Imagine His Face, OR, "Can't we have one nice moment?"

"No.

"No?

"Yes?

"Yes!

"...No.

"No?

"No.

"No.

"...Yes."

Bathroom Monologue: Five-Man Killer

There is an audio edition of today's monologue. To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming or click this text to download the MP3.

A five-man killer. All these people look at my like some legend, some badass that will save them. But I’m not. I didn’t sign up for the army; I was drafted, and shoved into the front line. There was nowhere to run with the legion on either side and behind me. I’m not brave. I keep waking up hearing men that aren't there crying to go home. I can’t do this. Don’t expect things from me, alright?

The first two. They came in waves. In rows of shoddy plate. The first guy in their first row ran forward and stumbled. He slipped in the mud. The guy to his right must have been his friend, because he stopped like to help him. Sword still in his left hand, he tried to lift him with his right. It wasn't enough, and they struggled. I got my man in the neck and jabbed his friend through the eye and into the brain. Felt brain-deep, anyway.

The third guy was so excited that he fell over their bodies charging me. He got tangled up in their limbs. Looked like they were holding him, begging him not to do this. They weren't. They were dead. I got him where the helmet ends, right above the collar. Some of his blood got into my mouth. I felt the warmth, the wetness, but not the taste.

Was going to throw up as the next in line approached. Yeah, my fourth? Took an arrow to the ear. Sailed in and took it away. You never think that an ear can leave a person that easily; they're so present on everybody your whole life. Then an arrow comes by. While he was clutching for it, I got him in the other ear. Some legionnaire around me was laughing about it.

Those arrows coming down? They were coming from behind us. They were ours. Archers were shooting too short. I backed up. Forced the line behind me to retreat a little, because if our arrows were coming in that tight, I didn't want to take one in the back. The enemy didn’t know what I was doing. Tried to close in, but I had lines of soldiers on my left and right. My guys closed in on their protrusion. I’m told I killed the fifth man, the frontrunner that charged. I don’t remember it. I remember some other guy jumping on him with a battle axe when I was still five paces away. That was my fifth man. "Five-man killer."

A five-man killer. I don’t know. I just want to not wake up for a while.

Bathroom Monologue: Guys & Logs

They were doing Guys And Dolls that Spring, and rehearsal always went  over. That left Jeff late for Mathematics at least twice a week. Mr. Crabtree left the door open and didn't say a word, always letting him creep into the back of the room. Yet before the end of every class, Mr. Crabtree would draw a new logarithm on the blackboard and "randomly" select Jeff to come up and solve it. After three weeks, he finally stayed after class and asked, "Why do you keep making me do them?" "As an actor," his teacher said, "I thought you could handle a mono-log."

Bathroom Monologue: Lucky Four Leaf Clover

Waylon checked the security cams. Still nobody in the building. He’d beat them all here. Maybe it was his lucky day. He leaned both palms onto the lip of the briefcase. It bent, but the clasps refused to meet.

“Oh, come on.”

He yanked it open and pulled out the top stack of bearer bonds. Those could travel in his pockets – most people didn’t even know what they were. If anyone at the airport got nosy, he’d give them one. That’d shut them up.

Wadding the bonds and stuffing them in his pockets, Waylon circled the office. His screen blinked to alert him that reformatting had finished. He shoved the flashdrive into his breast pocket, then stepped to the opposing filing cabinet. The picture frame crackled under of his polished shoe.

“Cambodian. French. Brazilian.” He finished flicking through the second drawer. Nope, everything had gone to the shredder or his briefcase. But he’d had to check, because the guilty always forgot something, and damned if Waylon was going to become a member of the club of examples.

A bottle of lighter fluid waited in the third drawer. The reminder to light the trash can. He took it and made the last sweep of the room.

The rest of his desk? The monitor. Keyboard. Newton’s Cradle. He’d buy a new one. There was his wife’s photograph. He could buy a new one of those, too.

“Like you weren’t intending the same, Charlene,” he said, tapping the glass from the bottom of his shoe. “You’ll only be angry I beat you here.”

Then he saw a fleck of green on the windowsill. He approached, fingers sweeping over his briefcase. What was that? A flower? He didn’t keep plants in here.

It was a clover, and damned if it didn’t have four leaves. He touched it in disbelief. Whatever adhered it to the pane released and it fell across his palm. He held it by the stem, looking down on it and the ten stories below. He tensed his thumb and made the leaves twirl.

“My lucky day.”

He turned to toss it in his briefcase and missed the flash. The instant it left his fingers, Waylon’s window cracked. He dropped the clover, and life dropped him. He fell, one hand gracing for briefcase, the other at the sucking wound in his lung.

The four leaf clover landed on top of the bonds and deeds. It had been good luck - for the man who’d left it.

NYSEG Vs. Us Vs. NYSEG, Part 2 of 2

It all began Sunday night. To read the first half of this article, please click here.

The canopy before new rains washed in.

WEDNESDAY, March 9

At 8:00 AM the NYSEG was still promising power by 10:00 AM. Just two hours. It also informed that only 74 homes in the immediate area were without power, out of 3100 homes in all the Mechanicville Division “Most customers” were expected to have power back “sometime today.”

That was a pleasant surprise. Trucks must have come at night to fix so many lines. At least the ice was melting. It was between 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit outside, cold enough to be uncomfortable, but warm enough to work easier.

10:00 passed with no lights flickering. At 11:00, I called and got an actual operator. She claimed we were supposed to have it back by now and should expect it "any time now." I bided my time clearing up the deck. All the frozen food I’d bagged out there had warmed and spoiled.

I called again at noon. An automated voice told me "5:00 PM."

Mom was still enthused by the news of so many in the area getting power. Her back had improved from two days of rest I convinced her to get out of here for a little while. We drove to get a fresh hot lunch somewhere, picked up some non-perishables, and hit the local fire department. They had no updates about what was delaying NYSEG so badly; the worst of the storm’s wreckage had been cleared. The man I spoke to was operating on NYSEG’s phone updates.

As we drove home, I saw my first NYSEG trucks. Their drivers were all parked on the sides of the road, none active in work. It was like they were shutting down before nightfall. When we returned to a cold home for the fourth night now, I nearly asked to circle back and ask the truckers what was going on. But at that point I was too sick to drive, and Mom was too tired.

We settled in and dialed up. NYSEG’s automated voice informed us that 2,600 homes were now without power. A far cry from the "most" of the 3,100 that were supposed to expect it that morning. We might expect power by 12:00 PM.

