Matt Posner's Blog: You've Been Schooled - Posts Tagged "matt-posner"

I'd like to introduce zombie author Drake Vaughn. His first book, Zombie Generation, can be found here:



The Zombie Generation

I asked Drake to write an essay for me about why zombie literature is so popular. His response references a lot of the material I grew up with. Right on, Drake -- we are on the same wavelength. This is a guy to watch for. Here's Drake's essay. Tell your friends about it.

1954 was a good year. Elvis Presley wailed his first tune at Sun Records. The polio vaccine was introduced. The Dow Jones surpassed the 1929 high for the first time since the Great Depression. Rationing due to WW2 finally ended in the UK. Color TV was invented. Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe. A gallon of gas only cost 22 cents. Hardly the time one would expect for the birth of the modern zombie.

Although, 1954 was anything but peaches and roses. Brown v. Board of Education laid the groundwork for the racial upheavals of the following decade. The USSR tested its first nuclear bomb, prompting President Eisenhower to give his “Domino Theory” speech. And one domino fell as the French lost the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, ceding control of North Vietnam to the communists and digging the roots for later US involvement. Cold War paranoia spread out of control as Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted his witch-hunt investigation for secret Reds.

And on the tiny Japanese island of Bikini Atoll, operation Castle Bravo birthed the first hydrogen bomb. Expected to produce a six megaton explosion, it rocked a surprising fifteen megaton punch. A nearby fishing boat had been told they would be clear of the blast, and instead found themselves irradiated. This news zipped through Japan sparking mass panic and fears over a radioactive food supply. And from this chaos, film director Ishiro Honda was inspired to create the atomic breathing icon Godzilla.

And Honda was hardly alone in transforming the era’s anxieties into a creative venture. 1954 was also the year when American author Richard Matheson published I Am Legend, thereby creating the template for the modern post-apocalyptic zombie story. Of course, the monsters in Matheson’s book are vampires, not the flesh guzzling undead, but the archetypes of I Am Legend are far more similar to zombies than the vampires of today.

Up to that point, zombies were associated with voodoo, such as in the classic film White Zombie (1932), where the undead were under the spell of an evil mastermind. For the first time, Matheson introduced a mob of monsters under nobody’s control outside of their own thirst for human blood. Likewise, this new breed of vampires was spawned by a global pandemic, similar to the zombie stories of today. Pop hits such as Twilight and True Blood have more in common with the gothic tradition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula than Matheson’s themes of isolation, survival, guilt-free violence, and post-apocalyptic destruction. And it’s no accident these changes began at the exact moment when Cold War paranoia reached its zenith. Matheson masterfully channeled the apocalyptic fear that with a single nuclear blast, society would crumble, leaving only a few survivors to fend for themselves.

Filmmaker George Romero likewise tapped this apocalyptic zeitgeist while writing the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead. And it should come as no surprise that he credited I Am Legend as his inspiration. But unlike the relatively stable 1954, the country was on the brink of massive upheaval when he wrote the screenplay in 1967. Race riots ravished major cities such as Cleveland, Newark, and Detroit. Protests against the Vietnam War splintered the country even further. And tensions grew worse the following year. Only a few months before the film’s October release, both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. All at once, Night of the Living Dead seemed to embody the breakdown and confusion of that volatile election year. The nihilistic orgy of destruction and aura of impending doom fit perfectly with the turbulent times.

Romero continued to expand on this zombie mythology, incorporating social themes such as vapid consumerism in Dawn of the Dead (1978) and psychological isolation in Day of the Dead (1985). Even so, throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, mainstream apocalyptic tales tended towards the themes of totalitarian government/corporate power and technological advances run amuck. Societal collapse brought upon by the brainless undead was pushed to the cultish sidelines. This mirrored the major epidemics of the time, such as AIDS, crack, racial animosity, and the rise of divorce. All of which frayed society, but were relegated to a small segment of the population. This was in contrast to the sweeping pandemic and mindless destruction reflected in zombie mythology.

Not to sound cliché, but this instantly changed with the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11th, 2001. Suddenly, a new monster emerged. Hidden right within our mists, this new enemy was irrational and suicidal. And along with this new outside threat, the economy tanked that December as Enron went bankrupt, revealing all sorts of financial shenanigans and corruption. So it should come as no surprise when Cold War anxiety and paranoia over a faceless enemy reemerged, tugging the zombie mythology back to the surface with it.

And this change in cultural zeitgeist was best reflected in Daniel Boyle’s 28 Days Later, released in 2002. Although filmed prior to the attacks, the movie still managed to capture the general anxieties of the time. Instead of lumbering brainless idiots of Romero’s creations, these undead creatures struck at a lightning quick speed. These rapid and mindless attacks seemed to embody this new type of terrorism of suicidal airplanes, anonymous anthrax mailings, and a distant sniper killing random targets.

Although, it wasn’t until another domestic tragedy when the zombie mythology really began to pick up speed. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck, demolishing the city of New Orleans. Not only did home videos capture the destruction for everyone to see in vivid detail, but the bungled recovery effort likewise added to the feeling of helplessness. Scenes of apocalyptic destruction were suddenly no longer relegated to big screen Hollywood fantasies. And out of this rubble, two major zombie novels were released the following year: World War Z by Max Brooks and Cell by Stephen King, the premiere name in horror fiction.

And in 2008, just as the country appeared to be on the path to recovery, the real estate market slammed to its knees. The entire financial industry imploded, collapsing on par with the 1929 stock market crash. And similar to how the Great Depression ushered in a classic age of Hollywood horror: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), Freaks (1932), and King Kong (1933), this recession brought the highest grossing zombie film of all time: Zombieland (2009), along with TV’s first zombie-centric show, The Walking Dead (2010). The zombies had returned. And in great numbers.

Currently, there seems to be no end in sight for this zombie fever. Hollywood has three undead projects slated for 2013, including a summer blockbuster release of World War Z starring Brad Pitt. Of course, spending millions of dollars on this zombie craze doesn’t guarantee it will resonate with the culture as a whole. However, with the stalled economy forcing even college graduates to move back in with their parents, along with the piles of ever mounting debts, there’s a growing sense things are only getting worse. From Tea Partiers to Occupiers, society is splitting into ever more polarized camps. And each one is convinced the other side is ruining everything, while likewise believing there is no way to stop the collapse. And whenever there’s a fissure in society, the flesh guzzling undead are never too far behind, waiting to chew on the pieces.

Drake Vaughn is the author of “The Zombie Generation” (Dead Orb Press, 2012). He lives in Santa Monica, CA with his wife and a spunky black cat who has returned from the dead on a number of occasions.

I'd like to introduce zombie author Drake Vaughn. His first book, Zombie Generation, can be found here:



The Zombie Generation

I asked Drake to write an essay for me about why zombie literature is so popular. His response references a lot of the material I grew up with. Right on, Drake -- we are on the same wavelength. This is a guy to watch for. Here's Drake's essay. Tell your friends about it.

1954 was a good year. Elvis Presley wailed his first tune at Sun Records. The polio vaccine was introduced. The Dow Jones surpassed the 1929 high for the first time since the Great Depression. Rationing due to WW2 finally ended in the UK. Color TV was invented. Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe. A gallon of gas only cost 22 cents. Hardly the time one would expect for the birth of the modern zombie.

Although, 1954 was anything but peaches and roses. Brown v. Board of Education laid the groundwork for the racial upheavals of the following decade. The USSR tested its first nuclear bomb, prompting President Eisenhower to give his “Domino Theory” speech. And one domino fell as the French lost the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, ceding control of North Vietnam to the communists and digging the roots for later US involvement. Cold War paranoia spread out of control as Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted his witch-hunt investigation for secret Reds.

And on the tiny Japanese island of Bikini Atoll, operation Castle Bravo birthed the first hydrogen bomb. Expected to produce a six megaton explosion, it rocked a surprising fifteen megaton punch. A nearby fishing boat had been told they would be clear of the blast, and instead found themselves irradiated. This news zipped through Japan sparking mass panic and fears over a radioactive food supply. And from this chaos, film director Ishiro Honda was inspired to create the atomic breathing icon Godzilla.

And Honda was hardly alone in transforming the era’s anxieties into a creative venture. 1954 was also the year when American author Richard Matheson published I Am Legend, thereby creating the template for the modern post-apocalyptic zombie story. Of course, the monsters in Matheson’s book are vampires, not the flesh guzzling undead, but the archetypes of I Am Legend are far more similar to zombies than the vampires of today.

Up to that point, zombies were associated with voodoo, such as in the classic film White Zombie (1932), where the undead were under the spell of an evil mastermind. For the first time, Matheson introduced a mob of monsters under nobody’s control outside of their own thirst for human blood. Likewise, this new breed of vampires was spawned by a global pandemic, similar to the zombie stories of today. Pop hits such as Twilight and True Blood have more in common with the gothic tradition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula than Matheson’s themes of isolation, survival, guilt-free violence, and post-apocalyptic destruction. And it’s no accident these changes began at the exact moment when Cold War paranoia reached its zenith. Matheson masterfully channeled the apocalyptic fear that with a single nuclear blast, society would crumble, leaving only a few survivors to fend for themselves.

Filmmaker George Romero likewise tapped this apocalyptic zeitgeist while writing the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead. And it should come as no surprise that he credited I Am Legend as his inspiration. But unlike the relatively stable 1954, the country was on the brink of massive upheaval when he wrote the screenplay in 1967. Race riots ravished major cities such as Cleveland, Newark, and Detroit. Protests against the Vietnam War splintered the country even further. And tensions grew worse the following year. Only a few months before the film’s October release, both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. All at once, Night of the Living Dead seemed to embody the breakdown and confusion of that volatile election year. The nihilistic orgy of destruction and aura of impending doom fit perfectly with the turbulent times.

Romero continued to expand on this zombie mythology, incorporating social themes such as vapid consumerism in Dawn of the Dead (1978) and psychological isolation in Day of the Dead (1985). Even so, throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, mainstream apocalyptic tales tended towards the themes of totalitarian government/corporate power and technological advances run amuck. Societal collapse brought upon by the brainless undead was pushed to the cultish sidelines. This mirrored the major epidemics of the time, such as AIDS, crack, racial animosity, and the rise of divorce. All of which frayed society, but were relegated to a small segment of the population. This was in contrast to the sweeping pandemic and mindless destruction reflected in zombie mythology.

