Worth The Registration Fee

Ben picked at a piece of icing with his fingernail. The doughnut on the styrofoam plate was obviously a couple days old, and he couldn’t bring himself to take a bite of it. This was the “breakfast provided”, as advertised on the workshop’s flyer; stale doughnuts, various chunks of cantaloupe, pineapple, and honeydew from a plastic platter bought at the closest supermarket, and weak Maxwell House coffee.

Twenty minutes in, and the workshop was exactly what Ben had expected it to be. A Days Inn ballroom with a scattering of round 6-top tables with white table cloths, straight-back chairs speckled with the remnant stains of God knows how many wedding receptions, regional sales meetings, and quinceaneras. A small stage at the front of the room on which stood a beat up lectern, wilting ferns hiding the PA speakers on either side. Enough fluorescent lighting to make an electrical meter spin like a top.

It was Friday morning, the opening day of the Thermal Belt Writers Workshop in Forest City, North Carolina, and Ben already knew that there was no way that he would make it to Saturday. He hadn’t wanted to come to the workshop in the first place. But his wife Carla had seen a flyer for the workshop in a local coffee shop in their hometown of Hendersonville, and had brought it home for Ben to see.

“It’s only thirty miles away, Ben. And you’re off that weekend. This may just be the jump-start that you need”, Carla said as she laid the creased-up paper next to a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich a couple weeks back.

Ben scanned over the flyer as he blew on his cup of coffee, and only rolled his eyes when he was sure that Carla wasn’t looking.

“Carla, I don’t want to go to this thing. It’s just going to be a bunch of folks that think they’re the next John Grisham or Danielle Steele, a handful of speakers who drone on and on about plot and character development, and bad food. That doesn’t exactly sound like something worth the $25 registration fee if you ask me. I’d be better off just staying here for the weekend and writing.”

Carla poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from him at the kitchen table, “Well honey, you’d need to actually write something for that to be the case.”

Ben didn’t make any effort to hide the eye roll at this point, and gave his wife a playful middle finger across the table as she smirked back.

He knew that Carla had a point, though. She had been nothing but encouraging of his wish to write, an encouragement that had not faltered over the last two years since Ben had mentioned that he wanted to publish something. Ben appreciated that about his wife. She could have easily dismissed the idea or looked at him like he was growing a third ear out of his forehead. But Carla supported the idea completely, just like she did with most of his plans. But as Carla noted, in order to be a writer you have to put words to paper. And it had seemed that as soon as he had given the idea legs, the creative juices had dried up.

It wasn’t for lack of trying on Ben’s part. A few days after announcing his plan to Carla, he had bought a used roll-top desk from the local Habitat For Humanity and placed it in their office. He had grand plans of writing his masterpiece there, but instead he had spent most of his nights off duty from his job with Asheville Fire Department in the desk’s wooden swivel chair with his feet propped up. He would sit and try to divine inspiration by staring at a grainy framed photograph of Raymond Carver that he had placed on top of the desk, from a copy of Larry Brown’s “Big Bad Love” in his lap that he would stroke like a rabbit’s foot, and from a tumbler with a couple fingers of Maker’s Mark bourbon. Two years later, and the only thing that Ben had truly accomplished was a computer trash bin full of shitty beginnings to stories, well worn scuff marks on the top of the desk from his shoes, the lamination beginning to break down on the Larry Brown cover, and a borderline drinking problem.

It wasn’t all booze and late nights at home, though. Ben had figured that he could take advantage of the down time at the fire station to write. He would tote his laptop in to work in a leather pilot’s bag that Carla had bought him soon after he told her his goal. He would set up in an office off of the truck room floor at night to try to get something put down. But this proved to be easier said than done, as every time that it seemed like the words would start flowing a dispatch would come across the station’s loudspeakers. By the time Ben would get back from helping granny off of the floor in her bathroom, or blowing smoke out of some drunk’s apartment after trying to cook a hamburger steak at 11:30 at night, the inspiration would be gone.

The flyer sat on the table for two days before Ben decided that he would humor Carla and sign up for the workshop. He mumbled to himself “what have I got to lose? It’s not like it can get any worse” as he paid the registration fee on the website listed at the bottom of the page, all while Carver stared down at him from the top of the desk. Ben figured he would at least get a couple free breakfasts out of the deal, along with the chance to sprawl out and watch HBO in his double queen room each night.

