My seatmate wants to know if I've ever been to Minnesota.
I'm reading poems, making notes, until my pen explodes mid-flight and ink stains my fingers. When we land, I make a happy noise. I remember these fonts, the French Meadow bakery, the giant moose. I ride down 169 in a Honda with a bumper sticker that says I'd Rather Be Reading Faulkner.
This town smells exactly the same. I take a picture of the hotel room for my father.
I haven't eaten since Michigan, so I buy Chex Mix. The machine flashes YOU ARE A WINNER and gives me a John Tyler gold dollar coin instead of a nickel.
There cannot be anything--anything--quite the first time you walk into a classroom to find nine people sitting in a circle, discussing your poems. My former thesis advisor is beaming. So am I. "It's so good to see you here!" he keeps saying. "It's so great to be here!" I keep saying.
Holy shit, people are asking me questions about my craft. I refrain from telling them I don't own a sailboat.
We head to the Pub for dinner. I have porter and pub chips. I think about all the times that P and Jeano and I would berate the B for not bringing us home any chip dip. "IT IS JUST MAYO AND CAJUN SEASONING," he would tell us. "EQUAL PARTS. DUMP AND STIR."
Back in my hotel, I finish my comments on poems for tomorrow. Jen pulls in and we go to buy wine, making sure that they have twist-off caps. We listen to Sam Cooke and drink from plastic cups. We use the John Tyler dollar to buy chocolate-covered pretzels, and they are the best I've ever had.
Thursday
On my way out of the hotel, I realize there is a breakfast bar. I make a waffle sandwich and walk to campus, careful not to spill syrup on my wool pants.
The department secretary remembers me, asks after the B.
After the conferences, I am introduced to the other alumni readers. We walk over to the radio station. We all know the way. I read on air the first poem I ever wrote in Minnesota. It is about turkeys.
We have lunch and I feel dizzy. I walk back to the hotel and iron my pants.
Darren slips into the craft talk and it is all I can do to keep from yelling Youmadeit! The audience asks us how we each go about composing poems and who we read and what life after the MFA is like. I do mention that I used to keep a list in my cube of poets and their shitty day jobs.
Dinner at the Chinese place and the wontons are actually better than I remember. On the way back to campus, we see Jen and Jean having a drink at the bar. "God," I say. "Remember how easy it used to be to find people in this fucking town?"
I read first. I try to rock it. The podium mike is flopsy and can't be moved. But I pronounce Leishmaniasis properly and dark bars like a Minnesotan.
After the reading, people come up. They want me to know there is a disease that is worse than Ebola, that they liked the McGoff's poem, they cheered at the Sabres reference, that they used to fill their car with fellow high schoolers and drive to the world's largest ball of twine rolled by one man. I love them all.
Dodge has red hair. She has not brought me a puppy as threatened. I tell her I know it's her car because it is covered in road dust.
At the afterparty, we sit on the floor and eat hummus and I remember where the beer's kept. Boots arrives. "Where to next?" he says. "Take me a bar I never knew existed," I say, "because that is what you do best." He thinks for a moment. "Okay," he says, "we're going to Mac's."
We are the only people in Mac's. We drink beer and shatter the naked lady picture find high score and make Boots tell the best story he has in his arsenal. It is about a girl named Sheila, and it is in no way dirty.
There are not one, but two, barber chairs in this bar. Over the cash register are three framed 8 x 10s of a yellow Lab. It has ducks in its mouth.
We go to Pub and order chips. People I used to wait tables with come in. At the after-afterparty, Darren and I invent a clever game we call The Douchebag Game: someone names a song, and we sing it by changing part of the lyrics to the words douche or douchebag. We lie on the floor and play this game for about an hour, singing "Douchin' on Empty," until it is time to go to Perkin's and watch a very funny and skinny man named Adam eat a Tremendous Twelve.
I watch Adam balance an entire egg on his fork and maneuver it into his mouth. At the other end of the table, his friend confides in Jen: he loves his fiancee, but she loves hog farming. "The smell," he says.
Friday
When I check out of the hotel, the St. Cloud State girls' hockey team has taken over the lobby. They are very blond.
Our old house looks exactly the same, which is to say it looks nothing like the place where we used to live.
We drive up 169. "When we get to Jordan," I say, "I am going to eat a corn dog I buy at a gas station."
I buy my corn dog. I eat it wearing a crown I find in the parking lot. Jean and I look at her car. "HOLY SHIT," Jean says, "LOOK AT MY FUCKING TIRE." We do. It is very flat.
Twenty minutes pass. Jen is trying to get a plastic cap unlodged from the tire iron. Jean and Darren are reading the instructions that come with the jack. I am trying to look helpful. Two guys in work boots finally approach us. "Uh," one says. "Do you maybe need a hand?" His friend gets down by the tire, next to Jean, and his hands are suddenly busy with lug nuts. The other stands next to us and spits. He has excellent aim.
The spare is on. The guys refuse money and amble away, talking about Ricky and his spreader and all the fucking work they want to get done in the garage today.
At Jen's, Jean and I proceed to explain inside jokes from grad school. This takes about three hours, but we are sitting on the balcony in the sun and drinking coffee and it is exactly what we should be doing.
"Lucy," Jen says to her cat. "Do not poop on the rug." "Mmmmehhhhhrrrr," says Lucy. She seems angry.
Jean and I go out to lunch and eat our weight in queso dip. We name our new band "Eskimo Pedophile." She tells me about the videos that her high school students quote during class, and we go back to Jen's and watch stuff on YouTube for two hours. Then we put on aviators and fake mustaches and take 242 pictures of ourselves.
We get to Uptown. Mini corn dogs are $2.50 for a basket and all drinks are two-for-one. I drink diet Coke and watch all the cool kids do their thing. We go to another place, this one crawling with hipsters. Darren and I begin to generate squares for our new great idea, the LATFH Bingo board. I say Any eyeglasses that you would have hated when you were ten but now insist on wearing. He says Tweed caps. I say Ascots made from bandannas.
Darren says People who sit in bars making fun of everyone else in the bar and I say Meta-touché!
On the way home, we listen to "John Allyn Smith Sails" and Jen and Darren promise me that next time they will take me on the Berryman tour. "Good," I say, "because it will be February and particularly appropriate."
Saturday
We are in search of pancakes, a copy of Drop Dead Gorgeous, and a bookstore. We find all three, though it takes us four different stores to get the movie. The pancakes, however, are excellent.
We make Jen watch Drop Dead Gorgeous. "Holy shit," she says. "This movie is AMAZING."
Jeano has to leave. "I like to take the Sunday paper from my folks," she says. I tell her to wear her seat belt.
Jen and I order pizza, listen to music. We start Heathers, but I can't finish it. I have never been so tired in my entire life. I crawl into bed and sleep is like falling off a cliff.
Sunday
"John Allyn Smith Sails" is playing as Jen drives me to the airport. "How many times have we listened to this song this weekend anyway?" she asks.
The plane is nearly empty. I move to the window and see the runway blur beneath it, and then the place lifts, and I am going home.
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