[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Ander, for that really generous,
generous introduction.
Anyone write a telekinesis nude modeling story, send it to me,
please, directly to my email address.
Thanks for mentioning Waxwing as well.
Isaac Kirkman has been in Waxwing
if you want to check out some past issues.
I think he might be the only one in the room that we've had.
Thank you.
Thank you to everyone for coming.
It's a real pleasure to have my first reading
from my first book in my dad's hometown
and to see a couple of friendly and familiar faces in the room.
So thanks for that.
Thank you so much to Vickie for letting me crash your poet
party and be your opening band.
I'm not sure if it's clear to everyone
that I'm a fiction writer.
But I'll try to bring my poet game as best I can.
[LAUGHTER]
And finally, thank you so much to Tyler.
Probably everyone in this room knows
what a great community citizen he is and the way he
supports other writers in addition to being a fine poet
himself.
I just reread "Heart Attack" this morning,
and it's a really killer poem.
I'm going to tell a quick story about what
a great citizen he's been to me.
And that will explain why I chose
to read the story I chose to read tonight.
The Kenyon Review published the first story in this collection.
It's called "Gravity."
And a couple of years after it was published,
I finally got the guts up enough at a conference
to go talk to the Kenyon Review table
and actually introduce myself, because I'd
been too shy before.
And so I tentatively said to Tyler, "I'm Erin Stalcup."
And he said, "Oh yeah, you wrote "Gravity."
Isn't that the title of your collection?
How's the collection coming?
I really liked that story."
Remembered me, remembered my work, remembered
that I was working on a book, and said,
hey, when that book is finally done, please let us know.
We all would want to celebrate with you.
And that's the first time anyone recognized me at all.
And it took me many more years to finish the book.
And it underwent a title change.
But "Gravity" is still the opening story.
So I'm going to read about 2/3 of that.
So you won't get to hear the whole story.
You'll get to learn about the problem.
You won't get to learn about the solution.
[LAUGHTER]
So thank you to Tyler for inviting me
and for all you do for writers.
This story starts with an epigraph.
And the epigraph is from Jon Mooallem.
We are suspenders of disbelief, easily enchanted
by possibility, addicted to wonder.
So whatever measure of faith we harbor
in the fallibility of gravity may,
like our faith in so many things,
be sustained not by facts or lack of facts
as much as by the sheer strength of our longing for it to be so.
Thanks.
[LAUGHTER]
I appreciate it.
I longed to fall in love in the way of the cinema--
fairy tales, tall tales, and great novels of all time.
I had faith it would happen to me someday--
any day now.
He dressed like a banker but didn't stand like one.
I wore skirts every day.
We didn't always ride the elevator together-- but often.
If we were waiting for it side by side, when it arrived,
he would hold the door, let me walk in first,
as if he'd opened that door, as if he had drawn a side
a velvet curtain to the box seat at an opera.
I'd walk to the corner, and he'd stand in front of me--
let me see his back.
He wore well-cut suits I could sense the texture of just
by looking.
I didn't touch for a long time.
The elevator floor pushed against our feet,
and our feet pushed downward, driven by a force that felt
like it was coming from above, but wasn't--
instead drawn down from the center of the Earth
that wanted us to return to where we came from--
ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Our feet were pulled downward, and the floor of the elevator
pushed upward, and it pushed harder, so we rose.
And then one day, as we lifted through the levels
of the building, he looked up into the mirrored ceiling,
and I did too.
And we saw each other-- our faces
framed by the tops of many heads,
the ceiling a goldenish metal so that our faces
were lit, glazed.
We smiled.
I got off the elevator first as I always did.
And as I stepped around him, I drew my hand across his back.
We were both wearing heavy golden rings then.
I always said the number for my floor.
17, please.
And one day, he didn't push the button.
We sailed up while the others exited.
And then we were on the top floor.
The doors slid open.
He walked out and into the corner office.
I followed.
He shut the rich mahogany door without windows
so no one from the office could see inside.
Two walls were glass, overlooking the city.
We could be seen by others in the other towers
that they picked this window to look into out
of all the hundreds of windows.
