Portrait of the Artist with His Own Hand

2009-07-08T15:42:00.001-07:00

I've said I wanted to be a writer since middle school. The desire came from my parents in two ways. First, they fostered my active imagination by not forcing me into extracurricular activities, like the parents of many of my classmates did. My parents wanted me to have a childhood, and thanks to them mine ranked up there with the best of 'em. Every evening and weekend, every spring, summer, and winter break was an ecstasy of unfettered play, either with my brother or by alone, always with the family dogs Pepper and Sabrina, my most steady companions. Anything could be a toy to me, from my Ghostbusters Proton Packs—I wore out three of them—to a stick that I imagined was a bow staff capable of firing off quarter moon-shaped projectiles (I swear I’ve never picked up an X-Men comic. If you asked eight year-old me who Gambit was, I'd probably guess you meant some crappy candy bar, maybe with peanut butter or nougat).

Then when I was about eleven, my mother gave me a paperback copy of one of Robert B. Parker's detective novels. I'm not sure which it was, maybe God Save The Child, or The Godwulf Manuscript. Before then, I'd idolized wise-cracking, chain smoking, ass-thumping action movie heroes such as Martin Riggs, John McClane, and Doc Holiday (Val Kilmer, not Dennis Quaid, damn it).

Parker’s protagonist was named Spenser (no last name), a Korean War veteran and former state trooper turned Boston gumshoe. Spenser was the perfect blend of my former idols but without their flaws—he lifted weights, beat the bejesus out of the toughest bad guys, and was an expert shot. He was also a sharp wit; I giggled endlessly at his jokes (even the ones I pretended to understand), falling off the living room couch regularly.

But it wasn’t just these man’s man hero qualities that attracted me to the books. Spenser was well read. He was also a gourmet cook. And although he could seduce any woman merely by stepping into her line of vision, he preferred monogamous relationships with smart, strong women. Other heroes I’d been offered were great, sure, but always lacked something for me. Take Spider-Man—awesome moves, but a brand of justice a little too PG for my taste. Or from Michael Mann’s adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans was Hawkeye—the musket-wielding frontiersmen with a great signature take down using his tomahawk and a knife. Female audiences surely found Daniel Day-Lewis as easy on the eyes as Spenser is in the Parker novels. Hawkeye was a worthy hero, indeed. But his story was too dependent on its backdrop of the French and Indian War. Conversely, John McClane took over the action of the story as soon as he was forced to deal with some terrorist plot. And yet I couldn’t worship McClane unquestioningly because he always had to get the daylights beat out of him before winning the final fight. For me, Spenser possessed every thinkable attribute and ability one could ask for in a modern hero.

Still, blazing through the entire Spenser series didn’t instantly make me want to write something just like it. Instead, I went outside with a toy pistol and became the character in my mind, like any other time I encountered a story I was taken with. It wasn’t until my seventh grade English class when I first wrote something I enjoyed. Mrs. Coffey asked us each to write a five page short story about a character that experiences discrimination of some sort—we’d just finished The Diary of Anne Frank. I wrote a ten page story about a Jewish junior high student who suffers anti-Semitic taunting and physical intimidation at the hands of a bully and his cohorts. The story lacked a beginning, middle, and end—basically the bullying got worse with each page. In a rather hackneyed ending, the protagonist, cornered in the gym after school, gives a speech exposing the bully as a coward. After brushing past the silenced group, he hears the bully’s friends turning on their former leader.

Strongly influenced by movies (if I’d only read a book for every movie I watched!), three years later I hoped affecting melancholy would make a girl I worked with love me, or at least get her to kiss me. I stupidly gave her my only copy of the story. If I still had it, I might be able to discover what was so good about it, because Mrs. Coffey said it was the best story written by a student she’d ever come across. Maybe she was trying to encourage me, since I was such a piss poor student. She gave me an A, and had me read the story to the class.

