Bullshit

Originally appeared in The Current, a former supplement to a former local newspaper in Hoboken, NJ, long ago in a more civilized age.

When you live in Hoboken, you either live there in spite of the ubiquitous bars, or you live there because of the bars. And there are a lot of bars, that’s for sure—wherever you live in Hoboken, you are within three blocks of a tavern of some sort. So you’re either sitting up late at nights with a shotgun across your knees, gritting your teeth in rage because of all the noisy drunkards screaming in the street, or you’re one of the screaming drunkards. Or, like me, you once were one of the screaming drunkards and look back on that time fondly, vomit and all.

Living here, therefore, you learn pretty quickly how to navigate the bars. It’s a survival skill. And the first thing you learn is that there are, fundamentally, two types of bars. There may be infinite sub-categories within, but every bar can be boiled down to one of these: Old Man Bars, and everything else.

The Old Man Bar is a phenomenon that crosses borders, cultures, and, apparently, time. Sometimes referred to with the misleading term ‘neighborhood bar’, the Old Man Bar is a simple concept: It’s that bar you walk into and stop three steps in because staring back at you, blank-faced with disdain, are men uniformly over the age of fifty (with a couple of possible exceptions). Instantly, you know you’re not supposed to be in this bar, and you get the heck out of it as quickly as you possibly can.

Of course, there are plenty of men over fifty who don’t spend their days in Old Man Bars, and plenty of people over fifty who quite happily hang out at bars you wouldn’t term “Old Man Bars”.? It’s not that all old men go to Old Man Bars, it’s that, invariably, Old Man Bars are peopled exclusively by old men. There’s nothing wrong with this, either, of course—live and let live, I say—but the fact is that if you aren’t already spending your time in an Old Man Bar, I know two things about you without having met you: One, you don’t want to be in an Old Man Bar, and two, the old men don’t want you in their bar either.

Aside from the unfriendly glares from the old men, you can tell an Old Man Bar from the uncannily consistent features it will sport:

1. It will be populated, but never crowded. There will be plenty of elbow room, and a sprinkling of patrons, most men over fifty—however, there may be one or two women, also over fifty, and even one or two of those old-before-their time younger men who have decided to get it over with and begin the serious business of drinking.

2. There will be a single pool table, much abused.

3. The jukebox will be playing something from 1973 when you walk in, and there won’t be an album more recent than 1980 on it.

4. There will be, at most, two beers on tap. It’s possible one of the taps won’t even work.

The best thing to do when you arrive inadvertently at an Old Man Bars to just back out silently and never return. Any instinct to be polite will not be appreciated, and will be uniformly painful for both sides. Besides, the bartenders in Old Man bars are usually bartenders by avocation, and any cocktail more complex than a Boilermaker will require a quick glance through a bartender’s handbook, not to mention a disdainfully raised eyebrow, so any request for a Cosmopolitan or a Dirty Martini will probably go unanswered.

No one knows, I don’t think, why this phenomenon is so common. Certainly a time comes when you’re too old for the crowded, loud, singles-oriented scene that most of Hoboken’s bars offer, but maybe you still want to meet friends for a drink once in a while, or every day, or just spend your time sopping up as much alcohol as possible before cirrhosis takes its toll We all probably have an Old Man Bar in our future at some point, when the music gets too loud, the air too smoky, and the crowd too young. We’ll wander onto the dimly-lit side streets of Hoboken, croaking out our mating call, eventually hearing an old song from our youth on the warm air. And when we trace it to its source, we’ll find the Old Man Bar of our future, sparsely populated by people who know the same trivia as we do, and there’ll be plenty of room at the bar, and no screaming kids ordering sweet mixed drinks, and the occasional entertainment of watching a group of youngsters stumble in, stop dead, and quietly back out with wide eyes and trembling lips.

Yea, verily, the tradition continues: A new novel shall be posted at this wee blog, one chapter a week, until we’re done! (Likely some time in October, as I have few novels with 50+ chapters).

The 2025 Free Somers Novel is …

The Bouncer

This is a relatively recent one; first draft was finished in 2020 and a light revision done in 2022. Had some discussion with the late, great agent about it but we never got organized to go out on it, and now I’m not sure it would be the right project to lead with, but I also don’t know if it ever will be, so let’s post it here!

Here’s the basics:

Mads Renick is struggling to get back to Zero — to the starting line. Working as a bouncer at a dive bar in Bergen City whose owner is affiliated with the fading Spillaine organized crime family, he’s just trying to survive along with his best friend, Jill “Pill” Pilowsky. He blames his life’s downturn on his parents, brilliant, evil Mats and brilliant, chaotic Liùsaidh, but they’re both dead.

