Edmond Manning's Blog, page 8

modern, urban Thai

fascinating characters

I’ll be back, John.

Like millions of other kids in high school, I wasn’t invited to the cool kid parties. Or, any party. For our senior trip, we visited a remote resort in Wisconsin. One afternoon, all my classmates ditched me (and two others) while they partied in the woods. In a class of thirty six (yes, you read that right: thirty and then six), the omission was noted.

I can’t really blame them. My dad taught English at our high school; you can’t party with a teacher’s kid.

Let’s face it. Everyone’s got a boo hoo story about high school rejection, feeling left out and vulnerable. Who knows how many of our stories are valid and reflect reality? But the painful feelings of separation and isolation were real.

Very real.

These surprisingly vigorous feelings made me apprehensive about October’s Gay Romance Literature (GayRomLit) conference. I felt excitement but also dread, like the first day of high school. I knew a handful of writers and readers from the online love we shared, but how would we manage in person when we couldn’t type the acronym ‘LOL?’

What if I showed up and nobody wanted to talk to me?

Would I eat alone in the cafeteria pretending it was exactly what I wanted?

After all, I only wrote one book. Other attending writers published dozens, have more readers, more writing skills, more marketing skills, more of everything. It’s hard not to feel a little insecure around talented people.

Nevertheless, I decided to enjoy myself and be ridiculously me, despite the teenage drama in my head. If I didn’t fit in, so be it. These days, if I am rejected I want it to be because I showed my true self. It matters now, to be my whole self as much as I can for everyone to see.

After preparing for so much rejection, imagine my freshman surprise to be wildly embraced beyond all reasonable expectations. While trying to check in at the host hotel, I ran into twelve or thirteen people I ‘knew’ online. We hugged, chatted, hugged, chatted, and they introduced me to their friends, some of whom said, “Oh sure, I’ve heard of you.”

It took me 45 minutes to check in and get upstairs.

All weekend, instead of waiting to belong, I witnessed writers and readers creating belonging. Come join us. Who are you? Sit at our table. What do you write? Who do you read?

The first conference night, despite feeling overwhelmed and shy, I joined an impromptu lobby party where I experienced iced cake vodka for the first time. These new friends showered me with questions and before long, we traded anecdotes and hilarious flirts as if this was our fourth successful date, the one where we have sex.

Hoping to return the favor later that weekend (and feeling a little guilty for gulping the last of the cake vodka), I purchased a few bottles of flavored vodka myself. Friday night, I boldly invited new friends to meet me in the lobby for a drink around 10:00 p.m. Nothing formal. No guest list. Just show up and pass the word.

A dozen people appeared at 10:00. We found an unlocked hotel ballroom to create our bar. We swilled vodka shots out of plastic cups, everyone saying, ‘Wow, this tastes exactly like cake.’ Conference friends passing by followed our laughter and poked their heads in the open door. Can we come in?

Yes. Stay. Bring your whole self.

I had a lovely conversation with someone who felt challenged by so much extroversion. We toasted with caramel vodka. I met two people I secretly admired, celebs in the GayRomLit world who happened to wander in and opted to stay. I provided lessons in how to devour a chocolate vagina pop and I’m chagrined to recall that someone in the room filmed it with their Smartphone. When I chomped off the top, women in the room screamed in empathetic agony.

Erica from Iceland approached me and shyly asked if she might go to her room and return with several bottles of her country’s liquor. She had been hoping for a secret vodka party just like this one to share with her new friends. A few moments later she returned with a bottle of Brennivin and Opal, two mysterious Icelandic treats.

While I could write paragraphs about each new friend at the Secret Vodka Party and how they blasted their unique flavor of love, I can’t do that for all. But Erica deserves  a shout out. Before the conference, she noted her local GLBT youth center lacked any current fiction, nothing new on the shelves for many years. Budgets for fiction are non-existent. She politely asked GayRoomLit authors to donate a hard copy and she would take them back to Iceland.

Seventy authors cheerfully agreed.

Erica paid for the shipping or dragged them in her luggage.

I was proud and grateful to co-host with her.

The Opal was a huge success because it tasted so awful.

Everyone who partook immediately grimaced at the taste of bitter, hard licorice and some other flavor akin to wheat. After the initial taste and involuntary reaction of saying, “OH GOD,” the taster inevitably smacked his lips together a few more times, experiencing a more pleasant sensation and then would say, “That was terrible. Pour me another shot.”

Erica laughed freely, happy to talk about home and the many uses for this strange liquor.

More people arrived and we welcomed them eagerly, found them chairs and poured them shots. We laughed about books, sex, writing habits, and people we admired sitting two chairs away. As more found their way to us, I said to my friend Anne, “How does everyone know we’re here?”

“Oh sorry,” she said cheerfully, “I tweeted that you were hosting a secret vodka party. Told everyone to come.”

Then, she resumed crocheting a penis.

About this time, one of the conference organizers pulled me out into the hallway to look me in the eye and say, “This is your party. You’re responsible for this room. You. Clean up when it’s over.”

