fiction | C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

08/05/2010 • 11:11 PM 4

What I believe about FICTION

I believe:

1. in the word, the power and the glory of its creation.

2. in the free expression of the word in all its forms.

3. free expression does the service of exposing bigots and liars.

4. censorship is for children who can’t handle all the adult input at once.

5. censors would infantilize us all if they could.

6. we speak truth to power through the power of the word so we must preserve that power.

7. words can transport us and help us transcend the ill winds of circumstance.

8. sometimes fiction is our only escape and our only hope.

9. dreamers write so that one day they can make their dreams true.

10. fiction is the lie that tells the truth.

11. books, in whatever form they take, are our chance to better ourselves because we can sift through others’ experience without suffering their lives.

12. novels measure what we believe, poetry measures what we believe about ourselves and rock and roll allows us to escape who we suspect we are. (Rock out and rock on!)

13. Fiction is pretend, but it lets us open a crack of light in the darkness so we gain an opportunity to see ourselves as characters in the story of our lives.

14. through this device of fiction, we can safely explore who we pretend to be.

15. through fiction’s device, we can get past the lies we all tell about ourselves to reach authenticity.

16. when we put pretending in its place, finally we can reach for the heroes we could be.

17. good reading can fill an afternoon.

18. great reading can fill your brain.

19. excellent reading can fill your heart and spur you to change yourself and others.

20. if I did not have words, I would paint and if I had no paints, I would sing. If I had none of these things to soothe my racing mind, I would be an evil zombie combination of Darth Vader and Dick Cheney on PCP in a Sunday school, naked and raging with automatic weapons and a Joker smile that would chill your heart.

Filed under: Rant, What about Chazz?, fiction, rant, What I believe about fiction

06/22/2010 • 3:25 PM 0

The Migraine Train by Robert Chazz Chute

This is a draft of the first chapter from my novel Romeo, Juliet & Jerome. I’m pitching it to whoever will listen at the Canwrite Conference this week. I hope you enjoy it.

The headaches began when I was six. I don’t remember anything before that. It’s as if zero to five is a dream that pulls away as we wake. Or maybe God gives us a rare free pass so we can better let go of the time we were most at everyone’s mercy.

In my earliest memory, Moms giggles and rolls on the floor. I’ve just asked why she always has a glass of blood in her hand. “It’s just wine, baby boy,” she said. “I drink it because red goes with roast beef. And everything else.” I can still see her looking down and saying, “Oh, shit. You made me pee myself!”

We lie to ourselves so much we have no business thinking we can tell the truth. For instance, when I’m a movie star, my fans will say that Bio-Dad took off as soon as Moms got knocked up. That little is true. Then they will say my parents named me after the escapee. False.

Moms told me the truth about my name eight years ago last April 20. “Your birthday’s the same as Hitler’s.” Moms pointed that out every year. It was my eighth birthday. I wanted a black forest cake but Moms said it was too late to go out again. She forgot the birthday candles, too, so she lit a cigarette and stuck it in the top of a stale cornbread muffin. I tried to blow it out. She cheered. “Blow! Harder! Harder!”

The cigarette paper glowed and sank as the ash rose. The smoke stung my eyes. My cheeks hurt. Moms laughed and finally pushed me away. She popped the cigarette nub back between her teeth, brushed gray flakes off the muffin and handed it back to me.

“Thanks, Moms. This must be what birthdays are like in prison.”

Her eyes widened and her thick lips went to a thin line. “I already said I was sorry,” she sulked. “Sorry, sorry, sor-ree!” She eyed me and took a long pull of wine. She used a water glass.

A breath. Her shoulders pulled back. “You know what time it is?”

Oh, no.

“Truth Time!” she announced. She showed too many teeth for a kind smile. I held my breath. For Moms, the cost of admission to Truth Time was a five-drink minimum. For me, the cover charge was death by embarrassment.

“I didn’t name you after your father,” she said. “His name wasn’t really Romeo. But he was a Romeo.” Moms explained what that meant. I noticed a familiar aura around the red light on the hot plate she used to heat the apartment. Moms’s voice boomed off the yellowed apartment walls. Any sound was too large for the small room. The light bulbs got brighter and brighter. My eyes were slits. The Migraine Train was coming.

