Trans/plant/portation

I contemplate a volcano

It was in the parking log at Costco where a woman, looking wholly bereft of home and afflicted of something came right up to me as if I were an old friend and asked if I could help her out by giving her money. I had been completely focused on how to get twenty pounds of flour into a space the size of one small Pomeranian, which assuredly is no easy task. So I nearly jumped from hearing her inquiry, and it took me longer than it should have to explain that I didn’t actually have any cash on me, sorry. She shuffled off, not unlike a zombie, and I realized she could have been a posterchild for the anti-meth campaigns of the Pacific Northwest. My heart went out to her, and even so, I was a bit unnerved.

It occurred to me after this incident that different places have different expectations for interacting with strangers. In DC it’s either tourists who are chronically clueless about their surroundings, laden with a map of the city or not, or it’s someone panhandling. The lobbyists, lawyers, government workers, hotel staff, cab drivers, administrative assistants, Metro drivers, and other commuters all keep to themselves, wanting no part of any conversation with anyone else. I rode the Metro for years, and very infrequently did I ever hear two people conversing who hadn’t boarded together. MP3 players were the best thing to happen to the silent travelers of DC—suddenly everyone had an easy means for ignoring the world around them.

So people looking for money from the hands of strangers kept, for the most part, personal distance, and requests were limited to the actual sidewalk or on public transportation. I think that’s why I was startled here in Seattle. I actually had to spend the better part of a second realizing that this wasn’t an old friend or acquaintance of mine, because she walked right up to me, and I in turn was right up against my open vehicle. It was her lack of recognition for whatever vulnerability I had at that moment that started my first sense of anxiety.

But for my part, I was just as destabilizing to her, because as soon as I recognized that all she wanted was money, which I was actually out of, having just left Costco, I went immediately into my DC-generated response when I don’t have cash to donate, which is, “I don’t have any money on me, sorry.” In DC this ends the exchange, 7 times out of 10 the requester will then ask God to bless me or tell me to have a nice day, and then I’ll wonder how much of their request was tinged with a need for human interaction and a measure of dignity that someone will talk to them. This woman, on the other hand, seemed shocked that I’d make eye contact with her, much less have a quick answer.

It occurs to me that people are less straightforward in Seattle than in DC, so people looking for handouts need to be more in their face. But the other big adjustment seems to be about sobriety: I can’t remember even a single instance of a non-sober person asking me for money in DC. Not a one. But everyone in Seattle who has asked for money has seemed to have an affect for one reason or another. And there seem to be many more homeless folks here than back out east, and I have no idea why that is. I’m sure there are experts out there who analyze such things, who advocate for this solution or that, but I don’t know who they are or what their positions amount to. But I’ve never thought about how different cultural expectations for civility play into how people on the margins express themselves. And clearly, there’s some kind of effect or panhandling would look the same no matter the geography.

For our part, I’m very glad to once again have a home. We might have been without a fixed location for two months by choice, but I don’t for a minute want to lose sight of the millions of people who have lost their houses or who are without their own home but who desperately need their own place. We are very lucky people.

To say I’m sick of driving would be to trivialize everything I’ve seen on my journey across the continent and back, would be to make too much light of the 8,600 miles of the trip, in which I’ve encountered everything from:

• tiny baby bunnies
• crystal blue boiling pools of adulterated water that are fueled by the unseen middle of the earth
• exasperated parents who look like they’re questioning the entirety of their lives
• all manner of coffeehouses and espresso shacks that dot the West like freckles
• at least 50 species of birds—sparrows, swallows, hawks, eagles, kingfishers, vultures, quail, turkeys, hummingbirds, and more
• barns and rural structures in all stages of their life cycles
• blue-collar men who all looked dazed and stressed, no matter where I encountered them
• lightning bugs outside a greasy spoon diner in Pennsylvania
• long moments of coasting down from mountains just after fighting to get to the peaks
• many, many anti-abortion and anti-Obama billboards
• tired front desk hotel staff

All of these people, animals, and situations were notable enough that they left their impressions on me. I don’t know their stories, except in some rare instances in which we had time to converse. Like an unfinished painting, I’m left wondering about all of the open canvas and what could be drawn on to fill it in. Perhaps some of these things will get worked into a story or other over time, or my memory will do that thing I hate and blur different events together in its quest to find patterns and meaning. But that tendency is why I write things down—then I retain the edges of each experience.

That said, I am loathe to sit behind the wheel of the car right now, even to go set up Internet in our apartment or buy bread. I’m sure that this hatred will fade, but hopefully I’ll remember that I don’t particularly enjoy driving 3 days in a row for 12 hours a day.