I wish I could recall some epiphanic moment when I realized my true calling and abandoned all other interests for writing. I had liked writing that story very much, but didn’t feel any desire to write another. What actually happened was the following August I found myself, as usual, bored during the last month of summer break. I had already watched all my favorite movies on VHS the month before, skipping showers and lunching on pretzel sticks and Diet Coke. I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but I felt the urge to write something. I wandered into my father’s den and stood in front of his IMB Selectric II. I thought the room was perfect for writing. Each wall was smothered by shelves packed with old books, which filled the air with the smell of graham crackers and dirt. I opened the CD player and popped in my only disc, a David Bowie greatest hits album (I had loved The Labyrinth, and my father correctly thought I would like Bowie). I lifted the white dust cover from the typewriter, which looked and felt like a diaper. I went through at least a dozen sheets of paper until I finally loaded the thing properly. I switched it on. The motor, or whatever it was inside there, pulsated weakly, like my father’s old Erector Set motor when it was on its last legs. I sat down in my father’s yappy swivel chair, adjusted the collar of my robe, took a swig of Diet Coke, and began writing a novel.

Although I wrote close to 150 pages over the next month, I wouldn’t say I was writing a novel—I was really just pretending to be a novelist. I often made up a character for myself to make things more interesting. For example, when I went grocery shopping with my mother, I usually had an orange squirt gun shaped like the Beretta 9mm. Riggs used tucked into the waist of my pants. My mom was someone important, like the first lady, or the young socialite daughter of a mobster. I was a bodyguard/chauffer, and the cart was a bullet proof GMC Suburban. Similarly, when I stayed up late doing homework because I’d put if off for playing outside, I wasn’t Tim the crappy student, but Tim the captain of industry, burning the midnight oil running his Fortune 500 company.

I can’t remember how I came up with the plot and characters. The better question would be where, since I doubt it was all that original. I say “doubt” because of course I later gave the manuscript to a different girl for the same reason. Of all the things for a boy obsessed with detectives to write about, you’d think a novel about dysfunctional marriage would be that last thing he’d come up with. I can tell you, however, where I came up with the protagonists’ names. Eric, the husband, was the main character in The Crow. Susan, the wife, was Spenser’s longtime girlfriend. Eric was a construction worker, and Susan was a paralegal, I think. I didn’t think of copying Parker’s style, otherwise I’m sure I would have tried. I did try to make Eric a smartass like Spenser, although he was about as funny as a brick.

I stopped working on the novel shortly after school started again, but not because I was focusing on my studies. I finally figured out how to masturbate successfully, and spent most of my free time finding things I imagined felt like a girl. Still, I had enjoyed writing the novel. Like all kids good at being kids, I had professed my intention to do many different things for a living when I grew up. That autumn I decided that one day I was going to be a famous writer living in New York. I think now it must be significant that even though I didn’t think of seriously writing for years, from then on I told anyone who asked that I would major in journalism and then write for the papers until I published my first novel.

Just because I wasn’t writing didn’t mean my imagination was completely closed off to making up stories. I continued taking inspiration from movie plots and characters to make life more interesting. Each time I fell in love, I lay awake at night, imagining myself as A.J. and whichever girl was my focus that month as Corey from Empire Records. Eventually I would grow bored with the original plot and write a sequel in my head.

I floated through adolescence that way, fantasizing about girls I never found the courage to actually ask out. Around the time I turned nineteen, my romantic life was in the same condition, only I’d finally grown bored with masturbation. But I still enjoyed making up stories. That summer, once again out of boredom, I found myself in front of a keyboard, this time attached to a PC. I had a story in mind about, of course, an imagined relationship with a girl. I’d recently visited a strip club for the first time, and had been quite taken with “Sky,” the girl I got a lap dance from. I sat down on a metal patio chair that always left deep red checker marks on my ass, scratched my crotch, took a swig of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and began writing a story. Only unlike six years earlier, I wasn’t pretending to be a writer. I just wrote.

Welcome to Uncontrolled Substance

2009-06-30T11:07:00.008-07:00

Since neither professional nor aspiring writers can contain themselves, I'm apparently obligated to keep up a blog if I'm ever to call myself a "writer" without being just another young man who can't grow a full beard and indulges his melancholy too much. Stay tuned.