Bandit X: Ten Years of the Bridge Run Show

March 26th, 2008

Charleston writer and Blue Bike Books owner Jonathan Sanchez’s Tenth Annual Bridge Run Show will be Thursday, April 3rd, at the store, 420 King St., 7:30 – 10 pm (reading at 8 pm). Every year since 1999, Sanchez has performed a new short story involving the Cooper River Bridge Run.

In commemoration of this turnover on the odometer, the Tenth Annual will be an outdoor extravaganza with wine, food, and firm, encouraging handshakes from the author. He’ll also sign copies of Bandit, a collection of Bridge Run stories from past years.

Ten Things To Know about Ten Years of the Bridge Run Show:

1. The first (1999) was in the living room of 164 Broad Street. Before settling at Blue Bike Books, it journeyed to Café Lana on Cumberland St., Magar Hatworks, Five Loaves Café, and Millennium Music.

2. When the series started there were only 49 stars on the American flag. (On a related note: Congratulations Hawaii! Welcome to the gang!)

3. The reading usually takes about 45 minutes, with a fifteen-minute break in the middle.

4. The show is not boring.

5. While audience members usually remain quiet, in honor of the occasion, calling out “Double Digits Baby!” will be allowed.

6. The tank top worn by Jonathan Sanchez at the 2004 shows is now in the Smithsonian, between Fonzie’s jacket and Mr. Belvedere’s apron.

7. This is the second-oldest CRBR peripheral event. The Blind Tiger’s ‘I Slept Through the Bridge Run’ party on Friday night always manages to stay one year ahead.

8. Typical Sanchez family après-race includes Johnsonville bratwursts and near-beer.

9. Nine stories from years past are compiled in Sanchez’s book Bandit. No other Charleston cultural event, not Spoleto, SEWE or the Bark in the Park has spawned a work of fiction.

10. No one at the ’03 show will ever forget the streaker!

For the People Who Deserve A Voice

February 25th, 2008

For the People Who Deserve a Voice, the literary magazine of Burke High School was been released. Copies are available at Blue Bike Books for a $5 donation. It’s a fantastic compilation, raw and funny and cool. Fine more about it here.

Kerouac Scroll — final update

October 19th, 2007

For the month of September, Blue Bicycle Books commissioned a 120-foot-long scroll story. This community creative writing project commemorated the 50th Anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road, which was written on one 120-foot continuous scroll of paper. Our scroll went up Saturday, Sept. 1. By the end of the month it was 122 feet long, with 47 authors in total, including (we interpreted signatures best we could)): Ali Delambo, Fiquet Krueger, Olive Gardner, Edwin Gardner, Whitney Powers, Steven Grossman, M. Shipley, Davis, Kalyn Oyer, Hannah Brooks-Moh, Amberjade Taylor, Alex Sanchez, Jonathan Sanchez, Caitlin Binda, Amanda Mae, Karen, Madeline Dixon, Nat, Shelly, and Taylor.

The final edition is below. For photos please go here.

He rolled into town on the back of a flatbed truck, smelling of tobacco and crushed grapes; it smelled like Transylvania almost and I hated it. The summer heat expanded this smell almost to the point that it overwhelmed the senses. The truck rolled and he smelled, the truck, the summer, the whiff of Europe, somehow, in the corn.

He thought about Paris, Rome, girls he’d known. He thought: This morning, she woke up to his mercies anew…mercies anew, his mercies anew. Every morning her Father’s mercies are new. Chances are his heart was in it, but he wouldn’t dare admit the scandal and eventual seclusion it all entailed. Autumn leaves coat the dampened ground. Like so many misplaced memories scattered by the breeze.

Yet he found himself running away from the only person who could rake them into any order. He had left her standing there ‘cause she wouldn’t ask him to stay and now, in the girl with her thumb out on the roadside, he saw his second chance.

Through the dark depths of the ocean, past the murky squid, lay a pineapple under the sea. It was regularly summoned by Zeus, for the purpose of taking out the trash and other menial assignments, but then, one day, as he drove past this girl, with her thumb stuck out, he realized that in the back of his truck was the pineappley squid he had caught on his Alaskan fishing trip. He had grown fond of this pineappley squid and named it Jerome.

Therefore he took advantage of this second chance and picked up this long lost girl. He asked her where she was going but kicked her out of the truck because Jerome became restless. How he can hope to share this drive with her while conscious of his beloved Jerome’s discomfort. Change isn’t easy, as it were.

