12-19-99

I flew out of San Francisco with a carry-on and a back pack. I read my book on the plane, a book about rock climbing, made me want for Yosemite. I slept on the plane thinking about some girl I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of and telling myself not to think about her but thinking of her just the same. I slept on the plane.

Denver’s crisp. A black man with shiny white broken teeth helped me with my bag into a hotel shuttle.

"How are you?" He asked throwing my bag into the back. I stood with my hands in the pockets of a red denim jacket in the cool air.

"I’m fine," I told him. "Just fine."

He dropped me off with the wrong bag at my hotel in downtown Denver. Three hours later the shuttle service returned.

"We had to go through it to find out who you were."

"That’s fine."

"You don’t have your name on your luggage. You should probably have your name there."

I spent the rest of Wednesday reading my book about climbing the rocks in Yosemite except for when I went out for dinner. For dinner I went to a silly looking restaurant with bright orange and greens. I ordered ravioli and soda water and paid thirty dollars for it. I sat at a table for two alone.

I spent the rest of the night reading until the evening finally took me and slept until early in the morning.

I had borrowed a laptop from work but couldn’t connect. I couldn’t find our Denver office. They weren’t listed. I called San Francisco and got the number from a salesman working away in the early sunrise opening across the bay.

The meeting went fine Thursday morning. I explained our company’s new product to a group of salesmen and account managers. I said, "It works like this."

They asked, "Does it work like that?"

"Can we copywrite it?"

"Can we own this?"

I said, "We can’t own it. It works this way. Most people don’t know how it works. We sell them our services. They don’t need to understand. Nobody understands."

"Like that?"

"Like this."
"It’s great."

I pointed to a presentation I had prepared. The meeting went fine and when it was done I wandered the streets of lower downtown Denver.

I went out for drinks with my Denver co-workers. It was two for one happy hour at Johny Tsunami’s so I had two when I only wanted one. We ate fish and my expense account covered it. We parted at 7 and I went to check my mail at Kinkos. I had a letter from a girl.

The letter said I had sent something bad. I had written bad things. I had written about sticking my finger in her asshole, she said. She said I was harassing her. She said her daddy was a lawyer. She said I’d never had it so bad.

I wrote back that I didn’t write that letter. That she was psychotic. That she should leave me alone.

Back at my hotel room I called a girl I had dated for a couple of months. We had a nothing relationship. We ended on good terms, neither of us caring too much, both of us wanting more, from someone else.

I said, "That’s it. No more sex for me. It’s not worth it." I tried to get internet on the television, but I couldn’t connect.

She said, "You don’t even like sex. Just shave around that bald spot you’ve already got going on the back of your head. You could be a monk."

Early in the morning the shuttle came to take me to the mountains. I missed the mountains. I didn’t feel like my job made me a person.

Snow fell all along the 70. I had been told not to go to the mountains. They said no snow had fallen in the mountains and the mountians were covered with broken sticks and rocks. The snow kept falling in big fluffy flakes along I-70.

"White gold," the driver said.

I got into the coffee shop in the mountains, sat on the couch, and waited. Tom and Susan came in from the snow.

"Look how it’s coming down," Tom exclaimed. Tom has big , red, happy cheeks. "Steve, how are you. Susan was afraid you wouldn’t come because of the snow."

"I came because of the snow."

Tom gave me a family pass. I stopped in a store where Wyatt was working and rented boots and a board. "Good to see you again, Steve," he said. "Where are you now?"

"I live in San Francisco."

"San Francisco?"

"Yeah, I got a job."

"How crazy, Steve. I don’t believe it."

He rented me the best equipment for ten dollars a day. Normally it would cost thirty five, but he presumed I was poor.

The mountains were a blanket of snow, thick, and delicious. I rode slowly up the timberline. The mountains were rich with snow and thick green trees. The snow was pouring everywhere, fell softly beneath the blue board. I stood upright, inhaling the cold air and the mountains and the loneliness of the mountains and the sky. Then I charged down the mountain.

Susan’s a writer. Tom is also a writer of sorts. He writes for television. They are very rich. The snow continued into the evening, long past the point at which Susan, Tom and I were very drunk.

Tom told me the story of how they own five, transferable, lifetime passes. "My father was an initial investor in Keystone. He knew Max and Edna and Henry Dercum."

"Dercum’s Dash?"

"Exactly."

Ultimately his father was bought out. He was given back his original stake twice over and five lifetime passes. Good forever.

"That’s an amazing story."

We ate pasta. The night covered the ski resort, and at some point the snow stopped.