We rolled into Walla Walla on Friday evening, having come through the evergreen forests along the waistline of Idaho. Sister cities Lewiston and Clarkston, watching each other from across a river and state boundary line, seemed small and a bit bedraggled, the road infrastructure not seeming to lead to any important point in either place. We opted to get some drive thru food, knowing how close we were and not wanting to take any more time at a pit stop. Finally, at long last, the wheat fields, close to harvest, signaling that we were almost back. I’d gotten so used to driving into the sun that I didn’t need to put on my sunglasses anymore. Around this turn and that, we swirled around the low mountains, revealing the last inkling of daylight and then burrowing into dark indigo again, weaving through what must have been a tapestry of bold colors, if only we’d had a bird’s eye view.

A bird’s eye view, I realize, is precisely what I’ve been interested in finding this summer. Something to help me understand my time in Walla Walla and how to get through the next portion of it when it inevitably sneaks up on me this winter. I’ve asked a lot of questions about who, what, how I am and I’ve enjoyed the funny moments, for sure (the leaky tub dripping into the kitchen below, not so much), but I do still feel the need for some larger perspective.

Maybe it’s all a big joke, a set on Laugh In that I haven’t realized is still being performed on a sound stage in southern California. Maybe I just need more time to elapse before I’ll come to the punchline, or the Big Reveal. In the meantime, we’ve reached Seattle, and wow, is this town a hoot. All this bluster about saving the planet but everyone chain smokes. Aren’t our lungs part of the planet, people?

I think this is going to be interesting, this fall.

I hopped on the bus, a sudden expert at the King County 560 route to Bellevue via Seatac. I don’t even know what half of that means. But it was the same driver, same bunch of drones heading to the office, and it kept occurring to me that I wasn’t seeing as many coffee thermoses as I’d thought I would. Maybe they all had stashes of coffee tucked away in their bags. Maybe I was in a parallel universe where coffee so perfectly absorbed light beams that it was invisible to the naked eye. Maybe coffee is illegal on public transportation in Seattle. But that would be too weird.

The bus ride went smoothly and I had plenty of time to grab my own cup of joe at the hotel before the workshops started, but then it all changed. I was at the courtesy vehicle ramp at the airport waiting for the hotel van. Waiting. For the vehicle marked Godot, apparently. More than half an hour ticked by, and finally he rolled by, stopping to pick me up. This wasn’t actually his choice, as I’d pretty much stood in front of him and blocked his path.

Now with six minutes to go until the editor’s panel, I had just enough time to grab some watermelon chunks, a muffin, and the proverbial coffee. Good thing I was there to network my six minutes, while stuffing food in my face before I fell over from low blood sugar. It was a great way to make a positive first impression, of course. The editor’s panel was interesting; I’ve posted it at the end of today’s blog. It’s good and somewhat dejecting to see how many kinds of editors, publishing houses, and distribution channels there are in this business. In my mind, trying to get that first book published looks like a daunting Venn Diagram: Agents in one circle, Editors in the second, Publishing Routes in the third.

Getting a book on the market is like playing pin the tail on the donkey, hoping you land in the sweet spot of the middle of the overlapping circles. In other words, it’s the dream of an ass.

And I’m all fine with that. I can ass around with the best of them. Especially while crunching my way through a few watermelon chunk seeds.

I went to a panel titled something like, “Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies, Oh My!” and I appreciated the tip of the hat to The Wizard of Oz. It was great to hear what’s selling in that market right now—hint, it involves urban fantasy—and what is about to be done with, at least for a while. So I’ll have to shelve that book idea for the teen vampire romance, and here I thought I was being all original. I do actually have a book project going on right now that isn’t done enough to pitch, but I hope to lay out the concept and see if they think it’s marketable. These poor agents can barely stand in line to use the rest room without getting accosted, so I try really hard not to be “that guy” who doesn’t know when to shut the hell up. And by try really hard, I mean I don’t stop agents from urinating. Unless of course, my ideas during the pitch session are so bad that they spontaneously evacuate their bladders. That kind of effect I just can’t help. But when someone says, “Wow, I really need to go to the bathroom,” it’s only proper that you let her go, even though you know in your heart of hearts that if she just listened to The Incredible Idea she’d never have to pee again. That’s her loss.

I networked, I talked to other writers, a couple of editors, who are really my kind of people. I know what they do up close. I’ve done it, albeit for much drier material than this. But I get who they are as people, so I feel comfortable with editors. Agents just make me want to throw up with nervous energy. I have to dedicate a portion of my consciousness to slowing down when I speak with them so I don’t rattle off words like a machine gun.