I didn’t believe it. We’d seen utility workers locking up their vehicles for the night. They weren’t going to work in the frost. But what options did we have? Risk on roads that were now going to freeze over and pay for a hotel, only to have the power here come back tonight or tomorrow? Even if they’d lied about their intentions to give us back power on Monday and Tuesday, how much longer could NYSEG possibly take?

One of my neighbors bombarded NYSEG with calls. She pushed through until she found an operator and learned that NYSEG thought nobody lived on our roads in the winter. How our winter electricity bills would have born this out, I don't know. My neighbor insisted that yes, people did live here. She was calling from here. We’d made claims of outages from these houses. The operator promised to do something about it.

 Neighbor's property from my lawn, two fallen trees clearly visible.

THURSDAY, March 10

They did something about it. The next morning the automated message reported that 584 people in our immediate vicinity were without power. Not 74 like yesterday. No explanation, just that we were 584 out of 1,700 remaining homes without power.

The revelation that they’d learned these households were actually important made the change more suspicious. When I drove to pick up more water at noon, I didn't see any new damage. The same lines that had been down two days ago were still lying there, including those on the major roads.

I got a better look at the damage on my road. One wire dangled four feet from the ground, leading into the lawn of my next door neighbor. Two trees had fallen, taking out the phone and power lines. Everything was splayed in the mud and remaining snow. You couldn't miss it.

Photo of the dangling wire.

Flashing yellow lights passed our house at noon. One of my neighbors ran out to catch the truck. I arrived in time to hear him relaying an anecdote; five miles away, on a road with power, my neighbor had seen four trucks parked working on a single dark house. The NYSEG guy had no explanation, but was personable. We explained the situation in plain view of the dangling wire and house with downed trees. The NYSEG guy called local units. Cherrypickers pulled up to the opposite end of our road.

Before he departed, I asked the NYSEG man, "Are they going to restore power right here?"

"Oh yeah," he said.

I pointed at the ground under our feet. I'm not a master of communication under the best of circumstances.

"Right here? You're not leaving until you do?"

"Oh yeah."

Mom watched them saw bad tree limbs from our steps. I let them work and went back to reading. They drove off without coming down the road. Mom had only seen cherrypickers and assumed power trucks would be on the way. An hour later, that seemed less likely.

We called NYSEG and were told to expect it back at 3:00 PM.

At 3:00, we'd now have power back by 11:00. But how could those guys have done the work at the end of our road, knowing what was wrong down here, and not have fixed it? If they weren’t allowed to, why hadn’t anyone dispatched for guys that could?

We decided to get out. We hit the library, ate a rare meal out, and saw The King's Speech at a second-run theatre. We killed time, unable to stay out as late as 11:00, but killing a few dark hours before we returned home.

There were at least a dozen trucks, all dark and parked for the night along the roads. Some sat under the street lights, which were back on. My chest swelled as we circled around the lake. There were house lights all around it. Homes at the bottom of our hill wet lit.

"Can it be?' Mom asked.

We turned onto our road. Our house was pitch black.

I swore my way to the phone. The automated system said power had been restored to this residence at 1:00 PM.

1:00 PM? 1:00 PM today?

At 3:00 PM, two hours after that, the system had recognized we didn't have power, and we'd logged again that we didn't. Somehow, someone had missed that all the way into 8:00 PM at night.

We called again in disbelief and kept hitting buttons until we reached an operator. That conversation went poorly. Rather than describe it, allow me to impart advice: if someone ever calls your company and says your system has been lying to them for five straight nights about when power would be restored, and that they would have found a way to get out of here if you'd told them Monday morning that power likely wouldn't be back for that long, do not ever respond, "Those were only estimates." Even if “Monday afternoon” sounded like an estimate on Monday morning, come Thursday night that news will not stop the caller from screaming from their freezing living room.

FRIDAY, March 11

Friday morning's message said we'd have power back by 10 PM and that all customers were expected to have power back. “10:00 PM” now sounded like code for “not today.”

I dragged myself into the car and scouted around the lake for any trucks. I would flag them down and talk to the men on the ground myself. If I had to, I'd beg them to follow me. Except the only two I could find were empty.

Actually, there was no road work ahead.

They were parked on the same stretch of road, flashing lights on and cones set up. They were empty and nobody was around. I rolled down my window and hollered to no response. At 7:50 AM, nobody was on the scene. When I doubled back at 8:20, the trucks were still unattended. There was a third further up the road, also with no driver.

Took photos of the empty cabs, in case anyone later claimed they were on site.

Maybe there was a good explanation. At the moment, I was furious, and that anger kicked through my already exhausted system. By the time I got back, I was shaking and had trouble keeping my head up. I slumped in front of the propane heater. Mom went out on her own shift.

She found some trucks and said the guys on the ground were not in communication with NYSEG. They were not feeding headquarters information and had no idea where NYSEG was creating its restoration estimates from. They wouldn't give names, and I wouldn't publish them if I had them for risk of retaliation against them. None of them had heard all power would be back today; they all expected to be back tomorrow.

One truck followed her back. Mom and I drove down as chaperones to make sure they saw all the downed wires. We circled the area and saw dozens of trucks, not all working on our hill, but at least in our area. Within another half hour, a crew rumbled down our road. They had no explanation for why Thursday's crew hadn't fixed things.

They worked diligently for the better part of an hour. We stirred when they started to leave. Power was not back. We actually got in the car and followed them to the intersection.

"Aren't we done there?" asked one guy.

"Yeah," said his partner.

"No you're not," I insisted. “It’s still dark back there.”

"Aren't we done there?" the guy asked again.

"Yeah," the partner said again. "Just needs to energize for an hour."

At which point, I laughed.

An hour and a half later, the water boiler roared to life. Lights flipped on downstairs, in the basement, and one in my room. A reminder that the power was back.

Everything had spoiled. Frozen chicken, beef, meatballs - what we hadn't cooked had gone off in the thaw. It had been cold enough to chill us, but five hours at a time, warm enough to ruin food. We began cleaning up strewn plates and packing propane gear. We relished in the returning electric heat. It was just in time for the forecast. Tomorrow, it was supposed to snow.



UPDATE: On March 18th I received a call from NYSEG. The operator wanted to apologize for the inconvenience and said the company was working on improving its responses and communications. This was a week after power was restored, but a day after I posted the story about it. They had read this and dug up my number to respond. 

NYSEG Vs. Us Vs. NYSEG, Part 1 of 2

SUNDAY, March 6

Nobody anticipated how bad the storm would be. Sunday morning I heard we’d get heavy rain, turning into perhaps an inch of snow around midnight. After this winter, that didn’t sound bad. In hindsight, the local authorities and NYSEG likely thought the same.