While she is a powerful and imposing woman, I was not intimidated. No, her message was not a threat, but loving trust. “I trust you. I believe in you. Make it right.”

In that moment, I realized I could check something off my Bucket List:  host a high school party.

I can’t say I’ve spent much time fretting over high school parties I never attended.

I had friends in high school and I now understand they saw more of my true self than I imagined. Still, some days I feel I missed something important, a piece of American Life that passed me by.

As I returned to our party room, several faces sought mine to make sure things were okay. I nodded. All was well. Although not everyone I had come to love at GayRom Lit attended the Secret Vodka Party, I felt warm to experience so much rich, loving acceptance in one room. Strangers and friends laughing, drinking, sharing vulnerable stories, sharing their true selves.

I heard someone gag on Erica’s Opal drink and say, “Ugh. Awful. Pour me one more.”

In the corner, Anne smiled and crocheted a penis.

I knew as soon as I popped the candy into my mouth that something was wrong.

Football Mom and Urban Cowboy’s eyes bugged out at me in surprise and I realized that I had somehow committed a serious airplane faux pas.

True, I hadn’t really been listening to their spirited conversation for the past few minutes. I nodded occasionally when they included me, but the pilot had announced his intention to land our plane soonish and I very much wanted to finish reading my book before touch down.  When I saw the look on both of their faces, I decided I had better listen with greater attention to see if I could discern what candy-related social gaffe I had just made.

The flight from Phoenix back to Minneapolis started out pleasantly enough. I sat in the aisle seat and the woman in the middle seat gushed her eagerness to watch her son play college football for St. Cloud the next day, earning her the plane name Football Mom. She was proud of her son and decided to show her support by flying in for his first home game. I liked her. Before take off, she announced her intention to sleep most of the flight, which meant I felt more talkative, knowing I wouldn’t have to sustain conversation the entire time.

The guy at the window leaned into our conversation a few times and said, “Yup.” He wore a country-style shirt unbuttoned enough to see chest hair, which earned him the plane name Urban Cowboy.

The plane took off.

She slept.

Urban Cowboy stared out the window.

I read.

Toward the end of the flight she awoke and about that time I suddenly smelled something suspicious. Marijuana. I smelled it strong. Could someone really be smoking weed on a packed-to-capacity airplane? Couldn’t you get arrested for that? I wondered if the air marshal would make a dramatic bust in front of all of us.

I sniffed the air.

Football Mom watched me wrinkle my nose a few times and sniff like a bloodhound before saying, “What? What’s going on?”

I said, “Nothing. I thought I smelled something.”

I went back to reading.

She kept needling me, saying, “What did you think you smelled? Do you still smell it?”

The marijuana smell overcame me again and so I said, “There! Can you smell that? Do you smell weed?”

She inhaled deeply as if the flight attendant just delivered homemade butternut squash soup to her fold-down tray, which caught the attention of Urban Cowboy. He said, “What’s going on? What are you guys doing?”

Football Mom said, “This guy smells marijuana.”

Urban Cowboy joined our sniffing contest and honestly, the three of us looked like freaks huffing stale airplane air. I’m surprised the people in Row 35 didn’t turn around to yell at us to knock it the hell off.

Urban Cowboy said, “Where’d he smell it? From the front?”

I wasn’t sure what I smelled, a whiff of something long gone at this point, so I downplayed that I smelled anything.

Football Mom said, “Do you know what pot smells like?”

I hesitated. When someone asks me about my familiarity with recreational drugs, I try to avoid answering that question directly and say something vague like, “I went to college in the 80′s” and leave it at that. I may want to run for Senate someday and I’d like to keep my deniability options.

While, yes, I have inhaled, I have never done any drugs harder than that. But I did live in San Francisco for four months and whether you smoke pot or not, merely being in that city is a crash course in all things related to mary jane:  the surprising public places you get away with smoking and household items you can turn into bongs. I once saw a Diet Pepsi can transformed into an effective delivery mechanism with seven punctures. San Franciscans’ ingenuity amazed me. So, yeah, I know the smell of pot.

(Also, I went to college in the 80′s.)

Football Mom was from California and she confessed that she too would recognize marijuana’s distinct odor but she didn’t smell it at that moment. Urban Cowboy chimed in with “Hells yeah, I’d know it” and he did not shy from this direction of this conversation. The two of them began discussing where to find pot, which turned into how to grow pot, and then the maximum quantity of pot you could grow without police detection.

I lost interest.

I wanted to finish my book.

They kept chatting, including me occasionally. I would look up and nod or say, “Yeah, that sounds about right” and go back to reading.

When the captain announced our imminent landing, I pulled out spearmint gum from my camo pants’ side pocket and offered them both something chewable to pop their ears on the way down. They each took a piece and thanked me.

Football Mom dug around in her purse and offered us each a piece of hard candy. She said, “It’s homemade. My friend made it.”

I liked this, this 30,000 foot high gift exchange. We’ll never see each other again. We never exchanged names. But we gave each other little tokens to say, “I enjoyed this time with you.”

