Full Contact Faculty

I’ve posted here before about how clumsy I am. This last weekend at the La Jolla Writers Conference was no exception, and very publicly so.

First morning:  I like to dress well at these things, for any number of reasons not relevant here. I like to start nice but casual and kind of work my way up as the weekend progresses. So for my first day I wore a vintage silk tan & black guayabera shirt with black cotton pants, brown skate sneakers, and my brown porkpie hat. It’s 83 degrees in La Jolla in the middle of November and I’m in some demented California designer’s hilariously awful notion of a Polynesian resort. Perfect.

Among the many favors the ostensible resort bestows upon its guests (including locking the ice machines at night, not having coffee available in the rooms until this year, and charging a la carte for virtually everything, including Internet access) are flimsy coffee cups with joke lids. In the faculty lounge I take a drink of coffee at the same time someone across from me takes a drink of his coffee. He’s wearing a white polo shirt. Both of us spill coffee all down the front of ourselves. There’s no club soda to be had anywhere (the front desk recommends the restaurant, wholly unaware that the restaurant isn’t open), so I just have to live with it and go to class looking like I’ve barfed on my nice shirt.

Only I have somehow also cut my forearm, and at some point I have wiped my forehead with my arm. So basically I taught my first class with a massively stained shirt, cut arm, and bloodstreaked forehead, looking like I’d just wandered in from some entertaining brawl.

Next morning I’m barely awake (remind me not to let anyone schedule me for 8 AM classes ever ever again), barely caffeinated, and wearing my deep blue pinstripe three-piece. I get to class, leave my stuff on the table set up in the middle of the U of student tables, and realize I forgot to get myself a bottle of water. As I’m leaving I realize I should be sure my digital recorder is set up.  I pull it from my pocket as I walk around the tables and glance back at my stuff, then turn forward and walk headfirst into a plate glass window.

Rather unbelievably, the window doesn’t break.  And I don’t even feel that my head hit the thing. For some reason I think it’s my shoulder. I go get a bottled water and hurry back and get into my little middle section to teach. Everyone’s staring. “What?” I ask. Someone points to his nose. I put my hand on my nose and it comes away soaking red. My nose is bleeding profusely across the bridge. I also have a decent goose egg on my right supraorbital ridge. Christ.

I run into the bathroom, get some napkins, and dab at my nose, then hurry to teach the class.  A two-hour lecture on lyric prose. When it’s over I go to check the damage in the bathroom and see that my nose is covered with blood on top. I’ve just taught a 2-hour seminar on purty writin’ looking like the bad end of a mugging. It’s a credit to the students’ perspicacity and diplomacy that no one said a word. I dunno how they did it.