Once I Was Cool

by Megan Stielstra

  THE OMG WE HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THIS LOOK

  WHEN I FOUND OUT my story collection was being published, the first person I called was Jeff. He’d been there from the beginning: the writing and rewriting; submissions and rejections; and, most importantly, all of the living that inspired the stories in the first damn place.

  We met up to celebrate. We drank champagne. “What did your editor say?” Jeff asked, and then added, gleefully, “You have an editor!” We giggled, drank more champagne, and talked about the stories. Jeff had been my first reader on all of them—except one.

  “So,” I said. We’d killed one bottle and ordered another. Celebration! “There’s a story. In the book. It’s about…us.”

  This is a tricky moment in the life of a writer. Let’s call it… “The Talk.” Historically, “The Talk” has referred to asking whomever you’re dating whether or not they want to be exclusive, but for a writer, it’s what happens when you’ve written about somebody close to you and you want their permission to publish it. It’s a nerve-wracking thing. You squeezed your heart into this story! It’s a great opportunity for your work! You changed the person’s hair color and made them from Nova Scotia!—still, you care enough about the relationship to discuss it first.

  For the record, I knew Jeff wouldn’t care that I’d written about him. Not because I’d done it before (I had), and not because I’d disguised him enough that he’d never be recognized (I hadn’t); rather, because he gets it. He, too, has done it. He, too, is a writer.

  “Okay,” he said, pouring more champagne. “Which part about us?”

  “It was forever ago,” I said. “We were living in Wicker Park, and we played that game called—”

  He cut me off. “Oscar and Veronica?”

  “Yes!”

  “You wrote the Oscar and Veronica story?” There was something nervous about his voice, like how he sounded back when we were both interested in the same guy (this happened a lot); or when he told me that the guy I was dating was actually gay (this happened three times); or when he told me that he was gay (this happened once, fifteen years ago, back when I was hopelessly in love with him).

  “Is there a problem with the Oscar and Veronica story?” I asked. “You know I’ve written way more personal things about you, like the time—”

  He cut me off. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “I wrote the Oscar and Veronica story, too.”

  Here’s how it worked: If Jeff called me Veronica, or I called him Oscar, it meant there was a cute guy within earshot, so we had to pretend to be brother and sister. The act was to appear natural, but be loud enough for the cute guy to overhear.

  “Did mom call you?”

  “Dad called last night.”

  “Remember when we were six and our cousin Johnny ate that lightbulb?”

  It was silly and ridiculous and an absolute necessity because wherever Jeff and I went, everyone assumed we were together, thus contributing to all sorts of awkward situations and complicated emotions—the stuff that makes good stories.

  To hear Jeff tell it, some ten-plus years ago we made a pact that each of us would, someday, write the Oscar and Veronica story. I don’t remember that conversation, but I’m sure it could’ve happened that way; Jeff and I have made pacts to write a thousand different things: the time he brought me, as his date, to chaperone Howard Brown’s gay prom; the time his very fabulous roommate used a loaf of French bread to teach me proper blow job technique; the time I told off his ex-boyfriend at a hotdog stand; and on and on. The thing is, over all these years, all these stories, all these seemingly secret moments when we’d give each other the OMG we have GOT to write about this look—up until now, we’ve never actually done it.

  When I think of literary friendship, I think of the heavyweights—Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Emerson and Thoreau—their relationships are full of inspiration, arguments, jealousy, letters, reading, and late-night talks about life and literature. Are Jeff and I like that? Sometimes. I hand him drafts of stories I’m sure are done, and then he asks a single fucking question that keeps me awake for weeks. He’s the one who put Gabriel Garcia Marquez in my hands, who to this day is my favorite writer. When his editor asked for yet another rewrite, we spent hours in front of my bookshelf, trying to figure out how exactly writers pulled off this whole writing thing.

