Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Wilcox
Hi Sara, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I spent the first 25 years of my life in balmy, gorgeous, fascinating Florida. When I share this with a Minnesotan in line at the Total Wine, I am often greeted with confusion. My pale skin is gazed upon, and in the winter months, my lack of appropriate layers obvious. “Why on earth would a person of your swampy humours make this change?”
Good question. Allow me to demonstrate my journey to Funkytown.
In 2007, I was in my first steady apartment in Clearwater, Florida, but I was two years and some change after my father’s stupid death and no better for it. I was also completely bereft of the ability to remain single. I met a charming artist on MySpace. In turn, he introduced me to Minneapolis. Though I no longer claim either of them on my personal paperwork, they were both easy to fall in love with.
Six months later, I took what money remained from the minor student loans I’d taken out for my third attempt at structured post-secondary education and got a U-Haul trailer. The steelworkers in my family welded a ball hitch to the frame of my Hyundai Elantra so I could tow this trailer, which I packed full of all I would continue to carry with me: from my childhood, a trunk that had been salvaged from a neighbor’s post-flood clean-up refuse pile, which we painted a deep Gak-like electric blue over its original driftwood grey; from an ex-boyfriend, a solid futon chair; too, too many clothes; and everything else in bulging Rubbermaid bins.
Never cardboard. Not on my life.
Over three days, the charming artist and I (who were still getting to know each other) drove these things north with Mapquest directions hastily printed at a Kinko’s on our way out of Clearwater. I had been through the Everglades so I knew well that it would be a longer road out of Florida than I thought. I pressed play on Modest Mouse’s *Good News For People Who Love Bad News* once I saw the sign that we were soon to cross the state line.
I was so surprised I didn’t have to fill out some kind of form to move across the country. I don’t have to notify anyone? I don’t need permission?
Oh, I’m an adult and can move about the cabin at my whims? I see.
“Well, then,” I said to myself, as I nodded a goodbye to oranges and hello to peaches. “Free at last.”
I was unprepared for the length of Georgia. Atlanta traffic was like nothing I’d ever seen and I grew up in the belly of Pinellas County.
Point is, I learned quickly that one cannot actually travel by map. The printed directions got us turned around and lost in Nashville. The early commercial GPS unit suction-cupped to the dashboard was occasionally helpful but spotty and we wanted to conserve battery.
But we drove that little car through terrifying and exhilarating mountains and came out the other side. We stopped in Metropolis, IL for the night after one leg included a nonsense slowdown during our dip into Kentucky. The road had narrowed and it was daytime, and I believe there were signs of impending construction. The flow of traffic was absurdly slow and when it finally started to pick up… there had been nothing. No evidence of workers or improvements made.
This is my favorite kind of slow down in a car: an excuse to be still and ponder and listen to music. And when someone else is with you, connect. There’s nothing you can do about it but sit and wait and decide to enjoy it because what other choice do you have? And when it picks up again… well, yes, better to see some evidence of why you were slowed. It can be more comforting to know why you were delayed. It’s preferable to see evidence of work being done – some pothole filled or discarded safety vest on the embankment. But at least in this particular traffic scenario, there was no evidence that someone had been hurt.
So, I take my forced slow downs where I can get them.
After Metropolis, we met with my mother and her husband for dinner, as they had been Chicago people for some time by then.
And after that… Wisconsin.
It was dark. I had driven through mountains for the first time on this trip. I had no idea where I was. With no kind of grasp on geography, those semis could have been edging my little car toward some kind of unannounced rocky drop-off to my right for all I knew. I was still a confident driver at this point, but no one wants to get blasted by the currents of a neighboring semi while in dark, unfamiliar terrain. Certainly not with all their life’s treasures bouncing behind them with every change in the grade of the road.
My compatriot had reasonably fallen asleep. It was late. And that’s when my uterus decided to speak up.
For the uninitiated: THIS WAS VERY BAD TIMING
For everyone else: You ever get cramps so bad you get physically ill? For this long, torturous phase of my life, I called it GIRL FLU.
Point is, I was in no position to force myself to fall asleep on the cool tile of a bathroom floor. The only bathroom I was able to find was barely appropriate for me to set bandages. There was nothing to do but turn on Fiona Apple’s *Extraordinary Machine* and keep my foot steady on the gas.
I turned it up loud enough for me to get away with singing quietly. Also, my new compatriot was asleep, so I finally went about smoking a cigarette.
Ah, such shameful behavior, this. It is one thing to smoke a cigarette when using it to irresponsibly light fireworks on Boomsday, but in drier climes this behavior might result in wildfires! And who wants a new partner who engages in such reckless behavior? Certainly not some decent Midwestern boy. No, no. In general, I could not have this.
But here we had long been on the road, and that is no time for impulsively chucking one’s vices out the window in an attempt to be done with them once and for all, so I smoked the damn cigarette.
