This letter isn’t addressed to you in particular, but to all the literary journals and monthly magazines that offer book reviews.

If you’re not familiar with VIDA, they’re an organization that “seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of wring by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities.” I pulled that off the VIDA website, which you can access here:

 http://www.vidaweb.org/

I don’t know the specific circumstances that led to the formation of VIDA, but I’m sure a lot of it had to do with many magazines’ overt bias toward reviewing books written by male authors, along with other acts of discrimination. For the last couple of years—and maybe more—VIDA has kept track of how women writers are being neglected in the literary world. They’ve scoured national magazines and periodicals, and have collected data that verifies these disparities. VIDA releases “the count” annually, at or around the time of AWP (AWP is an academic conference for writing programs. About 10,000 writers attend this yearly, and just about every publisher, press, and literary magazine has a booth. There’s a shit ton of readings, celebrations, panels, fucking, drinking, and schmoozing). The VIDA count consists of pie charts; each chart pertaining to a single magazine or venue that either publishes fiction/poetry, or offers book reviews.  For instance, if you look below, at the bottom of this post, VIDA published this Harper’s Magazines pie chart showing that of the 65 books reviewed in 2012, 11 were books written by females.

Busted! Think that’s bad? The New Republic’s overall representation of gender was 389 males to 77 females. Magazines like Harper’s, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and on and on and on, got nailed for dismissing women writers. The Times Literary Supplement might as well print a full page spread that says:

“ Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” Ephesians 5:22, New Testament (NIV).

You can take a look at the VIDA pies here: http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2012

And now it is time for me to switch gears. Listen, I have no sympathy for these magazines. I might be giving myself a bad name by attacking these powerful magazines. If I even write something that has the potential for a review in one of the said venues, they might—God forbid—group me with the women. But I’m a benevolent person, always willing to help out any male who feels like his penis is in danger. The New Republic’s dick is in danger. They’ve caught the literary equivalent of gonorrhea. The Times Literary Supplement’s collective cock has stage-three syphilis. Do you know what that looks like? Imagine cauliflower growing on a pecker. Who wants that? I just happen to have the cure for book review syphilis.

I’d like to offer all the literary misogynists a bailout.  It’s time to even the playing field and recognize females of the opposite sex. I know this will be terribly difficult for you because you believe that women are innately worse writers than men.  I don’t have the time or energy to convince you that you’re wrong, that Ernest Hemingway was one of the greatest female writers of all time, but I can offer you a quick VIDA pie-chart fix. In a way, it’s a readymade recipe. I have written reviews for a number of books written by female authors. If you’re one of the guilty, and would like to see a more favorable pie chart representation next year, feel free to copy these reviews and publish them. These reviews are about as poorly-written as I can make them, but at this point, you should be more worried about quantity than quality. 

The Days Are Gods by Liz Stephens (University of Nebraska Press): Stephens has crafted a definitive intertwining of prose and lyricism that only the most inviting of unorthodox memoir forms can achieve insofar as her personal recollections thrive on the fluidity of the controlling theme (laying down one’s roots) re-envisioned through multiple tonal valiances. Similar to Kevin Collins-Wavette’s detail-rich New Sentimentalism, Stephens takes readers to the next level, where self-discovery isn’t synonymous with cock.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (Scribner). This close examination of integrity resonates with our long-lost romanticism, and threatens—through the use of skillfully rendered dialogue—to incriminate readers who have banished their youthful ideals on the precept that passion is prosaic. Niffernegger is neither hostile nor aggressive; rather, she uses narrative as a vehicle for sympathy, and with an unconditionally loving sense of duty she walks side-by-side with her readers, ushering them back to the beautiful but often terrifying romantic world of abstractions.

Together Tea by Marjan Kamali (Ecco). And now that we know empiricism is no longer influential, we can either valorize the excess of life’s tenderness, or succumb to the tenacity of emotional obfuscation. Kamil boldly embraces tenderness, and it sometimes seems like no matter what she’s talking about, she’s come up with something to make what her characters talk about about. Before I began reading this, I was aware that the writer is a female woman; however, I’m glad she is because I was better able to grapple with the lack of dual-narratives. Together Tea is an exciting, well-developed journey about the subtextual non-journey that we’re all afraid of taking. We get there at least twice in the novel, and I assure you, we’re in good hands. What would otherwise have been dramatic indulgence were it written by Saul Bellow or John Updike, Kamil officers picturesque landscapes to compensate for the “unnoticeable despite” that intersects—perhaps even decapitates—the form’s necessity for trivializing the glimpses into personal lives we expect from a book about noticing things that happen to people in relationships when they’re going from one place to another

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingslover (Harper Perennial). This book will empower women who are searching for things.

The Mechanics of Falling by Catherine Brady (West Word Fiction). Brady’s award winning collection of short stories offers more than just a glimpse of life, impulses, and consequences. It discloses things that are irreversibly real, and then confirms them. There aren’t any paradoxes, either. This isn’t math-literature, it’s literature-literature, but with a twist. When you read this book in the comfort of your home, or in the discomfort of your home, you’ll inevitably escape your comfort, or your discomfort. And once you finish it, you’ll return to being comfortable or uncomfortable. It fucking does that.

The Earth is Not Flat by Katharine Coles (Red Hen Press). Cole’s poetry is about Antarctica because she went there and while she was there, she started to think about poetical things like life, death, and the meaning of life. You will not feel cold when you read these poems because her meditations are as warm as a match just seconds after you blow it out. If you like penguins and scientists and words, you’ll like poetry.

The Declarable Future by Jennifer Boyden (University of Wisconsin Press). Boyden uses sharp, poignant, sharp words in poetical arrangement in order to create poetry that both explores, interrogates, and meditates and interrogates meditations on the eager absurdities of alienation. Although doorknobs tell the daily news and an entire village has forgotten their children’s names, this isn’t so-called magical realism because in magical realism, you need reality to serve as the referent. Boyden, instead, tilts reality, so the referent and unfamiliar exist on the same plane. Clever. Alarming. Sharp. Poignant. This book will tip you over. Read it while slanting away from gravity’s pull.

Addled: A Novel by JoeAnn Hart (Hachette Books): Ever wonder what would happen if you killed a goose at a country club? This book tells you. Hart’s prose is whimsical and riotous while at the same time executing a sense of control that, were it goose killing instead of writing, would make for a slow, brutal murder. But this book isn’t a slow, brutal murder of the reader’s time; no, it’s a quick jolt of life. You will experience synergy with the plot.

Living Together: Short Stories and a Novella by Gloria Wheelan (Wayne State UP). If you read this book two times in one day, you might as well go for thirds. Each reading offers local pleasures, unlocks subtextual details that resonate from one story to the next with such great force that even your furniture will vibrate. Wheelan’s prose is like architecture, but I don’t mean to give the impression that it’s rigid; no, it’s like rubber architecture… rubbery without losing its beauty of integrity. What I mean is, if you look at it, it looks like normal fucking beautiful architecture, cement and iron bent in baroque patterns and shit, but if you poke it, your finger will leave an indentation. It’s reciprocal, really. Wheelan’s book approaches the reader, you, as if you’re ridged architecture. In a way, you are: we’re all like that when we open books. We’re tense and stiff and we’re like, “I fucking dare you to make me want to turn the page!” But then, after three pages, you begin to feel a bit elastic, and by the end, you realize that you, too, are rubbery architecture. At that moment, both you and the book are one. Only Gloria Wheelan can accomplish something like that.

Peter Never Came by Ashley Cowger (Autumn House Press). Cowger studies the tensions between adulthood and childhood by fucking the shit up. She whoops the crap out of things with inverted fairytales and contaminated recollections. Cowger provides the most pleasurable discomfort, kind of like when you take a hit of acid and your self-awareness breaks in two, and one is all chill, and the other is bugging out, but you can’t get the chill guy to talk the panicking guy down because they’re not on the same channel.

Fat Girl, Terrestrial by Kellie Wells (FC2): Small town, big woman, lots of mysteries, and false attributions of Godliness. Wells won’t settle for your typical domestic kitchen-scene argument fiction; no, she instead sticks a hose in each of her readers’ ears and then turns the fucking knob or dial or whatever, and the reader is flooded with good old fashioned fun shit that isn’t only fun, but important and meaningful fun, the kind that makes you think, yeah, people are nuts, but maybe I, too, lack a sense of scale; what I mean is maybe I fucking suck at weighing things. I don’t mean actually weighing objects. I mean choices. This book is about choices. Big ones and small ones, and how we often mistaken one for the other.

That’s not the case. The big news is you’ve confessed that you had a crush on her during the Spiderman years. You were envious of Toby.

I have a suggestion. I think it’s in your best interest—that is, you and Kirsten—to fuck like pigs for a few days, get it out of your systems, then go on a one week vacation together. Personally, I think fate wants you two together. But fate’s insecure; it needs to be convinced of its own design. Garrett will understand.

So do the nasty. Then, for the “let’s get to know each other again” vacation, go somewhere uncomfortable. Fuck Maui. To hell with the Bahamas. Bordeaux, France can suck it. Instead, go to a place that insists its ugliness is your fault, that your standards are unreasonable, that your sense of entitlement actually hinders you from having fun, that the horrendousness you see isn’t inherent to the location, but a projection of everything that sucks about you.

Spend a week in Cincinnati with Kirsten. If you can survive the vacation without scratching each other’s eyes out; without sublimating your frustrations into doggy-style bed-breaking, you’re made for each other.

Franco and Dunst fans are rooting for you. You’d make good couple. Personally, I need it to happen. Listen: over the last twelve years I’ve written maybe one-hundred short stories, three novellas, and I’ve got three novels on my plate in various states of revision. I’ve abandoned probably ten novels halfway into them. Out of the two-hundred or more projects I’ve embarked upon, only two involve my exploitation of celebrities as creative writing prompts: this blog (you), and the novel My Helicopter Heart (a failed pharmacist stalks Kirsten Dunst during the Christian apocalypse). I have a vested interest in both of you getting together, not because I need more inspirational material, but because your union would rob me of whatever the fuck compels me to target James Franco and Kirsten Dunst.

I’ll explain. Have you read Stephen King’s “On Writing”? Throughout the book, King argues that writing effectively involves an uncompromised awareness of (and empathy toward) the reader’s experience. He recommends having an ideal reader in mind, a specific person whom you’re writing to. An ideal reader will force you to become more objective, to see your “Everything I write is amazing, compelling, and relevant!” illusion for the crock of egotistical crap that it really is. Six years ago, I decided to pick the most far-flung ideal reader imaginable—someone I only knew from movies, interviews, and gossip. I’d already written to my wife, and as much as I’d like to believe there’s a correlation between my writing and her sexual arousal, that’s probably not the case. In the past, I’d used other girlfriends and exes as ideal readers, hoping my amazing writing might seduce them. I should have just bought them flowers and chocolates. Hell, if I’d scoured the clearance bins at CVS and presented them with gifts of cheap batteries, toilet paper, tweezers, and zit cream, I’d at least have gotten a peck on the cheek, something more than hundreds of shitty poems would have elicited.

Six years ago, when I decided that Kirsten Dunst was my ideal reader, I wasn’t writing with the hope that one day, the two of us would bounce brillo pads. I’d chosen her arbitrarily; I was challenging myself. It was a bad move: she’s too distant. Still, I believed that empathy—if it’s powerful enough—transcends social, economic, temporal, and spatial barriers. In an effort to bridge the massive gap between my middleclass white dude world and her unreachable Hollywood paradise, I strove to create something with a critical mass of empathetic power. I overcompensated and banged out a 638 page manuscript. It has taken years off my life, and now, having invested so much time in writing to someone I don’t know (and will never know), I struggle to divorce myself from the unobtainable ideal reader. Kirsten Dunst has become my ground state, my imagined audience who will not leave the theater. To top that off, I created this blog, which is another self-defeating maneuver: no matter what I say, it has to relate to you somehow. Now I’ve got two ideal readers who are, in my world, abstract.

Here’s the solution. If you two get married, I’d see that as a merging of ideal readers. I wouldn’t be able to write toward Kirsten without considering you. To say, “Kirsten Dunst” would also be an indirect address to James Franco, a conceptual violation of the two different mediums through which I write (blog and novel), a violation of the two differing agendas behind both celebrity-exploiting projects. I’d be stuck talking to both of you. For example, if I say such-and-such to Kirsten, it must also apply to you, because, alas, when people get married, they become one.  So I’d cower at the complications, and stop this nonsense all together.

Please. Fall in love with her. Hopefully, she’ll fall in love with you. The minute you slip that ring on her finger, I’m free. I can go find another ideal reader (In my imaginary mind-theater, I’ve currently got Steve Almond chained to a radiator backstage).

Don Peteroy

Then, on Saturday, 3/9 I will be doing a reading/signing at the offsite event, Functionally Literate, at 3PM, with a host of great readers including Erica Dawson, James Fleming, Juliana Gray, Nathan Holic, and Jeff Parker. Hosted by Jared Silvia and presented by Burrow Press. It’s at Dillon’s, 955 Boylston Street, right by the convention center. 

The most frequent search term/phrase leading people to my blog is “Don Peteroy Playboy 2012.” People–probably eager college students–are looking for my story. Or maybe it’s you doing all the searching? Every day, you type my name in Google 100 times? You might as well stop. We are, after all, in the same Playboy issue. I got permission to post “The Circuit Builders” in this blog. Enjoy it. Tell Kirsten Dunst I said, “Hell-O,” which is Satan’s favorite kind of Jell-o. 

Be impulsive; buy my book, “Wally: : http://burrowpress.com/wally/

And, agents are…. ummm… always welcome to contact me. 

THE CIRCUIT BUILDERS

By Don Peteroy

The drug addicts waited in the dining room. They admired the fireplace’s granite base and marble mantle. “Bet it’s beautiful when lit,” said Ken, poking the tip of his shoe into the ashes.

They knew their fireplaces. Walt—a fallen IT consultant—had once owned an Osburn woodstove. Beth used to whore herself out to a venture capitalist who had a floor-to-ceiling fireplace. Philip expressed the exquisite comforts of a Royalton fireplace, the best model all around.

Rand stood among the antique couches and chairs on the room’s opposite side. There were four indentations in the rug, impressions from furniture that had been removed recently. A coffee table, perhaps. He gripped the couch’s walnut frame and put pressure on it, not enough to stress the wood but enough to gauge if years of temperature change had softened its integrity. He ran his fingers along the velvet. Still firm.

“How much is it worth?” said Brianna, approaching from behind. “You’d mentioned something about owning an antique furniture business. Or was that someone else?”

Rand felt uneasy around her. During orientation, she’d thrown the intake coordinator’s pamphlets in the wastebasket, had hollered about his failure to honor an agreement they’d made. She’d wanted the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology delivered to the rehab. He’d reneged.

“I’d say it’s worth about $10,000.” He picked up the needlepoint pillow and squeezed it gently.

“Christ, it’s fancy here. The website didn’t give that impression.”

Rand recalled all those brochures that his wife had spread out on the kitchen table, places with names like Horizons, Care One and Freedom Academy. She’d insisted on Milestones because it was offshore and inescapable. Furthermore, the facility used an unconventional, but statistically impressive, French treatment methodology.

“It’s a ploy,” said Brianna. “I don’t trust them. Tomorrow they’ll send us to the real ward.” She drew in her lips after each sentence. It made her freckles stand out.

The head counselor, Trey, arrived. His red beard was neatly trimmed. He directed everyone to the dining room. They sat, and orderlies wheeled out platters of food: barbecue ribs, potatoes with chives, mixed vegetables. The patients cut their potatoes in two, and the rising steam tickled their cheeks. Rand had no appetite. He’d taken his last Percocet from the secret supply in his basement 24 hours earlier. His hips throbbed, a precursor to paralysis. Soon he’d puke, shit and shiver, unless Milestones took the merciful approach—like other rehabs—and doped him up on Valium for the withdrawal’s duration.

Trey said, “Welcome, everyone. I suppose you all introduced yourselves during intake?”

They looked at one another and shrugged.

“Then we’re all settled in? Everything’s gone smoothly?”

Silent nods.

Trey said, “Five minutes ago you were all yapping. Now everyone’s timid. I’m not a fan of shyness or indifference, but it’s typical. Most of you are probably skeptical about rehabs, so you’re going to try to act disengaged. It’s self-protection. I’ll tell you this: Milestones won’t be what you expect. Most rehabs want their customers to return. They operate on the oil-change principle: in, out and back again in three months. Here, we obliterate your addiction.”