I saw that my pitch session—which is a 10-minute block of time writers get at this conference with an agent one-on-one—was at the tail end of a workshop I wanted to attend. Its focus was on humor. I like humor. I walked in, looking for a chair near the door, but it was in a very small conference room, because hey, who gives a crap about humor? Note to PNWA conference coordinators, give a bigger room to humor next year. We nearly had to velcro attendees to the ceiling to fit us all in there.

I walked up to the presenter, Gordon Kirkland, who is Canada’s answer to Dave Barry. As if Dave Barry required answering. I apologized, saying I had to leave the session early and I didn’t want to be rude.

“Well, you’re going to be rude, but thanks for telling me about it in advance,” said the presenter. This was going to be a good workshop.

Kirkland had, legend tells it, basically locked himself in a room with a couple other writers in Edmonton, Alberta, to write a book in 72 hours. Fortunately we Americans don’t have to convert the time—it’s the same here as in Canada. But Kirkland brought this story up in his workshop, saying that nobody comes out of Edmonton except alcoholics and hockey players. I rolled my eyes, but most of the US folks in the room didn’t know the reference well enough to laugh too hard. Ha ha, they thought, hockey players. Those silly Canadians.

Some banter, as one can imagine, ensued. We talked about writing about our families, how humor works, etc., and then it was time for me to start practicing my pitch before my session. I stood up and started making my way through the throng to the door.

“And where do you think you’re going,” Kirkland called out to me.

“I’m going to my pitch session,” I said, “and by the way, my wife is from Edmonton!”

The room erupted in laughter.

Later, a writer to whom I had just told this story informed me I had left out a line in my response to him.

“You should have said, ‘my wife is from Edmonton, and she’s a hell of a hockey player!”

And that, right there, is why I love this conference.

I sat out in the hallway, and pulled up my pitch on my iPad. I read it something like 40 times in 10 minutes, not necessarily trying to memorize it, but so that I could hit every point in the synopsis/pitch. Gotta keep “edge of burnout,” gotta mention the bad hair dye job, gotta bring up the social networking profile for my cat. Once our time drew nigh we were to sit in chairs outside the ballroom doors and wait to be led in. This did nothing to lower anyone’s anxiety about the moment. Then a volunteer poked his head out and motioned for us to enter the inner sanctum. I drew my +3 Vorpal Blade.

Wait. Wrong story.

We walked down a hallway and then we saw the room of agents, each sitting behind their own table, each with a beverage at some point of fullness/emptyness. I had to walk by the agent with whom I’ve been corresponding. I nodded hello to her and she wished me good luck tomorrow, meaning the awards ceremony, for whom I’m a finalist (give a little yay! here). I found my agent and sat down. He was much smaller than I’d realized when I saw him sitting at the agent’s forum earlier in the day. He was actually a pocket person.

“I’m nervous,” I said. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, shut up! Just give the pitch, you dumb ass!

“That’s okay,” he said. “We can just talk.”

Suddenly this exchange had the tone of a teenage boy going to see his first prostitute. I figured I should just get up and walk away. Exploiting prostitutes isn’t right.

I told him I was going to pitch him a memoir. He sat back a little, waiting.

I said, “As Henry Miller supposedly said, the way to get over a woman is to turn her into fine literature. But that’s not why I wrote this memoir.”

Of course he wasn’t following me yet, because he didn’t know the Huge Transgender Topic of the memoir. But he didn’t look disinterested, per se. I told him the title, which is a giveaway on the whole book concept.

He looked straight at my chest. What a cute little pocket person agent. Thank God I usually query in letters. We talked for a bit, me giving the synopsis and then talking about my other writing, the speculative fiction stuff and the pop culture critique stuff.

“What other books are on the market like this,” he asked. I told him I’d made a book proposal with a full market analysis section, and he said, “oh good.” Quite the terse fellow, this one.

He never seemed really interested and I couldn’t get a feel for how I was coming across. I think perhaps future conferences should have a drop button so the writer can just fall through the floor onto a landscape of pillows. At least you’ll know their sentiment. He slid his card to me as the time for the session expired, asking for my book proposal. And then it struck me.

It was pity sex, this card. But I’d follow up and send it out to him. It wasn’t going to show him much in the way of voice, but it would show him that people buy books like this.

Next up was the dinner. This was a fiasco, as we stood in line for the buffet for half an hour, the hotel running out of food in the first 10 minutes and needing loads more time to restock. I was not pleased. When I sat down, other people had come to the table, not realizing folks were already seated there. I tried to turn it into another get to know new people thing. The keynote speaker was funny, but done way early for her time slot.

