Beautiful Boy

     Part of Kevin Brockmeier’s Illumination revolves around a sensitive boy, the kind of boy I was, the kind of boy Dylan is.  His parents argue over how to raise this boy:

"You're saying he'll cry whenever he doesn't get his way."

"I'm saying what harm does it do to humor him?"

"The world will eat him alive when he grows up."

"That doesn't mean that we should eat him alive, too."

I’ve had moments with Dylan when I can’t believe the first response which bubbles up to my lips; Stop being such a crybaby.

Stop being such a crybaby is how we teach boys to suppress their emotions, how we turn them from communication and understanding, pushing them toward stoicism and silence, it’s how we make boys into “men”. 

I might have heard it from my cousins a time or two, but it wasn’t a family motto.  Where does stupid shit like that come from?  My worry that he’ll have a tough time in school, like I did?  Shame at seeing my crybaby behavior mirrored back to me?  Wherever it comes from, I’m thankful I’ve kept it inside.  

As a momma’s boy, his social life might be hard.  I say “might” because maybe things are changing from when I was a child.  But if he’s like me, it will be tough for him to relate to other boys, who have so much to prove with physical and emotional violence.  When they speak in locker rooms about girls they supposedly like in graphic and derogatory terms, loneliness will whistle through him as he realizes how different he is from these boys.  It will take him time, maybe decades, to find people his gender who share his sensibilities, to look past “men” and find men.     

However tough his life might be, it’s not for me to make it harder.

"You're saying he'll cry whenever he doesn't get his way."

"I'm saying what harm does it do to humor him?"

"The world will eat him alive when he grows up."

"That doesn't mean that we should eat him alive, too."

There Are Folks Who Hear You

I joined a writer's group last month, my first one in a couple years.  It was all fun and games until I was handed homework.  Homework?  Yes, homework.  I'm a 38-year-old man with homework.

My assignment was to submit my writing for publication.

While I wondered how to do this, Joe Hill came to Books & Books the very next night.  He said he survived the ten years looking for a book deal by always having several stories submitted at once.  That way when he got rejections back, there was always hope that another story he had out there would be published.

Okay, I thought, I will submit one story each week for publication and see what happens.

Week one, I submitted a stub I mentioned a few weeks back to Jai-Alai Magazine.   I could have sent a longer nonfiction piece but my first love is made-up stuff.  I had this tiny piece of fiction which shouldn't have been anything, then I realized that with some polishing, I could use the stub to meet Jai-Alai's 700-word limit challenge.

The verdict is still out on that one.  With University of Wynwood caught up with the month long gorgeous madness that is O,Miami! I don't expect an answer anytime soon.

Week two, I submitted a story to Lip Service.  They picked me.  I'll be reading when they team up with Under the Sun at the Miracle Theater on Saturday, the 23rd.  Instead of rehearsing in Andrea Askowitz's living room, we'll be rehearsing in a recording studio.  How cool is that?

Two people also reached out to me this week.

One of them saw me at a Books & Books event produced by Moya, which I meant to write about but somehow never did.  I'd like to thank him for including me in an evening of music and monologues, and offer a picture to show I was there:

Proof that bigger isn't always better: this shirt.

The first woman was a stranger to me.  She saw my name on the upcoming Lip Service event and remembered me from An Evening of Good Things.  She wanted to let me know there are other halfbreeds in Miami, to wish me luck, and tell me I should keep plugging away with my writing.

The second woman I used to work with at Borders.  We weren't tremendously close, but she was one of the people who got it (and by "it" I mean how absurd life can be), the type of person you're glad to see on a schedule when you clock.  She told me she's been having a rough time lately, and my blog helped her get through it.

It's humbling and moving to know something you've written has touched someone else.  I'm tremendously excited about Lip Service / Under the Sun, but emails from these two women overshadowed that feeling.    

Make no mistake, I write for me.  But it's gratifying to know someone is listening.

This Writing Gig Can Be Frustrating

Opening files this morning and I came across this snippet I really love.  Pardon me while I subject you to the horror of a first draft:

Hannah Delaney sat in the garden of sound, thinking of how wonderful and cruel life could be.

      The pleasure was wonderful.  Hannah was odd but not so odd to think the garden had been made just for her.  Even though it was one of the few pleasures she had in her days, the cruelty it took to create the garden could only come from God.

The Delaneys were big on God.  On Sundays her parents took her to the big gym outside of town, almost twenty minutes away.  She listened to the tall, thin, white haired preacher talk about God and life and television and family, his timbre smooth, his tones bright.  He sounded like a commercial himself, a Voice You Could Trust stumping for a Life You Should Lead.  Every talk ended with the flock bowing their heads.  The preacher talked to God hard.  He invited people to raise their hands if they wanted to be saved.  Yes, I see that hand, the preacher would murmur in a tone like thick honey.  Yes, I see that hand.  Praise God.  Yes, I see that hand...    

