Vote On My Next Novel
I’m ready to start my next writing project, but I just can’t figure out which one to do. I have several ideas. It’d probably be good to start something especially since I’m trying to find an agent for my memoir and that’s super depressing to say the least. The search for an agent is depressing, not the memoir.
A few years ago I asked you dear readers to choose the book I would write and post as a blovel. The result of that was ‘Tunnel Vision’…which is (I think) one of the best things I’ve ever written. So I thought I’d turn to you again. Can you help an unfocused writer focus?
It’s possible I could post this next piece as a blovel too, if there’s interest.
So. What book would you like me to write…or…which of these would you be most likely to read?
THE CONTENDERS:
1) A sequel to “Pepper Wellington and the Case of the Missing Sausage” called “Pepper Wellington and the Case of the Bad Curry” in which Pepper and her friend attend a dinner party when people start dying. They’re on an island so Pepper must solve the crimes before she’s dead too. It’s sorta like a “And Then There Were None” but with more food and less British stuff.
2) A sequel to “Foodies Rush In” in which the characters from the first book celebrate the holidays. We’ll meet new characters, see multiple layers of disfunction and bad holiday sweaters. This would, hopefully, be a comedy and a feel-good type of book.
3) A suspense/action novel in which a young girl discovers that her chemist father made her resistant to drugs so she’s the only one that can see that the happy world she lives in, isn’t really happy. She goes on an adventure to stop the poisoning and mind-control of her people. Lots of running, explosions, and a little darkness.
So. Help a girl out. Which book should I write? And if you know of an agent who wants a memoir called “Popsicle Toes” that’s in a similar style to “The House on Mango Street” lemme know.
POLL CLOSED
Thank you for voting!
#3 wins with 63% of the vote! Let the writing commence!
!!!!
Tunnel Vision CHAPTER 6-Dreams
A daughter retraces steps, and Doctor Kinney meets his destiny.
Chapter Six
Dreams
Traverse City State Mental Hospital, 1952
My mother says that so much has changed on the grounds of the hospital, and not just the name. It used to be, she says, that there were patients everywhere. At first everything was lovely, she says, that Irish lilt in her voice weakened but still present. My mother speaks musically even when she doesn’t want to. She says: Patients working on the cow farm, tending gardens. It was beautiful really. It was peaceful. Then things changed, slowly at first, as they do. There was all that trouble with the money and overcrowding and then a special ward for folks with TB. It became a different place then. I don’t like to tell you. Walking the grounds, you could hear moans and cries. And in the wards, it was sometimes a scary place. You’d have to read a person’s sickness by looking in their eyes. A person’s eyes will tell you everything you need to know, the way you can look at a dog and tell if it’s rabid or not. Sometimes patients will smile, but their eyes tell you they’re about to bite. Now, those people on the edge aren’t on the edge anymore. They take parts of their brain and it sends those people into some other world. I can’t say that’s a good thing because now it’s like they’re not even there and this place, this place has become so quiet, but it’s not a quiet of rest, is it? It’s more a quiet of pain.
She says this to me as we walk the grounds together. And I try to look into her eyes to gauge what she is feeling, but she keeps her gaze focused just ahead of her. I do not often come to see my mother at work, where she has been for as long as I’ve been alive. She is only thirty-seven, but her shoulders have widened over the years, her belly has grown too, evidence that she has borne children. Her hair which as a child was fiery red has dulled and it is laced with grey. After my father passed away, my mother’s body seemed to drift out of her control. She is solid now, with little shape to her. She walks briskly forward, as she does in all things. And she seldom looks in my eyes.
Lobotomies, she spits it like a curse. Why, if you take the time to get to know a person and recognize that their illness is just that…an illness…you wouldn’t need such a fool thing. If there were more money and more beds and more staff…She drifts here. She cannot finish the words. She pauses and then says, There’s not a one of them that is possessed by a demon or uncontrollable. I nod as if I agree with her.
We are at the tunnels. She doesn’t pause or look at me to see if I am sure I want to do this. My mother, especially when things are difficult, plows straight forward. Energy and momentum, I suppose. We walk. The tunnels are brightly lit. Clean. Not at all what I imagined.