“Here. Try again, Einstein. Make a wish.” She handed me a lit match. The flame’s light stabbed the back of my left eye. I made a wish and blew it out. She did not drop dead. Instead, she toasted me with more thick red wine. That birthday migraine lasted two days.

The doctors drew blood and poked and prodded and X-rayed and scanned. They guessed and surmised. By the time they were finished, I was disappointed I didn’t have a brain tumor.

Our family doc back in Maine—we had one then—mentioned to me that red wine could cause migraines. “But you’re a little young for that.” He stopped chuckling when he noticed my frown.

“What if Moms drinks a lot of it?” I asked. I didn’t know that I should have asked to see the doctor alone. I sat on the examination table. She stood next to me, eyes flat and hard as nail heads. I kept my eyes on the doctor while, with one hand, I picked at the sheet of paper under me. I made tiny tears along its edge as Dr. Chuckles’s eyes shifted from me to her cleavage. Me to her light mocha skin and dyed blonde highlights. Me to her full lips. This was before the booze and the cigarette smoke worked her over. She stuck her jaw out and crossed her arms. A beautiful woman capable of sudden, sharp anger is a striking sight. Moms looked like a pissed off goddess.

I’ve talked to the children of alcoholics since. We all tell the same story. Living rooms aren’t for living. Everyone uses the same word. “Minefield.” All you can do is breathe and sometimes you can’t even do that. Home is never home. Home is house. That’s where the useless pleading and empty promises of atonement happen. House is the crime scene where the threats and punches and beatings with hairbrushes occur. It’s where you don’t want to go, even after the cold makes your breath plume yellow under florescent streetlights. Eventually you come back. You never know what will happen next. All children of alcoholics want the same thing. We yearn for boredom.

If I was a little younger or Moms was a little older, Dr. Chuckles might have been my hero. Instead, he shook his head. “Wine migraines don’t happen unless you’re the one doing the drinking, kiddo.” He grinned at me with the widest mouth in Maine that wasn’t smeared on a scarecrow. “Migraines are a hormonal thing…though, stress can also kick off a migraine.”

Causes of migraine can include cheese, ice cream, chocolate, caffeine and your mother shrieking “Henry! Henry! Henry!” in time to the headboard thudding against a criminally thin bedroom wall.

“But you’re a little young for stress, too, aye-uh?” Dr. Chuckles said. “Your diagnosis is idiopathic migraine. It means you get migraines and we don’t know why.”

Yes, people in Maine who say “aye-uh” are not confined to Stephen King novels. At least one idiot doctor says it in real life, too.

When experts fail, they blame you. That’s how I got trapped in a tiny IKEA-stuffed office with the Psycho Therapist. He doodled while I blamed my mother. That’s how therapy works. Or doesn’t.

Dr. Moto said he could help with my “me-graines.” (Decreasing them, I had assumed.) He was a Japanese-British transplant who was pretty smug about spreading mental health among New England colonials. In the first minute of our first session, he told me his treatment style was a mix of Freudian and proto-Jungian. I was ten.

The first few sessions were the usual. As I said, I blamed Moms for everything, which, in my case, was one of those clichés that happen to be true. He would nod and ask me what my responsibility was. I shouted back, “Nada-colada esta manana, baba!” It felt good to shout since my nonsense confused him and he was the sort of prick who never lets on that he is confused about anything. I’d shout. He’d nod and try to look wise. He looked like Yoda trying to hold back on a ripping fart.

Dr. Moto plucked his eyebrows so thin they could have been a faint pencil line. He talked much more than I did. I stared at the empty space above his eyes to pass some of the fifty-minute hour. Whenever I said anything about Moms, he wrinkled his forehead really hard to yank those almost-eyebrows up toward where his hair used to be.

He asked if I thought it was significant that I used the plural, always Moms never Mom.

