A Wounded Party

AWP made me want a cigarette. Well, not a cigarette, but to have cigarette smoke blown in my face by a hot guy. It was the worst on the last night when this very attractive animal of a man was rolling his own cigarettes while we all drank in the hotel bar. He couldn't smoke in the bar, so he asked if anyone wanted to go outside and smoke with him. I tried to come up with a way to decline a cigarette and yet ask if I could stand next to him while he smoked. There was no way. I stayed inside and thought maybe when he came back he would lean over to talk to us and a little bit of stale smoke breath would creep out of his mouth and into my nose. It didn't happen.

I met my soul mates, though. I would give you their names, but what if you think you're one of them and it turns out you're not? You are, though. You probably are. One of my soul mates tweeted about how that week in Chicago changed his life and how he was crying because he missed everyone. Then he deleted the tweet. I saw it and put my hand to my heart and thought, "I know what you mean." The connecting of faces to names was religious. I met Roxane Gay and it was like going behind the curtain in a temple.

Josh was with me. Josh isn't a writer, but Josh is a reader. Josh bought a ton of books. Josh danced. Josh made all the ladies go yeah. Josh was honest with me about my reading. "It was a little fast," he said. Josh was right. Don't tell him, but Josh is always right when it comes to things like that. Josh and I had a lot of whiskey gingers that were mostly ginger.

I met my best internet friend. I knew her by her hair. I miss her. She kissed my tattoos and then she made other people kiss my tattoos. Once upon a time, I internet joked about this one guy kissing my tattoos. When this guy was around, Josh would poke me and say, "There he is," and I would just look the other way like it didn't even matter. My one regret, I guess.

Chicago doesn't have better food than Kansas City. Josh and I ate a lot of OK food. We took the train and the bus and we went all over trying to eat the best of the best as determined by food critics. The stand out was this torta place, XOCO. The flavors, y'all. In every other way, Kansas City has Chicago beat.

People kept telling me I didn't look like my online pictures. I was taller or nicer or hotter, depending. Thank you, everyone. You were hotter, too. You all had very nice hands.

Hot Dog

Josh and I are on our way to Chicago. We're on the Megabus. Our driver's name is Maurice and he makes jokes like, "Excessive profanity is prohibited, but you can cuss a little." I would cuss, but there's nothing around here to cuss at. We're in the middle of Illinois. People make fun of Kansas, but I mean really, what's the difference? I guess Chicago's the difference.

The bus is a double-decker. We're on top so we can look down into the big trucks we pass and assess the drivers. I've seen one hot truck driver, which means there's a first time for everything. He had a ginger beard and, well, the Megabus was going too fast, but I think we made eye contact. His name was Roy. Like I said, we talked with our eyes.

We just passed some wild turkeys hitchhiking on the shoulder of the interstate. A guy in front of us said wild turkeys roam around in packs of 20. It made me think of chicken nuggets. All I used to eat was chicken nuggets. The only vegetable I ate as a teenager was corn and I don't even think corn is a real vegetable. It's just sweet golden nibblets. The point is: these wild turkeys were just looking for a ride and the Megabus did not stop.

Carless

I didn't get my driver's license right away. I was afraid to take the driving test when I was 16. When I finally took the test at 17, the tester said, "What are we parked on right now?" We were parked on a hill and I'd forgotten to pull up the emergency brake, but I said, "We're parked on...asphalt?"

Just to put you in the mind of my driving history, I had the same car from 17 to last week. A 1999 black Toyota Corolla basic. It had a slot for a dashboard clock, but there was no clock. That basic. I loved that stupid car. And now it's gone. The engine died and that's all. The end. I'll get another car when I need it. I've been taking the bus, and that works, too. It's been a while since I've been a passenger. I used to love driving, but lately, I've hated it. Maybe it's not so bad on the bus.

I'm just kidding. The bus is awful. Someone please surprise me with a car.

There's a party on Friday and I'm taking the bus there. I think that's pretty funny because I live in Kansas City and everyone I know has a car. People here are idiots for cars because it's the Midwest and everything is so spread out. I will be hard-pressed to ask for a ride from my friends. I hate asking for rides. I would rather walk. This is the sin called "pride," but I don't really believe in sin, so.

