The Time I Met Patricia Lockwood

In early September Patricia Lockwood posted that she was doing a mini poetry tour, and would be at Liz’s Book Bar in Brooklyn the following week. I decided to just show up, thinking it was a release party for her new poetry collection Agate Head/Stone Soup, her first new poetry collection in 12 years. It was a free RSVP and she encouraged people to “come out if you’re around!” I showed up to discover I was at a very small gathering of Lockwood, her husband Jason, publicists, editors, and a few people she’s met before for a reception: Lockwood had been awarded McSweeney’s Gabe Hudson Prize of $10k, an award devoted to second novels that “demonstrate humor, pathos, and a deep understanding of contemporary America.” I was early and browsed the fiction titles. I sat quietly in the corner, in a chair settled all on its own, until she read from Will There Ever Be Another You. It was absolutely fantastic. She did voices. Gabe Hudson is a writer who passed away in 2023 and his mother was there, bestowing the prize to Lockwood sitting on the small sofa set up two feet from two microphones. I’ve been sober from alcohol ten years later this month so despite it also being a wine bar, I didn’t get myself a glass of anything to switch between my hands. (If you have a seltzer or something people usually don’t bother you with the “you aren’t drinking?”) There were three very nice looking charcuterie boards for everyone and anyone in the back, one mainly made up of olives. I kept hearing someone say, “please help yourself!” but I couldn’t bring myself to have any. I had made sure to eat dinner before.

Finally I got up the nerve to go over and talk to Lockwood. I thanked her for reading. I thanked her for her work. I even started to cry and she held my eye contact like an angel. She is the sweetest, funniest person I’ve ever met. I told her how much her writing has meant to me, and my best friend Emily. We trade her lines and essays in the London Review Of Books like religious passages laughing and loving every dip, reference, and exquisite turn of phrase. WHEN will the second installment of the Tradcath wedding essay come out?! Emily wonders. I was too distracted to ask. Instead asked Lockwood when will a collection of her nonfiction be released? She told me a book about rocks and earth was coming out somewhat soon, next year maybe?

Lockwood had been at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, NY the day prior, according to her “come out!” post. I went to college there and told her I knew The Ith. I asked if they went to Moosewood, a famous vegetarian restaurant. We bonded. I told her my husband, Ben, is a poet who went to SCAD in Savannah, where she lives, trying to find anything to connect with her. She says they live right near Forsyth Park. Lovely, I said; “I’ve been there!” I told her weeks ago she replied to a post I made and told me that “talking about the work is part of the work” and that it meant the world to me. She claimed to remember our online exchange. She gave me a hug, maybe because I had teared up. Then I asked her for a photo. Luckily I’m wearing my Saturn Bar t-shirt and I had combed my hair. I love this image of us.

Then our circle of two widened and I was introduced to the Excutive Editor of McSweeney’s and not to a darked haired woman who told Lockwood a story about how her niece was just hired as David Remnick‘s assistant; she had put the resume on the pile and the niece was worried it was a nepo hire. “He picked your resume out of the pile!” she recounted. By this point I had been unemployed for six months (hence not buying any books or drinks at Liz’s) and I politely stood there and hit save. Days later I saw her face in TNY with a caption, Fiction Editor, and realized who I had been talking to in a circle of four people: myself, Lockwood, the McSweeney’s Exec. Editor, and Deborah Treisman.

Then Lockwood introduced me to her husband Jason, the one from all her stories, essays and poems, and we stood and talked for 40 minutes about everything: their trips to London, my stone fruit allergy, how he travels around with her a lot, about his caecal bascule she wrote about in the LRB, how he was born in Seoul and grew up mainly in Colorado, or used to live there. He told me how they met and asked about me and my writing. He told me the Mad Men essay I’m working on sounds fascinating. He told me he submitted Lockwood’s poetry for years because she wouldn’t. That she wrote for 13 years without notice or payment and just did it because she loves it. He said the first time she was paid for her writing was for writing recaps of Mad Men episodes as haikus for Adult Swim and they paid her $30 an episode (!!!!!). That they would often be on family vacation and Lockwood would have to go up to a hotel room to watch Mad Men in broadcast and would squiggle poetry for hours to submit. Jason was so nice. He was taller than I thought and wearing lightly washed jeans that were tighter than I expected and a cool leather jacket. He kept offering to buy me a glass of wine: the open bar of the event had closed but he had given them his CC.

