Friday, January 13, 2012

Dollars Per Hour Chapter 3

    I drop Doc Filth off at home after work, agreeing to meet him later at our bar, the Spot. I’m kind of tired, and am not really looking forward to being out until last call, then the obligatory trip to Meaty Boyz Italian Sausage, and then back to the Doc’s house to smoke a blunt, which has more or less become a ritual for the two of us in the last few weeks. I mean, obviously we have to do it on Friday and Saturday, because they are the weekends, that’s what they are there for.  While we’re on the subject, Sunday is still the weekend. Mondays just suck in general, so you need to drink them away as well. On Tuesday, you need to kill the hangover that has been kept at bay through the weekend, so it’s back to the bar. Wednesday: Hump Day, so close to the weekend, but so far away, and how to forget it? That’s right, go to the bar. Today is Thursday. The weekend unofficially starts on Thursday, leaving us obligated to be there.

   My mailbox yields–among a stack of bills–a letter from Lifesblood Press, a publisher in Montana that would like to see the entire manuscript of my new novel that they have heard so much about, and are brimming with excitement to read. Under normal circumstances, this would have me screaming, yelling, and dancing around my apartment, but the veil over the scam is too thin.

    They couldn’t have heard of my school violence novel, because no one has heard of my school violence novel. I find it a little hard to believe that the publishing world is out there, waiting, hungrily, salivating over the very first completed novel from unpublished and unknown Rubin Valentine, especially out in Montana.

    This has to be the dirty work of my archnemesis Writers Die-Jest, the archnemesis of good literature everywhere. I’ll probably never figure out where the devils there got my name to begin with, but when they did, they began a full-blown assault against me with advertisements and promotions cramming my mailbox every day, until both the postal carrier and my roommates were all begging me to accept the offers just to see if the magazine was worth the money. Finally, I broke down and accepted an offer for two free issues. I should have known that the third issue would come whether I asked for it or not, followed immediately by a bill. Then a fourth issue. Then another bill. Then a fifth issue. Then another bill.

    The sixth issue never arrived, only three or four more bills, and it seems by now, they have come to grips with the fact I have no intention of ever paying for their unrequested, quickly provided services. There are more ways than one to recoup their losses on me. Each and every fraudulent publisher, agent, book club, or anyone even remotely attached to the publishing industry in any shady way now flails me with their tendrils, pummeling me, hoping that I will break down to them the way I folded to Writers Die-Jest.

    That’s why I have no doubt that an publisher soliciting me, wanting to see my entire novel must be too good to be true. As I go up the stairs to our apartment, I read over their proposal, looking for the holes in the plot, trying to find where they fuck me. However, what if it’s not too good to be true? I can’t pass that up.

     I check the answering machine as soon as I get through the door. It’s all for my roommates: The hipster guy Chloe Isis is infatuated with this week, a touring band asking Kurt Vance to give them a show; Kurt’s mom; the hipster guy Chloe was infatuated with last week; the hipster guy Chloe was infatuated with the week before; nothing for me. I erase them all in a fit of rage and stomp into my bedroom.

    The computer is on, waiting patiently for me, smiling as I pull out my captain’s chair and fall into it. “How are you doing today Rubin?” it asks in a lifeless monotone.

    “Not bad,” I grumble. “My job sucks, my love life sucks, and the answering machine hates me,” I tell it. “I hope you can provide a little better.”

    “I’d say I feel bad for you, but I’m a rather obsolete model, and am incapable of feeling any kind of emotion. You really should upgrade at some point soon.”

    “Yeah, I know,” I sigh. “What can I say, I’ve grown attached to you." That, and I don’t really have the money for an upgrade. “Anyway, what do I have in the way of e-mail?”

    There is a short pause, and the computer lets out a loud ‘ding!’ “You’ve got four new messages, Rubin,” it tells me in a mock happy voice, and opens my e-mail client. There is one ad for penis enlargement and two porn ads that slipped through my filters, and with them, a rejection for five of my poems from some magazine in Kansas, which makes me wonder why I would submit to a magazine in Kansas to begin with. I delete all four. Afterward, I e-mail a magazine in California and one in New Jersey for their submission guidelines.

