Slug on a Razor

My holiday raft of new DVDs and books is decimating my productivity with regard to nocturnal novel-writing, although yesterday I picked up two pieces of freelance work - one bizarre assigment for the bar magazine, another for a travel guide to the District - to kick off the first week of the New Year in a big way. Last night I was watching one of my new acquisitions, the British gangster film 'Layer Cake' (starring the scary-looking next James Bond, Daniel Craig), and near the end Michael Gambon's master criminal gives his climactic speech:

"You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son."

It's all about working your way up through the levels of the aforementioned metaphysical dessert; although from the perspective of the cold absolute, even reaching the pinnacle means nothing. In a related tangent, in the New Year I'm resolving to discard most of my pretensions to nihilism, maybe in favor of deconstructionism. Or Dadaism. One of those '-isms'; though subscribing to Dadaism as a guiding philosophy could have a negative impact on my work, particularly if I were to turn in a piece on, say, erectile dysfunction, and instead of an opener along the lines of, "In a new research report that will doubtlessly make stockholders of Pfizer nearly pee themselves with gee..." I wrote something like, "Der DADA, Every man has his Football. BY whom? I like electrons, HELLO..." It'd be enough to make any editor snap my neck.

Apologies for the absurdities ... It's been a very long couple of days down here in the Alamo.

There's been stress and caffeine and plotting galore. They canceled my main print magazine, and we ended up being pilloried by a large number of newspapers. We're the slug on the razor at the moment, and while I've made resolutions for the coming year, I have not even an inkling of what the next 365 days will bring. From my perspective, this is not a bad thing.

All I Want for Christmas is Revenge

This holiday season, send a few thoughts in the direction of our troops in Iraq. And don't forget some of our other government employees who are spending this holy time of year on the front lines of America's 'War on Terror.' Those CIA operatives at that Black Site in Poland? They're spending Christmas Eve lighting up a detainee.

Poodle

Take this guy and call him Billy; a pothead par excellence; a legend in his dealer's time. One day Billy gets a gig housesitting for a friend who owns a spread that belongs in the pages of 'Town & Country,' or maybe 'Martha Stewart Living.' We're talking stenciled baseboards, color-coordinated walls hung with tasteful and expensive art, multiple bathrooms outfitted in marble and chrome. And a small, coifed teacup poodle. Expensive, dumb, prone to peeing on the Persian rugs. Now for Billy, this housesitting gig is the perfect job: sit on the Italian leather sofa with your favorite bong and watch cartoons, collect cash. There's enough ice cream in the fridge and all-natural snacks from Whole Foods in the restored-wood kitchen cabinets to last him through a whole week's worth of the munchies. Life is good.

Two days into the gig, Billy emerges from his haze of bong smoke to realize that - hey - he hasn't seen the adorable 2-pound ball of fur that's at least nominally supposed to be his charge. So he wanders around the house, calling the poodle's name. As Charles Bronson would have said, 'No dice.' Dog is neither upstairs nor downstairs. Then Billy notices that the back door is open a crack, so he pads outside. What he sees, well, kind of blows his already-baked mind.

Wait, let's jump back in space-time for a moment. We need to explain how, in the equally fabulous spread next door, there lived a Great Dane. A majestic and massive and un-snipped animal.

And this majestic and massive and un-snipped animal, well, somehow it managed to make it past its owners' hundreds-of-dollars-per-foot fence and into Billy's friend's yard, where it came across the teacup poodle doing whatever poodles (nervously) do. Billy comes out and sees the Great Dane, in violation of every tenet of sexual dimorphism, humping the teacup poodle for all it's worth, jackhammering away.

Billy just can't process this. The synapses of his mind are stalled as a subway train during an MTA strike. "Uhhh..." Meanwhile, the Great Dane is heading for glory. The poodle is, not to put too fine a point on it, nonplussed by this whole situation. And will probably need a colonscopy afterwards. Or something. Definitely Billy's day is heading downhill. His high is acting as a sort of mental shield; it's probably the only thing preventing his mind from totally snapping. "UHHH..."

That gets the Great Dane's attention. Its head snaps up. Caught! It takes off running back for the fence ... with the poodle, well, not to put too fine a point on it, still attached. One gets the sense that the poodle is going to need Valium if anyone ever tries to take it outside for a walk again. Great Dane is running for fence with tiny dog impaled on its member and Billy is like, whoa. The Great Dane hits the fence. It can't remember how it got over here in the first place. It stands on its hind legs and puts its paws on the top of the fence and still the poodle is hanging there, little eyes bugging out, and Billy finally gets a solitary thought and goes for the hose. Unwinds it. Aims. Squeezes the trigger under the nozzle and the stream of water smacks the poodle dead-center, sending it rocketing head-first into the fence. Now the little thing is traumatized on both ends. Fortunately it's a teacup poodle so it'll never have to do higher math or anything. That was the last time Billy house-sat for anyone.