  Every week, we sit in restaurants around Chicago, drinking champagne or coffee, depending on the hour, and typing from opposite sides of the table. Sometimes we talk—I know Jeff’s fictional characters I better than I know some of my real-life relatives—but, more often than not, we work. We type. We Ass in Chair. If I feel stuck, or I feel like walking away from the computer, I look up and he is there, hard at work. And I will not let him beat me. No, I’ll get back to it.

  But, if I’m really being honest, all his literary influence on my life is, to me, secondary. Forget literary friend—he’s my friend. He’s my son’s godfather. He gave me away at my wedding. He and my husband have weekly movie nights.

  In another lifetime, we’d stay up all night drinking bourbon while one of us cried and complained (me), or speak very elegantly and poetically about how our current misfortunes influenced our growth as human beings (Jeff). When I introduced him to guys I was dating, he said, “He was very nice. What about that guy Christopher?”

  In a lifetime before that, we sweated over graduate theses. When I introduced him to guys I was dating, he said, “He was very nice. But he looks sort of like a Troll. You know those Troll dolls? With the…hair?”

  Before that was the fateful night where, after he walked me home from a late night class, and I took a purposely long time looking for my keys until finally, finally drumming up the courage to look up at him and say, “Would you like to have dinner with me this weekend?” I was twenty years old. I’d recently broken up with my high school boyfriend. I was brand new to the big city, brand new to my adult life, and Jeff had walked me home after every night class for nearly a year.

  “I’d love to have dinner with you!” he said. “You know I’m gay, right?”

  Looking back on it, this was the moment where I learned that there are different kinds of love. It’s a long, complicated novel, not a three-minute pop song. And for me, that’s what Oscar and Veronica is about: letting go long enough to move onto the next chapter.

  One final thought: I recently read that Emerson owned the property at Walden Pond and gave it to Thoreau to build his cabin.

  Jeff? Are you reading this? Hurry up and buy some land so I can build myself a cabin.

  I’d prefer this land to be in Spain.

  But I’m not picky.

  CAN I BUY YOU A DRINK?

  IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO UNDERSTAND that Can I buy you a drink? doesn’t actually mean Can I buy you a drink? but rather Can I buy permission to sit with you while you drink that drink, during which time a romantic and/or sexual interest might spark, at which point I’ll offer to buy more drinks until I get one of the following, depending on where we both are intellectually, emotionally, and developmentally at this particular moment in time: 1) a phone number so I can contact you for dinner and conversation, ‘cause I think you’re really interesting and who knows where this might go? 2) consensual sexy time in the women’s bathroom, sweaty and sticky and thrilling, because sometimes both parties want that with every fiber of their being, but please note that the operative word in that sentence is consensual, so ask, motherfucker, and 3) after you say “no thanks” to another drink and “no thanks” to a ride home and “I don’t think so” when he asks for your number, because naive as you are at 21, you’re still smart enough not to give your contact information to a guy who knocks back three whiskies to your every one vodka tonic, to a guy already slurring his words, to a guy who says, “Oh, come on, honey,” like you owe him something, so what you do is this: put a $20 down on the bar, get your coat, and leave.
<
br />   Late as it is, walking out of the dim-dark bar onto Addison Avenue is like flipping a light switch: bars and people and laughing and tipsy and music and life. It’s January in Chicago and you can see your breath as you walk, a few blocks down that main drag, and then a few blocks down the side street where you parked your car.

  Fifteen years later and you still don’t park on side streets.

  Snap your fingers—that’s how fast a city street goes silent. The lights and noise of Addison are gone now; in their place are rows of residential three-flats with darkened windows. All you can hear is your own breath, your own heartbeat, your own footsteps in the snow as you hurry towards your car with its wonderful, wonderful heater and then, from a behind you: “Hey! Honey! Wait up!”

  Fifteen years later and the fear is still paralyzing.

  Slowly, you look over your shoulder, and there he is, in the middle of the empty street. “Wait up!” he calls again, the snow crunching underneath his feet, coming closer, closer, and fuck it, you turn and run, your breath and heartbeat and footsteps racing towards your car with its wonderful, wonderful locks, and behind you he’s yelling, “I said wait up!” and “Why the fuck are you running?” and “I’m not going to fucking rape you!”

