There is no reason why I should think
about Denver. I lived in Denver a few different times and for not
real long periods. I would say from 1992 until 2010, a mere 18 years,
I lived in Denver four different times for no longer than four years
at a shot. Denver was just a place I went in and came out of, I don’t
know why. And the end of my time in Denver really was in 2010 when
Janice and I went to Oregon.
Denver is only 30 miles down the road.
I still have friends in Denver. I never get there and when I do, I
marvel at all the changes, the changes to the town and to me. I don’t
really like visiting the place. Denver today is a much bigger, much
more crowded place than it was years ago, and this is true of just
about everywhere on Earth. As for my friends, I talk with them only
very seldom despite how much I love them and value them and the times
we had when we were all young and drunk and without families.
But I write a lot about Denver. Or
rather, I set many stories in Denver. I do the same with Portland,
but that’s more permissible only because I really felt free in
Portland. I never felt free in Denver. I often felt oppressed when I
lived in Denver. For many years I felt like a poseur in Denver. My
relationship with Portland is pure, but my relationship with Denver
is real.
After Camp NaNoWriMo came to an end, I
was really thinking deeply about Denver. The novel I wrote in July
for NaNo was set in Denver. It was set in 1993 Denver, because it was
a complete reworking of another story that I wrote in Denver in 1993.
I enjoyed the novel and the process.
A few days after NaNo ended, I started
to write what I thought might be a short story. I wrote about a guy
who went to a Congress Park coffeehouse to wait out the hot summer
drinking coffee. As I wrote I thought I would have him meet a young
woman who eventually let him know that they had met years before. I
thought I could write a story with revenge and all.
But as it was happening, I realized
that it was not going to be a story like that at all. Then I realized
it was going to be a novel. I had just spent three weeks writing
Exile for NaNoWriMo and now,
I was thinking I was about the write a new novel. As Go
Home Go Home started to flesh
out a little, I realized that I was really writing a Gothic novel
something I never thought I would be able to do. I wrote a Denver
Gothic.
The
whole story takes place over a few block area on Denver’s central
east side. As the novel goes on, it becomes a much smaller area until
it is completely contained in the main character’s apartment on 14th
and Josephine.
I like
writing Denver because it is a foreign city in many ways. It’s a
place I was once very intimate with and now I only have a vague
memory of it’s inner workings but I still know the geography. But as
I roll over the place in my mind, I know the order of the streets
from Broadway to Colorado Blvd. I know how long it takes to walk from
Cheesmen Park to Auraria campus. I know what the patterns of the
streets look like when the rest of Denver leaves downtown. I know
locations of bus stops and I know the number of the bus lines.
I
lived in Denver on a number of different occasions and each time was
something new, something great. I learned how to see the world in
Denver. I learned how to live when I lived in Denver. I had a whole
lot of life filled with massive experiences. To write Denver now, is
to relive who I was, how I felt and see the world the way I did.