I must cease looking at my hands. That's what Roberta told me. Actually her suggestion was directed more toward my fingers, but I've expanded on her theory. I find the backs of my hands disquieting. It's possible I get the same feeling looking at them that guilty people experience when they look in a mirror. But it usually takes a conscious effort to look in a mirror; most often, I can avoid mirrors until I'm ready for their mild shock. Same thing goes for my palms: I'm usually prepared for the feelings that wash over me after glancing at them. But the backs of my hands catch me off-guard sometimes. Then I just get to feel the feeling, take stock, accept who my hands tell me I am. Sometimes I like to simply move along through life without having to take stock.
Anyway, Roberta, my female prison guard, recently told me to quit gawking at my fingers. This she said while leaning over my shoulder while I worked on something I wasn't quite ready to share with the whole world. (Author's note: not that Roberta was a gossip or anything, but during her initial leanings, I didn't know how helpful she would soon prove to be.) And, as if that weren't enough, now she wants a speaking part. I told her that would be absurd: it's imposition enough to include her in my novel at all. I mean this novel is ostensively about Steve and me growing weed, all that. I'm not in here for growing, by the way. It's a little different than that. During my trial, the District Attorney tried to draw a connection there, too. But--
My prison guard just barged into my cell, unannounced, and started
peeking again. (Author's note: that's why the above paragraph ended so abruptly; I had to
cover my screen 'til she left.) She
knows I really don't appreciate the peekin', least not 'til I'm
finished, and yet she keeps on a peekin' on....
Anyway, so how was that for part of a novel about a couple of dope
growers? I guess what I'm trying
to say is when Roberta leans into this--as in the above--this may seem a bit
discomboobulated.* But only
temporarily. Later, she gets mad
because I'm not writing my novel fast enough and she's not getting her
speaking part soon enough. She is.
I mean, she will. She's scheduled for quite a few lines of dialogue, a few
quips even, but I was trying to save them for the end. She's incorrigible. This
was slated to be a pot novel, but, thanks in large part to her, it could be
turning into a prison novel. Which
might just work: the old crime and
punishment angle. But shouldn't
the punishment part come after the crime part (i.e. first crime, then
time)? Hello?
March 4th, Two Thousand One. So,
what's a writer to do? They say
to write what you know. The only
thing I know about growing drugs is from experience.
Yes, Connie Gibson left me because she found a couple few plants in our
garage. I pleaded with her, but our
divorce was soon final. Then she
fell for Steve Lancaster. Boy, was
she in for a surprise: Steve was a professional
grower. That's why he had all
that circumstance. And for Connie
to jettison me--the consummate amateur--only to get together with Steve, well,
didn't that take the cake? And
since--
(I'm just gonna act as if I
weren't interrupted and move along.) OK,
so my female prison guard keeps hounding me about her speaking part. Or she'll glance at
my screen and catch something out of context and behave dreadfully.
Like the time she intuited from my outline that Connie and I were gonna
have sex, and she angrily asked how I could write such a thing.
I told her Connie and I used to be married, that's how.
Then later that day when they called us to chow, she
distracted me so I didn't get to eat. So
there! her actions seemed to say: if
you're gonna depict her in such sweet strokes and make me out to be some
meanie prison guard, well then no gruel for you.
It's like she's saying I can't have an ex-wife, that I shoulda
never been married. I remind
Roberta if it weren't for Connie, she and I wouldn't have met.
This she takes as me standing up for Connie.
Ah, it's a no-win situation. (Author's
note: I'm rewriting this part
because it grew rather melodramatic, and, now that I'm free, I've grown more
appreciative
of the way Roberta treated me in prison. Turns
out, she was simply trying to keep me safe and secure and do her job.
Really, if it weren't for Roberta cattle-prodding me along, I don't
know if I woulda finished this novel in peace.
Sure, I probably woulda finished it.
I mean there's no shortage of female prison guards.
But she was caring, and in case I forget to mention her in the
dedication, I'd like to do so now. Yes,
Roberta: this novel couldn't have
been written without your guidance; and how you rigged that tiny light so I
could keep typing after lights-out, well, that was just plain speci--)
I just got interrupted again. I
was on a roll there, too, but, oh well. So
anyway, sometimes others interrupt me, and sometimes I--in a manner of
speaking--interrupt myself. Let me
explain. I figure if I include only
bona fide interruptions in this, then when I'm not interrupted for a spell,
the uninterrupted writing will appear different from the interrupted writing.
