An Apology to Social Media from a Recluse

I would like to thank anyone who is part of my social network for your patience with me.  Over the years, much has been made of the benefits of the internet for shy people.   But I’m just not seeing it.  I acknowledge there must be truth to these benefits for many, but for me, logging into Facebook “feels” exactly the same as walking into a cocktail party and being expected to gracefully mingle – that is, nearly impossible.    

I do care about others’ lives and aspirations.  I am interested.  I appreciate invitations and likes, and so on.  But I find myself overwhelmed by it all, and am limited to the occasional status update.   It takes a gargantuan effort for me to log in, and once I’m there, I’m the proverbial deer in headlights.    

My absence from social media for several years can also be partially explained by the fact that I was waiting for a better version of myself to develop and take over – one that would dazzle and impress.  One never did, so I’d best go with what I have.

This is perhaps similar to the phenomenon of being in your twenties and looking forward to the fabulous future that surely will arrive fully formed beyond the next horizon.  From what I can tell, for some people, this realization and consummation and actualization happens.  But for most of us leading lives of quiet desperation, we content ourselves with inebriation and consolidation.  The mid to late thirties are about, if not scaling back, putting bets on our best horses.  Ruthless decisions are made.  Mortality now awaits.  This is the time to look it dead on – or else perish early because your courage fails.

Does this sound extreme?  I don’t know.  To me, it just sounds like daily life.  Then again, as with the questionably-calibrated amp in Spinal Tap, I go to 11.  I don’t really have any lower, less intense settings – perhaps another reason social media stymies me. 

Some become angry with me, I know, for dwelling on my own experiences and emotions – everyone feels alone or isolated or awkward, they object.  For the record, yes, I know that.  In fact, I wouldn’t write about myself if I didn’t.  At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, I write from my own perspective about things because I find it too presumptuous on my part to think that I know precisely what the insides of others’ heads and lives look like – whereas I do know my own intimately.  From there, I always just hope that maybe something I say is relatable or hateable or, even better, odd or funny.  So yes, the only reason I write is because I know we all share loneliness at times.

I’ve also lived long enough that I know there are different degrees to these things.  It’s all relative.  I’ve heard people talk proudly and honestly of rarely having felt a moment of social awkwardness or loneliness in their entire lives. That extreme does therefore exist, and so does the other extreme.  Most of us fall, of course, somewhere in the middle.   Even in a single lifetime, we are many versions of ourselves, sometimes to the degree that we are like different people in different lifetimes.  Some versions of myself have experienced greater degrees of connection than others, and so by comparison, I recognize the times in my life during which I am particularly lonely.  But whatever the exact circumstances, most people have the occasional instance of feeling alone – and somehow the increased interaction (and styles of interaction) of the modern world can have the opposite effect of actually making us feel more alone. 

I’ve been told that it has become increasingly popular in recent years to bash or reject social media, but that doesn’t seem prudent to me.  Social media has both advantages and disadvantages – as does every other mode of communication throughout the history of time and space.  I always threaten my students with twenty lashes with a wet noodle if their papers contain even one sentence, thesis statement or not, that claims, “There are both advantages (pros, positives, upsides) and disadvantages (cons, negatives, downsides) to… [blank].”  Never has there been an emptier, more senseless statement than that one. (Well, except for the one that claims, “[Blank] and [blank] have both similarities and differences.”)

Within the past few years I briefly dated a man who condemned Facebook and all social media altogether.  Over dinner I made the rather inane and innocuous comment that it was, you know, fairly smart stuff.  No, Facebook was not a brilliant concept, he insisted.  Rather, it was utter stupidity, and every single person involved in social media is an idiot.  (A bit of a sweeping pronouncement, in my opinion, and part of the reason we did not go on more dates.)  This man also did not own a cell phone, and had no intentions of ever getting one.  When we met up, this made finding him quite the challenge.  (I don’t even remember: before cell phones, how did we ever find each other?  We must have done it through sheer determination and cunning and using our eyesight or something.)  I admit that I don’t quite understand what might be so wrong with owning a cell phone just to send the occasional harmless text: “Just pulled in at the restaurant.”

I don’t know.  But that’s the example of being a total luddite, and it must be respected.

If this man had a fear of cell phones or social media in general turning into offensive distractions from more “meaningful” contact, I alone am proof of the fact that simply owning particular devices does not cause this to happen.  I know how to send a text, but it’s very rare that I do, except to accomplish a particular purpose.  Also, I am of a generation and a temperament that I prefer certain etiquette to be followed, so for example, I make a rule of never so much as glancing at any kind of media if I am with a friend or family member in person.  I insist that my students show this kind of courtesy with their own devices while in a classroom (though of course a large number ignore me and/or roll their eyes).  I feel passionately about the power and value of community, of “face time,” and of placing quality focus on one thing at a time without too many distractions at hand.  Perhaps, then, the words for me are “scrupulously sentimental and old-fashioned.” 

