“I write love stories,” I said.
A gay friend of mine was backed up against the opposite wall, and he said, “I write love stories, too.”
I thought about that for a beat or two.
Then I walked across the room and stood next to him.
That day I started to consider the impact of my work; not the intention—the impact. I’d like to have an impact. I’d like to contribute to a greater dialogue. I’d like my work to mean something, and truly, how the hell do you pull that off? One of the stories I return to as I consider these questions is Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist.” I stand outside that cage, day in, day out, admiring his fasting, and I see things in myself of which I’m not proud.
In 2003, the stars aligned in some crazy way, and I got a job in a summer Study Abroad program in Prague teaching courses on Kafka. Over the next several months, in preparation, I read everything by and about him—his journals and letters and biographies—and what blew my mind was this: he’s an actual person. A genius, yes, but also normal, albeit somewhat freaky, with all sorts of insecurities and problems. It always amazes me to discover that these writers I idolize are really just people. Like if Jesus walked into my living room and asked for a beer. That’s what reading Kafka’s journals was like.
Kafka is everywhere in Prague. His face is on T-shirts, coffee mugs—anything that can squeeze a few Euros out of tourists. But if you look past all that, you can see he’s also in the bricks, the statues, and the chilled mist like a blanket on the Vltava River. You can page through his journals and find the flats he lived in and the bars where he’d read his work aloud to his friends. I sat in the back room of Café Montmartre, imagining his voice. It wasn’t hard. They have really good wine at Café Montmartre.
I didn’t have much of a religious upbringing, so when I took my students to visit Kafka’s grave, we spent a good three hours wandering around this beautiful old cemetery with its mausoleums and overgrown vines and crumbling sculptures, totally unable to find the guy. Finally, we figured out that we were in the Christian cemetery, which is next door to the Jewish cemetery where Kafka is buried.
Looking for Kafka in a Christian cemetery; it was very Kafkaesque.
When we finally got to his grave, my students wrote notes and left them under rocks. A few of them were crying. The air was heavy; history crawled on our skin.
When I got back to the States, I went to the restaurant where I’d waited tables back in grad school and asked for one shift a week for a year. The cash I saved bought me a year to write in Prague. The following summer, when I got off the plane in to teach my Kafka class, I walked straight to the ticket gate and extended my return ticket from six weeks later to a year later.
It was one of the greatest moments in my life.
My boyfriend and I rented a one-bedroom walk-up in Namesti Miru, an idyllic little expatriate neighborhood a two-stop tram ride from Old Town Square. Every day, I wrote in that back room at Montmartre. It was a dream. I’d never written like that before, nor have I since; not in volume or content, inspiration or ease.
We often went to beer tastings, and one night, while my boyfriend got drunk with a tableful of Czech guys, I had the following conversation with an older man who’d been a public school teacher:
HIM: What are you doing in Prague?
ME: I’m teaching Kafka.
HIM: Czech people hate Kafka.
ME: Why?
HIM: He is too depressing. Czech people, we are not depressing! We are fun! Look at how much fun!
We spent a week in Czesky Raj, which translates to “Czech Paradise”—five hundred miles of protected hiking forest with stairs cut into rocks, rolling hills, and beautiful scenery. We were out there so long it got dark, nearly pitch, and we couldn’t find our way back. And did I mention we were on ecstasy? Eventually, our feet found the stone staircase back to our hotel, and I thought of Kafka’s line from “The Advocates:” “As long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs won’t end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards” (The Complete Stories 451).
Dude, I thought, climbing those stairs. Kafka is like… here.
Sometimes, students tell me they don’t like Kafka. His sentences are too long, they say. There’s too much description, and what the fuck’s up with the bug? That’s fine, I say. Who knows what writers will influences our lives and how their work will grow and change for us as we grow and change with it. I’ve been reading Kafka for nearly twenty years, and every time, I understand him and myself in a different way.
You don’t have to like him, I tell my students. But keep going, now or next week or next year. I wonder who I’d be if, at seventeen, I’d stopped at too long sentences, too much description, or that fucking bug.
