Robert Jackson Bennett's Blog, page 12

Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2012

2012 is still going on, I think, except for dogs and cats and goats and stuff because they don’t know about years. But despite all this, I’ve just received word that Publisher’s Weekly has chosen The Troupe as one of their Best Books of 2012!

I found this out while waiting for a liquor superstore to open at 10:00 AM in a sketchy neighborhood, so it definitely brightened up my morning, which until this mostly featured grizzled homeless men who loudly complained that liquor stores should be open TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN, and bruised women carrying bitter silences. Fun stuff.

In other news, my son went as a gnome for Halloween, and despite being 19 months old he really committed to the part:

 

However, THIS is EASILY the GREATEST BABY HALLOWEEN COSTUME OF ALL TIME

Halloween exchange

Last week, Sam Sykes, of the Tome of the Undergates series, suggested on Twitter that we exchange ghost stories, to be posted on one another’s blogs.

We knew that these stories would be ridiculous, because the Twitter feeds of both Sam and I are 100% hot garbage, right in your face.

Over the weekend, we exchanged ghost stories. And we reflected that this may well be the end of our careers.

You can read mine here, and learn about my ignorance of toilet factories, as well as the Jewish culture. But now, without further ado, I give you Sam Sykes’s melancholy tale of haunted genitalia, and weirdly displaced rage, which I have chosen to entitle:

BEDEVILED MEMBER

“Mr. Bosch,” she said very calmly, “your penis is haunted.”

It’s funny.  I had spent my entire life bracing myself for the day when I would have to hear those words.

I mean, not those words, specifically.  But you know, something along those lines.  My penis was definitely going to be involved, I can tell you that much.  Funnily enough, though, I didn’t feel all that prescient at that point.

“I see,” I said very calmly right back—calm enough to make her calm look like a ranting, raving pile of poop.

“I’ll admit, I had my doubts as a scientist.”  She took off her glasses, at that point, to remind me that she was, in fact, a scientist.  She was always doing things like that.

Pissed me right the fuck off.

“But the facts are irrefutable,” she said, tapping the clipboard with one thumb.  “Your readings are off the charts and I’m more than a little concerned about your scan results.”

She didn’t have to point.  We all knew which scan results she was talking about.  Still, I couldn’t help but look—whenever someone references my junk, I find that the advice I was given on my wedding day still held true.

In tastefully sterile black and white, my genitalia were painted across the electric glow of a lit backdrop.  As usual, I couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed with the turnout.  My penis was angled slightly to the left, coyly looking away from the camera as though it just wouldn’t be polite to stare.

I had lost my virginity to a photography major.  Bashful genitals ever since.  Damnedest thing.

“As you can see, I believe the haunting to be located primarily around here…”  She waved her hand in a noncommittal gesture around the picture.  She wouldn’t touch it; she had too much class for that.  “Around this whole…yucky part.”

In fact, I could see that, and there was nothing she could do to stop me.

Admittedly, I hadn’t seen many movies on the subject but I was well-informed enough to know that one shouldn’t feel disappointment upon being told that they are in possession of a haunted penis.

And yet, I couldn’t really help but echo the sentiments of the face looking back at me from the photograph of my business.  You might have missed it, had you not been looking as I had.

That was my first moment of despair.

It was a bland face: a pair of blank, featureless eyes, a perfectly straight line for a mouth.  No withered old man peering out at me, no wide-eyed Japanese ghost with streaming black hair.  No.  I got a face that looked like it belonged to a mid-level lawyer used to getting people out of DUI charges who had been to a fair share of penises in his day and this wasn’t even one of the nicest ones he had ever haunted.

“So, what, exactly, do we do about this?” I asked.  I didn’t really bother with the calmness, at this point.  It would have seemed rude not to be at least a little panicked.

“Well, you’ve got a number of options here,” she replied, donning her glasses again like they made her so goddamn smart.  “We could try some more science-y shit.  I don’t know.  Or get an exorcist to take a look.”

That came with its own set of problems.

You only ever got the two kinds of exorcists.  The first kind was always a staunch, hard-set fellow struggling with his faith.  I don’t want to seem like I disapprove of the religious, mind; I’m perfectly happy to listen to sermons and give to charities that people in nice suits assure me are definitely not out to beat people with books.

But having my haunted penis looked at by a person of religion seemed like it would have been uncomfortable.  Like, it wouldn’t just be the ghost in my genitals, you know?  I’d get all kinds of lectures about grooming and maintenance and the dangers of briefs and I just wasn’t ready for that kind of lecture right now.

The alternative, of course, was the “renegade” exorcist.  The type that was too extreme for the church, all clad in leather and wearing spikes and probably with a name like “St. Xavier Delacroix Doombarrel.”  Probably would get a book deal out of exorcising my junk.  All getting book signings and people coming up and shaking his hand and saying “thank you, sir, for all the tireless work you did on that man’s penis.”