Now, as he kept his eyes on the stale doughnut he picked at to keep from looking up into the fluorescent death rays from above, Ben felt like a fool for the $25 he had wasted.

*****

After a lengthy welcome from the head of the English department of Isothermal Community College, the room broke up into groups for “get-to-know-you sessions”. Ben’s group consisted of himself and the three other attendees that were at his table. Their first task was to introduce themselves and to describe their current writing project to the rest of the group. As they huddled up around the table, Ben knew that the exercise was going to be about as fun as dental surgery.

First up was Raven Moonbeam. Ben’s initial thought was that Raven had the appearance of walking straight out of central casting for every trust-fund hippie kid that he had ever seen walking the streets of downtown Asheville while he was on duty. She wore what appeared to be a homemade skirt that was possibly a wall tapestry of some sort in a previous life. A wool button-up sweater the color of pea soup covered what looked to be a patchwork halter-top. Raven sported glasses that Ben was sure were the exact pair that Sophia wore on The Golden Girls, and a tie-dyed bandana held back shoulder-length dreadlocks to top off the ensemble. “Greetings everyone, my name is Raven and it is so beautiful to share this space with you today” she said as she twirled a dread around her right index finger. “I grew up in Chattanooga, but have been in western North Carolina for just over 3 years now. I studied environmental science at Warren Wilson College before leaving during my sophomore year to find my real truth. That journey led me to a communal farm just outside of Marshall, where I focused all of my energy on truly listening to what Mother Earth wished for me to relay to the rest of the world about the pain and brokenness that she feels on a daily basis from our insensitivity to her needs. That’s what my first book is about; the torture and victimization that our Earth mother feels. It revolves around a cast of characters who leave their capitalistic lives behind to be fearless advocates for the Earth’s well-being.”

Ben and the others at the table stared at Raven, waiting for some sort of follow-up or addition to the plot. Instead, Raven simply smiled, closed her eyes, and gave a small bow with her hands prayer-like in front of her face. Ben covered his mouth with his fist and gave a fake cough to keep from laughing as he looked across the table at the next contestant on this nightmare of a game show he found himself in.

A heavy-set middle aged woman with far too much mascara was next to share. “Hey y’all, my name is Evelyn Baker and I’m from Columbia, South Carolina.” Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut tight and fanned her face with her hand while she shook her head. This went on for about 15 seconds, and Ben wasn’t sure if the woman was choking or having some sort of fit. Finally, she continued, “I’m sorry, y'all. I’m just so nervous! I don’t really ever talk in front of crowds, so this is outside my comfort zone.” Evelyn sported permed brown hair with blonde highlights throughout, and a pink t-shirt with a Mason jar emblazoned on the left chest pocket with the words “Southern Charm” written underneath. She took a big breath and began again. “Well, my book is just a simple love story really. The main character is a young woman from Columbia like me who buys an old farmhouse in the South Carolina countryside. She lives there all by herself, working on fixing up the house so that maybe she can flip it or something. You know, like they do on the HGTV. But what she doesn’t know is that the house is haunted, by a former Civil War General. At first she’s scared, right? But then, she and this ghost start to communicate, and they fall in love with each other. But see, the problem is that he’s a Yankee General, and the young woman knows that there’s no way that her family would go along with her being involved with a ghost like that. So there’s a lot of conflict, you know?”

Ben knew better than to ask the question that was forming in his mind, but he just couldn’t help himself. He cocked his head and tapped the table with his knuckles, “Um…which Union General is it that this woman falls in love with, Evelyn?”

“Well see, that’s the thing”, Evelyn said as she leaned in close, like she was letting the rest of the table in on some secret sauce she had come up with. “The General is none other than William. Tecumseh. Sherman. See, that’s part of the tension and the conflict of the story as well. Not only would Lucille’s family – that’s the young lady’s name, Lucille – be beside themselves for her being in love with a Yankee ghost, but they would be absolutely mortified by her loving the ghost of the man who burned down half of the Carolinas!”

Ben sat wide-eyed for a couple seconds. Finally he shook his head and chuckled, “Evelyn, I hate to tell you this but Sherman didn’t die in battle, or in South Carolina for that matter. Hell, he didn’t even die in the south, he died in New York City a good two decades after the war ended.”