Several science fiction writers and I made our way down to the bar in the lobby, and decompressed from our day. It was a good day. I was glad my pitch session was over. Partway through my first 7&7 my friend who’s been hosting me arrived and he joined us. I could tell just in the car ride that I was going to crash once my head hit the pillow. And I did.

Day three starts in a few hours.

By the way, I lied, I’ll put the editor’s forum notes in another post.

This was originally posted over at I Fry Mine in Butter.

Once upon a time flying was fun. Planes seemed shiny and glamorous, travelers dressed up, and nobody measured carryon bags with scales. Totally unthinkable were long lines at security and computers sniffing for explosive residue. Mottos like “fly the friendly skies” are long long gone.

It isn’t that I miss airline food, food being a rather broad category when it comes to what was served on airlines. I was one of those folks who chose to bring on his own meals, much like Hannibal lecture, minus the fried human brains. But at least one received a full can of soda. Not anymore. Now I get a plastic cup of semi-fizzy liquid and a piece of the iceberg that sank Titanic.

This is the first flight I’ve been on to offer wifi,and no sooner do 67 stickers adorn the inside and outside of the plane—so the birds can use it, I guess—than they’re charging for it, $13 a flight. That seems a little triskaidekaphilic to me. Why thumb your nose at Lady Luck, airlines?

So it’s one more luxury I won’t be getting, like pay per view on DirecTV or $10 beer in flight. But don’t call it for my convenience, that’s just disingenuous. If it were really for my convenience it would be free or $1. There are 30 rows of seats on this flight; $13 from each of us on multiple flights a day more than buys the modem in what, the first month? I know not everyone will want the service, but surely the price point was set to earn profit.

I remember as a kid getting to see the cockpit during flight and I completely understand why that’s not possible anymore. Yet can’t we give kids those stupid plastic wing pins? Those were cool. Kids don’t get crap these days, and it’s sad. Yes, I know times are tough for the airlines. We all cram our bags into the overhead compartments rather than shell out an extra $50 round trip for checking them. And then the air stewards get on the PA system and tell us there’s not enough room in the overheads so we need to be good traveling neighbors and put our smaller carryons under the seat in front of us. I’ve even had a steward hand me my briefcase after I’ve checked my suitcase, and that really got under my skin. If I’ve paid $25 to check the suitcase, I feel like I just paid for leg room, so don’t tell me to cram anything under the seat in front of me.

Also, I don’t get that money back when they lose my bags, which has happened more than a couple of times. It just can’t be that saving 3 ounces of soda per traveler is more important than customers feeling they’re not getting ripped off. I know, I know, I should be happy that I’m flying through the air on a bunch of metal and plastic. I think I just want to feel like I’m being treated a few rungs above chattel.

And yet, there’s that small cup of soda in front of me. I wonder how long I can make it last on this four and a half hour flight.

Oh my God, I think I’ve become a grumpy old man.

I fly out in about a week to attend the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association annual conference in Seattle. I’m excited, working on my pitch to agents, and a mite trepidatious about what I’ll find there. I’ve been to conferences before, sure, but no writer’s conference. As a quick recap, so far in my life, personal conference attendance has included:

The Popular Culture Association conference—This was held in the Chicago Hilton where they filmed the remake of The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford. It wasn’t the closest I’ve come to meeting Ford, since that distinction goes to the Arlington, Virginia location of the Capitol City Brewery, when Ford and I were seated only two tables apart. For what it’s worth, he seemed like a genuinely nice person. As far as the conference goes, I’ve never had so much fun at an event as this one, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just because I was a completely broke graduate student who subsisted on sneaking in at the ends of coffee hours to eat from the appetizer tables. There’s something about going to a conference where one is giving a paper on Single White Female in the next ballroom to a serious discussion regarding why Bugs Bunny cross-dressed that makes boring conference centers more lively. I like the academization of The X-Files.

National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics—This would have been one of the more dry conferences I’ve seen, except for the moment when a garden variety social worker called out a speaker from the Heritage Foundation on using misleading numbers to say that poor Americans don’t have it so bad because look, they have televisions and telephones. I never saw so many angry middle aged women in one place. The other great thing about this conference was that it took place in Madison, Wisconsin, and that turned out to be a very cute, charming town.

American Association for Public Opinion Research—May in Phoenix is not a good idea, and not just if one is a Latina migrant farmer. It’s bad all around. It should not be 106 degrees in May unless one is standing in a shadow on the surface of Mars. And that’s a bad idea because of the whole lack of oxygen thing. I did appreciate skipping one afternoon of the conference to go golfing with a colleague, and meeting James Brown (the sportscaster, not the king of funk) on the plane to Las Vegas. The workshops and panels, however, were really far from what I would call intellectually rigorous. Sorry, AAPOR, it’s true.

Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference—I love this conference like a younger sibling who doesn’t know how to behave. I don’t really get the hyphen in the title, either. Trans . . . health to not health? What is the trans connecting? Oh, transgender people! Then say it’s about the people, people. Anyway, this is a vital meeting up for the trans community, even as it quickly descends into near meat-market status, with folks checking out each others’ outfits for minimal levels of hipness and outsider status. The more buttons on one’s backpack, the better. And every time I attend this conference, I see middle-aged trans women walking alone, not nearly cool enough for the too cool for school kids. It makes my heart ache. The workshops here are hit and miss, but again, they’re some peoples’ only conduit of information off the Web and/or means of meeting other like-minded people. I try to remember that.

So what will PNWA 2010 be like, I wonder? Are there writers squirreled away in tiny corners of the Northwest, just waiting for their weekend of fun? Will everyone be more successful than me—a low bar, I grant that—or will there be other folks in similar situations to mine? Will I totally screw up and puke on an agent? I mean, I really want to be more socially adept than George H.W. Bush in Japan.

I’m sure it will go well. At least I’ll have my little finalist ribbon to wear around, looking as dorky yet proud as possible. And for giggles, I’ll try tweeting a few workshops if it’s not too interruptive to the panelists. If anyone’s interested, I’m 4evermore over on Twitter.

I like fireworks as much as the next person, assuming the person next to me likes fireworks as an annual, but not more frequent, source of half-hour entertainment. But I made the trek into the steamy Michigan night thinking that my niece and nephews would really really very much yes want to see the light show. I learned something new in the process:

• The 13-year-old girl was more interested in recording the entire half-hour event onto her camera, having almost no interest in watching the explosions with her naked eyeballs.
• The 10-year-old boy remarked, “eh, you’ve seen one set of fireworks, you’ve seen ’em all.”
• The 3-year-old was thrilled beyond belief.

So why do we drag out our blankets and children and slap mosquitos off ourselves, pushing through slow-moving traffic to find that last parking spot, half a mile walk away? An extreme need for patriotism?

I plopped down on the ground, cuddling Susanne a little and watching the toddler fight for all the patience he had in him, waiting for the brightness to light up the indigo sky. We found a spot that framed the fireworks by two very large poplar trees, the kind that drove my mother crazy with all of their pollen, and that I played under as a child, because my sandbox caught its enormous shade and was viewable from the kitchen window. I can’t remember a single organized fireworks show that I saw as a kid. Instead we’d light our own fireworks on the sands of Myrtle Beach where we stayed for a couple of weeks most summers. These were procured from our friendly tractor trailer container, parked in the lot of the local Piggly Wiggly, suggesting that The South was a far more dangerous place than New Jersey, where we lived, because such things were illegal there.

Mom was the risk-taker, almost eager to light the blasting caps like she were ready to mine for something under the sand. I have to say she’s an agile one; nobody moved away from the lit fuse faster than she, and on the challenging beach, no less. I have a hard time getting my feet under me just walking, when it comes to sand.

It got so that I liked hearing the booms from the explosions against the sound of the surf from the Atlantic. So last Sunday I didn’t hear that combination, but I’ve learned to be flexible and take things as they come. Hearing kids giggle gleefully while their parents oohed and aahed at the unexpected shapes appearing in the sky was enjoyable enough. But I think in a few years, I’ll have to go back to the beach for Independence Day.

And ask Susanne to handle the fireworks. We all know I’d blow off at least a couple of fingers. I’m a scared Yankee with that stuff.

I am a fan of the contest. I just plain like the concept that for the trouble of sponsoring my own entry into it, I have earned the privilege of getting X chance in millions of winning whatever thing it is that I covet. It’s a tiny taste of exhilaration, made all the smaller by my intellectual understanding that I’m probably not going to win bupkus. But in the years of me entering contests, I have walked away victorious a few times. It’s like a siren’s song, drawing me back, distracted by whatever bauble or accolade is dangled in front of my head.

