Dad and I have this special cheers we do together. Over thanksgiving we were at the package store and he pre-selected his Christmas gift, which was to come from me. It was a bottle of Jameson that came with two rather attractive glasses.
When we find ourselves without a glass in our hands Dad says, "Is it time to go to Church?"
And my line goes: "I think Father Jameson is doing the blessing."
Dad pours the sacrament (he moonlights as the Chalicist at Church which means that my father and I have the same job one day a week) and I raise my glass, "Father?"
He raises his and says, "Son."
We clink glasses and raise the whiskey in the air and call it by name together, "Holy Ghost."
"So?"
"So what?"
"So you can't read my fucking novel without giving me a complete rundown. How did you like it? How does it flow? What chapters should I send to London? Use the word 'zeitgeist'."
"It's good. I had some problems with it."
"You can't hear me when I talk can you?"
"Like, you mentioned Merctutio going to Sunday School. Did they have Sunday School?"
"I could be having this conversation in my head the whole time alone."
"I put question marks on the parts I had trouble with."
"No, you're right. They didn't have Sunday School. Everyone was born knowing all the Mythology of the Bible."
"Then I edited it for spelling errors."
"Thanks. That's gotta be six times more difficult than writing a novel. Also, can you say some kind of awful thing to make me feel lonely and more isolated in the family?"
"Like 'Barman' did they have Barmen back then?"
"Like you hear the stories about other writers and their parents. You guys are too supportive. It would really help if you were ashamed of me in some way. Kinsella's father disinherited him because he published poetry and he didn't want the family plot to end up in the hands of a sissy. Tell me you don't get it or that it has no chance of selling. That'll help fuel me through the trouble later."
"Did they have bars? I don't know. But..."
"Maybe just tell me you hate it. I don't know why I trust family and girlfriends over editors and agents, but I do."
"...I thought it was good. Lots of great phrase-turning and good story-telling. Everytime I think you've completely gone off on a tangent you come back to the story."
"No, no. That's not going to help at all. You're using too many flaccid words. Say something meaningful."
"Some parts of it were so well-written that I wondered where you plagiarized them from."
"Thanks Dad!"
"Is it time for midnight mass?"
I reached for the bottle of Jameson, "Fucking-A right it is!"
Reading Anthony Burgess's two-volume autobiography is fascinating. It's also helpful to help me stop being a martyr for public education when I realize that one of my most brilliant influences was barred from public schools until Catholic Emancipation, and spent most of his time learning English from Mancunians and people who pronounced "love" like Shakespeare.
He was 40 when the doctors told him he had one year left to live. Brain Cancer. He sat right down and started writing so that his wife would have some money coming in.
He never did die of it and instead he wrote over 50 books on various subjects. Speaking of brain cancer: I spent an hour looking for his unparalleled volume on linguistics called "Languages Made Plain" to no avail. Then I found six copies of it on Amazon under the title "Language Maid Plane."
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
1) My laptop yearns for retirement. The disk drive quit last Christmas. It is beginning to drive me slightly insane. This is the first week where the battery has decided to act like a pre-Y2K cordless phone. This leaves me tethered to my parent's couch where the only open outlet is. My insanity has caused me to turn against my own mother--breaking a commandment!--and her movements in and out of her own house are pulling me away from my novel.
My father is in the other room following the strict instructions I've left him. He is to choose the best three sequential chapters of my novel for me to send to whatsherface in London. I used to be terrified of my parents discovering my weblog or reading what I had written. A big problem of this was that for years the most writing I had collected came from creative writing class, where I attempted to show the assholes what life was like for the Pizza Delivery Guy who waited for them to come to the bottom of the hill of their private schools. The assholes would write actual comment in my margins like, "Why don't the pizza guys ever have more than $20 in change?!?!"
(My favorite comment ever came from a story I worked very hard on for non-fiction class about the time I was supposed to stay with a one-night-stand from college in Philadelphia during the NOW convention. I couldn't get ahold of her (pre-cellphones) and so instead I walked around to the tables of Women's Microcedit Unions and the Wash'n'Re-Wear Maxipads and find a woman whom I could sleep with in the conference center hotel. A girl in my writing class simply flipped over my print out and wrote "FUCK YOU!" on the back.)
"Here are the rules, Dad. Don't make jokes about it. Don't be an asshole and go looking for which character is you. Search for clarity and typographical errors."
"You mean I can't laugh?"
"No. Laugh. You won't be able to help yourself. It's fucking hilarious."
Kafka read his first story out loud to his father. Joyce's father was his earliest supporter, but he then went bankrupt and crazy. Most writers wait for their parents to die. I instead make a point of writing about orphans.
(I really want to get to this story someday but I sometimes wonder what happened to this girl. I remember, in particular, that I had no money for food and she sat at the registration table with a bowl of stale Luna Bars. They shredded the shit out of my gums and when we were making out later near the fountain in LOVE park, it hurt.)
The Christmas Miracle of 1999 was that my high school sweetheart's father did not murder me. I may have mentioned a few dozen times that I was a late bloomer (in life) which is why his anger startled me. I have written three novels with this girl in it, but I think her parents scarred me more than anything.
