Indie Lit's Most Intriguing Writer

By Michelle Rae

My subject arrives at Cossetta’s in downtown St. Paul ten minutes late. ‘Highly dependable but often tardy’ is how he describes it—a side-effect of “stamina.” (Wink, wink.)

I know Nelson Pahl, so I’m instantly comfortable with this interview. He has a way of doing that. Reserved yet warm, very generous and mindful, and a guy that likes to ask questions and talk about you and a million ideas you might share. He’s also got this intriguing brew of peace and intensity going on. I think of it as an understated but defiantly charismatic aura. (One that modestly says, “Yeah, I think I can do anything, with enough work.”)

Nelson sits down and immediately offers to run downstairs and pick up my dinner. I tell him I’ll go down with him.

After we return to our table, I indulge in my lasagna while he picks at his antipasto salad. It’s summer and I have to ask him about his beloved Twins, who are in a pennant race. We talk about the team for a while as we eat. It’s clear he knows his stuff, and it’s clear he doesn’t like the manager much, saying there are too many unproductive “favorites,” even on a winning team.

I like baseball, so it’s a fun conversation for me. We go from topic to topic in the sport. He tells me all the details about the old ballparks, of how Ebbets Field and Shibe Park were so superior to today’s “stadiums” because of the “intimacy” they offered. I hear him say that word, “intimacy,” and my mind immediately veers back to his debut novella, Bee Balms & Burgundy.

In Bee Balms & Burgundy, Nick May—a thriving Vancouver entrepreneur—travels back to his hometown of St. Paul for a weekend visit with his widowed mother. When he returns to Minnesota, he runs into his former next door neighbor and lifelong buddy, Mia Lawson. While the two stay in touch, they haven’t seen each other in two years. In that time, Mia has developed a secret or two she’s yet to share with her longtime confidante—one of which is breast cancer.

Pahl’s witty, fluid prose and mastery of the novella tempo glide the reader through this charming and heart-wrenching novel with sense-liberating accuracy and wonderful intimacy. You smell, taste, hear, see, and feel everything with sensuous precision. In this reader’s opinion, Bee Balms & Burgundy might well be the best love story you read this year.

I smile at him and then, a little embarrassed, ask him the question I’ve been dying to ask him since I finished the book. Can he really do that stuff?

With a fork in his mouth, he busts out laughing, almost choking. He clears his chin and shirt with a glowing smile.

“It’s fiction, luv.” That’s all he says, never one to take himself too seriously.

I ask him what inspired the book.

“No idea, really” he says. “Mia is a collection of women…(he smiles) I’ve ‘known.’ All their good traits, of course—the enchanting stuff. My neighbor died of breast cancer a few years ago. My aunt beat it. I’m in love with Vancouver. Whatever, you know? It just happened.”

Did he know it was so good when he finished it?

“Thank you.” Oh, did I mention he has great manners? “I appreciate that, very much.”

He leans back in his chair. “No, I thought it might suck. I really had no idea.”

I laugh at his frankness. “But you realize it now,” I say.

“Well, in retrospect, as I read through it from time to time, I realize it’s…‘unique’? I realize I can write a little. I work on the craft a lot, and I seem to have a grasp of sorts.”

He continues. “But when you pen that first piece, or even the second one, you’re not sure. There’s a lot of insecurity with that first story or two.

“The characters come from deep within the viscera of your perceptual pith. You don’t have an objective vantage point. Thus, you question it every day. ‘Is this thing really any good, or is it just shit?’”

I know I’m not the first woman to ask him this: Is Nicky you?

Nelson, nonchalantly, replies. “In what way? You mean attitude?”

“You know…with Mia,” I ask. “Are you Nicky, like, with a girlfriend?”

He cracks up. I get no answer. I ask again.

He smiles and stares at me with his warm, soulful brown eyes. I’m helpless for a minute.

“I told you already—it’s fiction, darlin’.”

Somehow I don’t believe him. But I move on. I ask him if he likes the cover illustration for this issue.

“He did a good job, for what he had to work with.”