I don’t know how long we walk or how many turns we take. I know that I grow tired and I can feel every bit of my daughter’s growing weight pulling on the muscles of my back. Finally, we reach a small room. Not a room really but rather a false end to one side of the tunnel, as if they were building a tunnel but did not connect it to anything. Here my mother stops. She turns to look at me and her green eyes are almost grey and it is true I can read what she is feeling. She looks at me for a long time and then takes my hands in hers. Her voice is soft and fragile. This here is where they met, she says, your father and your real mother. The words pain her. I can see that.
You are my real mother, I say.
My mother hugs me then, tight, and I can feel my daughter between us. It is a hug of holding on. I think she whispers thank you but I can’t be sure. She doesn’t want to talk to me about these things but she does this for me because she is strong, and fierce, and she loves me as if I were her own.
Still in her arms she says the words I already know. Your mother’s name was Ama and she called this place her home.
*
Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1932
Images came to Kinney in waves, violent as the lake in a storm. Water rushed and he felt his hand press against the lean muscled chest of Kostic. With a firm push downward, Kinney forced him under the water and held. Kostic thrashed, churning the water like a great sea beast. Kinney held. The water was so cold he soon lost any feeling at all in his arms and this was a comfort.
Then he walked on a beach, studying the sands in search of Petoskey stones, fossils that would not show themselves unless touched by water. His arm ached and it was still cold. He turned the sand with his bare toes searching, but found nothing—and then, out in the water, a flash of white caught his eye. Perhaps the crest of a wave mounting. No. Not a wave at all. No. It was Rose, floating in the lake by their house, fully clothed, her white dress spilling around her, her hair reaching out and bleeding with the water. Kinney called to her, ran into the water but could go no further. The water pushed against him, held him back.
He was under water, being held, Kostic laughing as he pushed him under again and again. Then he was breathing. “Look at him, he’s sick,” said a man with long white hair. White? Yes. And the pale eyes of an albino. His skin the color of a ghost. “Sick like us?” Said a woman. A lovely woman with large breasts in a too-tight top. She licked her lips. “Get away get away don’t touch don’t touch.” Fingers tickling him. “I’ll touch him. Get him Taste him.” Then the fingers pulled back and Kinney’s arm began to heat. There was pressure too and he realized it was because someone held onto him.
Rose looked down at him, touched his forehead, her smile deep with sympathy. “Poor baby,” she said. “Poor baby.” She kissed him.
And then singing, softly at first, and then with growing force as if he were walking closer to the source of the voice. But he was not walking, was he? The sound carried him. Mallie. Mallie Lyn Peters sang a lullaby to him. The voices called to him. Mallie’s voice and Rose’s beautiful and harmonizing, but the others…the others delayed and discordant and sharp as razors.
Rays of light and shadows shifted and oozed and took human shape. Hands grabbed him, dug into his shoulders and waist, lifting him. He was carried, floated through the air, tumbled without touching the ground. He could not scream. He could not talk. Someone had stolen his voice, his very breath.
It was a dream. Of course he was dreaming, but he was also half-awake. So he floated in the netherworld between the dream state and reality and he could not cross over. When Kinney finally awoke, he awoke to rain thrashing the windows. An ice storm. And he awoke to a sound of someone choking, and the slow realization that the someone was himself.
“You’ve had a fever, Doctor Kinney,” Mallie murmured to him. “Take a deep breath now. You’re all right. All is well. You are well now. You collapsed you did. Underneath.”
Kinney tried to speak but his voice was hoarse and not his own.
Mallie nodded as if she understood. “How long were you down there? You were missing for a time. Overnight maybe? Chilled, feverish. And then you were helped up here and I’ve been taking care of you ever since. It’s been a week now. We thought we’d lose you, but Ama said no. You were a fighter, and Ama is one to know.”
“Ama?” It was the only word he could manage to speak clearly.
Mallie Lyn leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear. “She’s a secret, Doctor Kinney. One you must keep. Please, sir. If you could.”
He nodded his head and noticed that Ama was in the room with them even now. She sat in the corner, her face hidden in shadow, but clearly the mirror image of Rose. Kinney was not a religious man, but at once he believed in a power greater than himself. He nodded again and Ama rose from her chair to come to him. “Yes,” he said. He would promise to keep her.