Trey asked everyone to talk about their addiction histories and future goals. Philip and Walter were well-rehearsed, long-winded and masterful with 12-step terminology. They’d wrecked their lives by freebasing -cocaine—a gentlemanly euphemism for smoking crack. Ken’s belly bled from Xanax abuse. Beth was addicted to “mind-altering men” and had regularly sold her ass for meth. Of all their stories, Brianna had rendered hers most artfully. She described a glass city of empty bottles in her basement, the smell of cobwebs and cheap red wine. Rand imagined her wandering helplessly among the towers, knocking them over and crying in the shattered glass. Rand’s story, by contrast, was unimpressive: frustrated logistics, stolen prescription pads, memorized inscription codes and DEA numbers.

When everyone finished, Trey said, “The common denominator is that you’ve all lost the ability to choose when to stop. But if you think Milestones will give you an intellectual toolbox for combating temptation, you’re wrong. Understanding consequences won’t save you, but behavioral compliance will. Let me show you.”

Trey produced a small bag from his shirt pocket. Everyone gasped. Rand estimated that it was an eighth ounce of marijuana, the good shit with red whiskers.

“What the fuck?” said Walter. Trey dumped the bag’s contents onto the table. It stank like a gust moving over a swamp. He tossed a package of rolling papers to Rand. “Roll everyone a joint. Myself included.”

“What? No way!”

“Let me get this right,” said Trey. “You’ve about ruined your life, lost your marriage and business, but you still think you know better than a certified addiction counselor?”

Philip said, “This is a test. Don’t do it, man.” He crossed his arms.

Beth said, “A lesson on willpower. Or discipline. Or teamwork or something.”

There was Brianna, looking down at her hands, ashamed. She must have caught herself entertaining the fantasy of smoking a joint in rehab. Rand had imagined it too, for just for second. There was a garden out back, a perfect place for getting buzzed.

Trey said, “You signed a contract agreeing to do whatever it takes to get sober, right? Then roll the fucking joints. This is what it takes.”

Ken said, “It’s a trap, Rand. He’s using a technique called paradoxical intervention.”

Brianna’s eyes met Rand’s. Do it, she seemed to be saying. Rand reached for the papers. It’s not like he even wanted to be in rehab anyway. Ken mumbled something about reactance theory. Rand laid out the papers and sprinkled weed into the creases. The room was quiet but for the sound of paper crinkling in Rand’s fingers. Nobody stirred. Trey grabbed a joint, wedged it between his lips and flicked a lighter. The paper sizzled as he inhaled. Smoke rolled out of the sides of his mouth. Rand still wondered if this was a trick. Maybe he’d smell potpourri or mint leaves.

They watched Trey take three puffs. Then, in one swoop, Brianna snatched a joint, lit it and pulled hard. “This is crazy,” she said. “Am I in trouble?”

“Of course not,” said Trey. Rand lit a joint. It was smooth going down his throat, feathery in his lungs. The buzz came within seconds, his vision sparkling.

Beth cleared her throat. Ken picked at his cuticles. Walter and Philip exchanged glances, seeking each other’s approval. Trey said, “Enough ambivalence. If you all want to go huddle somewhere and talk it over, be my guest. We’ll just smoke the rest.” Their faces relaxed. Walter reached for a joint. Philip and Beth followed.

Ken narrowed his eyes at everyone. He said, “I’m here to get sober.” Nobody responded. Fuck him. Sanctimonious asshole. Ken turned away.

Soon they stubbed out their roaches and sat back, stoned, while Trey expounded on the rehab’s practices. “We at Milestones,” he said, “choose not to offer classes on genetic predisposition and addict neurology. It’s useless. There won’t be any group therapy. No worksheets or moral inventories or confessional essays about your shitty parents. If you’ve come here to sit on a yoga mat and deep-breathe burning sage, leave. If you want God, go to church. See, in AA, they tell you to accept everything that happens to you as God’s will. They want you to think acceptance means convincing yourself that the fucking you just got wasn’t -really a fucking—it was a message from your creator. We don’t do that. We embrace our humanity. There’s no other way to overcome addiction than to eradicate your guilt and shame and let yourself be the addict you are.”

Be the addict you are. Yes, Rand thought. All of his troubles stemmed from trying to be someone other than an addict. Trey stood and said, “Tomorrow you’ll be assigned a buddy, and we’ll take it from there. When you retire to your rooms, you’ll find on your nightstands an Ambien pill and a glass of wine. Sleep well.”

Ken interrupted, “Hold on. How do you get away with this? Legally?”

Trey said, “Our legal advisor will be here Monday, if you need to speak——”

“How about you give me a phone and I call my lawyer?”

Brianna whispered, “No phones here.”

Ken laughed, “Oh? And if there’s an emergency?”

Trey said, “We take you back to land and bill you.”

Trey turned and left the dining room. Once they heard his office door shut, they released their giggles. Ken, first to rise, rushed out. He banged on Trey’s door relentlessly, until finally—and who knew how much time had passed?—he gave up.

•

Twelve hours later, Rand and Brianna were stoned and relaxing by the garden’s pond. Nobody had expected the previous night’s fortune to continue, but when the group filed downstairs for breakfast, they found freshly rolled joints on the table, along with wrapped gifts for everyone except Ken. He’d opted out of breakfast. The maid left a plate of waffles by his door.

Beth read aloud a note that Trey had left. He’d been tied up in another commitment but would be back later. In the meantime, he’d produced a list of buddy assignments. Naturally, Walter and Philip were teamed together. Much to Beth’s consternation, she’d been grouped with Ken. “He’ll emerge,” Trey had written. That left Rand and Brianna. Beth read, “Being a buddy isn’t difficult work. What you do is get high together.”

They opened their presents. Walter and Philip got cocaine. Beth got Adderall. Rand got four Vicodins, and Brianna got a bottle of rum. The orange juice and muffins at the table went untouched. They slid their chairs out and dispersed.

Now at the pond, Rand and Brianna watched the swaying cattails, the ladybugs buzzing in the tall grass. Brianna gulped her rum. She drank immodestly, throwing her head back and tipping the bottle straight up. They laughed over the circumstances, but soon Brianna’s merriment passed. “I know what’s going on,” she said.

Rand’s mouth was sour from chewing the four pills. He swiped his tongue along his teeth.

“They’re getting it out of our systems,” she said. “The recklessness, you know?”

“Unlikely. We’re becoming more addicted, actually.”

She stretched out her legs and fanned her toes. Brianna’s feet had a peculiar shape; her soles were so deeply arched that only her heels and toes touched the ground. Rand imagined that her body and spirit naturally strived upward, away. His wife’s feet came to mind. They looked like uncooked sausages, the bloated veins around her ankles, the jutting bones and cracked-cement calluses.

Rand said, “The fact is, no matter how much I did, I never got tired of it.”

They gazed at the pond, its surface smooth and asleep. Rand’s eyes fell on Brianna’s feet again, and she caught him looking. Her cheeks turned red. She wiggled her toes.

Rand said, “What do you plan to do when you get out?”

“Course prep. I’ll have a couple more weeks before the semester starts.”

“You’re a professor?”

“A history professor. A drunk one. Lucky I didn’t get fired. Kind of hard to do that to the country’s leading expert on the history of U.S. involvement in Panama.” She took the bottle to her lips.

“History fascinates me. Everyone, really. Whenever I sell a piece of furniture, I know that people buy it because they want its history.”

She nodded, showing mild interest. He continued: “It’s how I retain customers. For each item in my inventory, I trace its history as far back as I can. I print out a little booklet that explains where it’s been. People want to be the last page in the story, the happy ending.”

Brianna joked, “How many histories have you forged?”

“Most of them,” he said. Laughing, their shoulders bumped. Rand hadn’t realized they were sitting so close together. Brianna’s proximity unlocked something inside him, a magnitude of excitement he hadn’t felt in years. He could make it even better if he could score more Vicodin.

“Tell me about your wife,” Brianna said, glancing at the last inch of rum in her bottle.

“She’s out there and I’m in here. That’s all there is to it.”

Brianna shifted, moving away just a little. It meant nothing. She swallowed the remaining rum. “Fuck,” she said, eyes honing on the few drops.

“What about you?” he said. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Off and on. Whatever.” She lay on her side and closed her eyes. Rand considered stroking her hair, but it’d be better to wait, let some days pass. He studied her back, its islands of pink blotches, probably symptomatic of her ailing liver. The blemishes didn’t disgust him; rather, they looked artful, like bursts of paint.

She snored. He stared at her feet. He imagined the sound of her sandals creaking when she walked. Perhaps, during the school year, she kept her feet in privacy, behind fragrant nylon curtains, which she peeled off at night and discarded in a pile. He bent down, inspecting the creases on her heel. Tiny fissures, no more than a fiber’s width. He opened his mouth and ran the tip of his tongue along the sole of her foot. Her rough flesh tasted like vinegar. Her toes curled. She stirred, then fell back asleep.

•

That evening, Trey summoned Rand to his office. Trey had one question: “Just for the record, have you ever licked your wife’s feet?”

Rand tried to conceal his panic. His eyes darted around the office, falling briefly on a pile of manila folders. Trey reached into a drawer and pulled out a bag of baby carrots. He snapped one between his teeth. “Carrot?” he said, holding out the bag.

“No, thanks.”

“Okay, then. Let’s try again. Have you ever licked your wife’s feet?”

“Were you watching?”

“We monitor the grounds. The dining room, the recreation room, the library. Liability’s a bitch, so we take precautionary measures.” He cracked another carrot in his mouth.

“I didn’t realize——” Rand paused. “What about my bedroom?”

“You’re safe there. Everyone deserves some privacy.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Trey held the bag out again. “You sure you don’t want a carrot?”

Rand shook his head. Trey continued, “You’re not the first junkie with a fetish.”

“I don’t have a fetish——”

“Whether you do or don’t, I’d like to know if you’ve ever licked your wife’s feet?”

“Never even thought of it. It was a onetime thing.”

“That’s all I needed to know. Thank you.”

Rand wrinkled his brow. Trey stared at him, the muscles in his jaw swelling, the carrot clamped between his molars splintering like brittle wood. Rand said, “Why are you asking me this? You should have been up-front about the surveillance. I feel violated.”

“Violated? You licked Brianna’s foot. Last I checked——”

“I was high. On drugs you gave me.”

Trey laced his fingers together. “Then maybe we should try a different treatment option?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I just want to know——” Rand stopped himself. He had to be careful because Trey had the power to cut off his drug supply.

“To know what?” said Trey.

Rand was going to ask if Milestones had ever been sued, but now he knew better. “I want to know if you think my perversion signifies an issue I need to work through.”

Trey said, “Nice try. It doesn’t signify anything alarming. You exhibit predictable behaviors, all around. So predictable, in fact, that I know what you’ve been itching to ask me all day. You’re sweating, Rand. Your face is losing color. I know what’s really on your mind.”

Rand said nothing. He felt ashamed for being so transparent. Trey continued, “Yes, we’ve got more Vicodin. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You don’t give a damn about the embarrassment of having been caught licking a sleeping woman’s foot. You want drugs. I say embrace your illness and just ask.”

Rand reached for a carrot. “May I?”

Trey waved his hand. “Take them all. I’m not hungry anymore.”

•

After midnight, while Rand was high and playing Call of Duty, Brianna arrived. She had a bottle of vodka. Rand let her in. Brianna was scratching her cheeks and grinding her teeth—sure signs she had used cocaine. She leaned against the wall. “You take your Ambien?” she said.

Rand looked at the nightstand. A single pill lay on a red cloth. “Are you asking me if you can have mine?”

She shrugged. Rand dropped the pill in her palm. “It works quicker if you eat it,” he said.

She chewed the pill, chased it down with vodka, then wobbled over to the bed and sat.

Rand slid down beside her. “When I first started using pills,” he said, “I’d swallow them, like you’re supposed to. But you know how it is. Soon, the buzz wouldn’t come quick enough. I started chewing them. The taste took some getting used to.”

She stared at the TV screen, a paused image of a soldier running toward barbed wire.

Rand said, “I eventually found I couldn’t get maximum absorption fast enough. I started crushing them, wrapping the dust in strips of toilet paper and swallowing ’em. Parachuting, it’s called. Sooner or later, I’ll start using needles.”

She didn’t seem interested in his war stories, or anything, really. He wondered if all she’d wanted was his Ambien. Rand continued anyway. “Opiates saved me, really. I was the kid who always hung his head in shame. I wanted to be like Superman but couldn’t even pass for Clark Kent. When I was 12, I broke my arm. The doctor gave me Vicodin. One pill and suddenly I felt like I belonged on this planet. I saw a big, glowing S on my chest. I’ve been chasing that S for over 20 years. Yet the more drugs I did, the smaller the S became.” He lifted his shirt, revealing his chest. “See it there? See it?”

Brianna squinted.

“Me neither. The crazy thing is, I’m convinced that one day it’ll come back.”

She started to sag. It was steady at first, like a body swaying from a gallows. She attempted to sit straight but soon gave up. She lay on her back and winced every time the ceiling fan’s blades crossed the light.

Rand said, “You don’t look well. What did you take tonight?”

“Some kind of speed. I wanted to stay awake.”

“And you just took an Ambien?”

“Two,” she mumbled. “Yours and mine.”

Her eyes closed. Rand combed his fingers through her knotted hair. She probably hadn’t showered in days. He found her deterioration erotic, the way she stank, her bloated face and parched lips. It was a beautiful kind of self-hatred that few could understand. Pressure built in his groin, a miracle. His penis had been inert since he’d started abusing opiates, yet this broken woman had the power to overthrow his impotency, even in her deepest stupor.

Initially, Brianna’s trembling was slight. Nothing to be concerned about, just some spasms, her body wiggling itself into or out of the poison. But then her legs kicked the mattress, her head thrashed and she screeched. Her fingers twisted into the sheets and pulled them to her chest. Rand dialed Trey’s extension. “Be right there,” Trey said.

A nurse arrived quickly. Trey sauntered behind, pushing a gurney with a squeaky wheel.

“Stand aside,” she said to Rand. She approached Brianna’s quivering body.

“Is she okay?”

“I said stand aside.” Rand stepped back.

They lifted Brianna onto the gurney, strapped down her arms and legs and rolled her into the hall. The wheel stopped squeaking, but the gurney rattled with Brianna’s convulsions. Rand followed them toward the elevator. They waited, the elevator’s gears grinding and air whistling between the doors. Trey put his hand on Rand’s shoulder. “Good thing you called. Otherwise——”

The doors opened. They crammed inside and pressed against the walls. Spasms rippled up Brianna’s arms, and bubbles of saliva formed at the corners of her lips. Rand looked away.

“Otherwise?” Rand said.

Trey said, “Otherwise what?”

The doors parted, revealing an infirmary no bigger than a cheap hotel room. The walls were concrete, mold blistering in the corners. A single lamp glowed over a heart monitor and a cabinet stocked with medical supplies. Apparently Milestones anticipated this kind of mishap.

They wheeled Brianna inside. Rand noticed a strange mechanism next to the operation table. Five feet tall, it looked technologically ancient, like a time machine from a 1960s sci-fi flick, with thick copper coils corkscrewing along its exposed interior, meters and lightbulbs, silver-dollar-size buttons and rows of red and blue levers. Electrodes dangled from a control panel.

The nurse hooked up Brianna to the heart monitor. Trey turned to Rand while she prepared the IV. “Listen carefully. We’re going to let Brianna’s heart stop for a moment.”

“What?”

“This is a controlled resuscitation process. Perfected down to the second.”

Rand winced. “You’re going to let her——”

“Die. Yes. Now pay attention. From this point on, you’re responsible for reviving her. And for teaching her how to revive you, in case you decide to overdose. Now—” the heart monitor screamed “—grab that wheel and start spinning it.”

Rand hesitated, his lips puttering as he tried to form words. Trey said, “I’m 30 seconds away from making funeral arrangements. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.”

Rand clutched the wheel. It wouldn’t budge; grime and rust hindered its rotation. He threw his body into it, and the wheel released some of its resistance. Trey said, “You’re generating electricity. This machine is a dynamo. An old one. We don’t want to make this too easy for you. Upstairs, life’s pleasant. Down here, you suffer.”

After three revolutions, Rand wheezed. His palms were pink, like strips of uncooked salmon. His knees were buckling, so he squatted and pulled on the wheel. Meanwhile, the nurse held up a syringe. “This is a steroid,” she said. “Next time Brianna overdoses, you’ll need to inject her, right here.” She jabbed Brianna in the neck and depressed the plunger. “The instructions are in the red binder.”

