NY Times Article

Here’s one I clipped from the New Yorker and tacked to the studio wall a while ago.

Bulwer-Lytton Contest Winners

For all lovers of good writing, here are this year’s winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, (aka “It Was a dark and Stormy Night” Contest) run by the English Department of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel.

10. As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it.

9. Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens.

8. With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.

7. Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: “Andre creep… Andre creep…Andre creep.”

6. Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved.

5. Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eking out a living at a local pet store.

4. Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.

3. Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.

2. Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn’t know the meaning of the word “fear;” a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death — in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies.

AND THE WINNER IS…

1. The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog’s deception, screaming madly, “You lied!”

and these: The new 2009 crop of Bulwar-Lytton winners are pretty good, too. Here’s the winners in the Detective category:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida – the pink ones, not the white ones – except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t.

Eric Rice
Sun Prairie, WI

Runner-Up

The dame sauntered silently into Rocco’s office, but she didn’t need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample curves said it all: “I am a shipping heiress whose second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me for my rare opal collection,” or maybe, “Do you know a good dry cleaner?”

Tony Alfieri
Los Angeles, CA

Dishonorable Mentions

The appearance of a thin red beam of light under my office door and the sound of one, then two pair of feet meant my demise was near, that my journey from gum-shoe detective to international agent had gone horribly wrong, until I realized it was my secretary teasing her cat with a laser pointer.

On a second note- I am going to do some work on a graphic novel (semi-inspired by Maus) based on a character I will call Promi the Squirell, who steals a flaming marshmallow from a suburban fire pit. My initial sketches ceertainly aren’t of the caliber of Ned’s but, whacha gonna do?

Pete sighed, knowing he should get back to his post behind the glass counter, but he took a moment longer to wonder what was going on behind that door.  A small shimmer of light dimmed and came back again behind the little peephole that looked out into the hallway.  Pete gathered up his self-consciousness and hurried back behind the counter, slipping on an apron that was a little cleaner than the last.

Now standing on the familiar spot of linoleum, scuffed black by Pete’s shoes in front of the Espresso machine, Pete could see Francisco through the front window with his notebook under arm, his notebook splayed with pages jutting out randomly.  Francisco was looking down at a couple of pages in his hand, like he was rediscovering them in the aftermath of the Eugene.  Usually when he got tossed out, Francisco looked up at Pete afterwards to get an extra dose of self-indulgent pity. 

Francisco often told Pete it helped him write better in the afternoon.

*****

Outside the paned glass, Francisco hugged the notebook tightly with the inside of his arm and looked at the pages in his hand.  There was something there, some words that vibrated in his mind.  He wasn’t quite sure what the words meant, but they started to echo in his whole body, increasing in tenor and force.  After a few seconds, the thrumming went from a dull pulse to a deafening roar.  Francisco wondered if anyone else could hear it, but instinctively knew it was internal.  He was in danger. 

Slowly, but immediately, he had to force his arms to crumple up the pages of the notebook because he couldn’t take his eyes off of the pages on his own.  He succeeded and thought it was over.  However, in the aftermath of this resonance, Francisco had a curious feeling take the place in his chest.  The beat that had vibrated his heart, like skin stretched over bones, dulled.  The silence took on a tangible quality. When he had visited his great-grandfather’s cabin on the edge of the mountain lake he had experienced something like this.  He could no longer remember the name of the lake, or the place of it on a map anymore, but there was a similar tangibility to the early mornings there.  He would rise before his parents to go out and look at the waterfowl skimming across the placid surface…to see the fish jumping up at the flies, darting against the reflections.

In the midst of this silence and calm that filled him, he realized this had never happened as a result of the green opaque bottle before.  Was it the concoction, the visions of Rachael, or getting thrown out of the store?  Had he hit his head on something?  Or was it a combination of all of the above’s morning inventory?

For the first time in a long while, Francisco decided to stop thinking.

It was if there was suddenly some organ or muscle, so long held in check, that had life redirected to it.  At first it was painful, like when a leg or arm falls asleep and you can’t even feel it … then you move it so the blood can get back to it. 

He became aware of the shifts that he had been encountering beneath the surface of things but had ignored, like time had been slowing, stopping and jumping forward.  Not only that, but the flavor of the segments of his life between these stops had been different, like they were written by different people in some unseen hand.  Some of the segments seemed longer, some mere moments.  The stops in between them could have occupied years or minutes.  If the world was on pause, who would be there to notice it?  If his life froze like a movie during someone’s bathroom break, how would Francisco know?