I made the poor main character of Breakfast Anytime live through it just out of torture:
Chapter 25 Like a department store, Sherry’s family started decorating for Christmas right after Halloween. Half the leaves are down and the jackolanterns haven’t even rotted through yet. Yet they’ve already sprayed the windows with fake snow. Through the white border on every pane you could see the Mr. and Ms. looking at something down the hall. Why do people do that to their windows? It looks like they tried to touch up their trim with spraypaint. A plush reindeer head hangs from the doorknocker with a sign that says, Jingle my bell, in big cartoon letters. Kasling-kasling-kaslink. They had a table on the porch and it was already full of Christmas crap. It’s a little village covered in snow, only it’s not really snow it’s like long sheets of cotton balls. It looks like our town did before they got here. A train runs to the center and comes out at a depot. And it’s a real depot, not an old train station remade into a restaurant like we got now. The little ceramic townspeople walk around with their mouths frozen into a whistle or wrapped in glass scarves. The village windows all have fake snow painted on them. Even then they smile and none of them have cars to honk at each other. Beautiful glass racehorses plow the fields. We haven’t had horses working here in years, but I guess you can’t just find little Jamaican farmer figurines. On the edge their little town is a big white wooden building with a crucifix staplegunned to the front. It’s much bigger than the rest and it’s not made at all like them. It actually looks a lot like our house. No, make that exactly like our house. Like someone shrunk it or something. Through the snow-sprayed roof I could just see Dad’s address. “Well hello!” the ole actress herself stepped into the spotlight, she copped a big, bright, sugar-free gum smile, flipped a big blonde swoop off her forehead and turned to the living room. “Guess who’s here?” Someday she’ll get a talk show on daytime TV and she’ll make sense to the rest of the world. “Well why don’t you come in out of the cold.” Seriously, it’s not even scarf season yet. She must be huffing the snow cans. “Thanks, well, I just thought I’d drop by and see if…uh, if you…” You ever feel like you can smell your own wake? Ms. L. stood at the doorway with her robot head cocked to the side, smiling. Mr.L. hasn’t moved the look on his face. He just stares at me. “…Is this a bad time? I could come back later. Or tomorrow. I mean, I could just see her in school tomorrow.” “No. Why don’t you come on in here,” her dad keeps his feet planted and his voice booms through his grey highway patrol mustache. “We’re having a discussion that concerns you.” “Oh yeah?” I’ve seen enough movies to know that this is how the guilty get yanked. I ran a check on myself. Am I doing everything right? Fly? Up. Shoes? Tied. Shoes! I leaned over to take off my shoes. “Where’s—” A scream ran though the hall. Sounded like a cat stuck in a mousetrap. Mr. L. stood with his arms folded across his reindeer sweater. Ms. L. just kept smiling. The room felt damp and cool like a tent in the morning, saturated with breath and sweat and voices. The stale funk of a cold chicken soup hung in the air. My socks wouldn’t move from the plastic rug. I looked around the living room and nothing changed when I heard the scream. Did I imagine it? “Is, uh…” There it went again, louder this time. Ms. L’s eyes glance down the hallway, then back at me. Wanna know a trick mom taught me? When you can’t tell if someone is really smiling or fake smiling in a photo, cover their mouth with your finger and see if their eyes smile too. I tried to imagine Ms. L wrapped up to her nose in a ceramic scarf like their Christmas action figure set. No one moved. Did I imagine both? “I could come back, you know? Later on. Tomorrow, like I said. I’ll just see her in school.” “No. Step in here.” His rough, puppet voice rolled through the carpet and up my pant legs to my chest. This summer I’m gonna find Mom, I thought. And when I get back I’mma get my own apartment in Northampton and she can come visit me and Sherry and we can have a normal life. My hands started to shake. I could feel my pulse pumping to the end of my jittery fingers. They trembled and then flinched with every beat, faster and faster until I could almost hear it. Gagunga…gagunga…gagunga… My arteries widened. Ms. L. glanced away when I looked at her the next time. Mr. L. kept staring straight at me. I was a deer separated from the herd and whatever he was, he doesn’t want to scare me away yet. “Sit down if you like.” Gagunga…gagunga…gagunga… “No, that’s a’right,” my heart rate pulled the puberty out of my voice. “It’s getting late, huh?” “Oh, no trouble at all,” Ms. L. smiles through the bottom half of her face. Mr. L. leaks out half a tire, “Wouldn’t be the first time you kept us up at night.” In ancient times, you tipped your executioner so that he would kill you with the first chop of the ax. “You fucken…” “You know what? I’ll just…” I stepped back in my socks. “I’ll just come by another time. I can see you’re—“ “I said sit down.” Gagunga…gagunga…gagu— “Ghah Daahd!” My heart stopped. Sherry’s voice came out of the cat in the mousetrap. “Dad, let him go!” Without thinking, I stepped through the living room and into the hallway. The sweat dripping down my back made my ass cheeks slide against each other. I found Sherry, bright red, in pieces on the floor. She looked up at me with her big swimming pool eyes, her cheap makeup rained down onto the braless front of her t-shirt. The whole hallway reeked of morning breath and the humidity of sobbing. She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth on the floor, hiding her face (slash) shame. “Baby?” I turned my back on Mr. L. and immediately regretted it. I can imagine him killing me, commando-style and pinning one of his medals through my face. “What is it? Are you okay? Did they…did something…” She cried again, the sobs came from further in her stomach this time. She choked each one out and couldn’t bring the air back into her lungs. I wanted to do something, anything. CPR, mostly. And for the first time I didn’t want to leave. I haven’t cried hard enough to change my shirt since I was eleven. Two twangs of hair popped out of her ponytail as she grabbed her head, squeezing her face between her elbows. The frays of hair cling to the sweat on her forehead. I couldn’t even think to do any of the things I probably wanted to do. Scream, run, hide, get in the car and drive until no one speaks English. Mr. L. gripped the gray ends of his mustache in between his lips. The Ms. put on a blank expression and now I’m completely lost. Her smile disappeared. And then we all looked at the wet mess on the floor. Ms. L. looked down upon her creation, “Sherry, honey? Do you want to tell Liam your good news?” Sherry squeezed her eyelids and wiped the navy blue tears onto her pajama pants. She stopped crying, and looked at all three of us. “Baby?” I couldn’t think of anything to say. Her mom gave a real firm, but supportive smile, like I’ve just been denied a loan. Sherry coughs and that morning breath stink floats up my nose. She collapsed onto her kneecaps again, imploding, shivering silent and curling into a ball. I went to check her elbows for scrapes and bruises. My body walked down the hall toward her and creaked the floorboards beneath. The sound echoed through the empty silence. “What is it, honey?” I whispered. My wobbly knees bend down in front of her. A wet piece of meat slapped me from behind. “You get the hell away from her.” He gripped me in the neck and my skin tightened around my throat in front, catching my Adams apple in mid swallow, making my choking noises sound like his leaky, high-pitched blare. In one handful he pulled me away and held on. My mouth hung open and I looked in the only direction I could. At the wall, wide eyed. “Dahhd, Daddy let him go,” the cat climbed back in the mousetrap. He pulled me onto my feet and I tried to steady them on the floor. Ms. L. lowered her chin and looked away to antique (slash) virgin china set. “Get away from him, ghaad,” Sherry pounded the floor with both fists. My knees buckled and he swung me in a half moon. The room flashed by until I faced the clean plastic path to the doorway. “How about this,” he gripped me hard and harder and I started to swallow my Adams apple. The education fell out of his voice and he sounded like a Boston firefighter. Or a puppet of one. “You get ya ass out of my house, and don’t you ever come back again.” He let go and I gasped the stale air into my lungs. My knees gave out entirely and I slammed into an antique table. My left hand slipped on a knitted cloth and my chest caught the edge. A brass picture frame of her and Elizabeth snapped down on my knuckles and I caught a wooden Santa statue on my shoulder before it hit the floor. Sherry wailed and wailed from the hallway. “What are you doing? What are you doing to him?” the gravel in her voice scattered up the landing on the staircase. I fell to my knees and grabbed my shoes off the mat. Her parents stood silent. My shoulder leaned on the doorframe for support. I went for the door and another knitted reindeer puppet slid over the doorknob in my hands (“Don’t forget the carrots!” it said). I squeezed harder but my fingers didn’t respond. It slipped around three times as I tried again. The floorboards behind me groaned and a footstep boomed for the door. I yanked the goddam puppet off, and focused all my energy on making the doorknob work. Sherry’s voice gasped for air somewhere behind me and my arm hairs stood up. The chain lock popped off the screen door and I landed on the porch. My knees shook on pedals in the car and the gears ground as the clutch slipped into reverse. Her house disappeared as I rewound all the way down the street, past the mailbox, past everyone’s garden and mulch. At the next bend I flipped the wheel around and the car tires screech on the sleepy street. I kept it in first all the way to the factory and burst most of the fresh muffler patch. The floor heated up under my left sock. In Montana they have no speed limit, I heard. You just gotta drive, Safe and Prudent. Whatever that means. And then I stopped. The car stalled as I jam on the brakes, jolting me into the steering wheel as the tires locked. With the car stopped in first gear everything but the stereo shut down. The dashboard lit up. Brake. Check Engine. Oil. Gas. My faces peeled off the steering wheel and my eyes opened at the shipping and receiving gate in front of the factory. What the fuck was that about?