Hannah never opened her eyes to see if people were really raising their hands, but she was always curious.  The idea of raising her own hand built over several months of Sundays until she realized she'd never have the nerve.  She gave up, and kept her head bowed and her eyes closed.  A few weeks later, when the preacher asked anyone who wanted God to enter his heart to raise his hand, Hannah's arm shot up at if pulled by invisible strings.  

"Yes, I see that hand," he murmured, sending a flush of pleasure from the pit of her stomach through her entire body.  She would have liked to sit with that feeling for a time, but he'd already moved on to the next person longing for salvation.  Yes, I see that hand...    

  The moment came suddenly, and ended just as fast.  Bookending her as usual, her parents must have felt her movement.  They'd never remarked on it.   

God ate breakfast and dinner with the Delaneys.  God was invoked when her aunt caught the cancer, or her cousin was born deaf.   God was invoked when the radiation treatments worked, or an uncle's business thrived.  God could send a station wagon to kill a beloved pet, God could eased psoriasis, God could inspire good people to do great works.  

When she turned thirteen, Hannah attended youth group on Tuesday nights.  Youth group took place in the chapel instead of the gym.  The chapel was so beautiful Hannah wished the church had never outgrown the building.  It was round, built entirely of wood so dark it was nearly black.  The spire on top was all glass, saving the space from gloom.  The podium was raised, the stage small, the cross simple gold.  She knew growth was a good thing, that sooner or later there'd be enough Christians to save the world, but she never felt as close to God in the gym as she felt in the old chapel. 

There were so many great churches downtown, miniature versions of the old churches of Europe, hulking in stone, swallowing city blocks, stained glass windows, copper roofs turning green, doors painted gleaming red.  She didn't know what kept the Delaneys from 

They didn't finish construction on the new chapel before she was exiled, so she never knew if the new, huge chapel was as warm and beautiful as the old one.   

It's written in a different voice.  I've never used "stump" or "timbre" in my life.  It's a promising beginning, more polished than some first drafts usually are, with a character I knew and a situation I wanted to explore.  Sure, I'd lose the first two paragraphs, but still; good stuff.

I must have been affected by all those churches I saw in central New York on vacation.  Growing up there, I never noticed how many of them there are.  And Garden of Sound is the phrase I think of when I hear one of Becky's favorite songs, Regina Spektor's Consequence of Sound.  I also remember that preacher from when I was born again.  That's where my knowledge of this piece runs out.

She didn't know what kept the Delaneys from- what?  What's the Garden of Sound?  And why was she exiled?  The water was flowing and I didn't get to the pump before it dried up, so I have no better answers than you.  I let the holidays or reviews or blogs came before Hannah Delaney, and she died.

I only knew her for a moment, on Monday December 20th, 2010, but I mourn her passing.

Here's Hoping All These Words Will Matter

When the crowd at Books & Books asked Lane Smith about his process, Lane said it took him ten years to finish John, Paul, George, and Ben.  He works on a lot of things at once.  It takes time to finish a project, time to store it and forget about it, then time to revise with objectivity that only comes from distance.  Meanwhile, he’d visit Mo Willems in his studio nearby.

“'How’s it going, Lane?'”  Smith said, pantomiming a frantic Mo drawing at break-neck speed.  “'I just finished five books this morning.'”

Even if I make enough money that I could quit my job and write full time (and part of me still harbors that fantasy, that my first book will be successful enough that I could be nothing but a writer), clearly I’d fall into the Lane Smith category.  I’ll never be a novel-a-year guy.  

I’d like to think that means I’m about quality, like David Mitchell or Nicole Krauss, but honestly it’s more about attention span.  I’ve already entertained myself in my mind with this story half a dozen times before I sit down to write it.  I know exactly how it will end (well, 90% of exactly) and sometimes getting there just doesn’t interest me.   

I think I’ve found a solution; I’m writing two books at once.  On Mondays I work on The Block.  Tuesdays, the last morning Dylan is with his father, I take the opportunity to sleep in.  Wednesdays, it’s Scratch the Dead Places.  Thursdays, The Block again, Fridays, Scratch again.  The weekends are reserved for whichever one has compelled me less during the week.  When a story is shouting in your head to get out, all you need is a couple hours in the morning to keep it fresh.  If the pump needs more priming, then you’ve got a problem to work out.  You need a solid chunk of weekend time.  

More often lately, I’ve been lazy about my other writing during the week (if lazy can be described as work, cooking dinner, doing dishes, reading, or sharing time with Becky), and I need to spend the weekend on next week’s SwF&F posts, or my monthly book missive for THL, or something Lip Service will hopefully choose for a future event, or a piece for DadsMiami, or whatever I hope someone will publish to increase my profile.  

  I’m enjoying the process, but I wonder if I should push myself harder.  It’s one thing reading four books at once, but working on all these stories at the same time means I hardly move.  I only finished the first draft of my first book because I gave myself a deadline.  Should I do that again?