He lifted me onto his desk, lifted my skirt
around my waist, ran his thumb inside the top
of my thigh-high hose, said, nice.
Knelt before me.
And before he knew my name, I was moaning.
Before I opened my eyes, he was standing and inside me.
And when I wrapped my legs around him,
I felt like I was tumbling, like we were spiraling up and away.
He yelled himself into me and when we opened our eyes,
we were up against the ceiling.
His papers, pens, phone, computer, briefcase, briefs,
printer, chair, desk, staplers, post-it notes, paper clips,
thumbtacks, books, bookends, and newspapers
were spinning slowly around us as if in a decelerated tornado.
Everyone everywhere was screaming.
We looked into the windows of the other towers,
and it was as if someone had shaken all the 78 story
compartmentalized snow globes.
People and their objects hovered in the air,
slowly swooned and swayed, and lifted and lowered,
as if on the moon.
I always knew I could do this, I said, break a bond,
be released upward, change the world.
And he dipped me into a back-bending kiss
that tipped us upside down.
Though now down was just a concept.
We spun, and flitted, and delighted,
moved around the room touching things, we took off our rings
and let them float.
And one time, they clanged against each other,
making a barely audible tinging sound, then drifted away.
At his place, we took off our clothes,
and they floated next to us.
The puddle of a dress, his trousers on their own walk.
No fetters, we were everywhere and right there at once.
We bounced around the room, my legs
wrapped around his waist to keep us together.
Then we tried to stay suspended in the middle.
"Stay with me.
Stay in the air with me," he said.
And I thought we could just hover still imbalanced,
but we couldn't-- not for long.
Every tiny move propelled us.
A shift in the bend of my hip made us scoot backward a touch.
A roll of my shoulder made us spin.
The body was much more responsive to the body
without the weight of gravity pulling us down,
tying us to a center.
We rose to the ceiling and touched it simultaneously,
both of us reaching out as it approached,
both stretching fingertips to have that feeling as soon as we
could, both with the same odd childlike
expression of amazement and desire to feel it fully.
And I knew we'd done the right thing.
Our fingers hit the roof of the room.
Our palms were against it.
And then we were flying away--
the contact enough without friction
to send us orbiting back down toward the floor.
Falling felt like flying, felt like the rising we'd just done.
And as we spiraled, and cascaded,
and tumbled without speed, without fear of landing,
we touched the rug and bounded back upward.
Soon I'd lost my direction-- didn't know up
with eyes closed.
The entire room became our bed.
We covered most of it.
The furniture so mixed, lifted and jumbled,
that opening my eyes didn't immediately tell me
which direction I was headed.
Only the fastened light fixture and stapled in carpet
were left as signs.
When it was all over, we thought to swim to the bathroom
and bathe together.
But of course, water no longer fell.
We toweled each other off, went to collect our clothes.
He called his wife, who was traveling on business.
She was safe but scared, because it had happened there too.
Gravity had gone away everywhere.
And of course, she didn't know why.
He didn't tell her then what he would be arriving home to--
him gone and me too, moved into a new place together.
But he did speak to her soon after she arrived.
He never told me how she reacted,
but I presumed there was screaming
and attempts at slapping, that drab, matte, heavy woman's
palm flying toward his face, though it's
difficult to hit someone hard these days.
I went to my house, packed my things
by snatching them from the air.
I swam through the halls, my husband following me.
And he couldn't exactly grab me and yank me to face him,
because any pull on me yanked him too.
There was still air to carry sound, air to swim through,
but his yelling felt muffled by all the objects floating
through every room.
I packed two suitcases as full as I could,
and they never felt weighted.
I told him the truth, that I'd been slowly suffocating
for years--
that I'd never loved him the way I wanted to love someone.
I just married him because I didn't
have a good enough reason to say, no,
but finally realized I hadn't had a good enough reason
to say, yes, either.
"Now?"
he asked, "You're leaving me now,
when everything's crazy, and up in the air?"
"I can't think of a better time," I said, and swam away.