This is not a very well written novel. My agent described it as "self-indulgent" which it is and which I am.
Incidentally, yesterday on facebook I had to choose who was prettier between my college sweetheart and my high school sweetheart. I skipped the question and it asked me who I'd rather date: my cousin or my high school sweetheart.
Mercutio, having tricked a band of Friars into thinking he is one of them, hides in their monastary.
When I returned to the abbey the other monks had so obviously discussed my papal orders that their eyes seemed to have take a vow of chastity from beholding me. None would look directly into my gaze for fear that I might see into their souls, which were no more rotten or benign than my own. I returned just after Lauds when they had harvested their daily bread and forgiven their debtors. We had a small meal of cow’s milk, bread and last week’s blackberry paste. No butter. I choked it down my sinful throat, which had all but closed up from atrophy once I finished speaking with the Sister Mary Neversins.
There is a saying in Italy that makes no sense whatsoever in theory, but which you must understand only by examples. Consider it faith: “The deceiver is always at the mercy of the deceived. Like the dark side of the moon from the blind viewpoint of the meteor that might crash into it, you can never understand it just by looking at your side of it. Once you have deceived someone out of a simple loaf of bread you are then in their debt until their deathbed when they’ve forgiven their debtors. But until then you will always owe them that loaf of bread, plus interest.
My heart raced like Achilles’s before battle. My eyes became like those of an owl: predatory, but always searching about me for prey and predators. Everytime one of the brothers so much as dropped a spoon into their dish I jumped in my hard wooden bench seat. But because these wall-eyed creatures jumped everytime I did I ruined the appetites of all—including myself—and our breakfast ended in a fast of forgiveness.
In the bird world you will always notice that the Alpha Male is the one with the most insecurities. Because he is the one with the most to lose.
Just as I thought I had fooled everyone there another monk approached me, monk to monk, in earshot of only two others and stage-whispered. “You’re a friar too and a human being. And if you can’t see that we are all just like you then you have another thing coming.”
I should have ran in fear. And knowing know what I didn’t know then I can only agree with this all to much. But instead I chose to act like the alpha rooster and I charged back at him in fear. And I said the only honest sentence I could think of: “You have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I bet if you looked up the word ‘traitor’ in the dictionary you’d find your picture.”
“You still use the picture dictionary?” I left a breath of air in my lungs and a long pause in the air so that I could watch the burlap of his habit dig and itch into his skin.
Strangely some kind of revelation hits me right around this time of year, as if by clockwork. I would put more stock in this wonderful feeling if I could ever manage to make it last much longer than my birthday in May.
1998
The valedictorian of my older brother's class took me with her family to see "You've Got Mail" and then to play Monopoly with the family. They had some kind of family problem and when she drove me four blocks home it took her six hours to return.
1999
My high school sweetheart's father chased me out of their house screaming, "You get your ass out of here and don't you ever come back again!" I had trouble leaving the house because her mother had knit a Rudolf door knob cover ("Jingle my bell!") that slipped in my nervous hands. Weeks l later I discovered that both he and the wife had read forty graphic pages of her diary, concerning a weekend where they were out of town. But right after Christmas I braved the man with the Saddam mustache and sat through the faded references of his lecture ("This place ain't your own personal Love-Shack, y'know..."
2000
We'll skip it.
2001
I was filling in for the reporters who were on vacation for the newspaper in Hartford. That week I had obituaries. It was sad and slow and when I picked up my first cellphone to reach out to someone who would understand: Amanda was already on the line. "Hello?" "Hello?" "Did I call you or did you call me?" "I called you." "No, I called you."
2002
It snowed just once in England, but it was beautiful anyway. Amanda and I returned home and there was nothing I could do to make it wonderful again.
2003
We'll skip it.
2004
I was poor.
2005
Annie and I had a big fight about something just before she left. But when she was gone I sent her this, because I am incapable of telling people my actual feelings: ""...then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off." -Brokeback Mountain She wrote back that she was surprised that I missed her. I was too, and that made it a good present.
2006
I spent this entire year running away from anything I possibly could. Nikki went off to North Dakota and we talked and emailed far too much to be casually dating. I still was too terrified to meet someone again--like I am now--because I seem to believe that nice girls are in such short supply that if I meet one accidentally I should just let her go until she grows old an tired. Because of my deranged psyche: I am incapable of seeing something until I see it through. All at once I realized that I could be happy with her and--more imporantly--that whatever end I foresaw had nothing to do with the story I would miss.
2007
This year I promised myself that I wouldn't get wrapped up in something that I wasn't ready for. But I can't think of one time that kind of thinking has ever once worked out for anyone, ever.
1 And God spake all these words, saying, 2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Any God I put before me--books, girls, writing, etc--only leads to more of my own insanity.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:- Keep it fictional.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; -Okay, so if I accidentally make a graven image: don't bow down to it. I remind myself that my knuckles still hurt from where the nuns struck my doodling grandfather with a ruler.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.- Always writing in first person so you can blame it on your characters.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. This one is really hard for me. I'm trying to only write on the weekdays so that the short breaks will give me time to be a human being. Today I awoke at 3:45am and I hopped out of bed to start writing and I remembered my promise. I got back in bed with Anthony Burgess. It was like being on vacation.