Finally, Trey ordered Rand to stop. Rand gagged, backed away from the wheel and clutched his stomach. Had he not taken so many opiates, he’d feel crippled.

Trey said, “It’s not break time yet. There are two defibrillator pads above the control panel. Take them and snap them onto the two wires there.” Trey pointed to the electrodes that dangled from the machine. “Try not to touch the exposed copper. The lightning’s for Brianna.”

Rand followed Trey’s orders.

“Place one pad on her chest, above her breast, and the other beneath her rib cage.”

The pads adhered to her skin.

“Not perfect, but that’ll do. Now, see that blue lever? Pull it down and let it bounce back up. That’ll deliver the shock. You’ve got three good blasts, so go ahead, revive Brianna.”

Rand worried that he’d spun the wheel one too many times and had generated just enough excess voltage to fry Brianna’s brain. He took a last glance at her, then pulled the lever.

There was a pop. Brianna’s body arched and her eyelids blew open. She looked startled. Then, something settled over her, an expression that didn’t fit her face. She crashed back down onto the gurney, and the heart monitor resumed its steady pulse.

“Congratulations,” said Trey.

“She’ll live?”

“If she decides to, yes.”

Rand, bewildered, watched the nurse prepare an IV. “I don’t understand this,” he said.

Trey loosened the straps on Brianna’s wrists. “With all the drugs in this place, it’s bound to happen. Like I said, we take precautionary measures.”

“She could have died.” Rand took a step toward Brianna.

Trey held up his palm. “You’re right. It’s a shame; your buddy has no self-control. Poor girl. Good thing she’s got you to look out for her. Now, we’ll take the rest from here. You can head back upstairs.”

Trey stared at Brianna. The nurse, holding a red tube, said, “Job’s done, man. Go on.”

•

The first OxyContin got Rand through the morning. Later, he crushed a 40-milligram pill and sucked its dusty essence up his nose. He was passing time, waiting for Brianna to rise from her stupor. He’d bring her tomato soup and maybe a few beers in case she was having the DTs.

At 7:00 p.m. Rand went to the kitchen, heated Brianna’s soup and pulled a Coors six-pack from the refrigerator. She’d appreciate it. He’d offer her a foot rub. He couldn’t imagine her turning it down, not after he’d saved her life. He headed to her room, forgetting the soup.

Brianna’s eyes looked sickly yellow. The veins in her neck were swollen from retching. She tried to apologize for last night’s incident, but her voice was clotty and hoarse from having her stomach pumped. “It’s okay,” Rand said. “Just pace yourself from now on. Here, I brought this for you.” He held up the six-pack. “I figured you’d want something to hold you over.”

“I think I’m done, actually.”

Rand felt stung. “Of course,” he said, walking to the recliner. He put the beer on the floor. “I know how it is. Shit happens, and we go on the wagon. A month later, we’ve proved that we’re not addicts, so we reward ourselves and get high. Then, it’s back to the races.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Sure I do. It makes sense. Last page in the story, right? Brianna gets sober.”

She patted down a wrinkle on the bed sheet. “I nearly died. My experience isn’t as simple as a booklet that comes with a piece of furniture.”

He snapped a beer from the six-pack, sat in the recliner and rocked. “Do you mind?”

“I do.”

“Okay then.” He placed the can back on the floor. “Listen, I’m happy for you, I really am. Near-death experiences can be inspiring. Lots of well-written books on the matter. But you’re a scientist, an objective thinker. You’re emotional right now, and——”

She retrieved a magazine from the floor. Rand saw its title: Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. Her name was among three other contributors mentioned on the cover. She said, “This article. I wrote it three years ago. I haven’t been able to write anything since.”

Rand said, “Do you really think anyone can be scared into sobriety? If that kind of thing worked, we wouldn’t need rehabs, right?”

She raised the blinds. The thick sea fog obscured the stars. Rand didn’t care about her declining career. He just wanted her to get drunk. He wanted to lick her foot again, whether someone was watching or not. He wanted to fuck her, there on the recliner.

“I support you,” he said. “But I can’t let you do this because of fear. I’d be enabling you, knowing all along that sooner or later, fear will fail you. That’s not the point of Milestones.”

She glared at him. “Enlighten me, Rand. What is the point of Milestones?”

“To show us we’re not addicted to drugs; we’re addicted to the concept of more. Here, we’re given the freedom to discover what enough means. We’re not powerless, Brianna. We have a choice. It’s not that hard.”

“I’m glad you see it that way. Personally, I’m done.” She walked to the door and opened it. “I need to be alone. Conversation’s over, so please take the beer with you.”

Rand lifted himself from the recliner and stomped toward her. “Really? What are you going to do all night? Get in touch with your higher power? Convince yourself you’ve had a spiritual awakening? Write apology letters to yourself?”

“Please,” she said. “I want to be alone. Get out of my room.”

He smiled and held out his hands to reassure her. “Settle down. I’m your buddy, not your enemy. I just want you to be true to yourself.”

“Get out.”

The door across the hall opened. Beth, in her nightgown, stared at Rand. “She’s telling you to leave,” she said.

The women waited. Rand picked up the beer. “Tomorrow,” he said, “when your senses have returned, I’m coming back. We need to talk.” He sneered at Beth, then walked out.

•

Rand couldn’t sleep. Why couldn’t Brianna recognize that her resurrection had originated in his body, had erupted from his soul? He’d spun the wheel. He’d generated the electricity. Why couldn’t she appreciate that?

Rand got up and put on yesterday’s clothes. He headed downstairs and exited the building. Outside, the air was misty, the morning’s dew heating in the sun. He sat by the pond. The buttercups glowed rich and yellow, and the air carried a thyme fragrance. The bottle cap from Brianna’s rum still lay in the grass. He picked it up. Maybe I should apologize to her, he thought.

Something rustled behind him. Rand turned toward the noise. There was Trey, pulling an ivy vine off an oak tree. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” said Trey. “This ivy’s been bugging me for weeks. It’s one of those evasive kinds that can fool a tree into thinking it’s being embraced. Then the vine strangles the tree to death.”

Rand squinted. Trey said, “Oh, don’t look so confused. That was symbolic.”

“You high?”

“Nope.” Trey threw the vine in the bushes, then sat beside Rand. “Didn’t expect you’d be out here so early.”

“I had a rough night.”

“Of course you did. Your buddy chose sobriety, and you don’t like that. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Everything’s predictable.”

“Yeah? Then what usually happens next?’

Trey lifted his knees to his chest. “I don’t want to give you any bad ideas.”

“I’m sure there’s a positive alternative. A favorable outcome.”

“As far as I’m concerned, your problem isn’t outcomes. It’s present behavior.”

Rand said, “I’ve been thinking about apologizing to Brianna for——”

“She doesn’t need your apology. Actually, I’m assigning you a new buddy. Walter.”

Rand felt a jolt. “Walter? Why? Didn’t I save Brianna’s life?”

“And now she feels threatened.”

“Given her current condition, she’s not the best judge.”

Trey held up his hand. “Neither are you. You’re with Walter. That’s it.”

“Don’t you want to hear my side of the story?”

Trey stood and wiped down his pants. “Your side of the story got you into rehab.”

Rand shook his head. “I’m going to talk to her. She’s just misunderstanding what I——”

“You’ll stay away from her. You’ll want to.” Trey produced a ziplock bag full of pills, their shapes immediately recognizable. He said, “Always obey the man with the drugs. Behavioral compliance.” He stowed the bag back in his pocket and walked up the pebble path. He disappeared into the building’s back door. Rand glared at Brianna’s window. Her shutters were closed, but she was probably there, peering through the cracks, satisfied.

•

Rand and Walter sat on the couch in the community room, doing bong hits. They had important matters to discuss. Over the last 48 hours, electrocution had become a fad. First it was Brianna. Then Philip got zapped into submission. Now, they watched the lights flicker. It was Beth’s turn; Ken had discovered her inert on the kitchen floor. Rand imagined Ken pulling the blue lever and Beth’s back jolting toward the ceiling.

Walter packed the pipe. “None of this was unintended,” he said. “You think Milestones hasn’t orchestrated this down to the minute?”

“I don’t know. That’d be pretty hard.”

The bong water bubbled. Walter held the smoke in, his face pinched. He said, “Ever heard of systems theory? It’s the big fuckin’ trend right now for stock market analysts.” He held up his finger, then continued. “We’ve got this massive system here, a sobriety-producing machine. We’re the parts. Rehabs don’t create sober people. Sober people create rehabs.”

Walter took another hit. “But it’s reciprocal because the idea of a rehab—its intended function—exists in everyone’s mind from the outset. Once they step through the institution’s doors, it causes a goal-seeking feedback loop between the system as a whole and its individual parts. The coherency we’re seeing—Brianna, Philip and Beth all getting sober at the same time—is an emergent property. All that’s needed to start the machine is an inciting incident. So they give us drugs. The minute one of us overdoses—Brianna, in our case—the machine’s alive, and all the parts start creating synergy, working together. Boom, you’ve got a rehab.”

Rand said, “You’re assuming that Milestones’ goal is to get us sober. I’m under the impression that we’re learning moderation.”

“Milestones’ goal is whatever the people’s goal is, and we’re outnumbered.”

Rand took the bong. “I’m not giving in.”

“You and I can say that now, but one thing about systems: They’re inherently self-correcting.” He handed Rand the lighter. “You might start feeling the urge to correct yourself.”

•

The sobriety seekers met in secrecy, held AA meetings and chanted the serenity prayer behind the community room’s closed door. Rand didn’t feel tempted to join, despite how he ached to see Brianna, to touch her. He wanted to tell her the truth, that she’s on an island and her sobriety is conditional, insulated, destined to fail anywhere else. He wouldn’t expect her to listen, but maybe, if he played her right, if he’d fall to the ground weeping, she’d cradle his head against her little breasts and whisper, “One day at a time,” or some other shit-for-brains platitude. She’d promise to stand by his side, and soon, his hands would move down the hollow of her back, her frantic breath fanning across his face, his lips brushing her neck, mouths coming together; punishment, so much punishment, curving together into their curled bodies, her legs in the air, her ankles on his shoulders, her toes walking up his chin, pressing against his jaw, digging into his lips, parting them, his moans stifled and throat gagging. It was possible. He just needed to establish the right spiritual connection. Brianna’s soul had been ignited, electrified, but his had not. The circuit was incomplete; electricity emerges only when there’s a path between two oppositely charged poles, anode and cathode, one alive by virtue of the other. Break the circuit and there’s oblivion. Rand realized his union with Brianna was contingent upon one predicament: She’d have to administer his resuscitation. And in order for that to happen, he’d have to both overdose and escape Walter’s scrutiny.

•

Three days, three saved Ambien pills. Two nights of scheming in his room, moderating his opiate abuse. On the third night, after sprinkling the -powdered-down pills in Walter’s bottle of red wine, Rand was buddy-free. He drank Walter’s whiskey and snorted his cocaine. The sharp grains rattled in his sinuses because he’d cut the coke too hastily. The chewed-up OxyContin numbed his tongue, and the clonazepam, taken sublingually, dissolved into an acidic slime.

He wobbled out into the hall and sat by Brianna’s door. He could hear her television: a commercial for Apollo 13 commemorative plates, a nasally lawyer promising financial rewards for work-related injuries. Soon the hall’s lights pulsed. His vision wavered, then became pixelated, as if broken glass coated his eyes. Something in his brain erupted, a feeling like a spike driven through his skull from behind. This was too intense, too painful. He curled over. Brianna’s door swung open. “Oh my God!” she screamed.

“Help,” he said.

She looked down the hall, probably wondering why Walter was absent.

In the elevator he was on his hands and knees, saliva swinging from his chin, heart thrashing against his ribs. For the first time in years, Rand wondered if he might die. The fear evoked an image of an untimely frost that had spread over Maine in July 1978, when he was a child. His mother had looked out the window at the ruined flower beds, then down at Rand, as if they were one and the same. Yet now, despite the chill spreading over his body, his bleeding brain and certainty of death, the fact remained: Rand wanted more Vicodin.

•

The shock felt like a bee sting. The better part of the pain had disappeared into the nothingness that marked Rand’s brief death. Awake, alive, he sensed the static’s hum dispersing through his body. There was Brianna, panting, and Trey, a blur in the background. It had worked.

Trey whispered, “Next, we pump his stomach.” Brianna cradled a coiled-up hose. The nurse pried open Rand’s jaw, and Brianna snaked the tube down his esophagus. He gagged; it tasted like a mouthful of rubber bands. She fed it slowly, hand over hand, as if unraveling the tube from her own stomach. An umbilical cord, he thought. She’ll never want to let me go.

Trey flicked a switch on the suction machine, and Rand felt like he’d received a quick jab to the gut. His insides shriveled. Brianna, mortified by the sudden stench and the machine’s gurgling, turned her head and cried. Trey put down his clipboard and embraced her.

“I want to go home,” she sobbed.

Trey’s hands stroked her back. He said, “Soon. It won’t be long.”

•

Autumn in Maine can seem so dour. Rand avoided his house as much as possible. The rooms echoed, and the cold drafts passed through too freely. He kept the store open until 11:00 p.m., though nobody came that late unless they were avoiding rain during their long walks home from the paper mill.

One afternoon Rand saw someone rushing in the downpour toward the shop. A minivan’s hazards flashed across the street. When she took cover beneath the awning and closed her umbrella, Rand gasped. His breath solidified in his throat. Brianna opened the door. The fliers and forgotten receipts tacked to the nearby corkboard fluttered in the gust. She stood still, water dripping from her umbrella. Then she looked at Rand, her face expressionless. Rand remained behind the cash register. He said, “If you’re about to tell me that you’re just passing through——”

“I’d be lying,” she finished. “This -really is the middle of nowhere. I don’t know how you ever found drugs out here.”

“I had a sympathetic doctor in Portland. Made a lot of calls to the pharmacist.”

“Seen him lately?”

“No,” he said. She walked toward the register. Here was a changed woman. She looked professional, her hair tied back and shining like polished wood, a black skirt and blue silk top, and a layer of makeup. Her perfume’s scent reminded Rand of a candle shop. Rand grasped a roll of quarters and spun it in his palm. “I never expected to see you again,” he said.

“There are things we have to do in order to stay well.” Her eyes moved down to where a button was missing on her collar. She snipped the hanging black thread between her fingernails.

Rand said, “I gather that this is part of your ninth-step amends?”

Her head bobbed. “I made a commitment to go to any lengths to stay sober. The Big Book says we must not shrink at anything. We make direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would——”

“I know my AA, Brianna, and you don’t owe me amends. I was crazy and belligerent.”

“We were all sick. And I hope we all recognize that and forgive each other.”

He smiled and put the roll of quarters on the counter. “I still think about you a lot.”

She had no reply. She squinted sideways, a gesture of nervousness.

Rand continued, “Had we met under different circumstances, I have no doubt that——”

“Stop. You’re idealizing me. You never even knew me, and I’m not here for this.”

“We brought each other back to life. That’s important, isn’t it?”

She said, “Right, but we’re not indebted to each other.”

He looked at the cash register. It’d been empty all week. He said, “I’m working on letting go. It’ll take time. I’m a slow learner. Maybe we can go out for some coffee and talk.”

Brianna nodded. “I can’t stick around for long. I’m just here to give you something.” She pointed her key chain toward the van across the street. The van’s back opened.

Rand squinted. “What is it? I can’t see that far.”

“It’s my symbolic token of forgiveness. The resuscitation machine.”

Rand stood. “From Milestones? Goodness, how did you get that?”

“They were shut down. You didn’t know?”

“I ignore my mail.”

“Class-action lawsuit. Your buddy Walter——”

“Whenever a lawyer called, I figured it had to do with my ex. I never answered.”

They went outside. The cold rain blew sideways. They shielded their eyes. There was the machine, on its side, its coiled copper wires, lights, meters, terminals and wheel. Brianna said, “If you ever plan on relapsing, maybe this will inspire you to reconsider.”

They positioned the machine on a dolly and wheeled it into the shop. Rand moved aside an old bureau in one of the storage rooms, and they shimmied the machine into the open space. Then, stepping back, they gazed at it in silence. Brianna wiped the dust off her skirt. Across the street, the pizzeria’s lights turned off for the night. She rattled her car keys, signaling it was time to go. She’d done what she’d intended, and now it was on to someone else. Saddened, Rand said, “Will I see you again?”

She looked at him warily.

“You don’t have to say it. I understand.”

He led her to the door. Brianna stepped into the rain and crossed the street. Rand stood by the window and watched as she lifted herself into the minivan. She closed the door, idled for a second, sipped from a thermos, then drove away. His breath clouded the window.

