About Jay Bates

Everything you wanted to know about me

(and a few things you wish you didn't)

my history in brief

"If you survived your childhood, you've got enough material to be a writer."

               --Anne Lamott

Lo, in the dawning hours of a sunny spring Sunday morning in 1967, in the industrial berg of Burien, Washington, I was born a preacher's brother.  

I was given birth to this world and claimed by a pair of loving, blue-collar parents who were loyal to the Lutheran church and the Democratic party. I was the third son given unto them, and fourth -- and final -- child overall. Family lore claims we were happy.

For the first half-decade of my life, it appeared my older brothers were excited about my presence on this earth, because for several years they had pined for a chemistry set for Christmas.  But with the 70's economy being what it was and my father being a veritable pawn of the corporate infrastructure, employment was not always steady nor financially lucrative.  Thus, a chemistry set was tragically beyond my parents' fiscal grasp.  My brother's, however, were creative scions, and therefore made due.  They used me for a lab rat.  

They conducted a vast repertoire of experiments on me -- their favorites included smearing pepper in my face, forcing me to eat Baker's chocolate, and locking me outside the house in my underwear when I was slow to get out of bed in the morning. 

I survived these episodes and went went on to elementary school, where I embarked on a mediocre T-ball career that went virtually unnoticed by the national media.  My team's sponsor was the local septic pumping company outside of Vancouver, Washington, and we managed to eek out one win in our franchise's storied history (by forfeit when the other team thought it was a rainout).

After that, my family moved around a lot, following jobs like a pod of characters in a Steinbeck novel.  We left Vancouver, thence went to Spokane before finally settling in (don't even try to pronounce it) Puyallup, Washington -- home of the "infamous" Puyallup Fair, one book store, and surplus quantities of cow dung.  

I grew accustomed to loneliness during this period.  My siblings grew older and eventually moved away to college, attending Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.  Meanwhile, I trudged through early adolescence ever the new kid at school.  

In the eighth grade I had three friends, two of whom could not speak English.  That same year I wrote my first "novel" -- a hapless, two hundred page story I called Lewiston, USA.  And while the general plot (thankfully) escapes me now, I am certain it was the sort of story you might expect from the pen of a forlorn boy whose mother made him wear a rainbow colored winter jacket every day to junior high school.  The heroes were a group of nice kids, do-gooders you might say.  They prevailed over the cruel and heartless bullies.  I was proud of that novel.  I worked on it for months.  That same year I got a C- in Language Arts.

In ninth grade I was pantsed in P.E. and a pretty girl asked if my jock strap was some sort of fetish underwear.  

And in tenth grade I ran over a duck the first time I ever drove a car.

That year did bear some promise, as it was the year of my first kiss.  It took place at a Lutheran Bible Camp near Bellingham, Washington.  I was doing pretty well until my lips parted and a foreign object penetrated the gap between my upper and lower teeth and went yoi-yoi-yoi against my tongue.  I pulled my head away and asked, "What is that?"

I followed my elder siblings' precedent thereafter, but only so far as attending college at Pacific Lutheran University.  They all went to seminary following their undergrad work and became ordained as Lutheran ministers.  To this day people ask me what happened to me, and I say, "What do you mean what happened to me?  What happened to them?"

I studied and became a teacher.  I married my college sweetheart.  We moved back to Puyallup, and now have two beautiful (I'm being completely objective) children.

A few years after college I returned to school for a Masters Degree and rediscovered the writing bug I'd been ignoring since that ill-timed C- in junior high.  Unfortunately, the bug I caught was one that led me to pursue lofty ambitions -- which, in turn, led to an over-inflated air of shameless grandiloquence on my part, and a notion that I could write the Great American Novel.  Oh, I wrote all right.  But what I wrote wasn't even great for Puyallup.  

A few more years passed, and I wallowed in a mix of artistic despair and pretentiousness.  My son was born and it suddenly dawned on me how short life is.  I know that sounds so cliche -- so Thornton Wilder -- but that's the truth.  I quickly realized that the great state of grace is never settled by those who travel in undaunted self-importance. And so I started writing: humor, for the most part.  I wrote a column for the local Puyallup Herald and started my own web site of humorous essays, but that grew old.  On a whim I applied to a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at my old alma mater and found myself accepted and required to write some sort of fiction.  I've enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend the adventure to anyone who takes the task of writing (at least fairly) seriously.  I started A River & Sound Review in February, 2006 as a requirement for my MFA.  I had so much fun with my first three productions that I can't help its continuance. 

I hope it goes on for years.