Not to sound cliché, but this instantly changed with the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11th, 2001. Suddenly, a new monster emerged. Hidden right within our mists, this new enemy was irrational and suicidal. And along with this new outside threat, the economy tanked that December as Enron went bankrupt, revealing all sorts of financial shenanigans and corruption. So it should come as no surprise when Cold War anxiety and paranoia over a faceless enemy reemerged, tugging the zombie mythology back to the surface with it.

And this change in cultural zeitgeist was best reflected in Daniel Boyle’s 28 Days Later, released in 2002. Although filmed prior to the attacks, the movie still managed to capture the general anxieties of the time. Instead of lumbering brainless idiots of Romero’s creations, these undead creatures struck at a lightning quick speed. These rapid and mindless attacks seemed to embody this new type of terrorism of suicidal airplanes, anonymous anthrax mailings, and a distant sniper killing random targets.

Although, it wasn’t until another domestic tragedy when the zombie mythology really began to pick up speed. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck, demolishing the city of New Orleans. Not only did home videos capture the destruction for everyone to see in vivid detail, but the bungled recovery effort likewise added to the feeling of helplessness. Scenes of apocalyptic destruction were suddenly no longer relegated to big screen Hollywood fantasies. And out of this rubble, two major zombie novels were released the following year: World War Z by Max Brooks and Cell by Stephen King, the premiere name in horror fiction.

And in 2008, just as the country appeared to be on the path to recovery, the real estate market slammed to its knees. The entire financial industry imploded, collapsing on par with the 1929 stock market crash. And similar to how the Great Depression ushered in a classic age of Hollywood horror: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), Freaks (1932), and King Kong (1933), this recession brought the highest grossing zombie film of all time: Zombieland (2009), along with TV’s first zombie-centric show, The Walking Dead (2010). The zombies had returned. And in great numbers.

Currently, there seems to be no end in sight for this zombie fever. Hollywood has three undead projects slated for 2013, including a summer blockbuster release of World War Z starring Brad Pitt. Of course, spending millions of dollars on this zombie craze doesn’t guarantee it will resonate with the culture as a whole. However, with the stalled economy forcing even college graduates to move back in with their parents, along with the piles of ever mounting debts, there’s a growing sense things are only getting worse. From Tea Partiers to Occupiers, society is splitting into ever more polarized camps. And each one is convinced the other side is ruining everything, while likewise believing there is no way to stop the collapse. And whenever there’s a fissure in society, the flesh guzzling undead are never too far behind, waiting to chew on the pieces.

Drake Vaughn is the author of “The Zombie Generation” (Dead Orb Press, 2012). He lives in Santa Monica, CA with his wife and a spunky black cat who has returned from the dead on a number of occasions.

Season's Greetings, y'all. I used to write academic fiction, and here's one of my short stories set on Christmas Eve in Athens, GA in the early 1990s. It was written for fiction workshop at University of Alabama around 1994. Note: contains adult themes.





Courage
by Matt Posner

It’s the day before Christmas. Survive it with me if you can. I’m Clyde Carswell, Jr., slumpshouldered pillowgutted frecklearmed rawthroated Clyde Carswell, Jr. Add a buzz haircut, gold wire-rimmed glasses, soft puffy flesh, little beady squinty eyes. I look kind of like a cracker and kind of like the crazy guy the family keeps locked in the attic. They said that in college, when I was studying the trumpet. My sister Annie was in art school, but she crapped out. So much for the salvation of our family. Daddy was a telephone lineman and a beersligging sonofabastard and Mother was a homemaker and they lived in Athens, Georgia. Annie and I were born there, and both our parents died, and Annie moved away. I still live there. I’m twenty-eight.

Annie is twenty-two. The guy she’s marrying, you should see him. Hell, if you don’t know him, you know someone else just as bad. Life’s like swimming in a bowl of rotting food. It’s putrid and you struggle and sooner or later you have to hit the end of the damn bowl and you figure you’ll pull yourself over the rim and smell some clean air. Sure you will.

I play second-chair trumpet in a small-town orchestra for a career, but for a living I’m a miserable pet store clerk. You’d think it would be just wonderful, being with animals all the time. That’s not how it really is. Just like people, animals take a bite out of you any chance they get. The jobs I had to get through college were worse. I dug ditches, I drove a cab. Worst job was, I was a salad bar attendant at a family restaurant in Marietta. Six days a week of wilted lettuce.

I’ve had a headache ever since I got out of college. I have a headache when I go to sleep and I wake up with it like some people wake up with morning breath. Why did I set myself up for this? Because it was time to quit being a cracker. Mother and Daddy wanted it that way. Get culture, they said. So I gave up all my cracker ways to blow into a horn that laughs at me if I hit the right notes, because no notes I blow are sweet, and farts at me if I blow wrong. Go on, laugh at me. I’m an ugly deerhearted sourfaced sonofabitch. When you get through laughing, I’ll tell you about Annie and Dwayne.

Christmas Eve, Annie and Dwayne were driving up from Mobile. I knew why. She called and told me. Since I’m head of the family now, Dwayne has to ask me for official permission to marry her, Annie said. She said, “Just say yes and shake his hand.” I said, “Do I have to say yes?”

Annie said, “Shut up, Clyde.” She said it in a sweet little whisper, like she was telling a sleeping baby about rock candy and chocolates, not like she was telling her brother he was a loudmouth piss-ant.

I said, “I don’t like Dwayne.”

Annie said, “We’ll be there tomorrow.”

When we were children Annie was supposed to play piano and I was supposed to play fiddle. Mother said we had to turn out different, different from Annie being barefoot and pregnant like she was, and me being a suntanned drunk like Daddy. But Annie didn’t like piano and I didn’t like fiddle. I took up the trumpet, but Annie started painting. When she was a girl she had a summer job in a flower shop and brought home old flowers they threw away and arranged them in a vase on the patio and painted still-lifes of them. Oil painting costs a lot of money, but Mother and Daddy came up with it somehow. We ate a lot of lettuce some months, why is why I hate goddamn lettuce like I was saying before.

After Annie got tired of flowers she got a fishbowl, and when the fish all died she painted everyone in the family and all her friends and most of the neighbors, the ones Daddy didn’t hate, that is. After that, she went out and painted in the park or at the public pool. She tried painting a little league game once, but a foul ball knocked her easel over. She went to an art school, but they all wore their hair funny, so she got tired of that pretty fast and moved to Mobile where some school friend of hers was, and about a year later she met Dwayne Taylor.

Dwayne was a Gulf War veteran. He was the gunner in a tank that fought Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. He came back from Saudi Arabia dusty and horny and he went into the insurance office where Annie worked and about a month of dating they were in love. Whatever the hell being in love is. Another month after that they were engaged.

I didn’t trust Dwayne Taylor before I met him. I don’t think I can ever trust anyone who wants to lay my sister. Annie’s skinny like one of those trees you plant in your backyard that doesn’t take, so it stays three feet tall for five or six years and then it dies and you pull it up and throw it in the dumpster. Annie is so skinny she can still buy clothes from the store racks for teenage girls. When she walks you can almost see her hip bones moving inside her jeans. Now, I’m not saying she’s sick. It runs in my family for women to be so skinny. Mother couldn’t get over a hundred pounds till after she gave birth to her slobbering son. Annie’s not sick, but she does look kind of sick: a little pinched mouth, almost no cheeks, no backside, no chest. I guess I always figured any guy who thought she was sexy would have some kind of emotional problem. Either that, or he would be able to see through her being so bony to love her for having the soul of a painter. Maybe painters have souls. After two years playing in an orchestra, I know damn sure that musicians don’t.

I met Dwayne Taylor and I said to myself, “He not only can’t see through to her soul, he can’t see through a glass of water.” He was small and hard as a fire hydrant. He had black eyes and needed a shave and his every word twanged like a banjo and he was wearing pink and blue shorts and a T-shirt that read, “God, Guns, and Glory.” Everything about him said, “Cracker and proud of it.” I hate people who live their lives as stereotypes because it never occurred to them there was any other way to be. There is another way to be, goddamn it. The other way’s a puddle of shit too but at least you know it and the guy who knows he’s in the shit is better than the guy who breathes it like a mudskipper.

The occasion that time was going camping, because Dwayne liked sitting on a river bank killing fish and he figured I liked it too. Annie knew better but she didn’t say anything. She said, “I can swim a little. I never get to do that much, Clyde.” I said, “I don’t want to kill any fish.” She said, “I know you. You won’t catch any.”

So we went out to some campground with an Indian name and Annie had one swim and spent the rest of the time cooking or sleeping. Meanwhile Dwayne put a fishing rod in my hand and sat me down on the bank and we got acquainted, which means Dwayne told me his dumbshit opinions. “This country’s going down the toilet,” he said, banjo-voiced, “that’s what it is. The country has lost its morality. This used to be a Christian country. Now all these, whatyoucall, other faiths are moving in.”

I said, “Uh huh.” The river bank was rocky; my backside hurt.

“Like, you take the Arabs.” He pronounced it ay-rabs. “These boys figure, all the money they got, they just buy whatever chunk of the country they want.” He finished a beer and got another out of his cooler. “Back at home, they have all these rigid morals, like the women wear veils, and everyone kneels and prays ten goddamn times a day. Then they come over here, buy some big house, surround it with security guards, and send out for rich foods, and whores, and they laugh at us. They laugh at this country.”

I said, “Uh huh.” I’d never seen an Arab in Athens. I figured they lived in Dwayne’s imagination.

“Want a beer?”

“Maybe later.” I didn’t trust myself to get drunk with Dwayne. I might say what I thought and then he’d punch the shit out of me. Or some of the shit, anyway. I don’t run out.

“And the Japanese,” Dwayne twanged on. “They’re just the same way. They want to buy this country up, just like they buy all those other countries. I studied it. I know all about it. Like Malaysia. They bought it all. It’s called, whatyoucall, economic imperialism. Yeah, that’s what it is.”

“Uh huh.” Like the Japanese or any other group of people were packs of evil clones.

“Sure you don’t want a beer? I got enough for the whole weekend.”

“My stomach hurts,” I said.

Dwayne grinned at me like he knew me inside and out. “I’ll tell you why that is,” he said. “Why your stomach hurts. It’s the goddamn trumpet, is what it is.”

I said, “I don’t think so.” I tried moving the fishing rod around, so I’d have an excuse to look at the water instead of at him.