Once you cut the chain and leap, there are no chains--
all is leaping.
When gravity goes, you see all the chains
are our own invention.
It was never a force.
It was something we postulated and then lived by.
We felt the pull downward because we'd
been told we were supposed to feel it.
When you decide that obligation isn't really there, it isn't.
He bought me flowers weekly, and they twirled around the rooms,
and often the water stayed inside.
He bought me jewels, looped them around my neck,
slid them through holes in my ears,
twined them around my wrists, left them on my body
when my clothing was removed.
After our lovemaking, puddles would sometimes slip from me
and stay suspended, glimmering, moonlight turned liquid.
He liked to take my clothes off and arrange them in the air
into my shape so that he could watch the clothed me
while he touched the naked me.
I watched too.
All the doors were removed from the elevator shaft.
The elevator itself taken away.
The inside refurbished, tiled, so
that it was a long pleasant column of air,
lit, no longer dark and frightening.
To get to another floor, we boosted ourselves up
through the huge tube.
Some flutter-kicked their feet, some
pulled themselves up with the cord
left running through the middle.
Some bought little propellers that blew them up and along.
No longer the ritual of waiting, of pressing bodies together
in a box, pushing buttons, being lifted.
Sleep was so different.
There was no need for a mattress-- something
to cushion from the pressing down,
no hard surface to ever be trapped against again.
We drifted.
And to stay warm and feel coddled,
we began by carrying our blankets with us,
wrapped and tangled around limbs.
But in the night, they would slip away,
end up across the room blown in their own limp trajectory.
Some people laced themselves to their beds
so that they stayed there all night
as it floated, with purchased lashes
or whatever rope or silk they had lying around the house.
I presumed with all these straps more and more people were going
S&M, loving being tied up, re-enacting a former form
of being ensnared--
for comfort maybe.
One bound, one free, the pinioned one relieved.
Your fate is not up to you to decide.
Like the laws of physics once, there
used to be certain things determined as true.
You jump, you fall.
Now, no.
Once for old time's sake, we locked ourselves in a closet
to fuck without flying around.
I pressed my hands on the ceiling
and pressed him against a wall.
He gripped me and the wall next to us.
And we remembered what it felt like to have leverage.
For a moment I missed the friction
I used to fight against.
It seemed that the Earth was still orbiting like before.
There was still night and day, seasons, we still had our moon,
still dawn and dusk, twilight and noon
still came at the same hours.
Though gravity used to hold the air around the Earth,
through an atmosphere down around the globe
like a down comforter-- feathers to sustain us,
keep us warm, alive.
But it was floating away, no longer held here.
We wondered when it would become harder to catch our breath.
People dreaded sunburn and asphyxiation.
Plans were being made for SPS 212 and portable oxygen tanks.
We didn't want the weight of a tank
to make us feel bound all over again.
The tank would float like we did, of course,
but carry the memory of weight.
I said we could think of it like we were underwater explorers,
swimming in our new world.
He said, he'd rather be flying through the air.
He said, this is all starting to feel like real life.
He and I, we didn't feel guilty, knew
the planet agreed to what we had done--
the loosening of bonds, lifting of laws,
the planet reconfigured itself around us.
And without the planet's grip, it was him I was laced to.
Threads of what we had done wove us together,
stitching my skin to his.
The string could stretch--
however far removed apart, we were still tied,
filaments through our flesh, taut, always lenient,
our bond a bind as we bounded around this new world.
At work, we'd meet in his office,
spy on the people in the buildings across the way.
Sometimes it was bosses and secretaries.
Sometimes custodians and CEOs.
Sometimes it was higher ups in their corner offices
with their wives then mistresses.
We were the ones who broke the chain.
We were the first to fall in love upward.
But of course, other lovers got to benefit.
We watched them in all their positions,
all their inventions.
We marveled at their acrobatics and their passions--
the lovemaking of those who don't have much time.
And then I'd want him so badly it would be a bodily force.
And time after time, I'd make him duplicate our beginning,
pretend it just happened, pretend we just made it happen,
I'd beg.