•

The machine was dirty. He ran a rag over its control panel and around its copper coils. Tomorrow, he’d pick up some WD-40 and spray along the wheel’s joint and maybe replace the lightbulbs. He tossed the rag aside and turned the lights out. He headed back to the sales room, his hands in his pockets, his fingers separating the pills from the lint, his mind unsure whether he’d stashed the needles in the cash register or left them atop the broken grandfather clock.

I need to tell you why I hate your Obama poem, “Obama in Asheville.” It’s got nothing to do with the poem itself, though. It’s more about your delivery—how it has affected me, personally, at this moment. I just read “Obama in Asheville,” somewhat indifferently. Right now, it’s 1:11 AM. I have to wake up early tomorrow. The problem is I can’t let this one (this “commentary”) pass; I can’t let it wait until tomorrow or the next day. Simply, I want more traffic on this blog. I want to open my browser, click on WordPress, view my daily stats, and say, “Well look at this shit! Google sent 300 people my way, and, in accordance to—or in verification of—statistical likelihoods, one of them happened to click the Burrow Press link and buy my book.”

Is that what this is all about? Me using you in order to fulfill my duties and freedoms as a capitalist? Yes, sort of. Actually, I’m not after the money that I might earn off a book published by an indie press; rather, I’m chasing a different form of capital. The cultural kind. I want people to read my book. I want them to have an experience—whether they hate it or not. I wrote a book, James Franco! A book! How many people get to say that? My exploitations of you provides one of the many channels that might increase my book’s presence and accessibility. I want people to read it.   

So, when you write/read/publish a poem about Obama, I need to approach the event with as much fervor as an emergency respondent. Timing is crucial. But tonight, you’re timing is a pain in my ass.

For one: I need at least six hours of sleep, and I’m pretty OCD about that. The introduction of “Obama in Asheville” into the public sphere has disrupted my pattern. If I don’t get in bed soon, I’ll fall short of six hours, and it’ll fuck my day. I’ll start zoning off in Literary Theory. I teach a Creative Writing class at noon. I’ll be a driveling, semi-catatonic fool and they’ll learn nothing.

For two: Like I said, I’m OCD about sleep. I have a systematic, predictable, and ritualized pattern of sleep preparation. I won’t list everything I do starting 60 minutes before I slip under the covers, but I must mention this. At the 50 minute mark, I take an Ambien and drink a cup of Tension Tamer Tea. If I get in bed exactly ten minutes later, the Ambien will start to take effect about a minute after my head hits the pillow. I’ve been doing this for years, and only a small handful of times had something distracted me during those crucial ten minutes. Getting sidetracked on Ambien, as you might know, can lead to all sorts of disasters, like amnesia and sleepwalking.

I read your poem after I took Ambien. Tomorrow morning, I might not remember that I’d written this blog. I might be in an Ambien blackout right now. I probably won’t remember any of this.  

The same goes for your poem.  I don’t think I’ll remember it.

Love,

Don Peteroy

I just read a torrent of Facebook posts and comments concerning Graywolf Press’s announcement that they’ll be publishing your poetry collection. Congratulations! I’m not saying that condescendingly, James. I do, however, hope you know that poets everywhere are turning their ovens on high. I’ve yapped enough about your short-story collection in the “Are You A Real Writer?” blog posts, and I don’t have the energy to reiterate myself. But here are some thoughts:

1)      I’m rooting for you, though many disgruntled poets are (justifiably) not. I enjoy controversy, so let’s imagine this scenario: Graywolf releases the book, poets and fiction writers (and the mass public) buy it, and to everyone’s surprise—or embarrassment—it’s fucking phenomenal poetry. The first thing people will say is, “Certainly, he had Billy Collins or someone line edit the poems.” But without any evidence of another poet’s intervention, we’d soon have to face the harsh reality that James Franco is, um, a better poet than most poets.

2)      If we’re going to assume that Graywolf took you on in order to generate publicity and profit, then that’s actually good news. The earnings can be used underwrite future Graywolf books. The fact is I don’t smell conspiracy. Graywolf doesn’t publish bad books. I doubt they’d release sub-par, celebrity poetry in order get rich for a month. Was there nepotism involved? Probably. Do I care?  No, unless some brilliant poet had written a masterpiece and her manuscript got tossed aside for yours. My guess is that either your manuscript matched or exceeded the quality of other Graywolf publications (regardless of how it got into the editor’s hands), or the James Franco Literary Empire waved a check in front of Graywolf and essentially used the publisher like a vanity press.

I’m not going to buy it—not now, at least. Unlike you, I have to look at the bank account before I buy a book. At the moment, my prioritized future-purchase is Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia by Blake Butler. My list is long, and you’re at the bottom. That’s OK, though, because my book isn’t even on your list.

But here’s what I would buy. Graywolf has this kick-ass series of craft books. I’ve read—and bought—The Art of Description by Mark Doty, The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter, The Art of Syntax by Ellen Bryant Voigt, and The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber. Here’s the web address if you’re interested:   http://www.graywolfpress.org/component/option,com_phpshop/page,shop.browse/category_id,bf8108ff1901b3e2f2376627dd7f8c0d/

If you wrote a craft book, I’d swipe my card in a second. I’ve got some suggestions for titles :

The Art of Being James Motherfuckin’ Franco, Yo, by James Franco.

The Art of Becoming a Famous… Everything, by James Franco.

The Art of Using Your Money and Cultural Prominence to Enlarge your Literary Opportunities, by James Franco.

The Art of Using Your Money and Cultural Prominence to Bring Writing Classes and Publishing Opportunities to Low-Income Areas where Aspiring Writers Don’t Have the Resources to See Their Dreams Materialize, by James Franco.

The Art of Teaching One Less Private-School Class, Like, “Master Class: Editing James Franco—With James Franco” (Columbia College, Hollywood), in Favor of Teaching Basic Literacy Skills to Underprivileged Children by James Franco.

The Art of Using My Newly Acquired Status as a Legitimate Poet to Promote Other New Poets, Who Have Been Published by Very Small Presses but Don’t Have National Distribution by James Franco.

The Art of Telling Bitter, Struggling Writers to Shut the Fuck Up; I’ll Do Whatever I Want by James Franco.

The Art of “Dude, Give Me a Chance!” by James Franco.

The Art of Knowing that Your Critics’ Books Will Be Out of Print After One Run, While Yours Will Sell For Decades by James Franco.

And while you’re at it, buy my book please:

http://burrowpress.com/wally/

Love,

Don Peteroy

I’m starting a rumor about you. I’m telling everyone—friends, family, students, colleagues,  police officers, pot dealers, mailmen, the guys at Valvoline, and  my psychiatrist—that James Franco will be in the next Star Wars trilogy.

Sadly, we both know that Disney won’t cast you. This isn’t to suggest that you’re a sub-par actor—I’m a loyal fan of your films. But, I’ve heard rumors that Disney’s looking for all new people. If, on the other hand, they realize a need for at least one famous actor to keep the novices humble and terrified, you’d be the best match for a variety of reasons.

One thing’s for certain: nobody wants to see Disney repeat the mistakes of the past. Episodes I-III suffered from the most pitiful casting. The actors and actresses were too fucking pretty. Anakin, for example, carried the appearance of a worry-free and well-groomed kid who’d grown up in Hollywood Hills, the kind of teen who hangs around Hot Topic all day and whose only complaint in life is that his wealthy parents make him get monthly pedicures. He was too symmetrical, too ideally white, too emotionally synthetic. To the contrary, Luke Skywalker looked like a kid who slaved sixty hours a week at a toilet paper mill in a country with no child labor laws.

Hell, even the evil monsters and alien races in the prequels looked pretty. The excessive CGI interference eradicated the bodily and atmospheric grittiness that was integral to the mood of episodes IV-VI; in effect elevating the most ghastly sights to shining beauty. I won’t bemoan the cartoonish visual effects because everyone else has claimed that critical real estate, but I’ll venture to say that had Lucas abandoned his compound, had he taken a year off to dig ditches in Mexico, had he chosen to reenter reality, the cartoonish veil that obfuscated his perception would have withered away, and he would have returned to Skywalker Ranch, demanding, “Get rid of the nonsensical CGI! It looks stupid!”  If Disney has any sense, they’ll shut off the damned computers, rip down the green screen, and build some fucking puppets. More so, they’ll cast actors who have zits, disproportional faces, short legs, fucked up ears, whatever.

Now, as for you being the one celebrity who will hold everything together, I have some theories. Your acting style, charisma, and look doesn’t accord with my conception of the ideal Star Wars character type, but you’d be a strong match because, well, the role would reinforce the mystery and magic of James Franco. It’d be fertile ground for your masterful duplicity. Not only does James Franco fly planes and get published in Ploughshares, he’s also in Star Wars!

Who will you play? Devon Scott Solo, the son of Han.

I imagine you’re flexing your muscles in front of the mirror now. You’re saying, “Yeah, that’s me, Devon Scott Solo. A badass like my dad.”

Wrong, James. Wrong, wrong, wrong. See, if I let you play the badass, what’ll happen is this: you’ll end up playing the role of James Franco playing the role of a badass. You will subvert the character, and elevate the actor. That was a problem with Lucas’ last three: the actors were playing the actors. Hell, the entire movie was performing itself as a Star Wars movie. There wasn’t any soul, it wasn’t authentic. It wasn’t even a mirror image of Star Wars. It was an approximation of the idea of Star Wars, rendered in second-hand synthetic polymers and producing as much visceral and emotional substance as a broken urinal.

If we make you a badass, we’re repeating Standardized Lucas Misconception No. 193: the image is equal to the soul.

Listen, I know how to make this work, and I’ve plotted it out.

Anna Trov, from the TV series Fringe, will play Alyssa Solo. No weird character names this time. Nothing that attempts to appease white-guilt by employing semi-ethnic names, like Padme or Mace Windu or Qui-Gon.

Standardized Lucas Misconception No. 6: if you make everything seem ethnically diverse, all will be happy.

Not quite. Lucas and Co. ended up creating overly-explicit, two-dimensional “racial templates,” which did nothing but transmit stereotypes. In my version, we’re going America. No shame. If we’re going to have ethnic characters, their racial and ethnic “otherness” will NOT be their primary feature.

Alyssa Solo gets to be the badass. You get to be the weird dork.

My idea for the movie itself—and your role in it—is a little more complicated. First: the title. Had George Lucas retained control, we might have seen titles like:

Episode VII: The Evil Glove Thief

Episode VIII: Let’s Try That New Restaurant Instead

Episode IX: The Gross Mist Turns Yellow

I needn’t put too much brain power into this. The name has to be campy and cliché (Like A New Hope) but must also appeal to current concerns and superstitions. Off the cuff, Episode VII will be called The Intangible Terror. Yeah, that’s a mouthful of butt, but I’m sticking with conventions.

Onward. Let’s talk about the plot. The most efficient way for me to communicate the “ground state” of what’s been going on in the post-Return of the Jedi universe is to write out what viewers would see in the opening crawl, the text that explains the backstory and context:

A long time ago in a galaxy, far

far away….

STAR WARS

Episode VII

THE INTANGIBLE TERROR

After the Thirty Year Reconstruction, the Republic enters a period of great prosperity. The Department of Energy creates a technology that can transport matter over great distances, instantaneously. Entrepreneurs capitalize on the technology, called the A-temporal Locked Higgs Vector Reposition Antagonizer (ALHVRA) and the galactic economy booms.

Let’s take a brief aside, and talk about America. While in the 1970s and 1980s, the average American was intelligent enough to understand simple analogies, things are different now. During the years between the release of Return of the Jedi and now, a significant portion of the American population has lost their critical-thinking capacities, for various reasons. Therefore, it would be in everyone’s interest if we at Disney simply point out, in advance, the otherwise overt correlations between the film’s content/world and what’s happening in America today. The current state of affairs in the Star Wars galaxy is analogous to the 1990s under the Clinton administration. See the connection? The ALHVRA industry resembles the .com industry. Also, as you watch this film, keep in mind that the original Star Wars trilogy was created during the Cold War, and is deeply influenced by the Cold War mentality and world-view. Back then, our standard ideologically-constructed assessment of the world relied on, reinforced, and perpetuated binary modes of categorization: Capitalism vs. Communism, Good vs. Bad, Rebel Alliance vs. Evil Galactic Empire, Jedi vs. Sith, and so on. In our Post-Cold War era, binary systems of categorization have proved to be unstable. We are in an age of skepticism, ambiguity, when “good” and “bad” are no longer purported to be “essential qualities,” but mutable attributes that arise from specific historical and sociological contingencies and contexts. Our enemies are invisible, abstract; they’re systems rather than individuals, they’re memes, they’re nebulous, they’re ideologies that come as quickly as they go. This is what happens when Disney hires a curmudgeonly Literary Theorist to write the opening crawl.

In any case, Supreme Chancellor Miles Skywalker has recently addressed the Congress about his growing concern that the Republic will repeat the errors of the past,  insofar as the old Republic—and especially its guardian Jedi Council– had relied on technology too much, which led to their vulnerability and inevitable destruction. Skywalker calls for a “purist” counterbalance to the new technological revolution—a return to the organic. And, most importantly, he advocates a revival of Jedi training academies; academies devoid of technology.

I’m not going to give you the entire plot, but I will provide a synopsis of the first few scenes.

The film begins with Alyssa, not you. Alyssa is a drug distributor who goes by the alias Jane Goldschmidt. She transfers products from Tatoonie cartels to regions where drugs are legal, like Cloud City. Viewers won’t know that Alyssa’s a criminal right away; they’ll see her in action and assume she’s a Jedi. While picking up a delivery on Tatoonie, she’s taken hostage by the Grodian (Greedo people) cartel, and their leader, Marissa Walters. Marissa has discovered “Jane’s” true identity, and plans to ransom her. Marissa wants an ALHVRA infrastructure built on Tatoonie in exchange for Alyssa. Recently, when the technology went public, the Republic prohibited ALHVRA development on Tatoonie because of the planet’s lawlessness.

Alyssa attempts to use Jedi powers to free herself, but she fails. She a totally fucking inept Jedi. Leia and Han had her trained under Luke, but Luke kept catching her snorting crystallized Tusken-Raider feces, which makes you trip balls for a month. Alyssa makes a second attempt at freedom, and tries to seize Marissa Light Saber telepathically, but ends up ripping off all of Marissa’s clothes. Now, if you know anything about Jawas, those tiny Tatoonian hooded fuckers with dark faces and shiny eyes, you’ll know that the second they smell genitals—male or female, but preferably female—they freak the hell out. As Marissa slaps Alyssa around, the doors and windows blow open, and hundreds of aroused Jawas flood in, their erections lifting their cloaks up above their knees. They surround Marissa.

Yeah, that’s gruesome. But if we want these films to resonate with our current ideological beliefs and proclamations of truth, Marissa needn’t worry. She won’t get pregnant. The force works in such a way that the Grodian body naturally converts Jawa sperm into vitamin B-12 enhanced spring water. As for Marissa’s dignity, well, for one, according to the force, it was her destiny, and you can’t argue that. She might need some psychological assistance to overcome the trauma, but that won’t happen. Had Marissa chosen a more lucrative and legitimate line of work, had she pulled herself up by her bootstraps when she was younger, she’d have a job with a health plan. The fact is, Marissa chose laziness.

Not that it matters, anyway. Alyssa stabs her nine times in the neck, and butchers the rest of Grodians. She pilfers everything—the money from the safe, the twenty crates of Tusken-Raider turds—and get back on her ship. She flies to Cloud City, sells the shit to a pharmacist, and comes out looking very wealthy.

But, back at Solo estate, Devon—that’s you–is watching a holographic news report about the cartel massacre on Tatoonie. You beckon Han. Han doesn’t believe it’s Alyssa’s doing. You offer to hack into Alyssa’s droid. “No,” says Han. “Let her be. We’ve tried enough already, and we’re done enabling her.”

That night, while Han and Leia are attending the State of the Republic Address (given by Admiral Miles Skywalker), you steal a cargo ship, and make way for Cloud City in an effort to intervene on Alyssa. As you fly through space, you see a green light flashing in the distance.

From Cloud City, Alyssa sees the same flashing in the sky.

All around the galaxy, civilizations look skyward at the mysterious green lights.

Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker, in a wheelchair, watches his son address the congress. Luke looks half-dead, like a zombie. His caretaker wheels him out, and back to his room. The caretaker puts Luke in bed, then leaves. Once the door is shut, Anakin’s ghost appears. He has some Taco Bell.