Evelyn Baker’s reaction to Ben’s comment was that of someone who had just watched a stranger kick their dog, she looked utterly gutted by his words. But that look turned into a glare as she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. “Sir, it’s called fiction for a reason” she spat at him from across the table. “It’s creative license. You should look it up sometime.”

Ben smiled as his eyebrows lifted and he put up his hands in front of him as if surrendering. Evelyn ignored the gesture and turned her head toward the stage. He was pretty sure that he saw her chin quiver, and that she may have been on the verge of tears.

The young man who was next to share cleared his throat and broke the awkward silence. “Hey, my name’s Brandon”, said a boy who Ben thought looked to be no more than 18 years old. He had jet-black hair, cut in a way so that it was almost shaved in the back but hung across his eyes like a sheepdog in the front. The boy looked like the fluorescents might give him a sunburn if he stayed in the ballroom too long, and the lights gleamed off of a silver hoop that hung off of the right side of his bottom lip. Ben thought the boy looked like a pale bass with a lure in his mouth. He had the boy pegged as weighing maybe a buck ten soaking wet, the black Slayer t-shirt that Brandon wore hanging off of his skinny frame like a limp flag. He spoke softly, to the point that everyone at the table had to lean in to hear what he said.

“I’m working on my first novel at the moment. It’s gonna be called “Evermore”, and it’s about Edgar Allan Poe. I’m a big Edgar Allan Poe fan, and my book is going to be about Poe’s relationship with women. It’s kind of a look at how the females in Poe’s life made him into the writer that he became.”

Raven closed her eyes and smiled while her head slowly nodded. Evelyn fought back tears and stared at the stage. Ben looked at the boy and thought, well damn, finally one that doesn’t sound too bad.

Then Brandon looked down at the table and smiled timidly as he spoke, “My girlfriend, she’s a huge fan of my writing.” Brandon’s pale cheeks turned a bright red as he continued, “She has this thing where she calls me Edgar or Mr. Poe when we’re, uh…in the bedroom. I’m going to take some of the crazier highlights of our sex life and play them out in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. You know, going to kind of channel what my girlfriend calls my inner Poe to the man himself. She says she thinks it’ll sell millions.” Brandon gazed off smiling while he flicked at the ring in his lip with his tongue.

Ben laid his head down on his arms that were crossed on the table and muttered under his breath, “God almighty”.

He looked up when he heard Evelyn’s voice harsh and cutting across the table from him. “And what about you, Mr. Big Shot? What are you writing about?”

Ben raised his head and looked at the others at the table. For a moment he just stared at each of them, looking from face to face as the light bulb went off inside of his brain. The others were looking at him as if he might be dangerous or in need of some sort of help when all at once he laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and gathered his notebook and pen into his leather pilot’s bag. Without saying a word he got up from the table, walked quickly out of the ballroom, through the hotel lobby, and into the parking lot. Ben was laughing uncontrollably as he started his truck and drove out onto Highway 74 West. He needed to get home as fast as he could, he had work to do.

*****

When Carla pulled into the driveway that evening after her shift at the orthodontics office, she was surprised to see Ben’s truck sitting in its usual spot. She rushed into the house worried that something must be wrong.

“Ben, is everything alright? I thought you weren’t coming home until the workshop was done tomorrow afternoon” she called as she closed the front door and laid her keys in the wooden bowl that sat on the shelf in the hallway.

“I’m in here!” Ben yelled from the kitchen. When Carla turned the corner she found Ben sitting at the kitchen table, his laptop open and a legal pad next to it. She walked over and looked over his shoulder, the paper was full of names and dates for upcoming writing workshops across the southeast.

“What is all this?” she asked as she picked up the pad and scanned through it. “And why are you home so soon? Was the workshop that bad?”

“It was perfect”, Ben said with a big grin as he got up from the table and kissed his wife. He told Carla to change clothes real quick, that he was taking her out Applebees to celebrate. On the way to the restaurant he told Carla that he felt like he had found the holy grail. They shared a platter of baby back ribs, and he explained how he hadn’t even made it to lunch earlier that day, but that the trip was worth every penny of the registration fee. Ben told Carla that if every writing workshop was full of people like those that he had met today, he would have enough material to write about to fill magazines, quarterlies, and reviews from here to eternity.