It feels so early in the process of both books to be worrying about this (even though Scratch is a third draft and The Block a second), but at the same time, I worry about getting older with nothing to show for my work.  Part of me is content to push the cursor a few inches a day, knowing the end will come eventually.  As Sugar says, “Your book has a birthday.  You  don’t know what it is yet.” 

Another part worries the end of me will come before my career ever starts.  

Dear Mom and Dad: I'm Sorry for How I Acted

I know you can only count on a yearly call a couple weeks before it’s time to come up for Thanksgiving so we can schedule an airport pickup.  I might call once every couple years on your birthdays, or Mother’s Dad and Father’s Day (never both), but you’re always in my thoughts.  Especially now that there’s a child in my life.

What I want to know is, how the hell did you do this?  How did you raise a child not just once, but three fucking times?

My fingers are shaking so badly I can barely type.  It’s nothing major, just a normal child-rearing night gone wrong.  He pitches one fit too many, his tone is a little too bossy and demanding, he won’t listen just once more than you can take, so you tell him there will be nothing fun tonight.  He will eat, and he will go to bed.

He doesn’t like this.  At all.  Sure he’s exhausted and could use the early night of rest, but that’s not the point.  The point is, he’s not getting his way, and he needs you to know he’s not happy about it.  The end is fairly dramatic, a slammed glass of milk splattered everywhere, the child sent to bed without dinner.  

The screaming and crying continue, because he’s not happy with this development either.  

Now you’re at a crossroads.  Did the thousand little ways he tested you all day entirely deflate your patience?  Do you have one parenting urge that hasn’t been worn away by the incessant questions, neediness, wheedling, cajoling, bargaining, ignoring, whining, pleading, and crying?  It feels like you have nothing left to give; it would be so much easier to scream back.

I’m leaning over the oven, emotionally exhausted. The kitchen and dishes are clean, so I can’t avoid him any longer.  His behavior has been and continues to be terrible, and he’s headed for a spanking.  I don’t want to deliver one because I never have and I’m not sure I’d know how, but his actions leave little room for anything else.

How did you do this? 

I hear Dad’s voice in my head, answering me with a slanted grin.  Not very well.  Then my mom’s voice.  Kent, that doesn’t help him.  Yet somehow it does.

I go to Dylan’s bed and tell him he’s headed for a spanking.  That I can’t give it tonight because I’m so upset that I might accidentally hurt him, but that if we need to tell him one more time to be quiet and sleep, he will get a spanking first thing in the morning.       

When the fit continues because he’s hungry and doesn’t want a spanking, I scoop him into my arms.  I hold him close and speak into the soft skin of his neck.  I don’t want to hurt your feelings little one, but the world doesn’t revolve around what you want.  Forget about dinner.  Your behavior gave dinner away tonight.  It doesn’t mean we don’t love you.  Now.  You can choose to go to sleep, or you can choose to get a spanking.  It’s up to you.  I don’t want to spank you, and you don’t want to get spanked.  So pick.

He chose sleep.  I chose a big glass of Chateau Ste Michelle dry riesling.  

I think we both slept content.          

Christmas Miracle

The house we're renting was built in 1928, impressively old by Miami standards.  Some months back, Becky and I decided we should remove the decades of accumulated paint before we chose our own pallet.

Okay, it was my brilliant idea.  Blame me 100%.  But the windowsills are flaking without our help, and previous peeling has obviously been painted over.  None of the doors close because of the accumulated layers.  The crown molding has no detail, and the corners sag with frozen drips.  Apart from the floors - oak in the front rooms, pine in the bedrooms - the house's wood energy is suffocating beneath years of latex and lead.

Little did I know how difficult it would be to remove.  

Five days of work spread over several months later...

Work is nothing without a deadline, so we invited Becky's family for Christmas brunch at our place.  Dylan stayed with his Abuelo and Abuela.  Becky and I could work all night if we wanted.

"So we'll be tired," I said, "so what?"

Well paint-scraping tired is not writing tired, or internet-surfing tired, or drinks-with-friends tired.  It is where-did-that-cut-come-from, aches-in-muscles-and-tendons-you-never-knew-you-had, making-a-fist-hurts-like-hell strung out exhausted, especially after a few hellish weeks of holiday retail.

This hurts.

We worked until three AM Thursday night then popped up at eight Friday morning.  We scraped until we physically and emotionally could scrape no more, until no amount of willpower would force our muscles to obey.  One cabinet is better than nothing.

We hit one cabinet with chalkboard in a can and painted the walls Chianti (Behr S-H-150).  The other cabinet, baseboards, and trim will wait for another day.

Through dividing and conquering, we managed to get the dining room not just presentable but lovely, while picking up paychecks, cleaning, and grocery shopping for the brunch.  We also learned that even exhausted at three am, we're a great team.

Yum.

Oddly enough, the red is so rich that it makes the last few layers of paint to be scraped look like a deliberate attempt to be distressed and antique-looking.  We were praised to heaven for the look.  It's a nice thought but I doubt we'll go with it, particularly when only one more day of work will give us a finished room.  Well, maybe two days.