“You shouldn’t play an instrument, Clyde,” Dwayne said. “You can see it don’t agree with you. A man like you and me needs to admit what he is. We’re the same kind, Clyde. You know I’m right.”

“I’m sick to my stomach,” I said. “Let me have a beer.”

That was my first long conversation with Dwayne Turner. The others were pretty much the same way. The worst part of the trip wasn’t Dwayne’s halfassed opinions, though. It was late at night. They were in their tent, and I was in mine, and I was supposed to be asleep, and instead I had to listen to them screwing in the tent. Muffled voices, mostly Dwayne saying, “There now, yes now, there now, yes now,” over and over, like someone who can’t remember the rest of a song, and Annie squeaking like a doorhinge, as if she liked getting it from that Gulf War prick, or as if she wanted him to think so. It had to be hurting her; he was making grunting sounds too, unk, unk, unk, into those little hips of hers. I was damn near ready to puke. I thought, “I’ve got to get you away from him, Annie. I’ve got to get you away.”

*

So now, the day before Christmas. All day I knew they were on their way in and would get there right about when I got home from work. All day, starting from 7 AM, I was in the pet store with my splitting headache, and also with a nagging cough from my perennial trumpeter’s throat infection. By 5 PM my head was ringing like a rusty cowbell, and my throat itched like mad because I hadn’t gotten a lunch hour to go pick up my antibiotics to get rid of it. There was no time to do that before Annie and Dwayne were supposed to show up, and there was no time to go for groceries either, which I was planning to do, so I went straight home to meet them. I had about two minutes to lie on my couch, right by the door, with no light but the last of the Athens sun through the twisted blinds and my fat arm over my face to block that out, then there was a bashing sound on the door, had to be Dwayne. I rolled off the couch and opened the door and Dwayne came in holding a six-pack and grabbed my hand and squeezed it into a bleeding marshmallow and sat on the couch and opened a beer and handed me one. My throat itched. I stood there looking at the beer can in my hand like it was a giant insect. He didn’t notice, but looked out the door and shouted, “Hey, Annie, you going for food?”

Annie came to the door loaded down with luggage: two suitcases, an athletic bag, a sack of road-trip garbage with crushed beer cans in it. I took the suitcases and carried them into my bedroom, where they were going to sleep. I left the beer on the nightstand. I came out and looked at Annie. There was no color in her face at all; she was standing by the door, holding the bag and the garbage, like she was so close to dead she had no idea where she was or where to go. I took the bag and the garbage and put them where they belonged while Dwayne turned on the TV. I heard the sound of static. My TV wasn’t much more than furniture without a cable hookup, but if Dwayne wanted to mess with it, fine for him.

I came back out. Annie was still standing in place. “You look tired, “ I said to her.

“Goddamn right I’m tired,” Dwayne said. He was twisting my TV antenna, trying to get a picture on any channel. “Hungry, too. You got any steaks in this place, Clyde?”

"I don’t even have any Fruit Loops,” I said. My head throbbed. I went to Annie and tried to hug her. She lifted her arms a little, but that was about it. Her coat was more solid than her bones. I knew why; Annie always got carsick on long trips. She probably hadn’t eaten all day, and had puked up water at the rest stops.

“I could use a big steak,” Dwayne said. “What do you think, Annie? Want to go get Clyde and me some, whatyoucall, filet mignon?”

“I’ll go,” I said. “I can cook dinner.”

Dwayne looked away from the static for a moment, looked at me. “Damn, Clyde,” he said, “your TV’s a real piece of shit, ain’t it?”

His pouchy red face, his pained, innocent eyes, his unconscious combat-ready stance, all just about made me sick. Not carsick, like Annie; just Dwaynesick. My head throbbed, and my throat itched, like they both had all day, but worse.

“I’ll take Annie, and we’ll go shopping,” I said. “You just rest up from the drive.”

“You sure?”

“We’ll be fine. Right, Annie?”

“Sure, Clyde,” Annie said in a weak, droning voice. Not Annie’s voice like it was supposed to be, like it was when she was a girl, grinning shithappy about what was on her easel. A voice like a groan, like the sound you make when you find a hundred leeches hanging off your belly and you figure they were there a long time. I had to get her away from Dwayne. He was breaking her. I took her hand – bones light as a bat’s – and led her like a child. “Come on, Annie. Let’s hit the store.”

I got her into my car – she still walking soft and limp as a scarecrow – and pulled out into traffic.

My car was a brown Escort with a wrinkled driver-side door. It always took a few pulls to get that door to latch shut, ever since a tourist from Ontario sideswiped me a year before. The window on the passenger side was stuck open a half-inch. The air-conditioning vents blew foam. Starting and stopping, the car wheezed like a lung cancer victim. Riding in it was like flirting with lung cancer, anyway, since before and after every orchestra practice, I played chauffeur to a flautist named Wanda Tracy who chain-smoked menthol cigarettes. With all its defects, though, I drove my Escort at the highest possible speed. I passed every slow-moving pickup, delivery van, or geriatric Lincoln I could possibly pass.

So today I plunged my groaning Escort into the Christmas Eve traffic and stopped dead. The traffic was going nowhere. Up ahead, the light had been green for at least a minute. It seemed as if no one had noticed. I looked at Annie. I said, “This is good practice for being parked.”

Annie closed her eyes and put her seat back. She was as white as a snowman, lying like a corpse in a coffin.

I have to go to the drugstore first,” I said. “I need to refill my lithium so I can make it through Christmas.”

She didn’t laugh – no surprise to me.

The traffic moved a few inches. “Hey, Annie,” I said, “help, quick! Is this pedal the brake or the clutch?”

She didn’t laugh at that one, either. We lurched forward a few yards. The light turned red.

“Annie,” I said, “you’re worrying me.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me, but didn’t raise her head. “I’m okay, Clyde. I’m just tired is all. I’ll perk up.”

“I’ll take you to the drive-through window at Hardee’s, get you a hot snack. It’s on the way. Just up the street. Should only take about two hours.”

My sister managed a small grin. She kept her eyes closed. I didn’t think it was heartfelt; I thought she was trying to appease me. Like you appease an angry God; give him a sacrifice, even if it’s just a smile. Smile and he leaves you alone. But this wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Dwayne had her trained to this appeasement bullshit.

Traffic moved somewhat. Winter air trickled through the stuck window, across Annie’s face and coat and down the back of my pants. We went through the Hardee’s drive-through. Annie got a small fries and a small Diet Coke. She ate one or two fries, sipped the Coke, and sat there chewing the straw, or maybe just tonguing it.

I stopped at the filling station. Annie was rubbing the straw across her lips, while my headache was erupting like Mt. St. Helens. Mt. St. Carswell. Mt. St. Carswell, Jr. I got into a dispute with the kid inside about whether the pump I’d pre-paid for was functioning.

“You can go out and try it,” I said. “I swear to you it’s not on. You may think you turned it on, but it is not putting out gas.”

“Try again,” said the kid.

While I was pumping the gas I had a coughing fit, and some bile burned up into my throat. I needed the damn antibiotic. When I got into the car, Annie had eaten a few more fries and was trying to pull open a ketchup packet with her bone-thin fingers. I had a sip of the Coke to ease my throat, pulled into traffic, and stopped at another green light.

“If you think this traffic’s bad,” I said, “you should see it at 3 a.m.”

Annie chewed her straw.

“How was the trip?” I asked.

“It was okay,” Annie said.

“Did you get this kind of traffic?”

“Not this bad.”

“You made good time.”

“Uh huh.”

“E equals M.C. squared.”

“Very funny, Clyde.”

After the next brief lurch forward, I said, “You don’t want to talk much, do you?”

Annie sat up. “I’m too tired.”

“I’m never too tired to get pissed off. It keeps my blood moving.” I pointed. “See that Aries up there? Trying to make a left turn out of the right lane. Blocking traffic in both directions.”

“Oh, who cares, Clyde?”

“I care. You have to call a jackass a jackass when you see him, or else you’re going to be him. Know the ways of fools, Annie, and act otherwise.”

Annie looked at me with deep disgusted weariness. “Whatever you say, Clyde. Your wisdom is too much for me.”
There was no more talk for a while. My head and throat were both hurting me so much that I hit some kind of fugue state where I didn’t notice much of anything practical but was thinking about an old fantasy I had more than ten years before. When I was seventeen and going off to college I thought while I was there I’d meet some girl who was damn fool enough to marry me. I knew how it would happen, too. I’d be in some studio or apartment somewhere tooting away at a Handel concerto, crisp and clean as everything, maybe not the best performance ever, but just good enough that you could hear it and know I was for real, good enough that you would know I meant what I was doing. Good enough that you would know Clyde Carswell, Jr. had enough heart and enough guts to go anywhere and do anything that had the word “trumpet” in it. The word “man” in it. So I’d be there playing, and there’d be a knock at the door, and I’d let her in, and she’d say, “I heard you playing, and I just had to see who it was.” And then lunch and dinner and another lunch and another dinner and playing duets and writing sonatas and touring the country together, Clyde Carswell, Jr. and wife. We’d be on the stage, and out in the audience they’d say, gee, Carswell sure is ugly but they say she really loves him, you can hear how they love each other by how they play.

I was lost in this, and then a honking horn and the smell of menthol cigarettes and a succession of my own coughs brought me back to my new location, the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, waiting behind ten other cars because someone ahead might be pulling out of a space, and next to me my fading sister Annie. Nothing more was said, and ages later we got a space and I got out of the car and headed for the drugstore. Annie followed me; probably she had had it with sitting in cars. I didn’t say much while we were waiting for my prescription, and Annie didn’t say anything. She wandered off while I was in line to pay. I popped an antibiotic soon as I owned it.

Annie was in line at the front counter with an Almond Joy and a copy of Modern Bride. There were eight people in front of her and six people behind. Most of them were buying bows and wrapping paper. The line wasn’t moving. No goddamn line was moving anywhere in Athens, maybe anywhere in Georgia. Waiting in line on Christmas Eve is like waiting for a landfill to rot.

