The phone rings — My wake up call arranged the night before. Only, I can’t remember what time I told them to call. So I have no idea what time it is.

I’m not this stupid in real life. Traveling has made me this way.

Eventually I decide to subtract an hour and hope for the best. When the clock says 9:00, I head upstairs, hoping I’m not an hour late.

In the lounge of the Dutch Colony Hotel, the Director is watching a ‘Dukes of Hazard’ rerun.

“Looking for some last minute inspiration?” I ask.

We swipe a quick continental breakfast from the hotel and discuss the day’s events. Bob, the Director, is worried about the response to the show — not the sexuality so much as the darkness, particularly in the Underworld sequence. I say that the best we can hope for are questions, a chance to have a dialogue.

He agrees and heads off to teach.

I and my entourage repair to Nederlander’s diner up the street to eat a proper breakfast and discuss Bob’s concerns about the Underworld scene. As usual, Keeley has more insight into the solution than I could ever hope to find on my own and so I rehearse a few answers on the off-chance that a fundamentalist Christian might show up to the talkback later in the evening. If they’re Reformed, they’ll want to talk . . . if not, it’ll be letters to the President and Board of Trustees.

I highly recommend Nederlander’s, if you’re ever in Orange City. Great service, warm and hospitable staff, and a most excellent cup of coffee.

After breakfast, we head over to the school to get a tour of the facility and theatre. I get to see tables of masks and props for a show I started writing almost five years ago. Everything looks amazing and inert and I can’t quite put it together with what I’ve been seeing in my mind all this time while I’ve been writing.

There are Barbie dolls on the table, cut in half and joined by a circlet of elastic. Bob won’t tell me what they are for. I am not sure I want to know.

But it’s a relief to see that someone put a giant teddy bear in there. That makes me happy.

Keeley holds up one of the masks — Hermes — and suddenly I can see him there, bobbing and babbling.

The set is gorgeous. A beautiful swooping rake painted like a vase with these finely textured nets hanging around it. I get to walk around on it and all I can think is . . . well . . . I’m very lucky.

Eventually I (gulp) get ready for my lecture to the Theatre as Arts class. Bob, the Director, tells me that he postponed a quiz due to my visit . . . I figure I can say something worth testing them on later.

When he introduces me, they applaud.

Gulp, bob my head in gratitude, start talking…

Stealing heavily from the process at work, I babble about my process, taking the notes I wrote three weeks earlier and adapting them into something mildly coherent. Apparently, do a fairly good job of keeping everyone engaged . . . except for a girl in the third row who obviously isn’t buying it at all.

The best bit was Stan Greene’s story about The Maze…

Do you know the one foolproof way to get through a maze? You close your eyes, put out your left hand, and lay it on the wall. Then walk, following the wall. Eventually you will get out.

If you open your eyes, you’ll start to doubt where you are. You’ll want to find a shortcut. You’ll take your hand off the wall and follow your eyes instead. And then you’ll be lost.

Stan Greene is a really smart man.

When you’re adapting something, the original text is the maze. If you take you hand off it, you’re lost.

They get it. They ask me questions. Some of them are in the Playwriting class and, although they haven’t seen the play yet, they have studied the script.

I’m staggered by the thought. Students have been studying my work, writing papers about it.

There is nothing better than this.

I survive. I enjoy it. I do a fairly good job lecturing about something I barely know anything about. And I think I avoid most of the visiting-pretentious-writer pitfalls (although the girl in the third row might disagree) and most everyone laughs at my jokes and, for the second time, they applaud.

Afterwards I realize that, although I went out of my way to purchase a microphone specifically for the trip, I completely forget to record the lecture.

All my wisdom and clever jokes are lost to the mists of time.

Which means, fortunately, I cannot post them here for download.

And then we head off to lunch.

It’s amazing what they put together in four weeks of rehearsal.

I had no idea how funny the play was. I sent them a script that had some jokes here and there, but they’ve transformed it into a comedy and, not surprisingly, it’s a thousand times better than what I wrote.

The audience loves it. Keeley loves it. I love it.

I’m really quite lucky.

At intermission I prowl around the lobby (quite inconspicuous in my black suit, thank you very much) and eavesdrop on conversations. No one’s talking about the show, near as I can tell. But most of them head back in for the second round.

Ah. This is a lot easier than I thought. The performers are working their hearts out and making me look far better than I deserve. The Direction is a huge and incredibly pleasant surprise, Bob found so much in such a short amount of time.