Susan let slip once that the melancholia wouldn’t go away. She explained the process of writing to me. It would seem there are five forces involved: The writer, the narrator, the story, the reader the writer is writing for, and the actual reader. "Take the writer and the reader away. They can go fuck together. The writer can go fuck the smelly fat bastard in Barnes and Noble. They don’t matter. All that matters is the narrator, the story, and the reader the story is being written for."

"I’m very drunk," I said.

"They’ll do it to you, Steve. When they publish you your publisher and your agent will make you more than the book. They will market you before they market the story."

"But I need people to love me," I thought to myself.
"They’ll make you bigger than the book and that’ll destroy you. You will never be able to write again. You won’t know who you are."

"I don’t know who I am now."

Early Saturday Maeve and I returned to the mountain base. The snow had stopped but a fine 8 inch base still blanketed the runs. We started with long, green runs, shuttling down towards the clean blue lake. Then we moved to the back mountains, the blue, and the blue blacks. Even 8 inches the day before was not enough to cover some of the rocks and tree stems.

A couple of years ago I had hiked to the back of the North Bowl. It took hours, through snow four, six feet deep on top of a six foot base at the mountain top. If I had sprung down the back of the mountain then I would of rounded out a dark cornice and finished deep in the Arapahoe forest. With a map and snow shoes it would have taken two days to hike out. I had neither. I stood on the edge, the end, strapped into my board, and barreled forward, not into the abyss but towards home. I surfed over feet of soft fluffy snow, skilled and confident, my knees together, leaning as far back on my board as possible so that the front of the board kept its head poked above the snow. I rode the bowl until the bowl became trees, the trees adding visibility and warmth, until I reached the base of the Outback in time for the last chairlift home.

Maeve and I hit the blue blacks.

"Do you remember Joseph?" she asked.

"Wasn’t that Amber’s boyfriend? No, I never met him."

"Anyway, he hates you. She read him that letter you wrote her telling her to leave him. Telling her that you would take care of her. He was very angry. He said he was going to call you."

"Oh. Well I suppose he has a right to be angry. I’m surprised she showed him that note. And I’m surprised he never called."

"I wouldn’t give him your number."

"Still. He could have called 411. I’d have apologized if he had." Then I remembered getting a threatening phone call on my answering machine a year ago from November. The person who left it said I was a motherfucker, but didn’t leave a phone number or his name.

This early in the season most of the harder runs were closed. Out of practice, the harder runs were beyond me anyway. By two in the afternoon we were back in the coffeeshop.

Susan and I were supposed to be reading from our books. "I’ve been thinking about what you said," I told her. "You hate Bukowski and Kerouac. They became bigger than their works. You hate that."

"I do. I hate that," she agreed.

"But why write?"

"I write to become a better writer."

"I’ve been thinking," I said. "Perhaps I write to communicate."

"There are better ways to communicate."

"Or for attention."

‘They don’t love you. They love the narrator who they associate with you. You will never live up to your narrator."

"You’re right. It will never be enough."

"It will never be enough."

We set up for our reading. Spread our books out. Cleared a space.

"Do you think I’m being indulgent," she asked me.

"No. You are supporting your business. It’s what you are supposed to do."

But there were too many children, too many families in the café. In my writing every other word is fuck. In my writing I want to fuck everybody.

We decided against the reading. We would leave the families and the babies in peace.

Jamie came around and we hugged because we are friends and I always liked him and his art and the way he lives his life. Jamie and I hugged and sat down for a game of chess. And the snow came back.

"It’s beautiful."

"Look at it."

"Perfect."

"Pure."

We pushed pawns sitting by the windows. Big fluffy flakes fell to the ground outside. Susan brought me a beer. We pushed pawns. It’s hard to concentrate playing Jamie. Jamie wears dirty t-shirts and ragged fleece, a goat-tee. His long blonde hair brushes four inches past his shoulders. He doesn’t worry about getting a job. He does steelwork. He sculpts from steel in Susan and Tom’s barn and he works the café two days a week.

"I have a present for you," he said.

"Give it to me."

"Not now. Later."

Jamie beat me in our chess game. It was close. I didn’t mind losing to him. We sat at the counter and ordered a drink. Jen came in. I never liked Jen too much, but then there isn’t much point in not liking people. "Steve, darling, where on earth have you been?! Look at you! Are you still writing? Buy me a shot will you darling while I go to the bathroom."

Jen downed her shot quickly. "Oh, to be beautiful again," and pushed herself off the wooden stool. "I have to go. I’ll be late for work."

"I want a nice girl, Susan. A normal girl I can be happy with."

"I think you want more than that."