Yesterday, I knitted with Katharine Cobey and some of my former teachers. My teachers treated me like a master knitter and crocheter. I've been writing so much I almost forgot I'm really good at knitting and crocheting, too. I wouldn't say I'm a "master" because that implies I care. I don't care enough about knitting and crocheting to make it my life. For a few years after college, I thought I might care that much, and I tried to care that much. I had some gallery shows and then I admitted to myself I wasn't really making art. I was making glorified stuffed animals and wall hangings and kitschy sweaters, but they didn't mean anything to me. It was just cheap yarn and some stuff to put around my house. Maybe I'll feel differently in some years, but that's how I feel now. I crocheted a unicorn with a banana split sitting on its back and what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Back to the knitting with Katharine Cobey. We sat around some tables and practiced some techniques I already knew. It was fun anyway. Some students were knitting, too. There were some guy students and they were so good looking. I mean, really. A couple of them were dressed like they were going out for the night and I just laughed to myself because NO, they weren't going anywhere. They were sticking their arms in dye pots and pulling out ugly/pretty fabric and maybe breathing in some questionable chemicals. One guy came back from lunch and his eyes were red, red, red. I'm just saying. We're all knitting again tomorrow, so I'll have to ask him if knitting is better or worse that way.

But anyway. We were all knitting and there was a camaraderie since we were all doing the same basic technique in different ways. There were cracks about men and how they ruin everything. One of my former teachers touched my shoulder and said, "We're just joking!" And I was like, "No, you're right. Men are awful." Katharine Cobey sat there knitting faster than anyone. She said, "Men aren't awful. They sometimes just make trouble is all." AMEN.

In other news, show my beautiful friend, Ethel Rohan, some love. Buy her books and tell her how they make you feel. We both recently cut our hair. Walk by us in the grocery store and see if you know us. See if you're surprised.

Pearl

My mother's mother, Pearl Trent, died last week. Josh and I went to Kentucky for the visitation and the funeral. My grandmother was quiet with Alzheimer's for 13 years. Half my life and there I stood looking at the casket trying to remember my grandmother ever saying my name. I couldn't even remember the sound of her voice. I do remember one summer I went to live with my grandmother for a couple weeks on the farm. There was fishing and cats and land going back and back and back. I remember the farmhouse like a wood paneled dream and how the carpeted floor popped in places. I remember the smell like the land was in the walls and that somehow the walls were very old and still very alive. There were noises all night--the coyotes screaming outside and neighbor dogs barking back like they could do a thing about it. And my grandmother. Quiet as far back as I can remember. She was so at one with the farm that to remember one is to remember the other, and to go back to the farm now would be like visiting a grave. I didn't even think about driving out there. I should have.

My mother's family doesn't get together often, but there was a reunion around my grandmother's body. It looked little enough like my grandmother that I had to keep telling myself what we were there for. She was so preserved and clean. I knew chemicals and makeup were doing that. They were keeping an image of rest. My cousins kept saying how my grandmother looked asleep. She'd lost a lot of weight and you could see that in her nose. It had the sharp flares of an orchid. The lighting was a soft red so my grandmother's skin looked like it still had blood running under it. I have seen recent pictures. My grandmother has not looked that way in a while.

One of my uncles didn't get far from the casket. He didn't say much until after the funeral when it seemed like all of a sudden he realized other people were there. The grieving was like that. My mother spent a lot of time looking at her hair and nails and arranging every little thing in the room. One of my cousins fainted. Another was fine until she wasn't. People were talking about old cars and she just sat in the middle of them and cried. I didn't know how I felt until we got back to Kansas City and I remembered everything like I had seen it in a movie. I don't remember how anything smelled. I don't remember being cold or hot. I ate, but I don't know that I tasted anything. All I did was see everyone else.

Bringing up all those memories and seeing those people I hadn't seen for so long made me sick with guilt. I drove back to Kansas City with a cold. There is an entire branch of my family I have ignored for going on a decade and they were all there saying, "Remember when?" I pulled up those memories and they looked like trees grabbed at the roots by a tornado. How dare I put one arm in the ground and try to walk away from it when my grandmother had no choice but to be buried little by little until she was all gone with no way of coming back? I'm only here because she was here first. Oh, Pearl.

Porker

OK, folks, it's Restaurant Week. Josh and I went to Justus Drugstore last night and the chef danced on our cheap little tongues. I'm just kidding. My tongue isn't little. It's short and fat like a garden spade. But the food and the drinks! I won't tell you all we ate. It was pork one way or another. Pork in every dish, even dessert. There was bacon brittle on our chocolate tart. It doesn't deserve more words than that. It just deserves that you get to Smithville and eat it.

What I really fell in love with was the bartender. I loved him as soon as I saw him. He was wearing suspenders and looked like he'd just hopped off a velocipede to mix our drinks. The wind was still in his arm hair. He had these jars full of plants and syrups and I felt like I was watching a true nerd and genius do magic for a bunch of rubes. I was too in love to say anything much, but I hope he saw how I licked the egg white out of my glass like I was digging holes for garlic.

I got rid of my hair last week, mostly on accident. I was trying to give myself a mohawk. Who do I think I am giving myself haircuts? My head is smaller in proportion to my body than I ever remember. The story ends there and isn't much of a story. I look like a Pringle with a Tic Tac balanced on one end. Someone do me some good and knock that Tic Tac off.

