Bullshit

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.

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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. ↩︎

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

Weddings are ridiculous affairs. Putting aside the obvious hilarity of two people in this day and age claiming to not only know themselves well enough to make a reasonable lifetime commitment but also to know a completely different person well enough to bet the ranch on, there’s also the issue of the sheer gluttonous spectacle of it all. The Wedding business is huge, weddings are incredibly expensive…and why? So you can invite a bunch of mean-spirited relatives, greedy ravenous friends you haven’t spoken to in a few years, and all of their anonymous and bottomless girlfriends, boyfriends, domestic partners, wives, husbands, and who knows what else, and then stuff them senseless? I don’t mind getting filled to the brim with watered liquor, rubber chicken and stuffed mushrooms three or four times a year, but ask me if it’s necessary.

And you cant blame us, the lowing stampeding herd of guests you’ve invited. The human race isn’t very complex: put a feed in front of us and most of us are like Boggies, we eat until were swallowed by an unexpected cloud of unconsciousness and rushed to the hospital. You resent the fact that you spend $20,000 just so I can draw a face on my beer gut and dance shirtless on a table while eating clams and chugging champagne (all the while being cheered on by everyone except my sobbing, red-faced date)? Then stop inviting me.

Ahem.

Earlier this year I was once again asked to pull out the old forest green suit and cut a rug at a wedding, this time being a rent-a-date for my friend Laura, who lives in South Carolina now and whom I don’t see nearly often enough, mostly due to my failure to travel south. A childhood friend of hers was getting hitched over in Staten Island and as is often the case with our lost generation, she needed a date. After exhausting her other options, she settled for me.

I’m well known in the wedding business now, and upon learning that I was to attend the reception hall hired three extra security people and restocked the bar. Such is my power.

Laura warned me that there was going to be no expense spared at this soirée, so I broke down and invested in a haircut a week before the festivities, to show my good faith in looking my best for my date. Of course, this was one of Italo the Barber’s (who has been cutting my hair since I was four with a maintenance of style and skill you’ve got to respect) $9 specials, which is to say: invariably a disaster. So I showed up at Laura’s house shined up like a new penny, except for my hair, which seemed to be prepared for a different experience altogether (possibly a rectal exam, possibly a murder attempt – who knows what my hair was thinking?).

Laura didn’t notice, however, as she was recovering from a bout of stomach virus so disastrous she’d been on IV fluids just the day before, which is to say she was still too busy vomiting to notice whether I looked good or not. I suggested that perhaps she was too ill to attend, but as she delicately locked herself into the bathroom she waved me off and insisted that everything was fine. I shrugged and went outside to spread plastic drop cloths over my car’s upholstery, just in case.

The wedding revived Laura somewhat, what with the brisk fresh air and the spirited drive over (I think my driving is spirited because so many people are moved to pray whilst in the car with me) and she greeted old friends enthusiastically, and finally took notice of my disastrous haircut. She politely ignored it, and me, for the rest of the ceremony, which was pretty long and dull as weddings go, and involved an odd spot wherein the bride and groom wandered off somewhere else entirely and left us all standing there in silence, wondering what the hell was going on. I imagine the couple got quite a hoot out of that, the bastards.

The reception, however, was Laura’s undoing, as you might expect: it’s hard to be at a well-catered reception and not eat until you pass out, and Laura continued to help herself to treats despite the mounting evidence that she shouldn’t. I was driving, and so only had one drink, which actually does nothing to improve my surly and combative nature. Upon our arrival we discovered that a nefarious couple had taken two seats at our table, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to sit with Laura’s brother and sister and their respective dates, with whom we had forged a strong bond over stiff drinks and appetizers during the cocktail hour. We wanted the couple to go sit at their own table, but nobody wanted a scene. We men stood around with our hands in our pockets, unsure of what to do, while Laura stalked off and caused a scene anyway. The offending couple were sentenced to a less prominent table and glared at me all night. They could tell I was an instigator, and blamed me. In truth, we men sort of avoided looking at the other couple and hoped to god a fight didn’t break out – I didn’t need the memory of Laura standing over me, defending my honor, while I bled and whined. I have enough of those sorts of memories.

I’m a lover, not a fighter.

The reception was pretty typical, and except for an hallucinogenic moment in the middle when the band played hard-rock versions of “Play That Funky Music” and “Devil Went Down to Georgia” back to back (twenty minutes of my life I’d certainly like to have back) the only thing which marked the evening was the fact that Laura’s Brother’s girlfriend kept disappearing for long stretches of time. She would just wander off and leave the poor guy sitting at the table alone, staring into space. In-between daring her stomach virus to attack, Laura and I noticed her talking to various men during the evening, and I wondered if tragedy was rearing its ugly head. The thought brought joy to my heart, and I prepared for drama and angst gladly. Little did I know the only drama and angst I was going to get was courtesy Laura’s wayward gastrointestinal system.

