Tag: Montgomery

Is It Wrong (For Loving You)

Well, that was a fun, if tiring, weekend..

I got to the hotel after dark Friday and felt very tired. Dad had gone to his alma mater’s football game with two of his teammates (I started to say old in the generic sense and then realized Dad IS old and so are they so best not to, or at least write a caveat so here we are). It was a peaceful, lovely drive and I was listening to my audiobook (Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song and I HAVE THOUGHTS), and there wasn’t much traffic, if any. It was a beautiful drive, and I never cease marveling at how beautiful Mississippi and Alabama are. I had planned on stopping to eat at the Whataburger in Tuscaloosa, but for some reason the map app did not take me that way this time; it seems like I never come up here or leave the same way twice in a row. It always takes the same amount of time, though it’s been interesting seeing parts of both states I am not familiar with. I almost stopped at a Jack’s in some small town I passed through after leaving 20/591; but I thought there would be somewhere else before getting here.

NARRATOR VOICE: There was, in fact, nowhere else.

I always forget how little there is between Meridian and Tuscaloosa, or between Birmingham and Chattanooga. It’s best to eat when you get hungry, and get gas before you get down to a quarter tank else you could be fucked. I know I’ve been ravenous sometimes when I’ve had to wait till past Chattanooga to eat, and same for going up from Mobile to Montgomery. It’s weird to feel so anchored to Alabama, isn’t it? I don’t remember living here; I was two when we moved north. We came down to visit a lot, and I know for Mom and Dad (and my grandmother who also lived in Chicago) they always referred to these trips as “going home” and so I, too, have always thought of Alabama as home in a corner of my mind. I never felt like I belonged almost everywhere I lived once I became more aware of just how different I was from everyone else. I felt displaced, like my life was supposed to have happened in Alabama but it didn’t, so in addition to feeling different I felt almost like a transient everywhere. New Orleans is home now, was always meant to be my home, and I have never felt more like I belonged than I do there. I think my life would have been very different had I grown up here, maybe even harder or more difficult; I don’t know. New Orleans and Alabama are, oddly enough, the only places where I don’t feel like a tourist.

I’ve always written about Alabama, and I do sometimes think that somehow my Alabama stories are my best work, as far as the writing is concerned. The story I’m revising right now was the first work I turned into a college writing class (after the first course I took was such a horrific, unmitigated disaster that basically pulled the rug out from under me and derailed my life for years) that not only the professor was incredibly enthusiastic about, but the entire class was as well. This was the story that made me start believing in myself a bit more after the asshole professor derailed my life2 when I was seventeen. Anyway, I digress. Driving through the countryside after getting off the interstate up there always is weird to me in many ways, because it’s so different than I remember. When I was a kid, most houses in the county were old and made of wood, and there were still tin roofs around, although mostly on barns and out buildings on the farms. Now the houses are mostly brick, there are a lot of McMansions, but there are still a lot of blighted buildings rotting and falling to pieces where they stand. There are abandoned country stores and dead gas stations, the store built from cinder blocks and the rusting pumps still out on a crumbling concrete island. It’s also funny because I wrote Bury Me in Shadows from memory, having not been up there in over twenty years, and seeing the differences now…I guess I never had to worry overmuch about basing that book in a county based on where we’re from, and the differences are so striking no one would recognize it as the same.

Saturday I went with Dad to his high school reunion lunch, which was at a nice restaurant where we always eat every time I’m up there (they have the most amazing chicken fajitas), and that was nice. We headed back to the hotel after and spent the rest of the day watching college football games. The LSU game was amazing, but they sent me into despair a lot during the night. They won the game without ever having the lead! A bitterly disappointing loss for Mississippi (how many times have their dreams died in Tiger Stadium? It’s really no wonder why they hate us so much), but a very exciting game. The Tigers are now ranked in the top ten–which is great, but a big win does not a season make, if you know what I mean–and the rest of the schedule isn’t easy, either. Two road games in a row, then Alabama before one more road game at Florida before finishing out the season with two home games in a row. There has been a lot of great football games this season already, which has made it a lot more fun to watch than it has been in years. Saturday alone, there was the LSU game; Alabama-South Carolina (Alabama eked out a two point win); Tennessee beating Florida in overtime; Penn State-USC went to overtime; Oregon beat Ohio State by one point; and Vanderbilt kept up its winning ways by beating Kentucky. I ain’t going to lie, I am rooting for Vanderbilt to have a great season.