In any case, simply owning a cell phone did not “corrupt” me, if one wants to see it that way.  And the reason I’ve never owned a smart phone is not through any sort of strenuous moral objection, but for the very dull reason that I can’t afford one.  I’d love to be able to move fully into the 21st century, but the 21st century is expensive.

It’s perhaps worth adding the observation that we know social media has the potential to be destructive, or even lethal – that individuals have committed suicide based on the ability of social media to overwhelm with a sense of (negative) comparison with others, and with feelings of inferiority and hopelessness.  If my erstwhile date sensed the dangerous undercurrent in social media, that aspect can’t be denied, and that undercurrent is as real to me as to anyone. 

But at its best, to put it very generically, social media is a valuable tool.  I’d give anything to be able to do it “right,” and I do feel I owe a kind of apology for being unable to “fit in” and actively participate.  In truth, we’re all just the same old people in different times and circumstances.  I felt exactly the same way in grade school as I do now – especially in phys ed when we played kickball and I didn’t even understand what base to run to. I also felt the same way back in kindergarten when I couldn’t explain why I was upset about being forced to take part in making a communal vegetable stew. 

I am not even remotely an antisocial creature.  I live to secure quality one-on-one time.  But we don’t live in a one-on-one world anymore.  One-on-one time takes, well, time – time that people don’t have anymore.  It also takes a particular form of focus and concentration that appears to be on the wane currently in our culture.

Or maybe there are just too many of us now – too many people in this world, that is.  Too much competition.  Perhaps I just fail to win the attention of another, while others do. 

My best modes of communication are hopelessly old fuddy-duddy – I love intimate conversations and long letters, which has been replaced by the long email (…except, that’s not really a thing, either).  I miss the idea that communication is special and exclusive, meant only to happen between two people.  It puts me into a hopelessly bad mood that it isn’t.  I recently saw it observed (probably in Entertainment Weekly) that the epistolary novel is virtually extinct because people don’t write letters anymore.  The epistolary novel has never been my favorite genre, but somehow this still seems significant and even alarming – that we communicate so little with each other in meaningful written verbal depth that we can’t even have a genre based on it any longer. That scares me.  I don’t know.  Maybe it doesn’t scare anyone else.

I create giant wordscapes in a number of different contexts.  It’s what I do.  What I was born to do.  And it’s really the only thing I do with any degree of real competence.  But in the super-visual, low-attention-span modern world – a world also of the quick and disposable status update or text message – I was apparently born in the wrong place and time.

Maybe one trouble for me is that I think almost entirely in essays.  That’s where my consciousness resides; it’s pretty much my only mode of being, other than fiction.  So if I’m in the fantasy part of my head, I’m in the Last-Lorns, and if I’m momentarily in the real world, I’m here in essays.  When I’m vacuuming, driving, on the elliptical trainer, thoughts passing through my head, I don’t really have anything like single, isolated thoughts – my mind, even at rest, collects thoughts and attaches them into structures that translate most naturally into the form we call “essay.” 

Problematically, if I try to write a personal email, rather than producing any sort of suitable “social” form, I find that my mode of thought translates into something very much like an essay.  The style of it is way too formal in an extremely informal world.  My style is too formal even for blogging, which is a tad discouraging. 

As for the notion of the long email (as a modern stand-in for the long letter), I find that even if one does indulge in writing them, they rarely accomplish anything, precisely because there is no context for them any longer.  I won’t go so far as to say that writing in this way *never* accomplishes anything, because I have had several lasting and very meaningful exchanges with particular individuals during my lifetime.  But for the most part, the trouble is that the long email/letter is a deeply considered and time-consuming means of communication for the person producing it that most people on the receiving end now treat as being disposable and quick “junk,” as if the effort put into it were nothing more grueling than a three-second status update.  I am not in any way trying to condemn these recipients. The truth is, these long forms are just the wrong modality for what most people are trying to accomplish these days, and I observe that by using them, I am committing an unfair action by preventing people from having any sort of next move.

A main reason for the extinction of long written communication is that it once had the purpose of defeating distance – a long, detailed letter was the closest stand-in for a personal visit.  That distance has been collapsed in the modern world.  Because of transportation and phones and especially the internet, distance no longer even exists.  That’s righteous and mind-blowing.  But for some people, the distance still exists anyway.  Distance is not just literal and physical.  That’s why I’ve been dispatching tales from the remote Last-Lorns since 1976.   