“Yes and no,” I said. “No, because I’ve always called her Moms since forever. Maybe yes, I s’pose…” Then I shut up. “Actually, no and no.”

I didn’t want to explain Drunk Mom and Sober Mom but I’ll lay it out here so my biographers of my humble beginnings don’t mess that up, too. Drunk Mom yelled a lot. Sober Mom woke up and baked cookies made with peanut butter and sweet regret. She always stirred promises to do better into the mix. Eventually, when Moms moved on to Dewar’s, she started blacking out. Whenever she fell asleep on the bathroom floor, she could not remember shouting at me the night before. No cookies for me.

The Psycho Therapist’s answer to my cookielessness was lists. To-do lists. To-dream lists. To-be lists. “I will Moto-vate you,” he said.

He told me stress caused the chemical cascade that cranked up my headaches. “Chemical cascade” sounds kind of good, like a gentle pink and purple waterfall might be involved. If he’d described it the way it felt I might have taken Dr. Moto more seriously. Something like “You’re tied to railway tracks and the Migraine Train runs over your head with steel wheels and rips out your pumpkin brains over and over.”

Moto told me lists would get my world in order. I feel the need to point out one more time that I was ten. I did not own a cape. Bullets did not bounce off my chest. I did not own a cave full of bats and cool implausible weapons. Getting the world in order seemed like a job for somebody taller.

But I had reasons to follow through. I already had to keep a pain diary for the neurologist so this wasn’t that different. One of the Dads (I forget which one) paid the shrink’s bill so he pushed Moms to push me. (Push me to do what was also unclear.) Moms’s toasts were beginning to sound like slurred prayers. “To my son’sh recovery from migrainsh and shtresh!” Yeah. I know. Cartoony drunk. Everybody was antsy about my progress toward pain-free mental perfection so when no one was looking I penciled lists in a notebook small enough to hide in my hip pocket.

Warming up, I made a list of movies I liked—Star Wars and anything with John Leguizamo in it. I was especially fond of Executive Decision. John’s got a gun to save the passengers of a hijacked passenger jet. Steven Seagal and his tough-guy ponytail get blown out of a Stealth jet almost immediately. Leguizamo played a super insane Tybalt with a gun in a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. I bet you Tybalt’s mother took one look at the handguns in his fists and another look at his crazed eyes and served up the peanut butter cookies quick.

Next, I itemized my pet peeves. School work (mostly irrelevant.) Homework (as if any rational grown-up would tolerate working at home.) I squeezed bullies between the first two items. I scrawled Team Dad at the top of my list. Also at the bottom and somewhere in the upper middle. I was peevish. I wrote the word “therapy” several times. Moto ignored that and zeroed in on the Dads.

1. Bio-Dad, formerly Romeo Sr. until Moms taught me the difference between the name Romeo and acting like a Romeo. Location: The Wind. Given all that happened later, he might have been the smartest of the bunch.

2. Rebound Dad. Self-appointed Lt. Colonel in the KISS Army. He let me stay up late to watch movies I was too young to see. When lit out in Rebound Dad’s junky old car, Moms burned black rubber tire into his white concrete driveway. I didn’t question that at the time but I think it means he was sure she’d come back.

Last seen: through the rear window’s dirty glass. “Waving” sounds like goodbye. What do you call what you do with your arms when you are waving for help? I did that until Rebound Dad was just a dot.

3. Cheater Dad AKA “Schmuck.” He and Moms made the driveway scene in Item #2 happen. By then I had “defiance issues” according to my teachers. On our first day at Cheater Dad’s house, I ripped through his pool table’s green felt. He would have loved to cure me of those defiance issues with the thick end of a pool cue. Moms ordered him to leave my discipline to her. (That didn’t get done.)

He shut up whenever I entered a room, as if we were playing Passive Aggressive Statue Tag. A fish in a freezer has a warmer smile. Still, passive aggressive is better than aggressive aggressive any time.

Last seen: who cares?

4. Lawyer Dad AKA Henry! Henry! Henry! “Highest thread count of the bunch,” Moms told me. “This one’s a keeper.” (I lost the sight in my left eye for an afternoon over that factoid.)