“It’s calling us, Luke,” he says, handing Luke a steak burrito.

“The dark side?”

“No. This is neither dark nor light.”

“Did you get extra hot sauce this time?”

“Shit!” says Anakin.

“Dad, you always forget! Anyway, tell me, what it is….”

 Here’s where I stop, James. All jokes aside, I think Disney needs to reconceptualize what we mean when we say “enemy.” Think of the “terrorists,” if you will. Terrorism is an abstraction—like a quantum particle, it cannot be located with precision. Occasionally, just like quantum particles, the terrorists emerge out of intangible probabilities and manifest as a material things. They are always nowhere, but have the potential to appear anywhere, and are therefore everywhere. Not only does the idea of terrorism obey quantum laws of emergence, but it is conceptually ever-present. The collective fear of elusive terrorists perpetuates its own existence.

That’s the kind of enemy Star Wars needs. Plus, we can’t let the force defeat this one. The force is a spiritual power (and fuck George Lucas for his Calvinistic biological-determinism explanation of how the force works… that drivel in Episode I. We’ll just forget that ever happened). Tell me, in our world, how effective is spirituality against massive, evil threats? It’s one thing to pray for your sick friend, and another to pray for the mass eradication of homophobia. Prays aren’t going to defeat homophobia. Education will.

Now, in terms of character, it’d be ironic to see Luke freak the fuck out. I wouldn’t want him to be a major character in this film, but imagine if Luke fell under the impression that the only way to defeat this nebulous enemy is to embrace the dark side? Darth would have been right: “It is your destiny!” Even better, the ghost of Anakin would have to save Luke.

That’s too much though. This movie is about Devon, Alyssa, and a slew of new people.

And you, James Franco, will rock this shit.

Love,

Don Peteroy

One of WordPress’s most useful perks is that you can view a list of the Internet search terms that have led people to your blog. Every day, I examine the list and find the most mind-boggling sets of keywords and phrases. The most frequent and mundane are “James Franco’s address,” and “Who won the 2012 Playboy Fiction Contest?” Others are rather frightening. In my first two blog postings (“James Franco: Are you a Real Writer?”), I’d written a brief—albeit ironic—defense of nepotism in the literary world. The words “nepotism” and “literary journals” have invited the most venomous search terms, like “Ninth Letter nepotism close friends,” and, “Fence editor favoring soliciting hipsters,” and (this one made my blood boil because it’s downright wrong), “You must be an editor of a journal to get published in Cincinnati Review.”

I’ve extracted a selection of search queries that have appeared during the last few months. I’m going to respond to them as if they’re questions, and provide the best possible answers.

1)     does james franco have big wrists

I’ve just examined about 100 photographs of James Franco. I will never do that again. His wrists normal to me. Why would anyone want to know his wrist size? If, somehow, the world could arrive at the consensus that James Franco’s wrists are, indeed, big, would this inquiring wrist-sleuth jump up and declare to all his doubters, “Ha! I told you fuckers, but you didn’t believe me! Look for yourselves! The Association for the Objective Analysis and Measurement of Anatomical Regions issued the results of their two-year James Franco study! His wrists are big!”

2)     Is james franco book palo alto being made into movie?

Word has it that Gia Coppola is currently writing the screenplay and will be directing the Palo Alto film. I’m doing the voice-overs. In Klingon.

3)     Who won the Playboy Fiction Contest?

Me. Don Peteroy. Write that down. I won that shit out of that contest, hardcore, 1997-style. Respect. I rocked it. You know why I rocked it? Because I fucking rock. Because I win things when it’s winning time. OK, I’m being horribly snobby and prideful. This was the 4^th time I entered the contest, and frankly, I’m still convinced that I’m just a novice.

4)     sample of james francos writin

Before you look for a sample of James Franco’s writing, find a sample of a well-written sentence. Anyway, here’s a link for his story “Just Before Black.” It appeared in Esquire online. http://www.esquire.com/fiction/james-franco-fiction-0410. Actually, you should read this instead: http://www.narrativemagazine.com/node/164739. It’s a story by my friend Brian Trapp. He’s a better a writer, and he doesn’t get automatically published. Call this nepotism if you want, but I’m just trying to provide you the best possible literary experience.

5)     James Franco Palo Alto fiction or nonfiction?

Who the hell cares?

6)     as i lay dying propaganda academia

This is difficult to decipher. My guess is someone is questioning the sincerity of James Franco’s recent announcement that he’ll be directing a cinematic version of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. The anti-Franco camp believes that he broadcasts these tentative projects in order to draw attention to himself. One should investigate the potential correlations between declines in the sale of his book, Palo Alto, and his public declarations of literary-cinematic projects. I bet that if tomorrow morning, Mr. Franco sends out a tweet announcing that he’s producing and directing an experimental version of Moby Dick (which takes place in a nursing home), Palo Alto’s sales will jump significantly.

7)     hemingway like any writer 95% the other 5% ends up in the trash

What the fucking fuck? Here’s my speculation. Some undergrad did ten bong hits, smoked a bowl of synthetic weed, then went to his/her Intro to Writing Class. The professor discussed Hemingway’s Theory of Omission in fiction (the Iceberg Analogy: “…the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”) during the first part of class, then talked about revision—how most drafts end up in the trash—during the second. The tweaked-out student convoluted the lesson. Later, she wanted clarification, so she Googled what she thought the professor had said.

8)     a smell song makes kirsten dunst use the bathroom

I’ve thought about this one for days. My guess is that this person thinks there’s a certain song—a song about smelling, nonetheless—that Kirsten Dunst goes out of her way to avoid because whenever she hears it, she has to take a dump. He probably believes that everyone is vulnerable to this sonic infliction. He (yes, I’m assuming it’s a male) probably plans to find her, aim a boom box at her, blast the defecation-inducing song, and then jump for joy as she rushes to the nearest bathroom.  If I could guess what song it’d be, I’d have to say, “Dust in the Wind.” That song makes me want to shit.

9)     how to write a letter to james franco

Start a blog.

10)     is the westchester review a legitimate publication

I have a question. What makes a literary magazine illegitimate? The Westchester Review is legitimate because they sent me a physical copy, and it contains literature by writers at various stages. Is this a question about nepotism? For the record, I don’t know anyone at the Westchester Review. If you’re aspiring to expose the lit-mag world as being fraught with nepotism and all-encompassing elitist conspiracies, your efforts will be as futile as attempting to prove that Obama plans to impose death panels on the elderly.

11)     james franco foot rub

Now we’re talking! Don’t misread me, though. I wouldn’t give James Franco a foot rub even if I had bags fastened around my hands, a gas mask, and a check for $5,000. But I admire this person’s implied sense of eroticism.

12)     what did you think about palo alto by james franco

So perfectly competent that I’ve forgotten every story.

13)     what happened to james franco studying at university of Houston

He didn’t go. Word on the street is that the University of Houston plans to move to New York City in order to make the program more accommodating to James. Several other universities are preparing to do the same. The Iowa Writer’s Workshop is relocating to a building across the street from James Franco, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is taking up residency in his basement.

14)     dzanc careers

This is one of the more random entries. Yes, dzanc careers. I agree. We’ve all been thinking about that lately. Dzanc is an indie book publisher. They have a lot of great titles, and I’ve never been upset with a Dzanc book. As for careers, word on the street is that they’re looking for someone who is skilled at replacing batteries—with a computer mouse battery-insertion specialty. It starts at $80,000 a year and offers stock options. Go for it. Apply.

15)     i love awp code chat

I did notice some “code chat” at AWP in Chicago this year. The elite among us have their own language of secret codes, consisting of vomiting, high-pitched nose blowing, inverted 50-cent quotes, ten-second masturbation routines, and banging together cans of WD-40. I was privy to a few translations. One distinguished editor said (via nose blowing and jerking off) to a famously emerging writer, “See that women over there? I’m gonna fuck her brains out tonight.” A lesser-known book reviewer used WD-40 to ask a blog celebrity, “Do you think anyone at the panel could tell I’d taken acid?”

16)     does james franco abuse amphetamines

Hmm. And If so, does he have access to Heisenberg’s blue meth? Can he score me some?

17)     does palo alto by james franco have sex scenes in kt:

Kt has an amazing sex scene, one that would have put John Updike to shame. It’s a thirty-page foot fetish scene in which the protagonist sucks a young women’s toes after she jogs around a track two hundred times on a 120 degree day. Then, he honor’s the woman’s fetish: she has intense orgasms when she’s making love in a room full of cats. She releases 300 cats from their cage, and lets them run loose around the room while the couple gets it on in bed. It’s a little hard for the lovers to maneuver around frenzied felines; the cats keep swiping at their feet and clawing their hair, but in the end, she’s satisfied and they all cuddle together

18)     james franco you stuck that one yo love

Yo learn english u no bc u make no senz.

19)     james franco wrist measurements

Again? His left wrist is twenty-seven inches wide, and fourteen miles long. His right wrist is two millimeters wide, and a half an inch long. It has nineteen micro-TVs implanted just below the hand, and microwave.

20)    james franco illuminati

This scares me. I’m trying hard to see the correlation. People who believe in the Illuminati are usually hyper-paranoid extremists who project irrational connections and patterns everywhere. For example: the nutritional facts on a bag of Doritos is actually a code written to wealthy satanic homosexuals, beckoning them to open abortion clinics. So, allow me to play around. You, James Franco, were the MC at the 2011 Oscars. Perhaps that was a facade… maybe you’d been selected as the Illuminati’s spokesperson for celebrating the New World Order’s takeover of Hollywood. Let’s look at the films chosen that year, and how they embody Satan’s one-world government agenda: Black Swan was about possession. Inception was about the government takeover of minds. The Kids are Alright celebrates homosexuality. The Social Network celebrates internet mind-control, and the loss of the individual’s soul through communist-style “social networking.” And 127 Hours advocates the satanic emo ideology of bodily desecration.

21)     did james franco sacrifice his dad

Of course he did! In order to become a member of the Illuminati, one has to receive silicon wrist implants, engage in nepotism, give foot rubs, take amphetamines, and sacrifice a family member.

22)     can undergraduates get published in tin house

A better question would be, “Can someone get published in Tin House?” I’m being sarcastic. They feature new writers all the time. As for undergraduates, I can’t recall if it was Tin House or another magazine, but I read in the submission guidelines, “Only undergraduates who agree to a urine analysis test may submit stories.”

23)     james foot fetish franco

That’s what I’m saying. Foot fetishists unite!

24)     use visualization to get a blowjob

Oh, this is sad. I’m picturing some sexually repressed creeper who’d just read The Secret. He’s sitting in lotus position, imagining in detail someone giving him a blowjob, and believing that the mystical power of visualization will beckon an eager pair of lips his way. The fact that this dude is visualizing oral sex is odd, too. Why not visualize the whole naughty-nasty? Either this is a goofy teenager, someone with a very unfortunate disposition, or someone whose significant other isn’t down with the mouth business. Word of advice: ditch the meditation. Get up off your yoga mat. If you seek, you will find. Actually, I take that back. Stay inside and meditate. Yeah, why don’t you just do that. Please.

25)     who has kirsten dunst sued.

As far as I know, she hasn’t sued anyone, but hang tight. I wrote a novel called My Helicopter Heart. She’s a character in it. If it ever gets published, there’s a high probability that she’ll be enticed to consider suing me, though I’d like to think she wouldn’t. It’s supposed to be flattering.

26)     i can’t understand robert pinsky

I don’t understand him either. He over-pronounces the letter “S” and it fucks me up. But if you’re talking about his poetry, then someone’s not teaching you well. Someone told you that in order to enjoy poetry, you have to understand it. You’ve been misinformed: poetry isn’t a puzzle; you’re not supposed to decode it or figure it out. Tell your teacher this: poems are not meant to be abstractions which the reader converts to coherent information blips; they’re meant to be experiences.

27)     oyez review and nepotism

Fuck you, OK? Yes, there’s nepotism in the publishing world, but it’s rare. The Oyez Review doesn’t do that. Here’s what I’m thinking. There are certain writers who think they’re much better at writing than they actually are. They send a world-changing short story (written in one draft to preserve the genius of spontaneity) to a little magazine like the Oyez Review, and get a rejection. They flip the fuck out. Magazines reject: that’s what they do, but I guess some people think they’re an exception. Unable to accept that, hmm, maybe the story isn’t good enough (yet), they blame the magazine for being unethical. Grow up.

28)     mfa bullshit blogs

This must be one of them. I’m happy to have been discovered. And now that you’ve found me, I hope you read my stories and come to the conclusion that they’re “cookie cutter” stories produced in the MFA machine. I’m pretty sure that every literary magazine story you read—all three of them, per year—get’s the “cookie-cutter” label. Also, now that I get to be added to the growing list of MFA bullshit blogs, you’re free to investigate examples of nepotism. Actually, give yourself a night off from amassing proof that the lit culture rejects brilliance for mediocrity. Why don’t you use that time to write a distinguishable story?

On Thursday I arrived in Orlando for a sort-of-but-not-quite book tour. If I haven’t said this enough, my first book, a novella called Wally, was just published by Burrow Press. Buy it: http://burrowpress.com/wally/

You can get it on Amazon as well: http://www.amazon.com/Wally-Don-Peteroy/dp/0984953817/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352535226&sr=8-1&keywords=don+peteroy+wally

And if you need a better sales pitch, you can watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G1IdIjfmBI

Anyway, I want to inform you about my Florida trip, but I fear boring you. Been there, done that, right? You’re probably desensitized to the enormity and significance of experiences like I had last weekend. Yet, my gut insists that I tell you the story, though I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe you’d benefit from vicariously positioning yourself within the realm of my small-scale triumphs. Maybe I’ll evoke your nostalgia for the early days of your writing career, when you had to fight your way up from street-level; when you stuffed countless envelopes with stories and braced yourself for the subsequent deluge of rejections; when you felt bewildered, lost, intimidated, terrified; when nobody complemented your writing or even wanted to help you make it better because, to them, you were no one special, you were just one of the thousands of aspiring writers; when the idea of having an agent seemed as impossible as trying to count how many miles are in the color orange; when you wished to God that someone would show you how to navigate your way through this massive and confusing culture, with all its AWP stuff and lit magazines and contests; when you wished to God that someone would grant you all the time in the world to focus on your writing, while he takes care of figuring everything out for you; someone who’d know which of the thousands of magazines to send stuff to, how to find their addresses and current editors, and how to write a cover letter. Nostalgia is healthy James. When we remember how hard things were, it humbles us and quiets the ego.

Onward.

My flight arrived on Thursday at 1:00. Ryan, the publisher and editor at Burrow Press, picked me up at the airport, and then drove me to Scott’s house. Scott is a kind man who puts up couch-surfers. This all worked out favorably, since I didn’t have money for a hotel. Originally, I wanted to pitch a tent at a campground or sleep in the bushes at a nearby park. The latter seemed more appealing. Although this sounds nonsensical, I’ll take any opportunity to manufacture my image in creative ways. My favorite writers were also skilled at performing the role of the aloof and crazy writer. Think about it: a writer comes to town for several events pertaining to his book release, and when people ask him where he’s staying, he answers, “I’m sleeping in a park. I found a nice cluster of bushes that I can crawl into.” He’s disheveled, mildly smelly, and dirty. He rolls out of the bushes all scraped up, walks six blocks, and arrives at the venue hosting his reading. Then, when he’s done, he goes back to the park and slithers back inside the bushes. I like that.

Ryan wasn’t thrilled with the idea. I understood why. But maybe if I’m lucky enough to have a third book one day, I’ll say, “I will only come to do a reading if you let me sleep in the bushes.”

After meeting Scott, we headed down to the University of Central Florida. I’d been invited to do two events on campus. A professor of Creative Writing had invited me to read to his undergraduate class of about thirty students. They were taking am upper-level section on the novella. Incidentally, I’d written a novella. I would read for about fifteen minutes, and then open the floor for a Q & A session.