A stuffed snowman. In 1983 I won a stuffed snowman, hand-knit by some other 8th grader’s mother. The real hook for me was the black hat on its head—inside, curled into itself, was a second scarf, in a different color, and you could change them out. Sweet! A snowman you could dress! For a kid who didn’t give a fig about Barbies, this was for some reason extremely appealing. Tim, a big bully of a kid, had bested me earlier in the school year in a campaign for class security guard—I don’t know how he beat my motto, Shoot for the Moon, Vote for Maroon—and had, upon the afternoon of his victory speech, insisted everyone passing him in the hallway should bow to him. Oh, how my fellow classmates rued their collective decision then! Tim saw me buy a raffle ticket for Mr. Snowman and like an arrogant parent, unrolled a loop of raffle tickets like baby pictures out of his wallet. I would never win, he said. Ruffled by his heckling, I capitulated and bought one more ticket. This doubled my chances of winning, I figured. Ah, 8th grade math. When the principal called my ticket number over the loudspeaker, I squealed and ran down the three flights to get my prize. And I’m positive I loved that changeable snowman far superiorly to Tim, would he have won.

Mill Road Camp Camper of the Week. I have no earthly idea how I earned this prize other than the counselors gave it out on a rotating basis and I just hit my number one week. I didn’t even enter or otherwise make my interest known to the day camp staff. I was just wasting my time perfecting my tetherball skills. Mad skillz, I say. But I still have the brick red banner with white lettering.

I have won roughly $200 in bowling league money. That I have bowled in a league at least 6 times reveals my sad-ass bowling skills. Even the last team in most leagues will walk away with something at the end of the season. But it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about having the coolest shoes in the league. Which I have.

A Panasonic stereo and 25 CDs. This was the strangest contest to enter in my personal history with contests. Sponsored by Dodge and Mothers Against Driving Drunk, or whatever it is they’re called, entrants had to guess how many CDs (in their cases) would fit inside the M.A.D.D. Music Mobile, a van that apparently was roaming around my college campus, hunting for drunk drivers, or something. That really sounds like an unsafe practice, but okay. I went upstairs to my dorm room, called 800 information (there was no Web, people!), and got the number for Dodge headquarters in Detroit. After a series of phone calls, I had the cubic dimensions of the van’s interior. I also, at the time, owned 12 CDs. I pulled two away so I would have an even 10, and I measured the cubic area, did some rough math—math keeps being so important! damn math!—and then went back down to the lobby to put in my guess. I’d all but forgotten about the contest when I got a letter in the mail, saying I’d gotten first prize. I’d missed the grand prize, which was oh, a sports car, but what would I do with a sports car in the snowiest place in New York? Crash it into the Music Mobile, probably, or a Delta Delta Delta on her way back from a drunken formal.

Employee of the Year. This award took me a bit by surprise, and without a doubt meant the most to me of all the things I’ve ever had the pleasure of winning. The vice president announcing the award at the annual dinner did the traditional, “let me tell you about this person before I give you the name” thing. I’m fond of that approach, actually, and not just because it reminds me of Sesame Street’s version of This Is Your Life. I had my suspicions that I’d be getting the award, but it was still great to get called up to the podium and accept it. Sometimes I think it’s silly to get so excited about a wood and brass plaque, but well, I worked hard to have that on my office wall.

It’s with this short but fun history that I entered the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association literary contest, submitting my affable memoir last spring. I’d known upon entering that finalists in each genre category would be notified by early June, so when 6/15 rolled around I presumed I was not among them. But opening my email yesterday, I saw an email from PNWA with the subject line, PNWA Literary Contest: Congratulations! My very first thought was, “well, I guess I’ll see who the finalists are, since I must not be one of them.” Imagine my surprise when I read: “Dear Everett, Congratulations!” Say what? Holy memoir, I’m a finalist!

Susanne wanted to know why the blood had all gone out of my face. I told her, rereading the Web site details about the contest, that so far I’d won a “Finalist” ribbon to put on my conference badge when I show up at the event in July. I bet it’s red. I love a nice, red ribbon and I have no idea why. As it stands, there are 8 finalists in each genre category, and a first, second, and third place winner. So I have a 3 in 8 chance of winning something beyond my lovely strip of satin. Whatever happens, I’m excited and thrilled.

Contests are damn fun.

We’ve been through four hotels in as many nights, and after our repeated exposure, I’m now prepared to say a few things about the Tourist of the West, at least as far as hoteliers are concerned. Using the set ups of our rooms as indirect indicators, I’ve deduced the following:

