25
I slept with a guy who made me keep my socks on. He was afraid of feet.
26
On days I worked at the Bongo Room, my alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. to get down North Avenue and open the restaurant by 7:00. On my days off, I slept in till 8:00 a.m.—9:00 eastern standard time—and on September 11 I walked into the living room just in time to see the second plane crash into the South Tower. I didn’t know what I was seeing. Sue would get home late from the bar and fall asleep on the couch watching movies. I assumed she’d left the TV on. I peed, made coffee, and came back into the living room. The towers were still on the screen, both smoking, the commentators’ voices panicked and unsure. I went to Sue’s bedroom; she was already gone for an early morning class. I went downstairs; Dia and Mike were awake and on the phone. I called Jeff and he came over. Sue came home with her boyfriend. We sat together on the couch, and on the floor around the couch, everyone’s body touching everybody else’s body so we knew we were all there, that no one was alone. We stared at the news for hours. For weeks. For years. I think we’re all still staring.
Now I get the majority of my news from social media, staring at screens, moving between different feeds, more perspectives and greater truths. I miss having someone next to me, a leg pressed into mine, shoulders locked, body to body and together, breathing, living, alive.
26
A student leaves a note in my faculty mailbox, one of those pink slips saying important message at the top. It’s signed by her psychiatrist and says she won’t be coming to class. She’s afraid of anthrax.
Anthrax is all over the news—“one part Clorox to nine parts water”—but until that very second I hadn’t worried about its proximity to me, probably because I’d been busy worrying about other things: friends in New York; the racial profiling and violence experienced by Arab American friends and students and human beings everywhere; the Coast Guard base where my dad worked that was on lockdown and I couldn’t get in touch with him; the families who didn’t know what happened to their loved ones and those five hours I sat in Boston, watching the news, not knowing, not knowing, not knowing; people worldwide who experience this sort of violence and worse on a day-to-day basis and my own privilege as an American; something I read about the Sears Tower being next; something I read about airplanes as time bombs; something I read about reinstating the draft; and how am I supposed to teach writing? There we were, eighteen—no, seventeen—college seniors in a semicircle around me and I’m holding a piece of paper about anthrax and looking up at the vents in the ceiling imagining white fluffy gas pouring into the room and me yelling hit the deck and all of us jumping on the floor on our stomachs, wrapping our hands over our noses and mouths, and finally someone said, “Megan?”
My mouth was full of gum. I could reach in and pull it out, a huge pink pile at my side. Everyone sat there, waiting for me to say something, and finally I looked up and asked, “Are you afraid?”
One young woman said, “Yes. Airplanes. I’m afraid to fly.” And everybody nodded. I went to the board and wrote “airplanes.”
“What else?” I said, and we started a list: bombs, racial profiling, biological weapons, domestic terrorism, student loans, not getting a job after college, invasion of privacy, the draft, corporate media, white people, Republicans—
“I don’t want to think about this,” someone said.
“That’s the problem!” said someone else. “Nobody’s thinking about their fear, no one’s deconstructing it, so we’re all irrational and terrified and dangerous and stupid and fucked.”
I thought about how unequipped I was to have this conversation. I was such a new teacher, so young, so green, and at most institutions, training of any kind—instructional design, crisis management, diversity and inclusivity, unconscious bias, college-wide resources, sexual assault, educational theory, educational technology, you name it—is nil. Here’s your classroom, here’s a roster, go get ’em, tiger.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’m doing. Not in my writing, my life, and right here, right now. You don’t graduate from college and immediately it’s voilà! Here are the answers! You find them as you go. You make mistakes and fuck up and fix it the next time around, and maybe it’s a huge mistake for me to be talking about fear so soon but it’s all I can think of right now, so”—* I took a deep breath—“I’m afraid of crowds,” I said. And I told them about having a panic attack at a George Clinton concert.
“You should have known better,” somebody said. “There’s like a million people at those things.”
And somebody else said, “But I’m afraid of elevators, and you can’t, like, not ride an elevator.”
And somebody else said, “D’uh, stairs.”
And somebody else said, “Not when you’re late for class and it’s on the twelfth floor and—”
“Hey!” I said, writing elevators on the board. “What else?”
Germs, bugs, tap water, chewing gum—some people laughed. So we paused to set the collective expectation that we were entering this brainstorming session with curiosity, not judgment.
Fire, heights, needles, doctors, ghosts, rain, sex, sexual assault, guns, Conceal Carry legislation, conversion therapy, Republicans—“We already said that!”
Big dogs, little dogs—that last one was mine.
Criticism—we stopped again to break that one down: constructive criticism versus being an asshole.
Oil paint: “It can kill you!”
Feathers: “So many germs.”
Water: “So many germs.”
Mice: “OMG, germs!”
Carbonated beverages, camping, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, The Ring, glue, blood, the dark, the police, failure, parents’ death, child’s death, being alone, dying alone, dying period, OD’ing, God, organized religion, paralysis, marrying your second choice, zombies, not being heard, not being seen.*
26
I got dumped. It was tragic. I loved him so much. I’d have loved him forever. He didn’t love me back and I thought I might die.
