I’ve long been of the opinion that there are exactly two places where it’s acceptable to wear a bow tie: when wearing a tuxedo at a designated black tie event (weddings, the Academy Awards, the Sigma Phi Epsilon formal at the lovely Radisson in Palm Springs, etc.) and when sharing the stage with the rest of the Thunder from Down Under Male Revue in Las Vegas. And even then, it’s a dubious proposition these days as more and more black tie events and male stripper shows are going for regular old ties and/or Dancing Bear costumes. However, after attending the annual Association of Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Chicago this past week, it has come to my attention that men of a certain type – typically those missing discernible sexual characteristics – have begun wearing bow ties in lieu of ratty cardigans and ironic t-shirts, opting instead to do some sort of strange amalgamation of Steam Punk, the late Senator Paul Simon and some vintage time of yore when people who didn’t want to have sex with anyone wore fucking bow ties and spent their afternoons scribbling thoughts into their moleskines.
The first person I encountered with the bow tie affliction was standing in the serpentine registration line a few feet across from me on Wednesday afternoon. He looked like Doctor Who, except his Tardis was a spiral notebook and his plucky assistant was a woman who kept muttering, “I hate standing in line.” The Doctor didn’t seem to notice this rather annoying utterance because he was looking around and taking assiduous notes on…something. (I wonder if right now there’s a post somewhere that begins, “I’ve long been of the opinion that there are exactly two places where it’s acceptable to look like you robbed a Banana Republic…” and it goes on to talk about how he saw this one guy over and over again who had the temerity to have an open collar and un-skinny jeans and who looked like the love child of David Schwimmer and John Lovitz).
At first, I didn’t actually recognize the oddity of the bow tie he wore – and by the end of the week, I felt like an oddity for not wearing one – because I was far too focused on his meticulous handlebar mustache and, uhm, the toy sword that hung from his belt. It can be slightly unsettling when you realize that your peer group includes guys with toy swords, particularly if your peer group isn’t made up mostly of people who perform at pirate shows in Las Vegas. But the more I looked at this young man, the more I started to feel like I knew him from somewhere (somewhere that didn’t include a great buffet and low cost strippers, it should be noted) and then I realized the connection: the year before, at the AWP conference in Washington, DC, I found myself stuck in an elevator with this same person over and over again and in my mind I began thinking of him as The Foppish Dandy. But, no, no, that wasn’t him. Because, well, The Foppish Dandy was actually standing a few feet in front of me. Or, no, wait, The Foppish Dandy was standing behind me. No, The Foppish Dandy was just now walking in, pushing a baby in a stroller. (Babies were a big accessory item at AWP this year, followed in short order by a surprising upswing in pieced noses and the occasional pierced-space-between-your-eyes.) After that initial run-in, I began taking note – not in a moleskine, because I don’t believe in killing mole’s for my reporting, opting instead for obsessive tweeting – of when I encountered my first bow tie of each day. (I didn’t keep accurate track of the handlebar mustaches, sadly, but they numbered in the dozens and unless your name is Tony Dushane or David Shook or Rollie Fingers, you’re simply not pulling it off.)
Thursday:8:33am, Chicago Hilton, walking beside me on the stairs into the exhibition hall. He was about 25, hair was shaped into a mohawk, but in that half-hearted way that clearly showed when he went home to his parents he actually probably parted it nicely to one side. Had the following conversation:
Me: That’s a bow tie. Him: Yeah, it’s vintage. Me: How do you know? Him: I bought it at a vintage store in Madison. Me: But how do you know it’s vintage? I mean, do you know when people actually wore bow ties? Is there a time hallmarked by bow ties? Him: Me: Him: Me: Have a good conference. Him: Yeah. Okay.
Friday: 8:32am, Booth 408, bald man, 40ish, with horned-rim glasses and a cardigan. When I saw him I said, “That’s a bow tie.” He didn’t respond. I suspect he was as surprised as I was.
