saw all the copies of O'Flannery on our desks and he picked up my copy and said, 'Who's making you read this shit?' It was so perfect. Professor Nobody just stood there pretending he hadn't heard Malison's remark. He just stood there and tucked in his shirt. He couldn't even own up to it! I think Malison hates O'Flannery for the same reasons I do, because she's a fascist, a typical bourgeois racist, a judgmental Christian right-wing parrot, and a timid writer who relies on grammar to carry her through the page. I hate O'Flannery, I really do.
Malison's reading was wonderfully assertive. He read a few sections from Rotunda Surf, parts that I had practically memorized even though the book only came out last month. He never numbers his pages, but I was with him for a good quarter-inch at the beginning of the second part. I just mouthed the words while he read. I wasn't doing it for attention; it's just a reflex action because I know his work, all of it, so well. After the reading, Professor Nobody opened the floor for questions, which was a mistake because it's always the stupidest people who ask the most questions. For example, one guy who's not even in the writing seminar raised his hand and said, 'I tried reading your third novel but gave up when I realized that all of the characters were going by the name
Oh right, he had a problem with it.
Malison was great. He just looked at this guy and said, 'Well, if it's giving you trouble, then I guess I'll just have to rewrite it in simpler terms. I thought I might continue work on my new project, but if
The questions continued and were all incredibly stupid until I asked Malison if the tall blond character inRotunda Surf was based on his former girlfriend Cassandra Lane, the fashion model. I just wanted Malison to realize that there are some of us who understand his life and work. My New York friend Russell Marks had gone to the Foxmore Academy with Cassandra Lane, and he used to fill me in on a lot of details, like what a bitch she really is and how she uses people. Cassandra Lane really put Malison through the wringer over that phony abuse scandal. She'll do anything for media attention. She's not even that pretty.
I asked the question, and Malison looked at me with a lot of pain, a great deal of pain and anguish in his eyes, and said thatRotunda Surf was a work of fiction and that his inspirations were none of anyone's business. A group of people laughed when he said that. I laughed too because I know that, on the surface, my question sounded nosy, but I didn't mean it that way. I realize it would have been impossible for him to open up and really talk about his work in that atmosphere, surrounded by so many people who don't know him the way I do. I can understand Malison's creative process and his life, and that's why I really need to sit down and talk with him. I saw that pain in his eyes. I need to sit him down and let him know that I'm behind him one hundred percent.
After a few more questions, Professor Nobody asked Malison where he saw this postmodern metafictional movement headed, and Malison just picked up his books and papers and said, 'Anywhere but here,' and walked out of the room. He meant anywhere but the small world of academia, but it went right over everyone's head. After he walked out, I picked up my shit and walked out too, but Malison had already left the building. I haven't been able to find him anywhere.
9:19. I'm sitting in the cocktail lounge of The Chesterton, a grotesque, brassy place ironically named Reflections, which erroneously suggests that I will see myself mirrored in this bar or any of its customers. I sit at a table, pull out my journal, and, when the waitress arrives, I order a boilermaker. The waitress acts shocked that a woman might order a beer and a shot rather than some frozen daiquiri product, and I shoot her a look that sends her off toward a group of people she thinks might find her cute.
Malison's reading is starting right at this moment, I can sense it. I think it's very appropriate, very revealing that right now he is standing before an audience of people who don't understand him, and at the same time I'm sitting in this bar full of people who, I am certain, have no hope of ever knowing or understanding me. It's a lonely feeling, but I'd rather be alone than stoop to a lower level of understanding. The waitress brings me my shot and my beer and gives me a look while I empty the shot glass into the beer. She acts as though I'm spoiling all her fun. Whatever fun she might have working in a place like this, leading her dull, unexamined life, she is more than welcome to. She can have it. The customers are all looking at me the same way. They can't deal with anyone who isn't into their Mr. and Mrs. Jovial scene, with someone who takes a hard look at the crumbling building blocks that are the foundation for their wasted suburban lives. With someone like me.
