To AWP Go, and Pray Against Snow

Those who go to DC may never catch their flight home, as winter storms mount, but hey, there's faith.

I think it will be worth it to attend AWP-- last year I went to Denver, where I was reading for Copper Nickel, and it was well-worth being there if only because I met a couple people and nearly got a job with the Richard Hugo House in Seattle. This year I'm not even reading or paneling, just going to meet a few friends, attend a few parties, talk to editors of the magazines I've been in or have work forthcoming from, and all the same, I think it will be worth it. I can't exactly put my finger on WHY I think going is helpful: there are awful things about AWP, not limited to the hunger, the legions of the aspiring and all the ways the moderately (or wildly) more successful assert their superiority. The whole thing can be icky. But there's also something about encountering the thousands and thousands of people who want to be literary artists or are: these are people who still care about literature.

And that gives me hope.

Not hope that I'm likely to rise to the top of the AWP hierarchy (what a terrible thing to aspire to anyway), or ever achieve any significant success in the scrum that is contemporary American fiction, but hope in the sense that, for all these people, writing still matters. We're in agreement, and I find a comfort in that even as I try to avoid the despair that's attendant when you realize just how many people out there are 'writers', or want to be.

Lately, I feel emptied. I go to write and am desperate to grasp something, anything, and the result is addled lyric, nonsense, sentimentality, narrative concerning lack of narrative: throwaway musing, self-indulgent posing, throat-clearing, drek. All of it sad, of course, and angsty, and really, when it comes down to it, pretty fucking pathetic. I know that Twain said that you reach a point where there is nothing left, and then you wait and fill back up again; I don’t even doubt that I’ll be inspired again, that I have more work left in me. I know it’s a bleak cold winter here, and out the window the weather lacks the decency to choose rain or snow and does miserable both at once, and under such circumstances my track record is not good. I know this feeling of narrowing, of teetering on the edge of something so vast and bleak it begins to seem preferable to step than to maintain balance. I know this sounds terrible, and so dear friends, do not worry, I am not speaking of suicide or of seasonal-affective disorder or depression—I’m not unstable. I’m just talking about this sense I have that if I don’t change my here and how, if I don’t find words for something, this bereftness, this malaise, will become the better part of me. Of course, you require nadir to swing up again, and I’m smart enough to recognize that if I think my small sorrows are so great, I should look around me at what others must suffer and buck up. That’s little comfort on an afternoon like this, when so much falls from the sky and every disappointment and longing is amplified, and you sit at the keyboard mouthing words like want, need, please, begging for reprieve in single syllables that speak only of absence.

Anyuta continued-- The Cat, in full

There was the matter of the cat. I do not like cats, am thoroughly a dog person, untrusting of the cat’s dainty fickleness and indifference: a cat does not need man, but only tolerates him for food, shelter and change of litter—contingent affection, smug, purring self-regard, those are the cat’s qualities. Anyuta’s cat was the worst. His name was Takahashi, after an anime reference I never understood—suffice to say that the character in question was no doubt obnoxious and quite mad, as these were the qualities most apparent in the cat. He was a thin tabby with a patch of white over his left eye that gave him a look of permanent derangement, and he was neurotic, lean and full of a mean, spoiled self-regard: he loved himself almost as much as he hated everyone but Anyuta. I was usurper in his space, and he delighted in finding ways to let me know how he felt: if I was making out with Anyuta, he would insert himself between us and find a way to present his furry little ass to me, his tail swishing in my face; he would attack my feet if I wore socks, digging his sharp little claws into the soft flesh; worst of all, he would pounce on my head in the middle of the night, his claws tearing my pillow with pent-up savagery as he choked me with his furry chest. And he even intruded on our intimate moments—no sooner would I be into it with a head of steam than I’d look up and find Takahashi watching me with disdain, that white-patched eye giving him the look of a raised eyebrow as he evaluated technique and pronounced it hopelessly inadequate. He’d been the man of the house before I came and he was confident he’d outlast me—after he made me pay for my intrusion. And so I did what any self-respecting man who was so challenged might do: I declared war.

Of course, the war was fought in secret—Anyuta adored Takahashi, loved him for all the reasons I hated him. “Kawaai!” she’d exclaim in Japanese (Cute!) when he attacked my feet, jabbing his sharp claws into the tender flesh with obvious pleasure as I withheld curses. She took his insertion of body between us at every intimate moment as Takahashi’s sanction of the relationship—she got the cat’s grinning face as I got the ass-end, and in the absence of a tail whipped across the cheek, perhaps it was possible to imagine affection in Takahashi’s devious actions. She adored the cat, would seize him by the shoulders and fly him through the room with adoring, exultant exclamations: “Such a pretty, clever fellow!” she’d cry as I watched his beady little eyes swell up with the praise and affection. When she returned him to the ground, he’d walk past me with a sort of feline swagger, a little kick to the paw, his white-patched eye almost winking. He knew we were at war. But I intended to win.