That'll make this seem jagged. Readers
don't need jagged. But if I
don't have control over my living situation, like here in prison, then
sometimes I get interrupted and sometimes I don't.
So I can either lift weights and sprout tattoos like the other guys, or I
can write a novel that occasionally touches on the ebb and flow and texture--in
short, the mechanics--of interruptions, and does so in such a way that most
readers will think interruptions are ok, maybe even... kinda cool. (Author's caveat to aspiring authors: there looms a nasty pitfall to avoid, however, when penning
one of these I-keep-getting-interrupted novels:
some are written by authors who actually don't get interrupted
all that often (if ever), and their tales are usually more clear, the action more
contiguous. To think it's possible to compete with these authors is
quixotic. More to the point, to conceive of them as the competition is
ill-advised and pointless: they really should break off into their own
sub-genre.) Be that as it may, I am
merely the coach of this baseball team. I
do not get to choose the players who happen to show up on that first day of
practice. My choice is to play them
or not coach. It just so happens
one of the players for this team is Mr. Interruption. He is willing himself into the script.
He usually shows up on time, too; trouble is, his watch is a Salvador
Dali, so sometimes the big hand melts outside of the face and appears to be a
crutch, causing him to miss an at-bat or two.
Other times Mr. Interruption says he's gonna make it to the game, but
he is a no-show. During those moments I fully expect to be interrupted, but
even though he never does materialize, I still feel interrupted.
The writing suffers accordingly. Other
times I write about Mr. Interruption making an appearance at the plate, and he
hits a home run. In other words, if
I wouldn't have been interrupted, then I wouldn't have meandered to the
liquor store immediately after his interruption... and then I wouldn't have won
that sixteen point two million dollars in the lottery!
How's that for a kick in the pants!
Yep, that was my favorite at-bat for my old friend Mr. Interruption.
But that's all beside the point. Certainly
one goal in Faith is to explain why they put me in handcuffs.
And that needs to be given its fair
amount of shrift. It needs full
disclosure. And I'm not trying to
be coy, here, either. This issue
really really really can't be rendered into prose in twenty-five words or
less, even were I as talented as, say, William Faulkner.
Nosirreebob.
"So"--I can hear a few observant readers ask--"does why you're in the
slammer have anything to do with your being asked a simple question at your
trial, and--in response--you went on and on about some really really really
really unrelated issues, one long continuous braided sidebar as it were, a
sidebar consisting of multifarious and not-necessarily related sidebars, and
that this soliloquy of a response to a simple question most assuredly befuddled
everyone present at your trial, and probably would have elicited a curious look
of befuddlement from Mr. Faulkner himself, were he to be revived and also
present?"
Um... not exactly.
"So how about the shrift? can we get to some shrift, here, soon?" I can
hear y'all asking.
Well, we already have. I've
already laid the groundwork in these opening pages for the eventual--
And that was a rather pleasant interruption.
Oh well. Oops, here he comes
again. That Mr. Interruption sure is working
overtime today. At least I think
he's on the verge of interrupting again.
But he does this, see? He
likes to wait 'til I'm in the middle of something engaging, then he
interrupts. This time he's waiting outside my cell with baited breath
and some zeugmas on the tip of his tongue.
Too bad what he interrupts me with has yet to translate to prose very
well. He'd make for some fine
storytelling if it did. But, oh
well, I guess that's why they call it prison.
That last interruption reminded me of the time I revised another work on
the beach and how the seagulls occasionally cried out to be recognized, and then
I'd include them in the proceedings. But
that novel was actually set on the coast and it's called Olive Might
The Ocean Be, and to infuse seagulls into it is reasonable, if not germane.
But to include the interruptions of my female prison guard in this novel,
which was supposed to be about growing pot with Steve, et cetera, I dunno.