I wrote one sentence: “The sailors silently plot to kill the cyclops.”

Bob directs (and the actors perform) a ten minute sequence straight out of a silent movie, so funny in so many different ways that my stomach hurts from holding the laughter in (I realize, afterwards, that I was afraid of waking the monster, just like the sailors).

And it isn’t everyone who can take something like a giant teddy bear (which I thought was a kind of funny little detail in the script) and turn it into a one of the funniest things I have ever seen on stage.

The show is terrific. The ending moves me more than I realize. I didn’t for a second imagine that so much of my personal life had ended up in the script. It’s all jumbled together, messy and noisy and hurting — just like the past year or so of my life — but it’s there and it hurts a little to watch.

But it’s a good show. The performers do a great job with it and it’s obvious that they had a terrific Director with vision.

Everyone stands up and yells at the end.

Again, lucky lucky lucky me.

From the stage, the performers gesture to the booth . . . and then to me.

My cover is blown but that was going to happen soon enough. The audience has been invited to stick around for a talkback with the Director and myself.

Two hundred people, free to ask questions…

No problem.

The airport in Minneapolis is like a mall, a very grumpy mall full of very grumpy people dragging around very grumpy children. No gods . . . but they have a monorail, which is a very cool thing to watch zipping by while you’re eating a steak and drinking a beer. I never realized I would live in the future of my youth. I hope I live long enough to see flying cars.

And giant robots. I want to live in a world with giant robots.

We wander through the newstand. Neil Gaiman lives in Minneapolis, or just outside it somewhere. But none of the stores seem to be carrying any of his books with a “Local Author” sticker featured prominently on the cover. Browsing the magazines, I wonder who Jessica and Nick are and why I should care?

In the waiting area, a little girl named Ireland plays with her toys, very much aware that everyone is watching her. A young Alpha in training.

Another plane, this time just a short jump. Keeley discovers a self-help book in the seat pocket in front of her called “Living the Centered Christian Life” and also a copy of ‘SELF’ magazine which appears to be ‘Maxim’ for Morons (which is already ‘Esquire’ for idiots).

I don’t write, I do some fantasy shopping in the Sky Mall magazine and make a mental note that Sam wants “Gadgets, lots of them…” for Christmas.

Then, before I know it, we’ve arrived.

Well . . . nearly so. Apparently Orange City is remote. So remote, in fact, that I fly in to Omaha (which, I assume, is the closest major airport).

You know you’re deep in the map when Nebraska is convenient.

My entourage and I disembark to an airport wasteland. Someone is meant to meet us and drive us back to Iowa. Under questioning, I confess that I do not know who the someone is, what they look like, whether they are male or female. And, no, I don’t have a phone number for anyone.

I had assumed someone would be there at the gate to meet us with a neatly lettered sign reading “Tim Klemp” but there’s no one.

Waiting for the baggage carousel to start grinding out everyone’s suitcase but mine, we scan the crowd looking for people who appear to be looking for people.

“What about the purple windbreaker. I bet you a hundred bucks that’s her.”

“She’s getting away!”

“I’m sure she’ll find us…” I say as the woman in the purple windbreaker embraces a teenager coming down the escalator “…or not.”

The older, vaguely academic guy wandering nearby is promising as well and I try to meet his eye with the nonchalant intent of someone who might be looking for him but not too direct so that, if he’s not the one, he’ll think I’m crazy. He looks like a professor at a small midwestern Christian college . . . only, apparently, not the one we’re going to.

“Well . . . I hear Omaha is very nice.”

“We’re stuck here.”

“It’ll be an adventure.”

“That’s what my parents used to say.”

I’m already planning for a three day stay in the airport, just in case no one shows up.

There is a sign, apparently. And someone to hold it.

Keeley points with her chin. “What’s that girl holding?” she asks through clenched teeth, like we’re spies.

I look over to see someone, speaking into a cell phone. There’s a sheet of paper in her hand and I read it, upside down.

I squint. “That’s her, that’s my name.”

Someone is holding a sign with my name on it.

We walk over to make introductions.

It’s our contact, talking on the phone to her husband, Jonathan, who is apparently waiting in the car.

And she has two signs. One with my name, spelled properly and with all the periods in the right places (“There was a debate in the department,” she tells me.)

The other one reads “Song to You” — which I would have recognized instantly.

I steal both the signs from her. After a moment her husband arrives and we set off across the dark prairie towards Orange City.