I’ve learned in the last few months that Nelson doesn’t like his picture taken. With all the arrogance and self-centeredness in this industry (and music and film too), I find his down-to-earth nature so refreshing. But I want to know why? Why does a handsome, smart, and talented man like him try to shun the camera?

He smiles. “Thank you, but…a photo is forever, right? I have this lingering dread that one day, when I’m 60 or so, I’ll look back on all these photos of me in my “prime” and I’ll scratch my head and say to myself, ‘What the fuck happened, man?’”

I’m laughing hysterically.

“You know, hair gone, putting my teeth in a jar at night, dancing around my studio apartment to Duran Duran in a pair of leopard-skin Depends—just longing for the glory days.”

I can’t stop laughing.

“Go to the natural foods store with the last remnants of my monthly welfare check, step to the counter, and the teenage punk working the register squints and says, ‘Hey, bro…didn’t you used to be Nelson Pahl?’”

I’m still rolling.

“This way I don’t have to reflect. I’ll just assume I always looked and acted like a loser. There’s a certain solace in that, don’t you think?”

I try to compose myself. People all over Cossetta’s are looking at me like I’m a fool. I can tell from Nelson’s mannerisms that he wants to change the subject and direct the attention away from us.

“Where’s the kid?” I ask quietly, referring to his canine girlfriend, the one he takes everywhere. “Is she in the car?”

Nelson tosses his napkin into the half-eaten dish of antipasto salad. “I dropped her off at my mom’s, so she could play with her cousin.” He smiles. “She wanted to come, but I think she and Tookay (his mom’s dog) planned on honing their Web site this afternoon. Something about linking a couple of new flash pages to their merchant account site. Obligations, you know?”

I laugh. And (his girlfriend)?

“At work.”

She’s a workaholic like you?

“It’s a nice change of pace.” He shakes his head. “Lazy women, man…I’ve known a few; I’ve become bored with a few. (His girlfriend) has a great work ethic. I love it. She has purpose, you know?”

I’m thankful I can’t be termed “lazy” at the moment. I ask him: Is marriage in the near future?

He looks like he has the chills, shaking his head. “God, no. She’s great, but…no. She has my loyalty at present, I have hers. Why wreck that?”

Not a fan of marriage?

“Uh, man...I don’t know. Both of my siblings are married. My parents were married forever, until my dad died. That might be enough weddings for one family.”

But, after reading his book, isn’t he a die hard romantic at heart? And what about that vision we women have of marrying Mr. Right someday?

“Listen, women don’t dream of marriage; they only think they do,” he says. “What they long for is true love, and they’re just not one in the same.

“She wants respect, adoration, and reverence. That’s what she’s really seeking, not a fucking wedding ring—even if she doesn’t yet realize it.”

One of my girlfriends told be a while back that she’s never met a man who knows women like Nelson does. I mention this to him and he laughs.

“It’s not that complex. It’s all spelled out for you if you only pay attention.

“She wants you to know her. Even the so-called ‘mysterious’ women are only guarded because they’re protecting that vat full of insecurities. Listen, if you don’t know her inside and out, how can you possibly satiate her? You can’t—unless you know her.’”

I nod my approval. Then, I ask what his advice would be to another man in matters of women and relationships.

“I’m not Don Juan, luv; I’m just some idiot trying to be cool.”

I laugh. But I want to know his advice.

He sits silent for a long moment, staring at me. “OK, my advice to a buddy…it’s simple, really. Just remove all the threats to her world. Emotional, physical, spiritual, what have you. When you do that, she, the goddess, blooms. At that point, she’ll do anything for you—anything.

“It’s the same with any woman. Whether she needs freedom in a relationship, if her career is paramount, if she’s the clingy co-dependent type, it’s all the same. Just remove the threats to her specific world and you win. She has to feel completely safe with you. No matter how tough she may appear, she’s a vast web of emotions underneath. That’s womanhood, man—in all its unbridled glory. Revel in it.”

Enough said.

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You can find Nelson Pahl's Bee Balms & Burgundy here.
You can read a free chapter of Bee Balms & Burgundy here.