    What the hell, what do I have to lose, sending this book off to Lifesblood Press? Ten, fifteen dollars in shipping? Hardly a figure worth noting in the grand scheme of accomplishing my dreams. It takes a few seconds to build up the courage, overcome the gnawing fear on the edges of my brain, open up Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?, and jam my mouse down on the ‘print’ icon. The cantankerous inkjet printer whirrs to life with a crash and a few bangs, and the computer itself is moaning in protest.

    In the parlor, the door opens and slams closed, and Chloe Isis bursts into my room in a blast of scarlet hair. “Hey, Rubin,” she says, “How long have you been home?” She skirts around me and sits down on my futon with my cat.

    “About ten minutes,” I say. “Why are you getting home so late?”

    “I stopped for beer on the way,” she says, emphasizing this by rubbing her eyes. “Where’s Kurt?”

    I shrug. “No idea, he didn’t come home after work. He’s probably downtown.”

    She falls back on my bed. “What are you doing tonight?”

    “Meeting Doc Filth at the Spot at midnight, working on our movie, and getting drunk,” I answer, still typing. “How about you?”

    “Getting laid, I hope” she says desperately. “At this point, I don’t even care by who!” She throws her arm across her face like a damsel in distress, seconds before the train hits her. “If not getting laid, at least getting really stoned.” She lifts her head and raises an eyebrow at me. “Do you have any drugs?”

    I say nothing, just shake my head as I continue to type.

    “What are you working on?” she asks, forcing herself into a sitting position.

    “New book,” I say, scrolling back to the top.

    “What’s it about?”

    “Disillusionment, wasted youth, growing up with no future,” I say, tossing a glance over at her.

    “It’s about you and all your friends,” she says. “Nice.”

    “It’s about me and all my friends,” I confirm. “It’s good. Here, check out the opening,” I say, and start to read. “‘The innocent days of youth kissed us goodbye a long time ago. There was a time when we all loved, we all laughed, we all cried. We all had hope for the future. We all thought things would go right for us. School, jobs, families, these were all owed to us, because it was fed to us by every form of media. If we lived the way we saw on TV, we would be just as prosperous as we saw on TV. It was a beautiful picture they painted for us: success; happiness; the “American Dream,” and it all drained out in the orgasm of our youth. Us poor, beaten children of the dying millennium had been promised so much, and we had come of age knowing just what belonged to us, and with gnashing, shark teeth, we were going to take it.

    “‘We were wrong.

    “‘Dead wrong, even.

    “‘What they failed to tell us was that there were millions of other kids out there who had been told the same thing. A lot of them already had the money we wanted to take, and were just out to get some more.

    “‘I’m not going to sit here crying about it. I suppose, if I had worked hard enough, I could have had the same things they did. I’m not bitter; I don’t think I’ve been denied all the things I should have been handed, so I could be put on an even playing field with them. Despite what I was told all my life, I wasn’t owed a fucking thing. Life ain’t fair. I found that out really early, and I refuse to stand with people who fixate on that point, whining about how life beat them down.

    “‘The point I’m trying to make is that reality had spent almost 21 years breaking all of my dreams. All of my hopes had been smashed, almost as fast as I could dream them up. I was going to be damned if I at least didn’t get to destroy myself. Really I mean, if I couldn’t have a ton of money, could have a high-stakes job in the corner office, what choice did we have, other than to poison our bodies with drugs and alcohol and fuck everything that moved. The way I see it, I had no choice!’”

    She giggles. “The day you ‘fuck everything that moved,’ will be an interesting day indeed.”

    “It’s a fictional character,” I groan. “If a fictional representation of me wants to fuck everything that moves, that fictional representation of me can fuck everything that moves, and there is nothing in the world you can do to change that.”

    She purses her lips and nods. “Creative license,” she says, standing up. “You just want your readers to think you are a stud.”

    “If that’s what it takes to convince lots of girls to have sex with me, that’s what it takes, and I’m willing to do it.”

    “You’re so noble, Rubin,” she says flatly, floating out of my room like a ghost.


Go to Chapter 4

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