“Isn’t there anything, like,” I said, “a little more natural?”

“Oh.  Oh, yeah.  Heck yeah.”  Her eyes lit up.  She had been waiting for this.  “See, sometimes, ghosts don’t pass on because they have unfinished business.  You just…you know…same concept, except with your penis.”

“Okay, so…”

“Yeah, just…you know, maybe ask it what it wants or something.”

“Right.  Right, of course.  So, do I…I mean, right here or…?”

“Yeah, man.  Sure.”  She blinked before her eyes went all nerd-in-a-girl’s-room wide.  “Oh.  OH!  Uh…yeah.”

She turned around.  My trousers hit the floor.  I looked at my penis.

It looked bored.

“Ghost,” I said.  “Ghost, get out of my junk.”

My penis did not provide an answer to my summons.  I didn’t like that.

“Ghost.  What the hell do you want, ghost?”

“DO YOU MEAN IN A SPIRITUAL SENSE,” the ghost replied in exactly the way you’re thinking he did.

“You are a spirit, so yeah, probably.”

“Ghosts might like material things,” she said, ponytail bobbing with each word.  “I think I read that somewhere.”

“I LIKE TO THINK THAT WE ALL WANT THE SAME THINGS.  YOU KNOW FULFILLMENT AND SHIT LIKE THAT.”

“You are not fulfilling anything in my penis,” I said sternly to the ghost.  “Please remove yourself.”

“I DON’T THINK I CAN DO THAT JUST YET.  I GOT LOST ON MY WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE AND I AM NOW TRAPPED BETWEEN WORLDS.  IN YOUR PENIS.”

“That’s been known to happen,” she said.  “It’s definitely happened, I’d say.”

“How do we move you on, then?” I asked.

“I NEED YOU TO FORGIVE ME.”

“For what?”

“FOR ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I HAVE DONE.”

“Like what?”

“OH HECK THERE ARE BASICALLY A LOT OF THEM IT IS PROBABLY EASIER TO JUST ASSUME THAT I HAVE DONE WHATEVER YOU ARE THINKING OF RIGHT NOW.”

She put a hand to her mouth and stifled a gasp.

“I…I forgive you,” I said to my penis.  “I know you’ve done bad stuff.”

“IT IS BASICALLY MY NATURE TO DO SO.  I AM SORRY.”

“That’s fine.  We all do bad things, sometimes.  I can’t make you feel bad for that.”

“I DO THAT ENOUGH ON MY OWN I THINK.”

“You don’t have to, anymore,” I said, nodding at my penis.  “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, least of all yourself.”

“THANK YOU FOR BEING MY FRIEND.”

There are literally all kinds of nasty ways that could have ended, what with the ghost leaving my body and all.  But the truth is that it was all a little rushed, like he just left without really figuring out why.

I was okay with it.  But part of me really wanted this to be more of an ordeal.

“So…can I turn around now?” she asked me.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” I said.  “It’s not at all exciting.”

She nodded, like she had been expecting that the whole time.

God damn it.

“Where will you go now?” she asked.

I had seen enough movies to know I was supposed to say something pithy here, something to summarize exactly what we had all gone through and what it had meant to me.

“Probably the grocery store.  I haven’t picked up anything for dinner yet.”

Good enough.

Halloween fun

I usually try and do something fun with my pumpkins on Halloween, but this year when I was cleaning up our garage I noticed we had a lot of old gutters lying around, and these made me start thinking.

I find the ideas of fields of chimneys burning with red fire to be pretty creepy – and I think that’s a perfectly natural reaction to fields of chimneys burning with red fire – so I got some black spraypaint, some knives, and I think I freaked the hell out of my neighbors by repeatedly stabbing the gutters, tearing them apart, and then nailing them together, and painting them black.

The result was this:

It’s not quite as big I hoped, but it did turn out well. I stuffed each one with red lights, and though my cell camera is terrible, this is kinda sorta what it looks like at night:

The pizza guy thought it was pretty cool.

Maybe next year I’ll put brighter red lights in them, or build more gutters, or just make something new, out of wood.

The only issue with making more artwork every Halloween… where to store it?

————————————————–

In other news, I have been extremely busy recently.

I run a trade show convention for my dayjob. This last year was my first, and I had no idea what I was doing or how best to do it. But it turned out pretty well. The best thing I can compare convention-planning to, is that it’s like planning a wedding, or actually five weddings a day for three days, and all the attendees have to pay to come, so they have high expectations.

Onsite, it’s wild, controlled chaos, and my job turns from “planner” to “taking care of huge disasters,” because inevitably there are huge disasters.