I touched Annie on the shoulder; after a little jump and peep, like a surprised cat, she gave me a weak loveless smile and looked away. I stood beside her, trying not to cough up my pill. I began to hear the drugstore Muzak. We waited thirty minutes. I heard “The Little Drummer Boy.” Then “Jingle Bell Rock.” Then “O Come All Ye Faithful.” “Jingle Bells.” “The Little Drummer Boy.” “Jingle Bell Rock.” Meanwhile I stood there looking at the green streamers hanging over the cash register, at a display of Casper the Ghost and Yogi Bear cartoon videos for sale on the counter next to me, reduced to $9.99, and when I threw my head back in frustration at the wait, at a cardboard scene overhead, featuring Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, arm in arm, supervising a rosy-cheeked girl-elf with a green pointed hat and little pointed green shoes sitting at a workbench with a hammer. I coughed worse and worse and my head pulsed more and more and the clock ticked on while Annie and I didn’t talk about how she was going to chain herself to Dwayne, and I could feel how the people behind us hated us for being ahead of them just like I hated everyone in line ahead of us for the same reason, and I found I couldn’t take it anymore, and I began to sing.

“Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock!” I sang. The stout, middle-aged woman in front of us looked back in rabid contempt. I have no singing voice, but I have a trumpeter’s wind, and I am very loud. “Come on, Annie!” I shouted. “Jingle Bell Rhyme, in Jingle Bell Time! Sing along with me!”

“I don’t feel like singing, Clyde,” Annie said.

“Ringling Tingling, that’s the Jingle Bell…”

“Stop, please.”

“That’s the Jingle Bell Ro-ock!” I stopped singing. “Oh, boy!” I said to the woman in front of us. “I sure do love Christmas music. Don’t you?”

The woman wouldn’t look at me.

“I’m sorry you don’t feel well, Clyde,” Annie said. “”Let’s just get through this if we can, okay?”

I said, “Jingle Bell Rock is my life.”

The crowd wasn’t so bad in the Piggly Wiggly. We got three filet mignons, a bottle of steak sauce, and salad fixings. My throat was cracking. We got to salad dressings, I grabbed a bottle of bleu cheese, Annie’s favorite. She said, “No.” I said, “That’s your favorite.” She said, “Not any more. Get ranch.” I said, “I hate ranch. You hate ranch.” “I don’t hate ranch,” she said, “and Dwayne always eats it.” I said, “Well, I guess that settles it.”

Same thing in the produce section, almost word for word, when Annie put radishes in the buggy. This time she gave me a don’t-mess-with-me-look. “Radishes it is then,” I said, “but I’m going to pick mine out and put them on your plate.”

The Muzak overhead changed to “Twelve Days of Christmas.” More like sixty days of Christmas, with time off for good behavior.

It was unbearable. I left Annie in line and split to the bathroom. There, in mid-defecation, rubbing my forehead and gulping saliva, I tried to clear my head. I had to do or say some goddamn thing before we left that store, to keep Annie from Dwayneing her life away. I needed an idea. Dropping and dribbling, rubbing and gulping, I got as close to an idea as I could get. Or I should say, if getting an idea were like getting shot in the head, this would only be a flesh wound.

When I got back, Annie was next in line. In front of us was a young mother, a few years younger than me, heavy in the hips, with a rag tied round her head, a pink face, gray sweat pants, a black Falcons sweatshirt, and two howling children. She had about $200 in picnic groceries. I could see on her face that her day had been too long, and she wasn’t up to handling her brats. Too bad. Shouldn’t have brought them. Shouldn’t have birthed them.

The older boy, wearing ridiculous white overalls, threw a candy bar amid the groceries. It landed between the Diet Mountain Dew and the cut-rate hamburger. She said, “Peter, please put it back.” Meanwhile, the younger boy, age three or four, wearing a sailor blouse and a diaper, began to pull on her pants leg.

I gave Annie a look of disgust. She pretended not to see it.

Peter ignored his mother. She repeated, ‘Peter, please put it back.” The boy couldn’t reach, not that he was trying. The younger boy began pulling on her shirt.

“Please wait, Kevin,” she said.

The child sat down, white diaper on unclean Piggly Wiggly floor, and began to cry.

“What is it, Kevin? Peter, please put the candy back.”

The crying became caterwauling. The girl at the checkout seemed entirely oblivious, and was trying to get something coated with ice to ring through on the laser scanner.

I looked at Annie. She did not look back. I said, “I’ve had enough.” I stopped and looked eye to eye at the little bastard in the white overalls.

“Peter,” I said, “if you don’t put the candy bar back, I’m going to knock your goddamn head off. You got me?”

Peter ran behind his mother. The other child cried more loudly. The mother looked down at me with her mouth open.

“Ma’am,” I said, grinning up at her, “it’s my considered opinion that you should not be burdened with these children.”

The checkout girl didn’t say anything, but she put down the icy package and leaned over the counter to stare at me, like a few tired and frustrated eyeballs could shut me up.

“It just so happens,” I said to the mother, “that I know just what you should do. Take the little one home and put some pants on him. He’s going to freeze his little dinky off before Santa comes. Give the bigger one to me and I’ll show him where to put his candy.”

The mother reddened and heaved, as if struggling with an unhappy stomach, but by and by she came out with a scream: “How dare you?”

“Just a concerned citizen, ma’am.”

Annie grabbed me by the arm and tugged with all the might in her bony little body. It wasn’t enough to move me, low and fat as I am, except I was so eager to go. The unbought groceries, the puling child, the hysterical mother, the long-eyeballed clerk were all left behind and Annie dragged me out to the Escort and pushed me against the dented driver-side door. I was wearing my biggest shit-eating cracker grin, but even so, even while my flesh-wound of an idea was working, I felt odd about it. I’d started out the trip trying to get Annie away from a thoughtless bastard, and now here I was trying to get a rise out of her. Something was off about that.

“Don’t act like I did anything,” Annie shouted, “because I didn’t do a goddamn thing! What’s wrong with you? Why’d you make a scene in there?”

“Because I wanted to see you alive for a change. All you’ve been is a goddamn zombie. Dwayne says this. Dwayne likes that. What about what you say, and what you like?”

“I’m tired, Clyde!”

“Well, I’m tired too. We’re all goddamn tired. Living is hard, Annie. So what?”

“Well, why the hell are you making it harder for me?”

“Because your fiancee is a damn jackass, that’s all,” I said. “I just don’t get you. What are you thinking, wanting to marry that loudmouth? You want to be his damn maid for the rest of your life?”

A pause. That took a lot of breath. My throat hurt worse, but my head was a little better.

Finally Annie said, “Are you saying you won’t give us your approval?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all. You know and I know my approval isn’t worth spit anyway. But I know what Daddy would have said.”

Annie looked away.

“Uh huh.” I pressed her. “You know, too. He’d say, ‘Annie, don’t go and marry another cracker out of the box.’ That’s what he’d say. He’d say, ‘What happened to your painting, Annie?’ Wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know what he’d say.”

“That’s what he’d say, Annie. That’s why I can’t figure you.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to be a painter anymore,” Annie snapped. “Maybe I’m not good enough for that. What difference does it make?”

“Because Dwayne’s a damn jackass,” I said, “and in his little pin head he can’t see you doing a goddamn thing but cleaning his house and birthing a lot of fat barefoot kids whose idea of a good time will be going out in the woods and blowing hell out of deer and squirrels with goddamn automatic rifles. Don’t you see that? If you don’t see that, what the hell do you see when you look at the son of a bitch?”

“He’s good,” Annie said, “and he’s strong, and he won’t leave me. He acts different with me than he does around you. He’s not really like that.”

“Oh, I’m sure he isn’t. I bet he’s twice as bad, isn’t he?”

“He loves me.” Annie pounded the car with her white fist. “I’m not strong like you are, Clyde. I need someone to love me. I’m afraid to be alone.”

I couldn’t look at her after that. I never knew Annie thought I was strong any way at all, especially not that way. I stood there a minute, and the Christmas Eve air froze in my throat. I could hear Annie’s whistling breaths as she tried to calm down. Finally I dug in my pocket. “Here’s my money,” I said. My hand shook while I gave it to her. “Go buy the food. I’ll wait here.”

“What are you going to say to Dwayne?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. What do I know about anything? If you want to marry him, you will. Just… keep in touch with me in case you get into trouble.”

She took the money. I reached out for her hand, her shoulder, but she was already headed back for the Piggly Wiggly and I’d never seen her skin and bones look so proud and lovely in all her twenty-two years. Imagine Annie thinking I was the brave one in the family. God damn.

When she was out of sight, I took a deep breath and walked around the car. I got in on the passenger side and let the seat way back and looked through the front windshield at the gray sky, put up my hands and played a little trumpet solo in the cold air. Just my tired throat, a couple of stiff fingers, the twilight, and the still, cold air. As silent as I could, as silent as it had to be.

Pleased to present a draft sample from School of the Ages 4: Simon Myth. This is from a chapter near the end. Simon is speaking, and his team is assembled in his grandmother's house in Mumbai (Bombay).


It was hours later when the doorbell rank. The naukar* admitted a small man in a tattered gray suit with a wilted flower in his boutonniere. He was about fifty and had wet brown eyes and pouty lips and was holding a cane made of rosewood with a bronze cap.

“That is him,” said Devi. “Bakshi, this useless excuse for a jaadugar*.”

“Useless?” Bakshi countered. “Madame, I protest. Things are difficult. They take time. With patience, we will be able to…”

“A refund,” my father said. “The full amount, minus one month’s fee as a courtesy. Write a check.”

“Absolutely not,” said Bholenath Bakshi. He wrung the ends of his stick. “There are no refunds from jaadu*. I have been paid for ceaseless efforts to…”

“To what?” Goldberry interrupted.

“My dear,” said Bakshi, lifting his cane which he shook like a wagging finger. “You must leave this matter to the…” He mouthed ‘experts’ but then he looked at her with broader recognition. “Oh, well,” he recovered, “I see I must acknowledge you as a junior colleague.”

“Oh, you see that, do you?” she pressed. “What else do you see?”

“I see that when you mature, young woman, you will understand better the true nature of…”

“Rubbish.”

Bakshi gripped his stick tightly. “In time, you will know the…”

“She knows the ten rimzas, the secret seals of the planets,” I said.

“All well and good,” Bakshi said, noticing with a glance that Rocco and Balaram were now standing behind him. “The ten rimza seals are useful in some conditions, but…”

“There’s only nine of them,” Rocco said into his ear.

“Keep your distance, boy!” Bakshi blurted. He raised his cane in a warning pose.

“Thanks,” Rocco said, and snatched it from his hand.

“Give her a refund,” I told Bakshi. “We offered you one month as a courtesy, even though you don’t deserve it.”

“You fake,” Balaram added.

Bakshi made a grab for his stick. Rocco, taller and sprier, easily evaded him.
“You have one more chance to accept these conditions,” I continued.