Ama stepped into the light. “Hello, Kin-ney,” she said softly and reached to touch his face.
He burned. Suddenly. Fiercely. And with a different kind of fever. She was Rose and not-Rose, but without question, Kinney knew one thing: this Ama would belong to him. He would own her. Completely. “Hello, again,” he said, and then with that he slipped back into sleep but this time, he did not dream.
Easy Lady Requests Guy with Two Socks EDI #5
Easy Lady Requests Guy with Two Socks
Chapter 5
It was nearly three in the morning and Eve sat at her laptop in her kitchen wrapped in her favorite pink silk robe. She’d given up on trying to get to sleep, and decided to check and see if Julie really did post that ad. She hadn’t gotten any emails or calls yet so she figured Julie probably hadn’t done it. Eve reached for her home-made cappuccino and took a deep sip. Of course, she thought, drinking four cups of cappuccino a day since she got her new coffee maker probably didn’t help in the sleep department.
She moved the cursor over the screen and typed in the web address. She didn’t even have to search for Julie’s ad as it had been chosen as the member spotlight, and was featured on the first page of the website.
There was Julie: sweet, withdrawn Julie, for the entire world to see in a red negligee sprawled on her couch holding up a nearly-empty bottle of wine and what Eve recognized as a very drunken expression on her face. To others, Julie’s smoky eyes and slight smile might be misinterpreted as a come-hither-now stare. And it looked like there was a paperclip stuck to her forehead. Laughter rose within Eve and then she noticed the little sideways triangle underneath her post. A play button? Why was there a play button. Eve pressed the button and it became clear: Julie had posted her not a written ad, but she’d actually recorded one.
The Picture wobbled and there was a close-up of Julie’s cleavage, then she ran to her couch and jumped on it, her yellow robe flying like a superhero’s. “Hey there,” Julie said in a voice that was pitched low, as if she were trying to sound sexy. “I’m Eaaaaaaasy Laaaaady and I want some socks. A two pair of socks. One two. Me…” she pointed at the screen. “You.”
Then Julie got off the couch and walked up to the screen, and said:
Look, I’m here you’re there and if you wanna
know the truth I’m tired of this being alone stuff
I don’t wannta be a lonely sock and it’s not like
I’m looking for marriage exactly but you know
what? I’m talented and smart and fairly attractive
and have killer knockers so why not come knockin
you write me and if not then forget you I’ve got
plenty of things to meet and people to do.
Julie flicked her hair, dropped her robe and the screen went black.
Eve laughed again. This was good. Too, too good. This was exactly the sort of thing that made her love Julie: she had an astounding knack for complicating her life.
Blunder Woman -- 78.5
Digression #23 Conversation With Matt AKA Fodder for Therapy
78.5
Digression #23 Conversation With Matt
AKA Fodder for Therapy
It’s at this point that I have to take a little digression, not exactly a U-turn or what have you, but a little pause while we go down this misadventure road to tell you about a conversation I had with Matt. I’m doing this, yes, in self-defense because when you analyze what he said to me, how he talked to me, maybe then you can understand why I went out of my head. And when I look back on it, it seems ludicrous that there was no physical intimacy happening. And I mean none. No more lip smacking, hand holding, or naked pubis areas touching. No dry humping either, the kind that I made Ken and Barbie do when I was a girl. We were just friends, with hinted at benefits. With Matt, it was always hinted at. In my defense, I offer this conversation taken word for word (which means pieced together from my splotchy memory) that happened a few days after my meeting with Lisa when everything was still in the planning session.
I went over to his house, which had returned to its former bachelor appearance, where Matt had a dinner all ready for us, sitting on a table with two candles lit. The curry was still in the takeout containers, but I found this profoundly romantic and not a symbol that he wasn’t taking me serious.
After curry and chit chat, here’s the meat of our conversation that night that we had while I snuggled in his arms between the commercial breaks of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report:
Matt: This feels good.
Me: What?
Matt: You. Here with me.
Me: Mmmm.
Matt: And there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.
Me: Yeah?
Matt: No, don’t look at me. Just look forward. I just want to talk a bit okay? I just want to ask you some hypothetical questions.
Me: Er, okay.
(I have to say at this point I was in deep danger of throwing up our curry dinner because my nerves were going absolutely bonkers.)