Either way, we can't let the paint win.

My Love / Hate Relationship with Nicholas Sparks

Man unknown, books unread, I’ve hated Nicholas Sparks ever since I read his contribution to a book called The Making of a Bestseller.  I grabbed an Advanced Readers Copy off the freebie shelf because one chapter featured our owner, Mitchell Kaplan.  I was new to Books & Books, and unfamiliar with his cache in the bookselling world.

Anyway, Sparks didn’t set out to be a writer; he set out to be a bestseller.  He researched bestselling novels and determined that there are only three household name authors in any subcategory of fiction.  You might have dozens of mystery authors, but when you’re searching for Medical Thrillers, you’ve got Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Crichton, and a bunch of talented midlist folks nipping at their heels.

Sparks wasn’t inspired to write The Notebook, he saw that the sub-genre of romantic fiction was “wide open” and crafted a book whose sole purpose was to make him a bestselling author.

Do I hate him because his formula worked?  For being so unabashedly commercial about an artistic enterprise?  Probably a bit of both, but I also hate him because I work from inspiration, and I labor under the delusion that if I love what I’m writing, enough other people will so that I’ll make a living one day.

Cut to Nicholas Sparks’ signing at Books & Books.   We have bestselling authors all the time, but celebrity authors are rare.   Books-into-box office aside, he'd just made the Forbes list of top ten highest-paid authors.  I suggested we order two thousand copies of Safe Haven.  I was given the irksome directive to "wait and see," as in wait and see how everyone in Miami procrastinates until the last minute so it looks like there's no interest, wait and see if the publisher runs out of books by the time we’re ready to order, wait and see until only ungodly rush charges will get us the books in time.

Mitchell choose a number much lower than my suggestion.  The Marketing and Events Coordinator and I yessir’d him, then we decided on a quantity somewhere in the middle.  

Mitchell was worried about turnout.  To hear Sparks tell it, he’d had a signing at Books & Books in 1996 and spoke to five people.  One of them was Mitchell Kaplan, who stayed the whole night.  Sparks said it was Mitchell’s hospitality which brought him back. 

Hundreds and hundreds of screaming fans lined up around the block later, Becky and I used her Barnes & Noble Club Member discount card to empty their shelves (another Books & Books secret: for successful events we’ve underestimated, B&N becomes our fourth wholesaler!).  Running through the alleys of Coral Gables to avoid the crowds, madly ripping B&N stickers off, Becky toppled to the pavement, losing skin, four bags of books, and the toe off a pair of five-inch heels.  Mitchell drove me to Borders (the fifth wholesaler!) to empty their shelves and come back to the store for more back-alley, sticker-ripping fun. 

We made it by the skin of our teeth - seven copies to spare.  


When I heard he'd left without signing some stock, I ran out and stopped the car Sparks was leaving in to get them signed.  It was a gross intrusion I only had the gall to perform because I’d run all over Miami to get the damned things, and he was going to sign every last one of them.  He handled my intrusion graciously, so I can't hate him any longer.  

I love Nicholas Sparks for the same reason I love Ricky Martin, Tori Spelling, Hillary Duff, and most recently (and especially) George W. Bush.  Whatever I think about their celebrity or their books, they sell.  They sell tons, and we all get to eat that week.

Just don’t ask me to read any of their books.

Work It

“If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
- Toni Morrison

There’s no secret. To succeed, you need to work your ass off. We know this, but we convince ourselves there’s something we lack. We admire her writing, his artwork, her fluency with languages, his carpentry skills, her guitar skills, his sewing ability. We wonder what makes these people so special. Instead of applying ourselves to the skills we admire, we envy those who have already mastered them.

Everyone might not have the potential to be world-class at a given activity, but who can say? I heard on NPR once that it takes fourteen years of effort. If you started playing piano tomorrow, it would be fourteen years of practice before you played a solo concert at Carnegie Hall. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell expresses this as ten thousand hours. The Beatles’ voices and fingers weren’t blessed, their minds weren’t filled with melodies and lyrics sent by God, they just practiced. A lot. Ten thousand hours worth.

I'm not sure if that relates directly with the Morrison quote, but I do like the two ideas together.

Let’s get crackin’.

I'm Back, Baby! (Sort of)

Now I remember what it felt like to be in the grip of a story.

To find my way back to writing fiction, I needed to give up the project I had on the front burner before my marriage fell apart - the third draft of Scratch the Dead Places, the final draft, which is really fucking good, if I say so myself. Unfortunately, parts of Scratch are a little too close to reality.

My second-burner, part two of the Ming trilogy, is in the safe terrain of almost pure imagination. It also hasn’t compelled me in the slightest. Even if they use different processes and have different views, most authors agree that when the story stops, it’s because you’ve taken a wrong turn. I know exactly what parts two and three entail. I have whole scenes just ready to type like dictation, but the main character – Levi – just isn’t speaking loudly enough.