The reading went OK. The students enjoyed it, but I picked a scene that takes a long time before anything really develops. The Q&A session—my first ever—was far more interesting. Here’s the thing. I’m about to tell you the thing. You’re acquainted with the social decorum of graduate programs; you’ve undoubtedly noticed—and perhaps perpetuated—the unspoken rule that when a visiting writer or scholar opens up his/her discussion for questions, you best not ask anything stupid (or too smart. Asking Denis Johnson to elaborate on the post-Lacanian mirror-inversion of gender commoditization would make you seem dickish). Dim-witted inquires, supposedly, involve subject matters like author biography, inspiration, ideas, habits, and influences. Whenever a writer visits UC, those are precisely the questions I’d like to ask, but I bite my tongue. Undergraduates, however, don’t give the fuck about etiquette or asking impressive, theoretical questions. They’re eager, and they want to know The Secret; they want The Answer to this whole writing business. During the entire forty-five minutes, there wasn’t a single moment of awkward silence lingering in the classroom because we had urgent and important matters to discuss. Typical questions were, “Where do you get your ideas from?”, “How do you know when a story is finished and ready to be sent out?”, “How much time do you spend writing every day?”, “How do you become a better writer?”, “How do you find your voice?”, “How did you write Wally?”, “How did you go about finding a publisher?” and so on. I loved it. They wanted to know every effing thing about the writer, the writer’s lifestyle, the writer’s struggles, the writer’s work ethic, and it was—to coin a new phrase—a breath of fresh air to be in a classroom where students weren’t ashamed to be beginners.

I’ve gone on too long already, and I’m still on day one. Let me just wrap up this posting by telling you about the rest of Thursday. After my classroom visit, I kindly “invited” the students to buy my book. I anticipated that maybe four or five would make the purchase, but get this: everyone bought it. I think I outsold Cincinnati in that one undergraduate class. I suddenly have an urge to visit more undergraduate writing classes. Hmmm.

After the class, we (me, Ryan, and the professor who’d hooked me up) went out to eat. Then, it was onto the next event—a public reading at UCF, sponsored by one of the student organizations. Days prior, when I’d imagined the event, I saw myself in some trashy community room in the student union. I visualized leftover pizza boxes from the day’s earlier functions, a threadbare carpet marked with soda stains, old couches and recliners filled with holes and gashes and bleeding out their cotton interiors, the walls a patchwork eyesore of fliers and announcements, and a rattling Coke machine in the corner. Nope, James Franco. Fantasy fail. My imagination was incorrect. The event was in a partitioned ballroom, a location that seemed far too elegant for someone who isn’t even considered an “emerging writer.” There was a stage with drapes hanging from the back wall, a podium, a microphone, and rows of seats. Not metal fold-out chairs or those generic plastic ones found in student union buildings, cafeterias, and dorms, but nice, cushioned seats. This was some AWP-style shit. I thought, “Have you mistaken me for someone else?” I glanced around for Lorrie Moore. I checked to see if Ron Carlson was taking a shit in the bathroom, or if Steve Almond was sitting at a table outside, with his head planted down on his arms. No, James Franco, this was about me. How’d I know? There was a cookie cake on a table by the door. “Welcome Don Peteroy” was written in sugary goo across the cake’s surface. Again, this seemed unreal. I’d spent most of my childhood convinced that I’d become the kind of person that nobody would welcome, that my celebratory cake would consist of fish guts and kitty litter, and would bear the words “Go Elsewhere” in the blood and tears of my traumatized victims.

The place filled up, just about every seat taken. I read. I read a better part, a manic interior diatribe about the Transformers action figure, Soundwave. They loved it. And then, the Q & A. I wasn’t nervous at all because I absolutely love talking to aspiring writers. Halfway through, I’d discovered my shtick. I’d received the same variety of questions that were asked earlier, and my responses—at least according to how I heard myself—were more along the motivational speaker lines. I was the Wayne Dyer of young writers, telling them that in the first draft, they mustn’t judge themselves; rather, they must outrun the inner-critic who always says, “Your writing sucks! Just look at that sentence! It’s horrible! Why even bother to go on? Face it, you’ll never been a good writer!” Once that first draft is finished, catch your breath, take a shower, eat, and watch some TV. Later, the critic—who you’d left in the dust—will finally arrive, panting and sweating from a long jog. Invite him/her in. Return to your draft, and now give the critic permission to trash it. He’ll be loud at first, pointing out every little mistake as evidence of your ineptitude, but the more you revise, the less he’ll have to say. You’ll know your story’s done when he’s quiet, when he’s searching hard for menial flaws, when he occasionally mumbles something trivial. Revising draft after draft effectively covers the critic’s mouth with duct tape. (If you don’t have a critic—if you’re so confident in your ability to write wonderful prose—find a critic. You’re deluding yourself. You’ll never get anywhere).

I was digging it James, not in a self-obsessed way, but on a more karmic level. Here’s the thing. I’m going to tell you the thing. I strongly believe that you can’t keep what you have unless you give it away. When I first started writing, I had no community—no workshops to point out my errors; no mentors; no way to develop craft other than through trial and error; no knowledge of the literary magazine culture’s conventions and practices; no understanding of how to gain access and maneuver myself through that world; and no insight about what it means to fail (I would have loved to know that most writers amass hundreds of rejections). Here I was in a position to both inform and encourage, to let confused and timid writers know that getting 100 rejections isn’t the end of the world—it’s not even close, to impart them with the uncomfortable wisdom that if you want this, casual reading and writing won’t suffice—there are no shortcuts, unless, of course, you have an economic and cultural advantage, but those instances are rare.

I felt alive again, James Franco. Not because I got a lot of attention and praise, but because—I hope—a whole bunch of writers left the ballroom feeling better about themselves, feeling optimistic even though failure is the most common outcome, feeling determined and inspired to read and write as if the world depended on it. The crazy thing is, after winning the Playboy College Fiction contest and getting Wally published, I’ve had a difficult time writing. Talking to these students brought me back to my ground-state. I felt inspired for the first time in about a year.  I’ve got some stories on my plate, and I’m eager to make another full revision on the Wally’s sequel, My Helicopter Heart (The 600 page novel about Wally stalking your friend Kirsten Dunst during the Christian Apocalypse).

I have three other events I’d like to talk about. It might take me a long time to cover them because I have a more important blog-related project in the works. Something interactive.

Anyway, I hope that my success reminded you of all your little successes you accrued on your way up, and that you’re feeling a bit of gratitude about where you’ve gone and where you are as a writer.

Don Peteroy

My Cake!!

In regards to writing my follow-up, I like the idea of embracing my current nihilistic state, but there’s a drawback. My disavowal of last week’s good cheer will do nothing but emphasize the tonal disparities between parts one and two. A grouchy sequel to a joyful testimony? Imagine We Bought A Zoo Part Two: The Honeymoon’s Over, Bitch! Matt Damon realizes that happiness is no more substantial than a two-week old air freshener hanging over an open sewer. He pushes Scarlett Johansson into a ravine, then sets the zoo ablaze. If I stay true to my gloom, I’ll lose the story and end up demonstrating the irrefutable evidence that I’m emotionally and philosophically inconsistent, that my feelings and world views one day are wholly incompatible with the nonsense in my head the next day.  

See, everything’s been mildly shitty since October 19th. I’ve got high-class problems, so I’ll spare you the tirade. Instead, here’s some good news. I’m going to Orlando this week for something that might be considered a book tour. I don’t have a grasp on what actually constitutes a book tour. I’m doing multiple readings in a small area. Is that sufficient enough? Can you forgive me my tendency to embellish, and just agree that what I’m doing is a fucking book6 tour? I need this line on my CV. Sooner or later, I’ll have a PhD (I hope) and I’ll need a job. I want to say to my interviewers, “Did you happen to catch line 34 on my CV? You don’t recall it? Yes, I agree, there’s a lot. Well, let’s look at it. Right here; this line. Why don’t we read it together? ‘In November of 2012, Don Peteroy went on a book tour of Florida, in support of his novella, Wally.’”

 Yes, the book tour is in Florida. But not all of Florida. Just Orlando. I’ll be reading at an event called Functionally Literate on November 3^rd. It’s at Urban reThink, the non-profit connected with Burrow Press. I’ll be doing a reading at the University of Central Florida, and, get this, I’m attending one of the school’s undergraduate writing classes as a guest lecturer or interviewee or some kind of living, breathing, and publically accessible body of knowledge who knows a thing or two about writing a novella.

Here’s what I know, by the way: If you want to write a novella, sit down and write the shit without fucking up. And if you do fuck up, try to stop. Otherwise, when people read your novella, they’re going to think you’re an asshole or something. One person will hand your novella to another person and say, “Read this. Isn’t he an asshole?”  

I’ll be doing other things, but right now, I can’t remember what.  One thing, though: I’ll be looking for you. Not in an active, creepy way, but in a general, hopeful way. I’m optimistic; the likelihood of you showing up at my reading is much greater than, say, persuading Mitt Romney to sit on the steps of his local Planned Parenthood and give free hand jobs to all the men who’ve honored and respected their lovers’ dignity by going to Planned Parenthood together. If you’re interested, I’ve included in this post the day, time, and location. For my reading event. Not for Planned Parenthood hand jobs. But you’re welcome to give out free hand jobs at Planned Parenthood. If you did that, I’d truly know how you feel about me. And you’d know how a lot of horny men feel about you.

I’m back to the original question: should I go ahead and write about the rest of the book release party? I’m inclined to hold off until I’m in a better mood. Maybe once I get to Orlando, I’ll feel less melancholic.

And speaking of melancholy, I’ve written the initial drafts for my first batch of query letters to (specific) agents. I’m currently revising the letters, and finding the task rather arduous because my insecurities keep interfering. I can’t stop my mind from anticipating the difficulties I’ll face once I start asking these agents if they’d be interested in representing my novel. I’m sure you remember going though the exact same ordeal. Any words of advice? Should I look for ways to dodge the query-letter slush pile? Should I forget these letters and go “network” some more? I don’t have the money to go to Bread Loaf, or the money to pay for a 20-minute private consultation and manuscript critique with big-time agent person. I don’t have Jonathan Safran Foer’s phone number anymore. I’m doing street-level unsolicited querying. Nor do I entertain any delusions about finding myself on the receiving end of extraordinarily fortunate outcomes (though I won’t dismiss the possibility). I’ve chosen to put myself up against substantially unfavorable odds, given my choice of topic and characters. Just to give you an idea of how I’m shooting myself in the foot, here’s the rough version of the query letter’s first line:

Dear _______,

My Helicopter Heart is a completed 160,000 word novel about a failed playwright who stalks the actress Kirsten Dunst during the Christian apocalypse.

I suppose I could do worse. I could write a memoir in which I contextualize every single fart I’ve blasted in the last year.

What I really want, James, is to see you in Florida. I want us to sit side by side in beach chairs, along the shoulder of a highway leading to Disney World. I want us to smoke cigars and laugh at the traffic. Maybe do a crossword puzzle, listen to an AC/DC cassette on a boom box, see who can fart the loudest and then offer the most high-brow Zizekian contextualization of the said fart, and then call it quits and go our separate ways.  

Go to:

Functionally Literate: A Literary Function.

Saturday November 3^rd, 7:00PM

Urban ReThink

625 E Central Blvd, Orlando, Florida 32801

Readings by

DON PETEROY 
(Me. The dude who won the 2012 Playboy College Fiction Contest and wrote Wally)
JOHN HENRY FLEMING 
(founding editor of Saw Palm, author, writing professor at USF)
SUSAN LILLEY 
(poet, author of Satellite Beach)
CAITLIN O’SULLIVAN 
(founder of Postcard Press, Kerouac Writer in Residence)

Dear James Franco,

This letter really isn’t addressed to you, but to the six or so people who read my blog. Actually, it’s for me. I want to keep a record of my happiness so that the next time I go through a bout of gloom and declare that life is never-ending hopelessness, I can re-read it and say, “OK, it’s true. Joy sometimes interrupts the otherwise ceaseless march of despair.”

October has been a wonderful month. First, I got a story published in Playboy. That’s kittens to you, but I recall an evening twelve years ago when I sat in my Syracuse apartment, reading a Kurt Vonnegut story that had originally appeared in Playboy, and I thought, “Wow. That’s a heavy deal. You know you’ve got it made when Playboy believes that one’s experience of reading your story is compatible to the lustrous bliss of gazing at naked women.” I felt like I’d reached a bar I’d set, way back when I was a silly dreamer.

Then, the official release of my book Wally was on October 9^th.

Let me back up and show you why this weekend was so great.

On Wednesday night, I think, I did a recorded interview on thedrunkenodyssey.com. That was my first “live” interview. New experience = excitement.

Thursday morning I drove to the airport in Kentucky and picked up Ryan Rivas, the man behind the helm at Burrow Press. He’d come up to Cincinnati for my Saturday night book release party. We hit it off quite well, but unfortunately, I had to ditch him at my house. I had six hours of seminar classes to take. After class ended, my wife and Ryan met me in the graduate office. We ate a quick meal and headed over to the final reading at the Emerging Writers Festival: Danielle Evans and Ron Currie Jr. When the readings finished, we all—as in the English grads and professors—headed over to Michael Griffith and Nicola Mason’s house for a party. Ryan and I yapped with the emerging writers and my fellow grads for a few hours, then headed back to my house, exhausted. Nonetheless, I stayed up all night and worked on a story.

During the day on Friday, Ryan and I took a trip to Joseph Beth’s Bookstore to see if they’d carry Wally. It’ll be a while before the verdict comes through. We returned my house and jammed on guitars. At some point, I went off to do something on my computer, maybe catch up on Kirsten Dunst news, and Ryan went upstairs to check his email. When I finished comparing myself to Dunst’s boyfriend (he looks better than me and has more money, but clearly, I’m smarter) my wife asked me if I’d go down to the store on the corner and buy her a Coke. I grabbed a dollar and headed out. As I approached the store, I saw something so fucking disorientating that I wondered if I’d accidentally taken my sleep medication and was having a hallucination. It’s happened before. It’s happened to Tiger Woods. Anyway, there were three people leaning against cars in the parking lot, and each held up issues of Playboy. I blinked a few times. When I recognized them, I thought, “Wait. These people aren’t supposed to be here. They live twelve hours away. I must have taken Ambien instead of Tylenol.”

No, it wasn’t Ambien. Long story short, my friends Tara had driven up from Virginia. Justin drove from New Orleans, and picked up Morgan in Mississippi on the way. They’d traversed hundreds of miles to come to my book release party. Even as I write this now, I feel the tears building on my eyelids. Listen, I have issues with intimacy. Not sexual intimacy—that’s fine, bring it on Phoebe (but not on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday night)—but emotional intimacy. It’s tough to break through my barriers. Well, seeing my friends there, the smiles on their faces, the joy they receive upon being around me, the sacrifice and warmth and love and devotion—it seemed so unreal. My protective layer turned to dust. Never before had I felt so grateful. My friends have the biggest hearts in the world. It gives me hope about humanity.

So I remained startled for about three minutes, which they found so amusing that they took a few pictures.

Phoebe was the mastermind behind this surprise. I have to say, it’s the best gift she could have given me.

So, there were a lot of people staying at our house: Me, Phoebe, Ryan, Tara (who would crash at her Rabbi’s at night), Justin, and Morgan. Excitement! Adventure! I was on a tight schedule, though. After everyone’s arrival, we ate a quick dinner, swapped stories, and then I had to rush off to band practice. The Knife Incident would be playing at the release party on Saturday, and we needed to solidify some of our songs. So, that evening, the women went out together, and Ryan and Justin came to band practice. Although I’d warned them in advance that The Knife Incident is a wild bunch, Justin and Ryan didn’t get the full Motley Crue experience. Two practices ago some drunken groupie intruder kept squeezing my nipples and grabbing my ass, and I pulled my knife. It almost got ugly, but Mark dragged him to the edge of the lawn and closed the door. We tend to attract that kind of chaos. Anyway, my friends didn’t get to see drama, but that’s OK. They got to meet my best friends Mark and Greg, and Anatole and Brian.

We jammed until about 1AM, then headed back to my place so that everyone could crash. Once Justin and Ryan had gone to bed, I stayed up until about 4:30, revising and editing a paragraph in a short story that I’ve been trying to fix for years. Since 2008, actually.

Alas, Saturday had arrived. I woke at 1PM, still tired. We lingered around the house, chatting, all afternoon, and slipped out momentarily to the NY-style deli for sandwiches. The only thing NY about it was the 9-11 memorabilia everywhere, and the Yankees photographs. The sandwiches tasted like sandwiches made in Cincinnati.

At four, we packed the cars and headed over to Baba Budan’s in Clifton for the big event… the book release. I’ll stop right there and continue later in my effort to describe one of the best times I’ve had in my life.

A few weeks ago, I lambasted books like The Secret. I take it back.

Something is amiss.

Over the last seven years, creative visualization has become dominant pop-spirituality trend. Like I said in a previous blog, the scientifically unsound theory behind creative visualization is that you attract into your life what you think about most. So, if you think about back pain all day, you attract more back pain. Accordingly (and here’s where CV goes wrong), if I think about becoming rich, checks will start arriving in the mail. My argument was, “Get a fucking job.”

