Hunter

My phone lays silent as I read on the interweb that two fellow blog-geeks I've never met have been accepted into the only MFA program I really want to attend next year.

MFA programs call you. Unless they reject you. Then they don't call, they make you wait by the phone all month until one day you walk into your house and there is a thin rejection letter waiting for you. And the wording is cold. And you don't feel better by thinking about all the talented applicants competing with you for the six spots. All you want to do is fling yourself under the covers and wake up a week ago when nobody had heard from this particular MFA program, the only one you wanted to be in; the only urban, public, non-fiction program that matters to me.

This is much worse than my college rejections. This is worse than when I graduated from Cal and couldn't find a job.

This is the most singular and specific thing that I have ever wanted in my life. I'm so afraid of not having it that I can barely breathe.

I would give up every memory of every kiss, I'd give up Barry Bonds and trucks full of Diet Coke, I would give way to gaining 30 pounds and give up vacationing for 10 years, I would give up Big Sur and San Francisco and I'd splinter every painted fingernail down to the bone and walk barefoot down Mission Street if I could just have this one thing, this one phone call from Louise DeSalvo, this one person sitting in a desk on 5th avenue reading my work, thinking "this woman is the one for us!" and calling California - oh please, please, please Louise.

And I will not beg, will not cry on BART, will not pace and beat myself up and knock my fist against the wall, I will not pray and I will let it all go; I will stand straight with a stoic face and if and when I am told NO, told NO, told NO I can't have the one thing I want and the only thing and place and where else will I go?

I'll fucking go anyway and sit my sullen ass down outside the building and wait for someone to change their mind.