The opaque drinking from the green bottle…the tenderness of making love to Rachael, despite his own callousness to it…blackening up his journal pages with a Sharpie and the ones that are not yet blackened.  His child.  New life.  He had a sense of time, and of light passing through space, colorlessly.  Then hitting something and releasing a full spectrum of light.  More than that, Francisco acknowledged colors he had never seen before.  The passage of time folded in on itself so that it felt like he had lived an entire life and then came back to where he was.  The words that connected these things separated and became thoughts without words. 

Francisco wondered, “Is this possible, to wonder things without words?”

And then that was it.  His mind slowly shifted into gear and the strange organ eased off.  It wasn’t like before, as if that strange organ was denied its lifeblood, but it was humming quietly in the back of his consciousness now.  Francisco was unsure if he was happy about this.  He thought he had been getting along fine before.  Now, there was something else.  The realization that had come over him was exciting, but also a little deathly.  It was a mercy his mind took back the controls when it did.  He couldn’t have handled much more epiphany.

Francisco looked down at his watch.  It was an hour and a half since the rain stopped and he had walked down to Pete’s coffee shop (if that’s what it really was).  Surprisingly, he was no longer in front of Pete’s store, but in front of an old, out-of-place brownstone building.  The other houses on this street were made of red brick, wood or granite.  He didn’t remember walking, or even the sense of moving.  He couldn’t even remember what the black sharpie marks on that page had read when this had all started. Slightly, and with caution, he uncrumpled the notebook page he held in his hands and looked down at the words….

Francisco woke, relieved to see Eugene sneering down at him. Eugene, foul of smell and worse of character was rarely seen by customers yet Francisco saw a lot of him. Still, better to be thrown out on your ear by Eugene than face the phantom of your baby-mother ex-girlfriend.

Predictably, in the next moment Francisco found himself in a sprawling pile with a trench coat and notebook garnish on the street. “Another day in paradise,” he muttered and picked himself up.

Eugene locked the door, and trudged back toward the kitchen but Pete held him up.

“Hey boss, ol’ Francis out there has nearly drunk up all his product. You want me to call corporate?”

“Corporate? Fuck corporate. Five parts rot-gut, one part Grey Poupon. Mix it up your own goddamn self.”

Francisco woke on the other side of the bed from where he thought he had fallen asleep. He had always been a restless sleeper, Rachael told him. She was sleeping, her back turned to him still, and maybe she was dreaming something better than what they had become together.

He pulled himself up onto the pillow. The window was a frightening prospect, so he kept it closed, the shade down, a little longer, please. She’s pregnant, she’s pregnant, she’s pregnant. That’s all he saw now when he looked at her, the little heartbeat somewhere inside. This would be so much harder, he thought, placing his hand on her hip, if he loved her. The three of them rested there in the dark.

It was a memory from before the decision, one that returned when he lost time. One of the only times it seemed like there was a three of them to speak of. It was in that grieving period after Rachael had told him she was pregnant, where he pretended to happiness, even though he knew it meant their relationship would end, and where there was no more reason to take precautions with sex. She was over every night, and they wrung out whatever remained of their time.

“You awake?”

“Yes.” She turned to see the ceiling. Then she turned to see his face. “Why do you remember this, Francis? Why this moment, every time. Every time you take that stuff?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, stop it. At least remember the sex, if that’s all we had. At least remember that.” She laughed and turned back away from him and yawned. Her whole body stretched beneath the white sheet.

“Don’t call me Francis,” he said. “I don’t know why I come back here every time. I’ve got to stop doing this.” He looked at her. His memories were supposed to be fixed. They weren’t supposed to talk back to him.

“Maybe you love me. Maybe you love our baby.” Her hand rubbed the sheet at her belly. “That’s why.”

No one ever understood creative types. “Maybe I’m in this for the story. And that’s it.”

“I think you love me more than the story.”

He stood up and pulled open the shades. It was dim morning, at best. He turned back to her. “I love the story more.”

#

None of it mattered anyway, Francisco decided. He only had two more weeks of the twelve week trial to endure and then his contract was completed. And Lucidon Corporation owed him 30,000 dollars. He could live and write on that for nine months. But if the drug was designed to drastically increase mental capacity, it wouldn’t be successful. Francisco kept blacking out—or “loosing time” as he had begun to call the disorientation that the drug produced. That was all Pete had said about it. It was a drug to “rapidly increase brain activity—a drug that will allow young people to keep up with the barrage of information out there today.”