In the main, I have resolved to quit writing long emails and write here instead, which will be easier on everyone I have ever known or ever will know.  (This amounts to writing letters to everyone – which perhaps equates to writing letters to no one.)  Now, I will not of course do it right; I can’t help noticing that there are limitless purportedly helpful articles about how to blog correctly.  But of course I will not be doing it “right,” or even attempting to do it “right” – whatever that’s even supposed to mean.

What makes the most sense (at least as I see it) is to cease trying to exist on any kind of personal level, and exist only on a “public” level instead, even though that’s against my nature, and even if I don’t do it “correctly” here either.  For the most part, I don’t really have a personal existence, anyway; writing has always been the only place where anything I have that is like a “self” exists. Also, in some strange way, if I do manage to say anything wrong and offensive, it is better to do it publicly than privately.  In a way, having a blog is a way that I can protect and honor people who have been close to me or kind to me.

I have always been a bizarre mix of an absolute open book and a very reserved person.  On Facebook, for example, I often don’t particularly want other people to know what I “like,” in terms of films, products, etc.  In some cases, it’s because I’m rather embarrassed about most of what I “like.”  I really don’t care to share.  And yet here, in this format, I will share everything I’ve got inside me and will never pull any punches. I have to be completely raw and bare, or nothing at all. 

So, if anyone wants me, you know where to find me – here.  Apparently this is where I now exist.  It’s a strange world where an extremely private person can exist only as an entirely public persona – or else doesn’t exist at all.

Great Scads of Words

I am very sorry for starting a blog.  It’s just that you have no idea how much I miss writing essays. 

Are introductions in order?

I have often said that there is “too much of me.”  I have always needed to find places to put it, but too often, it has flooded its appropriate confines and drowned something (or usually, someone) important in my life.  I figure that from here on out, I may as well place it here, in the great wide abyss.  Surely here it is harmless.  Most will never see it.  The internet is infinite, and here it does not matter whether it is read or not read.  Surely “infinity” is a receptacle large enough. 

Wise Wordpress says in one of its many tutorials, “You don’t just want to write blog posts and have them sink into the bottomless pit of the internet, you want people to read them.”  I would argue to the contrary that one of the internet’s greatest advantages is that it is such a great ocean that no one is ever likely to read much of anything. 

I am with the camp of people who see it as a necessary, though regrettable, evil to label ourselves.  (Actually, I’m not with any camps of people; but it’s just an expression.)  For me, just one of those many labels might be (bear with me) fantasist; also, recluse.  The latter seems important to note because it explains why I appear ignorant of absolutely everything going on around me in the world: I am.  If I ever write about anything relevant or current, or indeed anything that has happened in about the last few hundred years, I can assure you it is entirely coincidental and accidental.  Any resemblance to others’ opinions or activities, or any reference to anything going on anywhere in the world would be, in fact, miraculous.  Like when you’re having a conversation with someone while watching TV and in one bizarre synchronous moment you utter the same word or phrase that the actor on TV is uttering. 

I write.  I don’t believe I can properly be termed a “writer.”  To me, in the modern sense of it, a writer is a person who consistently seeks to be published, and who wants to live a literary lifestyle, which involves a presence within certain circles, on the internet, and so on.  I don’t do these things properly (probably can’t do them), so I don’t believe it will ever be accurate to call me a writer.  I have an MFA, but we all know that a slip of paper doesn’t make us anything.  Further proof against any ownership I have of the word “writer” is that I’ve never earned a penny for it.  Money is what defines us. 

Regardless, I write, and I’ve always written, and that is the one thing I know of a certainty.  I write more constantly than I do anything else, and it’s the only thing I love doing.  I write inane meanderings like this.  And I write Muller’s Mile, in its many thousands of pages.  Across the years I’ve always been doing that, no matter how quietly.

In my life, despite all the quietude, Muller’s Mile can’t help occasionally coming up.  I have no elevator pitch for this leviathan and have given up trying, especially since I can’t remember the last time I was in an elevator, or for that matter, in a conversation with anyone. I can form an anti-pitch by saying that Muller’s Mile is a kind of elf-less and dwarf-less and quest-less fantasy. Recently I have had serious thoughts that it is a fantasy-less fantasy, and have wondered in a very desolate way where exactly that leaves me.  It’s true that there are elements that exist in Muller’s Mile that don’t precisely exist here in reality.  For some reason, I guess that makes the work fantasy.  (Doesn’t it seem, though, that the existence of a few unreal elements in a work make it, rather unremarkably…fiction?)

In any case, when you’re in the position of having a few unreal elements, you feel compelled to call the work something.  And that something tends to be the preposterously broad label of fantasy.  (I know there are potential other labels as well as thousands upon millions of sub-labels, but it’s always made me very tired trying to think about it, so “fantasy” will have to suffice.)  Fantasy suggests, to me, a great degree of inventiveness, and I know that I, for one, am a million miles from being inventive.  From the review of a recent well-regarded speculative fiction release, I snatched these two phrases – “dazzling imagination” – of which I have none; and “virtuosic prose” – also nada.