The candy was cute, butterscotch-colored, and shaped like a heart. I unwrapped it and popped it into my mouth.

Then, the shocked looks.

So I started listening to their ongoing conversation.

They were still talking about marijuana. Almost fifteen or twenty minutes had passed since our Row 36 sniffing contest, and I had tuned out most of it. But they were still eagerly discussing marijuana and Football Mom was showing off her California medicinal purpose card.

Uh oh.

The candy dissolved on my tongue quickly. It was sweet. Tangy. Almost a hint of herb.

I interrupted their quiet, intense conversation to ask in a hushed tone, “Excuse me, but was this candy laced with marijuana?”

(Who even says, ‘laced with marijuana?’ That’s language from a 1950′s film strip meant to scare sixth-graders.)

Football Mom looked at me with big eyes and said, “Yes. It was.”

I said, “Oh.”

I didn’t know what to say. The candy had already dissolved on my tongue.

We were all quiet for a moment.

I said, “Am I about to get really high?”

With equal solemnity, she said, “Yes. You are.”

I nodded and faced the front. We still had another fifteen minutes or so to fly (pilots make that landing announcement roughly twenty to twenty-five minutes before touch down). I was about to be balls-out stoned in a flying metal box full of people.

Not. Good.

I turned to her and said, “I guess you’re not the air marshal on this flight, huh?”

With a smirk, she said, “I guess you’re not either.”

On the plus side, I now understood why their eyes popped open wide. When she gave me her special candy, she had no expectation I would instantly pop it into my mouth. Who knows — she may have even said, “Don’t eat this until you’re at home,” or some other implied warning a few minutes earlier to which I absently replied, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” I probably should have been listening with greater attention to the conversation.

But who gives pot candy to a stranger on an airplane? Hell, who brings pot candy on an airplane? I didn’t even know you could, I dunno, ‘candy it up.’ I thought you could only bake it into cookies and brownies.

Like guilty teenagers, Urban Cowboy and Football Mom ditched me as soon as we disembarked, and it was probably the smart thing to do. I was already acting weird. I walked by every TSA agent thinking to myself, ‘Stay cool. Stay cool. Don’t do anything stupid.’ For me, these thoughts are generally the precursor to my doing something unbelievably stupid. I don’t need marijuana to make a suspicious idiot of myself. I do that quite well on my own, thank you.

At one point, I ordered myself not to sweat.

I held my shit together until baggage claim, when I started giggling. I mean, c’mon. All those same-looking black bags spin around the silver, serpentine circle like black, stuffed sausages riding a carnival snake’s back. Everyone stared at the show with exhausted eyes, blearily watching those same rotating bags spin around and around, as if reluctant to pick a sausage and go home…it was all so ridiculous.

So I started laughing.

Yup. I was baked.

Took a cab home, of course, and managed to give my cab driver the right address. I stayed conspicuously quiet, admiring the trees and pretty, pretty lights flashing by.

Out of habit, I called Mom when I got home right away. She likes to know the plane did not crash. As we chatted, she told an anecdote from her experience at the hairdresser earlier in the week and the story made me cry. Weeping over her hairdresser story made me realize I should probably not be on the phone with my mom while I was baked out of my gourd, so I excused myself, promising to call her the next day. I decided to go sit on the back porch under my gazebo and study the twinkling lights.

So pretty. So very pretty.

I imagine there are several morals you can draw from this tale, including the obvious ‘don’t take candy from a stranger,’ an adage usually reserved for 10-year-olds and not 45-year-old men. Meh. Too obvious. Perhaps one might say, “Listen to the conversations you’re involved in,” and that’s a good one, I guess.

I think my take-away here is to always take breath mints to baggage claim because you never know when you’re going to feel the overwhelming urge to hug strangers and say, “Is it me or does the luggage carousel look a silver snake carrying rotating sausages?”

As I sit here typing late at night, the outcome of Minnesota’s Marriage Amendment is not known.

If it passes, our Minnesota constitution is updated to clarify marriage in our state can only mean one man, one woman. Many of my gay friends, especially those in significant relationships, are holding their collective breath, awaiting Minnesota voters’ decision tonight. I know this is important. I get what is at stake. But I can’t help but feel that we’ve already won.

We won.

When I was thirteen years old, I dealt with some of the normal teenage angst — irregular hair growth bursting from previously smooth  surfaces, awkward body odor, and the general fear that I would not survive high school. I had also acquired a unique Catholic angst picked up along the way: I was an abomination before God.

This last one made me really sad because I didn’t *feel* like an abomination. I didn’t want to be an abomination. I loved my family and loved my friends. I liked reading Charles Dickens in the room my brother and I shared. Sure, I wasn’t always nice to my two sisters, but I was thirteen. I thought that was normal. And yet, I was a teenage abomination because I was gay.

