Time to break open another blog-category here: Steal
My Stuff! (apologies to Abbie Hoffman, yip
yip)
In my mid-
to upper forties now, I've been writing for my amusement (and for grades in
school/college) for over thirty-plus years – in which time I've managed to
garner one little rejection note, but another one of my pieces did appear in a
popular magazine a few years later… although this was an adult magazine, and I
don't dare show the kids, or my mother for that matter. And this was almost
twenty-five years ago!
The fiction I write is mostly light-science SF (i.e., no particle accelerators),
dabbling occasionally into fantasy (a projected trilogy set in Mu and Atlantis;
time-travel, which – see Niven – is more fantasy than SF; some
slightly-more-mainstream-mystical stories revolving around a neo-Christian cult
of pacifist psychokinetics; etc.)
Nonfiction I write is essays (i.e.,
most frequently emails that grow too long and tax the patience of friends and
relatives!), mostly on history, religion (especially Catholicism), politics,
and language… but can veer off into many other realms.
The remainder is verse/poetry ("Poems, everybody! The laddie fancies himself a poet!":
that's from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" film), which is the bulk of what
I've been writing the last ten years. Some of it is downright good, I have to
admit… and so likely won't show up under "Steal My Stuff",
heh-heh.
Overall… what I write, there is
little or no market for. SF sections of your bookstore are saturated… and who
buys poetry-books by anyone other than Angelou and Chesterton nowadays?
Of course this is self-defeatist… but the viewpoint nonetheless leaves me free to
write for my own amusement (as in this very paragraph), and under little or no
pressure.
Back in college in the early eighties, I came up with the plot/question of what it would
be like – as written from the inside – to have one's memories thoroughly
scrambled. Picture your life as a large binder full of many, many pages of
photos, letters, stories, recollections, and so on. Whoops; binder snaps open
under a strong wind, and the pages go flying downfield.
You hurriedly gather the sheets… but there's
no longer any continuity between them, no progression from A to B to… Z. And
you'd never dated/numbered the pages! How do you reestablish your self-identity, self-awareness, with this
loose sheaf of dirtied paper? You need to read it, refer to it, use it, NOW; no
time to sort and analyze… and here comes a bull!!
I gave up after a few years of first-person vignettes, since I couldn't find a way
to bring the story – by its very nature – to rise above being a dreckful hash
of jumbled, disordered pieces. A good several of these pieces into the book,
there was to come the fellow's key recollection/recount of how his memory was
scrambled… likely several pages after the (later) conclusion of how to
unscramble it all. Slowly, lurching through his lifetime, he'd rebuild himself
using his emerging realization of what had befallen his psyche. This would be
told in the nature of the vignettes, and the commonality that begins to emerge
between them.
Still, most of what little fiction I write now is little pieces of projected bigger
stories; one in particular is a time-travel story with very good
market-potential… if at least two movies and a couple best-selling novels hadn't
paved the field over, painted lines, put in a parking deck, Starbucks®, and an
office complex. No suites to rent.
So here's something from the abandoned Fragments
novel. You're welcome to it – I still kind of like the banter, but the whole
thing is too shallow and doesn't have the hooks I'd need to fasten it firmly on
to something more redeemable. (Plus I tend to be a lot less bawdy nowadays!) I
wrote it in October of 1981; I was barely in my twenties, and just had to get
the words out.
I miss that innocence. But go ahead; Steal
My Stuff!
"Hey!" Bill called from near the east mirrors. "Has anybody heard
about the government's new prostitution tax?"
Heads turned expectantly, including mine; I grinned
wryly. Bill always got invited to parties; you could count on him to throw in a
few standup-comic type jokes. Always they were original, and never did he
repeat himself.
"Well," he sighed, shaking his head convincingly, "I guess I'll have
to tell you about this. Really, nobody pays any attention to the news anymore."
"Grunt," I said, as someone bumped into me. I turned to find Cheryl with my
scotch refill.
She was smiling broadly. "That Bill really
thinks he's a wit," she commented, gesturing with my drink.
I liberated it, adding, "Yeah, and he's half right." I had had a tendency
lately to break out in Robert Heinlein quotes. I had to cut that out. Maybe
Vonnegut instead.
"You see," Bill explained, having strode to the center of the room, "now
that prostitutes have been licensed, Uncle Sugar has decided to get into the…
act. With, voilá, a prostitution tax." He began pacing to the
fireplace.
"The first installment of the tax is paid the moment they guy – or gal – the
customer – the moment the customer gets his orgasm."
"Isn't that a bit, uh, anticlimactic?" Cheryl asked from our position near
one of the north corners. I nudged her.
Some of the guests chuckled; Bill blinked a
moment, then responded: "Would you consider writing some material for me?
Never mind! I'm not done yet. See me after class." He resumed
pacing.
"Now, ladies and gentiles, jadies and lentilmen, the orgasm tax is not enough
for our Infernal Revenue Service. No-o. Because after you've finished your
business, gotten dressed, and are ready to leave, the second installment is
paid. This is done just as you walk out the door.
He stood still near the mirrors, huge toothy
smile plastered askew across his face. He was relishing the guests'
expectation.
"Once again the Fed gets you coming… and going."
His audience applauded him with loud
groans.
"Really!" Bill added. "There's even something called the Head Tax… but
we won't discuss that. Gi' me a drink, somebody!"
Cheryl was chuckling. "That
should make him hesitate before telling any more of those around me."
My only answer was to stroke her bare, soft
back.
"Hey, Sir William," Cheryl called as Bill stepped our way. "You're
really into prostitutes, aren't you?"
Bill laughed. "Jerry! You didn't tell me your
wife–"
I held up a warning finger. "She wasn't making an offer."
"Damn."
"She isn't that kind of girl."
"That's okay; I don't have that kind of money."
"Two reasons: Number Two: She refuses to charge–"
"He'd be in debt up to his–"
"And Number One: She will not do it with animals. Which leaves you out."
"Oh well," Bill sighed, "there's
always a call for a fox somewhere."
"You'd never know," reminded Cheryl. But she continued, "Bill, I wanted
to ask you what the proper name for a Mexican prostitute is."
He looked at her. "A Frito Lay?"
Cheryl laughed so hard she spilled
her drink.
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