Saturday:8:55am, heading into a panel on gothic fiction of the Midwest, wearing a yellow shirt and suspenders, black boots, black glasses. Was talking on his cell phone, saying, “I’m so over anything to do with rhyme.” Now, I must admit, I’m not exactly a fashion plate myself, being one of Hebrew build and design, but I found myself, as the days went on and the bow ties multiplied like Tribbles, pondering if there was some kind of movement afoot, some sort of 99% thing that involved occupying fucking vintage stores, and whenever I asked anyone just why, you know, they were wearing bow ties, the answer I received more often than not was, frighteningly, “I just want to be different.” The irony shouldn’t have been lost on a group of writers but, alas, maybe they aren’t teaching the meaning of that word in MFA programs anymore. There’s always more than one trend to spot at AWP, of course, so here are a few others I saw during my time among the Moleskine People, as well as just a few general impressions and things I discovered along the way:
1. As I walked through the exhibition hall – there were actually four interconnected halls filled with hundreds of tables and booths occupied by magazines, presses, literary magazines, nonprofits dedicated to people writing poetry in the woods and university writing programs, and university writing programs – I couldn’t help but notice how literary magazines and small presses have continued the slow march toward absurdity by continuing to coin names for themselves that make them sound like bands. So I ask, is this a list of places you’d like to submit your work to…or is it the bands you’ll pretend to like after you watch this year’s Coachella replays on YouTube?
Kugelmass: Oh, shit, Jewish death rock. They bring the matzo to Satan, yo.
Hawk & Handsaw: Saw them open up for the Drive-by Truckers in Austin. Great show, but too many prolonged jams. Just get to the lyrics, you know?
Poor Claudia: Melodic, haunting, electro-punk from Minnesota by way of Vietnam.
Goodmorning Menagerie: Never got back into them after their first lead singer died in that boating accident, but from what I hear of their new singer, who used to be the drummer, I’m starting to think they’re gonna find their way. Saw them tour with Die Antwoord before, like, anyone was into them.
Blood Orange: They were in the bar scene in the Swedish version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” but were cut at the last minute, which is awesome, because now I don’t have to share them with everyone. Love how they use power tools instead of guitars.
The Coffin Factory: Saw them in the Sahara Tent at Coachella in 2006, partied with them in the camp grounds, which was pretty cool, and then they released those vinyl 45s, which were awesome, I heard, though I don’t have a record player.
Arsenic Lobster: I’m totally down with their pro-vegan message, though I thought their cover of “Meat is Murder” was a little heavy handed.
Pirene’s Fountain: Discovered them on Spotify and now, like, I can only write my poetry if they’re on. Only made one album and now everyone in the band is in
Prime Mincer, but with a different stand-up bass player. Hazel & Wren: I was so bummed when Cee-Lo picked them to be on his team during the last season of “The Voice” but then they totally dominated with their version “American Girl” and it all made total sense.
BatCat: I took my niece to see them when they toured with Crazy Town back in the day. The lead singer was on “Celebrity Rehab” last season and made Gary Busey seem sane, so, yeah, I was totally surprised to see that they were back together. Rap-Rock forevah!
Coldfront: I’m not down with that skinhead shit, you know? But these guys are actually pretty straight edge, which is cool. But, like, you know, grow some hair, right?
Compass Rose: Rob Roberge played a set with these ladies when they toured with The Urinals a few years back and he said they were like “[T]he MC5, if they MC5 grew up across the street from Bryn Mawr instead of in Detroit…” and then he went on to say something about William Gaddis and then he told this story about how, in 1988, Richard Yates was actually sleeping with the bass player in Compass Rose. Anyway, my point is, if you like Joni Mitchell crossed with LCD Soundsystem filtered through a feminist approach to seasonal disorders, well, then you’ll love Compass Rose.
2. There’s never a nice way of telling someone that you don’t want to read their book, which is how I ended up having the following conversation with a man who kept shoving his book into my hands:
Man: I wrote this after I got fired from my teaching job. It has all of my lesson plans and lectures in it. I think your students would really benefit from it.
Me: Why do you think my students would benefit from the things you used at your job before they fired you?
