Month: June 2020

Writing Prompt: Write a story featuring a pathological liar, a cow, and a cardboard box.

Jamie signed his name at the bottom of the painting,on the side of a cardboard box, of a cow, then put the box on a shelf next to other boxes with similarly bucolic paintings.

He turned to face a crowd of reporters behind. “And that, ladies and gentleman, completes number 523. Questions?”

“Why boxes?” said a man near the front, holding a notepad and a pencil, dressed in a sloppy suit one size too big for him, battered fedora, five o’clock shadow, droopy eyelids, bottle o’ hootch in his back pocket.

Jamie gazed at the reporter for a few beats, his face expressionless. “Why not?” he finally said. He turned to another. “Yes?”

A woman in a mauve pantsuit, lots of hair, lots of makeup. “Jill St. Parable, County Gazette-Informer. ‘An op-ed in ‘Artist Review’ last week claimed that your farm credentials are thin, quote, ‘he’s as lea as the one from Star Wars.’ What is your response?”

Jamie lowered his eye, sighed, then turned to the box he’d just installed. He ran a finger gently along the line of the cow’s back. “I am capable of enormous acts of imagination. I am an artist, afterall. And yes, I could have wrought from the damp, dark, secret places of my soul these scenes. Green for grass, red for barn, blue for sky. Easy. But this… this cow.” He turned back to the reporters. “The truth is, this cow and I were lovers.”

The crowd of journalists remained silent. Until someone in the back said. “Sexually?”

Jamie smiled a grim smile. “Oh my. Yes. I don’t know how you make love, whoever said that, but if it’s with the pen, I’m afraid this is one arena where the pen is not as mighty as the sword.”

“So, bestiality,” said the one in the fedora.

“Were all animals, aren’t we?” Jamie said. He frowned. “Anyone who’s died the little death in the arms of another is an animal-fucker, yes? I know what I said may seem, well, shocking. But it’s not provocative because of the word you give it. Our forbidden love stands alone, take it however you like, you needn’t infantilize it with pro-homospecies nomenclature.”

“Isn’t that illegal,” someone said.

Jamie shrugged. “That’s what artists do. We break rules. We push boundaries. We go to the uncomfortable places that everyone dreams of going but are too terrified to go. And we bring back hope, don’t we. We bring back love. 

“You were in love,” said fedora.

Jamie smiled at him, as if to forgive the boxes question, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Would I have loved Cleo if I weren’t an artist? Ask me if I would have shat different shaped feces if I’d eaten cheerios instead of muslix this morning. I am what I am. It is all that I am. If I were not an artist, I would not be.

“We had a very tender relationship, Cleopatra and I, and while I won’t deny, in fact I admit proudly, to our partaking in the carnal delights, there were also our moments of simple companionship. Sharing a glass of wine and a fistful of hay. Or talking about the moon, and lowing. She, lying on her side, gently snoring, while I sat against her bulging teats, scribbling meaningless doodles in my thick, care-worn sketch pad.

“I hear people say ‘She got me,’ or ‘he gets me,’ or ‘I want someone who understands me.’ Let me be clear. That is not what Cle and I had. She didn’t ‘get’ me. No one ‘gets’ a true artist. No one, not even the most sublimely beautiful, kind-hearted, devotional, self-sacrificing, three-quarters-ton bovine ‘understands’ what the artist’s self-torture is like. The isolation, the loneliness, staring with bruised eyes through tears of blood into that harrowing, soul-raping pit of hell we call ‘truth.’

“She was my temporary solace. And that’s all we can ask of our muses. Someone or something that can take us out of ourselves long enough to act as a conduit, a vessel to let the canvas drink the colors of said truth.” Jamie smiled warmly at fedora.  “Or cardboard, in my case.”

Fedora wept, as the other reporters scribbled furiously on their notepads.

“She knew she could never be a cure for the disease that is imagination. She could only be hospice. And I knew she knew. I knew she knew hers was to be ever the mistress to me, a man betrothed to art. And I loved her for it, as much as a man can love something other than the self-hatred that drives him to plunge into a sea of madness long enough to bring back a fish of… of…” A tear trickled down his cheek as his eyes held a far-off look.

The journalists ceased their writing, frozen, waiting expectantly.

Jamie smiled. “Well, words are not my forte, are they. I can only ‘speak’ with a brush and some acrylics. So, honestly, all I can say in response to this alleged ‘Artist Review,’ is this,” and with that, he held a hand up and swept it before his boxes.

Of course none of it was true. But the applause started in the back.

Writing Prompt: Come up with a new holiday. Explain why and how it should be celebrated.

Next week is Armless Day. It’s a day for celebrating people who do not have arms. Take it how you want. People who literally have no appendages dangling from their shoulders. Or people who don’t have guns. Think of it like this. Armistice Day is the day we celebrate the end of world war something. Armistice, armisless, armsless, armless. Not much of a stretch. And you can’t carry guns if you don’t have hands. And you can’t have hands if you don’t have arms.

Although there are some fuckers out there. Guys born without arms or legs who practice up and can shoot a bow and arrow while doing a backflip through a flaming hoop. I don’t know when that would be a necessary skill. But I like the irony. Guy with no arms who takes that handicap and turns it into a youtube video. Armless day is for him. 

What should you do. Well, there’s options. Some folks pull their arms into the shorts and go through their day. Frankly, that’s ridiculous. But so is religion, and look at the hold that has on the world. Other folks strap all manner of device to their arms. Painful things, straps with barbs, rough stuff that tugs at their arm hairs. There they go with the religion crap again. The idea I guess is to not take arms for granted. Load of crap if you ask me.