Or so he thinks until the young son of Abban Spillaine shows up to tell him that his parents aren’t dead, after all — they ripped off every loan shark in town and faked their demise, abandoning their son and buying their way into the retirement village for criminals known as Paradise. While they’re dues-paying members of Paradise society, they can’t be touched — but now it’s on Mads to track them down and make it right, or lose everything he loves, and any chance he has of a normal life.

Same deal as ever: Each week, one chapter will pop up here, starting on Monday, January 6th, 2025. I’ll post eBook files for each chapter as well. When the whole book is finished, I’ll post a complete eBook as well. You’re free to read along each week, or just wait until the complete book drops.

Thanks for reading! I look forward to your comments, insults, and joyous snark when you notice a mistake or plot hole. You bastards.

For most of us, your first concert is a fond memory. It’s a stop along the way to adulthood, an early moment when you expressed taste and made a decision for yourself. And it’s also often (though not universally) a key moment of independence when you head off without supervision. Years later, you can get all wistful and talk about the first show you ever went to and all the crazy adventures you had.

That’s all well and good if your first concert was something cool. My first concert? The first live music show I attended without any parents or adult chaperones? Meatloaf.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that — Meatloaf had a lot of fans and sold a lot of records, and was undeniably a talented singer (and even actor!). But it does not have the cool factor, does it? Heading into Manhattan in 1989 to see Meatloaf is not exactly like catching The Ramones at CBGB in 1974. I wasn’t even really into Meatloaf, honestly. I was vaguely familiar with the big hits like Bat Out of Hell, sure, but I didn’t sit around listening to Meatloaf tracks in my spare time.

A friend of mine from High School, who wasn’t a serious person, loved Meatloaf, however, and it was his idea to go. I thought, what the heck, let’s have an adventure. I should have asked myself why he couldn’t get anyone else to go with him.

.o0o.

First, I had to get an ID. I was seventeen, and the venue was 16 and older but you had to have ID, or so the official line went. I hadn’t yet gotten my driver’s license, so I had to go to a place downtown and show my birth certificate and sit for a photo and wait for the ID to be made. This was an early sign that I am a Rule Follower, because of course when I got to the show no one gave two shits about an ID — all it meant was that I didn’t get an adult wristband, so I couldn’t order alcohol. Joke was on them, I had three bucks in my pocket so I couldn’t afford alcohol. But I still got the ID, because Jeff is always terrified of being caught not following the rules. It’s a real problem.

The place was half full, and I remember feeling a little sorry for Mr. Loaf, who sweated impressively on stage and seemed on the verge of collapse at all times, but sounded pretty good. My Unserious Friend was ecstatic, and kept grabbing me to shout enthusiasms in my ear, but I was just slightly bored. I knew two songs, there were — at most — two dozen other people there, and I couldn’t even drink recklessly, already one of my favorite hobbies.

.o0o.

I’ve carried unspoken resentment toward my Unserious Friend for decades because of this. This is exacerbated by the fact that my next concert was The Who (followed rapidly by The Rolling Stones), much cooler bands that would have been a decent choice for first concert ever.

Of course, when I saw The Who and The Stones I imagined they were on the cusp of retirement. They were so old, so absolutely ancient, I felt like I was running out of time to see them. Meanwhile 80-year old Mick Jagger is out there making me look bad. So what do I know about cool? Apparently nothing.

HERE in my little burg folks get really into the holiday lights thing. Starting in early October, people begin setting up some pretty lavish displays – inflatables, music and sound effects, and, of course, lights, lights, and more lights. The Duchess adores this part of the year, and always wants to walk around town to see the displays, exclaiming in adorable childlike wonder at every moving tentacle, singing Santa, and elegant arrangement of plastic skeletons. One house, for example, always has about a dozen skeletons dressed in tie-dye shirts, with a sign proclaiming them to be the Grateful Dead. The Duchess loves it!

Me, not so much.

Anyone who is surprised that I’m a bit of a cranky killjoy has obviously never spent a Saturday night with me, but I’m not a complete Grinch – I love the holidays for non-religious reasons (i.e., excuses to drink and eat until I’m half dead) just as much as the next agnostic asshole. What I object to is the length of time we celebrate them, which seems to get longer every year.

I like my holidays tight and concentrated. If you start celebrating Halloween in late September, by the time the day actually comes, I’m exhausted, and much more likely to shut the door, turn off the lights, and sip bourbon in the dark while the kids shout outside, threatening to burn my house down if I don’t toss out some candy immediately (this is New Jersey, after all; my father used to sit outside the house with a baseball bat on Mischief Night). Same thing with Xmas – if I had my way we’d just go about our normal business until about December 23rd, spend a week or so getting jolly, and then spend January nursing hangovers. This 3-month holiday season bullshit is wearying.