I’ve noted that one of the most common (and very natural) questions posed to me (and others in my position, too, I suspect) is: “Who are your favorite fantasy writers?  Who inspired you to write?”  The question seems to implicate: From whence do you spring?  Justify yourself!

I feel like I’m either a vast disappointment or liable to get my ass kicked when I answer apologetically that I don’t read in the fantasy genre.  I’m not really a fan of it.  Oh, I do generally trot out Tolkien.  And by that choice of words, what I mean is for the love of everything elvish and dwarvish, who in their right mind doesn’t trot out Tolkien?  Lord of the Rings is viewed by some whose job it is to have important views as the greatest and most influential work of literature of the 20th century.  It’s been blowing out the back of people’s heads for a long time, and will be continuing to do so for a long time to come.  So of course it blew out the back of mine.  But that justifies exactly nothing.  

I can also say timidly that I enjoyed Harry Potter as much as the next person.  But that distinguishes me from exactly zero other humans on the planet.  And because I am too old to have experienced Harry Potter as a child, I don’t even have that sense of proprietorship of it that those of younger generations have.

Moving away from literary pop culture and into the more general world of pop culture, I can boast of a greater ardor for Star Wars than most females of my generation.  (Now, generationally speaking, as a child of the 80s, I do claim shared proprietorship of Star Wars. Don’t get me started on that one, though.)

Beyond that, the list continues to be rather generic and broad.  Like everything else above, it’s stuff that most people can claim to like to one degree or another – Marvel comic books, Star Trek, and more recently for me, Doctor Who, which I guess boasts of somewhat less bulky fandom.  But not much.  I’m a geek, for sure, but I don’t have genuine geek cache. 

But returning to the real point, I have rarely been inspired by a fantasy writer to write.  When I did my MFA at NC State, I was relieved to discover that in fact, it’s not necessarily uncommon that the genre that writers read in is not necessarily the genre they write in.  However, it is more common that they do.

I greatly respect the track that many take of loving a particular work or genre, then emulating it.  But in regards to most everything, I’ve always been inside out, ass backwards – I was born all wonky and reclusive, and that’s my one and only qualification for writing what I do.  My head sprouts fantasy the way other people’s heads sprout status updates for social networking and outstanding ideas for getting out of the house for the evening.  If my head is anywhere, it’s imagining what’s going on in the heads of the people I dreamed up when I was still a toddler and have been following around like the proverbial puppy dog ever since (when I should have been following real people around like a puppy dog instead); they grew as I grew. 

My grasp on reality is tenuous at best. I don’t mean in a paranoid schizophrenic, hearing voices in my head kind of way.  Nevertheless, the last thing I need is fantasy as an “escape.”  Just like most people live in the real world and need to go out to a fantasy film, I live in fantasy and need to go out and watch reality – in other words, what I need from what I read or watch is a lifeline to reality to keep me tethered.  Most of what I prefer is just real, fairly straightforward stuff, I’m afraid.  But what I really love is 19th century British literature, and modern criminal investigations, and a whole host of other typically eclectic stuff.  There happens to be a little fantasy mixed in, but no more so than the average person. 

But all of this is trying to justify myself as a fantasy writer, and I already said I’m not a writer.  I did however call myself a fantasist.  This suggests someone who lives in fantasy, someone who is immersed in it, defined by it in some sort of innate way.  That seems accurate.  It also has more than a touch of self-satire in it, and that’s a relief, since it means not having to take anything seriously.  

But problematically, above, I call myself “fantastic,” or at least I appear to.  We often use this word sloppily and informally to mean, “really great.”  But anyone who knows me knows that I would never be trying to say anything nice about myself.

So to pause a moment and appreciate the wonder of words when we are precise with them and really consider their derivations, here is the word “fantastic,” in all its glory, as defined by dictionary.com:  

fan·tas·tic

adjective

1. conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque: fantastic rock formations; fantastic designs.

2. fanciful or capricious, as persons or their ideas or actions: We never know what that fantastic creature will say next.

3. imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational: fantastic fears.

4. extravagantly fanciful; marvelous.

5. incredibly great or extreme; exorbitant: to spend fantastic sums of money.

6. highly unrealistic or impractical; outlandish: a fantastic scheme to make a million dollars betting on horse races.

7. Informal. extraordinarily good: a fantastic musical

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English fantastik  pertaining to the imaginative faculty < Medieval Latin fantasticus,  variant of Late Latin phantasticus  < Greek phantastikós  able to present or show (to the mind), equivalent to *phantad-,  base of phantázein  to make visible (akin to phānós  light, bright, phaínein  to make appear) + -tikos -tic

It would appear that I am fantastic in the sense of being unrestrained, odd, bizarre, (grotesque?), fanciful, capricious, foolish, unrealistic, impractical, and outlandish. 