But this one went well. People liked it. And I think I learned how to do it better next year. (And it reinforced my feeling that writing is not a hard job, and anyone who complains about writing being SO HARD and just TORTUOUS needs to buck up and try retail for a while, and oh my god when did I become a crotchety 50 year old man?)

However, I wasn’t able to do much creative stuff, which is probably why I did the above Thing in one big burst of activity, and I admit that stabbing and hammering was a pretty good way to take out a lot of stress. I did not get much writing or blogging done, naturally. But that’s what the holidays are for.

And, speaking of writing, I should have some pretty huge news I can talk about soon. Stay tuned, folks.

Beef seduction

If you ever wanted to see me eat a beef rib the size of my child, look no further.

It’s like something out of the fucking Flintstones, for God’s sakes

Busy, busy

My dayjob is in full throttle, and will be until the end of October, so if you’re on tenterhooks waiting for me to be clever, uh.. well, I hope those tenterhooks are roomy and comfortable. I also hope myself and my family are okay with 10-12 hour days. Whee!

But in real news, the kickstarter for an all-Texas Horror anthology has TEXAS OR DIE has begun! I’m lucky to be included with this amazing collection of authors, so if you could scrounge up some dough to help me live my dream (not the one about riding a horse-sized Welsh corgi, the writing one) that’d be super.

Trying not to turn this into a tumblr, but…

Too hard to resist.

The man has a point

An odd thing happened at the office today

The following story is true.

My place of work, being trendy and design-oriented, is located in Austin’s East Side, which is generally acknowledged as a hip, bohemianpart of town. My office stands at the corner of a crossroads, and one of the roads making up this crossroads is not really a road: it is more of wide, wandering alley, following the railroad track. Establishments along this road are not in agreement as to whether or not it is a genuine city street at all: you will pass the backs of many shops, featuring loading docks and emergency exit doors and the like, when suddenly there will be a string of shopfronts, as though insisting that this stretch of cracked asphalt is a valid throughway after all.

Due to the “bohemian” nature of this part of town, my office has to deal regularly with vagrants, particularly because our two AC units are bordered by a thick wall of bamboo and make for a concealed, close little clutch where the homeless can find sleep in relative safety. Naturally, our AC units are on the side of the building with this street-alley. We often find the remnants of nests and bindles and blankets in the morning, and though we’ve attempted to prevent people from getting in there, they persist in doing so.

Today was more or less a normal day: we had deadlines to deal with, many meetings, and I was attempting and failing to phase out coffee for tea. Then around three o’clock, our receptionist came sprinting down the hall, saying, “There’s some kind of rescue going on outside!”

I followed and asked her to clarify, but I didn’t need to: as soon as I got to the window, I saw the ambulances, and the fire truck, and the police cars, and the swarm of EMTs, firemen, and policemen working around our AC units.

They were trying to pull out a young man from in between the two AC units. He was about my age, if not younger. He looked a little like a scruffy college kid, someone who scrapes by with C’s and D’s: he had short, reddish hair, numerous freckles, shaggy, rough-cut flip flops, and khaki shorts. His wrists and ankles were ringed with Greek letters or tribal patterns: I recall thinking them very unoriginal when I saw them.

He was like many of the young homeless you see in Austin, who could be just rather scruffy young people with stable lives, or they could be homeless backpackers trying to scrape together food and water for a day. You’re never sure – you never know.

The EMTs were having a lot of trouble getting him out. I realized that he was totally and utterly limp, especially as one fireman mounted one AC unit, its thin metal flexing and shuddering, and took one of the young man’s arms and one of his legs, and bodily hauled him up; and when the young man rose his head snapped back in a way that told me absolutely no muscles in his neck were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

When they managed to force him up onto one of the AC units, and onto what looked like a nylon sling, I saw he was terribly pale, his lips bluish, his cheeks quite white. Getting him up onto the unit took the force of four or five people, and it flung his arms and legs about so much one flip flop went wheeling through the air. And I realized, slowly and quite numbly, that the EMTs were moving with an air of grim panic.

They set him on a stretcher. Again, his head flopped back at a terrible angle, opening his slack mouth to the sky. They clipped a pulse monitor on his finger, and I recall saying that this was a good sign, they wouldn’t do that if there was no pulse to monitor, would they, and no one said anything. Then they put him in the ambulance.

And then, nothing happened. The ambulance sat there. The EMTs and the police and the firemen conferred among themselves in their various vehicles. He had left his aviator sunglasses behind. No one had picked up his lost flip flop.

The ambulance did not move. A policeman returned to dig through the gravel and debris in the little clutch.

Someone asked, “What’s he looking for?”

And I said, with sudden certainty, “Needles.” And while I do think this was true, I’m sure he was looking for anything at all.

The policeman walked away. He had not gathered the young man’s glasses or flip flop. This bothered me – wouldn’t he want those?