I don’t think of you often. I only acknowledging your existence when I’m writing this nonsense. But maybe I’d concentrated on you to such a great extent that, um, I’ve attracted you into my life. That wasn’t my intention.

Speculations about mysticism aside, I’m bewildered by the enormity of this coincidence: you and I are sharing real estate in the October issue of Playboy. Little me, and big you, both sandwiched between the covers. That sounded a bit too sexual, but I’m not going to edit that out. Let some imagined reader (who has a hard-on or sudden moisture) live vicariously though me, and my blessed proximity to the great James Franco.

Today I went to the Barnes and Noble in Newport, Kentucky. I plucked the four issues of Playboy off the shelf, along with the new issue of Poets and Writers Magazine. I brought the stack up to the cashier, hiding the Playboys under the P&W magazine. Embarrassed, I whispered the cashier, “I have a story in Playboy this month.” Then I asked her if there were any more issues in the stock room. She called someone to the front. He said, loudly, “We’re all out of Playboy.” Everyone on line was looking at me. I said, “It’s not what you think…”

Anyway, when I got back to my car, I checked out the magazine. Flip through three pages of ads, and we get down to business. Right there, the first thing mentioned in the magazine: me. There’s my name, highlighted in red, and there’s my picture, taken by my wife, out in our front yard. I’m not boasting. I’m actually trying to come to terms with the reality of this. I started giggling. And then I noticed, a little more than halfway down the page, your name, highlighted in red. Off to the right, your professional headshot. You and me, James, same page.

Now here’s the thing. If you actually looked at this page, did you recognize my name? Did you think, “Hold on… isn’t that the mother fucker who has been attempting to use my cultural prominence as a way to draw attention to himself? Son of a bitch. I ought to call someone.”

Mind you, this blog does not have a wide readership. My friends might on occasion give a quick glance, but they hear enough of me in person, so why would they want to read my 3,000 word digressions? Other “clicks” are accidental: people looking for a way to contact you, or get the latest news on your love life. I’m willing to bet you still don’t know about Letters to James Franco.

Still, the coincidence startled me. In my book, Wally, which you’ll pre-order because you fucking love me like two guys sandwiched together in a Playboy magazine, you’ll read about how my protagonist, Wally, yaps and yaps about coincidences.

In the original draft, the coincidence stuff was actually much longer, but it was boring, so I cut it. I did research; and I don’t mean I used sources like The Secret or the writings of pop-guru Wayne Dyer. Real scientists, with real brains, and a real propensity to utilize the scientific method, have studied coincidences. The biologist Paul Kammerer created a taxonomic method for categorizing coincidences.

Anyway, it’s an honor to be in Playboy with you.

Don Peteroy

Whenever I get sick, my dreams become vivid. Right now, I’m sick, and last night, I had a dream about your friend Kirsten Dunst. Let me contextualize this because it has to do with my writing. As I’ve mentioned, my first book will be available on October 9^th. It’s called Wally (Burrow Press). It’s a road trip narrative. Wally gets in his car and drives as far north as one can drive on this continent. I started writing it in 2007, in conjunction with its sequel, My Helicopter Heart. Both are epistolary novels (well, one’s a novella, but we’ll talk about that strange distinction another time). Wally is written to Elizabeth, Wally’s estranged wife. My Helicopter Heart is written to Kirsten Dunst, and it takes place ten years after Wally, during the Christian apocalypse. He’s on a mission to find and protect her.

Beginning in 2007, my friends and mentors have asked, “Why Kirsten Dunst? Why don’t you just make it someone similar to her?” I’ve been warned that it’ll never get published, for fear of lawsuit. I don’t have the energy to defend my decision right now, but it has to be her. Or another celebrity. Someone real and famous. I chose her because she’s pretty and I’m shallow.

I want this book to get published eventually. I’ve put my entire life into both these Wally stories.

I’m prone to anxiety and depression, and lately, I’ve been experiencing a rather heavy load of both. Boo fucking hoo, right? Well, here’s my list of stresses: I want Wally to be successful. I have a story coming out in Playboy, and I don’t know what to expect from that. It’s both exciting and terrifying. I’m in a PhD program that buries students in work (as they should), so I’m still trying to coordinate my academic time, writing time (a few minutes a day), time with my wife (a few minutes a day), and the musical part of my life (the only thing keeping me sane).

Now, to last night’s dream. I was doing a book signing at Tower Records, which doesn’t exist anymore. I must have been successful because there was a huge line. The book, incidentally, was not My Helicopter Heart or Wally, but Facial Stab Wounds, another novel, which I started earlier this summer. As I’m signing, I hear gasps in the crowd. Cameras start flashing. Everyone takes out their iPhones and Droids and starts filming something going on at the back of the line. I hear people whispering, “It’s Kirsten Dunst!”

I panic. Now let’s think about it. Why would I panic instead of say to myself, “Fuck yeah! She’s come to buy my book!” Assuming that in dream world, My Helicopter Heart was published, I probably panicked because Kirsten didn’t respond to the book favorably. I was either sued, or publically lambasted for fictionalizing a celebrity for my own gain (filmmakers can do that, but writers cannot). In any case, she approaches my table. She’s got on sun glasses that extend all the way down her face, to her jaw-line. She’s wearing an unbuttoned flannel, and her chest is bare, exposed. Mind you, I’m not a breast guy. I’m impartial to breast as I am to elbows, so her nakedness has a non-erotic significance. I’ll allow you to interpret that. At this point, I’m a bumbling fool. I say something necessary, like, “It’s great to finally meet you.” She stares at me. Utter apathy. I noticed all the people filming us, and I get angry. I yell, “Do not put this on You Tube! Put your cameras away or I won’t sign anything!”

Kirsten lays the book on the table, opens it, and hands me a pen. I say, “Should I address this to you?”

She points to the stack of My Helicopter Heart behind me and says, “You did that once already and it was enough.”

Gulp. The pen wavers over the page. I say, “What would you like me to write?”

She says, “Your telephone number and email address.”

I say, “Is it for you, or your lawyers?”

“Just write it.”

I draw a roller coaster, then scribble my contact information beneath it.

She glares at me hard, buttons up her shirt, then leaves.

That’s the end, as far as I’m concerned. I told this to my wife and she pointed out how “meta” my dream was. The Kirsten Dunst in My Helicopter Heart is not Kirsten Dunst, but a profile I’d constructed from interviews and web pages. It’s the “represented” Kirsten Dunst (this is the heart of the novel, by the way, and why I need a real person). In my dream, the “represented” Kirsten—who, essentially, is nothing but a character in a novel—approaches me, her author. Add to it the fact that dreams are representations, so we have a representation of a representation confronting a representation of me.

Fascinating. We just can’t get at anything.

I wish the dream could have followed Freytag’s pyramid. I’d like to know what she did, or was planning to do with my email address.   

That’s it. Done. I’m going to bed. 

Dear James Franco,

We need to talk about me. We haven’t done that much. I’m going to promote myself. But before I do that, I have a question. It has to do with physics.

Let’s say a psychotic geologists drills a hole straight through the earth. The top of the hole is in New York and its end emerges in China. Yes, I know, China isn’t on the other side of New York. The Indian Ocean is. China is directly opposite to sections of Argentina and Chile. But let’s make believe that New York is now located in Argentina and Chile, and China is located in, um, China. I’m making this too complicated and I haven’t even asked the question yet.

Forget about New York. The fucking hole starts in Argentina and ends in China.

So we’ve got this hole that runs right through the center of the earth. You and your friends Mila Kunis and Gary Shteyngart are hanging out at the hole, drinking beer and listening Cage the Elephant. One of you says, “Yo. Let’s throw some shit down that fucking hole, right?” Everyone agrees that it’d be a totally cool thing to do. You all search around for something—sticks, stones, a belt, your ball cap. Gary happens to have a bowling ball with him. I don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter. He massages the ball and says, “Why don’t we just use this? I can always buy another one. No big loss.”

You all nod and say, “Wurd.”

Gary drops the bowling ball into the hole, and you all lean over and look. It disappears into the blackness, instantly.

Now, let’s imagine that there are two Chinese folk standing at the opposite end of the hole. They’re not doing any hole-related activities; instead, they’ve got a lemonade stand, which they’d set up by the hole. This location had become a tourist attraction since the crazy geologist drilled through a few days ago.

So Gary’s dropped the ball in on his end. What happens? Does Gary’s bowling ball shoot out of the opposite hole and up into the air? Is that even possible? I mean, Gary dropped the ball in the hole and it went down, obeying the laws of gravity. But if it shoots out of the other end, it’s violating gravity because nothing can fall up. Explain, please.

My guess is that the ball slows down the closer it gets to the center of the earth, and finally comes to a stop at the core. But I’m not sure how that would work. Would the ball just hover there in the center? Help me out here. This has been keeping me awake at night.

Anyway: I would like to inform you, and whoever happens upon this blog, that October is going to be a wonderful month for me. In 2007, I wrote a first draft of a novella. I entered it in a contest, and lost. I revised it a few more times, then took it to an undergraduate fiction workshop class. My peers told me that it sucks. I’m embellishing this a little. In truth, out of about sixteen students in the class, twelve told me what I’d written wasn’t any good (one kid suggested I abandon the project and write some historical fiction instead. When he turned in a story about wizards and elves, I suggested his style would be better suited for the growing family-inbreeding and bestiality genre of confessional fiction. Another student was outraged because nobody in the story had cell phones). I took seriously the three students who offered intelligent critiques *and who were well read), and my professor’s, Michal Griffith. In the subsequent years, I rewrote and revised the thing more than I’d like to admit. Finally, in 2011, when I felt it was ready, I sent it to a few indie presses. Burrow Press sent me the “we’d like to publish this” email a few days before Christmas. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. I was with my parents and my wife when the email came. I was sitting by the Christmas tree. My mother cried. My wife and I hugged for a long time.

I’m lucky, James. Burrow Press is amazing. They’re not one of those indie presses who print your book and then wipe their hand’s clean. They’re ambitious, hard working, devoted, passionate, and imaginative. Furthermore… well, we hear about the death of the editor all the time. Many indie presses don’t have the time or financial resources to provide Gordon Lish treatment to their manuscripts. My editor, Ryan Rivas, is the modern incarnation of Maxwell Perkins. I’ll yap about that at another time, after the book is released and I write up a long thank-you speech.  

The book is called Wally. It’s a novella, but I’m not sure if it’s actually a novella or a novel. It’s 214 pages long. The release date is October 9^th.

You can pre-order the book here: http://burrowpress.com/wally/

You can watch the book trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G1IdIjfmBI&feature=player_embedded

This is the book trailer that you didn’t make. I’m very happy with it, but I’d really like you to do the trailer for my next book, if it every gets published. It’s called My Helicopter Heart and it’s about a failed playwright stalking Kirsten Dunst during the Christian apocalypse. It’s absurd humor and satire, mixed with memoir. Let’s not go there right now… one book at a time.

There’s more good news. About a month ago, I found out that I’d won the 2012 Playboy College Fiction Contest. My story, “The Circuit Builders” will be in the October issue.

Please buy it. You can get a free copy with a pre-order of Wally. Ryan set up a Facebook event page called “Knockers and Novellas,” and that, as well as at the press’s author page, should have all the info. https://www.facebook.com/events/344873918936846/

So that’s it. I wanted to tell you more about who I am, but it’s nearly 4:00 AM, and my eyes are closing. I took my Ambien 20 minutes ago, and if I don’t get in bed soon, I’m going to start writing nonsense. I’ll leave you with some biographical bullet points:

• I haven’t always had my head up the ass of literature (did you catch the Vonnegut reference?) I originally went to school for electrical technology. I learned how to fix broken electrical shit. I had a job refurbishing cryogenic vacuums—sputtering systems, they’re called. They’re two-ton machines that are used in the production of microprocessors.
• I didn’t stick with that, frankly, because I was a disaster on the work floor. I eventually became a social worker, and did that for about ten years. I worked with adults with disabilities, and then at a school for fucked up rich children (did you catch the Vonnegut reference there?)
• Although I’d always read voraciously—and wrote—I didn’t see this as a possible career until five years ago. At one point, I’d tried really hard to make it as a musician.
• How did I meet my wife? I stalked her.
• My favorite writers, at the moment, are Percival Everett, Lauren Groff, Kurt Vonnegut, one of my professors (it’d be too weird to mention his name), Amy Hempel, Robert Coover, John Bart, George Saunders, Philip Roth, Steve Almond, Roy Kesey, Karen Russell, Saul Bellow, Donald Barthelme, Mark Twain, Matt Bell… I better stop. All the essentials: O’Connor, Kerouac, Stephen King, Hemingway, and on and on.
• I play bass guitar in a band called The Knife Incident. We’re not a hipster band. We’re all pushing 40, so if you ever listen to us, you’ll think, “Those dudes grew up listening to Sublime and pop-punk bands.” That’s what we sound like, but my two biggest rock band influences are They Might Be Giants and Phish.
• I don’t like the Phish sub-culture. I like the music.
• I drink cheap instant coffee, only.
• I take a pill for chronic insomnia, called Ambien.
• I like that pill.

That’s it.  By my book.

On behalf of everyone who is skeptical about your writing career—though understandably weary to voice their opinions publically, given the possible ramifications—I’d like to resolve the debate. Unfortunately, a quick and easy answer is impossible. For your benefit, I’ve broken the matter down into three chapters. I’ll post them consecutively over the next week or two. But let it be known: I don’t think anyone has the right to determine whether you’re a “real” writer or not.

Chapter One: To thine own self be… eh, fuck that. Polonius was full of shit. What the hell did he know? 

But before I go ahead and assess your art in accordance to a reductive, ontologically monovalent definition of what characteristics signify a real writer as opposed to a hack; before I address what some have construed to be your violation of our literary subculture’s ethical code; before I perform a 2^nd-year Graduate Assistant-style analysis of your work, I should contextualize the argument by posting a watered-down version of your C.V. (this does not include your acting career). Let’s make sure I’ve got this right.

You received an undergraduate degree in English from UCLA in 2008. One source claim you took 64 credits one semester. You were in a rush.

Then, all at once, you attended Columbia University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, NYU’s Tisch School for film, Brooklyn College for Creative Writing, and a low-residency poetry program at Warren Wilson College. You’re currently working on your PhD. in English at Yale, meanwhile attending the Rhode Island School of Design to study—what?—digital media? In 2012, you will be attending the prestigious Creative Writing doctoral program at the University of Houston. Some Franco-snoopers purport that this might not happen, due to residency requirements.

I’ve had a hell of a time trying to piece together your bibliography, but from what I’ve gathered, you’ve published in McSweeny’s, Esquire, Ploughshares, the Wall Street Journal; have written reviews for the Paris Review blog; have had a collection of short stories, Palo Alto, published by Simon and Schuster, and your first novel will be published by Amazon.

Pretty impressive, James. I’d say that you’ve done a writer’s work, but that still doesn’t answer the question of whether or not you’re a real writer. Had I the patience, I’d mine all available James Franco interviews for anything that would help me understand what compels you to write. But since you and I are in the business of taking shortcuts and telling lies, I’m going to do what my gut tells me to do, and make some generalized assumptions.

You and I share a life-consuming passion for reading and writing, and therefore, we can say with reasonable certainty that we’re similar, at least on one principal level. In light of our identical fervor for the written world, I might find an answer to the Franco riddle by looking inward. If I can prove that I’m a real writer, then I can prove that you’re one too, by virtue of our likeness.

Here’s the problem: I’m not a real writer.

I’m a shameful man, James. I do real writing, and I surely read a lot, but what I do and what I am are not always compatible. For instance, a New Age guru named Lynn once told me that my virtues aren’t aligned. Another guru, Lynn’s Buddhist husband, told me that my crown chakra is displaced. It’s hovering a foot away from my head, somewhere on my left. Also, it’s leaking. He said that I’m ejecting a fountain of “psychic snot” everywhere (is this not similar to writing a memoir?).

Not only is my spiritual body detached from my corporal body, but some of my physiological components, though locked inside me, insist on being located elsewhere. Consider my spine. Over time, it’s been bending itself into the shape of a question mark, and my body refuses to accommodate its insidious contour. As a result, I feel pain, and an overwhelming sense that my spine is trying to free itself from my body. It wants to be someone else’s question mark, someone better suited.

