Et tu, Yu?

I am unable to write for several reasons, the first being financial stress. I’ve always lived hand-to-mouth, but the bills from my angioplasty and my surgery came due. Any conservative will say that state employees are coddled by their lavish benefits, but show me a corporate middle manager who pays higher deductible that us State U proles. Many of my older MFA students, returning to academia to pursue their youthful dreams, have earned more over their lifetimes than I have. One fellow who fashions himself the next Chandler (God, do we really need another?) worked his whole career as a telephone lineman, getting out just in time before cell phones and the obscene corporate practices of our new Gilded Age began the new war on the middle class. He was the union rep of his shop, a relic of a happier time when a blue collar fellow could send his kids to college, buy a house, a speedboat for the weekends, a trip to Hawaii or maybe Las Vegas. In any case, he shared with me his salary upon retirement over drinks one afternoon, and I was not so shocked to learn that it was more than I’d ever earned in a one-year period, even when my books were selling. He saved his pennies while I spent mine on wine and gourmet groceries, and now he was pursuing his writing ambitions in retirement, living on his pension. Good plan. I always stress to my students that they’ll need to find a means of sustaining themselves and their obsessions with the writerly calling. I usually suggest they study oenology or viticulture, but that’s just projecting my own interests. In my case, I married capable and well-heeled women as my means of sustenance. Thrice.

Ruth, the second of my happy ex-brides, has been much on my mind lately. This has been another cause of my literary impotence. It’s hard to write when your past has you by the horns. We’ve spent hours talking on the phone since our reunion tryst in D.C. I’ve been dreaming about her. I feel like a teenager in love, though as we can never return to our youth since we all know we can never swim in the same river twice. My age and life experience has left a bitter and sick coating on my emotional equipment. My mind tells me that it won’t work. You can’t return to your past. My heart is afraid.

Finally, a third contributor to my period of unwritingness, beyond the fact that it’s finals week and I’ve stacks of projects to grade, is this phenomenon of our immigrant rising. This is a good reason. It has me exhilarated. Finally I feel like an American again. I feel that swell of pride, a whisper from those hot summer afternoons back in Wisconsin when I stood on the Main Street sidewalk for the Fourth of July parade watching the WWI vets march past, holding aloft the flag, the swagger gone from their step but replaced by a specific dignity that resonates with a young boy. I also remember standing on a street corner in my mother’s lovely Berlin in ‘89, talking to an old gentleman in a brown suit too big for his wizened, shrinking frame. He was flushed with awe and respect for my American-ness. He was reverent from the recent crumbling of the Berlin Wall and still earnestly grateful for the Berlin Airlift. Good God, how far we’ve fallen in the eyes of the world! I always wonder if my daughters will ever know such a conversation with a foreign national as I had that afternoon. I returned to my hotel room and wept with joy. I even forgave Ronald Reagan his transgressions, but only briefly. All’s it took to ruin our stature was one more stupid war, and a group of oil execs creating for our nation’s presidency a fake, illiterate cowboy to bully the leaders of the world on their behalf. Not even a real cowboy, mind you! Just some well-heeled bumpkin from New England old money who spent a year or two of high school perfecting his fake western accent before returning to Yale.

But excuse my tirade. Back to the marching…I talked to my daughter Ella, who was in Chicago on Monday for a cooking clinic. She participated in the rally in Union Park. Though she has no interest in the Foreign Service, like her sister she’s good with languages. A hobby. At the demonstration she was able to use her Greek, some Russian, German and of course Spanish. Those who see this current immigrant rising as primarily a Latino movement are missing the point entirely, and to their peril. It’s a social movement. It is more American than a billion of those “Support the Troops (by keeping them in Iraq)” bumper-sticker displaying, flag-wrapped, Dixie Chick-bashing nincompoops could possibly understand. These immigrants represent the soul of our troubled nation trying desperately to right our ship of state. When they wave the flag, it is done with a combination of defiance and love. This is not as stupid as singing “God Bless America” at a baseball game. This is true patriotism. They are the rising tide that has the potential of lifting us all, if we allow it.