Suddenly Jerome started talking, but he had a language that sounded like this: Humina, humina, humina, humina!

(Sept. 4, 27.5 feet)

In Jerome’s mind he heard the sound, actually the clacking of his grandmother’s loom. He reeled, sensing his worthlessness, sleeping while his grandmother wove. Then the tapestry of his life was revealed. He would use the squid ink to dye the cloth. Little did he know that the culmination of learning the skill to harness the ink he possessed would lead him down a road that would force him to deal with his worst fear and succeed or die trying.

Finally, the memories rushed in and he finally remembered what would happen—this would break the spell and he would once again be a real boy ~~ squirt! It happened, voila! No more squid—except he was sitting on the flatbed in a black puddle. He was stranded in the middle of the city. He no longer smelled bad, he smelled horrible! He was dripping from head to toe, and he felt like he had been thrown out of his truck. He could not remember where he was or what happened. He thought and thought, but he could not remember.

Out of the corner of his eyes, his oasis appeared: a sauerkraut stand. His hunger overtaking him, he submitted to his desire and spent the last of his fortune on a tasty sausage. He was satisfied. Such a relevant term, but he was not like super-sized. He would have been if only the sausage would have contained a few cucumbers.

He cleared the squid from the back of the flatbed, slammed the door of the cab and drove on. Today was a special day, a new day, a day that has been a long day waiting! Until his new and special day was smashed upon the rocks of reality and he had to find a job. He had never been without the abstract concept of an occupation. It was the physical realization of selling one’s time and energy for minimum wage that he had avoided.

His mind was always synched with those around him; his hands quick and able to react in any second. There was no need for a “job” so far as a thing to occupy these capable limbs, however, the limits of others’ generosity were soundly exhausted. In order for him to assume responsibility for his obvious needs: water, food, maybe a new pair of overalls, he acquiesced and absorbed himself in yesterday’s classified section.

Debauchery or diligence; it always seemed to come down to that. Was there possibly some confluence of the two which would prove both remunerative and satisfying? But then, he remembered in that electrical jolting way that he knew so well – his cosmic (light ???) plugged into the universal socket – why do I keep being trapped in either/or dualistic thinking? I must remember the words of his most precious teacher… “Play’s more fun when your work’s all done.”

He then thought back to his dear friend Galen who trained pugs with a stroke of his chin and a tear in his eye he began to dial the number…

“Stuck Glue Factory, can I help you?”

“Oh, hi, you have an ad in the paper for a worker, and I’m interested.”

“Do you want to stay stuck the rest of your life?”

“Not really.”

“Then you probably wouldn’t want this job. But you can drop by if you like!”

“OK, I might. I’m already stuck, and what I really need to do is wake up!”

Hanging up the phone, he stood alone and considered “stuck”-its cousins in phonetic kin, suck…pluch…fin…oh that one, yes the glue factory- pluck it! And the job search began again…

And he whispered to himself angrily, “No one better sniff my glue.” He pondered, thoughtfully, considering what he had just done. A phone call…a job? What was he getting himself into? He wondered what a job in a glue factory could do for his life. “I’d get money and free glue…everyone loves free glue.”

Then he thought some more. Hmmm…free glue was good but did he have a better reason? Of course! His grandmother, Karen, and her broken loom. He needed to buy her a new one. “Maybe I should get a different job…professional sheep herding sounds nice…” That’ll do pig, that’ll do.

Well, maybe sheep herding is a bad idea, maybe work in a toothbrush factory would do, yes it would do. But how will I get a job at a toothbrush factory? If there is none here, I’ll have to find one. In the newspaper there is a job page and in it I’ll look. Let’s see here…chocolate factory. No!

Perhaps the ad for a job at the chocolate factory is an omen. I am destined for higher things, maybe one day I’ll open the newspaper and there’ll be an ad for…for someone like me.

“Watch the thinker,” he heard a voice say. It sounded something like the “humina” of Jerome. A cat walked in and howled. He was reaching in the fridge for some milk, kicked at the door, missed, it closed anyway, gave the cat a bowl of…then he heard a voice: “Smookie! Heere kitty.”

He picked up the cat and the saucer and went outside. Then he saw her, and at once they loved each other. They went on twelve dates and finally he proposed. She said, “yes” so they got married. But she never knew about his horrible secret- and she was about to find out about it.

