A Writer in Iowa City

After my post-masters degree tour of racism in America I decided to stay in Iowa City. My reasons were not complicated.

I had to decide whether to be in a relationship with someone, and Iowa City was a regional social hub offering a large pool of potential friends and mates. The rest of the state seemed a primitive agricultural landscape, desolate and barren of intellectual engagement. As a young Iowan possessing two degrees, of course I chose to live in Iowa City.

Having established my desire to write, Iowa City seemed an excellent place for that. It offered a broad intellectual life, not to mention being the home of the writers workshops. I expected to find other writers of varied skills, along with what it took to support a writers community.

Work was available. The money I banked in the military would soon run out. I needed a job to pay monthly bills. I had no idea of supporting myself beyond the next rent payment. I could live paycheck to paycheck indefinitely, working a job that would leave energy each day for writing. The idea of long-term employment with decent benefits had already begun to fade from American society as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in January that year.

In the pre-internet days, relationships were in person or they were difficult. A long-distance relationship involved telephone calls and letters. We made our life where we lived and it took a year to discover what was possible in Iowa City. It became my year of being a writer.

In undergraduate school I saw writers come and go in the shared house on Gilbert Court where I lived. The pattern was simple. Find a place to live and write, find enough income to pay bills, and then go on living with a view toward producing a book of poetry or prose. It was no different when I finished graduate school.

When it came time to get my own apartment, I found a small one with a kitchen while most students were out of town on summer break. When I toured the apartment, a tenant still lived there. I deduced she was a writer of some kind, “a writer’s workshop type.” She had photographs of writers on the walls, and many books by workshop alumnae in a peer cabinet in the living room. My quick analysis of her book shelves was she displayed types of books I tried to avoid. My future landlady had had a run in with her, and described her as a little backward. I didn’t care much about all that drama. I was ready to move in and get started with the next iteration of my life.

The apartment on Market Street had six windows. It helped me feel more in touch with the world after living in a windowless basement with my friend Joe. I felt in union with events going on around me in the vibrant county seat. I felt a power living in the old part of the city, and I was in its midst. It took me two days to settle in.

From a logistics viewpoint, the pieces of a life were coming together. What I realize now, and didn’t then, was I needed something to write about. That flaw made it difficult to get words down on paper in the time before we knew what Reagan and his coterie were up to.

This is a draft of the first chapter of the second part of the author’s memoir.