Absolute Gentleman

It’s a title I’ve been saving for a special occasion, but like all things you save due to an overblown sense of the dramatic, the end of it is never that exciting anyway — like that ridiculously amazing ending for that story you keep on an index card and file it away in your “Great Story Ideas” folder, an ending that can never possibly be useful and probably not any good to begin with. I imagined this title would twinkle from the marquee of some local theater, during the week Junot Diaz came to read from his new novel, the first book-length project he put out since his highly-influential story collection, Drown (Riverhead Books 1996).

The day I picked up this book is the day I found my voice as a writer. I had been led to believe that I told entertaining stories, but for some reason, I thought all short stories had to be communicated the same way Ernest Hemingway’s were. As a result, I attempted to write a lot of third person prose, spare in language, annoyingly basic, seemingly insignificant dialogue. I failed horribly, although I didn’t know it at the time. I submitted it to an online magazine and it was published. In fact, I’ll look for it right now, hang on…

…OK, it’s not online anymore, thankfully. It used to be the first thing that popped up on Google — actually Dogpile was the search engine I used — whenever I did a search on my name. Of course I did a search on my name. Anyway, I found the story on my computer. It’s called Let The Sleeping Lie.

Junot Diaz’ masterpiece is a collection of stories told in the first person, much like a person would relay stories to friends, say, in front of a giant fire on the beach, drinking many beers, being stupid and twenty. It’s how I told stories, and I suppose the friends I’m thinking about right now are some of the best friends I will ever have because they listened and they laughed, and there was never anything in their faces, ever, that said they were going to betray me.

Junot Diaz didn’t really tell his stories that way, didn’t ride with his ‘boys through the affluent Long Island village of Old Field to find that dead end where you could park and build a ridiculous fire. Junot Diaz is Dominican, grew up in Santo Domingo and Paterson, New Jersey with a lot less money than I had, despite the fact I thought I was a poor, sad little kid growing up. Junot Diaz was real and I guess that’s where my problem begins with him.

I’ve been a teacher of English for twelve years now, and one of the best students I ever had is named Mindy Lu. She goes to Yale now. I tell everyone, because I need to remind myself that I am still the exceptional teacher who cut his teeth in rural North Carolina, when the adultery was everywhere, and you cared about wearing a tie every day — that I was excellent when I came to Massachusetts and met her, and that she’s not so far gone from those first years here that I can’t remember when I could change the world for a girl who would later go to Yale. Mindy Lu goes to Yale, have I mentioned that?

She contacts me on my cell phone, when it’s operational, and we talk like adults. She still calls me Mister. We talk about literature, although I haven’t gotten back to her on how I feel about Annie Dillard. She left the high school where I currently teach and enrolled at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. She was right to leave this area for a lot of reasons. One of them is that she’s going to Yale now. I taught a young woman who goes to Yale and calls me and asks me my advice on things.

When she was approaching her graduation at Hershey, she invited me to go. I know she didn’t think I would show up, which is only part of the reason I went to see her. Most of the other part is that I love her like she’s my little sister. My wife and sons came with me — we made a mini camping trip out of it — took the chocolate-making tours and drove up and down a street just to smell the Hershey bars they were making in a factory; drove a bit farther until we could smell the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. People there get to wake up every morning and smell Reese’s. What am I still doing here?

Then Mindy went to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She emailed me one day to tell me Junot Diaz was coming to speak at Yale on October 9 and that I should drive down. I had already missed a couple of chances to see him read, maybe even meet him, and somehow literary heroes replaced all the rockstars in my life in a hurry. I’m pretty sure it happened sometime in the mid-90s. Even Pearl Jam doesn’t mean the same to me anymore.

So October 9 I drive down to New Haven and it’s raining. During the treacherous drive, I wondered what he would read, or what he’d discuss. His first and only book was already ten years old. I’d been emailing him ever since I tracked down where he was currently teaching. I read his book, found out he taught at Syracuse. I emailed him a few times, careful not to sound like a crazed fan, though I probably did anyway. When I didn’t get an answer from him I did some more digging and learned that he taught at MIT in Boston. When I emailed him there he responded immediately. I felt incredibly warm and privileged to speak with him, trade well wishes and minor literary banter. He closed with “Ciudado” once which made me all happy and accepted.

When I thought it appropriate, I asked him if he’d come out to western Massachusetts to read for the benefit of Word Street, a literary drop-in center for young people out here. He couldn’t do it just then, whenever it was I asked him, because, as he put it, he wasn’t going to get up from his desk until he finished his novel. It was certainly understandable, and here I was with this information that I could use:

“Yes, Junot? He’s not coming just yet because he’s finishing the novel…”Yeah, we spoke about it and decided now wasn’t the best time…You know, the novel…No, I’m not comfortable sharing anything about the project…He said he’d come out here when he got it to his editor.”

I remember that it was February 2006, and he made it sound like he had just a bit to wrap up. Eight months later I was driving to New Haven, looking forward to talking to him about it: Yeah, how’s the book coming…or how did it go? Have a publication date yet?