The winds grew heavier after dark. I could hear branches snapping and torrential rain pelting my windows. The power went out for the first time at about 9:30. I sat in the dark for less than ten minutes before everything popped back on. When it went out for the second time, I shut down my computer and simply went to bed.

MONDAY, March 7

I woke to the sounds of chainsaws. The lights were still off. It was so cold that I put on several layers of clothing just to head downstairs. My neighbor Rick and four other men were buzzing fallen trees near the road outside my house. It turned out that the rains had loosened tree roots, then froze to the branches as the temperature dropped. Between the weight of the ice and the high winds, trees fell into the road and froze to the pavement. It had all ended as an ice storm, so that while our winter snows had melted, they froze back into craggy ice. Only the biggest truck could four-wheel its way up our road. I couldn't even walk it.

This birch was straight upright on Saturday.

We phoned NYSEG. Their automated system informed me that at least 7,600 homes in the “Mechanicville Division” were without power, including 944 in my immediate area. This was much worse than anyone had expected, but at least if so many people were reporting outages then NYSEG would now know to send extra crews. I was surprised when the recording said we’d have power back by that afternoon.

Two years ago I was stranded powerless in an ice storm here and it had been over three days before they got around to our hill. Maybe NYSEG had drawn up a more efficient plan to counter that.

With the chill coming through our walls, I got to work. I pulled out a propane stove to make coffee and cocoa. As the freezer thawed, I put new bags in the garbage cans and filled them with all our goods, then deposited them in the snow banks on our deck. When the living room hit meat locker temperatures, I dug out my old fat-pants and put those on over my existing layers.

When the power didn’t come back that afternoon, I called again. Now the system said 11:00 PM, which was still admirably fast. I got out candles and readied dinner. I made tacos on the propane stove by flashlight. Just like the pioneers, I joked.

I went to bed early, leaving one light switch on to alert when we got power back.

TUESDAY, March 8

Instead of electric lights, I woke up to the sun shining between my curtains. We didn't have power. I dialed with my gloves on and learned that there were at least 6800 without power that Tuesday morning, including 944 in my area. The lack of progress was odd. Why would they have expected us to have power back yesterday if they’d done so little that not one house was back online?

Our branch of roads has its share of problems. One neighbor at the end of my road has sleep apnea and relies on a machine to get through the night. On our adjoining road lives a woman who is dying of cancer. I have myriad health problems, including a neuromuscular syndrome that intensifies in pain with the more stress I endure. Soaking in a bath is one of the few effective ways to reduce my muscle spasms. Already my right hand was trembling. I can only imagine what being without power was like for my neighbors.

I called a local handyman for help with the road. The ice on the road was melted too low for his plow to scrape, but he brought a mixture of salt and sand. He shoveled the mixture over my driveway and up the road, moving a few inches at a time. As he tossed shovelfuls, he relayed his experience. The ice storm had knocked over trees and telephones polls, sheering some clean through. He described a local thoroughfare as looking "like a bomb went off." He'd only lost power for a night, but people in his network said the branch roads, like this one, might not see electricity for a week. I thanked him, paid and told him to stay warm, and headed for the phone.

Now the system said we'd have power back by 11:00 PM tonight. That didn't instill confidence. But Mom didn't want to leave the covers; her back hurt and it felt safer under the blankets. After assuring her I wouldn't be gone long, I went to test the roads.

Our area is full of woodlands, and every tree out there was encased in ice. They looked like bark bones under diamond skin. Many were dismembered, thousands of branches littering the roads. It got stranger when I crossed the flooded zones; it was cold enough for still water to freeze, but the ground tables had filled up on Sunday, leaving several areas overrun. Roads alternated between clean, tracks of ice, and flowing streams.

Geese discussing global warming in what is normally a field.

The Red Cross set up a warming station at the local high school. A police officer smirked at me as I came through the doors in all my layers and thermal hood, as though to say, "I know what you're here for." Everyone was cordial. They had bottled water, coffee and bagged snacks. The rep who helped me offered whatever I needed and even went to the back to scrounge leftover soup from their lunch. She recommended I return with my family tonight, since they were closing up tomorrow at 8 AM. I asked if that was when the power was expected. She got nervous and insisted that she didn't know anything.

I checked for news at the library. It was a worldly thing to do. Also, it was heated.

Reports conflicted. Some people were saying the crisis was already over - likely some of the thousand people who had it restored, or had never lost it. There were more estimates about when all the ice would melt than there were for NYSEG finishing the job.

I also browsed the national news, curious to see if we were being covered. The top story was that Obama was considering military intervention in Libya, which I immediately conceded was more prescient than this. Scrolling down I saw ensuing stories about Charlie Sheen and Mike Huckabee's opinion of Natalie Portman. Nothing about thousands of people without power in freezing weather.

Parking lot of the warming shelter.

The roads weren’t reliable enough to stay out too long, and my syndrome was picking up.  I passed three downed wires on the way, including one sparking in a large puddle. There were no NYSEG trucks on these roads. Not a single cherrypicker or electric utility van.

At 5:00 PM NYSEG’s automated voice estimated our area would see power by 10 AM Wednesday morning. We still had 944 people in our area without electricity, out of 4,900 homes. I slept in my jacket.


Click here to continue to Part 2.

Bathroom Monologue: Disrespect for Unhappiness

“Of course I'm going to make fun of you for being unhappy. You're always unhappy. Today it's the flu, tomorrow it's a boyfriend, next Thursday it's hating your job, two Thursdays from now it's not having a job since you quit, and three Thursdays from now we’ll be within spitting distance of a holiday that will find some way to depress you. I like you. Honestly do. It's why I'm letting you sleep on my sofa and use up so much of my toothpaste. But if unhappiness is always going to be in my living room, then I'm going to make fun of it. The things that're temporary, that I don't understand and am afraid of, can get some special handling. Not permanent fixtures. Death, taxes, my stepmother nagging and you bitching are constants, and constants do not receive constant seriousness. They must comply to the fundamental rule: if it's normal, then it gets dripped on, lost in the stack, and made fun of whenever I damn well please. You want me to take your sadness with greater gravity? Then make it rarer. Much, much rarer.”

Bathroom Monologue: Contagious Condition

"One bite. One scratch. Some have contracted the disease just by breathing in the same room. A cultural culture. Whether it's body fluids or airborne, transformation takes hold within seconds. The hunger claims you at least three times a day, and the thirst is even more frequent. The infected move in packs, congregating to feed, amongst other things. One assumes they will hunt together when necessary, though at this stage in the world, food is so plentiful that they seldom have to fight for it. You can recognize them by their listless walk, the range of fatigues and concerns in their eyes, and their inclination towards any sort of gadget. Place an iPhone in the middle of the sidewalk and take cover; in less than an hour one of them will wander off with it. They will shamble around poking it like mindless zombies. They are not zombies, though. The life expectancy is longer, with many making it to ninety years. Also unlike zombies they will spend most of those years keenly nervous over things that will shorten their lives. Nothing they do will actually save them. The human condition is one hundred percent terminal."