This place reminds me of the bar that Malison depicted inMagnetic Plugs, except the people are fully dressed and they're not drinking out of gas cans. The waitress returns and I order another boilermaker.
10:20. I'm sitting in the fancy lounge area of the women's rest room here at The Chesterton. I shouldn't have had that champagne on top of those boilermakers, but if I sit very quietly I'm sure I can pull myself together. Actually, I'm not even embarrassed about throwing up in the bar. I was having problems putting my feelings into words, so vomiting was actually a very ironic, very appropriate gesture. I'm not going to let it get me down, but still I curse that crippled man for distracting me the way he did. Malison's lecture is probably over by now, and he'll be heading back to his room. Thank God I brought that change of clothes. It's not my favorite outfit but, seeing as my first choice is spattered with vomit, I guess I'll have to go with the second choice.
That old guy is probably still sitting in the bar, using his nap-kin to mop up the vomit and trying to convince the waitress that the world is good at heart. He'd come over to my table and asked to join me, and I looked up from my writing and said, 'Go ahead, sit down,' not because I wanted company, but be-cause he obviously needed to sit someplace and all the other chairs were taken. This man walked with two canes and his legs were twisted. Each foot pointed off in a different direction as though they had been attached sideways. He sat down and asked the waitress to bring us her finest bottle of champagne. The waitress asked, 'What are you celebrating?' and the man just spread out his arms and looked back and forth across the room. I said, 'You're celebrating this bar?' and he said, 'No, I'm celebrating life!' I should have gotten up and left; but instead I saw this man as someone I can use for a piece I'm working on. He's someone whom Malison would describe as a self-hypnotic, one of those people who convinces himself that his life is meaningful only because the truth would destroy him. It's as if someone has hypnotized him by waving a turd back and forth in front of his face and saying, 'You're getting sleepy. . sleepy.'
When the champagne arrived at the table, the crippled man grinned from ear to ear. And I mean that literally. He had the widest mouth I have ever seen on a human. I think he could have fit a saucer in there with no problem. He had this wide mouth and sandy blond hair growing in tufts along the sides of his head. The top of his head was bald and covered with spots and freckles. He made a big production of popping the cork off the champagne bottle, and the people at the other tables all looked our way and cheered him on. Everyone acted as if this were important and memorable. The man poured two glasses and then noticed my journal and said, 'So, I see you're a writer.' This would be like me noticing his two canes leaning against the table and saying, 'So, I see you're a cripple,' but I bit my tongue and just said, 'Yes, I'm a writer.' The man said he'd never written much besides letters but that reading was his greatest pleasure. Then he rattled off a list of the writers he admired fussy, middle-of-the-road contemporaries and I said, 'Aren't all those people dead?' and he grabbed at his heart and said, 'I hope not!' It went right over his head. He asked who I like reading, and when I answered, 'Malison,' he winced. You'd think I'd spat in his drink. It pissed me off. I don't need this man's approval to readanything. I'm not here to live up to his expectations. I'd rather die than live up to his expectations. His attitude was getting on my nerves, and I should have just packed up my shit and left. I asked if he'd actually read any of Malison's work, and he said as a matter of fact, yes, he had. He said he'd recently found himself on a Greyhound bus to St. Louis and had discovered too late that the attache case containing all his books had been stored below along with his luggage. He said he'd spent eight hours reading a copy ofRotunda Surf he'd found abandoned on the seat beside him. He used that word,abandoned, to suggest that someone had deliberately walked away from a hardcover Malison.
This man proceeded to question what he called Malison's 'defensiveness' and said he doubted the wisdom ofRotunda Surf's prologue. It is supremely ironic that this man, this joker with the canes and the wide mouth, would question Malison. Who does he think he is? That prologue is one of my favorite parts of the whole book. In it
