My Writerʻs Mind (and Stomach)

Lessons I need to remember

To begin, a plug!

My writing friend,

Alyson Shelton

, had me as a guest in her Where I’m From Series, asking me to share a poem I had written inspired by George Ella Lyon’s Where I’m From. The conversation was held live on Instagram, but Alyson also uploaded it to YouTube, here.

You can find the rest of Alyson’s interviews here.

And if you’d like something else to read, my review of Alligator Tears, by Edgar Gomez, is here. My next review, scheduled for publication in early April will be of Lester Fabian Brathwaite’s Rage.

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Last weekend passed in a blur of self-care.

Saturday morning, Hiro and I got up early to get our quarterly blood work done (we both take a generic prophylaxis against HIV infection, which requires us to monitor kidney functions), and then a visit to AAA to get new international driving permits—we’ll be renting a car for four of the days during our May trip to Japan to visit parts of both Kyōto and Shiga prefectures where we think we might want to live. After brunch, we napped and watched two-and-a-half hours of a Japanese travelogue on Hachinohe, in Aomori Prefecture, almost as far north as you can go without arriving in Hokkaidō. Shark was on the menu, surprising both of us, although shark meat is a common component of Japanese fish paste products like kamaboko. A tour of a local fish market had the hosts sampling both giant oysters and tarako, a delicacy taken from freshly caught male cod, the white sperm sacs.

Tarako is one of the many things I ate during my ten years in Japan when I wisely adopted a policy of not asking what anything was before I ate it. And on a business trip to Sendai one day back in 1992, I was treated to a fantastic sushi dinner and ate tarako for the first and (so far) last time. It had been poached and served in a mild broth, and offered little (to me) in terms of taste and texture. When I then learned what it was, I declined a second serving, most likely sparing my host a significant chunk of change. Hiro has never tried it, however, so a future awaits where we both have some and compare notes.

Sunday morning, I read, finishing the delightful I Leave It Up to You¹, by Jinwoo Chong, a delightfully queer romance that begins with the protagonist waking from a twenty-three-month coma in Fort Lee, New Jersey. I also read from a book I am translating in my free moments, about the abuses suffered by Japanese Catholics in the 1860s and ‘70s.

Hiro and I drove down to Fife, to the Costco Business Center, yesterday afternoon, as part of his quest to replace the mat beneath his desk chair. Visiting Fife, a city wedged between Tacoma (in Pierce County) and Federal Way (in King County), is always an excuse for us to visit our favorite burger joint, Pick-Quick, and in the picnic area there, I noticed that the weeping cherry tree (Prunus itosakura ‘Pendula’) was beginning to bloom. It was a chilly afternoon, with a mix of sun breaks and sudden rain showers, but the riot of buds and blossoms brought a smile to my face.

Photo by the author.

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I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of time I spend on my phone of late. The mornings seem to be easier to control. I wake up and leave the phone in the bedside charger, heading to my office to write in my journal and then start working. Evenings are a little more challenging—as I eat dinner, I’m scrolling through Instagram, Bluesky, or Twitter (and I’m @iambrianwatson in all three places). But the scrolling brought me to this the other day:

I came back to this pep talk late yesterday afternoon. From Fife, we drove to the Costco in Federal Way (two Costcos in one day—living the dream!) for gas—it’s always the cheapest gas in King County by at least thirty cents). As we entered the parking lot, I noticed a black SUV with both the United States Customs and Border Protection shield and the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in large white letters swooping first through the lot of the adjacent Home Depot and then entering the Costco lot.

Of the myriad things that enrage me from the current administration, this stochastic terrorism affecting both our neighbors and my family (Hiro is a permanent resident, but as the past week or so’s coverage of Mahmoud Kahlil has made clear, the President cares nothing for due process for green card holders) is in the top three (of a very long list).

I don’t know whether I feel better or worse after learning (thanks to Michael McWhorter, tizzyent on Instagram that the SUV was not an official CBP vehicle. Some asshole (or assholes) thought it would be a whole lot of shits and giggles to pointlessly terrorize their neighbors.

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I had planned to finish this issue last Monday, March 17. Work, however, required some extra time and thought and before I knew it, Wednesday morning dawned.

The agent who had requested the full manuscript for Crying in a Foreign Language wrote back, saying, in part:

…I admire the writing—the structure is smart on the emotional level, and those smaller vignettes kept me turning pages—and truly celebrated the joyful moments here (the march in DC, the developing relationship with Hiro) as contrasted to, in particular, the apathy and dismissal from the Reagan administration during the AIDS crisis. Those sections hit hard, as history repeats itself. But as relevant and poignant as I found these pages, I ultimately haven’t come away with a good sense for how I’d approach the pitch, a sign that I’m not the best fit for it. I’m sorry to send disappointing news after the wait, and hope this lands with a clearer-eyed agent soon. I could see a smaller press getting behind this in a big way, so hope you’ll keep on with that path, too. (Have you tried Feminist Press or Dottir?)

This was disappointing news, to put it mildly. The pitch—how an agent would sell my manuscript to a publisher—feels hard for me to rectify. My pitch—Of all the things I was looking forward to when I moved to Japan in 1988, I wasn’t expecting to learn new ways to come out. The one-sentence version—was enough to interest her (together with my writing sample), but a writing colleague suggested that maybe my comp titles—the other memoirs I compare mine to to give an agent of sense of how to sell my manuscript—aren’t strong enough.