I wish I could remember which song he started singing along with. He surprised me. And he was awake with me when we finally arrived at home around 2 am, crossing the river into Northeast over the Hennepin Ave bridge.
Which means my first starry-eyed night drive into a “proper city” took me in past First Ave. This delights me.
In the present tense, I have more or less been hibernating since 2020. Maybe longer. But my first real foray downtown in years took me to First Ave in February.
It was a damn fine show.
I find it no coincidence that the Vilification Tennis shows at Strike Theater are on Sundays.
The poetry on the bridge between Loring Park and Walker Art Center was far too sweet to me the first time I saw it.
You simply cannot beat the creek.
If you didn’t take advantage of the free pie special at Bizzee Bee’s Cafe & Pies while they were trying to get your attention, you missed out.
What exactly is the vibe at Cheapo, anyway?
Don’t even get me started on Franconia Sculpture Park or Taylor’s Falls or the value of the journey to Val’s Rapid Serve or Toby’s.
And St. Paul? Psh. Never even met her.
Of course I’ve had my share of Juicy Lucys, but I have yet to pull a proper tab.
There’s time.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
All roads are wonky. Asphalt, dirt, brick – they all decompose when walked upon. I mean, heck. That’s how we find them.
Knowing this doesn’t make the path easier to navigate but it provides some trust in myself when I find an unexpected bend.
I have faced the darkness Jayne Cobb speaks of in *Serenity* when he brushes off the idea that the edge of space is something to stress over. “Just looked like more space.”
No, no. I have not been to space. Get out of town. But my mind and my imagination are vast. Though that comes with blessings, it has been a long journey where I often relearn that I am the monster at the end of my own book.
Anyway, struggles, schmuggles. I learned early that laughter is a preferred coping mechanic in this life, so, “haha”, “lmao”, and all that. You could make some good arguments for who might have instilled in me the most philosophy, but major among those who got to me in high school were these lyrics from the nerdy ska band Pain: “Life without pain is a long endless chain of errors repeated again and again, so don’t be afraid of pain, don’t run away…”
So, yeah. I don’t know. I’m pretty good.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Mostly I have been known to present myself as a writer. Quite frankly I am better described as a jack of all trades or a Renaissance man. But writing is easy, cheap, and romantic. So, fine. I’m a writer, then – often a repressed reporter poet who feels fiction is more reputable. I have also been known as an entertainer. A sort of clown or other hooligan, you might say. I sing for no one save the rare karaoke impulse. Lucky you who catches me singing campy duets on my own. That’s for me, you know. Welcome to my room.
Anyway, what else? I dance in grocery stores and I doodle. If it can be made, I want to make it.
If I have specialized in anything – it has been in *not doing any of these things.*
No, friends, I had a different path. I harbor the twin serpents of anxiety and depression! Wonderful, wonderful. And these fools of mine sleep and work in a palace made of mental Chinese fingertraps woven tightly of trauma.
God, are my internal employees exhausted.
So, it appeared that for some time I didn’t do much. I aped the emotions of a growing adult woman in her 20s and 30s in modern American society. No problem. I sort of did some jobs but I am often more interested in doing customer service in stores I don’t work in. “Yes, of course I will help you find that soup you forgot you liked. No, I just wear khakis and polos for fun, not profit. Haha, nah. I’m just getting my own soup. I won’t be here all week.”
I did enjoy working at the Mall of America, because I have some kind of sickness. And I cared the most when I worked at a Pump N’ Munch. That was a difficult job to leave even though I’d been frustrated with it for some time. It was a difficult decision to make, perched there on the counter for an hour and a half in March of 2020, watching confused customers pass cash and cards while trying to reach a quick casual consensus on adjustments to physical social interaction.
I couldn’t do it. So I retreated from the front lines.
I was lucky to be able to do so.
Since then, I have thought about returning to you, Workforce! I really have. Don’t be jealous, I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve just been focusing on myself, you know? But it’s okay. I realized something about you and me, workforce, and why we might have such a hard time, especially here in Minnesota. It’s not that we don’t get along – I know you know we do. And it’s not even that I consider scheduling to be a form of art instead of a precise science, though I recognize your feelings on this subject are valid.
But I did figure out a real issue on my end and I’m happy to tell you now. Workforce, I realized that not only did I take far too many self-study theater classes in high school… I grew up in *restaurants.* Do you have any idea what this does to a woman? I’m a moldy rain-soaked parking lot carnival caricature of a Southern waitress over here! I’m the biggest general harassment case this side of the Mason-Dixon line. No wonder I can’t get through to HR if I have to go through an AI filter. I’m not just underqualified. I’m a liability!
Given that you might also say I have specialized in interpersonal empathy, I haven’t decided whether or not this is your problem or mine, Workforce. Especially not now that I am portraying myself as a doctor on the internet even though I still refuse to settle down and go to school. I don’t want to get cancelled.
I really could be a villain if you let me. Yes, I am very sweet, but my hair is full of secrets and there’s more of it than meets the eye.
