Answer Me These Questions Five

June 22

We looked at a few apartments today. It's a great time to be renting in Oakland -- there are literally more listings than we have time to read, let alone go see. We haven't seen anything that's bowled us over yet, but we're optimistic. Especially about a place right by the Oakland Rose Garden. It's in a great neighborhood, and we drove by the building -- it's shady, with big balconies. We should be able to get a look at the actual apartment sometime this week. In about an hour we're going to look at another place -- a two bedroom, at the high end of our price range -- that sounds really lovely.

I expected to react to apartment-hunting the way I reacted to car-hunting -- that is, with boredom, annoyance, and resentment. Instead, I find it fun. Imagining living in these places. Imagining walking the streets. I'm excited.

***

We went to see that other apartment, but it was in a worse part of town than we'd expected. It has a beautiful bathroom and marble-top counters, which tempted us, but the neighborhood isn't any better than ours, and it's at the high end of our price range anyway, so, thpt. Nope. We'll continue our quest.

***

Those wacky livejournalers have been interviewing one another (it started here), and though I am not of their tribe, I asked Nick to interview me, and he complied. Here goes:

1. If your major avocation wasn't writing, what would it be? And no bullshit about "Ooh, I write to live, I can't imagine what I would do without it." (Oh, and don't say "reading" either!)

Probably putting together chapbooks, editing zines, etc. If I didn't spend most of my free time writing fiction, I'd probably be much more heavily involved in editing and in zine culture. I find playing with fonts and doing layout deeply satisfying. My favorite part of working at A Certain Magazine is the actual laying-out-the-issue bits, and it's a pleasure that is, in many ways, divorced from the content. I enjoyed the technical aspects of previous jobs where I made brochures and ads, too, and I'd probably always want to do that sort of thing as a hobby.

And if that's still too close to writing... probably cooking. If I can ever write full time (and thus have evenings and weekends free like a normal person), I think I'll get very much into learning to cook well.

2. How did you end up in California?

After I graduated from college in North Carolina, I got a job as an advertising copywriter. It paid very well, and I saved a lot of money, and I was pretty good at it, but I didn't enjoy it. At the same time, many of my friends were moving away, since most of them had just graduated, too. I felt lonely, alienated, and unfulfilled. My best friend Scott was in grad school at UC Santa Cruz, and after talking to him, I decided it would be fun to quit my job, load all my stuff in the car. and drive out to live with him in California. I'd never been farther west than Missouri before that. So that's what I did -- it took me four days to drive out. I had enough money saved to spend a month being jobless and idle in Santa Cruz, and I fell in love with the place. Then I met Heather and moved to live with her in Oakland. But that's getting beyond the edges of the question.

3. How come you don't read contemporary American realism?

I do, occasionally. I like Lorrie Moore's writing (that is to say, her actual sentences -- she has a poet's touch), and some of Michael Chabon's contemporary work. But, it's true, I mostly read SF/F/Horror. I grew up reading horror novels, science fiction, and comic books, because that was the stuff my mother and grandmother had around (well, not comic books, but otherwise), and as a result I love plots and melodrama and explosions and monsters, things which seldom appear in contemporary American realism. Plus, there's the fact that Rick Moody writes contemporary American realism, which is enough to sour me on the whole prospect. (Though to be fair, I suppose there are by the same token plenty of people writing extravagantly bad SF/F, which should sour me on that prospect, too...)

4. You're from the south. Thus, you must have had some exposure to professional wrestling as a kid. Who was your favorite?

Y'know, there was always wrestling going on at various fairgrounds, but I never went to see any of it live. I did watch WWF on television when I was a kid, and I had a great fondness for Jake the Snake. Later, I admired the Undertaker for being very enormously tall, and shadowy-eyed, and brooding, and imposing -- I think I modeled some of the villains in the stories I wrote when I was 14 years old on the Undertaker.

5. So Heather says you go to sex parties. What's the worst thing you ever stepped in?

A puddle of fruit juice is probably about the worst thing. The parties I've been to were very strict about safe sex practices -- gloves, dams, condoms. Not a lot of loose fluids flying about. Though there are probably puddles of lube here and there... I was very nervous when I went to my first such party, telling myself that, if nothing else, it would be an interesting anthropological experience. To my surprise, I had a marvelous time, felt very comfortable, and ate lots of free M&Ms. I've only been to a few of them, but I've always had fun, and there are some major scenes of the Frog novel set at a sex party. So I suppose I could even write off the cost of admission... hmm...

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