Look Out Shit, Here Comes Fan

Thursday (12/22):

11:53am: Slightly bored, contemplating weekend.

12:02pm: World turned upside down and shaken like a kitch holiday snow-globe.

1:10pm: news.google hits: 10.

1:34pm: Someone writes 'The Alamo' on a piece of paper and tapes it to section door.

3:34pm: Mix of euphoria and panic sets in; checking Orbitz for flights to Thailand. Other side of world looking real fine.

4:15pm: news.google hits: 54. Chinese get their hands on information.

5:45pm: Fucked. So. Very. Fucked.

6:00pm: news.google hits: 77. ABC Television posts online.

7:00pm: Drinking begins.

7:20pm: Wondering if last 2.5 years of life can be parlayed into book advance.

7:45pm: Drinking continues.

8:00pm: news.google hits: 95. Salon.com fixes napkin around neck, prepares to dig in.

8:15pm: Drinking: The Motion Picture.

10:45pm: H. finds and yanks me out of random bar.

Crash and Burn

I am not good in crowds. And since ‘tis the season to network, with holiday parties every night, it becomes a struggle to wade into the midst of it all, shaking hands and exchanging cards left and right, dispensing witty banter, above all keeping up the necessary momentum to move from one end of the floor to the other and then out into the soothing, empty night.

Friday night is George’s party. This is fine. This is hookah and rum and video games on two big televisions in the living room. As controlled by me, Master Chef dodges and blasts his way through Halo with all the skill and accuracy of a special-needs student charging across a classroom after the afternoon juice. The ingestion of controlled substances actually helps my game-play, imbuing me with enough skewed focus to at least put a clip’s worth of ammo in the approximate area of the next slobbering beastie. “Go ahead, make my day,” I growl with sufficient Clint Eastwood gravitas, the controller jumping and vibrating like a live thing in my hands.

Saturday is the office party, which means expensive catering to the tune of crab cakes and lamb kebabs, an open bar on a back porch encased in heat-retaining plastic, people milling about with their significant others. Such work-sanctioned events require a Kabuki-like dance of graceful rigidity, and I often leave them feeling more exhausted than those other, wilder parties that usually climax with somebody riding a mountain bike through the living room while screaming incoherently.

A slow Monday afternoon and M. in NYC and I are emailing back and forth:

M: “I’m being priced out of this city.”

N: “Don’t worry. The plebs will revolt. The rich will be forced to sell their houses, entertainment centers, cars, timeshares, dogs, and children in order to buy weapons in a futile effort to turn back the human tide determined to rip them apart like uncooked pizza dough. The blood-dimmed tide will be loosed. The goat with three eyes will walk down 5th Avenue with the Anti-Christ on its back.”

M: “Nick, I … don’t know what to say to that one. I think now is as good a time as any to go get plowed.”

N: “I am so bored.”

Yes; and frustrated. The infamous writer’s block came down like a brick wall yesterday, cutting me off some 36k words into the book. I need to go back and revise, rewrite, re-think. Yet every time I write a fictional sentence, it comes apart on the page irrevocably as ash in a high wind. I run. I stomp. I screw. I cook. I curse. I watch most of the discs of 24: Season 4. I toss a stress ball against the wall, over and over again, like Steve McQueen in ‘The Great Escape,’ until the next-door neighbor starts banging on his side of said wall in furious response. And this is just yesterday afternoon. Then, walking to work in the predawn, headphones on and listening to Tom Waits, the answer comes. I sprint to work and slide in front of my workstation and jot out three sentences, and – boom – the glacier cracks apart, water and chunks of ice beginning to move again.

At this juncture I harbor no more youthful illusions that the first book out of the gate will make me a solid seven figures, allowing me to grow a beard, get weird and disappear to some far-off swath of beach. Right now I simply want to finish it; it’s become a looming shadow, ever-present, ever changing.

Epigraph

Brawl

Last Saturday, ten minutes before the fists started flying, I was sitting in the back booth of Panache, being interrogated by a blonde about the merits of red wine. I was trying to explain that a good zinfandel could be calibrated to any number of dishes; she was talking about how she normally never drank anything that cost less than $150 a bottle. “Well, okay, but I’m discussing your everyday table wines here,” I said, wanting this conversation over with, even if it meant being impolitic. “If you’re paying that much for something to go with a plate of pasta, you’re just an idiot.”

She heard only bits and fragments of this, like a static-heavy transmission from Mars, because at that moment the turntable-jockey decided to throw on Gwen Stefani, the air molecules trembling and dissolving under the heavy base-thump. D., who had pulled us here to celebrate her birthday, came over and grabbed my hand, as the darkened room began to thrash with the beat. I was up and moving, the two drinks in my system almost but not quite overriding my normally acute case of White Boy Syndrome, my feet going left-right-left, my hands going up-down-sideways. “What am I doing here?” I asked D.