I marched, too. My mother was born and raised in Germany, only gaining her citizenship in my teen years. As a half-Jew, she had no qualms giving up her German citizenship for obvious reasons, thought she still loves specifics from her native country. My father was half African American…that 25% of myself that defines me upon first glance. Anyone pointing me out nowadays wouldn’t say: “that tall German guy,” or “that portly Jew.” They’d say, “that black guy with the beard.” In any case, we’ve all got immigrants in our heritage, whether we crossed the Bering Straight forty thousand years ago, or whether we came illegally, unwillingly, or by patiently following the archaic, inadequate and confounding legal process. Our march here in Campustown USA was pathetic but heartfelt. I cancelled Monday’s grad seminar, but the only members of my class joining me at the rally were the delightfully round and pregnant Miss Puppycute, and then Yu, my best student. The other students seemed disappointed that I called off the session. We marched with a scraggly band of peaceniks, a number of the campus international students, the Turkish family that owns the World Deli, a dozen tattooed field hands and day laborers looking squinty-eyed and amused, and the entire extended family that runs the town’s best Mexican restaurant, all twenty-five of them. Each of us carried an American flag passed out by the local Progressive Democrats group.

After the march, several of us went for beers. The party dwindled to just Yu and me, and I was surprised by her ability to hold alcohol. She did get teary in the end. She confessed that she was “basically illegal,” which was why today’s march meant so much to her. She’d married her computer science professor simply to get residency in our fine country. She’d grown estranged from her family back home because she switched from engineering studies to fine arts and they felt betrayed and enraged. Being married to a professor allows her to stay in country while also receiving a discount on tuition, necessary now that her parents in China have cut off her funding. “He not so interested in me,” she said of her young husband-professor, “He just play board game with friends on weekends and write computer program all night. I keep him happy with sex, but I neverless feel like a whore.”

I studied her face with interest. Tears hung in her honey-brown eyes, though she restrained them with her will. She smiled sadly, raising freckles on her rounded cheeks. She is beautifully complex, I realized. She is conniving, sacrificing her happiness and using this poor fellow simply to be able to pursue her writing. I instantly saw a kindred spirit. We talked for a long time amid the smell of stale beer and the “bleep bleep” of the electronic dart board. She sat with her hand on my knee. “Thank you for this day, for marching with me,” she said as we left. I wanted to kiss her.

Now I’m wondering again if a fourth marriage is such a good idea. Nothing happened between Yu and me that shouldn’t happen between a professor and his student, but still I feel like I’ve betrayed Ruth already. I’ve always had issues with fidelity, often a primary cause of the collapse of my various marriages. If the notion strikes me, I might pursue a girl like Yu as desperately as I pursued Shirleen Tomasetti.

Still, despite everything, there’s gladness in my heart. The people are marching again. On Mayday, of all days. They are standing up for all of us. I finally heard that controversial Spanish version of our anthem. It’s lovely.

Yu, me and writer block

Yu is perhaps my most promising student this semester. I haven't been paying much attention to student work, wrapped up as I've been in my personal soap opera. I admit that I'm a lousy and careless teacher. Yu is Chinese, from the Gansu province, which I understand is as wild as it gets. She's married to a young computer science professor. Her prose is cautious and spare, obviously due to English being her second language, but this seems to complement her work. She's written a series of vignettes on the Cultural Revolution. There's no story in her work yet, but good fiction always starts with images. The procession is like this: Image > Story > Character > Prose > Plot, with Story ultimately being most important. For more commercial work, it seems to go Plot > Character > Prose, leaving off Image and Story altogether in many cases. I've no problem with commercial or genre work, though I can't teach it and know absolutely nothing about it. It's as alien to me as screenplays and writing for television.

In any case, yesterday during our "nature exercise" as I watched Yu wading through a clear stretch of Ballard Creek, I was enchanted. Redbud petals were drifting down around her in shafts of sunlight while she chewed on the eraser of her pencil and an expression of recognition bloomed on her face. She pulled out her notepad and began scribbling, nodding her head excitedly, the long braid of her dark hair bouncing. Evidently my silly impulse to relocate our class to the woods for the afternoon was having some sort of effect. I dreamt of this scene endlessly last night, and not only because Yu's an attractive young woman.