She didn’t know if it was a secret of the most clandestine of natures, a smell of the familiar but unnamable. What kind of secret? What kind of idea was Jerome? Was he a Ralph Nader-like crusader? “Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing’s going to change. It’s not.” .

He remembered the ’92 Subaru he bought in Boulder with that bumper sticker on it. He’d always felt a little guilty, even though he hadn’t put the sticker on the bumper, admonishing other when he didn’t really care himself. .

It was late. He was married with a secret even he didn’t know. Was he a squid? A hitchhiker? Jerome or Jerome’s friend? He didn’t know if he was driving or riding, working or unemployed. So much had happened, and yet so little, but at least there was the road ahead. .

Kerouac Scroll Update

September 27th, 2007

Blue Bicycle Books has commissioned a community creative writing project, a 120-foot long scroll story to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road, which was written on one 120-foot continuous scroll of paper. Our scroll went up Saturday, Sept. 1. As of Tuesday the 25th it is 110 feet long, with about 40 or 50 authors, including 8-year-old Olive Gardner, 9-year-old Madeline Dixon, and 61-year-old Alex Sanchez, MD.

The latest edition is below. The scroll has been up all month, and will be up through the weekend.

Please check back for updates. For photos please go here.


He thought about Paris, Rome, girls he’d known. He thought: This morning, she woke up to his mercies anew…mercies anew, His mercies anew. Every morning her Father’s mercies are new. Chances are his heart was in it, but he wouldn’t dare admit the scandal and eventual seclusion it all entailed. Autumn leaves coat the dampened ground. Like so many misplaced memories scattered by the breeze.

Yet he found himself running away from the only person who could rake them into any order. He had left her standing there ‘cause she wouldn’t ask him to stay and now, in the girl with her thumb out on the roadside, he saw his second chance.

Through the dark depths of the ocean, past the murky squid, lay a pineapple under the sea. It was regularly summoned by Zeus, for the purpose of taking out the trash and other menial assignments, but then, one day, as he drove past this girl, with her thumb stuck out, he realized that in the back of his truck was the pineappley squid he had caught on his Alaskan fishing trip. He had grown fond of this pineappley squid and named it Jerome.

Therefore he took advantage of this second chance and picked up this long lost girl. He asked her where she was going but kicked her out of the truck because Jerome became restless. How he can hope to share this drive with her while conscious of his beloved Jerome’s discomfort. Change isn’t easy, as it were.

Suddenly Jerome started talking, but he had a language that sounded like this: Humina, humina, humina, humina!

(Sept. 4, 27.5 feet)

In Jerome’s mind he heard the sound, actually the clacking of his grandmother’s loom. He reeled, sensing his worthlessness, sleeping while his grandmother wove. Then the tapestry of his life was revealed. He would use the squid ink to dye the cloth. Little did he know that the culmination of learning the skill to harness the ink he possessed would lead him down a road that would force him to deal with his worst fear and succeed or die trying.

Finally, the memories rushed in and he finally remembered what would happen—this would break the spell and he would once again be a real boy ~~ squirt! It happened, voila! No more squid—except he was sitting on the flatbed in a black puddle. He was stranded in the middle of the city. He no longer smelled bad, he smelled horrible! He was dripping from head to toe, and he felt like he had been thrown out of his truck. He could not remember where he was or what happened. He thought and thought, but he could not remember.

Out of the corner of his eyes, his oasis appeared: a sauerkraut stand. His hunger overtaking him, he submitted to his desire and spent the last of his fortune on a tasty sausage. He was satisfied. Such a relevant term, but he was not like super-sized. He would have been if only the sausage would have contained a few cucumbers.

He cleared the squid from the back of the flatbed, slammed the door of the cab and drove on. Today was a special day, a new day, a day that has been a long day waiting! Until his new and special day was smashed upon the rocks of reality and he had to find a job. He had never been without the abstract concept of an occupation. It was the physical realization of selling one’s time and energy for minimum wage that he had avoided.

His mind was always synched with those around him; his hands quick and able to react in any second. There was no need for a “job” so far as a thing to occupy these capable limbs, however, the limits of others’ generosity were soundly exhausted. In order for him to assume responsibility for his obvious needs: water, food, maybe a new pair of overalls, he acquiesced and absorbed himself in yesterday’s classified section.