I had scanned a few books on my parents’ bookshelf, Catholic child-rearing books, and discovered that gay children were extremely rare. Good, decent parents shouldn’t worry about that possibility — it probably wouldn’t happen to your family. But if it did, well, start praying. You had an abomination on your hands and a lifetime of grief ahead of you before the fire pits of Hell took your child.

When I was fourteen, mom and dad took us on a fantastic family vacation. We laughed and played games. Mom and dad taught me how to play pinochle. I felt so guilty and miserable at being a Satan-sent influence on these wonderful, loving parents that I chose to spend a lot of time in the motel pool. In the pool, nobody could tell I was bawling. I did not enjoy being an abomination. Until these recent discoveries, I had always believed Jesus was my friend.

While I intellectually and spiritually outgrew the ‘abomination’ years, I can be honest enough with myself to admit I harbored a lingering, translucent feeling that somehow I was “less than.” When presented with the possibility, my straight peers would deny me a place at the table.

This year’s Minnesota marriage amendment changed everything.

My friend Brett campaigned tirelessly, trying to get Minnesota voters to VOTE NO. He spent his Sundays visiting local churches, facilitating difficult conversations as they struggled with their faith and this decision. He drove hours outside the twin cities to attend these events. When I heard him speak eloquently and passionately at a VOTE NO party this summer, I was struck by his grace, his commitment to human rights. His voice cracked with emotion while he spoke. He’s not gay. He’s married with two kids.

My friend Kyle made phone calls for Minnesota United night after night after night. I saw his Facebook posts inviting friends to join him. He works all day and having the equivalent of a ‘telemarketing hobby’ is not his idea of relaxing down time. But he committed. Last weekend at a party, I spoke with his wife Anna and she described her own experience making those discouraging phone calls, the bigoted resistance, how it wore her down.

In August, I attended a training session to facilitate church conversations similar to the ones my friend Brett initiated. I was surrounded by men and women of faith, and I will admit it made me slightly itchy (especially in the hairy places that were formerly smooth). During introductions, I discovered I was one of the few gay people in the room. Most attendees were straight men and women who challenged this proposed amendment “for my kids,” or “for my sister and her partner,” or “my adult son who just came out to us.”

They came for love.

Face it, Minnesota gays, there is no way–NO WAY–that this anti-amendment momentum could have achieved anything like the outraged enthusiasm it has without the committed, inflexible love from thousands of straight allies. Yet, these are the same people I was told would always think of me as an abomination. These were the ones who would turn away in deep disgust once they learned my shameful secret.

They’re the ones changing our civil rights’ trajectory.

In an hour or two we will know the outcome of the Minnesota Marriage Amendment. I will surely be disappointed if it passes. But I’ve already seen too much love to get overly discouraged. To give myself, hope, I will drive through the streets of Minneapolis to reveal in peoples’ front yards the hundreds, no thousands, of VOTE NO signs demanding justice. Yes, we will eventually have to undo that constitutional amendment but we will do it eventually. We will.

In this battle, the ‘we’ included grandmothers. People who believed in God. People who didn’t believe in God. Single lesbians, soccer moms, goofy twenty-somethings who thinks the whole debate is ridiculous. ‘We’ included people who worry about constitutional law and don’t really care much about gays. They were welcome, too. ‘We’ included rogue priests, happy newlyweds, single dads, and gay couples in love for twenty years.

Straight people. Gay people. Every rainbowlicious flavor in between.

I think the real victory here is that the the definition of ‘we’ expanded to include so many, to invite all of us to fight for civil rights and justice. We believe that even former abominations deserve loving marriages.

We won.

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Didn’t you sometimes resent J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series?

She created this fantastic world that sucked us in and made us care about potions class, an old geezer named Dumbledore, and bewitched furniture. But then we had to wait two years for the next installment. Two years. C’mon, woman, give us a fix! I had always wished she provided a tasty tidbit between novels, like a Harry Potter short story.

I’m hoping to provide you with a tasty tidbit.

If you read my first novel, King Perry, thank you. Because it takes me a while to write the king stories at the quality level that makes me happy, I thought you might like a metaphorical snack while waiting for the next full-length novel. My goal is one book per year. If I can get faster than that, well, I will. But for now, let’s count on one book per year.

Roughly six months after the last book release (which hopefully is roughly six month before the next full novel), I will make chapters available from the sixth book in the series, King Daniel.

I know, I know.

You’re thinking,’ Uh…shouldn’t several books come between the first book and the sixth book?’ Yes, of course. But Vin Vanbly’s tale is odd and the telling of his stories must also also reflect this oddness. Just go with it! Part of the grand adventure.

At the end of this blog post you will find the first three chapters of King Daniel.

Why three chapters?

I think that will be clear after you read them. These chapters may answer some nagging questions raised in King Perry and provide a little more insight into the world of Found Kings. Of course, these chapters might possibly drive you insane with new mysteries wondering what happened to Vin in the year 2005 and where is he now? Hmmmm. Perhaps you should read at your own peril.

I hope you enjoy meeting Daniel and exploring the world of the Found Kings in 2013, the year this story takes place.