After our exercise we all walked back to campus. Yu came to me timidly and asked how I felt about "writer block." I told her that it doesn't exist. I said that what exists is an unwillingness to compromise. People don't get blocked, they just choose not to write garbage. You can always write garbage. Writing garbage takes discipline, though. If you write enough of it eventually you crawl out of the hole you're in. Sometimes the garbage gets published, and I know from experience that your career can suffer. Filing the garbage away and moving on also takes discipline.

She nodded, still chewing on her eraser. "Writer block is a choice, hmmm, I never think of it like this before," she said. Her speech is more hesitant that her prose, but grammar typically does sort itself out in the writing. I'll have to keep an eye on Yu this semester. Now that I haven't heard from Mr. Clayhouse, and lovely Shirleen has moved on, and Nawaz is getting married, I need to find a new reason to keep my head in this job or I'll be fired for sure.

A recipe for the seduction of Ms. Tomasetti

I must ask, dear readers, for your assistance. I've drawn a blank. Although I've never suffered from "writer's block" and consider it to be a myth concocted by people who really aren't writers but like pretending that they are, I have, on occasion, suffered from "culinary impotence." You see, I'm having a young woman over for dinner and I am in need of a meal plan. I've been through dozens of volumes from my food library and nothing calls to me. Imagine...the Brown Trout at a loss for recipes. The horror!

She showed up at my office door yesterday. A trace of perfume festooned the air of the little room as she entered. I smelled, at turns, hairspray, fingernail polish, the tang of nervous sweat (pheremones!), shampoo, and crisp autumn air rolling off the black leather of her jacket. When she spoke I thought I could detect the sticky-sweet scent of a cocktail on her breath. This old trout's sniffer still functions well; I spend too much time in training in the woods with my eyes closed, inhaling wild smells, for it not to. In short, she appeared ready for a night out.

She sat down in my beanbag chair. She seemed nervous. She fiddled with her fingers and looked down at her lap. Finally she steered the conversation from small talk to what she had on her mind.

Lovely Shirleen Tomasetti: So, you've made your nomination, I assume?

Frumpy Prof. Trout: Yes. I have.

Shirleen: And...(looks away)...I guess you made your choice based solely on merit.

Prof. Trout: I did.

Shirleen: In that case, you probably didn't select me.

Trout: Why would you say that?

Shirleen: Because I know I'm not a good writer.

Trout: That's bullshit, Shirleen.

Shirleen: (surprised) You did pick me?

Trout: In truth...

Allow me to interject here. Intrepid readers will recall my recent quandry, where I had three students from whom to choose for only two slots for a full scholarship and stipend. Shirl was clearly number three, if she was that high. But she also offers obvious advantages should a lecherous old writer be intrested in lavishing favors upon a young divorcee. In truth, I did suffer an ethical lapse in choosing the two writers to nominate. Billy Clayhouse, the best writer in my classes, didn't submit an application. I also couldn't reach him. So I performed a no-no and forged his application. I submitted it along with that of the bubbly Ms. Elizabeth Puppycute. I ran Shirleen's application through the shredder, weeping as I did.

Trout (cont'd.): In truth...no. I'm only allowed two nominations, and I had applications from two better writers.

Shirleen: (eyes glistening) I see.

Trout: But if you try to say that it's because you're a bad writer, that's a fallacy.

Shirleen: (a sigh)

Trout: You've got all the tools. You're good with language. You just need to find what it is you're going to write about.

Shirleen: You've said that before, but I don't know what else I can do. You talk all the time about the "middlebrow domestic Iowa Workshop nonsense," and I know you're referring to me.

Trout: Not to you...

Shirleen: (a single tear leaking down a singular cheek) Yes...because that's what I write. I'm a "suburban" writer and you know it.

Trout: (meltyhearted) Some writers need to search to find what they want to write about...

She was openly weeping now, and my blubbering didn't help. But being a big, soft teadybear, I began crying as well. I rose from my chair and knealt by the beanbag. I took her hand and proceeded to recall, line for line, a passage from one of her stories. It's not that I'd memorized it, only that I'd been reading the piece when she knocked at the door so it was fresh in my mind. In truth, it wasn't bad. It was almost poignant, though it was a clear violation of my topic rules. Though it wasn't about the death of a grandparent, it did feature a girl standing by the edge of her aunt's hospital bed. In all, though, it was a decent scene.