Lawyer Dad’s job was to dig alimony out of #3. He got distracted. We moved in. Then Moms thought he’d moved in on his hot new secretary. He pled not guilty. He pled with Moms to be reasonable. He did not know her well.

Last seen? New driveway. Old story.

Dr. Moto compared my list to the timelines in my file. “Have you noticed you get an increase in the frequency and severity of your me-graines each time your mother er…has a new man in her life?”

“My” me-graines. As if I owned them instead of the other way around.

Moto often asked questions to which he already knew the answer. When I called him on it, he said his questions helped me “stay engaged.” He was very concerned about my “practiced disaffection” and, when I was really bored, “disassociation.” Dude had no idea what Cool looked like.

“Does it bother you? Do you wish your life was more stable, Romeo? That you could count on one good thing not changing? On average, I see that your mother goes through a new fellow once a year, bouncing from one to the next.”

Bouncing. Moms. Bouncing. Must. Stare. At. Eyebrows.

“Romeo, you know I care about you, right?”

Bouncing. Bouncing. “Henry! Henry! Henry!” Thud! Thud! Thud!

“Romeo, you know I want to help you, correct?”

Eyebrows. Eyebrows!

“Romeo, you don’t have to face this alone.” Moto reached out and touched my hand. I own one picture of myself as a little kid. I’m all big cheeks and bright eyes and curly black hair. My face looks so…I don’t know. Open? I teared up. A hot baby tear escaped. My face wasn’t slammed shut quite enough yet to keep me from crying. Maybe the Psycho Therapist told himself he was helping me. Or maybe Moto pretended we aren’t all just looking out for ourselves.

“Do you want to know the real secret to the perfect cure for me-graines, Romeo?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, Dr. Moto. I’d like the pain to push through my head like a rusty spike.” I said it as cheerfully as I could. It’s kind of funny that way.

He leaned forward in his chair. The walls sucked closer and the air got thin. My face heated up. My chair pressed hard into my back. That didn’t make any sense until I figured out it was me pushing into the chair. Even so, it felt like the chair was pushing me toward Moto. “Have you started masturbating yet?”

“Nope,” I lied. “No, uh…”

“Masturbation!” His face was like a light. “You should start now!”

“Now? Here?”

“It’s all about rerouting blood away from your brain. When the me-graine starts, there’s less blood in your brain. That’s when you see the halos around lights and things seem brighter and louder and you feel nauseous.”

Nausea did well up, but it wasn’t the Migraine Train steaming into the station.

“Then the body overcompensates,” he said. “The body sends too much blood to the brain. Blood vessels press on surrounding structures and the pain is…exquisite.” Again, the come-to-Jesus smile. “Exquisite” pain. Like he was saying, “Jerk off or die.” He let his bare, smug face hang open. “Masturbation is the secret cure for your headaches and your stress.”

“Um. Uh-huh?”

He moved one hot hand to my thigh, rubbing up and down. Mostly up. I thought his hand might burn through my jeans. His other hand covered his crotch. I jumped up and ran out. I burst through his office door. Moms sat in the waiting room.

“Cured!” I announced.

A week later we abandoned Maine for New York. Mother and son, we ran side by side, each in our own solitary race. She ran to. I ran from. I’m still running.

Filed under: My fiction, fiction, first chapter, short story

06/22/2010 • 2:03 PM 1

End of the Line

End of the Line won 3rd place in The Toronto Star Annual Short Story Contest and was published in August 2008. For your entertainment, a tale of torture and redemption…

“You must listen very carefully,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I said as I flipped through her file. Every call from a collection agent is meant to accomplish two things: squeeze blood from coconuts and gather more information to squeeze more blood from coconuts. The rule is we can’t call more than once a week and we stick to that rule as long as we’re getting somewhere. We rotate agents so the deadbeats have to tell their sad stories to a new caller every time. Talking about outstanding debt over and over compounds the target’s humiliation. I wanted to be an actor but I’ve been paying my bills by talking to people who don’t pay their bills. My horror, shock and surprise at their failure to pay sounds equally fresh with each call so I guess I act for a living after all.