All my love,

Edmond

PDF file link: The Lost and Founds_Book 6_Chapters 1-3

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Having been born during the Martin Luther King riots during 1967, I was roughly 100 years too late to go to a Dickens’ wedding.

I read a lot of Dickens in my teenage years (all of them) and the endings often boasted the most delightful weddings. The highbrow weddings were elegant: the painfully-in-love true bloods almost always bore great sorrow with their stark beauty in their wealthy surroundings.

Ester Summerhill.

Agnes Copperfield.

Lucie Manette.

They suffered for love.

But you also had to assume they served a good fucking wedding cake. Right? Something massive, five tiers, thick white frosting. If invited to a Victorian wedding party for a Dickens’ aristocrat, hell yeah, I’d go.

When the Victorian 99% tied the knot, you couldn’t always count on wedding cake.

Oh, their weddings definitely had cakes: jelly roll cakes, half-frosted, sideways cakes, fun cakes made by devoted children who did not understand the difference between flour and sugar. Even breakfast cakes. But these weddings also suffered more shenanigans, like the jelly roll cake toppling and the closest toddler eating it from both paws. When discovered, he blinks at the wedding party in wide-eyed astonishment.

That kind of thing.

Then an aged parent bumps his head hard and everyone cries and kisses him over and over.

It’s a thing in Dickens’ weddings:  everybody laughs. Then, everybody cries. Then, everybody laughs again.

These weddings boasted quirky artistic spaces, mis-matching twinkling lights adorning a boarded-in yard, lots of home-baked treats, succulent meats, random candle light, and everyone in love with everyone else. Children are serious and adults laugh like children. Inevitably, some minor Dickens’ character usually got tipsy and confessed his love for another minor character whom you had also come to deeply love. For the next two months they would avoid each other for the sake of British Modesty and soon thereafter would wed.

If a racous wedding hosted by the Micawbers conflicted with Lucie Manette‘s swan-studded afternoon tea ceremony, I might have to send Ms. Manette my deepest regrets and most sincere congratulations for scoring a French nobleman. Who cares that he’s disgraced and penniless? You got a title, girl!

This weekend, I attended my very first Dickens’ wedding.

On October 27th, Meg and Austin married each other in a lumberjack-themed wedding in northern Minnesota. My goddaughters were Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox. Everyone wrapped themselves in colorfully-knit afghans (courtesy of the bride and groom) and witnessed Meg and Austin share their love amidst the Lake Superior’s stark beauty.

I ministered the service.

The day Meg called to invite me to marry them, she cried hard and then I cried too, because I love being loved. We laughed, cried more. She is a queen who inspires my heart with her optimism, pragmatism, and her every Scribblenest creation is infused with hand-loved, good cheer. Love swirls around her way other women wear perfume.

Her father died recently and even in her raw grief for him she exudes this great love. She is not immune from life’s hardships and I’m sure she has her days, but she chooses to respond to life by loving it.

Everyone promised how easy it would be to acquire a ministry license online. Maybe it’s easy for some. Not for me. I was misdirected to the wrong office twice and I finally found a triage administrator who confirmed I had at last found the right place, but then looked at my offering and said, “Sorry, you don’t have the right paperwork. You have to order the letter.” It took two more tries before I finally nailed it.

Only three weeks before the wedding was I legally capable, far too close a call for me.

But today, I love that nerve-wracking experience , because I see the universe setting me up. The whole thing felt like an’ ill-disguised Dickens rant against insanity of government and complexity of bureaucracy. I suspect Bleak House‘s anti-heros, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, placed their invisible legal stamp on my paperwork.

A few weeks ago, Meg cooked the three of us amazing Indian food so we could discuss wedding details.

She bustled around the crock pot, while Austin and I, both eager to help, stood in the kitchen mostly in her way. Austin entertained me with volcano stories, the latest curiosity to snag his intellect. The world fascinates him. Meg served us sumptous curry and various Indian delights. Their home glows with the warmth of their life, interesting tree branches collected, knick-knacks, cat toys, and Meg’s  self-portrait of Austin and herself crafted in felt.

They wanted the service short, because they invited family and friends to stand with them on Artists’ Point overlooking Lake Superior. Very windy. Weather was likely to be in the 40′s. Or 30′s. Probably not the 20′s. No, it would more likely be snowing than that cold.

They were iffy on the whole, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’ line, and in the end, they kept deferring to me, telling me to say whatever felt right. That night, we decided on nothing more than my minister outfit: my camo pants and red flannel. We did find it rather amusing that we are an Iowan, an Illinoisian, and a Wisconsinite leading this lumberjack wedding party to Grand Marais, the heart of the north shore.

We love being Minnesotans, even if we are adopted.

We love this damn state and the character that shaped it.

Meg emailed me a week before the wedding, sending a story she wanted me to consider reading at her wedding, a cute tale about two dinosaurs who fall in love. She emailed me back a few days later to say, ‘Forget it. Do what’s in your heart, that’s what I really want.’

Adorable, right?

