The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [37]
It wasn’t until the following year, the year that was not the collaborative writing class, the year after the book we wrote that was not very good came out that made me feel like we’d utterly failed Kesey, the year after he’d ended up in the Mayo clinic for his affair with his lover, vodka, we met once at his coast house by ourselves.
That night he boiled water and cooked pasta and dumped a jar of Ragu on it and we ate it with bent old forks. We drank whiskey out of tin cups. He told life stories. That’s what he was best at. Me? I didn’t have any stories. Did I? When it got dark he lit some crappy looking ancient candles. We sat in two wooden chairs next to each other looking out at the moonlit water. I distinctly remember trying to sit in the chair older and like I had been part of history. Which amounted to extending my legs out and crossing one ankle over the other and crossing my arms over my chest. I looked like Abe Lincoln.
Then he said, “What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you in your life?”
I sat there like a lump trying to conjure up the best thing that had ever happened to me. We both already knew what the worst thing was. Nothing best had happened to me. Had it? I could only answer worst. I looked out at the ocean.
Finally I said, “Swimming.”
“ Why swimming?” he said, turning to look at me.
“Because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at,” came out of my mouth.
“That’s not the only thing you are good at.” And he put his huge wrestler writer arm around me.
Fuck. This is it. Here it comes. His skin smelled … well it smelled like somebody’s father’s skin. Aftershave and sweat and whiskey and Ragu. He’s going to tell me I’m good at fucking. He’s going to tell me I’m a “tootsie” - the nickname he’d used on me the year of the class. And then I’m going to spread my legs for Ken Kesey, because that’s what blond clueless idiots do. I closed my eyes and waited for the hands of a man to do what they did to women like me.
But he didn’t say any of those things. He said, “ I’ve seen a lot of writers come and go. You’ve got the stuff. It’s in your hands. What are you going to do next?”
I opened my eyes and looked at my hands. They looked extremely dumb. “Next?” I said.
“You know, in your life. What’s next?”
I didn’t have a plan. I had grief. I had rage. I had my sexuality. I liked books more than people. I liked to be drunk and high and fuck so I didn’t have to answer questions like this.
As I’m telling this I realize there is another way to tell it. Tenderly. Quiet and small. The question he asked me. It’s what a loving father should ask.
Or I could lie. I could render an epic psychedelic love affair. Or hot older man younger woman sexcapades. I could write anything. Maybe there are a million ways to tell it.
Kesey was the best liar I ever met in my life.
When I got home I cut all the hair off on the left side of my head, leaving two different women looking at me in the mirror. One with a long trail of blond halfway down her back. The other, a woman with hair cropped close to her head and with the bone structure of a beautiful man in her face.
Who.
Am.
I.
Back at U of O I went to classes. Once in the creative writing department a man big as a wrestler walked by me staring at my uneven head hair and kinda banged into my shoulder. Must be a writer. Who gives a shit about writers. Not me. Keep walking. But my heart nearly beat itself up in my chest.
I never saw Kesey again. His liver failed and he got Hepatitis C. In 1997 he had a stroke. Later he got cancer and died. But I’m of the opinion he drowned.
There are many ways to drown.
III. The Wet
A Happy Childhood
I AM SIX.
My friend Katie in the water my friend Christie in the water Phantom Lake Bath and Tennis Club and summer is every day every single day in the water we swim in the morning we swim in the daytime we swim in the afternoon we swim at night we swim every day we eat rainbow popsicles we eat