“There are no refunds for jaadu,” Bakshi insisted.

“You didn’t do any jaadu, yaar*,” Balaram said. “Right. You just took the money and spent it on what? Liquor? Gambling?”

“Give me that!” Bakshi snarled as he grabbed for his stick. “Do not test me, for I am Mahamayakar*, Mahaabhyosi*. I am Sarvajna, all-knowing! If you challenge me, you shall…”

“All-knowing,” said Rocco. “Okay. What’s my name?”

Bakshi thought about it. “Cretin,” he answered.

“Yep,” said Rocco. “He’s good. Mr. Moore, can I kick his ass?”




* naukar (Hindi): a house servant. pronounced like "knocker"
jaadugar (Hindi): magician, wizard.
jaadu (Hindi): magic
Mahamayakar (Sanskrit): A great wizard
Mahaabhyosi (Sanskrit): A great spiritual aspirant. Clumsily used, indicating what a phony he is.

Simon Myth update. Today I had some time to work. Here's what I did...

I typed up the end of Chapter 32, which was already drafted in my notebook. A few improvements.

I finished a first draft of Chapter 39. I don't like what I wrote, but I may change my mind when I get some distance.

I cancelled Chapter 40. The book's too long and my ideas for it are too vague. I can always do a short story another time with that material.

I added some material to Chapter 41 (all the chapter numbers will be redone).

I cut half of Chapter 26 and pasted it into Chapter 43, which gives me half of chapter 43 but I need to fill in the gap in Chapter 26.

This is really a lot of noise but not much production. However, it means something to me because I am getting rid of nagging problems. I'd been sitting on an unfinished Ch. 39 for something like six months. Plus, cutting Ch. 40 was momentous since I did a lot of research for it. You know how it is when you have to work on something a lot in order to realize it's no good. There's a certain satisfaction that comes from getting rid of something you are attached to. It makes you (or me anyway) feel virtuous. But overall, I just want this book finished. I have never been so "over" a book as I am "over" this one. I feel like it's the hardest book I ever wrote. And I haven't even started cutting the opening section, which is in a mess. And still a lot of the end part isn't written yet. ARgh.

This is from Chapter Thirteen. Mr. Tinker (Goldberry's father) is a guest teacher.



“You’re to learn advanced concealment,” said Mr. Tinker. “Should have been taught to you second year, but..." He paused. He knew a criticism would not be well-received. “Well, then. Advanced concealment differs from our general concealment magic mainly in its force. Advanced concealment hides you from the notice of even fellow magicians unless they are searching for concealed individuals or are extremely alert by nature. There is only one student present in this building who I expect to become able to hide from me or the Dean, and no one has ever been able to evade the attention of Maestro Morgan. As for Rabbi Horn, he has a set of magic cuff links.”

I assumed Mr. Tinker meant Rocco when he named the superior student. Rocco was and always had been expert in going unnoticed, and had developed a spell for total invisibility, although it had an unacceptable side effect.

“A simple tactic was used in my day to intensify focus on concealment as required. To become and stay concealed under the conditions created by the tactic, you will in some way, particular to you, break through to a deeper level of presence of mind. I need a volunteer.”
Rocco raised his hand.

“Good. Leave your hand up. Spread your fingers wide.” Mr. Tinker seized the upraised right hand. “Between each finger is a web of skin of varying size. Grasp the web between ring and index finger, so.” He clamped his fierce fingers in that spot on Rocco’s hand. “Now pull vigorously.”

Rocco winced, yelped, then settled into the pain.

“Now, turn on power of concealment,” said Mr. Tinker.

“I can’t hide while you’re holding onto me,” Rocco protested.

“Make me forget that I am holding onto you.”

“Can I make you let go of me first?”

“That’s not the goal.”

Rocco gritted his teeth. “Maybe I need to practice first.”

Mr. Tinker lifted his hand still higher. “When Cornelius Archer did this to me, I lost feeling in my hand for a month. I’m being gentle, boy. Turn on power of concealment.” He then began to tell us a story about breaking a man’s kneecap on the rugby field and then throwing the man’s sister into the River Mersey after the game. “Proved to me that cows don’t float.”

Then he went to the front of the room and discussed a spell to make mold grow in a butter dish. Then he rubbed his hands together. “Turn it off!” he announced.

“Turn what off?” asked Rocco, who was standing next to him at the podium.
I hadn’t seen him follow Mr. Tinker to the front of the room. My classmates conferred and we concluded no one had noticed when Rocco became concealed, nor had we seen him during the off-color rugby story.

Rocco returned to his seat and was rubbing the sore spot where Mr. Tinker had been pinching him.

“You have one week to master this,” Mr. Tinker declared. “Practice with your partners. When the class assembles next Tuesday, enter concealed. I’ll have a guest in the room. Anyone who is spotted by my guest will get six hours of scrubbing the floor of Conjuration Room C without knee pads. Go away and practice. Rocco.”

“Yes, boss?”

“If Goldberry can’t do this in three days, I’ll go and tell the cabala school seniors you’re a Palestinian.”

“You sodding well will not,” said Goldberry.

“It’s okay,” Rocco said. “We got it covered.”

It was true that Goldberry and I weren’t getting along well, but we could still work together on school work. What did he mean, assigning Rocco to work with her instead of me? I stayed after class to confront Mr. Tinker.

“Goldberry doesn’t need Rocco’s help,” I told him. “I’ll do it with her. Don’t you think I can learn to do this?”
“Of course you can.”

“Then why did you assign Rocco to help her? Am I not good enough for her all of a sudden?”

Mr. Tinker turned his back to me.
“Don’t play games with me,” I said.

That was a mistake.

He came around suddenly. “Or what, boy? Or you’ll thrash me? Or go whining to the Dean that I hurt your feelings? Or curse me into the shape of a hobby-horse? Just what will you do?”


If you liked this, please go and buy all my novels. I guarantee they are all full of adventure, romance, tragedy, and beauty.

This was the "best story" in my Florida State master's thesis. It's a reflection upon my two years as a high school wrestler, although Carson Bean is not me; he's a far better athlete but with a worse attitude.

This was written in 1991 in a dingy apartment in Alumni Village in Tallahassee, Florida.

The story contains the f-word and other profanity, so kids, and people who don't like reading such language, stop reading now.

The ending originally did not have a period at the end of the last sentence. I have added the period only so no one thinks there is an error.




Head and Arm
by Matt Posner





I'm Carson Bean. I used to wrestle one-twenty-eight for River High School. I stopped the day of the North High match my senior year.

Most wrestling seasons I can't remember eating. You have to be in amazing shape without any food. If you’re overweight when you come in on match day, you have to cut water weight by working out. One of our lightweight wrestlers, Pat Gables, used to come in for match-day morning weigh-in four, five pounds over. The day of the North High match, Coach Schmidt took him out of class and told Raz, the assistant coach, to keep him running in the stairwell to lose the weight. Raz does all Schmidt's dirty work.

I found out what Pat was doing during second period math from Steve Drexel, the loudmouth 135-pounder who wrestles after me in the lineup. When I got a chance, I ducked out of class, saying I was headed for the bathroom, and went to watch Pat run. There he was, brown skin and arms and legs like a chicken's, pacing the stairs panting and squeezing his waist. His curly hair was flattened by sweat, and he was rattling from the plastic garbage bag under his T-shirt and shorts which made him sweat more. Raz was yelling at him. "Suck it up, Pat!"

Pat just groaned, "Come on, Raz, I'm tired."

Raz shouted, "You should have thought of that before you pigged out last night."

I watched Pat dragging his ass up and down the stairs for a while. Raz nodded at me and said, "You make weight?"

"Yeah, Raz."

"Then get back to class."

"Yeah." So I took off. Back to Mr. Wong's algebra class and having to smell Drexel’s goddamn cologne even though he was two seats away. Pat had a real racket going with the coaches. He ate when he wasn't supposed to, and as a reward he got to skip class all day. It pissed me off, so I skipped out of sixth period English and went down to the locker room to stretch out. When I got there the wrestling room was open and Pat was in the tub.

I don't think I saw them use the tub but one other time. Coach Schmidt said it wasn't really safe. Pat must have still been a pound or so over and too tired to run anymore; probably he’d had to beg Raz to let him go in there. I could feel the heat as soon as I walked in. It was a big smooth steel tub, and you filled it up with water as close to boiling as was safe, and then the guy got in to sweat. Pat was lying there in the tub with his mouth open and his eyes shut.
You weren't supposed to go in there by yourself. You had to have a coach around to make sure you didn't faint, so Raz was probably next door in the football room, or across the hall in the weight room. Coach Schmidt said one time that if you fell asleep in the tub and you didn't get out in time, the water would make your skin get loose on your body. I could imagine a guy's skin coming off and all the blood vessels getting ripped, so under the skin it was all blood, just like a piece of meat marinating in a plastic bag.
I sat down on the bench, and finally Raz came in with his stopwatch. Raz used to be a heavyweight, and even as a coach, at about one-eighty, he could still wrestle the two-hundred-pound guys on our team. He had red hair and freckles, and got the nickname Raz 'cause one time he got sunburned and somebody said he looked like a raspberry. When he finally came in, he’d changed to the same River High shirt and the same pair of tan shorts he always wore on match days. I figured that when Raz was wrestling, he probably picked one move and stuck with it, and when it came to life he must have done the same thing, like, he wore the same clothes, ate the same foods, drove the same make of car, his girlfriends all had the same color hair and he met them all in the same singles bar. I'm like that. I just do the head-and-arm every match. If the guy I'm wrestling gets out, I keep doing it till I stick him or he sticks me.

Pat said, "Hey, man, I'm sweating my ass off in here."

"You're so skinny you don't even have an ass," Raz said. “Fucking toothpick."

"Yeah, fuck you, Raz," Pat said.

"You check weight yet?" Raz asked me. He forgot he’d already asked.

"This morning," I said. “I didn't eat anything today."

"Okay, no problem," Raz said. He clicked his stopwatch. "That's ten minutes, Pat. Get out."

Pat grabbed the edges of the tub and tried to pull himself out. He was too weak. "Aw, shit," he said. "Can't do it. Hey, Carson, give me a hand."

I got up and grabbed his forearms and pulled him up. He sat for a minute on the edge of the tub, then slowly swung his leg over. He held my arm, gripping painfully with his bony fingers, as I helped him walk, dripping and naked, to the scale outside in the main locker room. In wrestling, just like in boxing, they weigh you with the kind of scale a doctor has. The scale was shaking at one-oh-seven-and-a-half.