If you see me at AWP, you'll tell me I'm tall. Duh. I will have the mohawk by then and you can say if it works or if it doesn't. Tim Jones-Yelvington will probably have a mohawk, too, but his mohawk will be made out of lit taper candles. He will be naked but for the dripping wax that forms his outfit over the night. It will definitely work.

In college, I was a fiber art minor. The fiber studio was full of men wearing heels and women wearing ballet flats. We all ran around screaming about fabric and t-pins. There was a weaving studio, too, but it was across campus and no one screamed in there. You opened the door and the slam of the looms sounded like cars having sex. Being in the fiber studio got me over the fear I used to have of taking my shoes off in a dressing room. There are always pins on a dressing room floor. In the fiber studio, there were pins everywhere and still, there were never enough. People would steal them right off of mannequins, and I'm going to admit something right now--I was one of those people. I never bought a t-pin in my life. I owe my former classmates at least a nickel each. Forgive me.

I haven't had pizza since September. I'm nostalgic for a time.

Weekend Junk

We went out to Kansas yesterday to celebrate the second birthday of some twin boys. Josh and I sat in the back of a truck with our knees to our chests like we were hiding under a table. There were more birds sitting in roadside trees than I have ever seen at once. My friend was identifying them with the savant focus you get from people obsessed with math. She was calling out birds like they were numbers flying in front of her face. Starlings, mostly, but also grackles, geese, gulls, and hawks. Bird + bird + bird. It was fascinating. With the smaller birds, all I see is a ball with wings, but my friend knows them every which way.

The birthday party was at a church, but in an adjacent fellowship hall, not the actual church. I'm told the church is precious inside, like a Catholic cathedral in miniature. It's in the middle of the country like it fell from the sky. We couldn't go in because there was an afternoon mass. I wanted to see the painted statues, but maybe some other time.

I met a ginger man at a bar this weekend who was...opposite to me in every way. By the end of the night, he had a crush on me in the way straight guys sometimes do with gay guys. I fought most of what he said, from beer on down to pop music. That seemed to surprise and irritate him. The first thing he did was push me out of the way because he didn't realize we were with the same party. I knew I was in for an obnoxious and delightful evening. When he left, he shot me with finger guns and a wink. So.

My first rejection of the year was pleasant and painless. No acceptances yet. I'm mostly working on the book. I can't tell you how hard it is. I mean, physically, I can't. When I talk to people about the book, I act like it's a weekend of knitting. I belittle the process to get the attention off of me. You wouldn't know I take it seriously at all. But I am terrified. People ask what the book's about, and the only thing I can muster is, "It's about a guy."

I don't think I ever told my parents this, but when I was in college, some people with guns came on campus and stole computers. No one made better art because of it. Also while I was in school, some of my friends were mugged. The first time it happened, one of my friends laughed at the mugger because she thought he was joking. Our studio building was near a gas station and we used to walk down there and buy vodka for the long nights at the end of the semester. Vodka and Fritos and Twizzlers. I went in a gas station recently with some of those friends. One of them bought a bag of Doritos. No one else bought anything. My friend said, "What? No one eats shit anymore?"

Anyway.

Guts and Glory

It's 2012, so I can start freaking out. There's a reading next month at AWP. I've only done a couple readings and those were a hundred years ago in undergrad. I would read my story like I was ordering food at a drive-thru and people would laugh and I would think, "But this story isn't supposed to be funny." Ha ha, Casey Hannan. Ha ha.

The AWP reading is at a bar in Chicago. I will drink a little something before and try not to think about the hot guys all around me. They will read stories, too, and I will probably not hear a single word. Some other people will read after that and the roof will be on fire with how good these people are at reading in bars. The people in charge of this event will let the motherfucker burn. And then who knows? Don't look at me to put out any fires. There was once a grease fire in my kitchen and I made a mess with the fire extinguisher instead of just throwing a lid on the pan. You live, you learn, you pretend to be a smoker for a little while, but you really can't stand cigarettes on yourself even if you love them on other people. It's a big world and we're all stupid about a few parts of it.

This time last year, I was having my first stories published and it was blowing my little 2011 mind. I didn't even have it in my head that alt-lit demi-goddess, xTx, would be the best thing to happen to me all year long. But here we are. She knows all my names. She says if you say all my names at once, I sound like a serial killer from the Midwest. It's good that I'm not.

The only thing I've ever killed was a lizard in Florida. It was a very small lizard and I plucked it off a wall with my brutal kid fingers. The poor little sucker popped in the middle with the pressure. The whole thing was uncalled for. I tried to make myself feel better by saying there were a ton of lizards in Florida anyway. I kept picking up lizards, but only the one was so delicate as to explode in my hand like a hot berry.

We are on the subject of things we cannot change. As to 2011, I have no regrets.