Why writing is really the only viable option for me...

No one has ever accused me of being unimaginative. Sometimes I get the "unearned" flag thrown at me, meaning that whatever is being acted out by my characters hasn't been built to in a natural way, but no one ever says "You know, I've seen this before....like about a thousand times."

So I present for you today two stories. The first ended with someone else saying "I can see why you're a fiction writer" and the second ended with ME saying "I can see why I'm a fiction writer."

Last Thursday night my friends Heather and Swati and I got together at Drink, a bar in Uptown. We got there 7-ish, and sometime around 9:30, the place transformed from a restaurant into a college dorm. At one point, I had to go to the bathroom. Heather gave me the blessed news that the patio had its own bathroom (otherwise it was four flights down), so I began my journey.

All I wanted to do was pee. Let me remind you of this. So I trek across the patio, getting looks that scream "who brought their mom?!?" and I get to the bathroom. The scene before me is reminiscent of nearly every college party I attended between 1994 and 1998, and, to be honest, several non-college parties that I attended from 1998-2002.

The volume level is at canine-hearing-only. Against the back wall stands a girl holding two beers, while her friend pukes in the sink. The line that seems to be actually isn't because these girls still travel in packs. I wait for the person to leave the stall I'm going to go into, while trying not to lose my hearing. The girl vacates my stall, shoulder-butts me as she walks by (thanks, bitch) and then I enter my domain. I do my duty, then look over. No toilet paper. I think, 'Hey, thanks, bitch-who-shoulder-butted, for telling me there was no TP.' Then I realized that she was still at the age where using the words "toilet paper" were embarrassing.

Fortunately, the girl in the stall next to me worked at Drink, as did her friend (pack!) also waiting. I hear her say "Hey, ____, there's no toilet paper!" Friend says, "Do you want some paper towels?" Girl says, "Uh, no. Can you go get some from the closet." I say, "Grab some for me too please!"

So Friend runs out, we sit and listen to the Puking Wonder from the sink. I know that the puking girl's friend is not her BFF because she is only holding her beer, not her hair.

Friend comes back and I hear a crash and an ear-splitting scream as she slips on the floor and crashes through Girl's door with the toilet paper. Calamity ensues, screeching, laughter, and "Ohmigods" abound. After Friend recovers, she sends a roll under the door to me.

Did I mention all I wanted to do was pee?

I use the other half of the sink, though the Friend tripping catastrophe seems to have scared away Puking Wonder. I brace myself for the walk back to the table. As I walk through the crowds, avoiding eye contact and sweaty, twenty-one year old bodies, I take careful notice of the fact that Heather, Swati and I are the oldest people on the floor, including employees, by at least five years. I regale them with my adventurous tale when I get back to home base, and Swati says, "I can see why you're a fiction writer." Not because I make this shit up, but because it all actually happens to me.

The end.


Story number two took place last night at about 2aM. After a long, enjoyable day doing basically everything I could have asked, I ended the night with Erica, Dan and Phil playing Champps trivia. Though we only came in second, we still won $25 and thus paid for our evening.

At 2am my phone rang. I assumed it was Jessie. I looked at the caller ID and it said "caller unknown" or whatever an unknown call says. So I ignore it, listening to my Razzle Dazzle (from Chicago) ringtone and feeling surprised that it was as long as it is. When the phone stops, I turn to my tv and see a face filling the screen, with a scalpel about two centimeters from one of the eyes. The eyes are looking at me. This is disturbing.

The phone rings again, jolting my heart into the completely-awake-and-panicked position. I look. "Caller unknown."

At this point, some people turn the phone off. Some others simply curse the caller and go back to sleep.

Not me.

I instead lay awake for the next twenty minutes as I convince myself that the caller is actually part of a two-man rape/general violence team. The caller made my phone ring so that the team could tell where my phone was by hearing it, and that if I had answered it the rapists/murderers would know that I was, in fact, in my bedroom. They were, in fact, standing in my driveway at that moment waiting to hear through the open window if I answered the phone or not. The fact that I didn't only foiled their plan, because while they could guarantee the location of my phone, they could not guarantee that I was with it.