"One-oh-eight," Raz said. "Good job, Pat. Hit the shower."

"Yeah." Pat limped around the corner.
"How about you, Carson?" Raz asked. "You ready for Simpson?"

I had to wrestle Stuart Simpson that night in the dual meet. Simpson was district champion last year. He'd pinned me twice last season.

"I guess," I said.

"You know, Coach Schmidt and I were talking, and we both think you could beat Simpson if you'd just give up on the head-and-arm," Raz said. "I bet you a hundred dollars. You tried it and tried it last year, but it just doesn't work on him. Try some of that shooting I showed you yesterday."

"Yeah." Raz had drilled me and Drexel on an outside single-leg while the rest of the team was running the stairs. You glide around the guy, keep your head up and scoop the ankle and then step back, pull the leg just enough so he loses his balance and goes down on his belly. Then you get on top, control an arm and an ankle, and you have a two-point takedown. You don't have to lock up, so you don't give the other guy a chance to control your body. We drilled, and Drexel got the move and liked it, but for me it was just bullshit. I had to think to do it right, and wrestling isn't about thinking. If you need time to think, you're going to lose. You have to do it, as quickly and accurately as possible. It has to be an instinct. You do it by feel because your body knows the way to move, knows where the other guy's supposed to be and which way you're moving, even knows the way your singlet's supposed to wrinkle and which way your sweat flies off. Shooting just didn't feel right to me. Sure, maybe that's why I couldn't beat Simpson. I hated the way he walked into a locker room, swaggering, his nose up, those proud blue eyes of his. I wanted to pin the bastard, but only my way. Lock up, hook the forearm, and in one, smooth, snakelike strike, your hip goes into the body and your other arm goes around the shoulders and you tilt and dump the sonofabitch over your hip and fall on top, now controlling the arm and the head. Your whole weight goes onto the shoulders and you brace on your legs and you use your feet to steer and stay on top as he squirms. Keep your center of gravity on the shoulders, keep the pressure on, till you hear the ref hit the mat BANG mighty as thunder on a sunlit day, and you are the winner and you have dominated.

"Got to go make sure Pat doesn't drink the shower water," Raz said. I went back into the wrestling room, stripped, put on my spare singlet and a pair of shorts and started to stretch out. I did hurdler’s stretch, and my legs were so stiff that it hurt a lot. To distract from the pain I said my name. Carson Bean, Carson Bean. Carson Bean sticks Stuart Simpson. Carson Bean rubs Simpson's shoulders in the sweat and the grit. Ref checks the shoulders, then BLAM! hits the mat as hard as he can and blows the whistle. Pin! Carson Bean is on top. Brrrrstickem. You punk. Teach you to mess with Carson Bean.

Out of the hurdler's stretch into a full back neck bridge. Up on your toes and the top of your head, get your shoulders as far off the mat as you can. In the wrestling room there was about a third of an inch of carpet between the top of my head and concrete, so the floor was grinding my hair and pressing on my scalp. I arched back with the muscles above the shoulders bunching together, back straining, touched my nose, held it...Yeah. I'm Carson Bean. I'm five and three this season. Carson Bean, one hundred twenty-eight pounds of serious head-and-arm action. Outside the wrestling room, I heard Pat groaning, "I gotta take a nap, Raz."

"Yeah, go ahead, lie down," Raz said.

Scrub.

*
North High showed up at six-thirty. The JV match was supposed to be at seven. Whenever another team comes in I always look them over and guess who wrestles what weight and which guy is JV and which guy is varsity. There are always a few you can peg right away as new guys: tall thin guys, or guys with fat guts, or guys without any bruises on their faces, guys with skin so clean and smooth you know they've been drinking as much water as they felt like and after the match they probably go home and eat doughnuts and drink chocolate milk.
North High’s team stood around really quietly by some lockers talking in low voices. Coach Schmidt, who's short and built and has gray and black hair, knew their coach real well, so they were laughing as they checked over their charts and compared teams. Most of the rest of the team came out of the wrestling and football rooms to look North High over, but a few still hung out, like Pat, who didn't want to get up till he had to. Some of my teammates were still screwing around, telling dirty jokes and all that, but mostly we were real quiet, same as North High was. Funny how you hate guys who are into the same sport you are just because they're on a rival team.

Simpson, who was North High’s captain, had his foot up on a bench by the lockers, showing off his faded blue jeans and his cowboy boot, looking around the room with his eyes like goddamn vegetable peelers.

Finally the ref came in from the side door at a jog, apologized for being late, and we all stripped for weigh-in. We lined up by weight, varsity guy then JV guy. There was that kind of heavy, greasy, tangy smell you get when a lot of guys take their clothes off at the same time, the kind of smell that hits you in the face if you walk into it from fresh air. Then there was Drexel, in line not far behind me, with a fresh dose of his obnoxious cologne. Next to me was Simpson, buck-naked, strutting like a gunfighter. He was better built than me but still came in two pounds under weight.

After weigh-in, we got into our uniforms and went up to the gym. We'd rolled out and taped the mats that morning, also set up the chairs for the teams on either side, and Coach Schmidt had already opened up the folding bleachers, so all we had to do was sit around till match time. Most of the guys pulled out sandwiches and apples and bananas. The bleachers were still pretty empty except for parents of the JV team, sisters and girlfriends, and some football players wearing green North High shirts with the sleeves torn off to show their triceps and the sides ripped open to show their deltoids. The North High varsity came in and climbed up into the bleachers with them. Finally the coaches came up with the ref, and River High’s basketball coach, Dean "Duke" Brunner, in collar shirt, tie, slacks, and sneakers, followed them a minute later and went to the scorer's table. He messed with some controls, and the scoreboards, one on each end of the gym, blared and went on. The coaches gave him the record books to keep score in.

Finally the North High JV came in and warmed up, then took their seats and our guys came in. You can really tell a lot about a guy's attitude by what he looks like running on the mat. If he's got his shoulders out and he's breathing heavy, he's psyched up and wants to fight. If his head's down and he keeps looking side to side, he cut weight last night and he's tired and trying to get his blood flowing. Some of our guys were so out of it they couldn't keep their legs down for the hurdler's stretch. Didn't they know how pathetic they were? Didn't they know they lost matches because they were soft, clumsy, and lax? I'd been sick since seeing Pat in the stairwell, and I'd thought it was just hunger, but I looked at them and I knew it was scrubs who made me sick.

While the JV teams were wrestling, the gym filled up. There were two sets of bleachers, one on each side, and the two football teams sat on opposite sides and taunted each other while most of our JV got stuck. Then all the guys who just wrestled shook hands with North High's JV and went to the locker room to change, and the River High varsity warmed up. As always, I had to spar with Steve Drexel. He's our 135-pounder, tall, thin, strong legs, runs cross-country. He wears that cheap crappy cologne, I guess to cover up his body odor, and it always makes me sick whenever I’m around him. I did an easy head-and-arm on him; we got up and he did that outside single leg Raz had drilled us on.

"Come on, man," he whispered when we locked up again. "Why don't you do one?"

"I don't want to," I said.

"Listen, Carson, Simpson's gonna stick you if you don't."

I head-and-armed him, hard. I heard his breath go out, and he got up coughing and holding his neck. I figured the whole gym had noticed, but I looked around and no one had.

"What's your problem?" Drexel said.

"Just don't fuck with me."

The team huddled up in the center of the mat. We could all hear and feel each other breathing. Scott Bach, our captain, the 188-pounder, gave his usual kind of pep talk. "All right, this is it. Biggest match of the year. We can beat these fuckers, just remember keep your head up and keep moving. By the grace of God, amen." Then, light to heavy, we broke out of the huddle, ran once round the mat and over to our seats.
North High ran in clapping and chanting their war cry. Then, smooth as ballet, they were spread out in pairs throwing moves on each other. When they fell, it echoed in the gym, but after each move, no one ever went down; they hit their switches faster than you could snap your fingers. Simpson went to the center and shouted instructions: "Push-ups! Go! One! Two! Three! Four! Five!"

"Yeah, yeah," I said to Drexel. "He can count. Smart guy."

"Man, don't talk to me," Drexel said. "I hope he sticks you."

"Fuck you," I said. "I hope Jenks sticks you, too."

"Well, at least he didn't stick me the last two times I wrestled him," Drexel said.

I should have felt like hitting him, but instead my body got more cold and stiff, and I turned away, and even as I shook my head there was pressure on the back of my chair and a shadow fell over me. Coach Schmidt had his hands on both our seat-backs and was leaning over to whisper at both of us. "You guys got a problem?"

Drexel didn't say anything. I said, "Yeah, coach. I don't want to shoot on Simpson."

Coach Schmidt shook his head. "If you won't shoot on him, at least try to keep off your back."

"Yeah, thanks a lot, coach."

The coach whispered in my ear, "I'm not your mommy, and I don't care about your fucking temper tantrums. You don't want my advice, don't take it, but you’re screwing the team with your bad attitude. Got it?”

He walked away, and I muttered, "Fuck you, coach," under my breath.

North High ran around the mat again and went to their seats. The scoreboard blared as "Duke" Brunner cleared the JV score; the ref went out on the mat, blew his whistle and gestured for the hundred-pounders to come out on the mat.

The match went to the second period. I saw the end; our man, Mick Daniels, was bridging, his thin knees were up in the air, and the ref was checking the shoulder blades with his hand and they were clear and then they weren't and POW! the ref hit the mat and his whistle squealed Both wrestlers stood up and the ref raised the other guy's hand. They shook hands and walked off the mat and Pat Gables went trotting out, kind of awkwardly like he was lame, fit on his headgear and snapped it closed and put his feet on the line.

