twinkling lights of New York City.
He was gone.
Eyes tearing up, shirt drenched with sweat. It wasnât my place to know why, even if I was the angel making it happen. It wasnât about me anymore. I was witnessing a religious experience. It was intestinal.
It doesnât mean I was used to feeling ignored in these situations.
I put my shoes on and the butler let me out. The doorman was waiting in the elevator to take me down and I pretended he wasnât there. I walked out into the night, wondering where I was supposed to find a matching sock before going dancing at Jackie 60.
The sock fucker didnât tip me.
I get pissed off when wealthy Manhattanites donât tip, because the people around them have to pretend that everything happens by itself.
Valets have to pretend that cars park themselves, and security guards have to pretend that no unwanted guests ever try to sneak into the building.
I donât hate doormen as much as you think I do.
They have it the hardest because they have to pretend that their building is immune to ice and snow in the winter. They also have to pretend that doors open by themselves, that clothes dry-clean themselves, that taxis hail themselves, that FedEx packages float up the stairs by themselves, that garbage bags are transported magically to the dumpster courtesy of fairy dust from Bloomingdaleâs. Theyâre also dealers in kink, and masters of covering trails and keeping secrets.
When you donât see the doorman in the lobby, itâs because heâs manning the back door.
It sticks in my craw that thereâs a whole network of underlings, me included, who are expected to conspire together to make sure that the world runs smoothly and that everything happens with the utmost discretionâfor nothing more than the going rate.
Our charge is heavy, but a tip would somehow make it alright.
I sent out a new short story to eleven literary magazines today.
Hereâs how it went down.
I was getting sick of two-faced editors who demand exclusive submissions but are quite content to reject the unpublished, hundreds at a time. Does that make sense? I decided to start playing by my own rules. I spent hours in Barnes and Noble, nosing out which magazines felt empty without my writing. Multiple submissions it was.
Since I donât believe in karmaâa philosophy that says I deserve the life Iâve hadâthe worst that could happen would be to get two acceptance letters for the same story.
Iâm doing my best to stay positive, but I have to tell you that trying to get published (a word Iâve grown to hate) feels like buying raffle tickets for a prize thatâs already been given out by a church thatâs already burned down. Eventually, youâre going to stop trying.
Summerâs starting to fizzle out and the nights are getting cool. There are only a couple of months left in 1999 for me to make my mark in the world of writing, before the millennium sweeps in and changes things forever. I donât want to think of what January 1 will be like if Iâm in the same place I was the last time that date rolled
around: a writer with no readers.
Writing guides and the crappy advice they give donât work, so I donât buy or steal them anymore. This latest story comes from inside me. I threw myself into it and laced it with venom. Itâs probably the most mature thing Iâve written so far, and I think it reads reasonably well.
The story.
The kid wasnât adapting well to reform school. He was an outcast from the moment he got there, but it was all for the better. If he was going to survive a place like that, he needed the resourcefulness of a lone wolf.
The school designed lessons to destroy his soul, one wisp at a time.
In Morals class, they taught him about the importance of family. He sat through slideshows of mother, father, daughter, son, image after image of the same perfect unit, but with different actors
He was gone.
Eyes tearing up, shirt drenched with sweat. It wasnât my place to know why, even if I was the angel making it happen. It wasnât about me anymore. I was witnessing a religious experience. It was intestinal.
It doesnât mean I was used to feeling ignored in these situations.
I put my shoes on and the butler let me out. The doorman was waiting in the elevator to take me down and I pretended he wasnât there. I walked out into the night, wondering where I was supposed to find a matching sock before going dancing at Jackie 60.
The sock fucker didnât tip me.
I get pissed off when wealthy Manhattanites donât tip, because the people around them have to pretend that everything happens by itself.
Valets have to pretend that cars park themselves, and security guards have to pretend that no unwanted guests ever try to sneak into the building.
I donât hate doormen as much as you think I do.
They have it the hardest because they have to pretend that their building is immune to ice and snow in the winter. They also have to pretend that doors open by themselves, that clothes dry-clean themselves, that taxis hail themselves, that FedEx packages float up the stairs by themselves, that garbage bags are transported magically to the dumpster courtesy of fairy dust from Bloomingdaleâs. Theyâre also dealers in kink, and masters of covering trails and keeping secrets.
When you donât see the doorman in the lobby, itâs because heâs manning the back door.
It sticks in my craw that thereâs a whole network of underlings, me included, who are expected to conspire together to make sure that the world runs smoothly and that everything happens with the utmost discretionâfor nothing more than the going rate.
Our charge is heavy, but a tip would somehow make it alright.
I sent out a new short story to eleven literary magazines today.
Hereâs how it went down.
I was getting sick of two-faced editors who demand exclusive submissions but are quite content to reject the unpublished, hundreds at a time. Does that make sense? I decided to start playing by my own rules. I spent hours in Barnes and Noble, nosing out which magazines felt empty without my writing. Multiple submissions it was.
Since I donât believe in karmaâa philosophy that says I deserve the life Iâve hadâthe worst that could happen would be to get two acceptance letters for the same story.
Iâm doing my best to stay positive, but I have to tell you that trying to get published (a word Iâve grown to hate) feels like buying raffle tickets for a prize thatâs already been given out by a church thatâs already burned down. Eventually, youâre going to stop trying.
Summerâs starting to fizzle out and the nights are getting cool. There are only a couple of months left in 1999 for me to make my mark in the world of writing, before the millennium sweeps in and changes things forever. I donât want to think of what January 1 will be like if Iâm in the same place I was the last time that date rolled
around: a writer with no readers.
Writing guides and the crappy advice they give donât work, so I donât buy or steal them anymore. This latest story comes from inside me. I threw myself into it and laced it with venom. Itâs probably the most mature thing Iâve written so far, and I think it reads reasonably well.
The story.
The kid wasnât adapting well to reform school. He was an outcast from the moment he got there, but it was all for the better. If he was going to survive a place like that, he needed the resourcefulness of a lone wolf.
The school designed lessons to destroy his soul, one wisp at a time.
In Morals class, they taught him about the importance of family. He sat through slideshows of mother, father, daughter, son, image after image of the same perfect unit, but with different actors
Similar Books