I didn’t want to go home, so I went—again, always—to Dia’s bar, waiting for her to close. She kept refilling my drink, so I’m sitting there drinking and crying and drunk and ridiculous, mascara all over my face, snot everywhere, and I hear, “Megan?” I turn around. It’s one of my college students. It was so awful. It was so awkward. He didn’t know what to say, poor guy, as if he could’ve said anything in that moment, and in the end he was like: “But you’re supposed to have your shit together!” To him, I was only his teacher: four hours, once a week, knowledgeable, professional, shit together. And that’s true. I am that person. In classrooms, conferences, festivals, meetings, retreats, workshops, presentations, performances. But there are other parts of me, then and still, that are equally true. I want to sit on the couch and watch Orphan Black and not think about anything. I want to sit with my husband and a bottle of wine and not have to be on. I want to sit on the floor and play with my kid. I want to sit at my laptop and read the news and cry because so much is awful and it’s so hard to stay hopeful and on those days, I shouldn’t be anybody’s cheerleader or mentor or teacher. I don’t know how to help you. I don’t want to read your manuscript. No you can’t pick my brain over coffee. I don’t have time for coffee. I shouldn’t drink this much coffee, I shouldn’t eat this bagel, I want this fucking bagel, fuck you, bagel, fuck you, carbs, fuck you, thyroid. I say fuck a lot. I say the wrong thing. I say the right thing the wrong way. I don’t want to say anything at all. I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired.
26
Same neighborhood: new one-bedroom apartment a block down the street. Sue moved to Florida. Dia moved to San Francisco.
It was the only time I’d ever lived alone.
I know some people love it.
But if I was scared of anything, it was knowing this could last.
26
The first time I performed a story live was at Schubas, a rock club. We o
pened for EXO, a rock band. I was onstage with Julie, a rock star, and I was terrified. My arms were shaking. The pages in my hand were shaking. If I’d had a podium, it would’ve shook, too. I remember standing next to the little stairs leading up to the stage thinking how dumb this was. I was supposed to be locked in my room with a typewriter and a bottle of Wild Turkey.
That’s when EXO’s drummer, Doug, came up to me. He was super tall with shaggy hair, and every time I saw him, he had this look on his face like he’d just heard something hilarious.
“It’s time,” he said, nodding at the stage where Julie and Robert, our guitarist, were setting up.
“I don’t think I can,” I said. And I will never forget this. He said, “Megan. This is the fun part.”
26
My grandpa tells me to get a full-time job. This adjunct teaching business is a racket. If I insist on writing, I can do so on the weekends. “You have a masters degree,” he yells. “You should not be waiting tables!”
“The smartest people I know wait tables!” I yell back.
He pauses, confused. “Why are they doing that?”
I explain that I make more money pouring mimosas than I do teaching college students.
Let’s sit quietly for a moment and consider what this says about our culture.
“That’s awful!” my grandpa yells.
“Agreed!” I yell.
“But you need health insurance! A 401K!”
“I have health insurance! And an IRA!”
“But—”
“And I love my job! I love all of my jobs! How many people truly love the work they do?”
“But—”
“And I have time to write—sort of.”
“Megan—”
“And I’m helping people! I think? Maybe? I’m trying!”
My grandpa throws his hands in the air. He’s dramatic like that. Dramatic like me. “Fine,” he says.
“Fine,” I say. “I win!”
“You had to win,” he tells me. “You can’t lose a fight about your own happiness. You can’t lose a fight about your own life.”
26
A guy I loved sank all his money into an RV and asked if I wanted to drive across the country. I wasn’t teaching summer school. And covering two months of brunch shifts was doable, as was a temporary sublet on my apartment. I said sure. I knew I was setting myself up—he wanted adventure and I wanted him—but I decided to take the odds.
That’s what life’s about, right? Risk.
You go over the waterfall. It’s what the waterfall is for!
You drive across the country in an RV. It’s what an RV is for!
“Give me a sign!” I said to the sky, spinning in the courtyard. It was May. May in Chicago is perfection. We made it through a shitty winter and anything is possible.
On his way to pick me up from Michigan, the RV caught on fire.