At one point, Laura and I snuck out to have a cadged cigarette or two, standing by the bathrooms in the lobby and gossiping about her brother. It was nice; I don’t see Laura much, and it occurred to me that maybe the ultimate purpose of Weddings in my life is simply to get together with people I don’t normally see. Standing in the lobby with Laura, this seemed likely, and I wondered, privately, if I would ever figure out a way to make money off of my skills as a rent-a-date. I didn’t mention this to Laura, knowing how easily I am misinterpreted these days.

By the time the Venetian room was opened up, I could smell disaster in the air but Laura couldn’t resist, and an hour later we were leaving, a slightly green Laura bravely staying awake for the whole ride to make sure I didn’t wander into the wrong direction entirely, which I almost managed despite her efforts. Driving for me, especially when I’m wearing tight, uncomfortable shoes, is a very Zen experience. I just sort of pick a car and follow it, and hope it knows where it’s going. This works better than you might imagine. As I dropped Laura off at home and sped away, I thought that if nothing else I learned that sometimes you just have to lay off the seafood.

Note: This essay originally appear in my zine The Inner Swine as part of a series composed during a period of my life when I was attending weddings as a Plus-One every other week.

THE hardest part about attending my cousin’s wedding was finding a suitable fake name for her so I could eventually write about the event. Being from your prototypical Irish-catholic family, I have several thousand cousins, not to mention hundreds other less-defined relations, plus the weird hangers-on who aren’t even related to me but who are always at these family functions. Finding a name that no other member of my clan was currently using, so as to avoid the usual libel threats my family throws at me on a daily basis, was the most difficult and research-intensive task I’ve had to perform recently. After months of deep thought and careful searching through the bars and taverns of the tri-state area (the best source of Irish-catholic wisdom in the country) I’ve come up with a winner: I’ll call my cousin Smilla. I do happen to have a three-month old second-cousin Smilla, but she’s too young to have been the subject of this essay, so it’s okay.

I asked my gorgeous friend Elizabeth to be my date at this event, which was partly due to the deep and abiding friendship we have developed over the years and partly due to the fact that Elizabeth can cause car wrecks when wearing certain dresses. Attending family weddings is like going to a high school reunion for me: it’s a bunch of people I haven’t seen in a while who are dying to dig into the steaming pile of gossip I represent. Naturally, you want to make a big impression in these situations, and Elizabeth also kept everyone’s eyes off me and my sadly neglected physique. Little did I know that the evening would be a slow, tortuous dance of humiliations.

Elizabeth drove us to the combination chapel and reception hall somewhere in the uncharted wilderness of New Jerseys strip mall hell, and we arrived in time to glad hand a few Aunts and Uncles (some of whom attempted to glad-hand Elizabeth, causing a few early shouting matches) and take our seats to watch the ceremony. Smilla was marrying a Jewish man who looked vaguely Italian and so the ceremony was a mix of catholic and Jewish. Having been to a few weddings, I can tell you now that both sides of that coin are equally boring. Elizabeth slipped a stiletto heel off of her graceful foot to jab me in the side with every time my snoring threatened to become an embarrassment.

When the wedding huddle broke up, we had some time to wander the halls during the cocktail hour while they readied the reception hall. We found ourselves trapped, along with my Mother and Brother, with the craziest of my Crazy Uncles, who relaxed in a plush chair with a scotch on the rocks telling us about Jesus, who apparently spoke to him on an almost constant basis. Every time my Crazy Uncles eyes fell on me, I was afraid he was going to denounce me as a witch. At the first break in my Crazy Uncles nearly-seamless soliloquy I grabbed Elizabeth and demanded that we go outside for a cigarette. My Brother, no fool, tagged along despite the fact that cigarettes make him turn green.

Humiliation #1: Freed from insane relatives, the three of us prowled the corridors curiously and were having such an enjoyable conversation that we were late getting to the reception hall. The Wedding Party was gathered at the doors, ready to make their big entrance, and Smilla spied the three of us waiting politely to sneak in after them. My cousin insisted we sneak in before the wedding party, and we burst into the room amidst cheers and music meant for the bride and groom. I stopped to grin and wave like a superstar, until Elizabeth manhandled me to a nearby table, which, I must admit, I kind of enjoyed.