All said and done, here’s who Kafka is to me:
When I’m writing—sitting there at my desk, trying to figure out what happens next, getting pissed when the screensaver pops up ‘cause I haven’t typed anything in so long, getting pissed when rejections show up in my inbox, thinking about giving up, There’s got to be something easier, right?—Kafka is a Godsend because when you open his Diaries, you see this:
“Today, painfully tired, spent the afternoon on the sofa” (Diaries 198).
“I will write again, but how many doubts have I meanwhile had about my writing” (237).
“But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation” (300).
“Read ‘In the Penal Colony’ aloud; am not entirely dissatisfied, except for its glaring and ineradicable faults” (318).
“My work goes forward at a miserable crawl” (321).
It goes on like that, page after page. He always goes on. He always kept climbing. Up to his dying day, under his climbing feet the stairs grew upwards.
Kafka, Franz. Diaries. New York: Schocken Classics, 1988. Print.
Kafka, Franz. The Complete Stories. New York: Schocken, 1971. Print.
KICK MS
WHEN I WAS IN THE THIRD GRADE, my elementary school participated in the Multiple Sclerosis Read-a-Thon—an experience that taught me many valuable Life Lessons, starting with how to coerce adults. We’d bully our grandparents for five cents a page, multiply that times Island of the Blue Dolphins, and voila!
“Isn’t that wonderful, boys and girls!” said my teacher, a tiny, nervous lady who’d only ever taught kindergarten. “Reading is wonderful! And curing a horrible disease is wonderful!” On the bulletin board she’d made a construction paper track that said “race for a cure” across the top. Each kid got a car to decorate—mine was green with “megan s.” in wobbly cursive glitter-glue—and every day we moved our cars ahead depending on how many pages we’d read the day before.
What happened to me wasn’t because of the cars; it was the yellow buttons that teachers passed out on Monday. They said, in block letters, “kick ms!” and everybody was supposed to wear them all week long. Can you imagine? I was a walking target—a soccer ball, a hacky sack. “Kick MS! Kick MS!” everyone yelled, and they did. At first, the kicks were playful, but as the game escalated, it got more vicious. Those kids kicked the crap out of me. I’d run to the bathroom crying and wait in a stall ‘til the bell rang. Then I’d wash my face so it wouldn’t look all red and puffy and go back late to class, sitting gingerly in my seat.
The day I cracked was a Thursday. The teacher was moving cars ahead on the “race for a cure” track. “Look at how wonderfully you’re doing, boys and girls! Almost everyone is at the finish line!” Almost meant me. My car was alone at the bottom of the racetrack while all the others were thumb-tacked in a big pile at the top. Everyone looked at me then—thirty-two pairs of eyes turning towards my desk—and that’s when I lost it.
“I’m not reading for Multiple Sclerosis!” I yelled, jumping up and smacking my desktop with two fists. “Multiple Sclerosis can go to Hell!” Then I ran out of class and down the hall to the girls’ bathroom, with its count
ers and toilets and sinks set three feet from the floor for little-kid legs, and cried into brown paper towels ‘til my teacher found me.
We had a discussion then. Here’s what I remember:
1. “Hell” is a bad word, like “stupid” and “penis.”
2. Multiple Sclerosis is bad.
3. Reading is good.
4. Sometimes kids aren’t nice. Sometimes grown-ups aren’t, either.
When she said that—sometimes grown-ups aren’t, either—she started to cry, big heavy sobs that fogged up her glasses. Looking back on it now, I wonder what adult-equivalent of kid-cruelty made her lose it in front of a seven-year-old? Was her husband leaving her? Had her mother said the wrong thing? Did the principal just fire her, and this would be her last moment in the girls’ bathroom? Whatever it was, all I knew then was I’d never seen an adult cry before. And as I handed her a paper towel, I realized, for the very first time, that life doesn’t get easier.
IT SEEMS OUR TIME HAS RUN OUT, DR. JONES
IT WAS THE WEEK BEFORE WE ELOPED. I had a $20 dress from H&M, my best friend was recently ordained at humanspiritualism.org, and there were three cases of Maker’s Mark. We were good to go.