“You are not listening,” Dr. Papua said.

I tuned in. “Oh? Have you said anything that changes the fact that you owe $382.51?” Never say “about $380” or “about $400.” Always be specific about their debt. It squeezes.

“I do not owe it. I told your colleagues to send me a copy of the original receipt. All you sent me was a letter saying I owed the money but no proof, not even what the purchase was supposed to be. I could make a lot of money too if I just sent out random bills.”

“It was a Taunton’s account.”

“Those stores have been out of business for years and you have no actual record. All you have is my name and the time to harass me.”

“You need to at least send us a goodwill payment to keep this from going to court and so I can help you keep your credit rating.” Always say “you need to” not “I need you to.” Everyone is terrified of being sued and paying a lawyer, especially for such a relatively small debt. A lawyer would charge her more per hour than it costs to pay me to go away. “We need to clear this up today.” Always say “today” not “soon.” “Soon” means never. “Today” means now.

“This fictional debt is almost ten years old. The statute of limitations on debt in Ontario is six years. You have no case.”

I let my heavy practiced sigh drop on her and gave her a moment of silence. Lay a pregnant pause on most people and they’ll rush to fill the empty space. The longer they stay on the line, the closer you are to getting the money. She didn’t take the bait though. “Even if you don’t have a legal obligation to pay your debt, you do have a moral obligation,” I say finally.

I heard—or felt—something change then. I don’t remember there being static on the line but she suddenly came through so clearly I fought the stupid urge to glance over my shoulder. It was as if she was standing over me.

“A moral obligation?” she said. “You have made a tactical error.”

I smiled. In a moment she would be screaming into the phone and telling me she’d get me fired. The screamers were the reason we didn’t use headsets. It’s quicker to hold a phone receiver away from your ear than to snatch off a headset. She would hang up and stew for a week and one of us would call her again. Soon she’d send us the money. In a moment I would be skipping on to my next call and the next and the next.

But she didn’t scream and my smile dropped away. “Now you need to listen to me very carefully. Listen to me as if your life depends on everything I say.” Her tone was cool and I noticed for the first time that her accent sounded vaguely European, but not Zsa Zsa identifiable. She pronounced words in a way that said she formed each one with great care, as if each had to be dealt out letter by letter, syllable by syllable in a Morse Code of spoken language. “Are you ready?”

I held the receiver away from my ear. I thought she was going to blow a whistle into the phone or something. An old collection agent told me the worst is getting hit through the phone with one of those air horns fans use at football games. It damages your hearing it’s so bad. Then I realized she really was waiting for me to tell her I was ready.

“What?”

“No matter what happens in the next few minutes, you will not hang up.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You are correct. You are not going anywhere in life, either.” She spoke slowly and clearly as if I was a dull child. “No matter what I say, you will not let go of the phone.” She hit the word “not” hard and I thought of the sharp blade of a shovel striking bone.

My hand tightened around the receiver. I shoved the handset to the side of my head, squashing my ear. I took a sharp breath in but she headed me off. “You will not interrupt me and you will not yell or ask anyone for help. Do you understand?”

“Sure,” I tried to sound casual but didn’t make it. “Where is this going? This doesn’t help you solve your problem.”

“Your feet and legs cannot move.”

I almost laughed at her but all I had was a gasp. Somebody tells you your legs don’t work and without even thinking about it you move your legs to show them they are ridiculous. My feet were cemented to the floor. I couldn’t even wiggle my legs the least bit sideways.

My head suddenly felt hot. I could hear the buzz of the other call center workers but I couldn’t see anyone without shoving my chair way back. I craned for a glimpse of my shift supervisor stalking by. No one.

“You will not try to get anyone’s attention or assistance, Mr. Gayed.” Had I told her my last name? No, I never tell the deadbeats my real last name. She was worming into my brain. “You will answer my questions truthfully and without obfuscation. For your benefit you will comply.”

“Yes,” I said. What did she mean, for my benefit?

“You don’t care for people very much, do you?” she said.

