Oh the Places You’ll Go: On Meeting a Hero and Definitely Crying

I lied.

I've made the joke about meeting Stephen King several times over the last two weeks.

I very nearly almost didn't cry.

And I did try. I was oh-so-valiant. I told myself: don't you fucking cry in front of all these New England mens and horror fans, Cat, don't you do it.

But I lied.

I absolutely cried. And that up there is the photo that proves the fib, posted only here. I mostly kept it to glassy eyes and a slightly-strangled voice, but when Stephen King walked in on a sunny August evening, saw me, said: oh, it's the pretty lady! before giving me a huge hug... yeah. I am actually a human being, and while trying to say how much his books had meant to me in some way that he hasn't heard a hundred million times, I cried because I couldn't not. The other two authors, Richard Chizmar and Michael Koryta, had already met him many times, but didn't realize I hadn't. Rich said to his wife: did you see her face when he came in?

My face no hide feelings good.

I realize Stephen King is just so famous that most people who like books have some kind of story about how and when and why they came across him for the first time, and, positive or negative, what their reaction was. If not the books, a movie or six have almost certainly crossed most brainpans at some point. I'm not unique or special in having an attachment, that's sort of what happens when there are just that many hundreds of millions of copies in print for six decades.

But it was my turn to cry and be overwhelmed. I cried overwhelmedly when Christopher Golden invited me to contribute a story to The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales from The Stand, just to be allowed to play with a single grain of sand from the sandbox of a guy who played such a starring role in my youth. I cried overwhelmedly while I was writing it. And when I turned it in. And when Chris told me "Steve" was going to come to the launch in Bangor.

I'm a crier. Believe me, I don't like it any better than anyone else. It's just what my body does when it has big feelings, of just about any sort.

But this one was just so much. Such a big full circle to come round--almost a wheel, you might say.

I'm not going to list off all the ways King's work has affected me--that would be an essay without end. I won't say he made me want to be a writer in the first place--I don't have one single memory of being alive in which I didn't want that. But reading those books, at a hilariously inappropriate age, slowly changed the kind of writer I wanted to be.

My story in (mother of all acronyms) TEOTWAWKI is called Came the Last Night of Sadness, and it starts like this:

Fern Ramsey sat criss-cross applesauce on the cold concrete floor of a dead stranger’s garage, left foot squished tight between her long, thin leg and the slab, right foot plopped up on her opposite knee, waggle-tapping along to the song in her head. There was always a song in Fern’s head; always had been. Always the same song, in point of fact, even though she didn’t know what it was called, or understand the words too much, or remember where she could ever have heard it. She supposed she’d made it up herself when she was littler and just forgotten it, like you forgot all kinds of things about being littler once you got big. 

Oh well. 

But that was me. I was nine. I was supposed to be cleaning the garage. It was hot, July or August, as hot as it ever gets in what was then rural Washington. I remember so clearly pulling out a huge carboard box full of paperbacks: a treasure trove of 80s horror. Peter Straub, John Saul, V.C. Andrews--and the man himself. I remember looking at those covers and knowing for a goddamned fact I was absolutely not allowed to read these books.

And I did a kid's mental arithmetic. The conclusion I arrived at? I can read faster than they can catch me. So I sat down on that cool concrete slab and started reading The fucking Stand, because it was the biggest and I liked the cover best.

The rest of my life followed. In ways great and tiny.

Did I understand everything I read back then? Of course not, I was nine. I still believed in Santa, barely. But I understood enough--that it was taboo, that there was sex and death in there, that grown-ups really liked this writer, because I saw them carrying his books around all the time. And one of his biggest fans was my stepmother (who did attempt to guide me into the less traumatizing stories once she finally did catch me). All those stories also felt very true to me--many were about bad things happening to kids, or at least bad things happening to kids was part of the story. And in those days YA wasn't a thing like it is now, so these seemed to me like the only books that told the truth about how scary it could get to just be young. I adored them. I read them over and over. I read IT when I was the same age as the kids. I read every short story. I loved horror before I loved any other genre--I always went straight for the horror section in any bookstore, and I didn't seriously start on fantasy and science fiction until 12 or so.

Stephen King had to listen to all that. And several other stories I've told to many people, many times, about how his work moved various continents of my life. It really was such an odd way to meet someone--he came to a launch and sat through the whole discussion. Usually I get flustered and can't say what I want to, but on a panel, I'm right at home...and he had to sit there and listen to it all, which is not the usual way of meeting a hero. I probably came off better than usual--I hope, any way.

One of the audience questions was asking us anthology authors what scars we had, in reference to the scene from Jaws. I laughed and said: oh, I'm gonna win. Because, as some of you may have heard at some point, my legs are ALL OVER scars from running through a plate-glass window when I was 10. Fast forward 36 years and what the fuck am I doing but hiking up my skirt and laughing while I show the scars that made kids call me Frankenstein in school to a room of 75 people and Stephen King.

What is this life?

King has just always been one of my constants. His books walked with me, but especially IT, The Stand, and The Talisman. Thousands of pages like steps on a path. Like Knowledge in the medieval play. I will go with thee, Everyman, and by thy guide. They were so weird and personal and universal and gross and kind of pervy and sometimes off-putting and beautiful and dear and full of feeling. And all that was part of it, part of the appeal. He was always so unafraid to be himself on those pages. Hell, I live in Maine because--and I did get to say this in the room--because as a kid, reading those books, I got an idea in my head that Maine was where they kept the magic in America. Scary, awful magic, sure, but at least it was magic.

Turns out, that idea isn't all that wrong.

I wasn't a kid people liked that much. I didn't have any friends. A Loser without a Club. Most people kind of figured I wasn't going to amount to much, given the circumstances of my everything. I was just the awkward, unregulated, annoying kid with a bad haircut and ugly clothes walking around clutching a different massive fucking book every couple of days. There was a time, oh young folk, when that was not a quirky archetype, just a straight ticket to hardcore bullying.

But I grew up. I did do some things. I am still unregulated and awkward and annoying, but my hair is much better. And I held it together when he hugged me, not just as a fan, but as a writer.

Because when King finished sharing anecdotes about writing The Stand, he talked about the anthology, and reading our stories. And the last thing he said to the crowd was: And I will NEVER forget that FUCKING elephant on I-80!

That's how Came the Last Night of Sadness ends. That's my fucking elephant.

When we said goodbye, he hugged me again, winked, and quietly said: criss-cross applesauce. Another thing from my own story.

Like, how do I even talk about this? I was never going to get to meet Tolkien or Lewis or Plath or Clarke. I met Pratchett very briefly, once. I have certainly met writer-heroes of mine before, and even become friends. But SK is different. It's so deep in there. And I met Stephen fucking King and he deep-cut referenced my writing, twice. And told me I was pretty. In bloody Derry. That's the shit you dream about when you ARE a kid and things like that are IMPO
SSIBLE.

I tried to say the things that were important to me. I hope I did. I cried a lot when I got back to my hotel room. It's been a brutally hard couple of years in my not-a-kid life, and I've struggled to see the light more than I'd like to admit of late. It can get pretty scary to be a grown-up, too. And then something like this happens, and it feels like that fucked-up little kid wouldn't be so upset with how it's all turned out so far, after all.

All things serve the Beam, I suppose.

And there are all the details I didn't include online. About this strange, beautiful, dreamlike day, when I got to tell the Great Maine Patron how much he's done for me without ever knowing, and try to give some tiny, insufficient bit back.

When little me and big me got to wave at each other on either side of a window the size of a lifetime.