“Except for one thing,” Christopher said. Christopher, FYI, was my finance—a fact that still sort of blows my mind. Usually guys like him are: a) Taken, b) Gay, c) Dying, or d) A figment of my imagination. Christopher is none of these things. He’s wonderful and smart and “together,”—like, he has goals and shit—and he also loves kids and puppies in a very non-sappy kind of edgy, DIY sort of way. And he always, always does the right thing, even in those moments where the right thing makes you want to stick a fork in your eye, which just then, was exactly what he was asking me to do.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t tell him.”
“You have to,” Christopher said. “He deserves to know.”
In my head, I listed every possible out and decided on avoidance. “I’ll tell him when we get back,” I said, but Christopher shook his head. “This is your last week as a single woman. Get your stuff, we’re going now.”
He drove me to the Music Box: This beautiful, old movie theatre on Southport that only shows classics or arty stuff. It was built in the ’20s, I think—really ornate architecture with this huge red velvet curtain over the screen. I found a seat near the front and tried to calm down; there was a grapefruit sized knot in my chest—one part fear and two parts guilt. We’d been together for so long, twenty years almost, and here I was, showing up out of the clear blue sky to say, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t need you anymore.” I suddenly wondered how he’d react; he is a pretty unpredictable guy, after all. Would he snap his whip around my waist and refuse to let me go? Would he jump on a camel and track Christopher across Chicago? Or would he do something drastic, like look into the Arc of the Covenant until his skin boils off and he eventually explodes?
The lights went down—and there’s that feeling right before a movie when you’re transported to another life that’s the farthest thing from real—the red velvet curtain rose up—my heart was pounding so fast I didn’t know if I’d make it through the opening credits—and suddenly, there he was.
We’ve all had our little crushes on fictional characters. Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles, right? Maybe James Bond? Annette Funicello? Legolas? I know you all have one, but please understand: Indiana Jones and I were not just some fling; we were the real deal. And please don’t say that, “OMG I love Harrison Ford, too!” because, I tell you what, I could give a rat’s ass about Harrison Ford. Or Han Solo. Or Bob Falfa. Or John Book, or Deckard, or any of them.
This is about me and Indiana Jones.
We met in my parent’s basement in 1986. I was an only child, which means I was pretty lonely but also that I had all sorts of magical powers. For example, on the day I met Indy, there was a thunderstorm, which I’d started with my brain. Anyhow, I couldn’t play outside, my folks were upstairs doing whatever horrifyingly boring things parents do, and all there was in the basement was the TV—this tiny, rabbit-eared job that only got one channel. The Saturday afternoon movie: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The scene that really got me was the one where Indy and the kid from The Goonies are in that secret corridor with all the bugs and decapitated skeletons, and the kid keeps setting off booby traps and almost squashes them very gruesomely in the Spikey Room of Death. And I’m all, “Indy, that kid sucks! I am so way better than him!” I was up off the couch, talking directly to the television. “I’m not scared of bugs, and also I can teleport and stop moving walls with my mind!” I would’ve kept listing off my powers, but just then—I know you’ll think I’m crazy when I say this, but it happened, I swear!—Indiana Jones turned and looked straight at me, like how in the movies the actors talk into the camera. But there wasn’t any camera; there was only me, all alone in the basement with my incredible ten-year-old need, and he saw me. He looked right in my eyes and said, “What a vivid imagination.”
That was the beginning. We spent most of our time playing in the creek, digging ancient architectural relics out of the mud, and swinging on vines. Eventually, though, I got older. My priorities changed. I didn’t want us to play in the mud anymore; I wanted us to…well, I had these feelings, you know… God, how do I word this? “Nocturnal activities,” is what Indy always says, and—don’t look at me that way! Like you don’t have fantasies! Everybody has them, my psychiatrist says it’s perfectly normal, and Indiana Jones is pretty top of the line of I do say so myself.