“No.” I said, a little surprised.

“That is unfortunate. There is an axiom. If everyone you meet is an idiot, it is you!” Her laughter was glass breaking.

“I don’t have to take this,” I said.

“Yes, you do. You want to hang up, I forbid it. You want to move your legs but the nerves and muscles aren’t speaking with each other right now. You want to call out, but I forbid it.”

All she said was true. I was surrounded by people making their calls but there was no one to rip the thin gray wire out of the wall and free me. “You witch you—!“

“I do not approve of name-calling, Mr. Gayed.”

“Why not just ‘forbid’ me? You’re deeply into that. I notice you never use contractions. Does that make you feel like you’re a higher class of deadbeat?”

“Mr. Gayed. You sound articulate and functionally intelligent. I have already paralyzed your feet and legs. I wonder why you think it would be difficult for me to shut down your diaphragm?” My jaw moved more but no sound came out. My hand cramped around the receiver.

She made a tsk sound of impatience. “Stop breathing.”

With my free hand I grabbed at my throat. Useless. I looked down and saw that my torso was not rising and falling. The realization seemed to ignite fire in my lungs. I looked at my desk clock and watched the second hand sweep around half the face. I had not taken a deep breath before my breathing stopped and the air hunger was beyond a burning need. Need is not a big enough word. Black spots appeared at the edge of my vision and then they began to grow larger. Would the paramedics be able to move me when they arrived? Would firefighters have to saw me off at the ankles? Would they take my body to the morgue and leave my feet in my shoes forever glued to the Berber carpet? I pitched forward from the waist and my head slammed into the desk.

“Start breathing,” she said.

My first gasp was a great heave and it was several minutes before my breathing slowed. The bridge of my nose was bloody. It stung like bees. I decided not to call Dr. Papua any more names. The air tasted cold and sweet.

“Please let me hang up. I won’t bother you again.”

“I am fascinated with the workings of the body. When I studied anatomy I was awed by its complexity. I thought its design was proof that there is a god.”

“Please don’t do anything.”

“Then I studied pathology. When you see all that can go wrong with this incredible organic machine it makes one think there must surely be a devil. Do you know what the Circle of Willis is?”

“No.”

“It is a little circle of blood vessels at the top of your brain. It is a very common site for strokes…your heart is starting to pound much faster now.”

I could feel the gallop in my chest instantly and I was breathing harder.

“The hand that is not holding the phone to your ear is going numb.”

It was. “I’m just doing my job. Look, I’m sorry!”

“Your job compounds misery. You harass people. How many files do you have on your desk which are dead cases like mine?”

“I-I’m sorry…what do you mean by dead cases?”

“Those which are more than six years old.”

“I have all the old Taunton’s files.”

“Ah, yes, of course. You are the ‘go to guy’ of the office, are you not?” She used the expression as if the words had a strange taste.

“Yes.” The numb feeling was creeping up my forearm. I gave it a tentative whack on the edge of the desk. It felt like my arm was asleep, only the near border of emptiness was crawling up my arm toward my shoulder.

“A stroke can be terribly disabling and disfiguring. It can twist one side of your face or just kill you.” I wet my pants then, not in a spasmodic squirt I could try to hold back but a long hot coursing stream down my immobile legs. “If you were to live but could not take care of yourself, who would help you?”

The numbness was still spreading and tears began to slide down my cheeks. “My mother would help.”

There was a long terrible pause. The minute hand swept around twice before she spoke again. I couldn’t hear her breath or any ambient sounds. It was as if her end of the line was in some underground space lined with cotton. I couldn’t feel the right side of my face. “Hello?”

“Are you a disappointment to your mother?”

“Of course I am, Dr. Papua. No kid wants to grow up to be a bill collector. No parent dreams that.”

“So, you are disappointed in yourself, as well?”

“You know you are a sadist, right?”

Her laughter trilled again and a chill went through me that started with the cooling urine down my legs and crawled with spidery feet up my spine. Spine-tingling is not an empty cliché. It’s real. I know that now.

“You dare to offend me. You still have some dignity. You may be redeemable.”