Instead of either of these big projects, or beginning yet another short story (in keeping with the writing queue as kitchen metaphor), I dug way back in the freezer.

How long has The Block been there? I know sixty-four pages of a WordPerfect second draft were written in October 2006, that the original was written on a floppy disc then transferred to a hard disc, before CD-ROM, before jump drives.

Re-reading the eighty-seven pages of the third-draft in MS-Word (although since none of these versions were completed, calling them “drafts” pushes kindness into the realm of fabrication; let’s call the hundreds of pages devoted to The Block on floppy, hard disc, and CD-ROM false starts), I was surprised by how good it is. I never finished it because it felt too easy. It’s basically one story of hundreds I used to tell myself as a child to pass the lonely hours. When you live with a story for that long, you stop thinking it could have value for anyone except yourself.

The Block has been the perfect medicine because it is easy. I know exactly where it’s going and who the characters are (if not necessarily how they get there), and it’s all made up.

It’s also unpublishable. Even though books can get away with a lot of things movies and TV shows can’t because of the audience’s smaller scale, I can’t imagine a publisher tackling the legal hassles associated with having Barbie as the main character.

Supposedly one writes with an ideal first reader in mind. With this story, I’ve rediscovered myself as my first reader and it feels just fine. Whether anyone else ever reads it…

But the feeling I refer to in my opening sentence is not the joy of using imagination instead of reality to push the cursor, but the frustration involved in having a job. Short stories are one thing, but tackling a novel in the space between sleep and work is tough. If writing was sex, it’s interrupting foreplay to pay bills. If writing was food, it’s knowing how delicious the main course will be but trying to fill your stomach by nibbling appetizers because you’ll never be served. If writing was art, it’s penciling an outline, mixing the paints, dabbling a few colors, then cleaning your brushes because you know everything will dry before you find time to finish.

I wish there was a grant for authors who’ve written a Young Adult fantasy Bildungsroman with an adopted Chinese girl as the protagonist, which is the first of three, who need a few months off to hammer out the rest of the trilogy.

Maybe I should look for a sugar momma.

You Should Read Elmore Leonard

“You asking me,” Catlett said, “do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That’s what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn’t like having to learn how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn’t you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I’ve even seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don’t think it’s too important. You come to the last page you write in 'Fade out' and that’s the end, and you’re done.”
- Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty

My preferred method of recommendation is quoting an author’s work. As you can see from the paragraph above, Elmore Leonard is funny, real, and spare. He’ll never come up with a line so poetic that hipsters want it tattooed across their shoulders, but if there’s another writer as masterful at revealing character through dialog, I’m taking nominations. Whoever you want to bring forward, it would still be called the Elmore Leonard Dialog Award.

He’s created some of pop culture’s most memorable characters, folks who populate his fiction and film. Chili Palmer. Karen Sisco. Ordell Robbie. Of course, for every Out of Sight and Jackie Brown, there’s a Big Bounce or a Stick.

As is so often the case, you’re better off with his books.

More than providing hours of page-turning entertainment, I have Elmore Leonard to thank (or blame) for buckling down as a writer.

When Andi and I first moved to Miami, I was a mess. Looking for the job with the least amount of responsibility long before Lester Burnham, I’d gotten a job as a dishwasher at Bennigan’s some years before. Why go to school to teach yourself to be an artist? What did it matter what you did to keep food in your mouth and roof over your head? The work mattered, not the job.

Of course, this was before I knew what the work would be. That fundamental weakness in my pursuit of art led to a lot of late nights, LSD, and – most shamefully – to my spinelessness when presented with a dollar raise. I forgot my job was a necessary evil and not a calling

Airbrushing supplies gathered dust. T-squares collected cobwebs in corners. Paints dried up. The writing was dump and flush, amateur hour, the drivel of a dabbling dilettante (yes, I know that “dabbling dilettante” is redundant, but who can resist the alliterative pull? Say it five times fast, drivel of a dabbling dilettante, drivel of a dabbling dilettante… might make a better blog tagline than that if I care how others perceive my passions stuff. I’ll change it after I change the About Me section of my profile to “twat with a Tank Girl tattoo.”).

When Elmore Leonard pushed me into the writing life, I had the day off from my management job at Borders. I was watching a DVD of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, which is based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch. I’d seen it so many times, just watching the movie wasn’t enough of a distraction. I decided to watch it with the text commentary.

During the scene when Samuel L. Jackson's Ordell Robbie shows Robert DeNiro's Louis Gara a video called “Chicks Who Love Guns,” these words flashed across the bottom of the screen:

Elmore Leonard’s Rules of Remaining Invisible:

1) Never open a book with weather.
2) Avoid Prologues.
3) Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4) Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”
5) Keep your exclamation points under control.
6) Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7) Use regional dialect sparingly.
8) Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9) Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10) Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

All these rules have exceptions but the most important thing is- if it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

I hit the pause button on the DVD remote, sat up on the couch. The first draft of my first book opened with a prologue in which a person with a thick northeastern / reservation dialect talks about the weather (and how I heartily wish that was a joke). Clearly I had a lot of work to do. I ejected Jackie Brown from the DVD player and got to it.