27/28
I’m standing on Petrin Hill overlooking nighttime Prague, lit up like a miracle. My students brought me here for my birthday: an uphill funicular ride to Restaurant Nebozizek, a glass conservatory in the trees. It had a live piano player. It had delicious food. It had champagne—a lot of it—and at the end of the night, I took my glass on the patio. It was August, warm winded and lovely. The stars in a grid. The city in panorama. I was so desperately in love with this new country, this new life. We’d been there a few months, twenty students and I plus two other teachers, reading and writing and getting lost in the castles and cobblestone. Randy’d needed to staff a Kafka class for the department’s study abroad program and knew I was obsessed/infuriated/hypnotized/a hot mess about the man and his work—in academia, this is referred to as a scholar—and was I perhaps available? Six months later, my students and I were in the back room of Café Montmartre, a tiny coffeehouse off Retezova where Kafka read aloud to his friends. We dug into his writing, his life. We felt him in the walls. We cased his city: his birthplace near St. Nicholas; the Workers Accident Insurance Institute now a hotel; the memorial on Dusni Street designed by Jaroslav Rona (it’s weird as hell and totally perfect); his grave at the New Jewish Cemetery; and, my favorite, the blue house at number Twenty-Two, Zlata Ulicka, where he wrote stories for A Country Doctor and, later, The Castle. I stood in that tiny, near claustrophobic room and let myself dream.
That night on Petrin Hill, I came up with a plan: I’d go back to Chicago, back to the Bongo Room and ask for my job. I’d live off what I made teaching and save my tips. Then, after teaching next summer’s study abroad session, I’d stay in Prague and write until my money ran out.
Later, I took the funicular back down to the city and got a tattoo to remind me of that decision, the stars in a grid on my inner right biceps.
Listen: never get a tattoo when you’re drunk.
28
A week later at Café Montmartre during Kafka class, my students and I arrived at the end of Diaries—“more and more fearful as I write”—with the power punch of a last sentence that had so long been my lifeline:
“You too have your tools.”
But by the end of the paragraph I realized we had a different translation.
It didn’t say tools.
It said weapons.
28
Because I’ll be moving to Prague at the end of the year, I decide that dating is a waste of time. Why put in all the effort of building a relationship? I have my friends and if I need sex, I’ll go have sex! That’s a thing you can just do, right?* Just go out there and have sex?*
But then something crazy happened.
28
I fell in love.
28
New country, new neighborhood, new flat: from Wenceslas Square, take the green line metro to Náměstí Míru. You’ll see the Church of St. Ludmila, an enormous neo-Gothic castle-like place with a wide courtyard. Cross the tram line and hang a left onto Belgická. A half block on the right is an Internet café—40 Kč for an hour, which in 2004 was a little over a dollar. Another block forward and the streets change from asphalt to cobblestone. On the right is Medůza’s, the café where I wrote every morning and on the next corner, a Mexican place called Žlutá pumpa with raspberry margaritas. A half block from there, on the opposite side of the street—see the pink building? The top floor right was ours.
I liked that word.
Ours.
There, Christopher and I built a relationship. If he said or did something that I didn’t understand, I couldn’t go out for margaritas with my girlfriends and say, “What does that mean?” I had to ask him.
There’s so much bullshit in our beginnings, so much baggage and fear.
For better or worse, we faced each other.
29
I had more sex than I’ve ever had in my life.
29
I wrote more than I ever had in my life.
29
I remembered how to start thunderstorms with my brain.
29
We had time to do the things you never have time for. Slow cooking paella, daylong getting lost in the winding streets around Old Town Square, reading a whole book in a single day, watching all four Alien movies back-to-back. Christopher, for reasons that now elude us both, decided we would watch all the war movies: Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Good Morning, Vietnam, The Thin Red Line. For weeks, our flat was thick with aggression and despair. I cracked on Platoon, rolled up on the bathroom floor and unable to stop crying.
Here is my privilege: I could turn away.
29
Our friend Marketa told us: “It is okay. George Bush is not your fault. The world knows he stole the election. It will be fine in November.”
29
Alitalia airlines had some sort of financial problem and offered ridiculous deals. We’re talkin’ thirty dollars roundtrip to cross the continent. We went to London, where I had a panic attack on the tube; Paris, which we forgot to leave (i.e., we went to the airport and di
scovered our tickets were for three days earlier); and Italy. I wanted to remember Florence, to show Christopher its museums, to walk into those stores on Via Roma and buy dresses for my nineteen-year-old self. I promised her. I promised.
Those stores, of course, were Gucci, Miu Miu, Stefanel.
Ten more years, I decided. For sure I’ll have money by then! That’s when you have money, right? Thirty-nine?
29
That September, a group of Chechen terrorists took more than a thousand little kids hostage, holding them for three days before Russian forces stormed the school. This event received twenty-four-hour nonstop coverage from the entire international news media. Christopher and I sat in front of our TV, watching horrified as the Russian government deliberated and the eventual, horrible climax of hundreds of children running to safety.
At one point I called my mother back in Michigan. “Aren’t you watching CNN?” I asked, trying to get a hold of my words ’cause I was crying so hard.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “They’re interviewing Bill Clinton about his new book.”
That’s when I understood how naive I was. That I hadn’t considered the difference between domestic and international new sources. What gets covered depends on where you are, and who’s writing. And who’s editing. Proximity, nationality, economics, and politics are all lenses used to frame the truth. Another example: the media I’d consumed since leaving the United States was so fervently anti-Bush that the possibility of him winning the 2004 election hadn’t occurred to me.
The Wrong Way to Save Your Life Page 12