A little flame of hope sparked that she would, just and finally, let me go. Dr. Papua was quick to douse my little fire. “I let your predecessors live. That strategy does not seem to be enough to stop these calls from your firm. You know I can do more than simply stop your heart. I could instruct you to put a baby in an oven and broil it for your dinner if I was so inclined. If you fail me, you fail yourself. The world is full of phones.”

“Y-yes.” I would have grimaced but my face wasn’t under my control anymore. Were straining blood vessels in my brain about to burst? Had they already? She talked and all I could do was make urgent agreeing sounds from deep in my throat. When she was done she told me to close my eyes and count backwards from ten. I did so, though from ten to five I couldn’t speak and the numbers were only in my head like the opening of an eight millimeter film counting down. At one the line went dead. No click. No dial tone.

I lurched backwards and yanked the phone away from my burning ear. A long vowel sound burst from me as I shot out of the chair. People were suddenly all around me asking questions and telling me to sit down but it was all a meaningless buzz. I swept up the files and hugged them as I strode to the door.

Engells, my supervisor, appeared in front of me. At first he was perplexed and then he tried to hold me back and grab the files. I pushed him away. He leapt at me and I pushed him down. I had to get out. As the door closed behind me I glanced back to see Engells still on the floor staring after me with bug eyes.

I burned Dr. Papua’s file in a steel drum behind my apartment building. Then I burned the rest of the files. I watched the paper curl in the heat and turn to ashes. My cell phone went in next. I stood back from the drum and watched. I don’t know for how long. The cell phone battery exploded with a tinny bang which woke me to the night and the cold that was gathering its strength around me. “It’s time to come in out of the dark,” I said aloud to no one. I climbed the stairs to my apartment, feeling lighter with each step. Tomorrow I would begin again, I decided. I’d get my acting career going. This time for sure.

After I ripped it off the kitchen wall, I shattered the phone on the floor. I kept kicking until all the phone’s components skittered across the linoleum in small jagged pieces. I put on clean pants, sat on the couch and listened to my heartbeat. The pounding in my temples finally began to slow. I took a deep breath and the air was new. A hot tear slipped down my cheek. I was so grateful for my breath, as if I had finally surfaced after being underwater a long, long time.

I am still grateful. Dr. Circe Papua, wherever you are, thank you.

Robert Chute is a freelance writer, editor and existential horrorist with a background in newspapers and book publishing. End of the Line is from his short story collection Despair is a Vowel Sound. Copyright © Robert Chute, 2008. All rights reserved.

Filed under: My fiction, short stories, contest winner, End of the Line, fiction, short story

06/02/2010 • 6:38 PM 5

Writing Critique Group Decoder

They say: That was interesting and then add nothing else.

They mean: It wasn’t interesting.

They say: You made an interesting artistic choice there. At the turning point three quarters of the way through I would have done this…

They mean: If this was a totally different story, written by me, I’d like it.

They say: I found a bunch of typos here and you split an infinitive there and you like sentence fragments too much, cuz you know, that’s not a complete sentence…

They mean: I am a grammarian and hope to be an editor one day. Otherwise I am useless to you, but I can continue to be annoying. Later on I’ll be bewildered that no one ever sits near me or speaks to me at the break.

They say: Kaddoos to you!

They mean: I am an illiterate who doesn’t know the word kudos, so don’t take my praise so seriously.

They say: I absolutely love everything you write.

They mean: I want to sleep with you and hope you share my fetish.

They say: Where do you get your ideas?

They mean: Are you really the abused prostitute in the story and is it wrong that turns me on?

They say: There’s a few quibbles. Maybe you could engage more senses here and here and tell more than show in the last couple pages because it feel like you’re rushing the end.

They mean: I can make useful suggestions without trying to put you down to make myself feel good.

They say: I don’t care for fantasy stories so I really don’t have anything to say about that.

They mean: just what they said and that’s fair. If you hate a genre and can’t get past it, don’t comment on it.

They say: That wouldn’t happen.