A. He’s a college professor, fluent in numerous indigenous languages.
B. He has a very great hat.
C. Whenever I needed him, he was there.
Valentine’s Day, 1995. I was nineteen years old. I wore combat boots, listened exclusively to Nine Inch Nails, and read waaaay too much Sylvia Plath for anybody’s health. My boyfriend was Ricky—he had green hair, AND a leather jacket, held together with safety pins. We’d met dissecting frogs in freshman biology, which in retrospect is an appropriate metaphor for our relationship. Anyhow, we had this discussion about how Valentine’s Day was sap-ass corporate social conditioning designed to subjugate the masses, and we wanted no part. I believe his exact words were, “Cupid can suck my dick.”
He was soooo cool.
So. Long story short: we spent the day in a laundromat. Valentine’s Day in a Laundromat in Ypsilanti, Michigan—as gray and dead of a town as you could get—and I remember I was pairing his socks when out of the clear blue sky he said, “I’m outta here tomorrow.”
I said, “Outta where?” and he said, “Ypsilanti. There’s nothing here for me”—at which point I put down the socks.
“I’m here,” I said.
And he said, “Yeah, about that.”
I wish I could say I handled myself well—that I told him off in exceptionally witty dialogue—but it didn’t happen. Instead, I threw a tantrum. In the Ypsilanti Wash’n’Go. I said nasty things and threw dirty laundry, trying my damndest to pick a fight, ‘cause if he was standing there yelling at me, at least he’d still be standing there. He didn’t take the bait though, and after a while just packed up his stuff and left. And I was alone. In a laundromat in Ypsilanti on Valentine’s Day. Washing his clothes so he could me leave tomorrow—which, in retrospect, is a very good blues song, but at the time it was rock-fucking-bottom. I might’ve stood there all day, but just then, I heard it: that unmistakable “Da-da-da-DAAAA! Da-da-DAAA!” And there he was, Indiana f’ing Jones on a black-and-white TV near the back of the room. I sat on a plastic folding chair, and for the next six hours, I watched the Saturday afternoon Triple Feature.
From then on, whenever I needed a little rescue from reality, he was there.
Like when I dated the alcoholic.
Or the gay guy.
There were many gay guys, actually.
And actors, lots of actors, most of whom had serious substance abuse problems and girlfriend
s and/or wives—I know! I made stupid decisions, but everybody does, right? That’s how we learn to make smart ones—and Christopher, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me. We’re three years in, and suddenly I’m watching romantic comedies and wearing color and—flowers? I love flowers! Chocolate? Bring it on! Think I’m sappy? Fuck yeah, I’m sappy; I want everybody sappy. I want bluebirds on shoulders and walking on sunshine and reality to be so amazing that you no longer need your fantasy.
I no longer need my fantasy.
And so, there I was at the Music Box watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was that scene where Indy and Marion are in the marketplace in Cairo, and the swami guys are trying to kidnap them, so Marion hides in a wicker basket. And while Indy was running around fighting Nazi henchmen, I was slumped back in my seat, rehearsing what I’d say:
It seems our time has run out, Dr. Jones.
You’ll always be my greatest adventure.
I’m sorry, Indy, but I just don’t need you anymore.
No matter I came up with, I still felt guilty as hell ‘cause you know however much it hurts to get dumped, it’s nothing compared to hurting someone else. I can’t do this, I thought. Not to him. And I was on my feet, scooting down the row and halfway up the aisle when I heard him.
“Where you going?”
Slowly, I turned to face him—my Indy—staring down at me from the movie screen with his big eyes and stubbly face and beautiful, stupid smile. Behind him, the swami guys had just found Marion’s basket and were carrying her screaming all over Cairo, but she didn’t exist so far as we were concerned.
“Indiana Jones,” I said. “It’s been awhile, huh?”
He laughed. “Do you remember the last time we had a quiet drink?”
“Of course! We were waiting to shoot pool at Inner Town Pub, and some asshole tried to cut in line; you caught him with the whip and let him dangle from the ceiling for a while.” I felt suddenly nostalgic. “We’ve shared a lot of good times.”
Once I Was Cool Page 4