Austin is also a Dickens’ escapee from a Victorian era. He sports a fierce red, sea captain’s beard which, we discovered several weeks ago at breakfast, holds up to 7 full-sized crayons. My younger goddaughter initiated this experiment while the rest of our breakfast party made snarky observations over bacon. Austin kept offering greater access to his beard, occasionally blinking wide-eyed in ticklish surprise. The first time I met him many years ago, I found myself struck by the everyday uniqueness of him  and I loved him when I saw his email included the words ‘fascinatedbydinosaurs.’

I thought, ‘who the hell is this king?’

The wedding party hit Grand Marais Friday night. (To my west coast friends who wrestle with geography in ‘fly over states,’ that’s about five hours north of the twin cities.) It’s the ‘up ‘dere’ part of Minnesota that is oft teased. After checking into their various motels, the wedding gatherers partied at Sven and Ole’s Pizza Parlor. Saturday morning, the men followed the groom on one hike and the women followed the bride on hers.

Nice. I like symbolism.

I arrived Saturday noonish with Mary, a mother of my goddchildren. She and I laughed for most of the five hours’ drive that morning except when I snored in the passenger seat or asked her for last minute advice on my wedding speech. We were so engrossed in our this delicious, uninterrupted time that during the last twenty minutes of our five hour road trip, I said, “Oh, we forgot to listen to music.”

Saturday afternoon, everyone draped ourselves in colorful home-knit afghans and followed Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox out to the sun-dappled rocky plateau. Instead of rose petals, Paul and Babe spread bio-degradeable cocoa chips. (In the brief lull before the wedding party assembled, we took turns deeply inhaling the cocoa basket while attempting to convince The blue Ox not to taste them.)

Meg and Austin followed those Minnesota legends, Meg wearing her her home-tailored dress, adorned with felt shapes and words she turned into artful expressions of joy and love. Austin wore a suit that made him look incredibly distinguished and European. Upon seeing him, I realized that not all men who can wear suits well choose to wear suits. He sported a jaunty fedora that made him look fetching but also like a lost German tourist. Whenever Austin beamed in our direction, we all raced in to hug him.

I followed wearing my camos, a red dress shirt and tie, bearing my favorite well-worn axe from the garage.

Meg and Austin found their spot, the one that felt perfect.

Any lingering skeptics finally understood why Meg and Austin had picked this miraculous setting for their wedding. The sun beamed madly on us after a mostly-cloudy day, the rocks reflecting the joyful hard light right up in all our faces. Nearby wet rocks were soaked as the sun bit them and they would not release the light. I felt like we stood on a black, sparkling diamond while cold waves relentlessly chiseled the stone, shaping it.

Some do not appreciate Minnesota’s starkness, it’s raw beauty. They cannot feel the sheer power in a land that is cold, do not feel the beauty of woodsy survival, and don’t understand that we might actually bless another winter night by fire light. Hey, I’m not all poetry and sunshine about Florida in June, so I do not expect everyone to share this unique flavor of love.

But please know that it exists. We of the frozen land and many lakes feel it.

All our out-of-state wedding guests felt it that day, too. All of us stood around and gaped, many wrapped in afghans, understanding this rare beauty, the gift of this October day. Guest gift bags supplied hand warmers, knit caps, and local fudge. Nobody suffered out on the rocks.

I won’t repeat most of the ceremony and certainly not Meg and Austin’s vows. While I love blogging about my life, many moments are too important to share. Those words, the marriage vows, these will remain a cherished memory for the 60 or so who stood in mid-40′s temperatures to watch Meg and Austin beam right back at the sun.

The reception?

Well, think quirky artistic spaces, mis-matching twinkling lights adorning a boarded-in yard, lots of home-baked treats, succulent meats, random candle light, and everyone in love with everyone else. Apple cheddar pie, grasshopper mint pie, blueberry pie, a flourless chocolate cake. A red velvet cake and many different cheeses. Tender strips of pink-hued steak, hot from the grill.

My new friend Noah and I shared a glass of rum punch while his daughters ran up to him, waving their glow sticks. I chatted with Libby and Brenda from San Francisco, and they expressed their surprised delight to party outside in northern Minnesota. My friend Heather and I bantered playfully with John, recently moved back from Switzerland.

We drank, laughed, and took turns exploring the knick-knack filled house that they had rented for the party, an art gallery and old curiosity shop. We warmed ourselves in the backyard around three different pit fires, laughing, toasting, discussing the beauty of the day and gossiping about how much we love this couple together.

Since many have asked me ‘what the fuck was up with that axe?’ I do feel compelled to share the last bit of Meg and Austin’s lumber jack wedding. I can share this and still honor the privacy of our Dickens’ wedding party.

As part of the closing remarks, I said, “Long before horror movies, the axe was used to create and sustain life. Up here in northern Minnesota, they chopped down trees and made homes for themselves. Split firewood, necessary to survive the winter. Built lives for themselves. With no axe, there was no way to build your life together. So, by the power of the Universal Life Church, Hennepin County, and this big, ol’ axe, I now pronounce you Minnesotians.”