This isn’t really about grinchiness, though. It’s about the dilution of experience. We all have a tendency to stretch pleasurable activities out until they’re so thin we can see through them, and trying to keep up the ol’ holiday spirit for three months is a grind. For me, at least. By December 1st I’m usually already sick of holiday songs, and a I definitely have no interest in the lights any more. If we all just waited a few beats it would just be more special, I think.

.o0o.

Here at the house, we do put up some decorations and lights, because we’re living in a society here and no one needs to know just how weirdly bitter I am about existing. We put up precisely the same three pieces of decoration every year, along with some random lights strung up randomly (currently the front of the house is festooned with purple and orange for Halloween and those will remain up through Xmas so purple and orange are now Xmas colors and I will hear no arguments on the matter).

Strangely, this is comforting. Every holiday I put the same three things up – they’re like friends. We have Plastic Target Skeleton, Mangy, Ragged Black Cat, and Partially Torn Open Pumpkin Light. We have Plastic Wreath From Previous Century, Odd Amish Santa Statue, and Bent and Abused Tiny Plastic Tree. Something about the continuity of it is a balm to me. They’re old, substandard, and not that attractive (in fact, they probably depress Halloween attendance and Xmas party invites from neighbors), but they’re constants in a world that lacks them, so I lean in to that.

Plus, if we didn’t at least string some lights and hang a wreath on the door, The Duchess would knee me in the groin.

Happy Holidays, I suppose is what I’m saying here. The Somers Way is to complain about everything but react in horror to any kind of change, so despite my complaints know that if the house caught fire I would walk through the flames to rescue Odd Amish Santa.

As I prep for my presentation at the 4th Annual Short Story Virtual Conference I’m thinking about the whole short story of it all, naturally enough. I love writing short stories, and I love selling them even more; it’s like conjuring small amount of money from thin air. I’ve sold two short stories so far this year:

• Lone Star. Deep Black. Hum., which will appear in Fission #4, and
• History Porn, which will appear in Book XI : A Journal of Literary Philosophy

Not sure when those will pub, but some time this year, I think. Both of these stories were submitted this year, and both were written in 2020, which makes the time from completion to sale 3-4 years. That got me thinking about how long it sometimes takes to sell a story (or a novel). There’s a term out there: Trunk Story (or Trunk Novel), which refers to a story or novel you wrote long ago and never sold and now keep in your trunk instead of actively submitting it. I have a few Trunk Stories, but not too many, because in my experience it can take a long time to sell a book or short story. Like, a really long time.

My personal record? Sixteen years. I wrote “A Meek and Thankful Heart” in 1997 and sold it to Buzzy Magazine in 2013. Sixteen years¹!

I’ve got several stories that took 10-12 years to sell, and my novel Chum famously took my agent (the late, great, and truly hilarious Janet Reid) 12 years to sell after she signed me on the strength of it^2,3. On average, it takes about 4-5 years after I finish a story before I sell it, though this number is skewed by the stories I was invited to contribute (which are essentially 0-day sales) and doesn’t consider the many, many stories and novels I have failed to sell, many of which have fallen out of my submission process because I’ve decided they weren’t all that great to begin with (mostly older works, naturally). The oldest story I am still actively trying to sell is about eleven years old at this point, but it doesn’t show up in this particular statistic because it hasn’t sold (yet).

Note: In case it wasn’t obvious, I am not a math kind of guy⁴.

The point of all this is that after sixteen years (or 5, or 1) a story has garnered a lot of rejections, and it’s natural to wonder if maybe you’ve overestimated the story’s quality or interest level — if maybe you’ve got a trunk story on your hands. But it’s worth reminding yourself that it comes down to connecting with the right person, that editor who sees the same thing you do in the story. All it takes is one decision-maker to think your story is as good as you do to make a sale. And when you sell that story, the years of submissions no longer signify: It’s published.

Trying to sell your fiction can be a hard, soul-chilling business. It’s basically taking an acid bath in rejection 24 hours a day, sometimes (ah, but then there are the days when you sell a story and get a royalty check for 79 cents and you get your second wind). But it’s also a long game, and sometimes the game takes a lot longer than you might expect.

—————————————————————————

1. Of course, this means I am old enough to have published a story eleven years ago that took sixteen years to sell. <stares into the middle distance and feels old> ↩︎
2. To be fair, over the course of those 12 years Janet sent me numerous notes, revision ideas, and reviews from colleagues as we tinkered with it. The novel that sold was like a diamond after all the thought and effort put into it. ↩︎
3. And my second novel, The Electric Church, technically took 12 years to sell, too, if you measure from the first draft, though the re-write that sold in 2005 was essentially a totally new novel, so I usually count the time to sell as 1 year. ↩︎
4. Although, hilariously, when I was like 10 years old I thought I was. I actually wrote a “math handbook” for my fellow students explaining how I did basic arithmetic so quickly. It was not appreciated. ↩︎