12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. It's easy to leave David Sedaris his schtic on this one, but recently I've taken it to another degree. Biophilia says that vanity is the survival instinct that helps us love and protect our young. Proust had wonderful things to say about how his grandmother would destroy the world just to have a single one of his defects. But is it also true that you can honor your father and your mother and your grandparents by actually 1/8th of the things they think you can?
13 Thou shalt not kill. The hardest commandment for both the city mouse and the country mouse.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. For all of my egregious, nasty, disgusting sins: this is the only commandment I've never broken. When I meet Virgil in the woods, I hope this commandment landed on a triple word score.
15 Thou shalt not steal. I had to go to a Rabbi on this one, "This command forbids us to rob ourselves of what we have, by sinful spending, or of the use and comfort of it by sinful sparing; and to rob others by invading our neighbour's rights, taking his goods, or house, or field, forcibly or clandestinely, over - reaching in bargains, not restoring what is borrowed or found, with - holding just debts, rents or wages; and, which is worst of all, to rob the public in the coin or revenue, or that which is dedicated to the service of religion." I suck at this one. I'm in debt and I have no student loans. I stole a main character from Shakeseare. Prometheus was my cousin's friend. And I stole fire and knowledge from him. With my luck this will also be on a triple word score.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. I have an affinity for girls who are on dates with complete strangers. They ride into my bars on his ass and I don't covet his cheesy clothese and money, I covet the girls who fall for that. But as an artist this means that when my friends have good luck in the arts I just need to smile and congratulate them.
Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all; And after that there's nothing good Because the spring-time has not come- Nor know what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb.
215 Youth and Age
Much did I rage when young, Being by the world opressed, But now with flatering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
Among the other obscenely illegal things about my apartment: the boiler room is in my kitchen. In it rests of the neglected cleaning products given by a roommate's father (Janitorial Supplies Salesmen), scooter oil, eleven failed novels of mine, and any other flammable things I can find. But this week when it came time to build a designated studio space, I walked down there, flicked on the light and found my ex-girlfriend hiding in there.
She scared the living shit out of me.
"What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?"
"I live here."
"I live here."
"Stop that."
"Stop that."
"Why don't you just leave me alone?"
"Why don't you just leave me alone?"
[When I was a kid my parents' lines were so worn-out that they didn't even have to utter them. Slowly--and I'm stealing this from Vernon God Little--my mother's voice became my conscience. It's the voice that feels a dollar in my pocket, sees the homeless girl on my block who calls herself "Oprah" and--after I've handed it to her--immediately forgets that it's a twenty.
It's also the voice that prevents me from writing any graphic sex scenes. The one time I even tried to write about semen I heard my mother's mother's mother shout, "Gross me out the door!"]
It was then that I saw that ex-girlfriend was going through her own possessions. Whatever she had left was obviously not as important to her as moving out. There were paintings and records left behind. There are remnants of her all over the apartment. He color choices still adorn the walls and the ghostly sillouettes of picture frames border the nails where they once hung.
The poet who wrote Beowulf came over last week. He told me--under conditions of strict, millenial anonymity--that it is difficult to write in a post-apacalyptic environment because it concerns a past we will never understand. "The fuck you think I had to do with Stone Henge?" His use of Anglo-Saxon is stronger than ever.
My ex-girlfriend accidentally picked up a box that I had forgotten about.
In order to satanically organize her out of sight, I put all of her squibs in the little box that my first iPod came back from the repair shop in.* She picked up the box to take it with her--still, mind you, never once explaining how she got in without a key or how long she'd been in the boiler room in the dark--and I grabbed it from her.
It spilled all over the floor. Photobooth pictures, a two-page note describing how our bookshelves were to be organized, ticket stubs. A to-do list written out for me on page A3 of the New York Times:
-Email Editor -Ask Apathy agent about sending manuscript. -Send manuscript to Joe Regal -Follow up with [name of agent, now my former agent] -Finish draft.
A note from Stacy--my old homeless girl who accidentally sold crack to an undercover--and who is friends with "Oprah."
Dear Branden- I left you a plant please keep if you want to know were it came from your friend. -Stacy
If you ever needed me to prove to you that I have very thin skin and a very thick skull, here's my first lesson ever in Italian, handwritten out by her from our trip to Florence:
Dove il___? Come si dice___? Grazie! Prego! Dammi un baccio. Sono enamorata dite. Vorresti sposarmi?
Where is__? How you say__? Thanks! Whatever! Give me a kiss! I am in love with you. Will you marry me?
I went to pick up the pieces and she started going after my records.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"What do you think you're doing?"
For a time she babysat for one of my favorite producers and he gave her a copy of each one of his records. She never unwrapped them and I already owned all of them, but we kept them in the boiler room. They never mattered much to her before but now she wanted them, "Oh, you're a DJ now."
"You're a DJ now?" Her eyes glanced over at what I had built. I turned the back and supports of two church pews into a foundation-grounded turntable stand and built a shelf out of the bible-rack to hold my monitor and recording equipment.
"No."
"No?" The truth is that I'm producing a record for someone else's label and I'm terrified of it. I've paid my rent for five years from DJ-related earnings, but I don't go around calling myself things.
"Please leave me alone."
"Please leave me alone."
We went back and forth like this for twenty minutes until I decided to try and ignore her. I ran the vaccum and cleaned out the bare concrete floor. I added supports to the shelves and balanced my turntables. She was still behind me the whole time and so I took all the cans of paint she had stored there and threw them in the trash.
I started to work on breaks and cuts and actual DJ'ing work. Loops, remixes, fades, samples. But everytime I smiled it turned into her laughing at me from behind. I turned up the music to drown her out. In minutes I had turned "Last Nite" by the Strokes into a better-than-either version of "Ballroom Blitz," and preserved every guitar solo. I buried a microphone in my turntable case and stopped out the beat of a remix that I needed to make for a friend of mine.
A memory: for some reason one time I agreed to meet a girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. He was a moron. A thoughtless idiot who referred to her as "Fatty." He was such a moron that he brought this up at our meeting and I realized that it was his li'l joke in response to how skinny she once was. On the way home she broke down and cried, "Am I really fat? Do I look fat?" I wanted to cry too. It made me think of how many stupid things I've said that were taken as the opposite and hurt someone. No, you're not fat. He's a moron whose moron friends probably joke about how skinny you are.