Everyone cheered and waved their colored afghans.

Meg and Austin kissed.

Then we all cried.

Meg and Austin's amazing Lake Superior wedding

Sunday night, I returned from my first writers/readers conference (GRL) thinking about ‘the cool kids.’

Earlier that day while goodbying in the Albuquerque Hard Rock Casino lobby, a writer who I had been eager and nervous to meet signed one of her books for me. Inside the cover she wrote “Thank you for making me feel like one of the cool kids.” I was shocked by those words because *I* am certainly not one of the cool kids. Not by a long shot. Why would she write such a thing?

I hardly need to summon proof but suffice to say that the first night of the conference, I accepted a $2.00 bet to lick an ordinary electrical socket. We were in a steakhouse at the time. (And not even drunk.)

Not. Cool.

(By the way, it wasn’t the first restaurant fixture I licked that evening. But since the other dare only netted me $1, I didn’t think it worth mentioning.)

I suppose I could write about all the times I was ‘not cool,’ from my high school fat/book nerd days to my many Saturday nights studying at the university library, but that’s hardly the point. I would bet most of us do not feel we are ‘cool,’ or have not been part of the ‘cool kids.’ Not ever.

But perhaps the definition of ‘cool kids’ has changed.

Throughout the conference, I witnessed beautiful exchanges that made me tear up. Gushy fans of certain authors nervously asked for autographs only to have the object of their affection reply by saying, “Sure. And how about a hug?” Then, I’d watch that same beloved author turn around and “squee” (my new favorite word) on a different author whom she deeply admired. I loved the unapologetic gushing, the intensity of joy in meeting a stranger already deemed a friend.

Again and again, I overheard similar phrases, like, “You’re writing touched my heart.”

“Through this book, I feel like I know you.”

“I cried when they got together in the end.”

Squeee!

Nobody was exempt from squee-dom, and your giggly, frolicky, gushy self was very welcome to stay.

I felt bashful and happy to befriend certain authors who I have admired. I met email buddies for the first time, friends who gifted me valuable, hard won advice about writing, marketing, and publishing. These are my role models, the ones who are planning to become lifelong writers.  I tend to make an ass of myself in these circumstances (re: Things Licked For $2.00) but they liked my idiocy and we played and laughed like new playground friends.

In fact, the entire weekend felt like a grade school playground where at last nobody held advantage over any other social group. Those first to the swings eagerly shared. The Four Square kids weren’t snobbish about their ability to master the red ball. Instead they said, ‘Come play.’

Those who wrote fiction about shape-shifting squirrels discussed their work with pride alongside those who wrote historical romances. The young adult writers danced their assess off with the BDSM readers, laughing and spinning on the dance floor. And those who didn’t dance discussed books on the sidelines, and they were just as happy. They could speak freely, loudly even, instead of nerdy whispers. They were now the cool kids, too.

Last weekend in Albuquerque, I think cool meant “to love” or perhaps to unapologetically believe in love. Cool might have meant unapologetically loving love between men, whether you’re biologically a man or not.

We love writing.

We love reading.

We love stories about shape-shifting squirrels.

Or maybe we don’t, but if you love shape-shifting squirrels stories, well then, good for you. You’re welcome here. Join us. Dance with us. Or not.

Bouncing along toward a large group event involving all 400+ of us, I passed an author friend alone in a side corridor. I stopped to see if she was okay. Crowds made her anxious and she was doing her best to control her fear so she could go inside. She is a beloved, award-winning writer. I joined her in the lonely corridor. I confessed my fear of big crowds, how easily I am overwhelmed by large quantities of people.

We talked and then not-talked, just reflected glumly on our limitations, the things that scare us.

When she felt ready, we joined the party to share coconut shrimp (with a ginger dipping sauce) with 400 other people who also get nervous in crowds.

Cool might be mean radiating your goofy, joyful love and also embracing your vulnerabilities. I like this new definition of cool. I like that all of us – all of us! – were part of the cool kids.

I have a few more stories to tell from GRL and I will undoubtedly blog about them in the days and weeks to come. Moments where I felt loved and aha’s about writing. I must tell about the Secret Vodka Party. I won’t name names. I won’t embarrass you. Well, not any more than when I licked that light socket for $2.00.

What the hell was I thinking?

Not. Cool.

Generally fun.

Worst ‘shocking’ revelation

made the ending lame.

‘Damn that army!’ plot

shittily constructed world

strong editor, please

Tonight I am wondering why I do the idiot things I do.What on earth compels me to open my mouth when clearly, the situation calls for the exact opposite?

An hour ago I passed a twelve-year-old girl on the sidewalk, a complete stranger. It was dark.We were illuminated only by a streetlight fifty feet away.

As she prepared to pass me in the opposite direction, she pointed at a group of 12-year-olds and said, “Those girls thought you were someone scary.”

Without hesitation, I said, “I am scary.”

What the hell is wrong with me?

I think I know why this happened.

I broke my routine.