Matt: Let’s say you were really good friends with someone and you’d never, say, crossed a line with them physically.
Me: Yeah?
Matt: Do you think if you crossed that line that you could still be friends with them?
(WTF? In Matt-speak I figured out he was asking me if we slept together would it change our relationship. No. It would not. Fuck me now!! Ahem. Sorry for the outburst. I very gently and slowly said the following: )
Me: If you are very good friends, true friends, real friends, then maybe crossing the line will actually, uhm, enhance your relationship. Maybe you will find something even more wonderful than friendship.
(Subtext here: Maybe you will find love.)
(Matt turned my face to look at him then, and then kissed my forehead. It was a wildly chaste gesture.)
Matt: You’re the coolest girl I know, you know that?
Me: Yes.
Then we continued to snuggle until I fell asleep in his arms. An hour later after he’d shaken me asleep, I was in The Beast on the way home dreaming of the time when we’d finally, at long last cross that line. Surely he meant soon. Right?
Blunder Woman-- 2
A Brief (but not brief enough) History About Matt
2
A Brief (but not brief enough) History About Matt
I met Matt at a group training camp, you know those places that companies take their awkward employees to, employees who don’t get along and work better on their own. So the Company makes everyone go to a weekend long ‘retreat’ which is really a weekend long house arrest without the little ankle bracelets.
I’ve done these things before.
You have the group leader and you’re locked in a room with your ‘teammates’ (or office workers who usually you have nothing to say to), and then the group leader leads you in an exercise of trust…usually something like falling backwards from a high perch and hoping to God your coworkers catch you. It’s supposed to teach you about trust and the importance of working as a team, but I don’t think it translates at all. During one of these exercises, I actually spend most of the time obsessing about how much I don’t trust my coworkers and how very little I want to fall into their arms. But I digress. Again.
I didn’t want to go to the stupid Employee Esteem Training but I had to. I’d just been hired part-time at the musical society to write grants and organize fundraisers and I had to show that I was part of the team, a real go-getter, a team player. (More on this musical society later. Work is important, but right now I’m talking about the love of my life: Matt M. Or as I like to think of him “Mmmmmm”.) So the team building thing was mandatory. No go, no job, end of story. So I was very pleased to walk into the Wedgwood Center (aka The Happy Place) and see a very handsome and very male individual standing in the center of the room, arms open and smiling. Sex appeal came off of him in waves, the way the scent of Axe deodorant pours off high school boys.
I can tell you what he looks like, but it doesn’t do him justice. Descriptions never do, you just end up envisioning a freakish monster with whatever hair and eye color I’ve described and try to think it’s sexy. So instead of saying he was tall and had dirty blonde hair and a wide smile (words that don’t really describe him at all). I’ll say instead that he was a mixture of Jason Batemen of Arrested Development quirkiness, with a Harrison Ford grin, and a body (I imagine) just like an oiled-up man posing in Glamour’s Hot Guy of the Month. This was Matt: sensitive, sexy, warm, sexy, opening, funny, sexy, tall, ripped, sexy, and a smile that made me feel like he was looking just at me, even if he was looking at everyone the same way. And he was sexy. Did I say that? Like the kind of guy that should reproduce because, duh, that’s what we’re designed for, right?
I should have known I was in trouble right there. A man you’re attracted to somehow makes your brain stop working. It’s some kind of alien power I’m sure of it. Attraction = instant stupidity.
And when he opened his arms and welcomed us, I was ready to do any stupid trust exercise he asked, including the high wire walk between trees, which I did, all the while screaming “I hate this! I can’t do this! Let me down!!!” But I looked down at Matt, and there he was, my rock, my force, and the new obsession of my life.
Two days later, I called him at his work. I called at 6:30 on a Sunday, certain he wouldn’t be there, and he wasn’t, thank the Gods, so I left a truly awkward message:
Hi! Matt! This is Chloe!
My voice was so tight and peppy it sounded like I was on helium.
"Oh. Chloe from that group you just had, you know, Mozart fundraiser go-go-go! I was the one with the curly shortish reddish hair, the one who talked a lot, the one who screamed 'FOR GODDSAKES GET ME OUT OF THIS TREE!!!'