I printed Elmore Leonard’s Rules for Remaining Invisible above my desk, imagining them posted above typewriters and computers across America. I started a program called “Mind Pissings” with the words what to write when you have no idea? Mind Pissings became my journal, my drawing board, the place where I wrote every morning at five am before my judgment bone woke up and stopped the circulation of my imagination.

At a Books & Books appearance some years later, Augusten Burroughs told aspiring writers to write every day, and on the days when they had nothing to write about and no ideas, they should write about having nothing to write about and no ideas.

It’s the habit. Like pushups and sit ups before bed. Switching fried food for salads. Thinking before speaking. The tiny, healthy steps which, in the fullness of time, will get you where you see yourself. It takes build up to make big leaps.

Thanks, Mr. Leonard. I build my room in the Tower of Babble by your grace.

Starbucks

When people say they don’t believe in God I can only marvel. Look beyond the seeming randomness of events and you’ll learn there are no accidents.

In 1998, Starbuck’s corporate offices realized many of their stores failed to stock first aid kits. When Corporate sent our store a letter expressing concern over this, I took it upon myself as Assistant Manager to order one. After reading the letter, our General Manager also ordered one. Starbuck’s claimed the usual warehouse didn’t have the updated first aid kits we needed, so even though both our orders had been confirmed, Corporate gave us a phone number to call for a different kit. I wanted Corporate off our backs, so I called the number. So did my GM. Soon after we called, Corporate decided such a priority couldn’t be trusted to store level personnel. They shipped a fist aid kit to every store in the company, including us.

Over the next two weeks, we received five fairly expensive First Aid kits. Burn cream, band-aids, aspirin and ibuprofen (which by corporate credo we couldn’t dispense even to ourselves), gauze, mini-scissors, and rubber gloves. We tried to return them for credit. The problem is, we had followed the Corporate credo. Upon receiving the First Aid kits, the first thing we did was trash the aspirin and the ibuprofen (I don’t know who sued Corporate for dispensing medication, but there are a lot of aching baristas out there cursing their name). Also, between slicing bagels, steam wand burns, paper cuts, and banged knuckles, the band aids didn’t last a week. With these items missing, the kits were considered damaged; unreturnable.

Each first aid kit also had a bio-hazard kit. In two years and three stores I had never seen a bio-hazard kit used, but I was sure it was a nice thing to have, just in case. Five, on the other hand, is a lifetime supply.

One afternoon, as my GM and I discussed passing the kits out to other stores in the district, our good customer Dane came in and asked her for “ass paper.”

Dane was a regular. He came in several times a week and was a sweet guy. He had half a face, and that only thanks to extensive reconstructive surgery. Scabs covered his body. He also had a speech impediment heavy enough to bend steel. When he asked for ass paper, it was so far removed from our normal coffee talk that Janet, our GM, had no idea what he was saying. She laughed and got him his usual. We did that sometimes when Dane felt chatty because of the trouble understanding him. Also, that afternoon we had wall-to-wall people desperate for caffeine, so Janet didn’t have the time she might otherwise have spared to parcel out what Dane was trying to say.

Dane wandered over to the bar to doctor up his drink. When he turned from the condiment bar and back toward the counter, he had left a little something behind.

Now, in case I haven’t been clear, this man was struggling with a number of physical differences. Not only does he not look like the average guy, his system must not work the same. Lying in front of the condiment bar were what could only be described as a pair of very dark, soggy prunes. He got about five feet before another pair rolled down his leg from inside his shorts. At that point, no one had really noticed. Dane asked again, more insistently but no more articulately, for ass paper. The other customers gave Dane the stare-ahead, pretending he didn’t exist. Then the smell hit.

One minute, a crowd of cranky people waited impatiently for their double-tall lattes and grande 180-degree, one-and-a-half Equal cappuccinos, the next minute . . . well, I don’t want to exaggerate. No one ran for the exits, but when I looked up from the bar only two people waited for their drinks. A guy who just paid stood at the register. Everyone else had taken their caffeine Jones to greener pastures. Or more to the point, a coffee shop that didn’t smell like a truck stop bathroom.

The light went on for Janet. Once she understood Dane’s problem, his words were clear. She happily handed over a roll of T.P., asking only that Dane take it with him and stop leaving more personal deposits on the floor for us to clean up. He wanted to hang around and express gratitude; Janet assured him it wasn’t necessary. As Dane made his way out, the lumps finally stopped rolling down his leg. Still, he left a good-sized liquid trail almost to the door.

Understand, cleaning crews cost money. If you’re not a multi-million dollar store (and to make millions of dollars a year in coffee is a lot a lattes), then you don’t get one. Therefore, at Starbucks throughout the land, the hands that scrub the toilets and pick gum out of urinals are the same hands that make your macchiatos (side note: I once hung signs in our bathrooms expressing this and they got a whole lot cleaner. When touring corporate big wigs saw the sign, they told me to take it down. Doubtless, their offices have cleaning crews).

