A Travel Bag for Literary Conferences and a Short Story Wherein the Main Characters Are Barely Discernible

Make Sure to Pack a Bottle of Jack Daniel's and a Flask of Maalox

Sep 12, 2023

There are a few a good reasons to go to a literary convention. You may want to promote your new book of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction to other writers who will never read it because they will be spending the whole time promoting their books, or obsessing over that new idea they have rattling around in their heads for another book. You may also want to attend the event to see friends, and maybe you’re even lucky enough to be getting paid to be there and read from your new book, the one that no one will buy yet pick up and scrutinize for a half an hour while making cryptic faces that suggest they are constipated. Finally, you may want to attend with the hopes you might get laid by someone who is terribly lonely and confused, because that’s the only person who will agree to such a comingling, though she (or he or they) will cringe a week later when she realizes that people are capable of the most adolescent things when drunk and experiencing a moment of low self-esteem.

But then, literary conferences can also provide much humor, as shown in the below short story, very loosely based on a character I ran into years ago. Let’s call him “The Mohican.”

The Mohican

It was the last night of the writer’s conference, and all Marcus wanted was some ice from the hotel ice machine, which seemed harder to locate than a good urologist. He didn’t need the ice for drinks. He had twisted his ankle after stumbling over a pile of poetry books some publisher had left scattered on the floor near his exhibit, and the ankle was beginning to swell. The publisher was an odd, bearded, bespectacled little man wearing a black North Face fleece top, red sweatpants, and buckskin slippers with no socks. He had long stringy grey hair, the texture of straw, so Marcus guessed him to be his age, probably still reveling in the memory, real or imagined, of chugging down a bottle of fierce red wine on the beaches of Big Sur with Gary Snyder. But at least Marcus and the publisher had shown up. The possible threat of something they were calling the “novel coronavirus” had scared off most writers and publishers over sixty-five, so that the halls and exhibits looked more like a frat party than a literary conference.

Marcus almost toppled over one of these frat-boy poets on his way to the ice machine. The guy was on his knees, pounding on a hotel door, then pressing his ear to it, saying playfully, “I know you’re in there, Deirdre. I’m not leaving until you let me in.” He was enjoying himself, smiling and baring his teeth like a chimpanzee. This was no horny, angry versifier intent on breaking down the door, kidnapping his beloved, then dragging her off to his bell tower. He seemed up to something entirely more mischievous.

Earlier, Marcus had seen him hanging around one of the booths with other twenty-something poets, all wearing black tortoise shell glasses and trying to look disaffected. He was a short pale guy with a fiery red Mohican, so when he hopped around, his agitated movements resembled a rooster who had ingested some crystal meth by mistake.

Marcus also recognized him because he had almost punched the guy in the face earlier in the night. Marcus had been invited to a cocktail-and-cheese-and-cracker gathering on the top floor of the hotel. Someone must have realized that cheese and crackers weren’t going to cut it, so they had lugged in huge platters of chicken wings and displayed them on white tables that circled a six-foot ice sculpture of a creature who appeared to be a mermaid, or maybe—because this was a poetry party—someone’s conception of what a naked Sylvia Plath might have looked like a few years before she decided to check out.

The red-headed poet, the Mohican, was wielding an old-style camcorder that seemed to be more of a prop than anything else. He was trailing a woman poet who was fluttering around the room in a short tight leather skirt, stiletto heels, and a cowboy hat that kept her long, permed bleached-blond hair in place. Years ago, Marcus had thought her provocative, but many confused evenings of whiskey and cigarettes had taken their toll on her.

On this particular night, besides the Mohican, she had brought along a few bikers. They were drunk and playfully shoving each other, much to the dismay of poets who had come expecting a quiet evening of serious conversation and shameless schmoozing. The bikers couldn’t have cared less about poetry; they were looking for a few wimps like Marcus to intimidate, and it didn’t take them long to discover him, circling him while the Mohican kept shoving the camera into his face. Marcus was annoyed, yet he couldn’t help envying them the fun they were having. But after the third time the Mohican taunted him with the camcorder, he’d pretty much had it.

“Don’t you have something poetic to say?” one of the bikers said to Marcus. He was a squat beefy guy with a long gray ponytail and a tight, black leather cap. He had huge, tattooed arms, suitable for wrestling pigs, and a set of teeth only a horse doctor could appreciate. He was cartoonishly mugging it up in a way that reminded Marcus of Donald Trump, the latter who just yesterday had assured everyone that the virus was fake news.

Marcus smiled at the biker. He knew this wasn’t a guy to mess with, so he tried to be sensible. “I’m fine, dude,” he said, hoping the “dude” line might make him seem regular-guyish.

The biker squinted. A muscle in his left cheek twitched, while Marcus looked for the woman poet to bail him out. The year before she and Marcus had had a superficial chat about the stupidity of the literary world, but there she was by the door celebrating her own brand of nonsense, swaying in circles like a belly dancer and waving a small bottle of Southern Comfort over her head as if it were a magic wand.