So I have justified that I am fantastic in some sense.  Fortunately, I need far less space to justify myself as a recluse.  I leave my house to teach.  That’s about it.  I feel that I know very little of the world, and that as the years go by, I understand less and less.  I feel that all I can do is continue to happily dispatch from my remote island.  The Last-Lorn Islands, as referenced in the banner above, is the name of the world in Muller’s Mile.  I usually prefer to keep my “self” and Muller’s Mile as purely separate topics, but I will indulge myself just once by saying that for the most part, I am the Last-Lorn islands.  They were born with me in 1976, and we’ll continue on together for some time.

I love this quote from Russell Baker: “I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.”

I’m not that disillusioned, though.  Yet.  Let’s continue to dispatch for a little time.

One thing I have long noted with the “too much of me” problem is that others have lives.  I do not, despite much sound and fury signifying you know what.  So, in lieu of life stuff, all this energy goes into the production of thoughts that might be suitably converted into words.  I have discovered, through nearly forty years of experience and experimentation, that this is good for exactly nothing – not friendships, not relationships, not making money, not networking, not getting the house cleaned, not planting a vegetable garden.

It is good for one thing, and one thing only – making words for the sake of making words. 

But there comes a time when you have to live the life you have instead of hiding away because you failed to live the life you wanted.

So please forgive me: I will produce words.   Most likely, I will produce great scads of them.

On Becoming a Wife (2005)

1. Miracles

In my early twenties, I was so naïve that I thought writing and marriage happened by magic.  After sweating out a few opera librettos I was disabused of my notions about writing, but I still expected marriage to come off in a flourish with flashes of light and sprays of glitter. I found dates on the internet, but always overwrote all my personal ads, probably coming off as desperate and silly. At any rate, I found myself going out with a lot of desperate and silly men.  In the midst of these charades, I met and became friends with Thomas Williams. Tom was a freelance writer/artist, twenty-five years my senior, married with two teenaged kids.  He revealed right away in our correspondence that he was still married and quite sincerely thought it would be ending soon.  But after a few months, he decided he wasn’t quite ready to scrap it after all. We continued to correspond about our respective writing projects, and occasionally met for coffee.   

After I had known Tom for about two years, he invited me on a trip to Arizona to explore the possibility of collaboration on a libretto, and I agreed at once. He would be attending a court reporters convention at the Arizona Golf Resort in Mesa and thought we could work in the hours he wasn’t at the convention.  At this point, Tom was someone I would consider sharing a room with, in separate beds, on a platonic basis.  He was paying for most of the trip.

Just the day before Tom called, I had pledged to accept whatever miracles the universe provided me with, and this seemed like the universe stepping forward in good faith. Tom’s offer involved writing, the chance to meet new people, and stimulating travel. 

 2. Romance

I had never been out west.  Though Tom flew, I decided to travel by train to get a sense of the land, to see it framed through the train window like a John Ford western.  Actually, I may have taken the train more because I don’t like to fly than for the view, but the John Ford version sounds more romantic.

After the train, I boarded a bus that would take me from Flagstaff to Phoenix Skyharbor Airport.  The man sitting in the seat next to me fell in love with me.  All right, not in love, but he was interested.  He was John, 30 years old, single.  I was Elisabeth, 26 years old, single.  I was a writer, I told him, and soon to be a full-time student, and I was excited, so excited about a bus ride that was like a journey from one alien world to another, the mountains and pine trees and snow of Flagstaff giving way to the desert and cacti and mesas of the Southwest, all within two hours, and who knew that such startling and miraculous transformations were possible in life?  John was in concrete and cement.  And I was “Wow, look at the colors in those mountains,” and “Gosh I know I’m talking in clichés but photos just don’t give you a sense of the hugeness of it do they?”

He wasn’t in love with me. He was in wonder at my wonder, in love with my sudden rush of love for everything around me. Under certain bizarre circumstances, being a gawking and unsophisticated tourist becomes attractive. John gave me his phone number and was more than happy to help me if I got lost in Phoenix.

Later I realized I should have called John, but I never did.  I hated to admit it, but I was pretty bored with the idea of concrete and cement. Still, I was encouraged by his attention.  If a guy could show interest in me in twenty minutes flat, then my soul mate might be just beyond the next mesa.

