The Furious Spinner

On June 28, 1980, I packed my things into my 1973 Camaro, and I drove from Ypsilanti to East Lansing, Michigan. It was only an hour and a half drive, but my life was never the same after that day.

It had all started years earlier. Maybe even when I was a teenager. (Okay, it started when I began drawing pictures to tell stories when I was five years old. But let's not go back that far.) My father was a teacher and then a principal. One day he brought home a book edited by Damon Knight called the Science Fiction Argosy. I was fifteen or sixteen years old. I still remember I was sitting outside under our huge old oaks, probably reading or writing, and my dad came home and gave me the book. I'd never heard of science fiction. But I loved this book. I had never read stories written like these. I loved Damon's introduction, although I can't remember a word of it. I think I just liked Damon's voice. I don't remember any of the stories in particular except that I liked Kate Wilhelm's story and Theodore Sturgeon's. The rest are a blur.

Then in college I took a science fiction course with Marshall Tymn. I loved a lot of what we read, especially the Women of Wonder anthology. I loved Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., and Kate Wilhelm. And Harlan Ellison's stories were amazing. I was an English major. I had been inudated with John Updike, Joan Didion, Saul Bellow, John Gardner. And while I liked Joan Didion's writing, I was annoyed and bored with stories of college professors who were lusting after their students. (i.e. John Updike, et al) So I loved this science fiction class. When I became a graduate assistant with the English Department at Eastern Michigan University, Marhall and I were office mates, and he needed more students for his summer science fiction class in England. He told me I wouldn't have to go to the classes, just come on the trip. So I agreed. My then-boyfriend and I went to Europe with Marshall in 1979. It was there I met Russell Bates. He was in our class.

Are you bored yet with my trip down memory lane? If you are, I'm almost getting to the point. I loved Russell Bates. He was the most natural storyteller I'd ever heard. We'd just sit down around him like children and listen to him talk. And it was great fun walking around London and Brighton with him. He is very tall and Native American and everyone stopped to look at him. (I don't know how fun that was for him, actually, but it was interesting to observe.) And he was very kind. My then-boyfriend was an asshole, and when we'd fight or the then-boyfriend did something to humiliate me, Russell was always tender and kind. One day he told me about Clarion. I had been looking for a good writing workshop for years. I'd looked into Breadloaf, but there wasn't really much one on one with "real" writers. Russell talked about Clarion as a kind of boot camp for writers—it would be an experience I would never forget. And the people who ran it were none other than Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm.

I did research on Clarion when I got home, and it had turned out some wonderful writers. I wasn't that interested in writing science fiction. Whenever I had written anything in college that had a hint of fantasy or science fiction in it, my writing professors turned up their noses at it. Except one professor. George Perkins was one of the editors of the Norton Anthologies. I wrote a kind of surrealist bildungsroman (not a novel, but a short story) called Into the Lion's Mouth for one of his classes. After he read it, he sat me down in his office and told me I should try to get my work published. How? I asked. I'm not sure if he told me about Writer's Market or Literary Market. I can't remember. But he told me to do it. I was impressed with myself. I sent the story with my Clarion application. I got in.

In the summer of 1980, I drove to East Lansing and got myself a room in a dormitory there. My suitemate was Carol Buchanan. Down the hallway was Mikey Roessner, Lucius Shepard, Bill Coleman, Lorraine Schein, Bob Frazier, Julie Stevens, Mickie Massimino, Paul Witcover, Gary Shockley, and Mario Milosevic. Nineteen of us all together. On the first day, that first day twenty-seven years ago, Mickie, Mikey, and I (if I'm remembering right) were standing around on one side of the room and Mario, Bill, and Franz Zrilich walked over and introduced themselves and said something about the boys all being on one side and the girls being all on the other side. Robin Scott Wilson was our first instructor. For a week. Then Algis Budrys, Kit Reed, Avram Davidson, and Kate and Damon. We were there for six weeks.

I remember the first night. I remember getting under the cool fresh sheets. I looked around the small room and thought, "That's mine. This is mine. That is mine." I was so happy to be alone in that room without the then-boyfriend. I was so happy to be with these people. These writer people. Just that evening I'd had amazing conversations with amazing people. I was so excited. I couldn't wait to get started.

I became myself at Clarion. After years of living amongst American boys and girls, I had become a girl, much to my dismay. I wore make-up (very little, but some), I shopped for clothes, I shaved my legs, I wore a bra, I dated. All that went the way at Clarion. I was first and foremost a writer. Everyone there was a writer. That's how we saw each other. At least, that's how I saw everyone.

And I saw Mario. He was a tall pale quiet boy. I'd always been attracted to the shy quiet ones. But I was at Clarion. And I wasn't thinking about the boy/girl thing. One night I wanted to take a walk on Michigan State's beautiful campus. But I knew it wasn't safe to go by myself. I asked if anyone wanted to come with. Mario volunteered. We walked in the dark amongst the trees. I found one I wanted to climb. So I did. Mario climbed up after me. He never asked me if I needed help. I was impressed by that. We stood up in that tree and talked while people walked below us, unaware of our existence.

After that we went on other walks. We often went to the movies. And to dinner. Usually with other Clarionites. My god, the talks we all had! I had waited all my life for these people. They were amazing. I loved all the students and instructors at Clarion. They were the most interesting people I had ever met. And I got to live with them for six weeks. Of all of them, Mario was the most interesting. He was so smart. He was the funniest person I'd ever met. He had none of that boy stuff going on. He looked at women and saw people. After six years of college and college boys, that in itself was a miracle. Mario was not like anyone else I had ever known.

Many nights all of the students hung out at the instructor's apartment, drinking and eating and talking. One night (probably more than one night) Damon and I had a squirt gun fight. Kate gently told us to be careful, someone was going to get hurt. And of course, one of us did fall on the slippery floor. I don't remember if it was Damon or me.

One night at one of those parties, Mario put his hand on my bare back. As if his hand had always meant to be there. I was startled. But I didn't move. Before long, we were madly in love and crying about how soon we would be separated because we lived in different worlds—different countries certainly—and what would we do? And someone, I think it was Carol, suggested we look on a map to see how far apart we actually were. Mario was finishing up school in Waterloo, Ontario, and I lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan. We were about four hours away from each other. Tragedy averted.

Mario returned to school and I went back to Ypsilanti to break up with my then-boyfriend and move out of the apartment we had shared for many years. It was not a fun time. A very unfun time. Said boyfriend had always been emotionally abusive (I was young and stupid, what can I say), and when I left, he started vaguely threatening me. When I came to get my things, he blocked my way and wouldn't let me leave the apartment for a while. He'd call me up and talk about famous couples where the man had killed the woman. Finally, I got my clothes when he wasn't around and left all the furniture, which was all mine, and started my new life in a tiny efficiency apartment. One day a mutual friend brought my former then-boyfriend over to my new apartment when Mario was visiting for the weekend. After that visit, the former then-boyfriend disappeared from my life. The threatening phone calls stopped. My new life began for real.

Mario and I decided to get married, and a year to the day we met, a justice of the peace married us outside in the Arboreteum in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Many of our Clarion classmates and teachers were there, including Mikey, Mickie, Bill, Lucius, Julie, Carol, and Algis Budrys and Robin Scott Wilson. (Bill stayed for our honeymoon.)

And now we skip forward to today. Our twenty-seventh anniversary. Mario is still my best friend. He is still the most interesting person I know. I wake up every morning grateful that he is next to me.

Happy Anniversary, Mario!

P.S. Avram, wherever you are; he still doesn't tie his shoelaces.

Labels: anniversary, Clarion, love, photos, writing

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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Why I Love