  Can I buy you a drink?

  I’m not going to fucking rape you.

  You’re at your car, in your car, locked in your car, and then he’s there, too, rattling the door handle, fists pounding the window, but you’re already driving away, and now, 15 years later, you never walk to your car without your keys in your hand, and now, 15 years later, you’re still overwhelmed with gratitude that you were spared what so many women are not, and now, 15 years later, when someone asks if they can buy you a drink, your first thought isn’t, “No thanks, I’m married,” or “No thanks, I can buy my own,” or “No thanks, although I’m sure you’re very nice—nothing at all like that guy from that night who’s lived for so long uninvited in my memory.” No, your first thought is this:

  What will I owe you?

  WE ARE FINE

  FOUR YEARS AGO, I leaned over the bathtub to pick up my then one-year-old son, and something in my lower back snapped. It happened so fast: one second I’m bent right-angled at the waist, arms around my wet, slippery tank of a kid; the next second—flat on the floor. I couldn’t move. Even the idea of moving was an impossibility. I lay there for nearly forty-five minutes—never in my life have I been as helpless—until finally, I worked myself into an awkward push-up position and slowly, slowly, military-crawled to the phone in the next room. I remember the pain made me see white—a blizzard on the backs of my eyelids.

  Over the years, I’ve told this story to chiropractors, physical therapists, and yoga instructors. “Do you have injuries I should be aware of?” they ask, and again and again and again, I begin: “I was leaning over the bathtub to pick up my son, and something in my lower back…” For every time I’ve told it, every time I’ve relived it as part of understanding my own body, there is one part I always leave out:

  I dropped him.

  My beautiful, perfect tank of a little boy.

  I dropped him.

  Around a year later, my physical therapist cleared me for yoga. I will never forget those first months, approaching my mat as though it were an active volcano. On it, I might hurt myself again; half an inch in the wrong direction, and all this work, all this fragile healing could snap. “It’s not safe,” I said to my best friend, Dia. She’d been practicing yoga for years and dealing with me for longer.

  “What’s not safe?” she said. “That?” indicating my mat, “or this?” indicating my head.

  One morning, my teacher, Francine, guided us into Cobra Pose, and I started to shake. This always happened when I was asked to lie face-down. Too many times, I’d been unable to get up afterwards—my lower back seizing—and then, like always, I’d be back on that bathroom floor with my son lying next to me, his little eyes wide with shock. This image had become my drishti, my focus, my intention—for the life of me, I couldn’t shake it—and in the midst of my rising panic, Francine’s voice cut through like a life raft. “What if it isn’t a struggle?” she asked. “What if you welcome the fear?”

  I’m not a crier, but that day I couldn’t stop. I lay on my back, tears leaking sideways into my ears. Francine held my head in her hands, her calm, lovely voice continuing to guide the rest of the class in and out of poses while quietly holding space with me.

  I’m trying to understand what is in my body and what is in my head. Sometimes, there is pain, a blizzard behind my eyes, and I name it: this hurts. I ripped something, pulled something, pushed myself too far. Other times, I think: Wait. That’s not pain. It’s fear. And then I think: Is there a difference?

  Recently, I went to see a massage therapist for the first time, a woman named Dana who Dia had been recommending for years. When I arrived at her studio, she gave me a printed diagram of a body and asked me to mark the areas I wanted her to focus on. I circled the lower back. Then I circled the head, wrote the word fear next to it in all caps, and handed it back to her.

  She glanced at what I’d done, invited me to sit, and listened for over an hour. “I’m too young for this,” I told her, and “What if it happens again?” and “I dropped him.” Something magical happened then: explaining it all to Dana allowed me to explain it to myself.

  This healing of the body begins with words.

  Dia is a yoga instructor now in San Francisco. A few months ago I went to visit and joined her class, unrolling my mat in the back of the room. We’re friends now, that mat and I—four years of careful movement, cautious breathing, stopping when my body says stop.

