Because DC is much closer to Pittsburgh than Pittsburgh is to Denver, going to the AWP conference this year was a four hour-car trip, instead of a series of flights.  While I’d never been to Denver before, I have visited DC in the past–in fact, if I had picked another grad school, I would probably be living in DC right now instead of in Pittsburgh.  What made this experience novel was that it was the first all-female road trip I’ve ever taken.

Movies make all-female road trips to be Big Deals.  Take, for example, the Britney Spears-helmed movie Crossroads and Boys on the Side, with Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Barrymore and Mary-Louise Parker.  The stakes should always be high for the travelers.  Crossroads gives us one pregnant teen, one girl who hasn’t figured out–yet!–that her fiance is a scumbag, and one girl who seeks out her mother.  Oh, and they also want to audition for a contract with a recording studio.  I’m not sure what details I should give about Boys on the Side without spoiling the movie (it really is enjoyable and much better than Crossroads) but let’s just say that there’s an abusive boyfriend and pregnancy and terminal illness involved, among other issues.

Compared to those characters, we were boring.  I don’t think any of us fell in love with hunky men (whom we weren’t already in love with) during the course of the trip, as seems to be a plot requirement for the Female Road Trip Story.  There weren’t any squabbles that involved pulling over and one or several members threatening to split off from the rest of the group.  I’m pretty sure neither group of women in the two movies listened to This American Life, though they would have probably also cranked up Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” (at least Britney’s posse, anyway).

But what every female road trip movie does seem to have that’s somewhat true to life is that uptight character.  Actually, a lot of movies targeted at women have this character.  Sometimes she’s the protagonist, and she learns to have fun and throw caution to the wind blah blah during the course of the movie.  Other times she’s a secondary character, and she either mellows out or becomes a vaguely antagonistic character who gets her due.  There isn’t much sympathy for the character who plays by the rules, because upstanding = boring.

Clearly, I am that character.  To use a running joke during this DC trip–and to make reference to another movie, albeit not a road trip one–I am totally the White Swan.  I don’t think a young woman for whom I would be the Black Swan exists.

So did this White Swan unravel?

Well, maybe she got a little gray.  Gray as in not dutifully attending panels and keynote speeches and other big deal readings.  As in going to the zoo instead of seeing what Big Deal Writers have to say about writing.  Gray as in not going to the hotel bar where one goes to see and be seen by writers and other literati.  As in not networking.  Gray as in drinking cheap champagne (purchased from a neighborhood liquor store) in the hotel room.  As in drinking beer and girly martinis and cosmos much more than usual.

Sure, it was fun, but not a sustainable lifestyle for me.  I like sleeping.  I don’t like how my face goes from full on flush to haggard thanks to alcohol.  I think I would even get tired of the Zoo after a while.  I do like other writers–writers can be fun, but mean-spirited, and while bitching and ridiculing is fun for a while, it also makes me incredibly insecure, and leaves me wondering what on earth is said about me when I’m not in the room.  (And if nothing is said, is that really better than being dubbed terrible or boring?)

Oh, here I go, sounding like a White Swan again.  Well.

I caught a cold from this trip, which strikes me as a fitting transition back to the White Swanhood of my regular life.  And if there’s a Black Swan in me, flapping her wings and trying to get out, she can try again in about a month, when I’ll be in Louisiana.