After a few scary noises that are really only supposed to be scary for three-year-olds that haven't lived in a house for 31 years, I was able to go back to sleep. But not before I said to myself, "I can see why I'm a fiction writer."

Kelly, The Poet

This morning I went to a craft talk given author Thomas Glave at the Loft in Minneapolis. When I won Honorable Mention in the Mentor Series, I received the invitation to attend these craft talks throughout the year.

I must have been nervous. I didn't feel nervous, but my behavior suggests it. Consider:

1. I woke up at 7am on a Saturday. I didn't need to wake up until probably 8:30 or so.

2. I was at the Loft by 7:55am. This means that I woke up, showered, got ready to go and drove to Minneapolis in under an hour. I also stood in my kitchen and drank a glass of orange juice before I left. Apparently I was on fast forward this morning.

The biggie, though, is number 3.

3. When we began the talk, everyone went around and introduced themselves. We had to say two things: our name and our genre. I had to say "Kelly Flanigan, Fiction." What came out, though, I shit you not, was "Kelly Flanigan, Poetry."

HUH?

I haven't written a poem in close to twenty years. I heard myself say this and then paused before adding "and fiction." I had time to do this because my friend Heather was to my left and she was as surprised as I was at my identifying myself as a poet.

It's very weird to be outside of your head. The word "poetry" never passed through my mind, it came from somewhere else. I heard myself say it along with everyone else, and the voice I heard sounded different and louder than my name. I'm glad apparently "poetry" is what is running in my subconscious rather than "animal sex" "penis" or "I love porn."

Chuckus Kostermanus Interruptus

Tonight I went to hear Chuck Klosterman read and answer inane questions from young twenty-something groupies. He was hilarious, I nearly peed my pants about ten times. He was really polite about answering questions, some of which were good, most of which were so dumb I twitched.

After about a dozen questions the Barnes and Noble lady steps in and says "One more question." In front of me sitting on the floor (I was leaned up against a shelf) is this young girl, probably 20 (shit, when did I start referring to a twenty year old as a "young girl"??) and her hand shoots up in the air. He calls on her and she says, "Can I have your address?" There's a twitter throughout the audience, and Klosterman is clearly caught off guard.

He says "What, like my email address or like, my mailing address."

"Your mailing address."

"Why?"

"So I can send you letters."

The audience is mystified by this. He says, "Well, uh, you can have my work address, yeah," and he looks out at the crowd and back at her, "yeah, I don't want to be a jerk or anything. Buy a book and bring it to me and when I sign it I'll put my address in there."

What I love about this man is that he's all "Sure, but you'll be buying my book. Nothing's for free, honey." Good lesson for her to learn.


So THEN, of course I'm in line to get my copy of Killing Yourself to Live signed. I'm innocently standing there and then all of a sudden my life blurs into a wild druggie adhd manic freakout. Someone says my name (it may have been Chuck or my friend Erica) at the moment that I hand my books to the Barnes and Noble chick. The girl who has been standing behind Erica and I says "Kelly Flanigan???" And I said, "Uh, yeah." And I turn and look at her and I recognize her but I have NO IDEA where from. Like zero. I don't know if I went to high school with her or college with her or competed against her in speech or had her as a student or ran into her at some other time. What I remember is her hair, and I remember her crying. She had this bushy bushy hair and she cut it short and it was so much cuter short, and I have no idea what the crying was about. She says, "Do you remember me?" And I'm not in the mood to lie. I said "I remember you, but I have no idea what your name is." So she decides to make a huge production about the fact that I don't remember her. She refuses to tell me how we know eachother. She said something about "like the most important person to her in high school" but it might not have been that. As I said, a blur.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Chuck has my books and is signing away probably wondering who the hell I am that I can't take five seconds out of my conversation to say hello and thank him for signing my book. I'm all "Hold up, I'm missing my moment here!!" and then things blur out a little more except I remember thanking Chuck for his reading and for the signings and telling him I'm a big fan and he was just laughing at me and then I walked away.

Strange girl that I know finally tells me her name, after completely screwing up my moment with Chuck Klosterman, and I still don't have the first damn clue about who she is.