1. Tourists in the West like extremely hot showers. If you are not a Tourist of the West, you need only turn the shower dial three-quarters of a scant inch to get the water in the hot tub range of 100–103.
2. They are likely to bring along their small-to-medium size dog, even to national parks where the rangers tell them that those dogs only look like tasty snacks to the bears. Because clearly, they aren’t just dogs to the Tourist in the West, they’re part of the family. Would you leave your little sister at home while you go on vacation? (That’s rhetorical.)
3. They still smoke. Nothing cuts through the crisp air of Wyoming and Idaho like a fresh Marlboro.
4. They appreciate the free continental breakfast. Even the 2.5 star motels have a free continental breakfast of Costco-purchased food. Nothing says roughing it like making your own burned waffle while CNN plays on a communal television.
5. The Tourist in the West either doesn’t noticed or has actually caused every bed in the hotel/motel circuit to be as lumpy as spoiled cottage cheese. Perhaps using topographical maps as beds is a form of massage that I simply haven’t yet noticed.
6. The Tourist in the West likes to fancy herself a horse-riding, white water-rafting expert, although it would appear that she has done neither in a long, long time. The people out there riding horses and braving the Snake River seem to be different tourists altogether.
7. The Tourist in the West likes to wear a ball cap from a college they attended roughly 40 years ago, or a ball cap from some relative or friend’s college attended roughly 20–40 years ago. This is because they think, it appears, that they are thus wearing a conversation piece on their head. DO NOT engage the Tourist in the West in any conversation, however, unless you have half an hour to kill.

Now then, back to my vacation! We’re going to see Mt. Rushmore today, and thus discover why South Dakota’s tourism revenue far, far exceeds that of North Dakota.

In 2003, I volunteered at DC’s gay film festival, which meant working with some very nice people and a few overly controlling people, but I was willing to take the long view and deal with challenging personalities in order to get passes to other movies for free. One of the films I went to see was Drag Nuns in Tinseltown (rereleased in 2006 as The LA Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence), a documentary about the antics and charity work of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Some of the Sisters attended the screening, laughing along with us and hosting a Q&A afterward.

Unlike other drag performers I’d seen before, the Sisters don’t eschew things like facial hair (a Ru Paul no-no) or insist on lip synching to women-sung songs, but instead will occasionally take on tenor or other “male range” compositions, singing in their own voices.

They also have a tendency to rework lyrics to songs we’d otherwise be able to belt out with them, in order to make a point. I’d forgotten that little bit of Sis-trivia until last night.

Susanne and I trekked to the Tri-Cities yesterday with a few colleagues from the college to see the Seattle chapter of the Sisters host a fundraiser for Walla Walla’s Blue Mountain Heart to Heart organization, a non-profit direct service charity for people with HIV, AIDS, and Hepatitis C. Heart to Heart is, in fact, the only direct service charity of its kind in southeast Washington state, and Franklin County, which it also serves, has the highest HIV infection rate outside of Seattle, so their work is rather desperately needed here. I would have gone to see the Sisters in any case, but knowing it was a fundraiser for Heart to Heart only solidified my commitment to making the 60-mile trip.

We found our way to the only gay bar in these parts which, on the inside, was a series of differently shaped rooms and a hell of a lot of seating: booths, high tables and stools, plain diner tables that looked like they’d been purchased from a going out of business sale from the empinada counter around the corner. A room in the front boasted a stage and short catwalk where the Sisters and local performers belted out everything from Xanadu’s I’m Alive (unfortunately not performed on 70s-style roller skates) to Bjork to School House Rock, Electrify, and some strange German song about genitalia that left me covering my face because I was there with a student from the college. Talk about awkward! Thank goodness there’s no sexual harassment policy at Susanne’s school. (Ironic, I’m being ironic.)

As the performances rolled on, audience members left their seats to slip money into the contribution basket at the end of the catwalk. Here’s where I was reminded of the unofficial rules about gay bars:

1. No matter how gay the bar is, there will always be a creepy straight guy trying to strut his stuff or hook up with some random lesbian. Persistence of said creepy guy is in an inverse proportion to his level of attractiveness. And creepy guys tend toward creepy props/dress, like a pipe or opened up dress shirt.
2. As soon as a couple first hooks up, they must stand in a corner or against a wall, making out. It helps if they’re anywhere near a heavily trafficked area, so that more people will notice their coupled upness.
3. Older couples should feel free to bicker in the bar or stand apart from each other, at turns looking cold or hurt.
4. There will be an overworked, overtired lesbian bussing tables and shooting daggers out of her eyes at the careless customers who spill their drinks for her to clean up.
5. Even if the gay bar is occupied by 95 percent gay men and < 5 percent lesbians (the other 1 percent straight allies, transgender people, and lost people who haven’t realized they’re not in a straight bar yet), there will still be a long line for the women’s rest room.
6. A small group of depressed looking older men will be quietly sitting around a video monitor of gay porn.
7. A few young or questioning people will be in the bar on any given weekend night, looking astonished at the naughty humor and antics of the other people there.

All of these I saw with my own eyes last night, and nearly 20 years after walking into my first gay bar, I smiled a little to myself, because no matter what else changes, these dynamics are the same. Not that I don’t want all of those to stay the same, certainly not. But it’s kind of like I haven’t aged.