Debauchery or diligence; it always seemed to come down to that. Was there possibly some confluence of the two which would prove both remunerative and satisfying? But then, he remembered in that electrical jolting way that he knew so well – his cosmic (light ???) plugged into the universal socket – why do I keep being trapped in either/or dualistic thinking? I must remember the words of his most precious teacher… “Play’s more fun when your work’s all done.”

He then thought back to his dear friend Galen who trained pugs with a stroke of his chin and a tear in his eye he began to dial the number…

“Stuck Glue Factory, can I help you?”

“Oh, hi, you have an ad in the paper for a worker, and I’m interested.”

“Do you want to stay stuck the rest of your life?”

“Not really.”

“Then you probably wouldn’t want this job. But you can drop by if you like!”

“OK, I might. I’m already stuck, and what I really need to do is wake up!”

Hanging up the phone, he stood alone and considered “stuck”-its cousins in phonetic kin, suck…pluch…fin…oh that one, yes the glue factory- pluck it! And the job search began again…

And he whispered to himself angrily, “No one better sniff my glue.” He pondered, thoughtfully, considering what he had just done. A phone call…a job? What was he getting himself into? He wondered what a job in a glue factory could do for his life. “I’d get money and free glue…everyone loves free glue.”

Then he thought some more. Hmmm…free glue was good but did he have a better reason? Of course! His grandmother, Karen, and her broken loom. He needed to buy her a new one. “Maybe I should get a different job…professional sheep herding sounds nice…” That’ll do pig, that’ll do.

Well, maybe sheep herding is a bad idea, maybe work in a toothbrush factory would do, yes it would do. But how will I get a job at a toothbrush factory? If there is none here, I’ll have to find one. In the newspaper there is a job page and in it I’ll look. Let’s see here…chocolate factory. No!

Perhaps the ad for a job at the chocolate factory is an omen. I am destined for higher things, maybe one day I’ll open the newspaper and there’ll be an ad for…for someone like me.

“Watch the thinker,” he heard a voice say. It sounded something like the “humina” of Jerome. A cat walked in and howled. He was reaching in the fridge for some milk, kicked at the door, missed, it closed anyway, gave the cat a bowl of…then he heard a voice: “Smookie! Heere kitty.”

He picked up the cat and the saucer and went outside. Then he saw her, and at once they loved each other. They went on twelve dates and finally he proposed. She said, “yes” so they got married. But she never knew about his horrible secret- and she was about to find out about it.

We bought a bookstore

May 25th, 2007

Lauren and I are now the owners of Blue Bicycle Books — Used, Rare and Local. I started working there in the fall of 1998, and although I never put in more than a few hours a week, intermittently at that, had been learning the business ever since. Two years ago the owners asked Lauren and I to consider taking it over, but we had no idea how to buy it.  I probably hadn’t been behind the counter in more than 12 months when another buyer pulled out and we jumped.

www.bluebicyclebooks.com

Read all about it here.

And here’s the piece I wrote for the 10th annual Best of Charleston — we were still called Boomer’s back then.

 

 

Bill Clinton’s Publicist Presents “The Gaze Collection”

December 12th, 2006

We recently heard a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation say that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has the uncanny ability — "like former President Clinton" – to make you feel like you’re the only person in the room. Over the years I’ve heard this quality ascribed to certain people, none more than our former president. As Lauren and I have been hitting a few receptions and Christmas parties and she chastises me for my lack of schmoozing skills, I was reminded of it again.

The idea came to me, fully formed, about five o’clock one morning after an interior decorator’s reception. I was so happy with how it came out and that I was able to actually remember and write it all down hours later, this conceit that such a talent could be commodified and marketed, like a private dancer or maybe a twister of balloon-animals.

.

BILL CLINTON’S PUBLICIST PRESENTS
“THE GAZE COLLECTION”

Former President Clinton’s ability to hold the gaze of a person in conversation and “make them feel like they’re the only person in the room” has been much celebrated, and, frankly, somewhat abused of late. While Mr. Clinton’s power to lock eyes like a tractor beam is surely astounding, it is not supernatural. He is human, and his charisma is not some trick to be trotted out at parties. The truth is, during the busy holiday season, when Mr. Clinton attends upwards of fifteen receptions weekly, sometimes he just wants to eat cheese cubes, drink Pinot Gris out of a plastic cup and engage in flaccid, dull-eyed conversation just like everyone else.

That being said, the Immediate Past President is still the champ when it comes to giving you a double-clutch handshake and making everyone else go poof. And he will always be the champ, no matter what anyone says about Reagan, whose abilities have been grossly exaggerated in death. So, in addition to his ordinary Holiday Party Appearance fee of $70,000, we offer the following packages – “Bill Clinton’s Gaze Collection.”

