Got a collection of short stories out, the examples of my writing…hate to be so naked, thumbs up or down, the guy at a webzine in the U.K. who runs a big press and a Gail at Word Warrior, who may have gotten to it by now…God, I’m on the scales, broke as I’ve ever been…still holding out, like I’m waiting for a royalty check or something, anything to supplement the small change I get waiting tables…I don’t know what I’m looking for…someone to give me a job …I feel I write critique well, but no diplomas to hang on the wall…but what great writers have?
Wait for the e-mails, somewhat obsessed…I’ve put it all over the pages…Zygote in my coffee, which I know a lot of people read, see if I can stir some shit up with the essay…got it out to Salon.com, too, a big paying market, shooting at fish in a humongous lake, see if it will fall on the right eyes that can actually do something for me and get me out of the hell job that I’m in…I wasn’t built for normal labor. I do it, like pulling teeth. It’s either I’m an idler or an artist, the jury’s still out in my head…
I war in my brain, I’m a man, have to support my girl, we got those curses…She’s making obscene money as a PA, but don’t want any of it…if I do I feel like I’m selling out or mooching, these are the same to me, the same money boat to hell…all the people that know me think I’ve gotten lucky, a well-off girl, I can take it easy now…nothing ever easy for me in my somewhat paranoid mind.
FEBRUARY 16, 2005
Well, two other web lit journals want the essay on Frey, that makes fifteen…that editor (ex-friend now) said it sucked…I knew it was good because it was my naked honesty, stripped down of any carefulness, let it fly, the “fuck yous”..the true voice…he’s a flaming wreck, going down with the ripped wings of his ethical tirades.
My girl gave me the deluxe edition of the Writer’s Market 2006…that book’s not me…six hundred odd pages of hoops and chains to jump through…I hate the guidelines, one of which, or should I say a lot of which, want single spaced, name on every third page of the piece, specific font, cover letter, including contact info, send three copies because one editor likes the piece to look this way, then the other two editors split on their particular whims and have their own preferences with a whole host of other specific guidelines like page numbers on all the sheets with your name on the bottom next to the number, then I get through all these guidelines and in bold type they say, “no e-mail submissions” or “send 3 SASE” and by this time I’m exhausted. They say they’ll get back to me in six to eight months, and by this time I’m really tired…they want no simultaneous submissions, like I’m supposed to wait for close to a year for them to get back to me while I’m elbow deep in uneaten food, bussing tables for small dollars, they’ve got to be kidding…. Inhumane.
In the Writer’s Market I go to the advice for writers with pictures of freelancers, glamour photo shots, which give slivers of good advice, but I get the hints that they write for W.A.S.P.S. up in Connecticut or something…. they got those looks.. so successfully, educated with scarves wrapping their white necks, and most are women authors which, truthfully, have no hope for me.
“You need to write that which is appealing to get a large audience.”the slogans say… I start to feel like I’m on the Oprah show, some suburban hell, writing that takes no chances. So I put the Writer’s Market aside, go to my lit magazine cumulative index, and scroll the university presses, which have some lighter guidelines, some even accepting e-mail submissions…scatter my short stories around, the young aren’t so rooted in procedure. Go to Missouri Review, who have given me encouraging, hand written feedback on my writing…we’ll see…
FEBRUARY 27, 2006
So we went to the Coldplay concert last night which was other worldly…I’d bought the tickets for Christmas for Andrea…but once again her sister, who I do love as a sister (maybe somewhere deep, I can’t find it tonight), can’t recall when she’s coming over to our house, so wrapped up in the glory that is herself, wants me to spin around her universe…I don’t spin around anybody else but me…so once again, she becomes the definition of selfish. She, her boyfriend, and his sister and father are all going to coldplay(the next U2…we’ll see). We decide to meet them for drinks downtown, which I know we’ll end up being shit on, but decide to take the chances. She bops in, her glory…I’m sitting around the bar, Andrea outside chain smoking, we’ve run in to the waitresses from Hudson’s bar, having fun, the place is filling, the downtown is filling…tell them to sit at the round tables next to us, the food and beer will come faster, sounds rational…she dismisses, says no, wants a long table in the third tier of the yuppie bar. I tell her again there’s no service up there, she say’s no, come with us. So I tab out, make the blurry walk up, we sit for twenty minutes, no hint of a waiter…I’m in déjà vu…it’s the same booth where we had met four couples a year ago in a dreary rain, one of which threw a kickass Halloween party and thought they’d be fun…they weren’t, talking of houses and money and jobs…that night we waited for an hour and a half for drinks and food, same booth, it’s got those curses…so Captain Obvious(the sister) says “no service up here, we’re leaving”. I grow some balls and tell her that’s the reason I didn’t want to come, she shits on me again…but I keep it down, go to the Ford Center, to see Coldplay, but Fiona Apple first, drinking six beers between us…
The lead singer breaks into “Ring of Fire”, a little pandering, me thinking he thinks we’re dumb hicks, Southern stupid, Lynyrd Skynyrd, but the crowd goes nuts, he pays tribute to the Flaming Lips, born and bred here in Oklahoma…crowd nuts…I’m thinking, is this Coldplay, or Nine Inch Nails…me surprised at the crowds’ response…me and my girl swaying and dancing in the upper balcony with the candlelight of neon cell phones blinking…but I turn, an hour later at home, on her sister…calling her a bitch, that she always does this, never comes to my readings, never comes through with anything, flake, so it turns into a twenty-four hour fight. I draw the line, won’t capitulate, it’s about time for a lesson…I tell my wife I don’t want to be around her sister, everything she touches turns to shit for me…my girl defends…I get worse…I pull my hung over ass to work, full day, I needed the money…she calls, I hang up, I call, she hangs up…a mess. My wife shows up at my work, crying, I still won’t give in, like a pit bull grinding in to a kids leg…and then finally, at home it subsides. My wife bitches her sister out, the sister cries over the phone, finally after two years, from her, a glimmer of respect.
MARCH 2, 2006
So the “poet” that I impaled in “Implosion of a Poet” calls, blows up the phone…he still doesn’t know I wrote it about him…Becky called too, who I met him through weeks ago, tells me he tried to commit suicide…he’s on pills since fifteen, now twenty-six. He wants to hang out, show me his new poetry. He’s moved back in with his parents, they must be long suffering saints, he lives in the complex next to mine. So I decide to swim…he says he’ll buy the beer…never again…I pick him up (he’s got no car). He’s jumping around, won’t sit still, fucking with his pants. “Can I bum a smoke?” is the first thing he says, mooch forever, trying to be Burroughs with just the junk… So we get to Galileo’s, midday, the place a desert. He pulls out some napkins, wrote a short story. “Whaddya think?” I’m divided…don’t want to crush him, the light, the only light he’s keeping. In my mind, if I blow his work up, he might finally do it…. I say it’s good, trying to keep him alive, feeling like a drug counselor/priest…tell him keep working…all this purgatory I’m in, I must be paying for sins of a past life. I tell him my accolades, got a job, maybe, columnist for a lit review, paid finally…his pilled head blows me up…”I’d never do that, I’m gonna be big.”…I hold in the rage, don’t want to push him over the invisible edge…”I wanna go,” I say. It’s only been thirty minutes. He dumps two pockets full of change on the table like a ragged bum…the goth waitress wags her head…in my mind, never again, never again…