The problem is I was designed to be a semicolon. When we think of semicolons, we think of improper use and bad habits, all of which I exemplify. We semicolons have a bad reputation. Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite writer, said, “Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

A semicolon is used to join two independent clauses without a coordinating conjunction. While the semicolon implies a causal connection between two seemingly disparate independent clauses, it doesn’t actually provide an explicit or logical reason for the connection. It’s more like a doorway. This kind of door is meant—exclusively—for being situated between two incongruent rooms. Example: one side of the door opens up to a factory floor where workers build wrist watches, and the other side opens to a lecture hall where there’s a public symposium on affordable diabetes treatments. The door marks the divide, but doesn’t explain the logic.

People who have been diagnosed with ADD are semicolons.

I have ADD. A computerized test my doctor administered concluded that I’m “severely impaired.”

According to the Internet, you’re working on a film adaptation of The Adderall Diaries. I’m an experiential expert on ADD and its medical treatment. I keep my consultation fees low too. Just saying.

Back to writing:  My earliest memory of wanting to be a writer was in first grade, but I waited 32 years before devoting myself to the art. Up until then, I wrote in therapeutic spurts. All of my psychic snot, which otherwise would’ve been ejected into the atmosphere, materialized on paper. One year, when I was manically depressed, I churned out about twenty short stories and several first-drafts of novel manuscripts. Mind you, none of this happened in an academic environment. The only writers I knew were my soon-to-be wife, and a then-amateur playwright who lived Minnesota. I sent the stories to literary magazines, and amassed over a hundred rejections. Then I thought, “Fuck this.” I gave up. As far as I was concerned, my lot in life was to be a social worker. At that time, I was treatment specialist for a group of men with profound developmental disabilities. I did that for almost nine years.

Eventually, I got back into writing, but my return was largely conditional. Here’s what I’ve discovered: I write, and do the work that writers are supposed to do, when I’m part of a literary community. If I’m not in regular contact with people who are passionate for the written word, who derive pleasure from discussing books, who are thrilled to work with each other, I feel no incentive to carry on.

Thinking back to the time when I said, “Fuck this” and altogether stopped, my social circles consisted of musicians who were disinterested in literature, and health care professionals who didn’t have time to read. I carried out my literary endeavors in isolation; I had no mentors, and no money to pay potential mentors (I wiped drool and changed grown men’s dripping diapers for $9.00 an hour. If you can imagine it, that kind of salary isn’t conducive toward enrolling in an MFA program, or, in your case, several simultaneously). While some might romanticize the creative advantage of being unplugged from (and untainted by) our literary culture’s rules and codes, I’m just not brilliant enough to write a good story without some help. I’ll even make a snobby remark, based on observation: 95% of writers who trash-talk “the system” and consider themselves and their art above it are delusional about the quality of their own writing. The other 5% are geniuses.

In any case, writers are supposed to write for joy in isolation. That’s not my conjecture. Grab any How-to-Write book off the shelf at Barnes and Nobel, preferably the books nearest the one-inch barrier that separates the “Writing Guides” section from the “Self Help” section, and no doubt, the book will tell you that, by God, you better be floating with gratitude and bliss while you’ve been locked in a room writing for the last thirty hours—not eating, not sleeping, ignoring your loved ones, chain smoking, drinking fish-tanks full of coffee, and ripping your hair out—or else, damn it, maybe this isn’t for you.

We believe our own press. We justify our “I am happy about being completely alone and fucking insane” delusion by quoting Wordsworth out of context. We convince ourselves that we’re not experiencing devastating loneliness, but a spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility. We call to mind images of Ginsberg sitting at his typewriter, so enmeshed in the solitary world of the spirit that the ghost of Blake, drawn to the mystical power of Ginsberg’s passion, materializes before him. We imagine Thoreau at dusk, entranced, meditating on the breeze that tickles Walden Pond’s surface and makes it quiver. He’s so enraptured, so uninhibited by life’s distractions, that a book’s worth of brilliant insights pass through his brain like cheap beer in a frat boy’s full bladder.

Words, words, words! If you approach yourself lovingly and recognize that you’re a divine conduit for the creative spirit that dwells in everyone, a traveler on the journey toward truth, that you’ve been called to translate the language of the soul—for everyone!— then the words will just flow! They’ll fall right into your lap! All you need to do is trust the process, treat yourself non-judgmentally, step out of the way, and let the magic happen.

I don’t write so that I can experience, in dreadful isolation, the magical beauty of words. More often than not, I’m a failed magician; I choose the worst words, and it takes somebody else—a mentor, a peer, an editor, a rhetorical David Copperfield—to find better ones. Nor do I write in order to acquire the propagandistic, misconstrued Wordsworthian sense of transcendence. If that was the point, I’d just skip all this writing shit and chew up a handful of Percodan.

I read and write because it provides me access to a culture of like-mined individuals with like-minded ideals, beliefs, passions, and goals. I read and write because it gives me family. I read and write because I’m just about incapable of being intimate with another person unless I use literature as the connective medium (Interestingly, object-centered sexual fetishes serve the same purpose: they’re mediary agents upon which the subject re-routs his/her attention in order to access “normal” sexual behavior). Fetishes aside, let me give you an example of how I use literature as a bridge to other people’s hearts. Nothing provides me greater joy than those times when my wife and I talk about books. Sometimes we disagree—we might not see eye to eye on Colson Whitehead, or I might be a snob about certain genre fiction writers—but the best and most intimate conversations are the ones in which neither of us know exactly what the fuck we’re talking about. We’re uncertain of our individual thoughts, ideas, and opinions. We experiment with viewpoints. Sometimes, I play the old, conservative New Critic, and she beats me into a bloody pulp with Gender Theory. Sometimes, I say things like, “He’s the whitest poet you’ve ever read to me,” and that gets us going. I don’t necessarily believe what I’m saying; rather, I’m trying on costumes. She does it too. We yap and yap until we’ve arrived at a better understanding of our world, our individual selves, and each other. Now that’s hot.

Sometimes, I’m in no mood to talk about books. Sometimes, especially when I discover a new writer that I admire, she listens to me go on and on. Last year, it was Laura van den Berg and Rick Moody. This year, it’s Lauren Groff.

On a larger scale, books enable me to engage in conversation with other readers and writers. I am, by all accounts, a social reader. And hopefully, what I write not only contributes to the subculture’s aesthetic spirit, but can be used as way for otherwise lonely people to connect and converse. I’d be thrilled to find out that a girlfriend and boyfriend, having read my story in Eleven Eleven,got into an almost-argument about my treatment of gender issues, came to see each other’s points of view, decided to make an effort to be more sensitive to this or that issue as it pertains to gender discrimination in their lives. Better yet, I want to know that my story led to an argument, then an apology, and then the most animalistic sex this couple has ever had.

There you have it. My reading and writing practices are contingent upon community and building relationships. Remove the community, and chances are I’ll stop writing, eventually. Very few people would notice. I’d probably feel horrible and pointless for the rest of my life, but I’ve been there before.

In my next post, we’re going to shift our attention to you. And Ploughshares.

I punched in “James Franco News” on Google. It’s been a while since I last looked.  It seems like you’re doing that patented James-Franco-quantum-mechanical-embodiment act again: you’re manifesting wave/particle duality, a superposition of states, and achieving action at a distance. According to several websites, you’re currently working on the following films, whether as an actor, producer, director, or all three: The Letter, Black Dog/Red Dog, Child of God, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Spring Breakers, The End of the World, and True Story. You’re preparing to direct a version of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and in the process of writing an adaptation of Stephen Elliot’s Adderall Diaries. You’re still a PhD candidate at Yale, and you’re teaching at NYU this fall. I’m tempted to riff on the quantum theory of James Franco, but that’s old news. Instead, I want to bring up an interesting article one of your professors wrote. It should lay to rest all the propaganda about how academia—as well as the publishing industry—has cut you slack. You’ve read it, of course, but your haters haven’t. So here’s the link:   http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/12/james_franco_at_yale_franco_s_professor_speaks_.html

The fact is you work your ass off. Franco-bashers don’t want to acknowledge that because they’d lose all grounds for justifying their creative ineptitude and laziness. We’d rather believe that you scribble down some dumb crap, hand it over to Amy Hempel and Gary Shteyngart so they can “edit” (rewrite) it, and your agent gets it placed in Ploughshares. The truth is far more frightening: you work hard.

There are thousands of adults spending between $50 and $100 a day to earn their MFAs in creative writing (This is my liberal guess, which I’ve arrived at by dividing the average cost of tuition by 730—two years, then deducting about 20% to account for the select students who receive some form of graduate assistance, then factoring in the cost of rent, transportation, food, and so on. I suck at math, so maybe someone else can offer a more objective, fool-proof estimate). Even if someone drops $15 dollars a day to get an MFA, that’s a lot of money. Now, how much time does the average student at a two-year MFA program spend at the bar? Surfing channels? Bitching about not having time to write? Any amount of time over five hours would constitute a bad investment. I don’t know how many bad investors are among us, but I imagine about 20% of MFA candidates, right now, are doing something other than reading or writing. It’s 7:30 on a Monday night. Happy hour is coming to an end, but they’ll remain at the bar, staring into their PBRs and thinking, “Man, if only I could win the fucking Glimmer Train Short Fiction Award, just once, I’d be well on my way.” And tomorrow, they’ll probably continue in their $50 a day pursuit of not writing.

Along comes James Franco. He says, “Damn it! I want to become a writer.” He’s not sitting at a bar. He’s not watching a ceaseless procession of sitcoms. He’s reading and writing. That pissed us off.

You’re not a superhuman. You’re not taking shortcuts. Your teachers aren’t giving you favors. For you, intention, ambition, and action are all one thing. For you, wanting to do something is doing it. People are scared of that, James.

One of these days, I’m going to write a pop-spirituality/psychology/self-help book. It’s going to be called The Other Fucking Secret. It will contain ancient, esoteric knowledge about how to get everything you want. The premise might sound similar to a book called The Secret, which deluded hundreds of thousands of people—including me—into believing that if you sit around and think deeply about what you want most in life, it’ll “manifest.” Ashamedly, I was ape shit about The Secret, and all its offshoots.

The premise:

1)      Thought is energy.

2)      According to Einstein’s E = mc2, matter and energy are interchangeable. Thought is “low vibration” energy and matter is condensed and solid “high vibration” energy.

3)      Like attracts like.

4)      If you think about a new car, the low, intentional energy of your thoughts attracts the high energy of the substance: the car.

5)      In order to “manifest,” you must practice creative visualization. You sit somewhere for a long time and compose mental pictures of what you want, in detail. If you do it often enough, and “charge” your intentions with enough positive energy (belief), the universe will respond by sending your object(s) of your desire your way.

6)      Repeating affirmations is essential: it neutralizes doubt. Pop guru Wayne Dyer has his congregants repeat “It’s on its way!” “It” could mean anything—a check, a new job, a prize, a pizza, a blowjob.

For about two years, I tried this shit. I even believed it. Here’s the thing:

1)      The science is flawed, based on speculations by new age gurus rather than actual scientists (but what do scientists know? They’re so closed minded, aren’t they?).

2)      This kind of theology reinforces self-centeredness and materialism. It uses mysticism to obfuscate what’s essentially an admonishment of real work. Furthermore, it purports that happiness is getting what you want.

3)      Books, movies, and instructional videos that utilize this philosophy are often pitched to the most desperate and naive. The Secret offers a quick fix for financial difficulties, insecurities, and depression.

It didn’t work for me. I’m sure a devout follower of The Secret will point out that my critical mind got in the way of the miracle. I won’t dismiss the possibility, but I must mention this: my miracles came after I threw The Secret in the trash.

So what’s the solution? What’s The Other Fucking Secret? It’s simple, and it’s based on the James Franco model of success. I’ve broken it down into several steps:

1)      Toss the yoga mat out the window. Denounce Creative Visualization.

2)      Instead of spending your time meditating, use that time to actually “do.”

3)      Turn off the TV. You’re only allowed to watch it when you’ve completed whatever project you’re supposed to be working on.

4)      Only go out drinking once a week. If you catch yourself staring into your beer and thinking about how you wish you could do so-and-so, pay your bill, get the fuck out of the bar, go home, and do so-and-so.

5)      If you catch yourself saying, “I wish I had the time to _____,” do yourself a favor and second guess your assertion. Remind yourself that James Franco can work on six films at a time, while getting a PhD, while teaching, while reading and writing. Turn your complaint into a truthful self-evaluation. Make an affirmation out of it: “My ability to manage time sucks major fucking ass, and I’m gonna change that.”

6)      Instead of repeating Wayne Dyer’s mantra, “It’s on its way,” and dreaming about that imaginary paycheck en-route to your mailbox, say, “I’m on my way toward it.”

Nobody will buy it because it involves work. Hell, I remember when I first discovered The Secret. I was so thrilled to find out that I didn’t need to do a fucking thing in order to achieve my goals. I just needed to think about them and remain positive. How comforting! How pretty! How American!

OK. My rant is finished. In other news, I’ve written my short, bullshit memoir about what my life would have been like had you chosen to attend graduate school at the University of Cincinnati. I’ve re-imagined everything that happened over the last two years, and put you in the center. Now, it’s a matter of taking all the crap I scribbled in a notebook and typing it out. That might take forever. It’s on its way.  

In the coming days, I want to blog about me… my forthcoming novella, Wally, which will be published by Burrow Press in October, and my winning of the 2012 Playboy College Fiction contest. I want to brag. Neither accomplishment came as a result of intense meditation, or, as some have suggested, dumb luck. I did the Franco. That’s what happened. 

Last week I went to Burger King with my friend, whom I’ll call Joey. Every three weeks, we get our fix of fat and salt, then head over to Barnes and Nobel, where I search for books that they could stock, but don’t. Last week, I looked for  Steve Almond, Michael Martone, and PJ Wodehouse. Nada. 

While I shamelessly ate a cow, Joey brought up my Letters to James Franco blog. He was concerned that I was shooting myself in the foot. Joey’s argument made perfect sense: I’m an unknown writer who wishes to make a career out of writing books and teaching college classes, and you’re a celebrity actor who has a book published by Scribner, stories in McSweeney’s and Esquire, and several degrees in English Lit and Creative Writing. I’m a mouse stepping into the lion’s den. You’ve got the power to call McSweeney’s and say, “This shitty writer, Don Peteroy, sends you stories once or twice a year. On the off chance he actually bangs out something worthy of consideration, just keep in mind he’s an asshole and a trouble maker.” Hell, you could easily dissuade the public from buying anything I’ve written. One brutal book review from James Franco could wreck my chances of ever getting published again. Maybe.

Am I really a mouse challenging a lion? Is that the impression I’ve given? I certainly don’t feel like I’ve declared war on you. Sure, I’ve used your social multiplicity as a creative writing prompt, a exercise in satire, but I’ve never had the intention of mocking you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: your literary ambition neither disturbs nor excites me. If you’ve actually ever read this blog, you probably feel the same way about my aspirations. You’ve probably scanned a few paragraphs, said, “Whatever dude,” and then continued surfing cracked-teeth fetish videos on youporn. Still, I sometimes wonder if I’ll open my inbox and find a cease and desist letter from your lawyer. I’d be upset not because of a potential lawsuit, but because I have to give up something fun. I’d end up arguing on your behalf; I’d suggest that maybe my blog has actually increased the sales of your Palo Alto book. I want you to sell more books.

I used to be a social worker. This was before I signed my life over to graduate school two years ago. I mentored a kid whom we’ll call Max. He was fifteen, had robbed a few houses, had gotten busted for shoplifting a few times, and had been expelled from several schools. Max wasn’t too bright, but that wasn’t his fault. His parents had failed him. They’d taken no interest in his education, had never encouraged his curiosity, and definitely didn’t read to him when he was a child. Instead, they put him in a room with a big TV and an Xbox, and closed the door.

Max loved you. You were his idol. He watched the Spiderman movies again and again, as well as Pineapple Express. When I told him you’re a writer, and were attending college for English, well, I wish you could have seen his confusion. Pure cognitive dissonance. I might as well have told him that you showered with mud balls, ate baseball caps for breakfast, and had been born with two backs, one of which was surgically removed and auctioned off to amputation collectors. Max didn’t believe me, but after one quick Google search, his entire conception of the subject of English changed. This was a miracle, James. Palo Alto wasn’t out yet, but I’ll be damned if this kid didn’t start doing his English homework. I showed up at his house for my next shift, and he was reading The Diary of Anne Frank. He even wanted to talk about the book. Imagine that, James. Your literary ambitions influenced a mostly illiterate kid to crack open a book.

Digressions aside, I support what you’re doing, but I’m still going to make fun of you.