Yesterday I drove home, finished listening to Survivor Song, and then listened to the “My Dad Wrote a Porno”. I was very tired when I got home, very tired, so I spent the day in my chair getting caught up on the news from the weekend before we started getting caught up on our shows. I went to bed early and slept well–I was tired all weekend, but had slept well both nights, but not long enough. I did sleep a little later this morning (I took the day off) than I was expecting (but I also woke up at 5:30 the first time), and feel good. There’s still some residual trip hangover today, but I don’t mind that in the least. The apartment is a mess–I left it one when I left Friday afternoon, and so that needs to be handled today and I am also going to have to run some errands and get reoriented back into normality before heading back into the office tomorrow morning bright and early. I also have some things that I need to get done today–probably will be able to get all that done this afternoon–and then probably will settle into a relaxing evening. We started watching season four of Outer Banks last night, so we’ll watch some of that I am sure.

I didn’t have time to do much reading or writing this weekend, either, but I feel like today I can get to some of that. I do want to finish Gabino’s book this week, so I can move on to another as well.

And on that note, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never knows.

  1. The two highways run together from Meridian to almost Georgia–somewhere in northeast Alabama at any rate; it really is always mostly a blur. ↩︎
  2. I also realized this weekend that horrible professor fucked up my life for a very long time, and I’ve never given him enough credit for unmooring me and setting me adrift. I’ve always hated him, but now I hate him even more, and what an abuse of power and control! He shouldn’t have been allowed near students under any circumstance. ↩︎

I’m on the Road

We tried to stick it out, ever hopeful that Entergy would pull off a miracle, but today we cracked and couldn’t take it anymore. We were also out of food, and while some stores are indeed open (without power), it was incredibly ridiculously hot today; I’ve not really slept since the power went out Sunday morning; and we decided to go today. With it being the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, I knew–between Louisiana evacuees and “last holiday weekend at the beach” people, there was no point in following I-10 East and trying to find anywhere to stay. I only had a half-tank of gas, and wasn’t sure we’d be able to get any if we went north or west, so we headed east on I-10. We got gas near Biloxi (yay!) and once we hit Mobile we turned north. I knew we’d be able to find a pet friendly room somewhere between Mobile and Montgomery, and I was correct. Paul, Scooter and I are now checked into a motel in Greenville, Alabama. We’ve both taken our first hot showers since before the power went out, and are relaxing in the air conditioning (on high and full blast) while the US Open plays on the television. Everything is currently charging. Scooter isn’t sure what to make of this, as he has never stayed anywhere besides our house or the Cat Practice in the last eleven years, but he was great in the car and just slept…which is his usual state. I am looking forward to tonight’s sleep–you have no idea, Constant Reader, how much I am looking forward to finally getting some sleep. We have the room until Sunday–we’ll either go back to New Orleans or decide what to do next then. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.

It was very weird how quickly this storm came together–we barely had space to breathe or even think, and then it was already too late to go. I had to turn in my edits on #shedeservedit by the first; there were rumblings Friday morning that we were in trouble, and I had to power through the edits to get them done just in case (a wise decision, for once). I had to have my teeth cleaned Friday morning, and after I got home from that I just worked on the edits, finally finished about half an hour before I was due to meet my friend Ellen Byron for dinner at Red Gravy on Magazine Street. (The dinner and the conversation was marvelous.) Saturday morning I got up and by the time I was coherent–I overslept a bit, as did Paul–it was too late, really. I-10 in both directions a parking lot; I-55 and I-59 north both the same. We left very late for Katrina–and the crawl across the twin spans with the beginnings of the system starting to come in was not something I ever wanted to live through again. We just kind of looked at each other, and decided to ride it out and hope for the best–figuring if we made it through, we could leave afterwards. We watched a lot of television Saturday night, went to bed relatively early, and then of course, Sunday morning the power went out around eleven. I grabbed a book–I had started Megan Abbott’s The Turnout last week, and so I read for the rest of the day.

The storm was terrifying. The entire house rattled and shook, and there were times when I thought–I would swear to God this is true–I felt the house shifting before settling back to where it was once the gust had finished. I kept waiting for the windows to blow out–I moved my computer away from the windows–and finally, it was over. I never want to ride out a storm like that again, frankly; once was more than enough. And then we settled in to wait for the power to come back on, with no Internet and very very VERY spotty (did I say VERY) cell phone service, we were essentially cut off from the rest of the world. My friend Alafair texted me at some point and I asked her if the levees held; we literally had no idea what was going on, not only in the rest of the world, but in our own city–let alone our neighborhood. The weather was hot and humid but bearable–it was miserable, but it could have been much worse; had Monday been like today we would have left then.