Man: I don’t get what you mean.
Me: Well, if they fired you, that’s not a ringing endorsement for your ability to get my students to benefit from your words.
Man:
Me:
Man: Are you saying you don’t want to buy my book?
Me: I’m not going to buy your book, no.
Man: What about your students?
Me: They aren’t here.
Man: If you bought the book, you could share it with them and then they could make their own judgment.
3.I met a woman with this tattoo. I will never unsee this:
4. No one really wants to hear anyone read for 30 minutes. It doesn’t matter if you’re John Irving or John, the poet from Rochester. After about seven minutes of anyone reading anything, unless you’re nine years old, your mind begins to wander, particularly if you’re standing up in the middle of a bar near the Ukranian part of Chicago having already been subjected to the caterwauling of a band playing their first show to actual people. The same goes, however, if you’re just reading inside a ballroom in the basement of a hotel. Or anywhere, really. The thing about readings is this: the only people who like to go to readings are the readers, and they only want to hear themselves read and then talk shit about the other people. If you happen to be one of the readers, it’s important to remember this salient fact when your own fucking reading is spreading past the 15 minute mark and people start to clap every time you take a breath in hopes that your silence is indicating an ending and not some kind of dramatic fucking pause before you go on for another fucking 20 minutes. And can we talk about poet voice, people? Who taught all poets to read in that sing-song cadence? Is there a good reason poets read with that strange intonation? I attended two off-site readings during the week, both inside loud bars and inexplicably filled with people wearing backpacks (and let me state: if you need to bring your backpack to the bar, you probably don’t need to be at a bar), and in each case a poet got up and stood very quietly behind the microphone and tried to sing-song the audience into listening to their poem about…well, I don’t know what it was about. All I know is that at the first of the two readings in lovely Little Ukraine, I had a sleep erection by the end of the first poet’s eleven minute treatise on [choose one: 1) The terrific abuse they’d suffered. 2) The way light filtered through the room during the half-light of the morning on the day You died. 3) Fucking.] and all I could wonder was who was responsible for this disturbing trend. And then I thought, you know, maybe I’ll propose a panel at AWP in Boston next year called “The Poet’s Voice: The Pedagogy of Shame” or some such thing and get to the root of this issue once and for all.
5. The next fashion trend at AWP? The all-white Gimp outfit:
6. If your particular fetish happens to be for women with shoulder length brown hair wearing black tights, black glasses, black boots and sporting pierced noses, AWP would be the single greatest week of your life. Likewise, if your fetish is for men with bulging midsections, scuffed brown shoes, inexplicable earrings, messenger bags filled with back issues of Pank and who tend talk a lot about drinking whiskey, well, you’d have terrible taste in men but you’d find easy pickings, too.
7. Found poetry from the description of the panel “Feminism in the Writing Classroom: What’s the Rubric?”:
How do we negotiate
arising issues of gender
and
sexism
in the classroom
is loyalty to our identity
as feminists
or
teachers
paramount
need
we choose
8. Punching a hole in your book cover and stringing a chain through it and then wearing it as a necklace makes you look insane.
9. During a series of conversations with men and women 25 and under, I learned the following things:
a. 99% (and this is no exaggeration) have never heard (or heard of) “Born to Run.”
b. There are more and more MFA programs and writers’ retreats that sound like bed & breakfasts or microbreweries (to wit: Pine Manor, Stonecoast, Slippery Rock, Hedgebrook, Rosemont, Cave Canem).
c. If they are poets and they don’t own televisions, they also frequently don’t own microwaves.
10. Despite all of the above, I rather enjoy attending AWP. There is something bracing about watching the news coverage of Rick Santorum’s latest assault on intelligence, only to then be submerged in a world of ten thousand writers, all of whom cherish the written word and the desire to create empathy. To see so many people excited about books and writing is to see the very embodiment of hope. Also: to see so many young people still having random sexual encounters with writers whose publishing credits sound like congenital defects (“I have your issue of Harpur Palate!”) gives hope, finally, that the bow tied shall one day find their margin, too.