I normally walk super late at night. I nestle my ear buds into my skull and crank the iPod. I half-walk, half-dance-walk while I work through plot problems and rewrite sentences for the next book. Music sets the appropriate tone for working through scenes. Leaving the house at midnight to walk around my neighborhood is not uncommon. Last week it was 1:30 a.m. and I thought to myself, “Time enough for a quick walk before bed.”

But we’ve reached that critical time in August when days are growing noticeably shorter, summer’s last hurrah. Every night seems to beckon, saying, ‘Come out! Come out and soak up the pleasurable humidity. Soak it up. Winter is coming.’ I am no friend to humidity, but even I couldn’t resist tonight’s twilight.

I sauntered out into the neighborhood around 8:30 p.m.

First, I visited my gas station. They’re part of my nightly ritual. The Pompadour Man who works the counter raised his eyebrows and said, “You’re early.”

I usually show up two minutes before they close at 11:00 p.m. Because of this, White-Haired Mop Guy kinda hates my guts and lets me know non-verbally what he thinks of last minute customers. He doesn’t speak much English, but his meaning is clear. Over time, he has developed a glum tolerance for me and nods with resignation when I come in right before they turn off the lights. We’re working up to a hug.

White-Haired Mop Guy saw me tonight around 8:40 and frowned. I am messing up his world. Over the summer, he revised his mopping pattern based on my predictable thirst for milk at 10:58 p.m. He doesn’t mop the milk aisle first anymore. I came into the gas station early tonight and the whole world was thrown out of whack.

I strolled back to my house, put the milk on the front steps and left. I could have put the milk in the fridge but normally I’m walking late at night. There aren’t a lot of milk thieves out that late.

Funny thing on tonight’s walk:  people. Lots of them. I passed neighbors out in their yards, walking dogs, walking babies in strollers, and saw a group of neighbors around a fire pit in someone’s front lawn. I saw people leave their homes and come over. And teenagers.

Holy cats, who knew so many gaggles of teenagers hung out by their cars in the early night? Huh. I guess that’s been going on since the 1950s, but it’s been a while since I was a teenager. I forgot the appeal of hanging out in front of your car.

I kept getting surprised by all the people out watering, chatting. I never see people on my midnight strolls. It’s me and the feral cats wandering the hood. Tonight, I heard a mom yell at the kids to come inside and they ignored her, kicking a ball around the yard a few last times before it was pitch black.

Then, the girls.

I swear, dozens of girls all under the age of twelve. Where did they all come from? I did not see any adults around, no chaperones and we’re talking easily 30 young girls. What if they ganged up on me? Heroically, I decided not to be afraid of twelve-year-old girls screaming in the first-dark of night. I reassured myself that they were more afraid of me than I was of them.

Turns out, I was right.

As I hulked down the street in their direction, some of them screamed and ran away. That’s when I truly understood their numbers, when they moved in a flock. I heard seven pitches of screaming, screeching, saw assorted purse-clutching and hand holding, and watched the the firefly lights blink on and off in the backs of their shoes. Those who weren’t wearing sparkly shoes ran in clogs, creating a ker-thumping echoing off the nearby houses.

Where did they all come from?

It was a sparkling tweener mess.

They turned, enmasse, and raced into the dark alley. I was horrified, thinking of all these girls running down a south Minneapolis alley at night, but I relaxed a few seconds later. Roughly sixteen to twenty of them were running and screaming together and I realized  I should spend more time worrying about whoever they encountered.

The funny thing was, they weren’t even aware of their power. As a group, they were unstoppable.

I passed a few of the girls who did not run in the pack and I nodded a little in acknowledgement or muttered hello.

One girl yelled to the alley-flock, “It’s okay….it’s not him.”

As she prepared to pass me in the opposite direction, she pointed at the alley-flock who were giggling and returning. “Those girls thought you were someone scary.”

Without hesitation, I said, “I am scary.”

Again, I ask, who says that to a twelve-year-old girl on a dark street? I need better people skills.

Quickly I added, “But ultimately I’m harmless. Just a fat guy listening to his iPod.”

I really just need to keep my mouth shut.

The chittering flock and I passed each other, most of them giggling and nodding at me, relieved I was somehow not the object of their fear. I wonder who they were afraid of, who they thought I might be? I mean, those girls fled down that alley, their shoes blinking furiously. They trucked.

Maybe they thought I was that creepy guy who is always walking the neighborhood after midnight?

As the last girl passed me, she said with relief, “Thank you.”

Uh…for what? For not murdering you?

No problem, kid. I wasn’t really wearing my murdering shoes anyway.

Besides terrifying an entire entourage of Hannah Montana groupies, the other productive outcome from my evening constitution was that I ran into the cool lady who grows amazing fruits and vegetables in her front yard. I re-introduced myself and reminded her that three years ago, I stopped by and traded her my homemade raspberry jam for some of her delicious cherry tomatoes.

She said, “I remember you! I’d definitely be up for that trade again this year.”

Good.

I’m delighted that I’m not scary to everyone.

When I returned home, the milk was on the front porch.