The Swirly Silence. The Former President will, in a one-on-one conversation, make you feel like you’re the only person in the room. The room will grow quiet, all other party action will slow down into a blur of faces and passed hors d’oeuvres. While you might in theory be able to make out nearby figures, you will be unable to pull yourself away from Mr. Clinton’s eyes. Duration: One song (excluding Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’”). Cost: $400, $200 extra for a friend to join you. Comes with your choice of red rose or carnation.

The Vanilla Sky. Starts off like The Swirly Silence, but after a moment you will have the option to look around. What you will see is an eerily empty hall. Go ahead, check under the table skirts. Where’d everybody go? Kind of like when Tom Cruise runs through Times Square without a soul in sight, isn’t it? Duration: One song of any length. Cost: $1,000. Comes with your choice of calla lily, orchid or rose of any color, plus a monogrammed handkerchief. For the Former President’s security, and your own, a Secret Service Agent will remain present.

The 2001. Hold on to your bourbon-and-ginger, you’re weightless! Feel like you’re twenty miles above the surface of the Earth. Watch the moon closely as that gray presidential coiffure comes crowning out behind it. Mr. Clinton’s head will float attentively as you gush about your Peace Corps experience and who you think will be the MLK of the Gay Rights Movement. Duration: 45 seconds. Cost: $12,000. Soften your re-entry with a bouquet of assorted flowers, two commemorative champagne flutes, and a towel used by the Former President at a Hyatt fitness center.

The Full Monty. You’ll be in a circle of people making jokes about Bush moving his lips when he reads, when the Former President will turn to you. “So Madison, what do you think we can do to curb childhood obesity?” As he looks into your eyes and awaits your answer, everyone around you will go silent and blurry, then vanish. After a brief trip to outer space, you will find yourself in a West Elm-appointed pied à terre with silk sheets on the bed. Bebop from a club below wafts through an open window; a Meat Lover’s pizza cools on the sill. Cost: Negotiable. Pied à terre experience may not be virtual.

Nantahala

November 1st, 2006

from morning typing, Feb. 17, 2006

The college student packs his camping gear in an old car, grabs a coffee and heads for the mountains. He’s meeting an ex-girlfriend in Asheville, they both recently are single again. She’s taking him rock climbing. It’s Thanksgiving weekend and they’ll have to huddle in the tent together, eat pumpkin pie filling out of a can and drink Wild Turkey.

He’s envisioned the whole weekend on the drive, smoking a joint as he fights the traffic. It’s the best part of the weekend, the anticipation, he knows it, knows there’s a chance he’ll be made a fool of, make a pass at her and get a blank look and a pullback.

The car is ashy and dirty, old fast food containers on the floorboards, but it’s here, listening to Bob Weir on the tape deck, that he has the best sense of the woods.

When he’s in them, the woods will just be where he is with his emotions, but now, in the car, the woods are brown and shadowy, inspiring, perfect. And he knows he’s stupid to get his hopes up, but what if, what if she is just as excited, what if they get lucky. Every now and then people come together equally, no one is compromising or just trying to fill a need, some times people just come together in complete good faith, that this is now and this is what I want, nothing else.

In the woods they’ll make camp he’ll build a fire, and she’ll wear her old Patagonia fleece and her hair back in a ponytail. They’ll get on their mountain bikes and ride, and she’ll fall and he’ll help her. In the tent she’ll drink the bourbon and say how her father is dating her old biology teacher from high school, the one all the guys were in love with, she’s 32.

The girl is 22. She works at On the Border and is taking a semester off.

She gets emotional and thinks the bourbon is making her sick, but then she goes outside the tent and it’s cold and wet and dark, a squirrel makes a rustle in the leaves, but she doesn’t know it’s just a squirrel, God knows what it is, and she’s not wearing her boots or even socks, it’s freezing, but she’s not nauseous now, just drunk and full of wonderment, and she’s here in the woods now, not in the tent with the horny boy, she’s here now, completely. The same cold wind that shakes the pines blows against her fair unwrinkled cheek.

Soon she’ll give in and be in the tent and maybe marry that guy, but tonight she’ll stay out and be uncomfortable in the now, cold and shivering but not a second ahead of herself, not a bit of her anywhere else.

a scene from the new novel

October 17th, 2006

I caught up with Frisco on the corner of Rutledge and Grove, in an abandoned gravel parking lot where a Vietnamese woman had a hand-painted sign: SHRIMP $2.