It’s a two hour trip and, after about five or ten minutes or figuring out who everyone is and what we’re like, we settle down into a stream-of-consciousness ramble through the world of theatre, resumes, academic performance, politics, and a lengthy discussion on where the actual Ice Cream Capitol of the World really is.

I don’t recognize it at the time, but the whole thing is the start of a pattern that will repeat itself throughout the trip: People introducing themselves and then being amazingly kind and hospitable, over and over and over again. At first I thought it was just people being polite. But I was wrong.

Eventually, we make Orange City. We drive past the theatre — a beautiful glass-fronted building — and Jonathan notes that people are still working, putting up the lobby display and finishing up the set for Opening Night.

Opening Night? Not for the last time I realize that I’m a captial-W Writer on this trip and that I should act more aloof and professional and so on. But all I can do is smile goofily and babble about how terrific everything is and think how lucky I am. Again, another pattern is emerging.

We pick up a car at the school. I try not to act too amazed that they’re giving me the use of a car, like I was some sort of person who might somehow need or deserve transportation — and then we head over to the Dutch Colony Inn to check into our rooms.

The clock on the nightstand says the same time as the clock on my laptop. I didn’t think Iowa was EST and worry for a few minutes about what time I should set my alarm. I don’t want to miss breakfast with the Director in the morning.

I finally decide to assume Michigan time is correct, no matter where I’m sleeping. That way my biggest danger is being early for breakfast. Although that also means that it’s 2:30 in the morning and I have to get up shortly.

Bed. Finally. Collapse. Sleep.

We have lunch with the cast and, once again, I forget to record the conversation. People keep showing up throughout the meal and Bob introduces them to me: “This is Telemachus, this is the Merchant, this is…” It’s hard to reconcile the faces, the street clothes, with the characters I’ve been carrying around in my head for almost five years.

We eat, they ask questions — some very pointed ones, actually — and I realize that they’re the ones who have had to do all the heavy lifting on this project. It all comes back to me from my college theatre days, how In The Dark you are when you sit down with a script for the first time, trying to find a character in there.

I didn’t give them much help, I’m afraid. The script was written in a near-vacuum with Bob breathing some fresh air into it every once in a while. I wrote it for his eyes. It never occurred to me that actors might be looking at it.

I eat lunch, I answer their questions as best I can, I tell stories, I hope I’m not repeating myself too much.

“I have a question.”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Have you seen the costumes? The masks and the set?”

“I have. Bob gave me a sneak peek backstage.”

“What do you think?”

“I think they look great. They’re wonderful.”

“Do they look like what you pictured in your head?”

It’s a good question, one that I’m going to have to answer four or five times before I leave.

I realize, answering it, that they don’t in fact look like what I had in my head. But that’s because I didn’t have a play in my head while I was writing. I didn’t see a stage and actors and mask . . . I saw Hermes arguing with Calypso in her cave two steps ahead and half a day late . . . I saw Athena — pale and owl-like, almost luminous — nagging her father, Zeus, sculpted from living marble — I saw Poseidon, streaming green rage, riding on the clouds, pursuing Odysseus…

I didn’t see any of them and I feel a little embarrassed about that. They’re there, obviously. They’ve done the work. They’re the ones who deserve the applause (and they will get applause) and I didn’t write one line thinking about them.

It occurs to me that I never have. When I write plays, I don’t see a set. I don’t see actors. I see the characters and the place itself — am I the only one who does this?

At any rate, we finish lunch. I manage to hide my ignorance (I hope) and they manage to hide their disappointment.

They must be disappointed. I’m not nearly a real capital-W Writer at all. Just a guy willing to dare to wear black in Northwestern Iowa.

Back through the maze of buildings and hallways after lunch. The most excellent Jonathan tracks me down and hands me a sheaf of papers explaining how to connect to the wireless network in the theatre building. For a PC, it takes sixteen pages to explain. It takes two sentences for a Mac. Case closed.

Bob heads off to grade papers and, I assume, get some relief from my delighted babbling. I check e-mail, relieved to be able to do so but also annoyed that none of my e-mail is worth reading. I fire off a few of my own to coworkers and clients and even one to my attorney (it’s almost like being a grown up, folks) and I’m grinding my teeth over a late-night drunken rant that someone sent me the night before when the Director walks by with an envelope and says “Oh, hey, I’ve been carrying this around all day and almost forgot to give you your royalty check.”

Oh. Um. Yes. Thank you.