Who’s up for Gay Bar Time Machine? Or the Curious Case of Benjamin Buttman? We can make it happen, people. Actually, maybe I should do an Internet search and see if they’ve been filmed already.

Of course her goggles and irises match!

I mostly bit my tongue when 30 inches of snow fell onto our house during the winter of 2009 and after which no plows visited our neighborhood. Scratch that, no plow, as in singular, moved any snow. Susanne and I understood a little bit better why people in this corner of the state and country act like they don’t need government, because hello, government isn’t, or wasn’t, there for us.

Fine, I get it. One doesn’t feel the pulse of the Capitol this far away, which means, one doesn’t have any reason to think that any government worker in the entire 2.6 million-person force actually cares about the average human walking around in this country. That such an idea couldn’t possibly be true doesn’t stop folks from generalizing what the U. S. government is and what it does. So they generalize. And then do it some more.

Sensing a problem here? At some point, our assumptions about government intent and capability take us off the rails entirely as we try to get our 50-train car over the river with no bridge.

Over time, we’ve gone from “alert your police to suspicious behavior” in the wake of 9/11 and the anthrax-mailing assclown to “pass laws so we can carry our guns into church” because apparently we’re now better at policing than the police. Osmosis? Or maybe strapping explosive metal to your thigh infuses your quadriceps with law enforcement knowledge and then that is carried up to your brain so that you know at any given moment who to shoot and who to leave alone. Damn those police academies for keeping us in the dark.

Well, wherever there’s confusion and hysteria, there’s someone looking to make a few bucks. I was ignorant of a lot of this until the other night, while watching a rerun of NCIS, I saw a commercial for a 72-hour disaster response kit. A what? I went back with my DVR. Yes. I’d understood correctly. Flashing images of the Katrina hurricane, the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, and the Chili earthquake, a deep-voiced, threatening voiceover told me that government wasn’t there for any of these people, and I should not sit around waiting for 1. a natural disaster nor 2. the government to bail me out. Bail me out? Wait a New Jersey minute.

Bailout is from seafaring, as in bailing water out of a sinking boat. It’s taken on a negative connotation because it’s used when the Feds have given money to a struggling company or industry. And the negativity has branched out to the struggling entity. So don’t call me a bailoutee in waiting! I haven’t asked for anything! I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m buying this nonsense, aren’t I? Of course it’s fine to expect that at least the national guard will roll in if half of Walla Walla blows away in a dust storm, leaving only Walla. That’s not a sign of weakness, that’s a sign that I’m an individual and not an institution, that’s all. Sheesh, for a minute there. . . well, I don’t want to think about it.

Okay, so this ad is comparing the non-Katrina response, the Haiti and Chilean earthquakes and saying they’re equally devastating, and suggesting the next one is around the corner and buying their $100 worth of plastic-wrapped product will what, be like having soldiers bringing me clean drinking water and tending to my wounds? Will it pull me out from a crumbled building? Is it like a Roomba on steroids with self-extending grappling hook? I had to laugh at the ludicrousness of this. I laughed, and yet my chuckles were laced with nervousness. Someone will buy this. Of course many someones will buy it. We bought Pet Rocks. We bought Snuggies. We bought ShamWOW!s. We’re Americans, darn it! We buy what we feel like buying! If I’m not spending money on insurance against Armageddon, I’m not a patriot!

I went online to see what was in these kits, anyway. And I was astonished to see how many different Web sites are hawking this schlock. Go on. Google it. 72 disaster kit, that’s what I typed. Open another tab and check it out, I’ll wait.

See? Holy preparedness, Robin! There is a lot of selling of crappy stuff! Light sticks, freeze-dried food, first aid kits, water pouches—I’m sorry, pouches? What’s wrong with water in bottles? Does it have to be so militaristic? I’d rather just put a case of Evian in the basement, okay?

I can buy pre-packaged kits or I can learn how to make my own from one of what, a dozen or so Web sites that have painstakingly put such content together. I’ll be good for 72 hours!

Doing the math, I see that that’s three days. Three days, really? Seriously? And then what? The earthquake ravaged buildings are renovated? The landslides are packed back onto the mountain? The flood waters recede like the hot air at the end of a car wash?

Oh. The government comes into town. The do-nothing, help-nobody government. We want to condescend enough to suggest we’ll need to sort out ourselves for up to three days, but then, we want our government to come to our rescue.

Let me know when any of this starts making sense. Maybe I’ll strap a banana to my thigh and walk into a church with it. That seems less kooky.