Still, the ambulance didn’t move. And I slowly came to the conclusion that this was either a very good sign or a very bad one. And having seen the young man’s pale, clammy skin, I felt it was probably the latter.

I began to feel sure the young man had been dead. Not dying – they try and save dying people – but dead.

I am not sure if it was the abruptness of all this, or the grim, familiar way the civil servants did their job, as if used to cleaning up the lost people who gather in the interstitial parts of cities like so much windblown refuse, or perhaps it was how the EMTs and the rest did not acknowledge us, standing mere feet away, staring out a thin glass window just over their shoulders as they did their work, but the whole thing had a faint air of surreal mundanity about it, as if this was not an occurrence of note, but rather an unfortunate, rote procedure that simply had to happen every once in a while. It was as if the young man had been a songbird who had flown into our window, and broken its neck, and was being properly disposed of.

Everything felt terribly numb, and strange: what was inside our window belonged to one world, with deadlines and meeting notes and whiteboards and network servers, and what was outside was quite another, one of railroad tracks and barbed wire, where people simply laid down in the street and died. I wondered if urban life had made us so calloused as to reduce the passing of another person to a mildly dispiriting curiosity, and, having observed it, we simply returned to work.

Our receptionist eventually opened the little side door in our office – which felt a bit like magic trap door between our world and theirs – and asked the EMTs what had happened. The EMT, a sprightly, personable young woman, informed us that she could not tell us what had happened, but did we know who had called 911? We said we didn’t know. Had we seen anyone in the area? We said this was the first we had noticed about any of this. She nodded, grim again, and thanked us and left.

I began to suspect that the young man had overdosed on some drug, and had been abandoned there by someone, who had then called it in. Perhaps they had been doing their drug in the AC clutch when the young man overdosed, and his partner fled and called it in: but this seemed unlikely, as the AC clutch can hardly accommodate one person, let alone two. Either the young man had been dumped there by someone who later called it in, or some passerby on the street somehow noticed him – which is pretty unlikely, considering how hidden he’d been – and called it in, anonymously.

I did not know. I do not know.

I did a bit more work. Then I returned home. When I left, the ambulance was still there.

I consulted some EMT friends online. They confirmed that this was a bad sign.

It bothered me, but I did not feel disturbed. I did not feel as I felt one should feel when one has stumbled across the dead – as I grew more convinced that that was what the young man had been. We’ve seen it so often, haven’t we? On Law and Order, on CSI: someone, somehow, finds a body. And the story moves along.

I felt untouched, and I felt it wrong that I felt untouched, but untouched was all I could feel.

Much later, I was bathing my son and watching him play with his bath toys, which made me visit my memories of my childhood baths, where I’d pinch my nose and lie underwater and stare up at my mother, until she’d become nervous and motion at me to come up.

I watched my son explore and examine his toys, and I hoped he’d form memories as happy and accessible as mine.

And it was then that I thought that the young man I’d seen that day must have had memories like these, memories of his own, precious moments and joyous seconds and half-forgotten treasures. He must have been happy occasionally, right? Whatever it was that had brought him to our alley-street, he must have had happiness, and revisited memories of it when he needed. And I realized that all those memories of his, all those seconds and all those secret joys, had perhaps been burned up in the pounding, 98-degrees heat that day, burned up by whatever it was that had coursed through his blood; they had burned silently, softly, separated from us by a thin skin of brick and wood, hidden among the concrete and the bamboo, and they’d burned and burned and faded and faded until it was as if they had never been at all.

If the EMTs and the police had not come, would we have even noticed him at all? Would he have sat there all night? If we had not noticed the EMTs, would they have come and snatched him up without our ever knowing, and spirited him away like elves in a fairy story? Could we have done something, if only we’d walked by the window at the right time, and seen him lying there?

I did not know. I do not know.

I took my son to bed. I read him a story, kissed him good night, put him in his crib, and turned out the light.

Then I went and read a poem by Tom Waits, from the collection Hard Ground, about the homeless:

When I was born

My folks wept at my beauty

I was the package that all

Their good luck came in

I was bright and shining, magnetic

And flaming

Am I just something that got eaten

By the gods

Am I only the bag

That it came in

An oldie

Was reminded of this by a friend just a bit ago… It’s been nearly two years, yet it feels like only yesterday that I wrote what is probably my favorite of all the sentences I’ve ever written:

“Buckets are basically the best.”

Pure poetry. I still haven’t managed to top that piece. It almost makes me nostalgic…

1930′s Shanghai Batman

In addition to Avatar’s The Legend of Korra exploring the gorgeous, seamy aesthetic of early 20th century China, this animated short completely reimagines Batman, Catwoman, and Bane as semi-magic characters duking it out on the streets of 1930′s Shanghai:

Very cool stuff. I’d like to see more exploration of this style/period/aesthetic/whatever.