But that was not the only start for my day. I had a phone visit with my doctor to discuss some strange symptoms I’ve been having, symptoms I am fairly certain are specific to my acid reflux problem. Symptoms that include chest pain. A deep pressure in the center—we’re talking esophagus—of my chest.

The words chest pain, however, are a red flag to any doctor with an overweight patient. She urged me to visit the emergency room—the closest in-network urgent care is fifteen miles away and Hiro, still in between his cataract surgeries, is unable to drive.

I’ve done the ER route more than a few times. The first, back in either 2002 or 2003, produced a diagnosis of panic attack. I was working at Microsoft back, so a salient diagnosis for anyone queer working in what was then an intensely homophobic environment.

In more recent years, the ER diagnoses have included atrial fibrillations of unknown causes and acid reflux. And yet, each time I arrive, the words chest pain trigger panic among the staff.

My father died of coronary artery disease. Two of my siblings have experienced heart attacks, too. So yes, family history. I get that.

Here’s the thing, though. I have zero history of either hypertension or hyperlipidemia—both my blood pressure and my cholesterol levels have always been astoundingly good.

I choose that adverb—astoundingly—with intent. It’s never me who is astounded, though. Every doctor who treats me has to reconcile the assumptions they make when seeing me—heck, everyone in North America equates fat with disease—with my chart.

During triage at the ER, blood was drawn. The results? Excellent blood chemistry and no evidence of troponin, the enzyme indicator of heart failure.

Next up, an x-ray. No obstructions found around my heart.

Then comes the EKG. Utterly normal.

They find a room in the ER, and I manage to get the gown on.

The doctor complimented me on how well my eyeglasses went with the gown. Gay.

Both the doctor and nurse are tender and compassionate. (The nurse pings my gaydar, but I’m not the kind of gal to bat my eyelashes in the ER. I was wearing my rainbow socks and mentioned my husband—that’s enough gay networking.)

After all of my test results are complete and reviewed at 2 PM, the nurse returns with a dose of chewable aspirin. I’m hungry, but the doctor has not said I can eat.

The doctor comes in and talks me through the plan of action. She has spoken with a cardiologist and they’re looking for a bed. On her next visit, she explains that the cardiologist wants to run troponin tests on a six-hour cycle until Thursday morning. If the troponin shows any sign of increasing, then I am to undergo an angiogram, an intense scan to track the blood flow in and around my heart. If there’s no increase, then I am to undergo a treadmill stress test, a procedure I have done multiple times in the past with no indication of heart problems.

There were no open beds at the Bellevue Kaiser Permanent Medical Center, which is where I was. Nor were there any at Overlake, the hospital next door. The doctor mentioned that she had calls out to Swedish Hospital (both on Pill Hill in Seattle and in Issaquah) as well as the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Seattle.

I interjected. “Are we talking about an ambulance ride? I’d have to leave my car here, use a ride-share to return here, and then pay the overnight parking fee on top of whatever it’ll cost for a night in a hospital bed? I can’t go home, get something to eat, shower, grab a charger, and then go directly to wherever you send me?”

Nope. If I enter another hospital on my own—without the ambulance from Bellevue—the diagnostic process resets. I’d have to start all over. And if an angiogram is needed, no food can be had.

The doctor left. I called my husband. He asked whether they had checked anything to do with my acid reflux. They had not. But the only effective test, I supposed, would be an endoscopic peek.

I rang for the nurse and asked him to call the doctor back. I wanted to leave.

Tears welled in her eyes. She knew that one of the reasons for my decision was financial. But she told me that the cardiologist would reach out for a follow-up appointment, and I said I would also get a recommendation from my PCP to see a gastroenterologist—I’m taking omeprazole twice a day for the acid reflux and it feels like it’s not helping me anymore.

It’s Sunday. I still have the bruise in the crook of my elbow where a phlebotomist placed a port for an IV drip that never was needed. I still have symptoms—burning in my throat, coughing, and yes, mild chest pains that tell me my stomach is on the fritz. I’m still a victim of one of the world’s worst health insurance frameworks.

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I’m flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday, thanks to the generosity of everyone who donated to my crowdfunding for the AWP writing conference. My manuscript did not win the AWP nonfiction prize, nor did I match with any attending agents, but I will be meeting with representatives from small presses, I will collect a few autographs, I hope, from favorite writers (I know that Alexander Chee, Chen Chen, Kirsten Arnett, Greg Mania, and Roxane Gay will be there, and I hope a review of the schedule later today will tell me who else will be present), and I will sit in on classes that will inspire me.

Will I be able to send out a newsletter next week? Maybe not. But I do have plans for a great issue for subscribers, inspired by someone who told me they were bored by Tōkyō. Spoiler alert: if all you do in Tōkyō is the same three to five things (Disneyland, Sky Tree, Shibuya Sky, Shibuya Scramble, and TeamLab Planets) that every other tourist wants to do, then yes, you will be bored. But Tōkyō is SO. MUCH. MORE.

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