"Why do you listen to that shit?"
"Why do you listen tothat shit?" She was insulting my first song before I even finished it. I turned the music up louder, louder. I stepped into the middle of the house, where we have natural reverb and stomped out the beat.
STOMP STOMP STOMP STOM--
Just then Anonymous Beowulf Poet walked in the back door. "Something just occured to me, Brendan. Just because you're writing from the shadow of Stonehenge, doesn't mean you have to understand how it was built or why or why the people who built it left. In fact, I tried and I'm warning you. It might make you crazy."
STOMP STOMP STOMP STOM--
I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that place. Even your emotions have an echo--in so much space.**
-- *As you can see from my vocabulary, I was taught English by fourteenth century silk-road fireworks traders, the Irish servants of Marco Polo, who came to Rome in 1300 for the Jubilee and couldn't afford to return fare. Squib- the small paper trail on fireworks that burns out before it hits the ground.
Somehow this morphed into the magazine clippings that my Aunties get from my Great-aunties about menopause.---(That definition and the following example come directly from the funeral speech given at Great Auntie's funeral.)
**A quick note from Anthony Burgess's magnifiscent autobiography, concerning the lives of fiction-writers:
Writers are not remarkable people. And if they are novelists they are particularly lacking in interest. The novelist siphons his inner life into the work he has already published; his outer life may be summed up in the image of a man at a desk.
1) American Express, I didn't realize until just now, is run by the same company that Scrooge used in A Christmas Carol. This little fact came to me today through no research at all when I checked my email and discovered that my card had been cut off.
I looked up the number online and called so they would know that I'm a different kind of degenerate than they think I am. I dialed the number and a message said. "Oh, baby...You've dialed the right number. So why don't you whip it out and put it in. No, not that, silly! I mean your credit card number. Enter it at anytime during this message. Pull my panties aside and let's begin. No matter what you'll be coming...back for more."
As exciting as their new approach seemed, I realized that I may have punched it in wrong.
A few minutes later I called the real American Express.
"...You have a flight to Minneapolis, Italian Classes and traffic tickets all on your card and you have yet to pay them off. What is your reason for non-payment?"
"I have sporadic bursts of numerical dyscalculaia."
2) That was not funny to the woman on the phone at all. In fact, pretty much nothing is funny when you don't know the premise. On the flip side, making up premises for not-funny situations is what keeps me from wrinkling and whithering away.
My family had a plastic christmas tree that we stored in the basement under our New England-standard two-hundred and fifty gallon oil tank, with all of the ornaments. The tank had a small leak in its otherwise rusty underbelly and it dripped oil down on everything. To this day whenever I smell fossil fuels I get inflated with a good spirit.
My brother lived at home then and the family agreed that we would try and disarm Christmas. We promised to just get one thoughtful thing for each other. In a way it was also a gift to each other that we agreed not to stress each other out. They year we decided this I was folding tiny sweaters at Baby Gap for $5.15/hr and my mother worked across the street at one of those pre-Borders bookstore where they'd be out of Salinger, but they had a dozen copies of the Cliffnotes.
On our dinner break I would get hot rolls from the pizza place and we'd eat them with the warm seltzer water that was always around there for some reason. Prisoners of the strip-mall.
My favorite part of Christmas is that it's the only time of year where I understand why families bother loving each other. Decorating the tree in my family was always like an art we'd pull out the ugly ass ornaments we made out of pipe cleaners and clothespins and you can see the look on my mother's face light up.
As a kid I always found them embarassing. It was my early work. Far too derivative and indicative of the unrefined tastes of my professors in the presbyterian nursary school.
But even now I make ornaments for my friends because I like the idea of them forgetting all about me. Maybe we'll have a falling out sometime or I'll finally piss them off for the last time and in the in between time they'll have packed away the ornament in a forgotten box and maybe they'll remember me as something more than just an asshole next year.
Even thinking about it now I can smell the petroleum in the air.
By senior year I was inadvertently in one of those moments of mine. I had made it no secret that I would not be around the following year. None of my close friends were going to college except Ben and I thought I would take a trip somewhere. I didn't know then that I actually was going to college.
Mommy was in school in Hartford, my father was at the capitol almost all day and night because his job was to prepare for the sheer amount of terror that the State of Connecticut would face from the fallout of the Y2K bug. My brother was spending most of his time working or taking care of his girlfriend's little brothers and sisters. He is now married to her and the brothers and sisters help take care of his kids now.
We communicated with each other by writing notes on the mail we'd sorted for each other.
Anyway, by then I was delivering pizza. I was not very popular around town, specifically among the people I would abandon in five months.
My friend Robb lived on the farm across the street from the barn where another friend's father made a twenty-foot tall billboard that says "2663" because the town zoning laws won't let them have a billboard that says what they want it to say: "EGGS."
I am from a civilization of smartasses.
Robb also kind of thought I was an asshole at this point. Mommy left me a note asking me to go down to the basement and bring up the tree and I just couldn't do it. No one else wanted to either. If I remember correctly, we got the tree because somehow we thought it would be a fun thing to have in the house. We also had three cats who kept leaping into the live trees we had, thinking they might find something to eat, and instead they would go tumbling down in a flood of Christmas lights, broken snowglobes, three year old candy canes and nut cracker clothespin ornaments.
I went over to Robb's and I wanted this Christmas to be different. None of us were getting minimum wage anymore. I was Mr. Hotshot Pizza boy making upwards of $40/night, my brother was a Mechanic. I gave Robb twenty bucks and he pulled out a saw and cut down the biggest spruce I'd ever strap to my snowboard rack.
The women in my family tend to spend an obscene amount of time finding the perfect gifts. The family legend is that during the Cabbage-Patch craze, my grandmother sat at the loading dock of ToyRUs because the word around St. John's was the they were getting a delivery. She matched the eye color and hair to every one of my cousins, sewed us all new christmas outfits and then measured all of the dolls so that we would have matching outfits.
Gramma also had to make a few exceptions. I only found out last year that my doll was supposed to be Puerto Rican and his name was "Muguel" not "Nigel."
The point is: I wish that just one more time in my life I could make one woman as happy as my mother was when she came home from work at eleven O'clock at night to an empty house and saw the eight foot spruce where the plastic tree belonged.
Your daughter stayed with me last night but she is in a hotel tonight.
It ended up fine because she got a hotel and a band had to stay with me tonight, instead, and I just want to say:
Remember how you said the Irish dry-mason fences crumbled in Kentucky after the Irish stopped moving there?