The biker flashed an evil grin. “Only my friends call me dude, dude,” he said, then stared at Marcus for an uncomfortably long time. He reached over and tousled Marcus’s hair, then giggled and made a limp-wristed effeminate gesture before stumbling toward another victim, a paunchy young professor who had supposedly written a “groundbreaking” essay on the tree as a symbol in Yeats’s poetry.

But the Mohican was still there, the eye of the camcorder following Marcus as he rearranged his hair. Frustrated and angry, Marcus distracted himself by focusing on the transparent toes of the ice sculpture. He tried to stay calm, but the Mohican kept taunting him with his camera, until Marcus turned and placed his hand over the lens. “If you shove that in my face one more time,” he said, “I’m going to throw you out the window.”

Whether it was the threat or the way Marcus looked at him, the Mohican scurried off in the direction of the woman poet, while Marcus grabbed a drink from a nearby table and slammed it down.

Recalling this unfortunate event, he wasn’t too happy to run into the Mohican again in the hallway.

The Mohican looked up. “Don’t ask,” he said, probably referring to his creepy pounding on the door.

“Don’t have to,” Marcus said.

“She likes this,” he said. “It’s kind of a game.”

“No doubt.”

He stood up, and Marcus was reminded of how short he was.

“This is about the only reason I come to these conferences,” he said. “Where else can a guy who looks like me get laid?”

“Sounds like a poem,” Marcus said.

“I’m a lousy poet,” the Mohican confessed. “No one’s quite figured it out yet.”

“Maybe they have,” Marcus said. “Never underestimate the intelligence of literary critics.”

Marcus felt as if he were gaining the upper hand and couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

“Yeah, I stink,” the Mohican said, seeming to accept his literary fate.

Marcus was beginning to like this guy. Self-awareness had always been important to him.

Suddenly, the Mohican began to chuckle. “You’re the old guy who was going to throw me out the window, right? I didn’t recognize you in your pajamas. No offense, dude, but no one wears pajama tops anymore.”
“Really?” Marcus said.
“Do you think you would’ve done it?” the Mohican asked.
“Done what?”
“Tossed me out the window.”
“No, too many witnesses.”

The Mohican laughed again.

“Look,” Marcus said, “I have to get some ice.”

Marcus waited for some kind of response, but instead heard a worried female voice from the other side of the hotel door. The voice asked if the Mohican was still there. She’d let him in, she said, if he left and came back with a bottle of Pinot Noir.

“See what I mean?” the Mohican said.

“I’ve been there,” Marcus said, even though he never had. He pointed to the bucket dangling from his left hand. “Like I said, the ice,” then he wished the Mohican good luck before limping away, barefoot, down the carpeted hallway.

Marcus was hoping that the Mohican would be gone before he returned. But more than anything he needed to ice his ankle and call his wife. He needed a shot of domesticity. He wanted to hear about the roof leaking or the dog crapping in his study. His wife had warned him not to go to the conference. “You never sleep at those,” she had said. “All you do is bug me at work all day, and you end up constipated for two days. And they’re saying this virus might end up being bad.”

She was, of course right, but Marcus believed his reasons for being at the conference were more authentic than those of the Mohican. Yes, the Mohican had probably bedded a bevy of aspiring Patti Smiths over the last four days, but what he didn’t realize was that within a decade these same women, by then with respectable husbands and two tow-headed toddlers, would become slightly nauseous when remembering that one drunken evening they spent with a manic, red-headed dwarf.

But if that were true, then why was Marcus bothering to stop and chat again? “No Pinot Noir?” Marcus said.

“Not necessary. She’ll eventually give up.”

“Ah, so you’re good at this.”

The Mohican smiled. It was a likeable smile. He was proud of himself. “You have to be good at something, right?”

The bucket of ice was beginning to melt. “Now you got it,” Marcus said, not knowing what that meant.

“You’re a weird old guy,” the Mohican said.

“That’s the rumor.”

“I’ll bet you’re a good dad, though.”

For an answer Marcus held up the bucket of ice.

“Yeah, I guess you better freeze that foot.”

“Nice alliteration,” Marcus said, then limped off back to his room.

Fifteen minutes later, He was sitting up in bed with a towel full of ice tied around his ankle. He flipped through the channels, happy to discover that a “Twilight Zone” marathon was on. They were halfway through the one where the dummy comes alive and talks back to the ventriloquist. Remembering when he first saw it as a kid, Marcus was transported from the profound loneliness of hotels rooms to a time when the world made sense.

On a nearby bureau he eyed a tiny complementary bottle of white wine a bookseller had given him. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said to himself, very relieved when “himself” chose not to answer back.

Old Man Still Howling at the Moon

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