Sarah Anne Strickley
THE VISITING WRITER
The visiting writer remarks that everyone in your town looks like they shop at The Limited. Fortunately, you realize this is not a compliment before telling her your skirt is from Express. When she wonders aloud what there is to do in a place like this one, you ask her if she’s aware she’s in the weed capital of the state. She finds this amusing, suggests she’d be open to sampling the local wares, and you feel as though you have passed an important test and may now proceed to the next round. What’s the next round? You’re too self-defeatist to imagine it involves toking up the visiting writer, but even you don’t anticipate that she’ll be out until dawn with your asshole writer boyfriend. You wait for him to reappear at his apartment for hours and then decide you can’t blame him. You’d do the same if the roles were reversed.
The visiting writer is a mess when it comes to technology, so could you please extricate his prepared talk from a compact disc and print the files for him? In the end, it’s one page of notes and fifty pages of wingdings and you have to pay for it with your credit card. He calls you a miracle worker and ignores your grotesque pit stains—perhaps because he’s aware that they are the marks of your exertion. You have run from computer lab to computer lab in search of someone, anyone, who can print from a CD for the visiting writer. He winds up tossing the talk and playing his guitar on stage while musing for an hour, and is celebrated as an unconventional voice in the local weekly. He’s probably the most famous of all the visiting writers and he doesn’t consider himself a writer—at least not in the conventional sense—and that should tell you something about writing. Does it, though?
The visiting writer is famous for playing pool and brings her own cue in a long black baguette of a bag—one that makes her look like a rumpled assassin as she walks through the regional airport. You have memorized her most famous poem, but you’ll never tell her this. You won’t even manage to tell her your name. I’m your ride, you will say, and then drive in freighted silence for an hour. When your boss tells her that you’ve purchased every one of her books (and also the collected works), you will want to vanish in a sulfuric flash, but instead you’ll manage to ask her why she keeps revising her poems after she publishes them. She’ll flare her nostrils and then say she guesses she’s obsessive. You know you’re a real dickhead for preferring the earlier versions, but you do. If she keeps on this way, reading her next collected works will be like eating a laser-printed sandwich: a non-nutritional facsimile. But it won’t matter. No one reads poetry, she tells the audience.
The visiting writer is suffering from chronic fatigue, but knows she’s expected to speak for thirty minutes, so she will do that and nothing more. No Q&A, no book signing. You sympathize, but you’re making an embarrassingly small amount of money to do this job and (because you facilitated the completion of her paperwork) you know that she will receive six thousand dollars for doing this event. You have some opinions about all of this but conceal them carefully behind a mask that conveys only your awareness of your own irrelevance and nothing else. No problem, you say. You have purchased her book about courtesans and have brought it along, and it’s embarrassing to have it there in your hands because she has clearly said she will not sign. She’s very tired. But then she signs your book and she signs all the books and stands and chats for hours.
The visiting writer has heard you’re in a band and wants to hear you sing. You ask: Like, here in the car? Like, right now? Yes, he wants you to sing in the car. Right now. Why not? You explain that your singing in the band is more like screaming than singing. He’s disappointed. He knows precisely what you mean by this and was hoping you were a different kind of singer. You seemed to him like a very different kind. Holy shit, you think. Are you going to sing for this poet? You’re ashamed of your desire to sing and your literary ambitions. You’re ashamed of your clothes and the shittiness of your car. You’re ashamed to be dating a man who has an ankle tattoo of the alphabet in comic sans. In the car with the visiting writer you have a chance to move beyond this shame. But you won’t, you don’t.
The visiting writer is sober now but attends the afterparty, and you stand on the porch with him and watch fire dancers spinning lit orbs in the park very near where some of his most famous stories are set. You will say nothing, but both of you will stand observing for a long while and this will feel revelatory, like being in the movie version of his life. The visiting writer is, you would say if asked (though no one asks), the writer most important writer to you, and she asks you for a cigarette and you somehow have one. Bliss! The visiting writer tells the other visiting writer that he likes dogs and they bond deeply over dogs. The visiting writer refuses to have dinner with the other visiting writer because he’s a known sexist. The visiting writer tells the audience that he’s in the middle of a terrible divorce and his estranged wife’s relatives might be in the audience in a spying capacity; within three months, he’s married to the other visiting writer. They make a TV show together.
The visiting writer asks for three things: a bottle of decent vodka, a typewriter, and a carton of unfiltered cigarettes. The visiting writer happens to know the writer who insulted you at the conference. He’s such a piece of shit, she says. How does he keep scoring these genius girlfriends? You agree that this is one of life’s great mysteries. The visiting writer says that she’s pissed that she hasn’t been invited to Edinburgh Book Festival. The visiting writer says that she’s pissed her agent didn’t fight harder for hardcover. The visiting writer says that everyone is going to Hollywood because the money is too good, but then they’re miserable because they can’t stop making so much money. The visiting writer asks where you’d like to live. Right here, you say. He clarifies: I mean, if you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? You say: Okay, how about Hawaii?
