Aestival Tide (52 page)

Flash forward to 1999, shortly after
Black Light
was published. I was visiting my folks in Pound Ridge when the phone rang: I picked it up and a voice asked, ‘Is this Elizabeth Hand?' It turned out to be the guy who'd picked us up—he'd seen a copy of
Black Light
in his local bookstore and remembered my name (which was in the journal). And, when he went back and read the journal again (which he'd done back in 1976 as well—hey, I would have, too), he realized that some of the people and places I'd written about in the journal ended up in
Black Light
.”

Hand in proto-punk mode with some friends at their second New Year's gathering at the Hotel Empire in New York City —at the time a “total dump” (just the way they liked it). Left to right: Michael, Oscar, Julie, Elizabeth, and Steve. Hand says: “The red blodge by my nose is actually my crimson fingernail and a cigarette. I was a chain smoker, also an early do-rag adapter. Oscar inspired Oliver in Waking the Moon; the book was dedicated to him.”

Hand in the early 1980s.

Hand read Samuel R. Delany's
Dhalgren
when it first came out in 1975, and it was a huge influence on her early works, such as
Winterlong
. In spring 2012, Hand visited Washington, DC, and saw her dear friend Rafael Sa'adah, who had an amazing surprise in store: one of the original manuscripts of
Dhalgren
, which he'd acquired from a book dealer. Hand says, “Raf unwrapped it for the first time and we went through it page by page. Like entering a literary Tutankhamun's tomb.” Hand took many photos of the text, including this shot of the novel's epigraph, which she has always loved.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:

“Nick and the Candle Stick” from
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath
. Copyright © 1966 by Ted Hughes; copyright © 1981 by The Estate of Sylvia Plath. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

“Let No Charitable Hope” from
Collected Poems
by Elinor Wylie. Copyright © 1932 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and renewed 1960 by Edwina C. Rubenstein. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

“The Hymn to Demeter” from
Homeric Hymns
translated by Charles Boer, 2nd Edition, Revised, Spring Publications, 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Court of the Crimson King” written by Greg Lake, Ian MacDonald, Michael Giles, Robert Fripp, and Peter Sinfield. Copyright © 1989 by EG Music Lrd. (Administered in the USA by Careers-BMG Music Publishing, Inc.) Used by permission.

“If You Have Ghosts” by Roky Erickson. Reprinted by permission of ORB Music Company.

copyright © 1992 by Elizabeth Hand

cover design by Angela Goddard

978-1-4532-7893-2

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