She stopped weeping and watched me as I retold the scene. I'm a good reader. I'm no Garrison Keillor, who could engage an audience merely by reading the label of a soup can, but I can manage to add weight and power to a story whether it's there or not. I did my best.

I follwed by telling her again that she had the tools, which is completely true, but that she just needed to "spend some time in the trenches." She needed to travel. Cook. Wander in the woods. My native American friends understand this as well as anyone, as do, oddly, most Mormons.

Shirl: I guess you're right. I just don't know where to begin.

Trout: There's so many options. But, unfortunately, an MFA program may not be the best place to start looking.

Shirl: Maybe...maybe you could give me some ideas. Over dinner sometime (OVER DINNER SOMETIME!).

Trout: (speechless)

Shirl: (blush/smile) I mean...if that would be apporpriate...

Trout: (recovering) No, no...that's perfectly fine. Very appropriate! In fact...I'll have you over some evening. We'll discuss this matter seriously. I'll cook. It's an important conversation to have, and I haven't found a restaurant in this town yet that's reliable enough to trust for such a situation. How about...

Shirl: Tuesday?

Trout: Perfect!

And there you have it, readers. I've been racking my thoughts for the past two days. I've started a shopping list, but at the moment it contains 1) olive oil (xx) and 2) eggs and nothing else. Cookbooks are strewn about my apartment. I've spent hours on my favorite websites. I called Lucy, Most Favorite Ex-Wife Number Two, who was a glorious gourmet cook. I called my daughter Ella, a chef-in-training. I still have no idea what to prepare. I'm sick. Lovestruck over lovely Ms. Tomasetti. Please share your thoughts as to what I should prepare. My heart is twittering like a teenager's. O, the agony!

Leading the children astray

Nawaz announced his intention to change majors from engineering to creative writing. I suppose I should be thrilled or at least flattered: after all, it was my suggestion.

But I also must admit to being a little troubled. The idea of being a fiction writer is infinitely more appealing than the life in practice. When I'm visiting colleges, someone eventually asks the inane question: do you have any advice for aspiring writers? After I smirk, roll my eyes or groan I usually respond by saying that they should give up the notion of success, steady income or ever having any of the stabilizing pleasures that most other middle class Americans take for granted. I tell them that they will probably spend most of their lives working at some job that they despise in order to buy time to write, either that or they will be living in the basement of their parents' home in suburban Cleveland until they are in their mid-forties, in which case masturbation will take up a bulk of their time. I'll also suggest that they try to marry rich, though unfortunately this is more difficult than it sounds.

But Nawaz was so giddy when he announced his intentions to me today that I decided I would hold back and let him bask in the glow of his expectation before breaking the truth to him. He isn't a bad writer. He's written some clever poems since he started working for me. One, about the recent earthquake in his home country, was so poignant that I pulled out my bank book on the spot and wrote him a check for fifty bucks (he's been collecting funds through the Muslim Student Assn.), my hand trembling as I signed my name. Only my dear friend Jesse Jackson, the master fundraiser, is able to shame me into parting with my wine allowance so easily.

Nawaz assures me that his father will disown him. He is holding out hopes that his fiancee will keep him, though. I will pray for this grinning beanpole who inhabits the stool in the corner of my office.

An ethical lapse

Alone this Thanksgiving. Despite her recent promise, my daughter Billie had to cancel. But at least she's not going to her mother's...I know it's crude, but if I can't have her, nobody should. My other daughter, Ella, has volunteered to cook at a homeless shelter in Colorado. She's in culinary school, so the less fortunate of Denver are in for a treat. Even Nawaz has abandoned me for the home of an American classmate.

I'm blue, and it's been compounded by my ethical lapse this morning. I've had to choose two of my students for a scholarship nomination, and I'm afraid I've bent the rules of better behavior. I won't mention which two of the three aforementioned candidates I've chosen, but suffice it to say that my selection procedure probably violates some campus rule. I wonder how many other "professors" factor the possibility of seducing a student into their decision-making process.

In any event, I'm going to prepare a proper fall table. I've been thawing the two wild turkeys...royalty among table birds...that I shot last April. One is to be smoked, the other roasted while filled with a miraculous chorizo stuffing that I concocted with assistance from my Mexican writer friend, Paco Taibo, during a happier Thanksgiving when I was still married to Wife 3 and the girls were home. I've got several good bottles of Ontario Vidal that I'll use to wash down the birds. I then intend to waltz through my apartment, naked, to the usual Strauss. A starlight hike in the state park should help to sober me up and then sleep dreamlessly.