The sign was a bit of a ploy. That’s the loss-leader price, it only bought you the 60-count, head-on popcorners.

She wore a wide conical straw hat and had an old red pick-up with three or four big white coolers in the bed. She opened the lids for Frisco, scooped the various options out of the gray ice slurry with a plastic colander.

“This here is head-off jumbo, six dollars a pound. This here is head-off regular, five-dollars a pound, and this one…” she lifted a lid marked $PECIAL , “…is super-colossal. These boys are my mack-daddies. Sure, they may cost a bit more, five-dollars a pound for head-on, but when you steam them, you will know where that extra money went.”

Frisco peered in at the colander.

“Yeah, they’re pretty big, but I don’t know about colossal now. You got to remember I just got back from Apalachicola.”

“Frisco, please. Am I Cambodian? Are we in North Charleston? Black people who know their shrimp come to this corner. I’ll take the Pepsi challenge with that Panhandle stuff any day of the week.”

He scratched his chin. She didn’t let up.

“Listen pal, whiting is dead as Dick Nixon. Shrimp is back. It’s a seller’s market…”

“Excuse me,” I said. “But which is it? Is your stuff really better, or is it just a seller’s market, because those seem like two different arguments.”

“Both. Not that it concerns you. I’m trying to close here.” She turned to Frisco and gave him a little Saigon Sass. “You buy or no?!”

“Okay, okay,” Frisco said. “Give me a couple pounds of the mack-daddy, and if it’s as good as you say it is I’ll come back tomorrow for more.”

“Okay,” she said, skeptical, scooping a colander-full onto the scale and taking off shrimp. “I only hope I still have some when you do.”

The needle was on the heavy side of two. She took off one lousy shrimp and it bounced to the lighter side. Chintzy.

Not to brag…

October 6th, 2006

When he spoke here last month, Sherman Alexie was asked if he had good relationships, was received well by people on the Rez (The Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington where he grew up).

He made a reference to Isiah/Luke, a prophet never being welcome in his hometown, and quickly moved on to say how much he had moved on, and, trying not to be pompous, mentioned honestly how great it would have been if there had been a successful, straight-shooting Indian writer/comedian/filmmaker like himself to look up to when he was growing up.

He then went into a long harangue, showing how amazed he was at how far he had come. It was meant to be cute and perhaps self-deprecating, but by the sheer length of the list of things he mentioned, seen the Eiffel Tower, been kissed by Sharon Stone, having a huge house, having Robert Redford’s number in the cell phone he pulled out of his pocket, on and on and on, it morphed into something else entirely.

Anyway, I’m at a curious stage in my career. I like to call myself a working writer, analogous to a “working actor.” Some people are impressed I support myself solely through writing. Some, like my wife, are probably a bit less impressed that a 33-year-old Yale graduate makes so little money and has no publishing prospects.

Either way, I haven’t exactly come up from poverty. I’ve spent the last ten years clawing my way back up to the level of comfort and security I enjoyed when I was thirteen.

(Digression: this probably has a lot to do with what I’ve begun to notice recently as a ridiculous change in the standard of living in this country in the last twenty years, due to leftover effects of the boom economy of the 90s and, most of all, people’s ability to borrow vast sums of money. When my dad was in medical school, he and my mom lived in a trailer, next to other med students. I’d be shocked to find a med student today who doesn’t live better than my parents did when my Dad was well through his residency.)

Anyway, like Sherman, I have a lot to brag about too.

I have a laser printer and a lawn mower. The printer has a bug – with MS Word it only prints two pages a minute, but if you plan ahead it’s not much of a hindrance.

Not only have I not had my water cut off since 1998, I’m now so confident in my ability to pay each month that I even sprinkle my lawn, just needlessly padding the bill.

I have high-deductible health insurance and recently stopped going to the dental hygienist school, got a real dentist to fill the cavities the dental hygiene students and faculty have been telling me about for eight years.

I don’t have a cell phone, but I know someone who has Stephen Colbert’s phone number.

I shop at the Banana Republic, and on at least four or five occasions have paid full price for items.

I have a house and a mortgage. Hell, what am I saying, I even have two mortgages!

In recent years I’ve traveled to Costa Rica, Lake Tahoe, and Orlando, Florida.