John’s encouragement had come at a good moment; his attention on the bus was wanted attention, but earlier, on the train, I had received unwanted attention from more predatory types of men.  Their advances were the sort that made some women into man-haters. After chatting casually with one man for all of five minutes I was offered an all-expenses-paid trip to London.  Later I struck up a five-minute acquaintanceship with another man and was promptly informed I would be spending the night with him in Flagstaff.  I retreated from the observation car back to the solitude of coach in the hopes that I would be forgotten before Flagstaff.  I was.  This guy’s penchant seemed to be blond women, and I was only one of many on the train. 

I didn’t know anything about traveling as a single woman.  I didn’t know the old trick of wearing a gold band on my left ring finger.  But after awhile I did have the sense to invent a fictional fiancé, based loosely on an old childhood friend, so that I could more convincingly render the details of the character:  “Yeah, I’m engaged.  I miss him so much, but he just couldn’t take the time to come with me on this trip. He’s really working hard in school right now . . . the wedding is set for June.”  

After a time, I was lonely and a bit scared.  That’s why I invented these fictions. And I guess I didn’t really understand the style of these men’s seductions. I was puzzled since I expected so strongly to stumble into an intense and romantic experience of love.  I still expected magic. 

 3. Becoming a Wife

Instead, I accidentally spent the next three days at the Arizona Golf Resort posing as Tom’s wife.  We had arrived at the resort late at night on a shuttle from the airport with a group of fellow convention goers.  I stepped out of the shuttle last, and as everyone looked on, I fell over my luggage, tripped down a few stairs and landed sideways. 

“Are you all right, Mrs. Williams?” a woman asked. Tom and I looked at each other, but he didn’t correct her.  I was still sitting dazed on the concrete.  Tom smiled at the woman and helped me up.

 4. The Reality of Phoenix

The Arizona Golf Resort turned out to be a cheery constructed community of container gardening, intoxicating orange blossoms and perfect sidewalks to walk on.  Very nice.  But neither Tom nor I had budgeted to rent a car. The reality of Phoenix is that without a car you are essentially imprisoned wherever you happen to be.  In our case, at the Arizona Golf Resort.

In Phoenix you are a Lilliputian in Gulliver’s world, little legs worn out before making it from the resort to the next strip mall. Or even across one of the many-laned roads for that matter. Trapped in Mesa, you have only a few choices: play golf, shop, eat, or walk.  If you’re broke and don’t play golf, the options become very limited indeed.  You will need to go for a lot of walks among the orange blossoms. 

Tom and I frequently chose to exercise the “eating” option. At lunchtime we sat in the dining room at a big table with others from the convention. “What do you do, Mrs. Williams?” they asked me.  “Do you like it here, Mrs. Williams?” Tom smiled at them and looked at me to see what I would say.  Since I couldn’t seem to think of any tactful way to get out of being Mrs. Williams, I answered their questions politely.     

Oh well, I thought. It was only for a few days, and I was always better at organizing intimate spaces than at traversing large ones anyway. With no place else to go, I soon set up housekeeping in our shared resort room.

5. How to be a Good Wife  (with advice from a 1950’s home economics textbook)

Have dinner ready.  Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal—on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.

Every day Tom gets up very early to start the day’s activities at the convention. Since he’s a big eater I walk to a huge grocery store about half a mile from the resort. I pick up fresh fruit, cereal, milk, soup, and a few bagels. Well-dressed gray haired folks wave at me as I carry my groceries back to the resort. I read on the patio for awhile as men in plaid pants walk by with their golf clubs and say hello. Everyone in Mesa is talkative, helpful, smiling.  Tom comes back to see me during his lunch break.  We either go to the dining room, or else I put forth my humble culinary efforts in the kitchenette and we eat at a table with a striped umbrella out on the patio. 

Prepare yourself.  Take 15 minutes to rest so that you’ll be refreshed when he arrives.  Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair, and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may be in need of a lift.

After lunch, I take a nap.  I get up, touch up my makeup, make coffee, and take a walk in a nearby memorial park full of fountains. I read a guide to the area, find dozens of things I want to do, and conclude I can’t do any of them due to lack of transportation. I have the idea I could go swimming if I had a swimsuit. I go to every shop within walking distance.  They have every imaginable item except swimsuits. I go back to the memorial park. The dead have no advice on where to get a swimsuit. When Tom returns in the evening his boring day seems to be in need of a lift. I try to be gay and a little more interesting.   

Listen to him.  You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first. 

He talks for a long time. He tells me his marriage is still struggling, that there’s no love in it, no sex, no comfort. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.  

Make the evening his.  Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure, his need to be home and relax.

One night we go to happy hour at the resort bar and drink merlot. 

Another night we take in a movie and some beer and pizza. We trudge along on foot and ask a man in a truck for directions. He’s helpful in such an eager grinning way that it’s both endearing and funny. At the theatre after the movie, a complete stranger walks up to us, smiles, and says, “See ya!” As we wait outside for a cab we’re treated to the manager’s reviews of current movies as well as his cheerful Oscar predictions. 