Later that night Jamie and I drove through the snow storm. I left all of my bags and snow clothing in the café. We drove on the highway in his Geo hatchback. Trucks lay jackknifed in the middle of the highway. We passed SUVs and four wheel drive trucks. Jamie drove fast in the thick pouring snow.

"It’s mental," he said.

Jamie lives in a small house with 8 foot ceilings in Frisco. In the mountains ceilings are always low because otherwise you can’t keep a place warm. In Jamie’s house it didn’t help. The house was freezing cold and stuffed floor to roof with jars.

"Here."

Jamie gave me an oak leaf door handle made from iron in his studio. I tucked it in the top pocket of my red denim jacket.

He stuffed a couple of logs in the fire and introduced me to Brian who lived out back in a trailer. Brian climbed rocks. Brian had climbed the Half Dome and El Capitan, just like in that book I had been reading.

We walked through the snow on the streets to a party a mile away. The powder kept coming out of the skies, even in the nighttime. Brian, Jamie and I walked through the snow in Frisco to a party. By that time there is nearly 10 inches of snow on the streets of Frisco.

"Copper’s gonna be sick," Brian said.

The party was a birthday for twins, John and Troy. Sara had made a meal in celebration, mashed potatoes, chicken, vegetables. Sara gave us beers and when more people arrived we drank whiskey. Presents were given. Nobody talked about work, about what they did. It was obvious, they climbed, skiied, boarded, hiked in the snow.

"You don’t live here anymore?" someone asked me.

"No. I live in San Francisco. I have some crazy job."

"Don’t let him fool you," Jamie said. "He’s a writer."

I wanted to kiss Jamie for that. For bringing me back. We all raised a shot of Maker’s Mark.

Later in the night Sara changed into a dark, shiny blue shirt she had bought in Denver. I laid on the floor, hands behind my head, singing songs, making up the words as Brian played guitar. We had all been looking through pictures of Jamie and Pat kayaking through Central America, through the jungle.

"Let’s go out," Sara said.

"Fuck that," Jamie replied. "I’m going to get some sleep."

I slept on Jamie’s couch in his sleeping bag. The apartment was cold but the sleeping bag was enough as long as I left my clothes on which I did. In the morning I woke up thinking thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking. Thoughts that weren’t going to get me anywhere. Sometimes in the morning there is nothing you can do. The movie in your mind starts playing and you are sitting in the theater. Across the screen old scenes replay themselves, like a game of chess. You take back moves. You push things differently. You attack and then you retreat. You look at the angles and try to see if you could have won, if you had done things differently. Was the game ever winnable? It’s hard to get that far. As the movie plays you come back to the loss. It’s easiest to come back to the loss and when the hero gets it you cry for him, cry for the hero of your film that plays on the screen in your head during the earliest hours of the morning.

In the morning it was still snowing. Jamie’s roommate, Sean, drove me to River Run over Swan Mountain Road. The road curled up through the hills. We drove slowly, his truck was rear wheel drive, and it was a long drop from the pass.

"I lived in the city before," Sean told me. "I left it to come here. I got into debt. To be a patroller here on the mountain."

"It’s a good life."

"Nothing wrong with it."

Tom and I hit the fresh powder of the morning. We hit the first runs on Mozart and headed to the back. The snow was clumpy and pushed into piles.

"Like skiing in mashed potatoes," Tom said.

"Beats the hell out of ice."

Tom left me at 10:30. "I’m too old," he said. "My legs are weak."

I met Maeve at the TimberRidge at 11. We had missed each other in the morning. She missed her bus. She had breakfast in the café. I left five dollars there for her to have a breakfast bagel. We sat in front of the fire at the TimberRidge.

"I don’t care. What’s the difference between liking someone for their money, their looks, some achievement they have made. What is this stuff about being loved for who you are? Who are you? It’s an abstract term. You are the job you have. You are the things you create. You are the money you make and your physical appearance. You cannot be loved for something you are not. You are all these things."

"I want to be loved for me. Someone with a sense of humor."

"There is no bad reason to be loved. It’s always good to be loved."

We sat in front of the fire in the TimberRidge and then nailed two more runs. I fell getting off the chairlift on the last run.

"Damn, I almost made it the whole weekend."

Maeve laughed and then she fell as well. We sailed down our last run and I returned my equipment. Maeve waved goodbye and I sat in the café until the shuttle came to take me back.

I fell asleep on the ride to the airport. I boarded a plane for back home and flew away from the mountains. There’s mountains by San Francisco too. A flight attendant caught my eye. I watched the folds in her skirt. Later, while waiting for my shuttle to the long term parking lot I saw her walk by with her bags. She had changed shoes, from flats to heels, and she wore a long black trench coat and walked with another stewardess laughing towards some hotel room somewhere.