found twenty dollars on the floor where i’d dropped it earlier. making change.

i have some responsibilities for putting something together sometime in the future for the people at the table at AWP where i worked, eleven to five yesterday, nine to five today, three hours two days ago, good work, talky work, giving people the slightly-unhinged, the authentic-enthusiasm-which-always-is-scary-slightly, you know the kind of sell i mean, what’s important is i came out of it with a backpack of books, journals, papers, etc., one t-shirt which i got for free- for nothing! for being nice, which, ok, not nothing, but not something either, it’s neither, really, agree with me.

i am anxious about getting my train tomorrow because i haven’t learned how to wake up in the morning. i forgive you the jealous supposition that i’ve been doing it for twenty years now so i must have learned something by now about it. i forgive because i care. for you, reader. i care for you and about you.

when asked how i feel, i say foggy and weird but up to the task. i think, “centuries of training prevent me from saying what i mean to say, which is, ‘it doesn’t matter what i feel.’” i think, “i’m going to write something like that later, but i won’t say ‘centuries of training.’” i think of how james purdy’s “cabot wright begins” begins- the paragraph about nobody ever knowing how bodies beside you are conscious, have thoughts, read in british accents, edit themselves.

my two-day buzz almost is dry. people say my hair and skinny tie look good on me. together, they look good on me, i mean. i am on the inside special and will get a trophy when this is all over.

that was a lie, i’m sorry, for and about the trophy thing.

some people give me business cards but i don’t mind. when i ask “are you familiar with our press” and people say “yes” i shut up after that. these are things i’ve learned. about the industry, about myself. i’ve learned again but always knew but needed i guess another lesson on how at odds with my getting good grades good writing has been for me. i missed thursday and friday classes on a week when those were the only days of there being class, because of all the snow.

all of my cab drivers tell me they’ve heard it’s snowy where i’m from. i exaggerate to all of them. it’s really only waist high, and by now likely lower. it reminds me of some good advice a dear friend gave me about the profession: “don’t forget to put the weather in your god damned book.”

that was a lie, nobody told that to me, hemingway wrote it to f scott fitzgerald. why i do this, i don’t know. i ought to have better answers, that’s why.

i choose a cigar i have until now, the end, saved. it tastes miserable and turns my whole mouth numb and i feel not like i am walking away from something but like i am just leaving a hotel, briefly, to come back and look for anything that’s changed at the table. i pitch its stub in the snow. it will be there come next year’s AWP, if there is an AWP next year or if there’s a next year. i have learned this too: don’t presume.

also i have decided to worship accidents. i intend not to explain.

nobody’s there. they all cleared out. it looks like a high school in summer. i find my twenty dollar bill i dropped on the floor. by my chair, as i’d been counting cash. it could’ve been today, it could’ve been yesterday. which matters? i don’t know. you never can know.

i would like to take this opportunity to mention a thing i heard from nobody else. this might be original, but it might not be. this might speak well of our profession, but it might not, and i’m prepared for either possibility as usually i am. for all the people drunk there were no fights. i think that is special.

i heard two women- and women more often came to my table- i have grown a moustache and goatee and will shave it the minute i go back, maybe wax it off, maybe wear it as a costume- “i’m sam’s evil twin”- call this conference halloween-like, their canvas AWP totes goodie-bag-like, and it is an apt comparison, i think, except after halloween is over you get to dump your candy on your bed, whereas now you dump it on the bathroom floor of your hotel and jury-rig a drain stopper with some plastic wrap and toilet paper (wad up toilet paper in plastic; tie) and float and drink and read and float; and before halloween there’s this excitement you and all your friends all share about putting stuff on and becoming other people, whereas a week ago it was private and about stuff like “what am i going to do, who am i going to see, where am i going to stay;” and during halloween all you have to do is be interesting and you’ll go from door to door getting fed, whereas now all you have to do is stand behind a good press and be interesting and people will go from table to table feeding you.

no great ideas, though. bummer. all i managed was that horrible, perverted fantasy about mcdonalds around the corner from yesterday, grotesquely inflated to: “buy enough french fries to fill a table, put them under the table, watch people drift towards our waft, profit.” and something about dart throwing and/or catching, it was too ridiculous even to mention out loud, i’m not saying anything about it.

i thought i saw our very own rachel sims but was too timid to say anything. most likely this means that really was her.

while waiting for my boss to get back to me about that twenty dollars of his i found i sat next to a red haired woman wrapped either in a poncho or a blanket. i moved my backpack for her. i still had some cigar left but was not smoking it because in the valet area it’s not ok to do so. they don’t care about convention people. they care less if you do not have a badge i imagine and i have been for this whole time marvelously without one. i feel, about this, something primal. i have won. the redhead waits for me to get up and walk off before walking away herself. i didn’t say anything to her. she escaped from my life without leaving more mark on it than that and i did the same to her and we’re never, no matter what, telephone or no telephone, going to erase that conspicuous nonexistence- the shitty grey stains of a bad eraser- from our memories.

i sat down at that bench puff daddy. what i am now i don’t know. whether she’s him now i can’t know. that’s the point.

it rained a bit today.