Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“High?”

“Hi, Daddy. Hi, Uncle Rootie. Father Travers? Grandpa Wolfgang? What I meant was that I’m high on life, Grandpa. Life’s what intoxicates me. Solely, life’s what makes me high.”

“You don’t think you can have coffee, then.”

“Not tonight, Leonard. Thanks.”

“How about us driving to San Gregorio Beach sometime this weekend. I hear it’s rough and rustic and gorgeous.”

“I’m going to my future in-laws this weekend, though I don’t know which day.”

Then the day you’re not going.”

“I better keep both open.”

They keep a close tab on you, no?”

“I suppose, because Hank’s in New Zealand, they think they have to.”

She laughed. He also laughed and figured it was for the same thing. It amused him when she spoke about her fiancé being in New Zealand. He’d gone there half a year ago to get his Ph.D in abnormal psychology. She was to follow him out after she graduated, four months from now. Lenny suspected she was a virgin. She’d spoken about “perhaps a certain sexual inexperience for a California girl my age” when they talked, over coffee, about a Henry Miller novel he’d read as a college freshman in the smuggled-in version from France and she was reading for an American literature course. And she’d written explicitly about the inhibitions and frustrations of a virgin heroine who resembled her in looks and read that story in class, but refused to answer — and the writer-professor who ran the program said she was “within every realm of her rights not to”—when one of the male grad students pumped her on whether the protagonist was herself. Lenny had never made love to a virgin. He didn’t think he’d ever even had a chance to the past ten years, not that he’d know what to do, though he was eager to test his delicacy in such an event. He felt that with Louise, whom he felt tender to, it would be extraordinary, though maybe not for her.

“Well, I guess that’s it then,” he said. “See you Monday.”

“No class Monday, didn’t you know? It’s Washington’s Birthday — or Lincoln’s. I forget which.”

“Ronald Reagan’s. To celebrate the good governor’s fortieth year in show business. But one or the other’s all right with me. So long as it means a day off from class and I can get in another afternoon to write.”

“Oh, I don’t feel that way yet. I guess I haven’t been writing that long, but I love our seminars and everybody in it. But I’ll be signing off now, Len. Little Louise Robbins, now flying away.”

He went back to the cafeteria table and finished reading two full pages, but they were mostly dialog. Nathaniel Vest was one heck of a writer, he thought, and I’m probably one of his few readers to take an entire week to complete half of Miss Lonelyhearts . He looked at the moon again. It was still pretty low, though seemed to have risen a bit. Or maybe he was just sitting lower in his chair than before, so the moon was actually higher than he thought. Today is Thursday, and there won’t be another class till a week from Monday. At least in class he talked and joked and could look at Louise and got into an occasional literary argument. And after the seminar he always had a coffee and pastry here with B.J. and sometimes Louise would come along with a few of the tuition-paying grad students, who read very well though wrote rather poorly and usually criticized his stories he read in class more severely than he felt they even overexaggeratedly deserved. “Hang Washington,” he said. There were classes on Lincoln’s birthday this year so why not Washington’s? Another thing he didn’t know the answer to.

He stuck a napkin between the pages and closed the book. He got up for another coffee, stretched and yawned and looked around. It was getting late; not many people here, and he didn’t recognize anyone. If he did, he was sure he’d ratchet up the guts enough to walk over to that person’s table and ask if he might join it, even to someone he’d only met briefly or to a girl he’d never met but was sure she was in some way connected to the creative writing program. But he didn’t recognize a soul.

Enraged, the writer walks off the stage and out of the television studio.

“Where’d he go?” the host says. “Hey, Mal, where you going? God, that guy walks fast. Come on back, will ya, and let’s be friends. Then let’s have a walking race. Okay, we’ll just stare at each other while the announcer reads sonnets. And you didn’t sing that old Irish ballad you promised us. Sure, you can go. Made a mint with his last two novels — not that I’m knocking it, you understand. It’s the international way, comprendo? Nicht so? Bet you didn’t know I spoke Chinese. But me? Walk off once like he did, and that, my friends, would be show business, as they say — forever. And bestsellers I don’t write. Some people will even say I can’t write, and there won’t be many who’ll take issue with them. Because anybody here read my last book? Come on, don’t be ashamed. Stand up if your belt and garters are on tight. Say, let’s not all rise at once. Anybody even remember the title? What was that? Be brave and shout it out. No, it wasn’t Gone with the Wind ; but thanks, Mom. Huh? No, not Madame Bovary , either — but Flaubert, right? And you people thought I never went to college. Crime and Punishment ? That’s what the readers thought I inflicted on them. War and Peace ? A good description of what went on between the editors and me. It was… Madame Bovary Returns , the hopeful horticulturist in the front row says. We’re all quipsters here. No, I said horticulturist. That’s a hearts and flowers man with brains. Swann’s what? Never heard of it. Oedipus Sex ? Never saw it. Be a Wolf ? Who even wrote it? And is that a nice thing to advise a married man? Dead Souls ? — you said it, brother, not me — is what I think I have in devoted readers here. The Trial ? What this guessing game’s getting to become. But Wild Walter’s World . There it is. My autobiog. Born with a silver spoon and golden locks in my mouth, which is why I talk this way. My mom never took them out because she thought they might improve my face. Someone once suggested it be retitled to Crazy Publisher’s Catastrophe , because you know what that book sold? How many fingers you got on your hand? Not you. Our orchestra leader just held up six fingers on his right hand and seven on his left — but the fiddler next to you. The one who got his hand caught in a giant metronome the other day and had to have a few fingers removed. Well, his hand — the one that was operated on. Count how many fingers he’s got left. Subtract two. That’s how many copies my book sold. I still got it home. Under a broken kitchen chair leg. In the same brown paper bag they sold it to me in. My wife didn’t want it on the bookshelf because we already had a book there. And our youngest daughter refused to sit on it to reach the dinner table and our mutt still thinks it’s the oddest-looking fire hydrant around. Truthfully, it sold pretty well and in more languages than I knew existed. And starting this month, any one of you out there and in this audience can be one of its two million paperback owners. Wild Walter’s World . I said the title too low? That was Wild Walter’s World , folks. Not Wild Walter’s World Folks , but just Wild Walter’s World . Okay. Now, did our guest really leave? He’s not back there smoking a cigarette somewhere? Daphne, you checked? Nobody? Dashed out of the studio with our library prop and ordered his chauffeur to drive him home? Well, this is a very intellectual show tonight. And before introducing our next eminent author — and it beats me how we’re going to carry out our literary discussion format if it’s now just going to be me and him here. Or ‘I.’ All these brilliant writers around the joint are making me unsure with the language. Maybe we could bring up some members of the audience to join in the discussion. They’d like that, right? Yeahhh. Anyway, before we do that, time for plugs. Have you always had a deep-seated yearning to write great novels and story articles and lead the happy enriching life of a successful author, but everyone said you had to have a household name, like Ivory Soap, or your work would never sell? Well, the Westport Famous Writers Correspondence School — I’m joshing. But this all but indescribable product I have here and which is really something to write home about, folks, as it can literally do the magical polishing work of a thousand and one genies…”