[Post-Potatoe Famine?]
Such is how I feel about all of my houseguests. I'm offended that the bands and your daughter even had to ask if they could stay with me.
I'm Irish.
Of course they can stay with me. Personally, I feel like this is our apartment and that I'm hogging it for myself.
My cousins never need to ask if they can come over. I would never be able to live in my unnecessarily nice apartment if it weren't for you'all [Kentucky for "y'all"] taking care of me my whole life. And every single person who took care of me when I was a dirtbag (was?) is my family. I love "you'all" and I wish I could repay the favor you did to me when I was broke and living off the shitty scholarship.
To me it's a sad--yet ecstatic--funeral.
I'll bring you the greatest flowers from Turkey when you're in hospice, but it will never amount to how well you took care of me when I was broke, thirsty, and wishing I could afford gas back to school.
I spend all of my life re-paying it. With interest.
To celebrate Chanukah I have adapted two stories. One is an Italian folktale about a man who tricks a woman into sleeping with him by telling him that Angel Gabriel will sneak come into his body during the night because he has a crush on her. The other is the strangest book in the bible.
My assistant told me that in Catholic school all the girls would hide in study hall reading about when Solomon was working blue. As typical of the project, I couldn't find a translation that I liked and I also didn't want to ruin the original poetry.
Song of Solomon is, at face, a sex manual as advanced as some of the teachings of the Kama Sutra. Our translations were all done by Puritans. These Puritans may in fact have never seen a vagina since birth. King James puts it in her bellybutton. He makes the narrator do belly-shots: "Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies."
Perhaps King James or his translator had a lover who had a pop-top vagina and a teen wolf belt of wheat with labia encircling it. I am not judging anyone. But I have taken liberties with the translation--going so far as to read the original. My memory is not always the most reliable, but it makes more sense to me that young, inexperienced Mercutio would be more comfortable having oral and position c. with a girl whose womb was like a wine pitcher and which opened at the traditional Hebrew location. It may even be a goblet encircled with flowers among a mound of straw.
I've also taken advantage of gendered pronouns to make them become equals within the dialogue. And no matter what I learned in school about academic dishonesty: I have an unreliable narrator who is trying to nail a girl by telling her that had the second coming in his pants. It doesn't quite matter then.
“Be ye not afr—” “Get in here!” the creature grappled me into the building and all but tore the white habit I had chosen to wear. “How did you know it was me?” “Believe me my dear. I know. I know everything for God himself has told it to me. Remember of course what Christ said about Moses and you will understand how we work up there: When you were a little girl, I am.” I saw the envelope of her consciousness open up and spill out of her head. My words filled her skull to the brim and a minisces of knowledge-bloat floated her eyes. So I continued. “You must listen to me very carefully. Angel Gabriel is only on earth for a certain amount of time. A very short, certain amount of time, relative to my life, but an amount of time no less. And I am here because of you. When God created both of your parents I remember thinking here, here is the ones we have been waiting for.” “You mean it was pre-ordained for my parents to meet?” “No only preordained, but it is a matter of heavenly consideration and even when your grandparents were born we know. Sorry, in your language that is ‘we knew.’ All is one for us. Even us are in that one.” “This is fascinating. So if you put me back in my mother and my mother back in her mother would this order continue? That is to say, could we be little more than a chemical reaction spawned by eve? And if so—” It then occurred to me that my creature had learned much more in her short amount of years thatn I had expected. Frequently when you meet a woman who has a brilliant mind it comes from years of placating the ego of an older, well-educated man. Often times they are bright girls whose natural curiousity forces her to seek out the local apothecary or physician. Men such as these have little reservations about unfolding the mysteries of the universe, specifically those that lie with in her body. But we’ll get to that. “Madonna, we must proceed with caution. I have borrowed this fragile earthen vessel from a local member of the church.” “But you wear it so well! I know the priest who usually wears it and he carries himself through the streets like a pall bearer. You bring so much light his face it is unbelievable,” I was about to get offended by that remark from someone who knew me for little more than fifteen minutes but she then engulfed each of my shoulders with her grip. “And you must have filled out his muscles. Look at what grand arms you have.” She traced the muscles of my neck through their pronounced neighbors on my biceps. Her hands then slipped between he creases of my robe where the sweat of the summer’s heat clung it to my flesh. Her fingernails fell into the trenches left behind by the Godly abdominal muscles of Archangel Gabriel. “Be ye not afraid, my angel,” she pulled herself in close to my ghostly ear as wrapped the rope of my belt around her fingers, cinching me in tighter to her. “I’ll take good care of this earthen vessel of yours and you can bring it back to that priest in one piece.” With one single terrifying drop, the rope belt fell to the ground as inauspiciously as the snake that fell before Moses. If I can prove the saintliness of this creature it is only because she dropped my snake and somehow came up with my staff in her hand. I’d rather not use the vulgar tongue while I’m engaged in ecclesiastical duties, but I had branch growing out of me that could only be useful as Achilles divining rod. I had sprung an Arlecchino of my own and it I wouldn’t be to embarrassed to tell you that it glowed like an altar candle and there was only one acolyte who could extinguish it. My robes fell from my shoulders and I decided to enjoy one extra sin of pride (how much longer, I often wonder, did they keep Jesus hung on the cross for my sins alone?) as I see her eyes inflate as she watches my body glow in the candle of the moonlight. I had worked up enough sweat with fear and climbing. Her nightgown fastens in the front with a single clasp that falls one inch shy from the perfect cleft of her gorgeous breasts. If I reached up to unfurl her awaiting beauty, I feared that my hands would shake and I would give myself away as a fraud. Instead I gazed at the projection of her magnifiscent figure against the screen of her gauze-thin white nightgown. Will I go to hell if I admit that I heard the voice of the actual Archangel Gabriel at that moment? “Be ye not afraid.” With the gentle touch of a papal florist she twisted off the harmless button and her creation blossomed out of the mouth of her night gown. I look down at the puddle of a dress on the floor and see that she is still wearing her sandals. Be ye not afraid, Mercutio. “Woman, forgive me.” “Did I do something wrong?” “No, it is this corporeal form. This earthen vessel. It is made in God’s image and likeness but that in turn makes it something of an idol we hew from the clay, generation after generation,” I looked down at the candle and wept. “Please forgive me, sister.” Her face fell into the quiet fear that not even the greatest confessor could instill in her. “Please tell me what I have done wrong?” “It is I who have wronged you and I see now both why I am necessary for God’s work and yet why so often I am sent down to earth in distress and disappointment. I can see now that you humans are only trying to protect and perpetuate yourselves, which is worship in itself when you think about it. What better way to exhalt creation than by taking part in it?” I let my words hang in the air like the smoke from a smited candle. “I apologize to you because for a moment there I had what you humans call doubt. I doubted myself and I doubted the Lord. But most of all, I doubted this pathetic form I have taken.” “I understand, dear Angel. I understand. Please talk to me about it.” “But the one thing we can never doubt is the scripture. And this was written long before you or Mary were written.” I then recited her the following in Jew-tongue: ? ???-?????? ?????????? ????????????, ????-??????; ????????? ??????????--?????? ????????, ???????? ????? ??????.