Of course, it was hard to strike a real blow when my human actions couldn’t be played off as unintentional feline behavior. Takahashi could rend my feet to ribbons and it was instinct (“Your feet in those socks do look like little rats,” Anyuta said when I complained about the attacks), but if I kicked him off, I was abusing the poor cat. If I shut him from the room so that I could have at least one unobserved moment, he would mewl piteously, so that Anyuta would be distracted and insist we let him in to continue his voyeurism. And so I had to wait for her to go before I had my chance. As soon as she was out the door, however, it was on—I would try to shut him in the bedroom so that I didn’t have to tolerate his presence. The first time I had the satisfaction of his mews of frustration and angst, but he was no simpleton. The next day, as soon as she was out the door he scampered away from me when I neared and there was no cornering him; as I finally had him he darted through my legs and I turned so fast I hit my elbow on the razor corner of the television stand and so, bleeding, I had to take a breather and wash the wound, and there, with the tap running, I struck on it: water. Cats hate water, and surely Takahashi was no different. And so I filled a butter container, removed my shoes, and sat on the couch with my socked feet extended as bait, wiggling my toes in as seductive a manner as I could manage. Takahashi had been watching the preparation from the coffee table across the room, licking his paws to ensure his razor claws were clear to slice me, but now that I was ready for him, he showed no interest at all in my feet. I turned my ankles in circles, wiggled my toes and called his name, and he regarded me with a puzzled look of disdain, as if to say, you think I’d be troubled for those feet.

“Come on, kitty, kitty,” I said, redoubling my efforts.

He closed his eyes.

“Here, cat!” I called, and he opened the white-patched eye just a smidge in acknowledgement and then closed it.

“Damnit!” I said, standing quickly with no regard for the brimming butter container, which sloshed across my lap, soaking the front of my jeans as if I’d wet my pants. Disgusted, I set the butter container down and stalked to the bedroom for a dry pair of jeans. The moment I had my jeans down about my ankles, I saw a furry blur from the corner of my eye and then felt the claws pierce my foot. “Get—off!” I kicked at him, tripped on the jeans and crashed to the floor while Takahashi retreated to the corner, nose twitching, one paw raised threateningly. Slowly, I sat and kicked free of my jeans and found a dry pair and shimmied them on as Takahashi watched smugly. When I was dressed again I stood and backed out of the bedroom, my eyes locked with his, and the moment I cleared the door I rushed to slam it but the cat was already through and past me. In the living room, he slowed and glanced back at me over his shoulder before leisurely making his way to the coatrack where I’d hung my new overcoat. Rearing up on his hind legs, he began to scratch it with his paws and purr. Slowly, as if I was ignoring him, I picked up the better container and made my way to the tap and filled it, the scratching of his claws suggesting the damage that was being done to my coat. With the brimming container raised I stepped back into the living room where he was still at it, got as close as I could, but just as I threw the water the front door opened and I looked to the door and so missed Takahashi as he dodged, doused the coat, and heard Anyuta’s cry of horror at my assault.

“What are you doing!” she cried, running to Takahashi and scooping him into her arms.

“You abusive bastard!” she said, retreating from me and stroking Takahashi’s pleased face as he sat dry and coddled, his white eye winking. I looked at my soaked pea coat, at Anyuta’s accusing eyes. “Is this what you do when I go? I just left a book I needed, and here I’m gone five minutes and already you’re torturing my baby.”
I began to speak, and went silent, trying to imagine how I could explain what had actually happened, how my feet were scratched, my elbow bloodied, jeans soaked, coat wet and dignity gone and the cat now a blameless victim, and I knew there was nothing true I could say.

“It was just a game, Annie—I would never have actually poured water on him,” I said. “That would be cruel. It was all a chase. I was trying to miss.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you an idiot? You were throwing water all about the house? What kind of—game—is that?”

“A harmless one,” I said. “You should see how much water I got on myself—I already soaked one pair of jeans. But Takahashi was just having so much—fun...“

She didn’t really believe me, but my soaked pants and Takahashi’s dry hide convinced her just enough; as for me, from that day on I accepted defeat and bought thick wool socks and took the tail-lashing when it came. I have abandoned only a few battles in my life, but there was no victory to be had over so nimble a foe as Takahashi. In fact, the grace with which I suffered his attentions seemed to strip them of their pleasure—now that I didn’t kick and curse, he left off my feet, and when I closed my eyes and refused to acknowledge his bedroom presence, the self-involved encouplement of humans seemed to bore him, and often enough I’d open my eyes to find he’d turned tail and walked off. I tolerated him until he had no effective weapon left—and it was at that point, finally, that he stopped his harassment, and would even come to me sometimes when Anyuta was gone and rub against my leg until I scratched the hard-to-reach spot between his nose and eyes—now he needed me. I had outcatted him.