"Corners of this Little World" at 5x5

This week Angel Zapata launched 5x5, an e-zine dedicated to stories of five sentences in length, each only five words long. The issue includes work by Michael Solender, Laura Eno and Erin Cole. I’m flattered to be included, contributing “Corners of this Little World.”

The story’s too short to summarize. You can go read it in under a minute, or take in the entire issue in a few. The whole thing is free to read at this link.

Angel cribbed from my site’s bio, leaving me with a hilarious credit under the story.

Bathroom Monologue: End

Ouroboros finished her meal.

Bathroom Monologue: My Space Plane

My space plane would have no leaks. The hull would be brand new, up to code, and spotless. Three robots would be attached to the exterior, polishing the hull at all times, humming admiration for its glory into the airless void.

My space plane would have no angry women. On my space plane, all the women would have at least minored in Advanced Engineering and would be able to rig the jets so we'd get there on time. They would have too many functions for them to all be crowded into the cockpit, second-guessing and decrying, "It's a lost cause."

My space plane has no shifty cooks who constantly talk about mutiny in Portuguese. If there was such a man on my space plane, he would not be in the cockpit. Why would such a cook be in the cockpit? He would be where he belongs: in the airshaft. On my space plane, the airshaft would be opening right now. A robot would pause, lift its polishing rag, and wave it as the former cook decompressed.

My space plane would not be under attack. Certainly it would not be outnumbered six-to-one. Its destination would not possibly already be overrun. Its destination would be a beach. A powder-white beach with no angry women screaming what a moron I am in my ear. If, for whatever reason, our visibility were reduced to zero when the viewing screens were shorted by the enemy arrays, the women would certainly not yell even louder in that same ear.

My space plane would positively never have its hull breached by enemy lasers. It would be enemy-laser-proofed. And if it somehow was breached, that single laser would not miss an entire room of annoying people and somehow hit me in the thigh.

When we arrived at our destination, my space plane would hover nine millimeters above the surf, at the request of the robots. The robots would know how stupid a space plane looks with sand on its butt. And as I disembarked, my all-female engineering corps would follow, stripping down to starfleet-approved bikinis, asking me what the old life was like. And I'd make something outlandish up. Something like this. Yes, on my space plane, this is all a dumb hypothetical that isn't happening.

I wish I was on my space plane.

Bathroom Monologue: Abolishing True Love

We the undersigned do hereby agree to abolish any notion of "true love." The undersigned shall abstain from the consumption of, and from permitting their offspring and loved ones from the consumption of, any media of any format, including but not limited to text, film, videogames and mystical potions, which leaves the impression that any special feelings were ever thought possible by the human species. Conversations about "true love" and/or related media shall be similarly verboten, and redirected towards subjects of chemical coincidences. This is for sundry benefits, including but not limited to: 1: making impressionable girls easier to fuck on the first date; 2: TBA.

_____
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_____
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Bathroom Monologue: Quiet in the Library

Four teens at the counter. The aged, permed librarian talks louder than any of them, about PIN codes and dates of birth and where you sign. When a fifty-ish woman in a red coat crosses from the other side, the librarian yells, "There's my sweet. Girl, you look good."

A-C. Unattended.

D-M. Unattended.

Audiobooks. Unattended.

Six computers, five in use, two occupants who won't shut up. They whisper at each other about what they're doing on Facebook - by the sound, the photos they are sending each other in real time.A third occupant leaves her computer to run in circles around the other two, to see it all. She is obediently silent in her orbit. She only pauses to take a single earbud, pulsing so loud with tunes that it can be heard two stations over.

N-SAN. Unattended.


S-TAN. Unattended.

Printer screeches.

A man steps out into the vestibule so he can hear his cellphone. Something important about where his honey is tonight. He puts his hand over his mouth in excitement, but you can still hear him through the glass.

Even the computers hum a little obtrusively. At least they're always here. Maybe they've forgotten the rules.

Or maybe he's forgotten to check if they've changed.

Bathroom Monologue at a Public Library Bathroom, OR, Immortally Yours

Apologies for the late post today. Almost broke my everyday posting streak. Terrible ice storm in my country; still without power at home, typing this one to you live from the library. Full story on the storm to come later, including photos of frozen trees, flooded farms and frazzled hair.




"Who wants to live forever? I mean, in some moments, I guess everyone does. That whole fear-of-death thing can getting pretty big if you're going to die. But I'm not, so I want to.

"I mean, who wants to live forever? To see all the progress in society and science? What kind of person wants to see the catscan developed? To see our species go from cave paintings to photos of the earth? To see cancer cured?

"I mean, I guess most people do.

"Listen, I mean, who wants to keep making friends forever? Continuously meeting new people with new dynamics, new values, new interests, new jobs, new passions, new things to offer. Every century touching new lives, experiencing fresh innovations, and having even more sex?

"Shut up. All your friends will die. Unless they live forever, but they don't. I'm asking, who wants to live forever and be the only one? Because then you'd have to keep watching friends die. Yes, now you see. To see everyone you know pass away and leave you behind.

"Now, true, if you live a normal life you still have people die on you. I guess any group of friends dies off, invariably leaving one person the sole survivor. So even if you don't live forever that can happen to you, unless you die first.

"So I guess that's the angst of the immortal. Because doesn't everyone crave to die first, see none of the suffering of others, and leave everybody else sad? Wouldn't that be great? Isn't that what living is all about? Isn't that why you make friends, so you can make them sad before they can do it to you? Ultimately desiring what would make you the worst possible friend to them? Well an immortal can never have that. Yeah. Living forever is hard, because you have to spend the maximum amount of time with everyone you like."

Bathroom Monologue: Caller Id

I used to have Caller ID. It broke and now I'm left with caller id, which only tells me what the person wants. I have to guess who'd want that thing. If it's "Sexual" then it's probably not Mom, but Mom could want anything. "Your location," "To see you," "To talk for half an hour about wallpaper" - all of these could be covert Mom calls. She can even fake what she wants. Twice now she's pretended "To help pay off student loans" just to nag me about doing my laundry at her place. Dad's never like that. He only calls "To bitch about the Yankees" or "To get you to call your mother."