We go to another movie and eat at a steakhouse. I drink Cosmopolitans, and Tom tells me about his daughter from his first marriage. He tells me about his current marriage again, how empty it is, how meaningless.  

The goal.  Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit. 

Each afternoon the Chicana maid comes to the room and is overly polite and deferential, bowing her head and averting her eyes. She does the dishes and makes the beds. I begrudge her this, thinking it should be my job as a proper wife. 

I lock myself out of the room one day and try to wait for the maid to let me in, but she’s late. I walk to the desk to get another key. I forget and identify myself by my real name, not as Mrs. Williams. The lady at the desk asks whose name the room is in. I have to tell her Thomas Williams. 

Suddenly I’m not a wife anymore but a prostitute, a tawdry creature with a sugar daddy. The lady at the desk is overly polite and deferential, bowing her head and averting her eyes. She gives me another key. 

6. Diplomacy

“I have many wives,” Tom joked one day.

“I enjoy being part of a harem,” I joked back. And I did. I had fun playacting, and didn’t see it as degrading myself, at least not until the lady at the desk saw through the ruse. For a short while, I understood the allure of being a housewife. I felt secure within bounds I completely understood, and yet my time was free and autonomous – in a very limited kind of way. Not much work got done on the libretto Tom and I were supposedly collaborating on as I went about my wifely duties. Fortunately my little prison sentence lasted only a few days, unlike 1950’s housewives whose frustrated ambitions lasted a lifetime.

Both Tom and I had benefited from our arrangement. I was provided with food, drinks, and entertainment, and I had enjoyed taking care of Tom enough that I knew I still wanted to be a real wife someday, though only in an equal partnership. Tom had gotten to talk to a much younger woman every night as she took her hair down.

The only challenges came after my hair had come down and Tom tried to take the opportunity to consummate our imaginary marriage. He tried plying me with alcohol, not knowing that I always stay well in control of myself. 

“I can hardly keep from touching you,” he said the night after the merlot as his hands groped around. (Yes, he actually said that ridiculous line.) I smiled, changed the subject, and eventually he fell asleep.

“I’d better get ready for bed,” I said the night after the Cosmopolitans. (Yes, I actually said that ridiculous line.) His hand had been feeling its slow and methodical way up the inside of my leg. I thought about how good it felt and how much I wished he were someone else. I wanted a man to be touching me who I wanted to be touching me. I stood up and went into the bathroom with my toothpaste.

The next morning Tom stated his desires more explicitly. But diplomacy is one of my better skills, and I said no without his knowing I had said no. He left the resort on the shuttle, his marriage and sex life still a shambles but not feeling rejected or hurt.

We remained friends, and sometime after this trip his marriage began to improve.  It’s now a full, happy and satisfying marriage. “Things grow steadily better and better here at the Williams homestead,” he said in an email a few months ago. More happiness to him. I continue to date occasionally, but haven’t made any more friends that way. 

Roadkill (2005)

1. The clean up crew

Some people slam on the brakes or swerve, others don’t even slow down.  They know the limp animal will just bounce off the car. Bloody entrails and matted fur will stain the road for only a few days. The clean up crew - maggots, bacteria, vultures and other helpful workers – will take care of it.  After their services are performed, the roadkill will be nothing but flattened bones, a slight jolt as a wheel rolls over it.

We drive to connect in the Midwest.  We just have to.  Everything is so damned spread apart.  In order to get to anyone or anyplace, we have to climb in the car.  Most of us don’t mean to kill anything in the process.

When I lived in the east I didn’t have a car at all.  I went everywhere on foot, a method of transportation which may result in the deaths of a few ants but doesn’t threaten mammalian life.  Rats were a common sight, and sometimes the person I was walking with shrieked at them.  For me it was more a matter of nodding and saying hello.  We walked away, and the rats went on about their business, which is the business of a clean-up crew.  They clean up human trash, the things we leave for dead.

2. Cats

Domestic roadkill makes some people sadder than feral roadkill because it used to be someone’s pet.  I personally feel the same amount of sadness for both wild and feral roadkill, regardless of the human factor in the equation. 

Though cats are usually thought of as independent creatures, the truth is that they prefer to live in colonies or groups.  However, since they are lone hunters, they lack advanced communication skills. They don’t need them. 

A group of cats is called a clowder.  Males are toms.  Females are queens.       

3. Humans

I have very few female friends. All my life I’ve watched females go off in little groups, but I never developed an understanding of what this is all about or how to be involved in it.  Once I spent about a week researching how to intentionally cultivate female friendships, looking into online groups or organizations I could join. During this time a stray cat decided it loved me and moved in.  A female.  As I continued my research at the computer, a furry black and white arm began to reach in under the door, feeling around for me. 

