In February, I discovered only minutes before boarding my flight to Nashville that my on-again-off-again, emotional self-waterboarding experiment of an ex-boyfriend might be moving there for work. I’d never been to the city before, at least not for any length of time. I was accompanied by a group of people I liked very much, but didn’t know incredibly well. I was overwhelmed.
Photo by The Piper in the Story, who took it without me knowing on a freezy-cold North Carolina Beach and called me a “dime” in the caption she wrote for it on Instagram. I love you, Piper.
When we landed, the airport was, of course, right next to a Mustang dealership. We touched ground and I watched rows and rows of the exact same little red 2007 throwback he bought when we broke up — one of the times we broke up — zoom past.
I will admit that I leaned on something raw and irrelevant like “fitting”-ness in choosing to submit this essay about that same person to Nashville Review, where it was, to my humbled surprise, accepted. After spending a decent chunk of that weekend in tears, wandering around wondering where he’d live, where he’d hang out, where he’d find his next woman, I felt so strongly this essay belonged in the city’s namesake journal I refused to submit it elsewhere, even when I missed the first deadline.
No matter why I felt compelled to send it there, you can read the essay — which is not at all set in Nashville — in this month’s issue. And I’m overwhelmed all over again by the superior talents surrounding my own words.
Just a sampling:
Leila Chatti, “In August I Undress”
Stevie Edwards, “Late Night with the Prince of Ruin”
Katie Condon, “The Real Self is Very Scary“
Ashley Davidson, “Higher Ground”
Too much beauty.
Oh, a quick note of thanks and curiosity: Nashville Review pays its contributors a pretty generous honorarium, and I’m grateful for that — not because I need the money (although it’s always nice), but because it’s such a rarity for creative journals to do so. If money is the way we spell our genuine appreciation for something in this culture, it makes sense that artists don’t get very much of it. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be involved with a journal trying to change that dynamic.
(P.S., he stayed in Florida.)