  Dia leads us through Sun Salutations, balance poses, and Breath of Joy, and in all of it, I am present, clear, fast, and free. Then she tells us it’s time to play with handstands, and just like that—I’m out. I slide back into Child’s Pose. The rest of the class lifts their legs in the air with various levels of success, and like always, I remain still. I protect myself. I breathe: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Usually, teachers leave me alone. They’ve heard my story: “I was leaning over the bathtub, and something in my lower back…” But this time, I feel a gentle tap.

  “Let’s try that handstand!” Dia says.

  I shake my head no, and she squats down next to me. “Do you trust me?” she asks.

  I think of that day on the bathroom floor, my back bones snapping like kindling. I think of the creative writing classes I teach, and how, on the first day, we talk about what it means to trust your instincts. Most of all, I think about Dia. For twenty years, she’s been there, telling me what I most need to hear about my jobs, my relationships, my fears, my body.

  “I trust you,” I tell her.

  And then, for the first time in my life, I stand on my hands.

  In my life outside of my body, I help people tell their stories. Recently, I had the privilege of working with a yoga teacher named Jen. She wrote about a student who cried in class. About holding this woman’s head in her hands. About holding space. “Does it happen often?” I asked, thinking of that day with Francine.

  She said, “All the time.”

  So much work I’ve done, this fragile healing. One morning, years ago, I lay on the bathroom floor unable to move with my then one-year-old son next to me; both of us dropped from an impossible height. For a single second, maybe two, his eyes were wide in shock. Then, he was up, naked and giggling. For forty-five minutes I listened to him run around the apartment, playing with toys, toddling on perfect, fat little legs—he was fine. Hitting the floor was one of a thousand moments in his short life where something could have gone one way, but didn’t.

  We are fine.

  For the moments when things aren’t fine, Francine has suggested a mantra. I am new to this mantra thing; still finding its place on my tongue in a way that feels authentic. I try because Francine gave it to me, and I trust her, the same way I trust Dia to lift my
feet off the ground, or Dana to place her hands on my lower back and help me find myself.

  Netti netti netti.

  It means Not That.

  I am broken—netti netti netti. I am afraid—netti netti netti. I am silent—netti netti netti. And what if it wasn’t a struggle?

  DRAGONS SO HUGE

  My friend Bobby Biedrzycki and I wrote this piece together about an experience we shared.

  BOBBY: First off, I think it’s important for you to know that this is not a story about endings, although there will be talk of endings. And that this is not a story about addiction, although there will be lots of talk of addiction. And this is definitely not a story about suicide, although there will be talk of suicide. Because most importantly, beyond all the things I just mentioned and beyond just about everything else, this is a story about miracles.

  Megan: October 2009, the last night of 2nd Story’s very first West Coast tour. I was sitting alone on the back patio at the Bookwalter Vineyard in Washington State, drinking a hot-off-the-presses Pinot Noir out of a very fancy glass, which for some magical reason always makes it taste better. Behind me, inside Bookwalter’s jam-packed wine bar, I heard Seeking Wonderland, 2nd Story’s house band, and the happy, tipsy chatter of our post-show audience. We kicked ass that night. We kicked ass all three nights; opening the Wordstock Lit Festival in Portland and two sold-out shows in the vineyard, surrounded on all sides by miles of grapes and above us—stars. I remember watching them like a movie. In the city, you can never see them, but out there, it was one of those moments where you understand how enormous the world really is.

  That’s when Bobby sat next to me. He’s a storyteller. He’s also my friend. He’s also, I had recently learned—learned, in fact, one week earlier, the day before we flew to Portland—an alcoholic. Friends of ours reading this will wonder how I didn’t know, how I didn’t see. I’ve asked myself that same question, and every answer sucks: I didn’t want to see. I was busy, we weren’t that close, we never hung out at night, he didn’t care what I thought, and he damn sure didn’t want to change—at least not until that last night of our tour, when he sat next to me under the stars.