Across from him was Roger Fisher, who'd been wrestling varsity for North High three years already. Fisher was a blond guy who had so much muscle it looked like his skin might break when he moved. And there was Pat: the only difference between him and a broom was he had arms and legs. Pat had spent every minute he could all day sleeping so he'd have some energy for this match. How the hell was he going to hold out? Good. Stick him, Fisher. They touched hands, a slap not a shake, and the ref blew the whistle. They circled. Pat kept his arms in front of him, moved them slowly, twisted them out of grips Fisher tried. Fisher shot--slid a knee down and forward, reached for Pat's thighs, but Pat stepped back, pushed his head down, kind of jumped or slipped around him. Fisher was trying to keep moving in a circle so Pat couldn't get behind, but Pat was taller and he kept one hand on Fisher's back and with the other grabbed an ankle, put weight on Fisher and broke him down to his belly. Two point takedown. Typical lazy wrestling from Pat--took him almost no energy compared to Fisher's shot. And Pat was lying on him, let the ankle go and got an elbow. As Fisher tried to push up, Pat chopped the elbow in toward Fisher's body and he fell again and Pat brought his other arm up, worming it or wriggling it under the other elbow and across to the back of Fisher's blond head--half-nelson--and at the same time he was holding Fisher's other wrist, stretching Fisher's arm out so he couldn't use it to push up, and Pat scooted his waist off Fisher and began to run the half with his whole body, to turn Fisher over on his back. No way Fisher was going to let that happen. He kicked with his legs so he kept moving the direction Pat was going and Pat couldn't turn him. Pat lost the wrist and Fisher turned his head and peeled Pat's half-nelson away. Pat spun on him trying to get another grip and Fisher was on his knees, and then he thrust up. Pat came up slower holding his waist from behind, heaved and had him in the air and was going to bring him down on his butt and did, but Fisher had his arm back and he switched and now he was on top--two point reversal--and he was strong and he threw a half, caught Pat's leg to throw him over by force. Pat tried to go flat, but in seconds he was on his back bridging and trying to roll to his belly. The ref was counting back points. Pat squirmed to his belly quick enough that Fisher only got two back points. He started to get to his base and Fisher chopped the elbow and broke him down and started to turn him again and then the ref blew the whistle and Fisher got off and the ref signaled for the trainer. Our trainer went scooting out on the mat and bent over Pat, who was holding his waist and writhing around on the mat.

"Give me a break," I said. "I'm sick of Pat pulling this shit."

"Man, shut up," Drexel said.

I did. Up in the bleachers, North High's football team starting chanting, "Poor baby! Poor baby!" as loud as they could. Finally the trainer scooted off the mat and Pat crawled to the center of the mat and got in the down position, on all fours, his hands in front of him and in front of one line of tape, his knees behind another line, and the ref checked him and then gestured and Fisher got on top, one hand on his elbow, the other on his belly, the ref checked that, stepped back, and blew the whistle.

Fisher broke Pat down again, moved his other hand off his belly and got an ankle, but Pat sat out, Fisher lost the ankle and went back to the belly and tried to get him down on the side where he had the elbow, Pat tried a switch and screwed it up and he was on his back again. He bridged up, shot his free arm through and he was on his belly too fast for back points. He got to his base and sat out and reached around behind and caught Fisher by the back of the head. That was the desperate, knob-knuckled grip that had almost bruised me when I helped him from the tub to the scale earlier, and I knew Pat’s fingers wouldn’t slip, that he was clutching so tightly that Fisher’s skull could be warping from the pressure.

"Don't reach back!" Coach Schmidt bellowed, but Pat knew what he was doing and in a minute so did I. It was some crazy move he got at wrestling camp. I don't know how he did it, but somehow he pulled Fisher over his shoulder to his back. It was slow, Pat was pulling, he had his back and his triceps into it and Fisher’s greater strength should have let him break free, but finally he slid across Pat's shoulder and Pat got a leg and cradled him up, clasped his hands together, got a wide base with his legs and Fisher with all his muscles couldn't get out. He rolled and he bridged the best he could with just his neck and one foot, but I could tell, everyone could tell, Pat had him. It was nice and slow. Pat got his three back points and then settled in to wear Fisher out, used his weight instead of his muscles as much as he could. The ref checked and checked. I felt how my teeth were locked and my hands were wet. I wiped them on my singlet and Pat had his weight on the guy and I rubbed my forehead and Pat had his weight on the guy and I ran my hand through my hair and Pat had his weight on the guy and the ref slammed the mat and blew the whistle and Fisher was stuck. Pat let the cradle go and just lay there. Fisher got up and was massaging the back of his neck and Pat was just lying there like a pulped fruit.
And it hit me how wrong that was. It was wrong, Pat the lazy fuck lying there like he was dead. What an insult it was to Fisher and Coach Schmidt and Raz and the trainer and the rest of the North High team, an insult to me and to everyone. He was laughing at everyone, like he did it all without anything to do it with. He was weak and useless and he'd won anyway and he was laughing while he lay there, laughing and slapping us in the face It was wrong! Didn't anyone else see it? Didn't they see, the jeering football teams and the JV guys limping back into the gym with cokes from the locker room soda machine and "Duke" Brunner who didn't know how to dress and the fat parents losing their hair and wearing cheap jewelry and all the girlfriends and sisters in their shorts or jeans and loose school-colors T-shirts, didn't they see him laughing at them, laughing at Fisher, laughing at me?

"Pat!" I shouted. "Pat, get up, you lazy fuck!" I got out of my chair and ripped off my loose headgear and threw it at him where he was lying on the mat. "Get the fuck up!"

Drexel got up too, and he grabbed my shoulder. "Cool it!"

I brushed his hand off. "Don't touch me."

And Pat was slowly getting up as I pushed Drexel and he fell back over his chair and his own loose headgear fell off and bounced and he hit the hard court shoulder-first and got tangled in the folding chair as it closed up. The 121-pounder who had been sitting on my other side grabbed me and I elbowed him in the gut. I saw Coach Schmidt running toward me and the ref coming off the mat, and Scott Bach, the captain, who was twice my size, was coming too as Drexel wormed his legs out of the chair and rolled free. Pat was limping off the mat with a dumb, puzzled look in his watery eyes, and I heard the noise in the bleachers grow louder and when they grabbed me I looked over at Simpson.

Here is an out-take from Simon Dusty Duringer's interview at my School of the Ages site.

Tell an interesting story from both your writing life and other.

This is one that covers both your questions; within yet not quite within my writing life. I apologise for amalgamating the two… but you readers may appreciate it as this is a fairly long story in its own right.
This 100% true story reinforces the words of the English Author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who in 1839 coined the phrase; “The pen is mightier than the sword”.

Furthermore, perhaps it may offer hope an alternative to fists for those who have found themselves, through no fault of their own, to be the subject of bullying…

I joined the Royal Air Force much older and (I thought) wiser than most other recruits. I had completed what you might call my first ‘tour’ in life; I was married and my eldest son Jonathan was a toddler. I had been a multi award winning salesman and experienced various degrees of success in the world of business.

Prior to joining I had researched what is expected of recruits during training and felt well prepared for the challenge. I set about doing my best from Day 1…

What I had never considered was that my evaluation might have been flawed and in actual fact the measure of a good recruit was not by being competent from day 1, in fact quite the opposite, it was by demonstrating continuous improvement, regardless of actual ability throughout training. Therefore by starting off firing on all cylinders with a bucket full of knowledge had actually been a real and distinct disadvantage.

Looking back, it was probably for my own benefit that, instructors appeared to concoct inefficiencies and discrepancies with my work. This would enable them to report a gradual improvement in my performance. But, I was naïve of this possibility; I wasn’t having any of it. I mean, I was either going completely bonkers or I was being set up. My first few weeks during training were therefore about as miserable as they could possibly be. Things came to a head when I was called to the Sergeant’s office….
I entered, approached the Sergeant sitting behind her desk and brought myself to attention. But, within moments a hefty corporal who had stood behind the desk approached me. He became up close and personal. The proximity of the man’s face to mine set me slightly off balance at which time; his temper became apparent, his pitch became a squeal, and he ordered me, though I wonder to this day given the volume of the order how many recruits stopped abruptly in their tracks around the base and followed the order, back to “Attention”.

Now, fear affects different people in different ways, I couldn’t afford to fail this training, but for me fear, in the short term anyway, certainly did not help my cause.

Firstly, my brain engaged with the “Attention” command, I raised my leg high and brought my foot down hard, figuring to make as much noise as I could when my boot made contact with the ground, and achieving just that.
As my size 9 boot slammed against the wooden floor with an immensely gratifying crack, the expression on the corporal’s face changed. Not the change I had anticipated. Rather a brief look of surprise, quickly reverting to the bulging bloodshot eyes and most fierce of war faces…. Now standing to attention and at a loss for words I completely froze. I stood there waiting. I think he might have taken this as a form of challenge and for several moments neither of us retreated an inch.

But he had clearly breached my airspace, any closer and his immaculately cropped moustache might have tickled my top lip. I was confronted by a man drunk, nay paralytic, on the power of his chevrons, and whilst he appeared to be in a battle of stares, I was simply frozen to the spot, terrified to move…

To this day I don’t know where, why or how this situation gave rise to a wandering mind… But, I was suddenly reminded of all manner of big screen, stereotypical, drill instructors; Heartbreak Ridge and Full Metal Jacket were in there somewhere before my mind finally came to rest with some characters from the legendary U.K. television comedy called Dad’s Army.
Now, hindsight is a wonderful thing…
I know now that I should have recognised immediately that once my mind had drifted off into this chain of thought, that one way or another, I would be doomed. Perhaps then I might, whilst I still had an opportunity, have launched some sort of ‘thinking’ counter measure. In my defence I do recall, the more I tried to dismiss the thoughts, the worse my predicament became, until eventually, I simply couldn’t contain myself. My tugging and flinching stomach muscles had forced all the air to my mouth, which in turn was already beginning to make my face twitch involuntarily, the corners of my mouth rising inappropriately.

I was sharing airspace with a corporal whom had complete control over my fate and the only ‘uncontrollable’ thought I could muster up was that of one of the most hilarious wartime comedies I have ever seen. I did what any individual drowning in panic might have done in that situation really…. I attempted to relax my body muscles as best I could. But as the tension in my facial muscles dissipated a huge smirk began to replace the look of pain and any hope that the pressure of the air would disperse gently disappeared. It didn’t happen. In fact it was like the opening of an over pressurised valve. Things got incredibly worse, very quickly, and as the pressure of withheld laughter grew to an uncontrollable level I bowed my head to avoid further eye contact and let the air splutter out as I tried to catch my breath and gain control of myself….
Now you’d be forgiven for thinking that was the end of this escapade…

Surely nothing else could go wrong, indeed nothing else needed to go wrong, yet sadly that’s not the case. What I noticed next reversed all previous evidence of laughter or smiling from my person. Indeed, I felt such powerful shockwaves through my body that I do believe I was experiencing a panic attack. It was as though the used and exhaled air, that moments previous had fought to escape my lungs, had now appraised the situation outside my body and quickly decided it might be safer returning from whence it came and, without any element of oxygen it previously carried, it re-entered my body as Carbon Dioxide, creating an impasse; no air in, no air out! The cause of this sudden reversal in expression and subsequent panic attack had been that as I had bowed my head, my eyes had naturally followed and on seeing the floor realised that my right size 9 toecap was perched on top of where his left, meticulously polished toecap should have been.