But for now I have chosen to hashtag protect my peace. So I will simply tell you that the work I am most proud of has been in conversations with strangers at bus stops. As far as something you can witness, I self-published a book of poetry, Francine: A Collection of Dead Ends and Other Oddities. I hear the handmade copies still sit on shelves though I neglected to make one for myself. This weird little book is part poetry and part scraps of my internet presence. I am proud of this too as I have been punching my thoughts into keys since Prodigy. I am scattered across more remaining spaces than I care to mention, but it’s possible the one I am most proud of… surprising me most of all… is Facebook.
I’m not sure who to thank for that. Let’s go with Sorkin, Reznor, and Ross.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
You’ve been reading this awhile so it should be no surprise my “favorite” memory would end up being one where my damage is on display. Yes, yes – when I am not longing for the mines I remember that I yearn for the days where the holidays were many, not because the gifts were abundant (though I knew even then that the consistency of those gifts relied far too often on circumstance and scratchy-lotteries) but because I was constantly in my village, at one relative’s house or another.
And honestly, as I got older, some of those stories involve too much tequila for your stoic sensibilities, Minnesota. So let’s talk instead of what it feels like to be rescued.
Okay, but it’s St. Patrick’s Day while I’m writing this, so imagine we’re late-night whiskey-drunk in a boat, telling war stories:
March, 1993. Known in my previously sleepy Gulf coast community as the “No-Name Storm.” Also known as the “Storm of the Century.” Legend has it that storms of this attitude are only named during hurricane season. I believe the system moved north in an easterly fashion, so you might not have felt it here, but… you think you got screwed on Halloween? Let me tell you something.
I was 11 and sleeping in the living room, right? It can still get cold in Florida in March and her cold is different than Minnesota’s. The sub-tropical winter doesn’t stop at your coat, if you even own one. It eats at your bones. And this neighborhood we were in is right on a seawall. So, it’s expensive af now, but 30 years ago we were renting a house that had been built in the 1950’s. Terazzo floors, jalousie windows, palm trees. We went crab-trappin’ and couldn’t do anything with what we caught because we left them in a bucket in the hot sun all day. I hung out near a canal and played street hockey in a bank parking lot. Real Mark Twain vibes.
Anyway, central heat and air in central Florida was not a thing for me. So my family and I, we’re camped out in the living room near the wall unit keeping us toasty. We’d been at some family gathering the night before and got home late, so I don’t think I’d been asleep at home for long when I woke in the early morning dark, wondering why someone was running the washer. No doubt the Weather Channel was running its overnight jazz as it did in the years before we had Lofi Girl, or at this point, the adults in the situation had probably switched to the inky blackness and rotating digital neon greens, reds, and yellows of the Actual Local Radar.
My parents were clearly in crisis management mode, and I realized it wasn’t the washer.
It was water pouring in the mail slot of the door.
Soon that water would surge under doors, through the lower slats of the windows, and around and through the wall unit we were using to stay warm. In my memory they were grabbing towels like deck chairs. Something like 5 feet of water outside made this pointless, so they got the dog, scooped my brother and I up, and we all headed for the highest point in the house.
My bed.
I believe I still had a New Kids on the Block comforter at the time.
And I believe it was among the water-damaged items that had to go when we fully returned to our house a couple weeks later.
There were many of these items, but at least my notebooks somehow survived.
Must have been the Rubbermaid.
So we’re all on this twin bed for hours, right? My wild-eyed father disappears into the water sometime after it was clear the tide had stopped rising. We saw him outside in the backyard briefly surveying the situation, and then he was gone.
I couldn’t tell you how long it took for him to come back, but the sun was well up by the time he showed up in a canoe with my grandfather. They waded into our house. My brother and I were carried out and put in the boat. I remember being very concerned, of course, about what would happen to the dog.
The dog was fine. The adults were obviously more concerned with getting the children out first, which I later found reasonable.
Luckily our house was on the street furthest from the water. Once my grandfather paddled us out onto the main street, we found the new shore. I remember standing on the Pinellas Trail in one of my first The Most Surreal Experience of My Life moments while my grandfather and father took that canoe back into the neighborhood to do what needed to be done.
Our Toyota Corolla DX did not survive, but my father’s ’63 Ford Fairlane was refurbished and found new, cherry red enamel life after that. Many of the houses in that neighborhood had to be remodeled, and some of those started going up on stilts.
We had only been living there since Christmas when this happened. But the best Fourth of July I’ve ever spent was in that neighborhood. We got a permit to block off our street. We roasted a pig. The neighborhood children farted around in golf carts and everyone had tiny key lime pies from J.J. Gandy’s.
One of those neighbors drove me in a limousine to my father’s funeral. I wore a pink dress. He refused a $20 on a bet we made years earlier that my first relationship wouldn’t last.
It truly was a village.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.sarawilcox.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctorspacecake/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@spacecakepresents
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/sarawilcox.bsky.social
