Name Dropping

Day Three: Madison, WI

Why Madison? That was the question (or more often the look) I got from people upon telling them that Madison, Wisconsin was going to be the first destination upon buying the rail pass that would allow me to go anywhere in North America (excluding Mexico, they don’t count). People would ask where I was heading straight out of the gates and expecting an answer like San Francisco or The Grand Canyon or even Montreal probably would have sufficed. But Madison? What the hell did I wanna rush over there for?

The problem with straightforward questions like this one is that they always seem to freeze me up. I’m terrible at giving people concise explanations to satisfy their curiosity about the strange decision I make. Here are some more questions over the years that I never could respond to with grace:

*Why do they call you Billy Hot Chocolate?

*How come you moved to Portland?

*What made you decide to get a degree in Television?

*What’s a fifteen year-old boy doing with barrettes in his hair?

And so it goes. But the problem isn’t that I don’t have any answers to these questions, so much as that their actual answers are way more than anyone who asked knew they were in store for. So the short answer to “Why Madison?” is Tara McPherson.

Back in 1999, I was cruising thru my sophomore year of college with a declared major in American Studies. I had drifted toward American Studies because it was the degree of my teenage idol and ultimate crush, Janeane Garofalo. The problem with my American Studies program fifteen years after Janeane graduated from Providence was that mine required me to take an American History class that was offered every semester three days a week at eight. Back then, eight AM wasn’t very often in the cards for me. So when I found myself missing so many mornings that I had to drop the class and essentially wave the white flag on American Studies, I was left scrambling for a major before my time was up to declare. Luckily I had just signed up on a whim for the Intro to Television class that met once a week (at six PM) with a thirtysomething professor named Tara McPherson.

Tara was a triple-threat for nineteen year-old me: she wore dark frame glasses, was a staunch feminist with a sense of humor, and was obsessed with television. I often found my college professors lacking in the sort of personal touch and jovial connection that high school teachers would make with you; they were more often performers whose focus was on the material rather than you. But Tara seemed pretty easy to roll with. So I started hanging around her office hours, almost every week.  But it was all harmless.

My crushes have always been weird. To start with, they’re so nonsexual that I’m convinced that they’re not crushes. They’re more like imaginary best friends for me. One of the weird side effects of being an only child who hung out in his room by himself all the time is that when I grew up and started liking girls, I was more interested in a lifelong best friend than an ideal sex partner. And then there’s the whole blurry line between keeping her a crush and turning her into a role model. So after not too long of hanging around Tara, I had declared myself a Television major with thoughts that I could follow her path. Maybe I’d even keep going and teach this television stuff and head to grad school in some small liberal arts college town I missed out on by going for my undergrad in LA. Maybe I’d even end up where Tara got hers, The University of Wisconsin at Madison. Now you see why it’s a bad idea to ask me about my major.

Eight years later, I finally made it to Madison. And the first thing I did upon getting into town? Tracked down the office of my new crush these days: my favorite author, Lorrie Moore. Lorrie’s a fortysomething fiction writer with a mean arsenal of puns and a flip knack for sarcasm. And since she teaches at UW, I thought that I’d wander by her door just in case she held office hours. No dice. That’s probably for the best. My opening line was likely to be a question I tried to ask her at a reading she did back in Portland a couple years back: “How does Madison feel about sharing its name with America’s new favorite baby trend?” When I was the last person passed over to have a question asked, that actually may have been the moment that I decided I wanted to try to visit Lorrie in her hometown.

So in answer to yr question, that is why I went to Madison.

And my name’s Billy Hot Chocolate cause I think that it sounds funny.

Tags: stalking