They mean: That’s either outside my experience and I have no idea what I’m talking about or you have to write more to convince me that’s the ring of truth I’m hearing and not you working the smoke and mirrors.

You say: What do you mean, that wouldn’t happen? It did happen.

You mean: Sorry I didn’t hit the feel of verisimilitude for you. Yet. And sorry I sounded defensive.

They say: You sound defensive.

You say: Perhaps it’s because you’re being offensive.

They say: It’s just feedback. I don’t mean to be offensive.

You say: I guess I’m a delicate doily…or being offensive just comes really easy to you. Clod.

They say: Let me hit you over the head with the fact that I’m a teacher (or I’ve been published somewhere and you haven’t or as my good friend Norman Mailer used to say…)

They mean: Just do what I tell you to do and God, isn’t my voice a lovely basso profundo?

They say: Needs one more polish and you’re done. Have you thought about sending it to X magazine?

They mean: Good for you. Damn I wish I’d written that.

They say: I suck.

They mean: Somebody throw me a bone here and tell me one thing you liked about my story or I’m not coming back cuz I just can’t stand it anymore.

They say: You suck.

They mean: You shredded my favorite story last week. Payback, bitch!

They say: That’s the best story ev-er! Ev-er!

They mean: And you’re critiquing my story next! Mercy Master!

They say: I don’t understand the connection from here to there.

They mean: I wasn’t really listening.

They say: Your writing is very muscular and you know…workmanlike prose.

They mean: It’s too readable. I hate it.

They say: I hate epiphanies.

They mean: Your epiphany was banal or your story isn’t depressing enough to suit my worldview because no ending should ever connote trancendance because that would mean there is hope for the human race.

They say: It’s good but no agent or editor will ever touch that.

They mean: That’s really bad.

They mean: It’s no good for agents or editors without vision who are constantly trying to catch up with the last publishing trend.

They say: Your writing is good but your subject/genre isn’t hot in market right now.

They mean: Once everybody else publishes it, then we’ll concede it had value but for now we’ll pee all over your efforts.

They say: Your writing is very accessible.

They mean: They could understand it and enjoyed it.

They mean: They could understand it too easily which means you’re a commercial writer and therefore unworthy of their time.

They say: I don’t get it.

They mean: I don’t get it.

I’m high.

They say: Far out! Man, that was like…I don’t know…you know…

They mean: I am incapable of expressing myself and I meant to sign up for the hemp macrame class but it was full. Also, I’m high.

They say: Nothing but once in awhile you catch more than one or two people rolling their eyes so hard it looks like they might strain something.

They mean: You’re the hobbyist in the class who is, in their opinion, truly hopeless. They’re right.

They say: Something consistently unhelpful .

They mean: Who cares? That’s all they’ve got. They’re negative clods who will not help you in your career. And if they’re so shit hot, what are they doing in a group with you? Shouldn’t they be off somewhere exotic turning down calls from the Nobel committee?

They say: Something constructive and consistently helpful.

They mean: I consistently say something helpful to you because you’re helping me. Why don’t we ditch a bunch of these opinionated bozos, go have a coffee after group and become each other’s readers? I get you. You get me. Let’s lose all these people who don’t get us and exchange stories and finally have a voice we know is worth our trust? Also, if you don’t give me 3,000 words a week I’ll really bitch you out. Please do the same for me.

(Keep an eye out for these Theys. They could be really useful to your career.)

They say: I didn’t write anything this week.

They mean: I’m just here to snipe at others and refuse to put myself out there.

They say: Your story had a compelling sense of place.

They mean: I couldn’t bring myself to read that shit but I have to say something.

They say: The twist ending (or revelation or change in character or the emotion) felt too easily achieved/melodramatic or cheap.

They mean: what they said.

They could have a point. Maybe they don’t. Maye you underwrote it or overwrote it. Whatever they say or mean, remember this:

YOU GET THE LAST SAY.

All art is subjective. Don’t take any critique too seriously. Listen and then do what makes sense to you. You must write for yourself first.

BONUS:

They say: Thank you for all your suggestions. I can’t wait to go home and implement all of them..even the ones that contradict each other.