The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [64]
The person who judged the contest on the fiction side of things was Carol Maso. I only entered because of her. Her writing was considered “experimental.” “Innovative.” “Heterodox.” All I know is that her weird made my weird feel better. The writers I wanted to meet were Lynn Tillman, Peggy Phelan, and Eurydice. I don’t know if you know them like I do, but to me they were the intellectual shit. I didn’t actually think it would happen, I just got drunk, wrote the names down on the form they sent, laughed, farted, and mailed it back to them. I remember thinking, fat chance. My ass. But Frazier Russell collected them all. This is how four of the most humble happy nights of my entire life happened to me. Dinners that cost more than my rent. Food that tasted so good I thought I might faint. Wine that made your teeth melt. And women so intelligent, so creative, so gorgeous and present in their own minds and bodies … I mean I nearly barfed, piddled, and orgasmed all at the same time. Fuck heaven. Puny cloud lie. These women were the loves of my brain life.
These four women wrote unconventionally. Intentionally unconventionally. Wildly, passionately, blood-bodied, unapologetically blowing up the house of language from the inside out, unconventionally. And all four of them insisted on the body as content. They were not mainstream writers. They were carving out astonishing paths of their own quite to the side of mainstream, quite in spite of the stupid mainstream, maybe the way water cut the grand canyon. I wanted my writing to go like theirs. Follow it. I felt like their writing had parted the seas for people like me.
I can’t tell you how many times I choked up talking to each of these women. Looking into their eyes. Trying to see an I. I don’t think I said much. It’s possible I went mute. It’s hard to remember anything about me. Though I remember nearly every word each of them said. Of this I am sure: I was never as … happy.
More magic happened on that trip - there was a poet guy who traveled with me from Oregon. He’d won the poet side of the prize. Turns out, I knew him from the Eugene days. Incredibly wonderful man stunning poet named John Campbell. Among the poets he requested was Gerald Stern, who I will never forget eating and talking with because he’d dislocated his shoulder and wore this sling thing all evening - only able to gesticulate with one arm. Still, he was something. We also lunched with Billy Collins and Alfred Corn. The latter I adored. The former talked to my tits. But my poet friend also requested to go to a jazz club in place of one of his writer choices. So I got to sit about 15 feet from Hamiet Bluiett at one club and about five feet from McCoy Tyner at another. I’m pretty sure when I got back to the hotel that night my underwear was soaked to shit from glee. Thank you forever, John Campbell.
What an opportunity, huh? Oregon writers in the big city. Still makes me smile and get a piss shiver remembering it.
But there is a bittersweet in my throat too. A small stone I carry there. The small stone of sad that came from my inability to say yes. I was taken to meet an editor at Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. He talked to me about my life as a swimmer, and he suggested I had a nonfiction book in me about my swimmer’s life. I don’t know, say, like a memoir. I stood there like a numb idiot smiling and shaking my head with my arms crossed over my tits. He waited for me to jump at his suggestion. Nothing nothing nothing came out of my throat. He shook my hand and wished me luck. He gave me some free books.
I sat at dinner between Lynn Tillman and the beloved W. W. Norton Editor Carol Houck Smith - who sadly has since died - while Lynne tried to convince Carol to publish me at Norton. Carol Houck Smith, who leaned over and said well then send me something. Her bright fierce little eyes staring right through