She smiled: silly boy. “You’re dancing.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

We danced. The song ended. I plopped into a convenient chair and the blonde plopped down beside me, limbs now loose as a doll’s on a toy store shelf. Her head lolled back. She gave a point beyond the far wall a beatific smile. One look at her dilated pupils told the story: Her brain had officially departed the last rocket from Earth. “Long line in the bathroom, huh?” I asked her. Your normal semi-cognizant cokehead will usually respond to such insinuations with a lopsided grin or else haughty indignation; but the woman’s blank china-doll smile never wavered. “You’ve just spun right off the surface of the planet,” I said, leaning in until our noses were an inch apart. “Do you even understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”

Houston, we’ve lost contact. She was still facing straight ahead, totally oblivious, as a table a few feet behind us went over with a crash loud enough to be heard above the sound system, with an accompanying tinkle as its freight of glasses hit the floor. A pile of people, dark forms, rolling and punching. Bouncers leaping left and right into the fray. A woman’s voice, high and strident, yelling with feral intensity. The front door crashed open and the winter wind swept in, blowing shards of glass and napkins across the floor, as the bouncers heaved and dragged the combatants outside.

My company holiday party tomorrow night, I’m betting, won’t have near the same level of fisticuffs. But you never know.

Groan

Two-and-a-half years back, when I was still at Chicago, Terrance Malik gave me a piece of writing advice that I’ve always remembered but never followed. “You just have to write,” he told me. “Don’t look back, just get it all out at once.”

Every late night, I sit at the Spartan wooden table in my living room, usually with a cup of tea or a bottle of water depending on how late it is, the quiet only occasionally interrupted by the sounds of a car honking outside or a police chopper overhead, tapping away at the laptop. Tapping away at a book that constantly mutates, absorbs past fragments, slips away on new and occasionally ludicrous tangents. And the whole time, it’s the Battle of the Somme. I type a sentence, and then delete it. Type. Delete. Repeat. If I smoked, the ashtray would be a forest of crushed filters and ashy mounds. It reminds me of that time over a decade ago I was lost in the Appalachians in December, while hiking, and ended up picking my way for what felt like miles down a rocky, icy and wooded slope, unmoored in an alien world. Where are you going with this?

While we're striding down memory lane, let's jump back in space-time to an interview I was doing, a few months ago, for a bar magazine I freelance for in exchange for free concert tickets and the princely sum of five cents a word. I was talking to someone who had once been a talent agent, mostly for rock bands. Not top-tier; he hadn't been one of those million-a-year Universal execs forcing their gold-plated 9mm against a manager's forehead while informing them that the phrase "Kanye West won't be able to play your son's bar mitzvah" simply did not compute. But he handled some major-in-a-minor-way name acts. He asked me how much I made annually, and I gave him a ballpark figure. He told me to get into another line of work. "Back when I was doing what I was doing," he said, loosing a chilly laugh. "I knew most of the ladies only by the top of their heads."

Such gruesome invitations aside, this is what I do - writing, that is. Other than watching movies, pontificating on arcane and slightly pretentious theories at parties, taking punches from strange and attractive women, and occasionally picking the right stock, it's one of the only things I've ever been good at.

Siberia Lite

Sample conversation between my office-mate and me this afternoon:

Me: "Meredith, who was the Russian writer who wandered off into the
Siberian wilderness and encountered a bunch of tribesmen with no knowledge of Western culture, except that they all knew who Abraham Lincoln was? I'm thinking of Dostoyevsky, maybe; I want to use it as the opener for this article."

Her: "I have no clue."

Me: "The problem is all those fucking 1800’s Russian authors decided to up and do the whole 'I'm going to wander in the wilderness and either discover my pure and unadulterated soul or die of starvation' thing, which makes it hard to differentiate. I can’t Google it without getting every English department syllabus between Boston and Bangladesh. Was it Gogol?"

Meredith: "Why do you always ask me these things?”

A minute-long pause, then:

Me [tearing off headphones]: "And why the FUCK am I listening to Kelly Clarkson?"

Snow is coming, by Sunday probably. There will be panic in the supermarkets, and the rampant purchasing of bread, water, and, in the Whole Foods on P Street, the last of the soy milk. The cold is already here, whistling down the emptying streets. This friend of mine and I, late last night we’re lying on my living room floor wrapped in blankets against the creeping chill and finishing off the six-pack of Bass that had been languishing in my fridge. “Winter’s coming on,” she says, taking a pull off her bottle. “Survival of the fittest.”

Indeed. Gogol and Dostoyevsky knew it: Winter makes people crazed. You ease into your running rhythm early on a Saturday morning, sneakers slapping the icy sidewalk, and pass someone wearing a fur hat and boxer shorts pissing off their stoop, Hunter Thompson style. People start parallel parking by ear, waiting for the manly crunch that signifies they’ve come bumper-to-bumper with the SUV in front of them. Cabin Fever builds. And this is for an inch of powder.