Ponytail

 

“He’s a construction worker and a poet,” he said, looking at me. He wasn’t looking for a reaction, so I nodded. I looked at his burgundy Members Only jacket and vertical striped t-shirt with alternating stripes of navy and goldenrod. His hair was a dense pillow of brown curls breaking apart, frayed and unkempt.

He looked like he was straight from central casting. So did the guy next to me, another agent like him, and they steered the direction of the conversation toward jazz. I had nothing to say, but after minutes of listening to their soapbox to our circular table of ten, I admitted my knowledge was limited to a jazz appreciation class I took at Cuesta College twenty years ago where the lecture was viewing the Ken Burns documentary Jazz. I added something about buying my instructor’s recommendation, Sketches of Spain.

Both agents agreed, Sketches of Spain is great.

I ate from my plate of California cuisine on a paved courtyard at the off-season ski resort, wondering if an entire week at a writers’ retreat was a good idea. This was the first night, and I already felt like I had met fifty people from Brooklyn.

After dinner, I went back to the condo I shared with three twenty-somethings. They were smart, easy to talk to, and passionate artists. My evenings were always committed to reading people’s pages for our workshop the next day. It took me hours to do what many of the recent MFA students were completing in twenty minutes. But I needed the alone time since I came from a pretty solitary existence to full days where I was socializing with a hundred people.

Our mornings started promptly at 8:30, and we workshopped for three hours with an assigned group of twelve people total. We grew to really love each other, and as we moved through the week, reading two new people each day, it was like we were slowly getting naked in front of each other. We were revealing true selves.

There was a break for lunch, and then each afternoon there was a succession of three to four panels where authors and agents would give information and insight into their lives. “He’s a construction worker and a poet,” the same agent said, talking about how he found his latest writer. 

The panel was on the process and power of securing a person who believes in your work. I jotted notes occasionally: online presence doesn’t matter, age doesn’t matter, and keep query letters brief. These were all noted from the panel during a Q&A where I felt so embarrassed for the people asking questions I wanted to climb under my chair and hide. Each question was a desperate cry for validation and projection of anxiety that their work hasn’t been recognized. The question askers were not just standing up butt naked; they were gyrating their bits and bobs for the room to acknowledge.

My roommates invited me to a party held by the staff after an evening reading and a keynote from a famous author. When we approached the massive cabin, it was pretty obvious we were the only participants granted this invitation. Nervousness escalated as we ascended the stairs to the kitchen. The room was circular with tall vaulted ceilings and all the wood and stone accoutrements of a mountain home. My roommates and three other attendees orbited the faculty, hugging the kitchen island. Occasionally, one would turn around and chat with us, saving us from seeming like uninvited bacteria nibbling away at the exterior of their tight-knit circle.

I spoke with the author who workshopped my piece. She was a nice person and supportive in my bubbling up of plans that started to form from the week of focused inspiration. She introduced me to a writer next to her. He was very kind and asked me about my stories, widely smiling and saying, “I love it when the main character is a liar.”

He told me about his day job as a professor. I was realizing most of these writers had a life not much different than my own. They loved their teaching jobs as it afforded them the safety to be a writer without an anvil of pressure hanging from their neck. I talked to him for over twenty minutes, and the entire time I felt disdain from the woman standing next to him. She was thin with shoulder-length platinum hair combed straight back, without any part, like she came up from underwater. She never looked at me, only the man I talked to. She was ready for me to go the minute I came.

I assumed she wanted to fuck the writer I was talking to, and I had interrupted whatever cozy conversation they were having, moving closer to each other one inch at a time. I was not a threat; she knew it from my earnestness. After the conversation wrapped up, I ducked away to find my roommates who were standing by the stairwell with the president of the retreat. In the few minutes I stood on the edge of their conversation, she repeated an anecdote about her daughter three times, so I assumed she was a step past tipsy.

My roommates and I decided to head home after we watched the faculty play instruments and sing together. I appreciated my roommates’ indifference to leaving abruptly, as I would have felt obligated to sit there all night, worried it would be offensive to leave after they sang their song. 

We walked home and shared our stories of the night. I thanked them for inviting me. I knew if I were housed with other middle-aged women, this invite would not have fallen before me. The spirited twenty-year-olds radiate with promise and attract guidance, but as the years tack on, that glitter gets encased in grit from life, and requires an archeological chipping to see. 

I looked good though. I dressed well and did my hair and makeup. I knew it was important to be comfortable with being seen, and I can’t pull off lounge wear and a ponytail like I used to. A shift happens after 40 where a ponytail sculpted from freshly showered hair hangs like a dying flower in a short vase. It’s a ponytail that looks like she’s flushed her youth down the drain of all the toilets she’s cleaned, laundry she’s washed, and dishes she’s scrubbed. This look is fine for going to the grocery store, but it’s not making a statement like a poet in a hard hat.

The last night was a talent show showcasing mostly the faculty, who were a well-worn quilt of camaraderie. Some of the attendees participated, and one of them was my roommate who read a poem. I was thrilled by his performance even though I don’t know squat about poetry. I stood up and applauded him. I wished at that moment he was a construction worker; maybe he would have had a standing ovation.

I was protective of him. They had deemed me the house mother, which I thought was cute and represented my inclination to retire to my room after dinner, drink Smooth Move tea, and watch TV on my phone till 1 am. All the socializing was counter to the small life I lead. I loved talking and meeting people, but I couldn’t unwind at the end of the day, and by the last day my eyes turned to little slits above massive sandbags.

The last morning I said goodbye to two of my roommates. I told the poet I was impressed by his bravery; bravery will carry anyone where they want to go. I thought it was a motherly thing to say. I made it for the last panel, a goodbye speech from an author who focused on Lucia Berlin. He told a story about how an unknown student once gave him a copy of their book that he shelved, and he pulled it out after she became posthumously famous. He highlighted that she was a cleaning lady and an alcoholic. I wondered what her hair looked like when she handed him that book: was it a ponytail of straw?

What a privilege the week was. I’m so grateful I was invited and very happy that I went. I’m glad I met 100 people and needed 3 days to lie on my couch to recuperate. I left drained, but bursting with visions of what was to come. An understanding that writing is a gift of observation, and I was like a boa constrictor digesting a cow, downloading a week of dense data at my outdated dial-up speed. Here I am, writing in worn-out loungewear, puffy morning eyes, and a mass of wild, tangled hair, begging me to tie it up in a scrunchie.