Recording: Not For a Doomsday Weapon

This post is exclusively for the reading of "Not For a Doomsday Weapon." People voted for it, and I stayed up until 2:00 AM recording it.

You can listen to today's story by clicking the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or by clicking this text to download the MP3.

If you want reflections on it, I'm just happy it no longer sounds like the narrator is from Brooklyn. Nothing against Brooklyn, they just don't see many sky-whales. All feedback is welcome.

Bathroom Monologue: New Rule for the Game

“Some day in the future we are all going to have microprocessors in our heads that record everything we say and do. We’re going to pay for the privilege because it’s going to do all sorts of radical stuff, like auto-friend hot girls you pass on the street and get you the best discounts on the music you just heard. It’s going to do something else, too. It’s going to log everything you say, so that when you use 'qoph' in Scrabble, I can check if you’ve spoken it in the last five years, and if you haven’t, you lose those fucking points because there’s no God damned way that counts.”

Bathroom Monologue: Not For a Doomsday Weapon

By popular demand there is an audio edition of this story. You can listen to it by clicking the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or clicking this text to download the MP3.

This is all your fault.

So Nothning was running away. You know his name, right? That's the little guy whose soul you hid your doomsday weapon in, or whatever the hell is actually going on there. That's one of the two loose ends I don't understand yet. But you scared the crap out of Nothning, and he ran away, and to the best of my knowledge, you have shadowy goons chasing him.

Nothning has two very dear friends. I'm one of them, and I certainly wouldn't have the brass to talk to you if I wasn't. There's me and Furnhang. The three of us have always been very loyal, so when he ran with assassins at his back, we tailed to protect him. In that horse chase, it was Furnhang that brained your guys with a yoke. In case that story's reached here, that was him. Not me. Yes.

Your eyes tell me the stories haven't reached here. Okay. We're little people, except Furnhang. He's the big guy, flowing golden hair. Obscenely attractive. He's in one of your cells. Was captured protecting Nothning.

You don't care. Why would you? You're evil. You’re powerful. You do things.

You should care because of these two ladies. When a guy is that charismatic, love interests follow. The first was this shopkeeper girl. Don't know her name. She never talks to me. Honestly, she's kind of a bitch. She was bent on following the golden-haired guy on his big adventure, which chaffed Pandling. Commander Pandling.

See, the shopkeeping bitch is in a rivalry with Pandling over who's going to bang/marry/live-happily-ever-after with Furnhang. So when Pandling hears that shopkeeper girl is following him to certain death, she's all, "Let me die for him too, and more tragically! Then he'll love me."

A commander doesn't follow somebody into contested territories alone. She is followed by her command, in this case some five hundred highly trained foot soldiers who unquestioningly followed her highly questionable lead. They crossed over and even your army shrank back. Which we appreciated, because you totally would have had us that night if you kept going.

It was pretty startling on our side, too. So startling that Pandling's fellow commanders thought she was making a power play and moved their forces in to steal the glory. That's why you had three hulking commands bouncing into the contested territories instead of one. None of these people were coming to help Nothning. They didn't even know he existed.

Too late. They do now. I told them.

The next part is entirely your fault. I assume it's you, or some paranoid admiral. Because no sooner are Nothning and I kicking back and relaxing, no longer fearing death amongst the thousand-plus heroes around us, then your freaking Serpent Fleet comes sailing up the coast. So now three commands are looking at dozens of corsairs and cannons. Were those warning shots? Because I thought so, but the commanders did not agree. You fired in the vicinity of three overachieving commanders and immediately they called in the aquatic cavalry. That is seriously the only reason you've got an oceanic stalemate right now.

I don't know what brought on the sky-whales. Didn't think those were real until they swooped through the clouds and started eating people. From the number of ogre skeletons in their droppings, I'm presuming your side doesn't have a much better handle on them. We have no idea what they're after. Commander Pandling thinks your cannonfire woke them up. Nothning thinks they're after your weapon.

Good damned luck finding my buddy, by the way. Thanks to everyone overreacting he's got the biggest, bloodiest crowd in creation in which to hide. And if the commands retreat, he’s going with them and letting them have your stupid weapon, even though as I’ve just described, these people are nuts.

But Nothning extends you this offer: if Furnhang and I go back to him alive before sunset, we’re going underground. Permanent style. Your enemy does not get the big doomsday weapon. You don’t, they don’t, and everybody deals with the sky-whales in their own way.

Up to you how this goes. That’s only how it’s unfolded so far. How it’s actually unfolded. Maybe you can team up with the commands and we’ll all survive this mess. I doubt it - I mean, I'll survive. Providing you don't kill me, I'm digging the deepest hole possible and staying down there until the smell of whale droppings fades. I just presume you're going to charge and get everyone killed, because that's the kind of stupid drama this situation seems intent on heading toward.

Bathroom Monologue: Marriage of Evolution

Crickets and violinists played in tandem for their earless common ancestors. The chimp had carried The Bride’s train since he was the most genetically similar to her, and because he looked the most adorable in a tiny tux. Simple bacteria chatted about how relevant they were to digestion until everyone was bored. Hunter/gatherers brought flowers, though it was the Neanderthal that caught the bouquet. The Missing Link read the rites and asked for their vows. The crowd waited hours for the newlyweds to kiss, a long wait since The Bride first has to pick lice from her love’s scalp. Understandable all in all, given that a gorilla was The Groom.

Bathroom Monologue: Regarding Mr. Floyd, OR, Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2, Take 2

[The bar has been painted lime green, with an additional unique color to each booth. Our booth is virgin cherry pink. At the center of the booth sits DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA, wearing a cloak made of living bats with their wings sewn together. DARKLOSS and HIS BATS are sharing a single margarita. To DARKLOSS’s left sits MEGATRAN, a Chinese knockoff of Megatron made from blue plastic instead of white. To DARKLOSS’s right sits SAMID, wearing a pink tuxedo and pink reading glasses, scrutinizing over the liner notes in what we presume is the last compact disc case in existence.]

Samid: "We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom." What the hell is this?

Darkloss: Who needs education? Addition, subtraction, history - it's all useless. With grammar like that, of course you don't need no education.

Megatran: Double negatives are the standard in French.

Samid: Unfortunately not in English.

Megatran: Any linguistic form used reliably is grammatically correct. If they keep using double negatives, they're correct.

Samid: Firstly, if I start calling "first aid" by the name "bacterial infection," I've done something incorrect and unhelpful to everyone else who's using the terms correctly. "Do you want me to get you some bacterial infection for your gaping leg wound?"

Megatran: I don’t get infections.