I did manage to read a lot–I finished The Turnout and moved on to Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage (loved it!), Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia (also recommend); A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen; Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; and A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King. I started rereading Paul Monette’s The Gold Diggers, and also started Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Velvet Was the Night, which came with me to Alabama. I am going to do blog posts on all of these books at some point–it was a week of amazing reading, frankly–and I also thought a lot about things I am working on and things I want to be working on, so it wasn’t a total loss of a week. I cleaned and organized in the kitchen some, and of course today I had to throw away everything in the refrigerator and the freezer, which was sad–all that money into the trash–but better to clean it out now rather than let it sit in there rotting and then come home to it. (A valuable lesson from Katrina.)

I thought about bringing manuscripts to edit with me, but then decided not to–I have the electronic files, after all, and I have enough paper around as it is. I started purging books again too–and I spent a lot of time, as I mentioned, thinking about things and life in general and what my priorities should be going forward–there’s nothing like a catastrophe to make you sit down and think about what is and isn’t important–and I am going to probably make some changes going forward. I hate that this disruption came when I was on a roll–with my writing, with the gym, with the reorganization of the apartment–but I am glad that it did happen in some ways; I was kind of letting myself drown again and a reset was kind of necessary. I also don’t know how long this particular disruption is going to last, either.

So, I am going to relax, enjoy hot showers and air conditioning and having access to the Internet again–and read and write and try to dig out from under.

And now I am going to take a doll and go to sleep.

Til tomorrow, then.

Nobody But Me

As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep very deeply last night, and I was wide awake this morning by six thirty. Not a bad thing; I’ll probably sleep well tonight, and I am trying to get organized. The kitchen/work space is an absolute disaster area, and I am also doing laundry, having to put away dishes, and file and organize. I am going to be really tired later, but must stay awake and watch Twitter because tonight is THE EDGAR AWARDS, and I have so many friends nominated! I can’t BELIEVE how tense I am, and I’m not even up for anything!

No lie, but if I were ever an Edgar finalist, I would probably cry.

It’s lovely to be back home; this past week or so has literally been crazy. I’ve driven almost a thousand miles (yay for new car!) and had a really nice time reconnecting with my Southern roots. I am an Alabama boy; I used to joke that I still have red dirt between my toes. I love Alabama, and I love the South. But that love doesn’t mean that I also blind myself to the problems down here, and have actually spent a lot of my adult life trying to figure out ways to change things down here. But when you drive through Alabama and Mississippi, you can’t help but be blown away by how beautiful it is down here.

I’m also aware that I can be blown away by the natural beauty as I drive because I don’t have to worry about being pulled over for Driving While Black.

Alabama’s license plates, and welcome signs, all say “Alabama the Beautiful,” and it’s true. So many trees and forests, lush green grass, the sky is beautiful…and I feel so connected there. I always am inspired when I visit Alabama, or even just drive through it. I don’t write much about Alabama, but when I do, I feel like it’s some of my best work. Dark Tide is my only novel set in Alabama, and it’s one of my personal favorites. I do want to write about Alabama, and I do have an idea about how to turn what I consider one of my best short stories into a novel. I may do that next; we’ll see how I feel when I get finished with the current project. I am also leaning towards shelving the Scotty book for a while. I like the idea behind the book, but I don’t really think it fits Scotty. I’m also struggling to find his voice again, so I think it might be best to take a break from him for a while.

I had a lovely time at the Alabama Book Festival. Troy University and the volunteers and staff did a fantastic job, and Old Town Alabama (or is it Old Alabama Town?) is gorgeous. I really liked Montgomery a lot–it’s a charming little city–I just wish I hadn’t been so tired. I worked doing bar testing the night before I drove up, and as such I was tired the entire time I was there–not sleeping well in hotels had a lot to do with it as well. My panel went really well; Lachlan Smith is very perceptive, insightful and smart, and I look forward to reading his books. I started the first in his series, and was really enjoying it before I put it aside for Thirteen Reasons Why; I’ll get back to it when I finish Cleopatra’s Shadows. Our moderator, Jessie Powell, did a really great job as well, and we had a nice audience. It was also lovely to see Carolyn Haines and Dean James and Tammy Lynn from Wetumpka again, and I also got to meet some lovely people whose company I enjoyed tremendously.

I never thought I’d ever be liked in Alabama, frankly–gay writer of gay stories–but that was my own prejudices and buying into the notion that everyone in Alabama is prejudiced and bigoted. It’s easy to make that assumption; just as it is easy to make that assumption about Louisiana. There are progressives in the South; we’re just outnumbered, but we’re fighting the good fight against prejudice and bigotry and discrimination and hate. Sometimes it feels like we’re fighting all alone, and progressives lucky enough to live in states that are more progressive are more than willing to write us off all the time. (Thanks for that, by the way.)

And on that note, I need to get moving on the day and back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you, John Wesley Shipp from when he appeared on Guiding Light in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, and fueled many a fantasy of mine.JohnWesleyShipp