“Would you care for me to translate?” Magnifiscent creature nodded her head as I bent down on one knee and clutched her beautiful foot. “Song of Solomon is one of the most misunderstood works of scripture. Throughout history, concerned forces have tried to keep is stricken from the bible and the Lord himself kept them from destroying the poetry and he wrote. Even I fail at times and his scripture is left in every household so that we can look to it for instruction. It is only know that I have seen you with earthly eyes and heavenly mind that I know you are the one,” With one foot in my hand I began. “Shapely and graceful your sandaled feet, and queenly your movement.” She placed her quivering hands on my bare shoulders. I moved up the smooth flesh of her gorgous leg with my unworthiest hand and placed her foot upon my bent knee as I worshiped upon the altar of her left thigh. “O prince’s daughter! Your limbs are lithe and elegant. The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of a master artist.” Her flesh went goosebumped like Mary Magdalene’s when she saw Christ again at the well. It may be the chill spring air or just the word of the Lord (thanks be to God!). There is something that you might never understand about Mercutio. No one will. I’ll tell you once and maybe you will understand it later. I love the women that I love. There are men out there who will mark themselves as barbarians in the sack to their friends. But I sometimes wonder about even them. For who could kneel before a woman like this and not feel humbled, as though you are receiving the audience of a goddess. All boys act like expert swordsmen infront of each other and it is a shame that anyone ever hears us. It is not the machismo of Achilles that keeps him alive on the battlefield, it is the fear of the power of his attackers. The respect of their power over him. Maybe it is this small spigot attached to the base of my face that prevents me from pouring out its contents all at once, instead leaving only a trickle from just one of the many barells inside of it. Let us put it this way: just because I dive into the Mediterranean does that make it impossible for the Mediterranean to say, authoritatively, that she engulfed me? Given this respect I have for the trembling creature, I grab her beautifully curved hip and set her down on the bed, kissing her inner thighs as her flower begins to blossom. “Your secret place is a chalice full of sweet wine.” My fingers trace her beatific femurs, connecting each bone to the next until I discover the joint of her spine. “It is encircled by lilies in a field of wheat…touched by the breeze.” She closes her eyes like a Pilgrim awaiting a miracle. And I say my prayers in her secret place. I rise from my prostrate position and hover just over her so that my hips align with her knees. I trace her spine from belly button to sternum. “My dear, your breasts are like fawns. Twins of a gazelle.” My hands finally stop shaking the moment each one beholds a twin. And I find myself face to face with this glorious creature. I look away if only to keep my trembling eyes from her gaze. “Your neck is carved ivory, curved and slender. Your eyes are wells of light, deep with mystery like the fishpools in Heshbon by the gate of Bathrabbim. Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looks toward Damascus.” She kissed my chin as I roll over on one side. We moved in unison, dancing like swans upon a lake. I will never know if she has had many partners and much, much practice before me or if a combination of this natural dance and my leading abilities has caused her to perform in such perfect sync. I look up at her perfect features. “Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses.” She kissed me inside that beautiful curtain of hair. “How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights!” A smile from above radiated down, warming my face. I held her from the bowl of her goblet and gazed up at the trunk where the blood of Christ was still yet the fruit of the vine.“ You are tall and supple, like the palm tree, and your full breasts are like sweet clusters of grapes.” She slid over me so that I could taste her sweetness and I held her thighs with both hands. “Let me go up the palm-tree, and let me take its branches in my hands: your breasts will be as the fruit of the vine, and the smell of your breath like apples.” I climbed under her like a squirrel on a branch, clawing my way to her end until my legs wrapped around her ribcage. “And the roof of your mouth like good wine flowing down smoothly for my loved one, moving gently over lips and teeth.” It was then that I realized I had completely mistaken her silence for inaction. This creature had instead waited, like a soloist in the choir, for her moment on stage. Although her mouth was otherwise busy singing the song of Solomon’s sword, she hummed along to the tune and before her song was finished she sang her lines. "I am with my beloved, and he longs for me,” she clutched her beloved’s beloved like a doorknob and pressed her wrist to her field of wheat. “Come, my beloved. Go into my field. Spend the night among the henna flowers. Go to my vineyards early. See if the vines have budded, if the grape blossoms have opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom. There my love-fruit gives off a fragrance, and at my door are all kinds of precious fruits. I have saved new and old things for you alone, my beloved...”
A backpack, a red flannel shirt, and a swinging purse burst through the herd of smoking assholes outside of one of my bars on monday night. "Get out of my way I'm going to fucking kill somebody!" The girl above shoved everyone out of her way, kicking in the doors of parked cars along the way. "I hate you! I hate all of you!"
She started hailing cabs with one of her tits hanging out, kicking their tail lights as they sped away. I went to hail one for her and I put her in there, screaming. She kicked the partition and screamed at the Nigerian man at the wheel, "Fucking drive! Get me out of here!"
British Henry and I had just left the restaurant up the street where we ran into Nikki. "Do you know that girl, Brendan?"
"Not really. I recognize her from the neighborhood."
When we turned the corner she got thrown out of another cab. Literally. She landed on the street in a pile of flannel and purses, screaming. "I hate you! I fucking hate you! FUUUCK!"
I picked her up again and she started screaming at me. For the sake of brevity I will have to paraphrase her argument: fuck you, I hate all of you, you all make me sick, fuck you.
"Sweetie, just get off the street and put your coat on. Relax. Breathe." I let go over her and she tore down Rivington towards Essex. A cab with a greenlight came screeching in front of her. The drivers eyes widened as if it might tighten his breaks. It stopped so close that it banged her purse.
"I. Hate. You!" She kicked in the grill of the cab and fell into the intersection. British Henry and I were crossing that way as it happened. I picked her up for the fifth time, which is easy because she weighs maybe ninety pounds. "I hate you!"