Samid: Secondly, if Mr. Floyd was trying to make a point to me about not needing an education, failing to use the correct grammar you get from an education doesn't help his case.

Megatran: That's part of his point. He's expressing his argument without conforming to your educational standards.

Samid: So he's failing to use correct grammar in defense of his failing English class. Again, his argument isn't working on me. Maybe it’s all that dark sarcasm I learned at university.

Darkloss: But he's not trying to convince you. The song is directed to kids.

Samid: Directly spoken at educators.

Megatran: Using the direction at educators to make its point which is directed to kids.

[SAMID feeds the liner notes to DARKLOSS’s cape.]

Samid: Oh, well if he's so juvenile that he's attacking one group to win over another, no wonder he doesn't need no education. He’s a child.

Megatran: I don't think Pink Floyd was a person. It's just the band name.

Samid: Again, mucking up the conventions of language. He needs yes education.

Darkloss: Needs yes...?

[DARKLOSS tries to read the liner notes, but HIS BATS will not yield them. He looks in confusion to SAMID.]

Samid: If "needs no education" works, then "needs yes education" works.

Megatran: Nobody says that.

Samid: Nobody intelligent says "needs no education," because they can speak with adult grammar and because they recognize that education is important. I can find data on incomes and schooling levels if you want. Maybe set them to petulant verse.

Darkloss: I don’t see how you can take this much umbrage with Pink Floyd’s lyrics and still listen to Bob Dylan.

[MEGATRAN hides its faceplate in its robot hands.]

Megatran: Please don’t let this level of lyrical scrutiny spread to any other music. I don’t believe the institution can withstand it.

Samid: Oh, stop that.

Megatran: Why?

Samid: Because these things have to close on a clever line. If you don’t rebut in sidesplitting fashion in the next three seconds, the whole thing’s been for naught.

[MEGATRAN hesitates. They sit there.]

Bathroom Monologue: Coldblooded Body Image

“I try not to talk about it because it's unfashionable for men to have body image issues. Society is acutely aware of how unrealistic their demands are on women's appearances, but you never think how much pressure you put on a man. I spend hours in aerobics classes, arms behind my back and undulating on my belly. I've paid thousands for skin creams and mud treatments without a single scale to show for it. There's a surgery to bifurcate your tongue if you want to half-ass it. Truth is, science won't ever give you a reptilian mouth. The funding isn't there. It isn’t profitable enough. Now you're going to tell me I'm silly, that I'm too hard on myself, that nobody expects me to become a snake. Ride the rails in my shoes for just one day. How they stare at me while I’m trying to coil in my chair. They're all thinking, "What a worthless cobra he makes." But none of them are willing to help me become whole!”

The Bathroom Monologues Movie Awards

It's almost March 2011, so of course we're all talking about the best movies of 2010. If all the complaining on Twitter is any indication, I'm once again happy to have skipped the Academy Awards. Naturally I disagree with some of the winners. More naturally, I don't understand what some of the categories mean. But nothing shall dissuade me from telling a sizable democratic body of people who devote swaths of their lives to film that their mass conclusions were wrong. So here we go.

The Robbed Award
Going to the movie that got no play last year
and is still on my mind more than whatever won Best Picture

Moon

The Too Little/Too Late Award
Going to the movie I missed by several years,
but have now seen and wish I'd been on the bandwagon for at the time

Brick

The Raddest Scene Award
Going to the raddest scene in a motion picture

Regatta Race to Trent Reznor's "In The Hall of the Mountain King" remix, The Social Network

The Best Soundtrack Award
John's already used the "going to the obvious thing-award" joke,
so this is embarrassing

Inception

The Dark Horse Award
Going to the movie that was way better than you all led me to believe it would be

Devil

The "What Have I Done With My Life?" Award
Going to any kid born in 1996 who should not be nearly this good at acting

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

You're Actually All Great At This
Going to the best ensemble in a motion picture

Everybody, Inception

The Frank/Nixon Memorial Award
Going to all actors who performed as well or better than Frank Langella did in Frost/Nixon

For the third year in a row, nobody

The "There's No Such Thing As The Best Movie of the Year" Award
Seeing as there is no such thing as a best movie amidst a field of comedies, dramas, musicals, period pieces, speculative fiction, animation, blockbusters and an international film market we're both not watching enough of as it is, the award that simply goes to whatever movie brought me the closes to both crying and laughing

Toy Story 3

(Baleful apologies to The King's Speech, Black Swan, Mother and other potentially fine films,
but for the life of me I could not convince one person to go see any of them.
Everyone else wanted to see Tron 2, so I stayed home and read a book instead.)

Bathroom Monologue: The iBelieve

To hear today's blasphemy either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

Your religion needs an update, Father. This crucifix. Yes, it's a cross, and the image of Christ suffering for mortal sins, but those are just two functions, and most consumers see them as one. Single-use devices are unfashionable. Can't it be a keychain, too? Put a bottle opener at your Savior's feet. Can't this thing play music? I've seen MP3 players and flash drives smaller than this. You could fit a terabyte in Jesus's chest. It needs WiFi; pray with the rosary beads, fine, but get some Facebook integration so God can Like your best prayers on your Wall. Twitter integration, for short requests and pithy spiritual thoughts. Boundless functionality. Auto-updates. The Vatican authorizes new canon and bang, streamed straight to your personal iconography. Launch it next month. A new model next year. Make people feel like they've got outdated faithware. If you can't make Steve Jobs convert, you can at least convert his methods. You're not going to Hell because you don't have one; life is Hell because you don't have one. The iChrist. The iBelieve. Think about it.

Bathroom Monologue: Monologue for a slightly tipsy Stephen Fry who may have forgotten he’s still on stage

“Wouldn’t be caught dead with Naked Lunch. Caught stone dead. I wouldn't be caught dead, but still upright, my corpse sodomizing a chained five-year-old boy, with a copy of that book. Though without it, I don't know where I'd have gotten the idea for the evening."

Bathroom Monologue: What You Need

I’ve done everything. I listened to you bitch for thirteen straight hours. I missed work to stay up with you. I bought your greasy comfort food, and I threw it out and cooked chicken breast when you started bitching at the mirror about your waistline. I talked you out of calling him, then I told you it was a good idea after you did it anyway. I paid for the liquor, and I held your hair while you tossed cookies. I cleaned the bathroom and made you six different hangover remedies. What did you do when you sobered up? You started crying at photo albums again. So I’m doing this. This is what you need.

