In the late summer of 1989, I sit in the Rainbow Room in a stucco hacienda called the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico. The air is thin at 7,000 feet, the room hot, intense, packed with pain. I sit in a tight circle with twenty-two other writers, heads bent, shoulders hunched, pens scratching the page. We write for ten minutes and then we read aloud, hoping to catch a smile from the teacher, Natalie Goldberg, poet, writing guru, student of Zen, and author of Writing Down the Bones. Natalie wears sandals, shorts, and a pale blue shirt. When she writes, she kicks off the sandals. When she smiles, her teeth flood the room with light.
Writing practice is the ritual of choice in the Rainbow Room. Grab a startline, set your timer, and go. No crossing out, keep the hand moving, go deep. It's the third day of a five day workshop, I am not going deep, and Natalie keeps forgetting my name.

Sorry, she says. I've forgotten your name.
Bob, I say.
Bob, she says. Go deep.

She forgets my name and I feel pain. I am a published author, novels, how-to's, short pieces. Natalie has two books - a book of poetry and Bones - and my curriculum vitae, that snapshot of my writing life, lists half a dozen. In this circle of writers, most of them unpublished, I am Big Dog Writer. My fellow writers treat me with proper respect, but not Natalie. She looks through me. I've forgotten your name so sorry.

Keep the hand moving.
No crossing out.
Go deep.

It is the third day of the workshop and I can't go deep so I think about leaving. I am here because I have writer's block. My books get published, but they don't made me famous. No film sales, no TV pilots. Natalie is famous on one book.
I hate what I write in my notebook. I hate reading aloud. I can't decipher my ugly handwriting. I need my writing tools, my study, my books, my computer. When another writer reads, filling the room with emotion, I writhe in green envy. I am not a woman. I am a man. I am not dead. I am one of six guys and we are out-numbered by nineteen women, heavy hitters all. Power hitter females who swing for the fence, hit home runs, and wipe the bases clean. I am a guy and I like to score and my guy-team is losing.

It is the third day of the workshop and the women read longer now, filling the Rainbow Room with divorce, music, illness, pregnancy, poetry, lost babies. One woman gets cheers when she reads about telling her parents she is gay. One woman writes about a lover who dumped her. Tears and laughter in the Rainbow Room and the teacher does not know my name.

That night, I pack my bags. If I leave early, I won't lose face. On Thursday morning, departure day, I snap awake. It's dark outside, where no birds sing. I'm alone in Tony Luhan's room, alone in Tony's Indian bed. D.H. Lawrence slept here in Mabel's house, filling the house with sex and manhood, and now, O Ghost of Lawrence, it's my turn. One of the writing exercises is Roll Over and Write. Okay, here goes. I grab my flashlight and write for ten minutes. My startline - I am Not a Woman - explodes from three days of pain in the Rainbow Room.

     In the Rainbow Room after breakfast, when Natalie asks "Does anyone want to read?" I raise my hand and she gives permission and my legs shake and my armpits squirt hot sweat and my voice cracks all the way back to my twelfth year, when my voice, a clear, bell-like boy tenor that made the rafters ring, changed overnight to a baritone teenage croak, not boy, not man, but green frog ugly. Tears fill my eyes as I read, but the writing is strong at last and this is me, this sweat is mine and this fear is mine and this earthquake heart is mine as I write about competition, scoring, being a man, crying hot tears when I lose my wife to a commune in Northern California.

     Dead silence in the room when I finish. Dead silence and eyes looking me over with interest and a voice says: Are you married? And another voice says: Would you like to meet my sister?

And then Natalie says: that was very good, Bob - and on that still hot breathless Thursday morning in July in Taos, New Mexico, I knew what it took for Natalie Goldberg to know my name.