Mystery of Mr. Clayhouse

No black ass today for the first Monday in quite some time. It was a bright morning, if brisk, and I took a stroll around the quadrangle to take in the trees in their bare winter glory. Started puffing after only a couple miles, and felt a bit dizzy. Aging "sucks ass," as my daughter Billie might say.

Still no word from Mr. Clayhouse since he stormed out of my class. When passing the ROTC office on campus, I entered on a hunch. I struck up a conversation with the pimply kid peddling brochures:

B. Trout: How's business?

Officer Zit: Slow.

B. Trout: Imagine!

O. Zit: That Cheney's a smart guy, but he's got to learn to keep his fuckin' yap shut.

B. Trout: You're half-right. Anyhow, have you seen Billy Clayhouse around?

O. Zit: Billy? No...it's been a few months. We had a little ceremony for all the vets at the beginning of the semester...

And that's how I confirmed my suspicion that Billy served. And did he ever serve...two seven-month tours in Iraq as a Marine sniper. Purple heart and all. I would never retract my classroom tirade on the war, as self-censorship in the service of pleasing others is the greatest of writerly crimes. But if Billy ever does return I must somehow take him aside and acknowledge his service. While I've opposed this war from its incipience as a pre-9-11 neo-con wet dream to its current disastrous state, and I've got the usual peacenik misgivings about militarism in general, I do respect the uniform. I've had too many students and friends over the years who served. Whenever I see kids in uniform in a bar, I'll always buy a round. In any case, I've decided to make Mr. Clayhouse my special project during my tenure at this program. He's got too much raw talent and compelling experience not to write.

Mr. Clayhouse evolves

Billy's latest story is an astonishing improvement. A mill worker from South Carolina drives seven hours to visit his recovering daughter, a nineteen-year-old helicopter mechanic recently returned from Iraq where an IED ripped off half of her face. He sits outside her hospital room, face buried in his hands, unable to go in. Significantly, none of this is sensationalist or even melodramatic. It's difficult material, but Clayhouse pulls it off with his clipped prose. To keep himself from trembling, the father character recounts recipes from his long-dead grandmother, a half-black, half-Seminole woman who concocted miracles out of butchers' offal and whatever she could grow in the red clay garden of her sharecropper's shack. Incidentally, I copied several of the recipes (pork jowls, lard-fried greens) for my own collection as they are so similar to my mother's German delicacies. Any would be grand with a Riesling or, better yet, a Gewürztraminer. I'm debating whether to send the story to an editor friend at a large East Coast magazine, but then he always warns me that I can be swayed through witnessing a student's improvements. It's best to put it in a drawer for a time and give it a fresh look. At the very least, it would be solid foundation for the student literary journal, a project with which I'm afflicted next semester.

Pork loin for Mr. Clayhouse

Had an experience today to make this entire writing school concept seem less inane.

A student, a laconic, tallish, thirtyish, square-jawed fellow, asked this lucid question after class: what should a writer eat? Like anyone who has toured the MFA reading circuit in order to whore up a few bucks for poorly bound reprints of novels long past their relevance, I hate the standard post-reading, eager-young-writer questions: when is the best time to write? is it better to write longhand or on a keyboard? do you recommend using an outline (Lord please deliver me)? do you have any advice for aspiring writers, &c, &c, &c.

Ah, but what a writer should eat...this is a question of literary merit.

Billy Clayhouse, the student in question, is an Okie with Kiowa roots. Unlike that playacting aristocrat that is Our Leader, Clayhouse has the bearing of a true cowboy. His western jeans, his crewcut and his pearl button shirts are not affectations. He hasn't said two words in class until now, except to read from his work, and then his voice is steady and clipped, like his prose. In his own way, he often tops Miss Puppycute when it comes to pure style, his only drawback being the fact that none of his work, up to this point, has featured any human beings. I'm all for dogs and cats as characters in narrative, but it's people that make fiction pulse. Clayhouse has featured an owl, a coyote, prairie chickens, a covey of quail, etc. But then, to the traditional Kiowa, animals are people and vice versa.