My wife and I regularly buy some of our groceries at Whole Foods, in Mount Pleasant.

Even though our house has three bedrooms, we only sleep in one. The others are essentially superfluous.

I personally own three bicycles, two of which run quite well.

I got rid of dial-up internet almost two years ago.

I’m not due for a boot on my car (which is foreign and is of a model year in the current decade.)

Said car also has air-conditioning and can be unlocked from thirty yards away.

I very often buy the name-brand salsa, and always get the low-fat cheese, even though it’s almost never on sale.

I have a complete set of golf clubs. (I think it’s complete, I don’t play golf.) 

I get my hair cut every four months at a real salon with gay people. When you go there they offer you something to drink, anything you want. Beer, soda, whatever.

 

The Siren Sofa

September 5th, 2006

Written on my typewriter on Feb. 13 of this year. Released this week to coincide with the debut of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Mermaid Chair, a Lifetime movie event starring Kim Basinger

Sumter, our petulant Boykin Spaniel, sat in the bow of the johnboat, the spartina grass tickling his nose. Drayton, his skin tanned by the warm October sun, popped open a Palmetto Ale.

“You want to throw the cast net?” he said.

As I threw the cast net into the brackish waters of Edistawmalaw Creek, time and again, pulling in a haul of squirming shrimp, spottail, and Carolina croker, I was reminded of the rhythms of my life, my grandmother, who was the only white woman in the ’20s to weave sweetgrass baskets along Highway 17, my great-grandmother, who fired a cannon off the piazza of her tabby-stuccoed house, trying to drive the Union out of the harbor, not because she hated black people, but because she loved the South.

The muddy hands of an oyster roast in November, the smell of the oleander branches burning and wet burlap steaming. The sweet banjo picking of the woodsmen at our ancestral mountain cabin in Cashiers. The well-crafted cornices of the Four Corners of Law.

Great-grandma was so lucky, she died after an oyster roast, from oleander-smoke poisoning, and I wished, throwing that net, that I could die while shrimping.

It was a perfect January morning. Drayton pulled out his harmonica from an old handkerchief he got at Luden’s and played a tune from Porgy and Bess. A grey heron sat like a lawn jockey, listening and watching us, and we watched him.

And later that night, as we rode over the new Cooper River bridge, and looked down on the old bridges, being torn apart, I realized that my connection to my ancestors was being torn apart, like the bridges were being torn apart, like me and Drayton were being torn apart, and I took his hand in mine and told him I was leaving him for my web designer, a metrosexual from Portland, Oregon who wore Prada turtlenecks and made the most beautiful air quotes in the jasmine-scented Carolina air.

Drayton was mostly trying to concentrate on driving, he was very drunk from the White Lightning from his great-grandfather’s ancestral still out on Goldbug Island, but in the morning, he would take a walk with me in the surf of Breach Inlet, the sandpipers scooting along with each wave sliding in like a bed sheet changed by a Gullah housekeeper at the Mills House Hotel.

His khakis from Grady Ervin, well-worn and handed down from his older brother Chalmers, a harbor pilot who died in Hurricane Pinckney back in ’73, were rolled up to his ankles, and he took my hand in his.

But no words came. We walked to our favorite sand dune. You aren’t supposed to walk on the dunes, but our ancestors helped build those dunes, I’m sure, and those laws were meant for tacky tourists who bought T-shirts down on the Market, where my great-uncle Middleton used to sell lemons. Those people didn’t know a sea oat from a royal palm, and anyway, nothing could prevent us from heeding the call of that dune, which cried out like a beautiful mythological creature with a sweet song, and we went and sat, we sat there all night, watched the sea turtles come and lay their eggs, watched them hatch, watched the ghost crabs swoop in and scarf up the wee turtles like a fat man eating crawfish.

And as a dolphin leaped above the surf, the moonlight shimmering off its wet back, I knew that this night was every night, that just having this one night was like having an eternity, because the turtles would come back and lay more eggs, and in a hundred years we’d tear down the new bridge and put up a new one, and my great-granddaughter would throw the same cast net and smoke pot from the same plant and date a boy who drank whiskey from the Draytons’ ancestral still, and I could never escape this land of the salt marsh and pluff mud, of tea olives and camellias, it was as dissolved in me and I in it as simple syrup in sweet tea, and as Sumter barked and we laughed we realized we lived in Charleston once and no one, not even Dennis Kucinich could take that away.