I had Lockwood sign my copy of Will There Ever Be Another You and I saved the ballpoint pen as my Lockwood pen; it’s the one stowed in my dollar crossword puzzle book I use daily and also happens to be a 92 WICB Ithaca College radio station pen. Kismet. She wrote “bon courage,” I assume, because I had started to cry while talking to her. She thanked me for talking to Jason for so long. “He’s always so bored at these things.”

She told me the launch for her poetry book would be in the next month, here in NYC, at an n+1 event in Dumbo and told me I had to come and bring Ben. They both wanted to meet him. Life and other shit got in the way, preventing me from going; it also ended up being in Willyberg and I really don’t have the patience to commute to North Brooklyn from Flatbush, so I skipped. But I knew I was two seconds away from getting Jason’s cell number. I told him I was going to London with my husband on his work trip in two weeks, I was tagging along for three days. I wish I could tell him all about my trip. Jason told me they went there back and forth a lot because she’s judging the Booker.

(Jason: I had absolutely horrible jet lag but the best time in London. I spent five hours at the Tate Modern where there was a Frida Kahlo exhibit and an entire room of Guerilla Girls art. I saw Tower Bridge and wandered to Banglatown for an underground vintage mecca in Brick Lane. I saw the pelicans in St. James Park and went record shopping in Soho where I got my white whale vinyl: a German pressing of Captain Beefheart’s Safe As Milk—with an alt sleeve and track listing!!—and a VU radio broadcast from 1969, the second show The Velvets ever played with Doug Yule after Cale left, at Sister Ray Records. I went to Reckless Records, I’ve also been to the one in Chicago; I went to Third Man Records, I’ve also been to the one in Detroit; and I went to Rough Trade, I’ve also been to the one here in Brooklyn. These are my cathedrals.)

I had falafel, lahmacun, and the best Indian food my stone fruit allergy could find—which was tricky!! A red curry butter chicken with the best rice I’ve ever had, and I tasted a lamb & peas thing. As an American Coffee Snob (registered trademark) the coffee situation was god awful—no filter coffee just espresso based drinks everywhere. The ass of Westminster Abbey is more beautiful than its face and Big Ben was beautiful at dusk. I truly believe Buckingham Palace to be the silliest place I’ve ever seen. I thought there was a backside view and while I was wandering toward it I stopped a bunch of young people I saw leaving the building wearing lanyards, very obviously government employees. I stopped them and said, “hey are you guys locals? I’m trying to find the other side, or the front of The Palace.” They seem shocked I was speaking to them and directed me back to where I came from and I realized I had already seen it: the government building to end all government buildings. I thanked them and headed back. I decided to pay total tribute by putting on the most fitting and disrespectful song I could think of. So I hit play on L7’s “Wargasm” and cranked the volume, headbanging while the Beefeaters stepped their silly little marches. Those MFs. I even saw a horse-and-carriage “motorcade” with accompanying cops (?) on horses in tailored tweed, leather boots, silver straps, fancy hats, and what appeared to be snooty fuckin attitudes. London loves a line AHEM a queue, and not one goddamn person there is in a rush. I went to Hatchards where I bought Justin Silver’s Fruit Fly and befriended a lady cop at St. James Church who let me into the locked public handicapped restroom; public toilets everywhere! Woohoo! Fortnum & Mason had a fucking buiscuitorium; that place was a hoot. It was the longest and shortest three days of my life. I had a blast.)

All this to say: I met my literary hero this year! She was so incredible to me (and, I imagine, everyone). Jason too. He is a real life character I know from the page, only now he was actual man standing in front of me. It was like talking to someone I had been texting with for years and finally meeting them in person.

I love you, Patricia. And: hello, Jason. You guys are the best. Patricia: you are the first hero of my own I have met that has not been a disappointing weirdo. I will follow you into hell. Thank you for your kind words and for your work. I find you inspiring and absolutely lovely, if that is not already clear. I hope you are having the best day. Cheers!