Ftrain, by Paul Ford

I am too big for my chair. Seats are close together, like we were on an airplane. My body will warm the body next to it. Even having lost 60 lbs.

G-- tells me he likes my intertextuality. He noticed my intertextuality! I think. Suddenly I am sitting in the conference room at Seidlin Hall at AU, below the framed Monet, eager for the world to notice me. G-- is a famous and charming man; you want to listen. I am pleased and honored to be thus observed by so serious a critic, but am also very worried about mispronouncing his name. Grail? Gree-ul? Greye-el? That last sounds like a sort of cultural-critical elf. Greye-el of the Plains.

I live in Awk, where every direction takes you awkward. The fete at hand is a fete to fete an anthology of music writing, and while I am not a music writer I am surrounded by music journalists and their friends and significant others. The air is thick with desire for fame.

I don't recognize a single face here aside from the woman who works at the bookstore and organizes readings. I recognize her because I have been on this stage before another lake of unfamiliar faces. Her name is R--. Nice lady.

We all, the readers (but actually writers), introduce ourselves to the audience of readers (who are likely all writers as well), and we turn out to have a lot of selves to introduce. I felt, as I always feel when I am seated atop a podium and staring at people, fat. Elliptical in appearance, a plane intersecting with a cone, blocking the light.

Eventually it was my turn. I went to the podium and said my name and gave the title of the piece ("Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s by Paul Ford"), read one of the 763 reviews, and sat down. Thirty seconds. Two hours to support a Vaudeville gag. Always worth it. A sole chuckle, a small round of applause. I was not boring, and I was memorable. At all costs be those two things. Give them your stuff and run.

But don't cry for me (as I give my best-of-anthology reading). Jesus, I can spoil anything. The point is--I take tremendous pride in not fitting. In every sense. The only place I feel truly welcome and contextualized is my marriage. And writing/coding. Everywhere else I feel uncertain, as if at any moment someone might hate me. Always and forever unwelcome. Does this ever go away? Likely, no. One lesson could be suspicion and paranoia, and god knows I had that before I started this--the sense of fear and distrust I was developing was one of the reasons I did this thing, because I didn't want to be huge and vulnerable and afraid of death, and thus suspicious, and full of hate.

If I am not to belong, if I am to remain a guest--and of course , I should not hold it against the world. I should try to be a fine guest: to bring a gift, appreciate the hospitality, always offer to help, and leave promptly. So I made sure to shake the hands of the anthology editors, made some smalltalk, and skipped the after-party.

(It's late when I wrote this, dinnertime, actually, and my wife is in a mood, and I just agreed with her not to come home so she can stew alone. Thus sometimes I am even a guest in my own home.)