"Shut the fuck up; I hate you too, just so you know," I said casually, semicolonically. I put her down in a pile on the street. It wasn't dealing with drunks that helped us both then, but it was the mountain guide training. When you're lost in the woods they tell you never to sit on a rock. Sit in the snow or sit on you pack if you need. I put my bookbag down, which is the most use I've ever gotten out of my Italian text book. "Fucking breathe or you're going to pass out. Breathe through your stomach, sweetie. No. Your stomach. Like me, ready?"
I crouched down and wrapped a jacket around her and spooned her like a pedophile tennis coach, holding her elbows with mine. "Why is everyone so awful?"
"Because you fucking hate them, now breathe. Just fill your lungs as much as you can." I ran my fingernails in her hair because that's was my mother's cure for stomachaches. "Shhh...just breathe."
What was really odd was that the only word for what I was doing with this stranger is cuddling. I also have to admit that it felt marvelous in the least-creepy way you will allow me. "I'm not on drugs."
"Who said you were on drugs?"
"You're thinking it. You think I'm crazy."
"Are you crazy?"
"I'm schizophrenic and bipolar."
"That's awesome."
"Why do you think that's awesome."
"Because you can be on vacation from yourself. Do you have your medicine on you?" For the twelfth creepiest thing I did to her that night, I started searching through her purse. It was full of make up, headphones, sparkly underwear, titty-tassles and prescription bottles. Only later would Sherlock Holmes inform me that she was "a dancer" uptown in a place where people go to see strippers. "Honey, these are all empty."
"I just want to go home. Can you take me home?"
"I can't take you home like this, can we get a refill somewhere?"
"I just want to go home."
"You can't. You just offended half the Middle East. Allah forbids you from getting in another cab right now."
"He's following me."
"Who's following you."
"I don't know but he won't leave me alone."
The cops came and for once they weren't assholes. The seventh precinct encompasses all the bars in the LES and all the drug dealers from the housing projects that border it. Thank god they believed me when I said I didn't know the girl. She started screaming again when the ambulance pulled up. "Don't put me in there! I don't have any money! Don't put me in there!"
British Henry said we should leave and I told him just to meet me up the street at another bar. "What a crazy girl," he said. "Why on earth wouldn't she want to go into an ambulance?"
"Henry, you're being too English right now. I have a standing agreement with all of my friends where unless I am bleeding directly from an aorta: put me in a cab."
"That's ridiculous."
I then explained to him that an ambulance ride is more than a trip to London and that I could stay a week in Hammersmith for what it would cost to spend three hours in a New York City hospital.
We watched them load the girl into the ambulance, her screams now muffled by the closed doors. "But wouldn't it be hilarious if you met your wife this way?"
"You can use that story. I don't think it would be very believable."
Apparently since I can never do anything right I had done all the wrong things. In the hospital they strapped her down to a bed and forced water and medicine down her throat.
I know this because she walked into my thursday night party and didn't even recognize me. I asked her if she knew who I was and she said, "You're the asshole who always charges me for drinks." Which is true.
Instead of explaining I just asked her if she got out of the hospital okay. "Look at this." She pulled open the same red flannel shirt--tits out--and showed me the two bruises pictured above. "They shot me with a tranquilizer and started screaming that if I didn't calm down they would shoot me again. And they did. There were six of them holding me down."
She told me she had a nervous break down and I said, "That's great. Do you feel better now?"
It's time to bring the Nikki story to an end. I've taken it as far as I can go. I've flown to strange cold cities to speak with her. I've written two novels for her. I've made her various personalities into various characters.
Wer broke up on the day of this photoshoot. I told myself that I would never speak with her again. Then I told myself that we would just give it some time. I secretly told myself that we would get back together as soon as this article came out. That was six months ago.
There's much more to my life than obsessing over girls. I'm doing my first mix tape for a single artist. I got a very sweet letter from my favorite agent in London just now and she wants Mercutio. Instead of doing these things I take unenconomically long showers and organize the spines of my book cases.
Wednesday, British Henry was in town and we went to have dinner with a director from LA and one of her actresses. Henry's a producer now and so you're fucking-a right I let the big shots pay. Henry and I talked about how it's pretty much impossible to have a girlfriend and be a good person while you're in a big writing project. And he's totally right.
We went out for a smoke and in walked a guy that dated Nikki after me. I said a polite hello and when we got outside some girl joined our conversation. Someone said, "I thought we were meeting Nikki here."
"She's going to meet us at Motor City?"
"Then why did she just turn and walk the other way?"
All things considered: I kind of prefer being spared the awkward moment where I'm introduced to the guy she's been dating since we broke up. Actually, I kind of wish I could have been spared this moment a long time ago so that I could have given up and moved forward with my work.
It's unfair of me to make people into stories and sometimes that's all I have left of them anyway.
The worst part about this one is that I submitted it to a friend of mine from college. We had creative non-fiction class together. I could tell you, for example, intimate personal details about his life and sexual abilities. And I get a fucking form letter?
Dear Writer,
First and foremost, thank you for thinking of us as a home for your work. We could not exist without your support. We have reviewed your submission thoroughly, and we do not find that it fits our current editorial needs. This is as much an effect of this issue's design as it is of quality. We regret we cannot offer individual attention, but please do consider us in the future.
Sincerely, The Editors Some Bullshit Magazine University of the Town Where You Stalked Nikki
Thank you for sending me Mercutio and my apologies for being so slow to respond. This is really well written and clever, but I fear you may just be too smart for me. The fiction I sell tends toward the Jodi Picoult, Lifetime original and this is much more literary and esoteric. You might try Alex Glass at Trident or Julie Barer at her own shop. It might also help to frame your cover letter around some more popular literature. Are there any historical novels out now that you like and think might draw the same audience? (The last historical novel I read was The Birth of Venus so probably not the best comparison.)
Anyway, do let me know if I can be of guidance. This definitely has a shot but you want to be with someone that feels confident in their ability to place it. And put me on the list for your Romeo and Juliet production please.
All best,
Some Girl You Who Never Knew You in College
Are there any historical novels out now tha you live and think might draw the same audience?
No. I'm not a fucking broke-ass-young-agent who is looking for her first break. I have no idea how to convice the assholes to talk to me. It's okay. That's your job and mine is to keep the other assholes in check.
I happen to play records in shitty clubs for assholes for a living. Your job is to be just-as-good-as-that-bitch who sits next to you at work. My job is something else that I haven't figured out yet. But I'm glad you at least read Mercutio.