Running out of ideas and realising I was about to experience the effects of napalm up close and personally, and in a last ditch attempt to get out of the office in one piece, I remembered the proverb; “Attack is the best form of defence” and I purposefully stood back up and locked eyes with the corporal to divert his attention, knowing full well if he looked away first he would lose face yet simply terrified of what would almost certainly come next. It kinda worked, temporarily anyway.

I was ordered out of the office by the sergeant who had remained silent throughout. So, with no explanation as to why I had been summoned in the first place, the corporal marched me out of the office, slamming the door on my back as I went.

For all of about 5 seconds I actually convinced myself that might be the end of the matter, but before I had got out of sight of the office, I am guessing the beast that remained within it, must have caught sight of his irreparable toe cap, and he immediately, and very audibly, erupted….

Whilst I could go on to explain what took place next and over the coming days, perhaps I should save that for my memoires! But all in all I think you have the gist that I was in big trouble and remained so for a number of weeks until I was called back into the Sergeants Office. She had with her some paper of mine and it made me scared…. The paper was a first draft of a short and satirical story about life as a recruit. It took on a very light hearted and sarcastic viewpoint of training and the characters I had met during training so far. But to my incredible surprise and relief the Sergeant brought me in to the office not to discipline me, yet to inform me that she had confiscated the story which would be published within the Halton Gazette! A number of months later it was also published nationally….
As a result of the article, rightly or otherwise, the instructors changed favourably towards me, I actually enjoyed the remainder of my training and went on to design the flight shirts and win The Best Shot Award…. So, it really does go to show that Edward Bulwer-Lytton was right:

“The pen is mightier than the sword”.

In Level Three’s Dream, this passage appears in the U.S. edition, but not in the India edition. My editor (where editor = person who deletes a lot) removed it by stating that it is gibberish. I understand the statement, but actually, it’s not gibberish, but is a carefully crafted text. Mermelstein and Lorena have just met H.D., a giant egg sitting on a wall, and asked him his name. He replies:

“H.D. may stand for Humpty Dumpty,” he said, “but there are many additional names. Clearly I am not Hilda Doolittle. But in Looking-Glass Land, I am called Ytpmud Ytpmuh; in Spanish, Humpito Dumpito; in French, le Umpe-Dump; in Latin, Umpetis Dumpetuum, in the dative. And in Hawaiian I am called Uameapea Duapemialoa, and in Afrikaans, Dumpaas Humpaas; the Japanese call me Houmdoumichi-chan; and in the Bronx Homie-Dope; but the Russians dub me simply Fat Vanya. The Elves named me Ilyanto, or on formal occasion Antoparlima; in Georgia I am Humptiydumptiyvilli; in Arabic, al-Maji-Waji, after my son. Shakespeare called me ‘that pressed moon, that upon a wall doth sit sequestred, and doth issue such girth of prattle as may match its girth withal.’ Never grasped that one. To the Poles, I am Humpiszcz Dumpiszcz; to the Czechs Jan Hump; to the Germans, das Ei-das-auf-der-Wand-trägt-eienen-Gurt-und-tag-und-Nacht-spricht-sitz; and the Chinese do not name me. In Airstrip One I shall be called Doubleplusegg. In Italy I am Il Huevatore; and there are those who call me Tim. Aye, why did H.D. cross the road? To get away from a chef.”
“What happened to your son?” asked Lorena.
“He hatched into a cockatrice,” said H.D.

Looks like gibberish? Actually, it’s a lot of rather complicated humor. Perhaps it should be excised, as its inclusion is not really necessary, and another way could be found to meet my goal for the passage. However… Well, let me explain.

“H.D. may stand for Humpty Dumpty,” he said, “but there are many additional names. Clearly I am not Hilda Doolittle.

The poet Hilda Doolitle published her work using her initials, H.D.

But in Looking-Glass Land, I am called Ytpmud Ytpmuh;

Actually, in Looking-Glass Land, it wouldn’t be spelled backwards, but viewed in a mirror reflection, but I couldn’t put that into the text. This makes an OK substitute.

in Spanish, Humpito Dumpito; in French, le Umpe-Dump; in Latin, Umpetis Dumpetuum, in the dative.

These are jokes about the sounds and patterns of the languages. Spanish adds –ito as a diminutive, meaning someone or something is small, cute, or beloved. French might sound like that to a non-speaker. That name is not real Latin, nor is it dative case, which shows that H.D. uses false erudition, pretending to know more than he does.

And in Hawaiian I am called Uameapea Duapemialoa, and in Afrikaans, Dumpaas Humpaas; the Japanese call me Houmdoumichi-chan;

More jokes about the sounds of the languages. Hawaiian language is mostly vowels; Afrikaans has double A’s; and the Japanese use –chan as a diminutive for something beloved or cute.

and in the Bronx Homie-Dope; but the Russians dub me simply Fat Vanya.

A joke about hip-hop language that would have been more current in 2002, when the novel takes place. Homie, obviously, is short for home boy, a term that was still actively in use at the time to mean “good friend” or “person from the neighborhood”, and “dope” means “the truth.” As for Fat Vanya, it is a reference perhaps to the commonality of using Ivan. nickname Vanya, as a hero’s name in Russian folklore.

The Elves named me Ilyanto, or on formal occasion Antoparlima;

I used an online glossary of Tolkien’s Elvish to create these names. Both of them have something to do with eggs, but I forget what exactly.

in Georgia I am Humptiydumptiyvilli; in Arabic, al-Maji-Waji, after my son.

A joke on Georgian names; some Arabic male names are based on sons, where the man is referred to as “father of …”

Shakespeare called me ‘that pressed moon, that upon a wall doth sit sequestred, and doth issue such girth of prattle as may match its girth withal.’ Never grasped that one.

Okay, I can’t write Shakespearean language that well, but I can duck the blame and instead blame it on H.D. He doesn’t understand it because it’s a joke on the average person’s difficulty with Shakespeare. The meaning is, pressed moon, because an egg isn’t spherical and might have been squeezed to get its shape; doth sit sequestered upon a wall, is on a wall away from others; and doth issue such girth of prattle – runs his mouth so much – as may match its girth withal – that his language is always as big as his big belly.

To the Poles, I am Humpiszcz Dumpiszcz; to the Czechs Jan Hump; to the Germans, das Ei-das-auf-der-Wand-trägt-eienen-Gurt-und-tag-und-Nacht-spricht-sitz; and the Chinese do not name me.

Here, respectively, we ahve joke on Polish spelling with sz for the sh sound, and cz for the ch sound; on the Czech preference for the name Jan, which anticipates a Czech character with that name in the next novel in the series; and on the German tendency to make really long words. It’s “the egg that sits on the wall day and night and talks.” The “Chinese do not name” him because I couldn’t make any jokes about Chinese language.

In Airstrip One I shall be called Doubleplusegg.

A joke based on Orwell’s 1984, where Airstrip One is England and bad things are

“doubleplusungood”

In Italy I am Il Huevatore;

A joke on the Italian opera title Il Trovatore.

and there are those who call me Tim.

A direct quote from the character Tim the Enchanter, who appears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Aye, why did H.D. cross the road? To get away from a chef.”

A variant on the old kids’ joke: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from Colonel Sanders.”

“What happened to your son?” asked Lorena.
“He hatched into a cockatrice,” said H.D.


Medieval bestiaries state that cockatrices hatch from chicken eggs.

...

Again, I am not disputing that this material might be unnecessary to the plot. I don’t even question the assertion that it should be cut, as there is a strong case for doing that. The counter-argument, however, is that in Carroll’s original, there were a lot of scholarly jokes that young readers could not unpack without help, and for me to have a few is in the spirit of the original book, which it was my goal to reproduce.

Sneak Preview of Squared Circle Blues
by Matt Posner
coming September 2015 (I hope)


Becky had to pound on the door of Billy’s room for a long time before he opened it. He leaned against the wall just inside the door as she came in. He was wearing his boxers and not much else. His hair was tousled. His chest was covered with broken blood vessels. He stank. Becky pushed him into the shower, turned on the water, and left him to bathe. She opened his luggage and pulled out clean underwear, clean socks, jeans and a t-shirt. She opened the hotel window the crack it would open, lit one of his cigarettes, smoked out the window. Billy came out naked and dressed in the clothes she had laid out for him.

“Let’s go to the diner,” she said when he was dressed. “You’re paying.”

Hestia’s Olympic Diner was a block from the hotel. After the shower, Billy was able to walk there. He staggered a little. He hadn’t shaken off the previous night’s hurts. Billy was a well-trained, skilled wrestler who could take a beating, but Fighting Eagle was both clumsy and stiff.

While they were having their eggs, toast, and coffee, Dora Gutierrez arrived and slid in next to Becky. Her heavy features and broad shoulders belied her tall, thin frame. She wore a linen blouse and dark skirt and a hair ribbon whose girliness didn’t match her mannish face.

“I got to get me my own car,” Billy said.

“You’d just wreck it,” said Dora. “The usual,” she called to a waitress. Dora’s voice was a low croak. She didn’t smoke anymore, but had acquired a permanent huskiness from her smoking days.

“I ain’t never wrecked a car,” said Billy.

“Why don’t you start paying me for gas money?” Becky suggested.
“Since I got to drive you everywhere. Instead of all this bullshit about saving for a car you ain’t safe to drive.”

The waitress brought Dora oatmeal with raisins.

“You should eat more,” said Becky.

“Aah, what’s it matter?” said Dora.

“You’re getting skinny.”

“I give a fuck?” asked Dora.

“You get any skinnier, your tits’ll be hanging off your back.”

“Aah.” Dora took a tiny bite of oatmeal. “I got no appetite.”
She turned her attention to Billy. “Gash ain’t gonna say it, so I will. If you’re getting hurt as bad as last night, just get out of the ring. Roll on the floor, get counted out. Morgenheim’s too stupid to put you back in the ring if you don’t help.”

“I can take it,” Billy said. “Got to have a good match for the crowd, right?”

“Got to make your next shot,” Dora countered. “If you can’t get out of bed the next day, or your ass is in the hospital, then what?"