You’re the visiting writer, and a literature professor is driving you around town, pointing out the highlights, and almost gets you killed by driving into the path of a freight truck. You think: I don’t want to die in a place named after a lawn sport. You’re the visiting writer and are warned not to talk about abortion. Why would you talk about abortion? You’re the visiting writer and you have been told that you will receive one hundred dollars for a one-hour teaching session, but are then expected to teach a five-hour session on “staying inspired.” At the end, you are compelled to do a spontaneous YouTube video for a fundraising effort. You refuse and are blacklisted until the organization collapses and a new staff arrives with no institutional memory. You’re the visiting writer and one of the other visiting writers says that your definition of experiment in literature is problematic. You agree to look into that.
You’re the visiting writer and you have a device that plugs into the ass-end of your phone so that you can swipe credit cards at events, but you never use it. Not even once. You have all of the cash apps. You wish to God you’d thought to set up different usernames. At least it’s something to joke about when the women buying your books (it’s always women) tell you to look for usernames containing dorky book puns. You bond over your devotion to slutty Mr. Darcy memes. The first time you do a book club, they ask you why your stories are so depressing. Your agent has asked this same question, so you’re ready with an answer: It’s art?
You’re the visiting writer and half of the audience is there for a D&D event (scheduling mishap) but you make them laugh, so they buy your book, but then they get serious and kick you out. Your kids cry through most of the reading. Your kids rush the podium during the reading and it’s not cute. Your kids share a pair of headphones and watch PBS Kids on the floor during the reading. Your kids see your face on the poster, and you let them believe you’re famous for an hour, and then you explain that your kind of famous is a different kind of famous than other kinds of famous. So, you’re not really famous? they ask. You tell them that when they grow up, they’ll get to show their friends their names in the acknowledgment pages you’ve published at the end of your books. Won’t that be cool? you ask. As you’re saying it, you realize that it doesn’t sound very cool at all. It sounds boring. But they nod because they love you.
You’re the visiting writer and you present to an audience of seven in an auditorium that contains two hundred seats. You’re the visiting writer and you Zoom into a reading at which you, the other visiting writers, the host, and three others are the only attendees. You’re the visiting writer and the other visiting writer is so disappointed by the turnout that during the reading he openly contemplates the point of doing these kinds of events. It’s now your turn to read, and you scrap your plans to read your most depressing story and read the funny one instead. Spoiler alert: it’s also a depressing story. With jokes! You make an internal note to write a less depressing book in the future.
You’re the visiting writer and you always thought you’d love signing books, but your signature is inarguably disappointing. How did this happen? You wonder if it’s too late to learn how to sign better. Is there a class you might take? You’re the visiting writer and after the reading someone emails you to say that you were way better than the other visiting writer. You wonder if he has received a similar missive in the night. You’re the visiting writer and you wake up in pain after a reading and have to have your gallbladder removed. Post-surgery, you review the video of the event online to look for signs that a medical disaster is about to befall you, but all you see is your decision to go with full eyeliner for this one.
You’re the visiting writer, but you’re not that visiting writer. A man insists that you are, in fact, that writer, and he wants you to sign her book. You think about doing it—why not?—but then you firm up your face. This is not my book, you say. He stalks off, furious. Later, at that same event, a man wants to know how you’ve published where you’ve published because he would like to publish there too. He gives you a soiled business card. He wants you to call him to tell him how to publish where you’ve published. Your parents call because someone in India has called their house with an offer to republish your book with a bigger press and better distribution. It’s a scam. How did they get our number? they ask. You explain Google. One of your lousy ex-boyfriends googles you and discovers that you have published books and wants to apologize, if you’re open to that.
You’re the other visiting writer and the graduate assistant refers to you as “the wife.” You’re the visiting writer and you stay up all night with the other visiting writer and in the morning the other guests at the BnB complain about the fact that you drank all of the wine and were loud. You are amazed at your ability to effortlessly brush off the acrimony in your hangover. You compliment the eggs and ask if anyone else saw the ghost on the second floor. No one did. You’re the visiting writer and one of the final questions during the Q&A is about what you’re working on now. You think about the visiting writer who makes a habit of talking about an obviously fabricated project in order to protect his real work because he doesn’t want to talk it into oblivion, but then you admit that you’re writing little essays. What about? You have no fucking idea. I light a candle, you say. I read a little poetry. And then I do the thing.
SARAH ANNE STRICKLEY is the author of three books of prose: Fall Together, Sister, and Incendiary Devices. She holds graduate degrees from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Cincinnati. She teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville and is the faculty editor of Miracle Monocle.