I’m so shocked to be paid that I forget to even open the envelope — something I’ll forget to do until after I’ve been home for three days, so it’s not like we do it for the money or anything.

But still . . . to be paid to tell stories?

It’s a good job, if you can find it.

I abandon the e-mail and go wandering through the building, worrying over the next class I’ll be teaching — well, facillitating. It’s not a class, more of a workshop really. A writing workshop that either four people or forty will show up for.

I start wishing I’d brought some hand puppets with me.

Keeley and I prowl through the lobby, looking over the lobby display. There are costume and make-up renderings, a model of the set, and this article that appeared a week earlier in the student newspaper…

Vaughnahue’s Top Ten Reasons to see “The Odyssey”
by Vaughn Donahue

1. A brand new adaptation – Homer’s epic in its original form is not an easy read. While this might be a major reason for being wary of the play, have no fear! The script has been adapted by playwright T.M. Camp into a hilarious and pleasing modern masterpiece.
So despite what you remember from high school English class, this play is actually about love, murder, sex, revenge and redemption. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!

Ahem.

You gotta love a preview that’s got a Your Mom joke in it.

The director walks by and hands me a copy of the latest edition of the student newspaper, which has a yet another preview of the show.

It’s opening night. I have a writing workshop to give. I collapse onto a small, um, divan in the lobby and talk to Keeley and wish I were taking a nap.

I have a writing workshop to give in a half-hour. I assume that my subconscious mind is working on how to take the two or three things I know about writing and extend them into a meaningful hour or so of workshoppy things.

After a while I go and buy two cans of Mountain Dew and go in to get ready for class. This mainly consists of playing Tom Waits on my laptop and shotgunning the two cans of Mountain Dew while Keeley assures me it will all work out.

Then student start to come in, some of them I recognize from the morning class. And from lunch. My repertoire is suddenly very limited.

Bob, the Director, introduces me and then leaves me in charge of thirty-plus students (and a few faculty members).

I am John’s spastic colon.

We muddle our way through. I do a few exercises which, it becomes painfully apparent, they already know inside and out — at least most of them — and I read a few somethings from one of my own exercises which, even more painfully, sound flat and stale.

When all else fails, change the rules.

We split up into groups, writing together, one line back and forth.

A few minutes go by and it suddenly feels like there’s something happening. Keeley and I slide a pad of paper back and forth, the sheets dripping with my own fear and flop sweat.

Eventually I call time and a few groups read what they came up with. Some of it is very good and, yet again, I miss that Writer’s Group I used to meet with.

I end off by reading “The Face Game” and asking for a response.

Everyone confirms what I have know since college: You can hide a lot behind a good performance.

The truth is, I love reading my work out loud.

All in all, not too bad a way to spend an afternoon in Iowa.

Afterwards, I realize that I completely forgot to record the afternoon session, too.

Then it’s off to the hotel to primp and get ready for a department potluck followed by (!) Opening Night.

I call a client from the car. She’s from Iowa and laughs when I tell her where I’m going. “I’ve read some of the stuff on your website. Doesn’t seem like they’d be up for it in Orange City,” she says with a hollow chuckle.

Then, a quick stop to drop off some keys and make sure Vincent will get his crunchies while I’m gone. I still make it to the airport with plenty of time to sit around wondering why I always insist on showing up for flights two hours early.

Security runs my bag through three times. I see a group of people huddled around the monitor, discussing something of concern. One of them makes a stabbing motion, shaking her head. I rack my brains, wondering if I somehow forgot that I was carrying a Bowie knife.

It’s my fountain pen, I realize. They’re worried about my fountain pen.

“Well, it is mightier than the sword,” Keeley remarks.

I’m rehearsing my defense, ready to have a debate with Security (hey, I’m early), when the send my bag through without any further problems. Only slightly disappointed, I continue on to the waiting area to read Paul Auster’s ‘The Red Notebook’ and worry about Sam and Julia.

Not even the gaggle of Alpha females who show up at the last minute, getting their mojo all over everything, can distract me.

Eventually, we hit the sky.

With the exception of the very, very old god that’s on the same plane, the flight is uneventful. I write for a bit, trying to figure out in the novel I’m working on just when exactly the sweet little fox should show her teeth. Once I get things far enough along, I set it aside.

The old god looked very tired and he had a ring on that was topped by a flat disk of dull gold about three inches in diameter, studded with five different colored stones. I make a mental note to include him in the next novel I write.