You take this end here and stick it on your chest. Right over the chest. Grip it firmly. Now when you squeeze, it latches on and zaps you with subzero molecules. It would flash-freeze a polar bear’s balls. All your ventricles and tissues, just like that. Simultaneously these clamps will extend in and grab the whole mess, so before your blood stops pumping you can pull it out, have a look and dash it on the floor. You can watch it shatter on the linoleum and finally get what you want so bad: you can die of a fricking broken heart.

Excuse me if I don’t watch. I’ve got to go pay the landlord.

Bathroom Monologue: At Death's Daughter

This dialogue sprang out of a brainstorming session for a new Fantasy world. They've just suffered a mass demise of various cosmic beings, leaving messengers and executors woefully busy. One such executor, a winged man in a suit, stops by a girl's apartment to drop off her inheritance. It's a large and rather unruly scythe.

Moffet pushed the thing back across the table with two fingers, like the angel might take it to the back and have the chef whip up something better.

"No. I don't want it."

"You have to want it." The man folded his arms, refusing to pick it up. " It's rare. It's a multi-functional device. It could only be more desirable if it had an Apple logo."

"I don't want the scythe."

"You should want the scythe."

"Well, I don't."

"Fine. There's still good news."

"And that is?"

"Your mother wasn't unfaithful."

"Pardon?"

"Olivia Constantine was an absolute, one-hundred-percent lesbian. Your father was not that gardener you've heard about."

"Don't bother sticking up for him. He ran out on us."

"No, he moved because there was a new green house. He's actually just two counties over, and he doesn't think about you ever because he's not your father. Your mother never slept with him or any other man. She found them quite gross from her first day seeing a wee-wee on the playground to her last night in the hospital."

"Uh-huh. I guess she molded me from magic clay."

"Don't be petulant. You were immaculately conceived."

She rolled her eyes over the scythe, the man's suit, and his stupidly handsome face, giving the whole business a sweeping dismissal.

"That doesn't happen."

"Does too. Happened to you."

"Don't tell me I'm Jesus. I'm agnostic."

"You're getting a special delivery from a ghost. You're gnostic now. And you're not any sort of Sloppy Seconds Coming. He was a better dresser and conversationalist." He pushed the scythe across the table towards her, using the same two fingers she had. The blade made a sphincter-tightening scrape across the tabletop, though it left no mark. "He wasn't the first to be immaculately conceived, though, or the last. There have been at least six hundred immaculate conceptions this year alone, and it's not even cold yet. Snow makes those Winter Gods get kinky."

"That's ridiculous."

"You know what's ridiculous? That a lifelong lesbian can make eye contact with a man just once in public, and the first time somebody calls her a slut, the consensus is 'Guilty.' That, by the way, is how most immaculate conceptions get covered up. Statistically insignificant, and you never catch a ghost boinking a girl on film, so of course she's a dumb whore."

"Okay, now you're ridiculous." She rose, jerking a thumb towards the door, and accidentally pointing it at the only picture of her mother in the entire apartment. "Get out."

He rose along with her. He was unfairly taller.

"You think that's ridiculous? Think how many immaculately conceived prodigies have been aborted. Let me tell you, at least three of them would have changed the world if their moms hadn't flushed them. Their fathers knew it, too. Planted them down here to prove a point to all the other gods."

"And what was the point of predestining a bunch of aborted messiahs?"

"You ever see a horrible plane crash?" He stuck out his pinky and thumb, turning his hand into a mock airplane. It sailed down across his smile and crashed into the adjacent palm. "Thing's on fire before it hits the tarmac, airport crew swear they could hear the screaming over the engines, and whatever mangled survivors crawl out of the smoke spend the rest of their life in nightmares?"

"What could the fucking point be in that?"

"The point? Why should they bother stopping it if you won't? It's your fucking world. You strapped yourselves to a rocket built by the lowest bidder and fired it into weather you weren't paying enough attention to. It's your damned plane, your damned fault, and it's your scythe now."

He stooped just low enough to meet her gaze. Those two fingers came back, nudging the scythe to the very edge of her side of the coffee table.

"Here you go. Do whatever with it. I only did this as a favor to your father anyway. I'm going to go sprout wings and do something you don't believe in."

Something stupid made her touch the scythe. Not take it. She wasn't that stupid; only stupid enough to touch it with two of her own fingers. Enough of a gesture to make him pause.

"You said I didn't have a father."

"I said your mom wasn't knocked up by any man."

"Okay. In the world where you sprout wings and think you're clever, just how did I immaculate my way into the world?"

"Baby, you just inherited a scythe. Notice you spent your whole life wearing hoodies? Where'd you think you got that?"

"Mom loved them."

"Maybe that's what attracted him. Goodnight. Enjoy your immortality."

And then he wasn't there. Ghost, angel, nutter - now he was only absent. Moffet thought she saw a glowing wing pass by her window. Then she thought again. No, that was not what she felt like having seen today.


She still saw the scythe, though. Ugly black, both dulled and too dark to go with anything in her wardrobe. She hunkered down over the thing, breath leaving no fog along the blade. She nudged it with two fingers. It jostled to no particular affect. There was no particular affect about the thing until she actually picked it up.

Bathroom Monologue: Very Smart

"You have to stop telling people you're dumb. You're very smart. You're smarter than them, and it unnerves them when they hear you cut yourself down. They ask you to look over their taxes. They look at you when someone mentions thermodynamics. You watch PBS and read articles on the internet that are longer than one page. You calling yourself dumb means they are all barely functional slime pods. Barely sentient pustules of DNA. That's very rude. And don't say that they have skills you don't. Yes, she fixes your computer. She also thinks you ask her because you're too busy learning astrophysics to pick up mundane nonsense. And it's not nonsense to her most of the time, only when she's in the knowledge radius around you. That's what you do to people. You can't cut yourself down or you drop the whole thing on them. I'm sorry that you're smart, and I'm sorry that you're too stupid to know you're smart. But this is your burden. You have to carry it. Pick it up just as soon as you finish the weekend crossword puzzle."

7 Things I Want From Novels

Recently T.S. Bazelli put together a list of the things she’d like to read in a novel. Some of her points were appealing (“Magic with serious consequences.”), but I was left wondering just what mine would be. We should keep such inventories as readers so we can acknowledge the writers who take such risks, and as writers so that we can attempt to fulfill them if no one else will. So here's my current tally. I focused on things I don't see often enough. The tally is incomplete. I guess it will remain incomplete until I die. Somebody remind me to do a draft on my deathbed.

1. Humor at its own expense. Not sarcastic, not wry or counter-cultural, not essentially “meta” or any other postmodernism that allows people to avoid direct feeling. Preposterous humor that exposes and cherishes quirks. This culture has an excess of humor that can only make me nod in concession that the writer was somehow clever. It's so plentiful I now read it as dead inside. I want you to actually make me laugh. Douglas Adams, Gail Simone, Stephen Fry, Jeff Smith and Mary Roach have all pulled this off, so I know it's possible.