Yeah. So I was wondering if you’d like to go out for coffee with me? Scratch that. I don’t drink coffee, but maybe you do. You could get coffee and I could get something else. Tea maybe. Probably hot chocolate. Or maybe just water. And a scone. I like scones. Do you like scones? Yeah. So. I’d like to meet you. For an uncoffee. Okey-dokey? Okay."
Not only had I actually said ‘Okey-dokey’, I also hung up without leaving my number. I had to call back and leave another message which I knew he’d get before the previous message so I basically had to repeat the entire thing. It was terrible.
He called me Monday morning.
We had uncoffee on Tuesday. Followed by unlunch (I was too nervous to eat) and an unwalk (we sat on a park bench and talked). I thought “I’ve found him. He’s the One,” and leaned in to kiss him. He answered a call on his phone. It was his mom. At the end of our ‘date’ he hugged me to him, told me he loved spending time with me, that I was unlike anyone he’d ever met.
I’d been in love with him ever since.
I’ve loved him for two years. Two years of incredible conversations and ‘undates’. Of having dinner together, and movies, and celebrating each other’s birthday parties. Two years of meeting him for uncoffees and having unsex (meaning elaborate sex fantasies only in my mind), of being at his beck and call. Two years of celebrating holidays not on the holiday, but near it. Of talking about our daily lives on the phone or while curled up watching a movie. And when I stop to think about it: two years of never meeting his friends, never meeting his family, and never, not ever, meeting his penis.
I loved him for two years. Two! I probably love him still. And I hate his guts for that. Really. I do.
Blunder Woman--1
Me, Chloe Knaggs, currently with Megan (And ‘with’ I mean sitting and eating with not ‘with’ as in sexually.)
1
Me, Chloe Knaggs,
Currently with Megan
(And ‘with’ I mean sitting and eating with
Not ‘with’ as in sexually.)
Megan and I were at our favorite restaurant, Bud and Julie’s Bistro aka the BJ Joint (although no one really called it that), having our morning staples: veggie hash for Megan, and bacon, eggs and toast for me. This had become our tradition. After a night out of a few too many cocktails, we’d recover in the morning together, nurse our hangovers, and analyze everything about our lives to death. And since we’d become like religious zealots hanging out there, we sometimes pitched in during the busy times to help out and make extra cash. Much needed extra cash. I’d wait tables, mixing up orders terribly, and Megan would help at the bar or in the kitchen where heavenly scents wafted from, making you pray to Jesus for a little lunch. It was a good arrangement, for all of us.
Bud and Julie’s was the perfect spot, just down the block from my apartment in Heritage Hill and with food so good you’d swear the toe-curling was because of an orgasm and not just a really good scone. Speaking of which, I took a bite of an amazing cinnamon currant scone, curled my toes and said: “I’m going to give up sex.”
Megan choked on her coffee. “Give it up! For what?”
“I don’t know. I’m giving it up for Lent Lent.”
“Lent is in April, Chloe.” “So?” “It’s May.”
“Well, I can still give it up for Lent if I want to.” I was mumbling a bit, depressed by the teeny tiny scone crumbs on my plate. Maybe I could order another one. Surely one more wouldn’t do much damage. “I’m giving up sex for my very own personal Lent. Lent for the terminally late. I can do this because I’m not Catholic. I’m hardly even Christian. If they were handing out pins, like ‘I’m a Christian’ pins, I’d seriously have to think about putting one on. No, I’m just going to give it up.” I took a sip of my coffee and waited for Megan to think it over. When you talk to Megan, you get a lot of awkward pauses as she cogitates. I think that comes from her job in a bankruptcy law firm. She says she has to be awfully careful that she says the right thing or she can seriously send someone into counseling. “You’re going to give up sex for what?” She said at last, and the added: “Forever?”
“No. Not forever.” That sounded like a major commitment, forever. I didn’t think I was ready for anything so serious. FOREVER. “Geez. Not forever. I mean, God, I hope not. No. I’m just going to give it up for…” I paused here. I hadn’t really thought about putting a number on it. “A year.” “A year? An entire year?” Megan said loudly. Then she looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to us. No one was. They were too busy stuffing their faces and having mini-food-orgasms. “Do you know what that means?”
“It means 365 days of no sex.”
