When the Things You Love Hurt You

I never want to go into a bookstore again.

Me, author of five books. Me, publisher and editor of nearly 30 books by authors around the world. Me, who was a local author coordinator for the most prominent bookstore in Denver just a year ago. Me, who can list major publications and local bookstores where I have appeared, and name drop this and that person I’ve met or signed who is still involved in the business and making waves. Me, who has been so tied to the literary world for over a decade, never wants to attend a conference, a writer’s group, a literary event, and most of all, never wants to step foot in a fucking bookstore.

This symbol of archaic values and the mythology of the superstar writer. This symbol of refined culture colliding with misfit outsiders colliding with a refined, high intellectualism and degraded emotions the author him/herself is too ashamed to admit. The art of literature still stirs my soul because through the use of language we can use the rhythms of music, the psychic visualization of visual arts, the fluidity of dance, the visceral impact of film, all on a page with finely-tuned sentences. The depths of human intellect and emotion condensed into just a few words that act as an uppercut to the heart. This was the art I chose, and loved, and championed, imprisoned in the sterile aisles of a suburban bookstore, or an urban one that is more cafe than bookstore. Stories relegated to arbitrary categories and sold to people who may not even read them.

My cynicism is clear. My impulse to dismiss the importance of this art to others has its source in the thing I don’t wish to talk about. How the arts leave you vulnerable. How you invest yourself in this form of expression and community only to be ignored. I’d rather tell you not to care. I’d rather tell you to not delude yourself into thinking you’re important or that the work you create will reach more than the eyes of those who love you. That you should invest in those people instead of your silly stories. You should not buy into the industry that tells you your dreams are valid and possible. I would rather be cynical, because it hurts less.

In 2020 I shut down my publishing house, La Casita Grande. I had nine authors, three of them outside the US, and the hurt in their responses was palpable. That I would abandon their literary children was a betrayal, but I had to do it, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. The literary world had just hurt me too much. In 2012, the company I co-founded, Aignos, experienced its first major loss. The first editor I ever hired, Zane Plemmons Rosales, was “disappeared” as he was covering drug cartels in Mexico for a San Antonio newspaper. Ten years and three months later, he has not been found. Me and my partner decided to pay tribute to his memory by creating a book by persecuted journalists speaking out against the biggest issues facing their countries. This book, There is No Cholera in Zimbabwe, included 21 writers from 18 countries, three of whom were living in exile, and many more living under death threat. I convinced his sister to write the opening of the book, and dedicated any proceeds to his family. The book sold barely a dozen copies. Nobody cared. My friend is still missing.

Yet the message online about activist literature and literature as a whole is that it matters. That people will take to the streets. The world will be changed. Our stories matter. Except for the ones by the dozens of writers I represented, and got to sign contracts promising promotion and fame. Their books failed too. And then I befriended Patrick Dalton, an aspiring New York writer who was a fan of my work and who found hope in what I was trying to do, and what the work of our mutual friends in the underground were doing. He found a place with us. He felt seen by us. Isn’t that supposed to be enough? I suppose when his health started failing I should have recommended a self help book and bought him a ticket to AWP, or got him involved in a writers group, or get him into a MFA. After all, the literary world cares about your stories. The literary world supports its own. Maybe I should have pushed him to have a writing routine and that would have stopped him from killing himself. I’m sure if he had just followed a writing routine he wouldn’t have left his wife and child to a life without him.

I’m being sarcastic because I want to scream, but even more than that, I want my friends back. I found no refuge in the writing world. I was also mean, and angry, and pushed away people instead of bringing them closer. I had one friend, Chris, who I wanted to confide in but who I felt saw what a hole I was in and decided to separate himself from me. I can’t blame him. I didn’t want to write anymore. I no longer saw the beauty of the art form. All I saw was the self-promotion and self-absorption of the industry. All I saw were people who only cared about me based on what I could do for them.

So I went to theater, my first love, it was what I grew up with. The people are realer in theater. Community isn’t a word but a reality. I wrote Puerto Rican Nocturne, I felt like I was working through the solitude I had endured. I could make headway in theater. Real people responded to theater, instead of the small group of your friends who you manipulate to make it look like you have a real following. It wasn’t a perfect world, toxicity bleeding out the pours of so many old traditions and attitudes, but there was an authenticity that the literary world never had.

And then I got a job at Tattered Cover. I was hired specifically to re-shape and reform the local author program, which was in disarray. Multiple organizations in the city had cut ties with the bookstore, and I was brought on to repair those relationships. Every person I talked to was cautiously optimistic. I said the right things, but nobody believed I could change an institution that had been toxic for years. Yet I allowed myself to be vulnerable enough to be optimistic. I fooled myself into believing that I could change a broken system. I brought on authors who never had a book in the store. I diversified their reading list. I was making change occur, right? Sure enough, the naysayers were right. My program was taken from me by the owner, who was threatened by the attention I was getting. I was pushed out and forgotten, and once I couldn’t help those authors, they wanted nothing to do with me. I had my heart broken and had no one to comfort me. Even the literary people involved in the organizations I had built bridges with, stopped returning my emails and calls. The message was clear: The more I love a thing, the less it sees me as human. I am merely a commodity.

I can’t walk into a bookstore because it is a reminder of the emptiness of good intentions. I can’t be involved in an artform I loved because it never loved me back.

I relayed this to one of my partners involved in Puerto Rican Nocturne. This show I was able to get off the ground, develop, and see performed. It would appear that there is a community for me, and that I finally have some acceptance, but my friend relayed to me how theater broke the heart of one of their friends. In the arts, you matter as long as others deem necessary. We are all expendable, in the end. I told my friend this story, and what is more, my experience in the literary world makes it so hard to savor this moment. To savor when I am complimented for this work. To savor the times people in high places in the theater world tell me they want to work with me. I have such a hard time trusting that I can make a mistake, can I have a show that falls short, and that there will be someone there to comfort me, tell me it is okay, and that I can move forward? I am liked by this world for now, but how long will it last? Or is community in theater truly a real thing, and I won’t have to fear not wanting to enter a theater again. Can I love this art without fear that it will turn on me too?

But even if the theater world is more forgiving, even if I embrace the small and large victories, will that ever make up for the fact that I am too hurt, too jaded, and still wouldn’t be caught dead in a fucking bookstore?