To recap, we had four piles of fun on the floor and one good-sized trail to the door. We also had five first aid kits. Kits with a package for cleaning up biologically hazardous materials. Five kits of something that we had not needed in the twenty-four-plus months I’d been doing the job. Five kits that we received only through miscommunication and Corporate Hairball business-as-usual. Five kits which had finished arriving that very week.

Five bio-hazard kits, five craptastrophes. Coincidence, or providence?

We sprang into action. By we, I mean mostly me and Janet. As managers, we were expected to do that kind of stuff. There are managers who become managers so they can order others to do stuff like that for them; they’re called assholes. I’m just an asshole sometimes, but I’m not a major asshole, and Janet wasn’t even remotely an asshole, so we just did it. Also, I can only breathe out of one nostril. My sense of smell isn’t so great, so I’m ideal for that kind of stuff. We had the place clean and ready for customers again in no time.

My friend Amanda was working there at the time. When we tell the story, she says, “I thought, ‘Unless they want to be cleaning up shit and vomit, I better stay on this side of the bar.’”

I’m struck at how often Amanda and I relate this story to the general merriment of others. If the point of having so many kits available was to clean up after Dane, maybe the point of having Amanda and I working on the same night was so we would always be able to spread laughter when we come together, and share the time we saw God’s design.

You might not understand it when you’re elbows-deep, but give it time. There is a plan for the mess you’re going through.

Looking for the Bright Lights

Many books I’ve read lately pulse with the desire to be Bright Lights, Big City. Read between the violence, sex, drugs, dubious friendships and hollow disaffection smeared across their pages and you’ll see the writer’s thought process. I’ll look around at what my friends and their friends are doing and put the most fucked-up things I see and hear to paper; I will be the Jay Mcinerney of my generation.

I recognize it because I’m guilty of it. Every group has an observer more comfortable alone, the person dragged along on adventures who is not of them. The purpose of those people, people like me, is to record what we see, to keep alive the manic and tragic antics of people who belong in stories more than life.
Bright Lights, Big City became a touchstone because its themes extended beyond the characters’ lives. Honestly, the writers trying this tactic have nothing to be embarrassed about. I’ve enjoyed their work. The people I’ve recommended their work to haven’t complained. Maybe I should just take their stories at face value and stop imprinting my desires on them. Maybe they just want to craft simple stories of how drugs, violence, or heartless sex - or drugs and violence and heartless sex - corrode people.

Sure.

The confident, slimy douchebag who somehow parlays his six-pack abs, fuck you slouch, and slutty friends into a prostitution ring. Unless you can also make the story about how America prostitutes its youth, or a condemnation of a culture which has forgotten moderation, then you’ve got nothing but a prurient exercise. If you can’t take a group of friends sucked into drugs and make it about the rest of us trapped in the limits of our lives, then all you have is a lurid tale of tweaked idiots in search of the next fix.

While we’re on the subject of reality into fiction, I know someone who would be an excellent character. As a young girl, she fell and damaged her face on a piece of public works equipment. She got years of reconstructive surgery, the constant ridicule of her classmates, and a settlement that pays a monthly stipend until she dies. It is not a huge monthly payment, but it would cover rent on a two or three bedroom in most cities. Also, her uncle is a wealthy, independent businessman. He molested her. Out of guilt and family obligation, he also sends her a monthly check. Coupled with the settlement, this uncle’s check ensures she never needs to work. He has no children, and he’s made it clear this girl will inherit everything when he dies (his wife is no fan of the plan, but let’s forget the tension there and focus on our character; I’m not crafting a story, I’m making a point). This inheritance will be the life-changing kind, and not in the yay, I can finally buy that camp / boat / classic car I’ve always wanted sense. This inheritance is glitterati money.

That’s her backstory. She carries the abused girl inside her, right alongside the disfigured girl. The taunts of her classmates still ring in her ears. Not until college did she realize she isn’t Frankenstein. The accident happened at a young enough age that the work of skillful doctors have erased all traces of it. Not only that, her body has developed into the stuff of pin-up dreams. Money has been collecting in the bank since elementary school. She works when she feels like it. She wants for nothing. Constant attention and flattery coupled with a painful past has led to a sense of entitlement. Because she doesn’t need to work for her wants, she has no chance to develop character. She is beautiful, promiscuous, easily bored, and essentially biding her time to become very wealthy. She is shallow and bitchy, attracting friends with her money and men with her body, but she has little to offer the world.

All of this is true.

Now, put her on the page. What life lessons can she learn? What could take her on a journey worth our time? She can flit from place to place and be interesting, but we need more. When trying to build a story around her, I keep bumping against who she actually is. I’m stymied by her refusal to grow.

These are the limits of reality. Characters have arcs. They struggle to overcome obstacles and learn profound life lessons which change them forever. People move from foible to foible.