4. Rabbits

I’ve never hit one, but many times I’ve seen them hopping in the road, uncertain which way to go to escape the danger.  They perform a mad, frantic dance.

5. Humans

I went to my first dance in junior high with a few other awkward girls.  For the first hour or so we flailed and writhed around to the music and had a lot of fun.  Deciding to dance our way over to the concessions stand was our mistake.  Ebony Harmon, popular and coordinated, covered her mouth and laughed at us while pointing us out to her own group of gracefully dancing friends.  Suddenly we were uncertain which way to go.  Soon we hurried home.

 6. Skunks

Skunks are unusual in the pantheon of roadkill because you can smell them before you see their corpses.  It’s like a final act of defiance.  I admire skunks. 

7. Dogs

Dogs are a sadder form of domestic roadkill to me than cats because we mow them down in spite of their trust in us. Though cats may like to live in clowders, dogs take it a step further and consider us humans an actual part of their group.

Unlike cats, dogs hunt in groups and have advanced communication skills.  A group of dogs is called a pack.  Females are bitches.  Males are dogs.   

8.  Humans           

In high school I went to my first rock concert with festival seating.  I trusted that when the doors opened there would be a surge of camaraderie, that the crowds would joyfully cooperate together in the run for their seats.  What really happened is a massive pack of adolescent boys in black concert T-shirts nearly ran over me.  I raced down an aisle in blind panic, the boys shoving me and hitting me from behind.  “Stupid Cow!” they yelled as I ran for my life.  “Fucking Pig!  Fat Whore!”

9. Raccoons

I hit one a few weeks ago.  I had no time to react at all.  I was traveling late at night, the only car on the highway.  The coon must have sensed the relative calm and thought it was safe to cross.  He darted directly into my path and looked up.  I had time to see his terror, and then he was dead.  For the next week, I had to commute by his corpse.  When he had finally deteriorated to the point I could no longer recognize him I felt immensely grateful toward the hardworking clean-up crew.

10. Squirrels

Not long ago, I made friends with a squirrel in Indianapolis.  Using almonds, macadamia nuts and pieces of dried apricot, I drew him toward me.  I realized right away I’d probably done something people would hate me for.  My mother has told me that when she lived in Indianapolis the squirrels were a nuisance.  They were so tame they came in people’s kitchens and tried to eat their food.  If my mom’s husband had a few free moments with nothing else to do, he stepped outside the backdoor of their house with an air rifle and shot squirrels.  Both my mom and her husband were struggling student musicians without much money for food, so they skinned the squirrels and ate them.  I worried I might have made my poor little friend so tame that he would wander into someone’s kitchen and be knocked off with an air rifle by a struggling musician. 

I know squirrels are supposed to be prosaic and uninteresting.  But I had never seen a squirrel close enough to consider how his gonads were arranged.  Squirrels all seem smooth bodied and genderless from a distance.  But there he was, standing on his hind legs in front of me, everything on display.  A little pervert flashing me in an island of trees in the city.

At first my friend kept his distance and I threw him nuts and pieces of fruit.  Some of these he buried for later.  Though he was very jittery, eventually he came up to me.  His little hand, if it can be called that, reached out and took a banana chip from my hand.  But after he had grasped it, I stupidly withdrew my hand by reflex.  He was startled by the movement and retreated several feet to begin contemplating me all over again.

 11. Birds

I hit a bird on the interstate.  The day was very gusty, and she was blown off her intended trajectory and into the path of my car.  She tried to pull up, but there was nothing either of us could do.  

12. Deer

People will go to great lengths to get their car stopped before hitting a deer since a deer won’t just bounce off.  A deer involves big dents, police, insurance, and sometimes a totaled car.  Several times I’ve seen cars get stopped in time before hitting a deer. Sometimes the car can’t move for awhile because the deer stands there just looking around, looking at the car, taking her time.  I admire deer. 

13. Humans

People are mad at most kinds of roadkill because there are too many of them, and that’s why they end up in front of our cars.  But of course one big reason there are so many of them is because our towns and suburbs scared away their predators. Predators are notoriously shy and fickle.  Build one too many housing developments and they’re off in a big huff.  Their erstwhile victims are more affable, which is why they now live with us comfortably in our suburbs.  They are the animals that don’t mind homogeneity.

14. Possums

He dashed out on a busy two-lane highway and danced for a few seconds like I’ve seen rabbits do.  Then, in an act of dramatic desperation, he decided to play dead. With cars zooming by him on both sides, he threw himself onto the median, fainting like a silent movie drama queen. God help him, it was all he knew to do in the midst of all that.  He didn’t know it was of no use, not there, not in that place.  My heart ached for him.