“No. No!” Megan pushed her plate away from her in disgust. It wasn’t the food she was disgusted with, she’d actually licked her plate clean, it was the idea of a life of no sex. “It means spending Christmas, New Years, and Valentine’s Day alone or sober, or possibly both.” I hadn’t considered that. Nothing was worse than a holiday by yourself, sexless, watching Comedy Central and laughing out loud. I’ve been there. It’s a sad sad sad world. “Well, you haven’t had sex since you broke up with Eri…” Megan sent eye daggers across the table to me. I wasn’t supposed to say his name. Eric. A perfectly nice name, but a name that could make Megan curl up like a frozen shrimp. “You haven’t had sex in over a year and you’re doing just fine,” I said. Megan harrumphed, and gave me a gesture that somehow said, “You really believe I’m fine?” I continued. “You know, I could have a boyfriend. I wouldn’t have to be alone. I’m not opposed to a boyfriend. I could have a boyfriend and just not have sex with him.”
“You already have a boyfriend that you don’t have sex with. Matt. And how long have you been in love with him?”
I didn’t answer that one.
“No,” Megan said gently. “I think you’re doing the opposite of what you should do. For you, I do not recommend a sexless year. For you, I recommend...tossing Matt over, finding someone new, and having sex every single day for a year until Matt is out of your heart.”
“Oh. It’s that easy, huh? I should just toss the love of my life, my destiny over, and date some hapless guy. I should just date and fall in love with…” I looked around the restaurant and pointed at the guy by the window. “Him.” He was reading a book and bobbing his head to his iPod. At least I hoped it was his iPod and that he didn’t have something wrong with him.
“You’d date him and not have sex with him for an entire year?”
“Why not?” I asked. “I’m tired of sex. Sure it was fun for a while, but now it’s all in and out in and out and the whole thing is boring. Plus, I think I’m a little messed up with it emotionally. Maybe I just need some time to figure myself out without letting my hormones whack up my thinking.”
“Oh, I get it,” Megan said nodding. “You want to give up sex for a year because Matt isn’t head over heels for you yet. I mean he’s never even kissed you and you’ve been seeing each other for over a year” “Almost two.”
“A year and a half. You’re way past the third date mark with him, slipped into Sorryville. So now, a year and a half later…”
“It’s closer to two!”
“Whatever. You say you’re officially giving up sex, then there’s no more pressure for Matt to have sex with you and you can keep going out and fantasizing about him and you don’t have to be depressed anymore that you’re not sleeping with him because now it’s your choice, and not his.” She reached across the table, took a piece of scone from the center plate, the scone that I had mentally claimed as rightfully mine, and then popped my scone into her mouth! The demon. I was so breathless over what she’d just said I didn’t even move.
“I did not want to play Therapist with you,” I managed. Her insight hit just a little to close to Reality, and I was not into discussing Reality in the morning. Over breakfast. With a hangover.
“I wasn’t playing Therapist,” Megan said and then reached for the other piece of MY scone. I grabbed it before she could get to it and smiled smugly. She looked at me and blinked. “I’m not playing with you. I was telling you the truth,” she continued. “We only play Therapist when your mom is with us.”
“Well, anyway, you can just stop. And by stop I mean shut up,” I said softly, my heart beating so hard in my chest I thought it was going to erupt Alien-style. “That’s not it at all. I’m not going to have sex for a year not because of Matt. I don’t care that he doesn’t seem to notice me even though I’ve been in love with him forever. I don’t care that we’re not sleeping together because our relationship is better than that, stronger. I’m not giving up sex because I haven’t dated anyone besides Matt in forever and I’m thirty-two and I hate him and I can’t seem to get a date and I’m a complete and utter loser and my boobs are starting to droop. No. I’m not going to have sex for a year because this is about empowerment, Megan, this is about choice. This is about sticking it to the Man, without the, uhm, Sticking, the It, or The Man.” I angrily shoved the rest of the scone in my mouth in a So There type of way. And then I choked a little bit. It was a really big piece. Like, really enormous.
Megan took one look at me, reached in her purse, and handed me a tissue for the tears that were threatening to fall if I couldn’t get it together. I swallowed the scone without tasting it, and used the tissue.
Who was I kidding?
My decision to go without sex was all about Matt. It’s always been about Matt.