I just don't know. Ostensively,
this is (or was) to include the early years of my marriage to Connie, and about
our daughter, Reba, and friends, you know, salad days; and, later, our divorce,
followed by Steve and Connie getting hitched, the birth of their son, Nate,
etc.... but just because I've found the time to write about the above here in
prison doesn't necessarily mean a prison guard deserves a spot in this.
She is here after the fact. She
never was a part of this story. She
is shoehorning her way in here more and more.
During--
Speaking of which... Oh
well, I guess it's best to simply move on.
A publishing note: what I
plan to do is publish on paper made out of marijuana for the first printing.
Then after I have a full-blown clientele, I'll gradually blend Faith's
pages with hemp, hemp that is bereft of THC.
Pretty soon it'll be a straight book, but by then the buzz surrounding
it should be self-regenerating. Some
of those late-comers might complain my book didn't get 'em off, didn't
"float their boat," as it were, and that I musta "stepped" on it; I'll simply tell
them that Faith has never been anything if not a compendium of placebos,
and that a lot of its first readers were enjoying what is known in the biz as
"contact highs." Whatever they
are. I am so sure.
What's next?--getting high offa licking frogs?
March Eleventh, Two Thousand One. Roberta
has volunteered to sit on my fingers while I type.
She's hunkered over my console like a huge German Shepard that thinks
it's a lapdog. I tried telling
her my laptop is not a lap, that I longed for the good ol' days when she only
leaned. In response, she scratched
her ear with her boot. Yes, folks,
it has become hard to push these keys. After
a while, I imagine, if I encounter still more difficulty, repetition may occur.
The spelling of the word "literature," for example, might be affected.
It may come out litterature, or even litttterature.
It'll still be literature that you're reading, but you may sense
redundancy. Please ignore this
slight doubling and re-doubling of my efforts, dear readers. I should be able to clean up most of it in the third draft.
During this, the second draft, however, I felt I should leave be a few
examples, if only to demonstrate some of what I went through to deliver, to you,
the litterature. Thank you for your patience.
After Roberta read the above, she said I should be glad I'm not another Jonie Aereckson Tada, the quadriplegic who typed inspirational books with her mouth. She's right, you know: things could be worse. I could be clacking away on one of those antique manual typewriters. No add, no delete buttons. If you made a mistake, you quietly inserted a pristine piece of paper. Wow, these inventions. It's really neat to be able to word process four million operations per second with such a nice wonderful female prison guard sitting on your fingers. Anyway, I'm trying to write this in such a way that none of my readers will notice, let's say, the scaffolding. In other words, I don't wanna be diagnosed with impedimentia (a dementia associated with stuff that impedes the typing of a novel, for cripe's sake). Maybe this calls for an example. Say someone has done a bang-up job cleaning windows. No streaks, nothing. Just pure blue and gray sky out there above the raucous cityscape. You're just a passer-by, say, waiting for the elevator, and you see her putting away her squeegees, and you're on the brink of complimenting her. But then she launches. She in fact interrupts the first strains of your compliment by launching into an extremely elaborate discussion of the copious amounts of elbow grease she administered to those windows, the well-placed squirts of Windex, the calculated arm swirls, all of it. It is no wonder they shine. She stops to take a breath and you look at the numbers above the elevator doors. Your elevator is still floors away. And it's your turn to talk. Would you still feel like delivering your compliment? Wouldn't you rather have not heard about all that went into getting those windows that clean? I guess what I'm trying to say is I want my readers to enjoy a nice clean novel. I don't want my readers to feel as if they have to do anything out of the ordinary or be anything other than what they are to appreciate this work of litterature. I want Roberta to enjoy it, too, though. I want my readers to enjoy it, but I don't wanna hurt Roberta's feelings. When she's riding on my fingers, I have to choose my words very carefully. Which is really nothing new. All authors need to be extra extra careful whenever we write. Just because someone's lurking over your shoulder, her trigger finger bent precariously near your "delete" button, that's no reason to discontinue writing. Memo to aspiring authors: if I can tailor a pretty good piece of fiction despite the meddling and rubbernecking of a female prison guard, you can too. And even though I have a few things to add, now, Roberta has asked to borrow my computer for a while. And I have a hard time resisting her. She says she'll be right back.
* (Or "discombobulated." Further details for this and other asterisks appear at the end.)