Humiliation #2: The table we’d found ourselves sitting at wasn’t the table we were supposed to be sitting at, but rather one of the kids’ tables. It was Elizabeth, me, and several ten-year-olds who were rather belligerent towards us. Often I had to use violence to defend myself. The fact that several of my aunts and uncles no longer speak to me can be directly traced to my actions, words, and attitudes at this table.

Humiliation #3: After the pandemonium had settled down a little, I went to the bar for a much-needed stiff drink, whereupon I was promptly carded. At my own cousin’s wedding. I have always been cursed with a cherubic and innocent face, which is why I get away with copping free drinks and cheap feels from my friends on a constant basis, but this was too much. I took our drinks, grabbed Elizabeth, and once again demanded we go out for a cigarette.

When we returned from prowling the halls once again, my family in general had boozed itself into a frenzy, with fights, romances, and general silliness breaking out all around us in record numbers. The groom, well-oiled with liquor through the evening, was hoisted up on a chair along with his bride and a handkerchief for what appeared to be some sort of traditional religious nonsense, and promptly fell off the chair. They hoisted him up again, and he fell off again, killing several people. One of my uncles is a cop, though, so it was all made right in the end.

Finally, Elizabeth’s friendship had been strained enough and we made our way through the EMS workers, police, and wounded to say good night to the bride and groom. The bride eyed us with the traditional catholic-matron marriage eye and thanked me for coming, the groom thought my name was Steve and seemed to be still standing only because he was too drunk to fall down.

In the car, with the wind screaming past us and Elizabeth’s perfume in the car, I pondered the horror of the family wedding and decided that it was definitely better to be a rent-a-date than the relation. As a rent-a-date I can get really drunk and make a pig of myself at both the buffet and the bridesmaids receiving line, and my mother never has to hear about it.

When I went to college, I had a job at the Student Center. My first year there, this involved me sitting, hungover, at a central desk where they sold candy and I was expected to dispense information that I absolutely did not possess. The Student Center staff was divided into a few separate units: There was the Workbench, which was a crafty sort of spot where people came to do screen printing or bake their sculptures, the office staff, the central desk area, and the House Crew.

The House Crew were tasked with setting up for events, lugging chairs and stages and sound equipment around, partitioning meeting rooms, and general cleanup. It was a lot of hard work, and I had nothing to do with them initially. I worked at that front desk and sometimes in the Workbench, which involved just sitting around and making sure people didn’t steal anything or set themselves on fire while using the equipment.

At some point, I decided I wanted to grow up a bit, make a bit more money, and, I don’t know, challenge myself? That can’t be right. But whatever 20-year-old Jeff’s reasons were, I decided to throw my name in for a management position. Each area of the Student Center had a manager who handled scheduling, payroll, and other issues, and despite a lifelong commitment to MEMO (minimum effort, maximum output), I decided to go for it. I was pretty confident I’d get manager of Workbench, but when the day came no one called me to let me know either way. There was a little party for all the new managers, so I toddled down there and forced the Director of the Student Center to inform me that I had not gotten the position in front of everyone, which was kind of humiliating.

Apparently living the MEMO life didn’t translate to success. Who knew¹?

Our First Second Choice

My time came a few weeks later, however; two people had been installed as co-managers of the House crew for some reason, and they got into a dispute with the Director over the hourly pay rate for some of their folks. As a protest, they purposefully filled out payroll at a higher hourly rate for those workers, and were promptly fired. So I got the call to replace them, because, I assume, the field of potential managers was pretty thin.

I’d never managed anything before. I’d also never worked House Crew, because of my delicate writer’s constitution and ladylike hands. But I dived into that job with gusto. My main innovation was writing up minutes of our weekly staff meetings and distributing them to everyone, which I of course turned into a creative exercise. My Minutes were mini-stories, detailing fictional brawls, field trips, and supernatural happenings that occurred at each meeting. I wrote a few as epic poems, some as stage plays. In a lot of ways, those staff meeting minutes were prepping me for The Inner Swine, the zine I started publishing after I graduated college, which was similarly filled with ridiculous experimental stuff like that.

Was I good manager of the House Crew? Probably not. I’m not good at managing anything, so I was likely deeply mediocre. But I like to think that I brought a little fun into the job. Like a lot of the ephemera of my pre-Internet life, I wish I’d saved some of those meeting minutes; they’re all gone now, trashed shortly after they were handed out and forgotten by their recipients. And honestly they were probably only mildly amusing to the folks who were literally there. But I still kind of wish I had a few copies, just to see if I was really as clever as I thought I was².

Since my heady days as Lord of House Crew I have carefully avoided any kind of managerial responsibility, and I think the world has been a better place as a result. You are welcome.