2. Main characters that form a strong artificial family. They've elected to care for each other, tease and torment, stick up for each other, even support to irrational degrees. Think Lupin, Jigen and Goemon. Think Aragon, Legolas and Gimli. Hell, “A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a…” is one of the most boldly diverse casts in literature. Whether we watch them meet and develop together like the ka-tet of The Dark Tower, or they simply seem to have always co-existed like the surgery team from M*A*S*H, I will follow you anywhere for those clusters of people that just go together.

Poster art from Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro. How we got an anime franchise out of a series of dimestore French novels, I don't know.

3. People possessing supposedly deviant characteristics who are not defined by those characteristics. I'd be much more interested in a gay character that was defined by his love of collecting Russian nesting dolls than by his sexuality.

4. Sex other than fucking. Fucking is not only tasteless, bland, and more base than sentimentality while managing to lack the soul – it’s also played out to the point of eye-rolling cliché. It doesn't even essentially bond characters anymore. It's both masturbatory and only good for masturbation. If you're going to write sex, have characters getting it wrong, being vulnerable, confused or cracking up laughing. Give me something distinct, something personal rather than prurient. I’m thinking of James Clavell’s hilarious all-dialogue sex, or Stephen King’s teens who don’t understand why it’s nothing like media led them to expect, or Ethan Coen comparing it to having your genitalia stuck in a paint mixer (“for the full quarter hour”). Or you could not have it at all. When it doubt, don't have it at all.

5. Absurd characters who relish in their own absurdity. One of my favorite character traits is that of Marvel’s Bullseye, a supervillain who wears a ridiculous costume because he actually loves the garish fashion. While few of us are that way (or have the guts to buy the wardrobe), most of us have our own absurdities. The state of satire has left many of us thinking the height of creativity is pointing out someone else's flaws, sheltering and reinforcing our own habits of being. The dubiously mature take on this in literature is to reveal the deep desire in some Gatsby-esque tragedy. Well folks, Jay Gatsby is dead. Give me characters who live their personal absurdities.

"It's perfect," he says, not comforting his tailor at all. Art by Steve Dillon, an interior from Bullseye: Greatest Hits.

6. Characters who survive and have to deal with circumstances. Death is often a cop-out from consequence. One of the best books I've read in recent years is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is all about living through the damages of tragedy. The survivors come out of it monumentally messed up, leaving it far more interesting than if they'd all simply died in tragedy. I cut slack for works that truly earned the punch, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but these are the exceptions. The best fiction can offer us ways out of deep depression and hardship. Mediocre fiction can at least be more interesting than “He was sad, and sadder, and even sadder, and then he died."

7. Take me into another view. I don’t need to agree with their morals, religion or actions. In fact, it’s better if I don’t. Humbert Humbert and Hannibal Lecter are not people I'd want to be around. They are fascinating on the page. Characters can exceed being mouthpieces or pawns for an agenda. If I even suspect you're trying to convert me you've already lost. I'll turn against you and rip apart your novel with a critical acumen I've been building for years. Most readers can do the same. I'm not asking for propaganda. What I love are those characters so broad in scope that they are twisted within things I'd never accept personally, and which I can sympathize with on some level. Plenty of the best Horror operates using such literary sympathy. I have a sense of smell, was raised by both of my parents and have never come close to an obsession that would lead me to kill, but I am left feeling deeply for Grenouille in Patrick Suskind's Perfume. That's success.

Bathroom Monologue: Twinkle, Twinkle, Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ Superstar

How I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high

Like a diamond in God's eye

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little lights,

Twinkle, twinkle, Jesus Christ,

what have you sacrificed?

This is a song merger I've done over a dozen times in the bathroom. It always falls apart after two stanzas, because neither song is worth much after the initial flourish. Hope this gets it out of my head once and for all.

Bathroom Monologue: Whitewashing Covers Monologue

To hear this excuse rather than just read it you can either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3. Enjoy!

I thought that question would come eventually. The cover.

He is a pretty, pretty white man. I don’t even think he has follicles. Look at that. Why couldn’t they airbrush my author photo like that? God, I look even more like an ogre than usual when you have me lying in print next to this guy.

This is supposed to be Zhange. That’s what my editor told me that the art department told her. He doesn’t look like a Zhange. He looks decidedly like a Fabio. Like a Theodore. Like a Donovan.

For the record, Zhange is not white. I was not included in discussions about the cover art and do not have any contractual say about it. I was not happy about the decision. My agent says it looked like I bit into a lemon when I first saw it.

My alternative would have been to return my advance, breach my contract and have my publisher sue me whenever I tried to publish the novel in the future. I’m hoping you all liked the book enough to forgive me getting it published. That choice was my prerogative. How much you resent me is yours. We are left with four options.

The first is we can remove the dust jacket, like this. I brought some silver pens to autograph the exterior cover so you have something else to look at than blue hardcover binding.

Second, I brought these other permanent markers so we can make him mauve, or orange, or put him in blackface. I’ve been practicing on advanced copies. I’m getting good at it.

The third option will cost you a dollar, because it cost me about that much to print up these stickers. Full page white stickers on which I’ve written the title of the book and drawn this non-racial stick figure. He’s got a sword and everything. Look at that bad ass. There’s also this wide white area on the side where I’ll write whatever autograph you feel like. “To Cindy, please don’t take the stick figure as a body image role model. Jesus God, that’s a controversy I don’t need right now. Ex-oh-ex-oh, jay-see-double-yew.”

The fourth option is that when you come up I can give you the address of my publishers. You can take it and write very intelligent letters, which you will mail to them because the time it takes and postage you pay convinces corporations more than any angry Facebook petition. You can forward the address to your friends who like the book, and they can write their letters and spread the address on to others. When my publisher sees that there are however-many literate people who buy books and don’t mind or actually like people of other races and ethnicities on their covers, I can make a stronger argument the next time they put out an edition.

Please don’t boycott the book. Please don’t wait for e-books to kill paper books. Please don’t pirate a copy and think that some racist in the art department justifies it. Instead, please realize that some of the boundaries I attempted to push inside this book are a lot bigger than the cover. As angry as some of you are, and as angry as I got with them in private, I am still grateful to most of the people at that company. They got the words in my book to you. In the process of doing that, they did something offensive and we can spend the rest of the Q-and-A talking about it. I think we’ve got the space until eleven. I’ve got time. I’ve got water. Let’s go.

Next question?