And he'd tip me backward, wheel me upward to the ceiling,
kiss me with the zeal of the first day.
But it was always play acting--
a memory enacted.
He never kissed me with that passion
when we weren't performing.
No longer any separation between all of us in space, nothing
dividing our orb from the universe any longer,
I could swim to the moon.
The air around me was sky.
The sky was space.
And my well moved me through it.
I told myself I could go anywhere I wanted.
When my mother died, no surprise, but something
that still felt sudden, I had her cremated.
Burials were problematic.
Grave diggers had to toss the Earth into a bolted down lidded
box, then bury the coffin by covering
a shovel full with a sheet to keep it there, then
plant grass on top and nail it down
until roots knitted the soil back together.
My lover didn't know how to comfort me in grief.
So I alone took off the lid of the urn
in the forest, shook it, loosened the cinders upward--
what had been burnt in an electric kiln in these days
after fire.
Ashes to ashes, ashes to air, dust to sky.
Some collected in a cloud around me.
I intuitively held my breath until I remembered
I breathed packaged air--
no danger of inhaling ash.
But some seemed to rise.
When I got home, I wanted the comfort a body can give.
So I went to him, not talking, took off his clothes,
wrapped my legs around his waist to keep us locked,
and the floating around the room didn't make me feel jubilant.
I felt uncentered, homeless.
My internal gyroscope was tired of keeping up.
And it wasn't the dizziness of passion or desire,
but of fatigue.
I clung to him to remember where I was.
I felt like I was sinking and only he could keep me afloat.
I looked at him to try to remember why we were both here
in this weightless world.
And he was looking right through me, as if I weren't there,
as if I were air.
As a child, I'd been comforted that the air wasn't empty,
that there were invisible particles between me
and every object, touching me, containing me, but leaving
me free to move, encircling and cradling me,
carrying messages from my surface
to the surfaces of everyone else.
I felt less alone when I thought the air encased me, entered
me, came into my lungs, and then back into what
everyone else breathed.
But then, there were no particles, no invisible atoms.
There was nothing there.
And it was impossible to feel free, or held, or comforted,
when making love to someone in a gas mask.
I thought he would stay unbound with me-- bound to only me.
Our immortality would bring immortality.
We would always feel as giddy and unfettered
as when we made the snap happen.
But it couldn't remain free-falling always,
freedom, the same elation from the beginning.
He and I weren't enticed to pinwheel through rooms,
didn't throw things we had thrown just
to see them fly newly across space.
I thought we would love the sensation always.
No longer beholden, we were emboldened, assented to ascent,
gave in to the vertiginous spin.
People used to think the stone fell to Earth
because it was made of Earth.
We fell to sky because we were sky.
The gravity, which bent starlight,
made them appear to be in places they weren't, no longer bent us
to its will.
But even that broken taboo became tedious.
We waited for other conventions to crack,
for a breaking of another prohibition to splinter a law.
We wondered if it was still only our responsibility,
if we were still the ones who had to do it.
I imagined electricity and magnetism breaking apart,
becoming two phenomena.
Light would no longer exist.
No X-rays, no ultraviolet, no cancerous radiation,
but no light to see by--
the bulbs all failing, the sun no longer sending forth rays.
I imagined entropy reversing so that broken glass
mended, tangled sheets made themselves into a tidy bed,
mussed hair styled itself.
Clothes would fly onto my body, and the furniture
coasting around our rooms would right itself,
find a sustainable pattern that didn't require a gravity
to hold it.
Given a day, the dishes would be done,
the floor swept, the books tallied,
the cracks on the sidewalk vanished,
all surfaces varnished.
The law of thermodynamics would no longer
apply, heat not moving by contact,
warmth not draining predictably from the hotter body
to the cooler.
We would flush for no reason, freeze without cause.
Two touching bodies could be flaming and chilled,
not affecting the other at all, not bringing
the other into balance.
If e doesn't equal mc squared, then energy
could create itself without destroying matter.
Sparks could fly from my fingertips, light from my eyes,
without singing flesh, and without sacrifice.
And I'll stop there.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]