If you ask me, here’s what I do. I go to a bar. What good is a holiday if you can’t go to a bar. There’s this culture out there that Xmas sucks, cause of family. Take your goddamn family to a bar. Get piss drunk with your Aunt Clorita. Have a fuckin’ fist-fight with your dad. Trust me, by last call, you all be in love again. So, I go to a bar, I get a booth, I get a few drinks in me. I trap my arm between me and the wall. Eventually my arm goes to sleep. Now I’m armless.

Is it much? No. But so what. President’s day, arbor day, christ, even armistice day. Who celebrates those anymore. If I had a time machine, I’d go back to when I was 15 and got my ass kicked by Lemar Washington. But then I’d go back to George himself, and say, guess what. They’re going to celebrate your birthday by putting sheets on sale. Still worth it, freezing your ass off at Valley Forge? Then I’d asked to see his teeth.

Maybe we should have a toothless day. A fella could make a killing selling fake wooden fake teeth. I mean capitalism, right. That’s all holidays are good for anymore.

Writing Prompt: You’re afraid that your name and personality just don’t fit your writing style. To help sell your work, come up with a pseudonym and an alter ego for it.

Tex McNabb. Call me Tex. My real name. Some folks say, what’s your baby name. I tell ’em I don’t got one. The say nah. The name they called you when you was born. I say I don’t got one. That shuts ’em up.

I live in a house my grandma built with her own two hands, mostly. Had some help, here and there. Met a man, did what she needed to do to get the rest of the house built, had my mom. She run off to be a trucker. Truck broke down one day, she did what she had to do, and then there was me. I live with my grandma, mostly.

The place is piece outside of Washout, a little town a ways from a little but bigger town a ways from a place no one ever heard of. If I need an airport, there’s Tulsa. 

But I don’t never need no airport. Everything I need is in Washout. There’s the general store, for bacon, cornmeal, coffee, the occasional vegetable. There’s the nail shop, for repairs on the cabin. There’s the typewriter store, for ink ribbons, paper, and such. Sometimes, when times is lean, I do what I have to do for paper.

You see, I’m a writer. Crime novels mostly, sometimes I’ll write one of them there thrillers. I wrote a romance once. Under a pseudonym, of course. Who’s gonna buy a romance novel from a fella name of Tex? For that one we went with Flora McNabb. The review on that one was brutal. One feller for one of them newspapers in one of those cities wrote, “What the hell did Flora McNabb do to get this piece of trash into print.” I wrote that man a letter. “She did what she had to do.”

Folks ‘spect I write westerns. Well, let me tell you. I could. I’m out here in the brush. There’s horses. There’s rattlesnakes. Clemmet, fella who runs the general, he’s one fourth Comanche.

But there’s nothin’ in it. Fella keeps to himself, rides his horse, eats corn cakes and bacon, drinks coffee, shoots a rattlesnake here and there. Then there’s a piece of trouble. He don’t want to get mixed up in it, but he does. There’s some woman, says she’ll do what she has to do to get him to help, and him, well, he doesn’t even give her the satisfaction, just helps her anyway. There’s no justice in it.

Next thing you know, his horse is run off, his rifle is out of bullets or ammo or rounds or whatever you call ’em, and the woman is dead. He’s hell-bent on revenge and boy does he get it. And then he finds his horse. But beans don’t taste like they used to, now he’s killed a man or twelve. So that’s it then. The rest of his days is ridin’ the range, tryin’ to right wrongs. 

I’ll pass, thanks. I’ll stick to the crime novels. Easier to write, if I’m truthin’. Some feller in the big city with a slick name, like David Harbrace or maybe Gregory Oldencraft. Hardened by a life on the streets. He’s broke as shit and drinks too much and when someone’s daddy gets plugged for seeing a mob hit go down, he lets whoever do whatever they need to do to help ’em. He’s a sour son of a bitch but he’s kind that way. Solves the crime, goes back to drinkin’. Not that he ever stopped.

Me, I tried drinkin’, but it didn’t sit to well. I did all of the things. I got a few bottles of whiskey from the general. Got one of them glasses, the fancy ones, crystal, cost me two hundred bucks. Had Clemmet work a connection, get me some rough-cut cube-shaped ice. Drove into Tulsa, attended a seminar on how to put the ice in just so, how to pour the liquor, how much water to add on top. The lady who ran the seminar, she was a nice old gal. A big one, for sure, but the big ones’ll sometimes do what they got to do for a hell of a lot longer than them skinny gals on Sheridan by the airport. Let me tell you.

But like I said, it never took. Got through, maybe, four or five bottles, a quantity of ice cubes, wore that damn glass out. It was a rough weekend. Had to trash most of what I wrote. “She crawls up on the roof to watch the sun set. A cigarette keeps her company. And then when it’s dark, she crawls back down, goes back inside, opens a can of soup for her dad.” You see what I mean. Trash is the right word.

That’s okay though. Nothing ventured, as Clemmet will say now and again. Got a call from that seminar woman a while ago. She said her boy’s thinkin’ of becoming a writer, did I have any tips for him. We had a nice conversation. I told her to tell him that writin’ ain’t nothin. The real work’s when you’re done and you want someone to read it. She asked what he should do. I told her to tell him to do what he had to do. That’s what I did. I think she knew what I was sayin, cause she said she’d tell him, and she didn’t seem too tore up about it. Nice gal, all things considered.