Also, most friends are alive. If you use too much of them for a character, you risk alienating them. Even if they’re a bright, burning butterfly of a person, they may take issue with how you present them.

According to Kate Christensen, all you need to do is change their physicality. If the character is taller or fatter, a different race or a different gender, no one ever recognizes him or herself. She’s six books in, so she must know what she’s talking about.

To introduce a friend or acquaintance to the rest of the world through prose, a writer should see the world through two different lenses. The first lens is terrible. Part of you catalogs every experience, sizes every new face and conversation for the page. In this first lens, the blessing and the curse, you must keep life at a distance so you can record it.

The second lens is imagination. If you’re too bogged down in reality, the way I am in trying to write about the girl I mention above, you will never get a decent story. She’s not even my favorite character, or my most interesting, or the one who has thwarted me most often in trying to make her fictional, she’s simply the first person who came to mind. But every time I’ve struggled with creating a story from someone I know or from a real event, it’s because I’ve stuck too close to reality. Reality is shimmering and wonderful and terrible, but if you want to tell a story which engages people, best to leave What Actually Happened out of it.

Take that first draft of craziness surrounding you. You might have a compelling glimpse into a secret world only you have access to, a story only you can tell. The reader will be engrossed. But your story won’t be Bright Lights, talked about a quarter century after the fact, unless it finds a larger significance.

The Best Concert I've Ever Seen

Leonard Cohen was amazing Saturday night.

“I don’t know when we’ll be back through this way, so we’re going to give you everything we’ve got tonight.”

And they did, from 8:10 to 11:30, with one 10 or 15-minute break. Moody, atmospheric, sexy, sprightly, and 75 years old. He performed "If It Be Your Will" as a poem, before Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters took over and gave us some gorgeous harmonies. It was his third encore. The extremely moving movement was marred by a group of women at the top of the seating area who were used to the hockey games at Bank Atlantic Center. They were shushed, hushed, screamed at, and heckled on numerous occasions, but they could not stop blathering drunkenly on about nothing. They could not shut up long enough to allow beauty in. They will miss all the lovely things life has to offer and die confused, fearful, and angry.

Leonard Cohen did another poem, A Thousand Kisses Deep. He is a world-class writer. I have a blog. Still, the stab of jealously over that refrain, repeated in his trademark rumble, a thousand kisses deep… I want to have written that line. It perfectly describes being consumed by love, and in only three words.

His music is so complete, so fully-formed, it’s like it’s being drawn from the air. It was odd seeing a man on stage. I was glad for the distance, so he could still remain more force than person. He is also undeniably a man. “You handled me like meat,” he said, “you’d have to be a man to know how good that feels, how sweet.” He is vulnerable and sensitive without being weak, he is weak without being cowed, he is lustful without being vulgar, he is funny without being glib. Seeing him live has long been a dream. That concert fed my soul. I wanted to waltz into the night.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank JC and Laura Moya for bringing me with them. Laura’s brother-in-law gave them seven passes to the ADT VIP lounge. Rather than inviting me and three other friends, the Moyas gave me four tickets to invite whoever I wanted for my birthday. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve friends like them, but I’m grateful. The Moyas have been supportive and loving, as everyone has been during this difficult time in my life.

I survive, and thrive, by the grace of those close to me. Daily, their generosity of time, spirit, and warmth humbles me.

It’s the cracks which let the light inside.

A Poem by Marge Piercy

For the Young Who Want To

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy, a poet, novelist, and social activist, lives on Cape Cod. This poem is from her collection The Moon is Always Female (1980).

Thanks, Henry

Everyone loves Susie Horgan’s photograph of Ian MacKaye’s brother. He’s slumped on some stairs, exhausted, shaved head resting on arms folded over bended knees, wearing a jacket and jeans and boots, bottles and party detritus at his feet. It’s a great shot. Minor Threat used it as their album cover. Nike liked it enough to copy it exactly, apart from the footwear.

My favorite picture Susie took of her future famous co-workers is the shot of Henry Rollins standing there wearing a Haagen Dazs t-shit, hat in hands, withering look on his face.
Henry Rollins is not wearing the t-shirt ironically, or because the Salvation Army was selling it on the cheap. He’s wearing it because his boss told him to. He’s wearing it because it’s the uniform. He’s wearing it because he has to, because he’s at work and it’s part of his stupid job to wear a Haagen Dazs t-shirt.  Beyond the composition, I love this picture for the message it sends to me and to all creative types toiling in service jobs – you can make it. You can do your art for a living. It gives me hope.

It’s my desktop background at work. His expression goads me to leave every time I see it. “Really, Aaron, you’re still here?” Henry sighs. “Is this is how you want to spend your time, Aaron? Seriously?”

No, Henry, it’s not.

You’re right, Henry, it’s time to leave for the day. There’s dinner to make, books to read, movies to watch. Life to live.


(thanks, Susie, for letting me use the picture)