Francisco dropped into a café chair, woozy again. He decided to sit in the corner and try to write. Pete would take care of him if he had another spell. But the increasing severity of the spells did concern him. He flipped out his notepad and a fine point Sharpie he had tucked into his jacket. In haste, he had left his laptop. He wasn’t in the mood to compose. But maybe if he wrote all the time, even when the muses weren’t there, he would get lucky or better.

Could he write during his blackouts? He knew for a fact that he was doing things. He would revive in new places, sometimes with people he didn’t even know. Sometimes he woke with an incredible hunger. Rachael hadn’t called him for weeks now.

He scribbled. Dark descends without warning. He immediately scratched the words out. He tried for Lorca or Thomas or even Hughes but he got Stephen King instead. Staring at the ink scratches made him think how indelible some things are, like ink. He could cross his words out, but he couldn’t make them never have been there.

He had totally misread Rachael. He liked her to begin with because she was independent, feisty, and unpredictable. She was crazy in bed, and she didn’t take crap from anyone. So why, why, why had she decided to see this thing through? It could be worse, he thought. She could keep the baby and he’d be stuck with child support for the rest of his natural goddamn life, like a life sentence. With adoption, he at least got out of paying, but his DNA was still out there without his blessing. He couldn’t take it back. It was indelible.

She was the last person he expected to make this kind of brash decision. That’s why he cut her loose. He couldn’t get caught up in that kind of thing if he wanted a writing career. If he didn’t know her any better than that, she might end up doing anything. She was sacrificing nine months of her life for Pete’s sake. He chuckled at his own thought.

“What?” Pete asked from across the foggy room. “What’s so funny?”

People in his life did not understand what it takes to be creative, thought Francisco. Pete only suggested the drug trial out of pity for Francisco’s unemployed state. Francisco had to put his creative life first, or he wouldn’t have one. He was certain ending things completely with Rachael was best. Artists will never be understood. He saw no point in trying to explain this view to Rachael, or to Pete.

“Are you going to tell me wha y fink i soooo funnnnyyyyy…” Pete’s muffled voice drifted across the room like a foghorn calling boats to shore. But the shore was shifting. Francisco despised Pete’s constant insistence on “the important work you’re doing”. But he couldn’t very well tell him that. He was counting on Pete. He had to trust him.

His eyebrows raised and then tightened together as he examined Pete’s face more closely looking for something that he would recognize as he let out a sigh. It was always different. A moment had passed before either spoke. “Look, you know the drill, Frank.” Pete stated in a stern, almost fatherly voice. “your work here is done.” “C’mon, you didn’ think we weren’ keeping track of you did ya?” he added, tone changing to an apologetic, yet mocking tone.

“That’s just it!” Franscisco boiled over, “I never know shit!” he shot back, more heated this time. “I don’t even really know what I am doing, what this “work” is that you are having me do. All I know is that I get used to something, bein’ somewhere and then Bam! it’s time to go. No explanation for anything. Nothin’! I can’t get too close to anyone. Ever. Because I don’t know where or when it will be time again. I can’t trust anyone. Every time it is like starting over.” His laundry list of complaints doing little to change the affect of the man on the other side of the counter.

Francisco straightened himself, and eased back onto his barstool, head collapsing into his hands. He stroked the three day stubble and found the abrasive nature on his hands strangely soothing to the palms of his hands. He rubbed his humidity-greased forehead and removed his glasses for cleaning.

“Can’t I ever know?” he inquired.

“When you are done, you’ll know. Things will be clear then. You’ll understand the work you have done and its importance. For now, Francisco, you must have faith.”

Francisco bristled at hearing his name said this way from Pete (if that’s his name at all) because he knew this meant the ruse was up. The fantasy he had become accustomed to was over.

“What if I don’t want to go this time?” he offered, knowing there was little choice in the matter.

“Pete” stood smiling triumphantly, his silence a cool, emotionless ansewr to Francisco’s plea, and poured a little more liquid from the bottle into Francisco’s cup.

Francisco hesitated. “I never get used to this.” he muttered, half hoping to be spared. He raised the cup slowly, sighed, and finished it.

“I wish I were as great as you, Francisco. Your life is the work you are doing.”

“Little comfort, ” he said trailing off at the end, his vision darkening around the edges, “little comfort”.

"You know, you’re the only person I let call me ‘Frank.’"

“Should…I…consider myself lucky then?” Pete let the lilt grow in his words as he counted the mess of bills and coins Francisco handed him.

“Very lucky.”

Pete looked up from the drawer, then his hands broke a roll of pennies on the black battered rim. “I’ve always considered myself lucky.” He nodded once, then the change in his grip broke through its paper prison and fell against the cheap metal of the cash drawer.

