enough for a story or a novel. Someone’s gotta change or be confronted with change or blah, blah, blah, change and then arc.

I keep characters long after I shut the book, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about what their office building looked like. I obviously write more character-driven work. I get in trouble a lot about lack of interesting plot. This is why I think about things like this.

I’m always curious what books writers read that made them want to become a writer. I was reading and I was writing, but I was always like, I can’t actually write. I’m not Stephen King or whoever it was that wrote The Secret Garden. McInerney made think differently.

So, what makes you remember a story? Voice? Scene details? Language?

I think it’s a hard thing to pinpoint. I’d bet for most people it comes down to what the story makes you feel. How does a story make you feel something? Voice? Details? Language?

If you want to talk about any of this, I’m listening.

Sprouts was hella crowded today

But first, I had to put gas in my car. $3.25. I’ve been loafing around my house for a few weeks since school has been out, and I haven’t been at the gas station very much. Wasn’t it just around three bucks in December? Why are prices rising right before I have to start commuting again?

At the pump, this young kid in a suit that was way too big for him comes up to my car and is all, “How are those New Year’s resolutions going?”

I wish I was the kind of person that could respond to space invaders with a simple “fuck you”, but I am not that kind of person.

“Fine,” I said.

“I just wanted to let you know about a brand new glass cleaning product,” he began and then sprayed this white crap all over the window of my car. “It’s just been released onto the market–stores aren’t even selling it yet.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “What are you doing?”

He took this nasty old rag he had in his hand and started cleaning my window. But, like, he didn’t hear me. He just launched into some more b.s. about miracles and sparkling glass. I hate aggressive sales people.

“Stop,” I said. “I’m not interested. Stop, please.”

He kept going.

“Hey, I’m not buying anything from you. Seriously.”

You have to say no to men, like, a bunch of times before they listen.

He finally paused in the unsolicited cleaning of my window and stepped back. “OK, miss, well, we’re right over there if you have any questions.”

I turned and saw another young guy–this one wore a sweater vest–standing behind a table full of this revolutionary glass cleaner. I thanked him and shut the pump off even though I knew the tank wasn’t full yet.

Yeah, I thanked him. Isn’t that weird? Dude. Don’t talk to me and don’t touch my car. That’s what I should have said.

Then, I drove up and down three Sprouts aisles before finding a parking space but not before I had to wait for a small, gray-haired woman to take her time walking to her car.

Everyone was at Sprouts today. Everyone in the whole world. I hate to wait in line to buy Romaine lettuce.

I had to park my cart in front of the baking aisle to slip in for some almond flour, which is, by the way, crazy expensive. Health is expensive. That’s what so bullshit about it. McDonald’s and Wendy’s and Wal-Mart will save you money, but they will kill you with pesticides and inhumane farming practices. But I have low iron, and I’m supposed to be eating meat again, and life tends to not give a shit if you feel guilty what goes on in slaughterhouses.

In the bulk bean aisle, a woman wearing a fanny pack asked me if I knew where she could find something or other, but I couldn’t understand her because it was so loud around me. I just shook my head and said no, I had no idea. After I was able to process this for a second, I realized she was asking about lentils, which were, of course, right in front of me. Then I felt ridiculous.

When I was checking out, I made a comment to the cashier about how crowded it was.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” I said.

The cashier smiled and shrugged. Clearly, she saw it like this all the time.