In any case, we spoke at length about the usual reduction sauces and the importance of restraint in a marinade. I recommended "Dad's Own Cookbook," which Harrison, the pre-eminent foodie, touts as essential for anyone starting from scratch. I've no doubt Clayhouse could do justice to a rabbit spitted over a campfire, but his skills are otherwise fairly raw. He mentioned macaroni and cheese as a staple, which caused me to shudder. I realized, then, that this was no pampered trustfunder or the recipient of suburban largess...this was a fellow working his ass off (golf course grounds crew) in order to eke his way through, of all things, an MFA program.

In any event, I shared a very simple grill recipe featuring pork loin ribs marinated in olive oil (extra, extra), fresh lime, orange peel and black pepper, then rolled in dried rosemary and seared before a gentle, slow grilling. Serve with steamed carrots (lime butter sauce) and some Ojibway rice. We strolled to my apartment where I bestowed on him a bottle of San Giminagno white, which I gave him permission to refrigerate, this being appropriate only for a novice.

For the first time in my playacting at professor, I feel as if I've made strides with a student.

Indictment Day

And so in celebration of what shall henceforth be known as Indictment Day, I sent my students home early. The grad students, no longer accustomed to snow days, left reluctantly, grumbling some inanity concerning the cost of tuition. I sympathize, but then the privatization of our public universities is not my responsibility. Our particular state institution is 80 percent privately funded, and the students pay a ridiculous amount to attend this middle-class Harvard.

Enough digression.

To celebrate the good work of mister Fitzgerald, I sent the kiddies home with a modest assignment reading seventy pages from my second book. I initially hadn't planned on using my own work in the curriculum, but the department director insisted.

Director: The students may not be acquainted with your work, and reading it might energize your class.

Trout: But it will make me feel like an asshole. "Okay kiddies, today we will be reading...me! Whee!"

Director: I think you're being a little modest (grimace, aboutface, walkaway).

Trout: (muttering) Dearest director, just because you've assigned your petite assessment of Hawthorn's lesser (sic) works to your students, don't expect the Trout to follow suit.

But then I've had my fifteen seconds. In any case, after the dismissal, one pert little writerette lingered near my lectern. Buttonnosed. Tightcurled. Frecklefaced. You might call her cute if her creator had just eased up on the spaniel puppy features. But still, for a moment, I thought that I'd finally found my new teaching assistant.

Then she spoke:

Puppygirl: Uhm...Mr. Trout

Trout: Yes, m'dear?

Cutiepup: May I ask...

Trout: But of course, Love.

Puppypup: Indictment day...

Trout: No worries, Love, we'll have a makeup (makeout?) session at some point. I just feel a lump (hollow echo) on the Warmonkey's skull is an event worth celebrating...

Cutiecutiecutie: You're a liberal?

Troutietrout: Why, yes!

Puppygirl: But my stories...

Trout: Yes?

Puppygirlie: Umm...I'm Lowell...Elizabeth Lowell...

Trout: Ah yes... (suddenly remembering)

Allow me to intrude here. A few background notes are needed to fuel the drama. Miss Lowell is a very fine writer. She's close to the best in the class, though that's not saying much. Still, she has a handle on this whole prose thing. She's a little cute (imagine) with her phrasing, but somehow it works. For example...she'll engage in Fun With Capitals on occasion. Also Fun. With. Punctuation. And then there's the runtogetherwords that someyoungauthors are sofondofoverusing when they're tryingtobetricky. But for some reason, in the case of miss Lowellypuppy, it works. She hits her sentences in stride, and the tricks always pay a bigger role in her stories. She's "inventing her own language," as a critic might say. And her invented language reinforces her theme.

But that's the problem.

The theme in all of Miss Lowell's assignments to date has been that of strident antiabortion polemic. Strident. Antiabortion. Polemic. Stridentantiabortionpolemic. Thus her concern. She had finally realized, as a result of Indictment Day, that her fat, sensualist, bearded, drunken, lefty, socialist, communist, anticapitalist collegeprofessorvisitingwriter was...m'gosh...a liberal. Liberal! And so, she now worried that her fundamentalist mindlessness might endanger her grade.

To be continued...