The metallic applause annoyed the hell out of Francisco. He winced according to his perturbance, and his teeth suddenly tasted bitter. “Just don’t…call me Francis.” He pushed the words through his tightened lips. The name, the power of a name, held too much control over him. It was a dangerous dominance, like Lilith in the Garden of Eden. “Enna Gadda da Vida, Baby” started to weave through his mind, when Pete rescued him a moment later.

“Even I know I’m not that lucky. I may be able to call you ‘Frank’, but the Pope couldn’t save me if I called you Francis.” He chuckled, made obvious by his head bobbing grossly over his spastic chest. He quickly recovered from his own joke when he saw Francisco’s eyebrows arch in distaste.

Pete somehow thought the joke was a lot funnier than it was. Usually, his humor was diabolically funny. Everyone has an off day, Francisco rationalized, or else I’m just not getting it.

“So, anyway back to the question,” Pete looked especially inquisitive, “why do you look so ragged?”

“Because it’s a good day.”

“Frank, I think I know you pretty well, but sometimes you make no sense.”

“Not a good day to me, a good day to them,” he spat and swept his hand melodramatically across the room. “Sunshine. No, not only sunshine, but rain, then sunshine. The worst kind of sunshine. There’s just too much fucking newness everywhere. I’m stuck in a goddamn Disney cartoon.”

Pete almost dropped the cappuccino he was working on, “Hey, hey, Frank, take it easy on the profanities.” Francisco retreated, then Pete gentled his darting eyes. He leaned over to Frank and said, “Look, this is a family establishment, and these Disney-type days are great for business. Besides, even you could use an occasional good day.”

“I want nothing to do with ‘em,” and Frank slouched up even more, as if to take advantage of his own shadow.

“No, no, no. You don’t really mean that,” Pete said with dismissal.

“Yes.” Pause. “Really.” Francisco looked at him earnestly.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Pete looked around; he hesitated, then said, “Well.” Another hesitation. “I guess that can be arranged.” Frank let go of a puzzled look, then Pete slopped another cappuccino in front of him. “Here, this one’s on me.”

Frank lifted the wide-brimmed cup weirdly to his lips, and as the froth left him with a thick mustache he tasted the faint sense of…dried egg yolks? At least, that’s what it tasted like.

“What kind of flavor shot is this?” he questioned.

Francisco looked up and found…

But the rain had stopped and Francisco had yet to find the ability to write a poem about sunlight or any light for that matter. Darkness was his forte. When the thunder woke him up that morning he was certain that he had a full day of rain to concentrate on his misery so he slept until after noon and he loathed himself for his sloth. Finally he rose and brewed the last spoonful of his stale coffee and placed his last slice of bologna between the two remaining heels of white bread to make his unhappiness just a little more pathetic. Francisco was somehow delighted to find that there were grounds in his coffee and a little mold on the corner of the bread. The rain, the sloth, the grounds and the mold began to coagulate into the darkest bile he had let himself experience as of late. Then as he set his leaky fountain pen to paper the rain stopped.

This sent Francisco into a depression for which even he was unprepared. He struggled with such fervor to set this scene of pathos. Now it had been destroyed by an arrogant sliver of sunlight across his face. As the clouds broke apart and moved away leaving only blue sky behind Francisco’s depression reached a level that would make the average person incapable of normal functioning but after months of conditioning, it only made Francisco incapable of writing.

Utterly sick of himself, Francisco poured his coffee out the window and stuffed his sandwich into the pocket of his trench coat and slammed the door behind him.

The sun cut into him, left him feeling dry and unkempt. Puddles and running gullies emptied into drains at the street corners and echoed in loud splashes: it sounded to Francisco as if the world had turned into a public restroom, all drips and drippings. His mood turned dull and yellow.

His walking moved him instinctively toward the closest coffee shop, to wash out his mouth with what might burn. He rubbed back his hair and turned in the doorway, seeming smaller in the high ceiling and in his drooping trench coat. The sight of people – a quiet couple near the window, another loner against the far wall – was startling at first, disconcerting, and he made himself smaller by removing his coat and draping it behind a chair. Would my life be less lived if no one noticed it?

Pete behind the counter knew him at least and, without the need to address Francisco, blurred together a cappuccino and set it on the glass countertop.

"Two-seventy, Pete?" Francisco realized this was everyday his first words he spoke to the world. The familiarity was disturbing.

”Yeah, as usual." What else would it be? The need to repeat broke him. The need to repeat broke him.

Go to Part II