Monthly Archives: July 2006

The Wiener Dogs of Terrible Town

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People joke about the name of my neighborhood: strašný means “horrible” or “terrible”, so Strašnice could be interpreted to mean “Terrible Place”. Marketing was slow to catch on here.

It’s a quiet neighborhood, even at the busiest of times. The sounds that come in through my open windows are the songs of birds and the occasional distant rumble of a tram. Today was a holiday, so I was not at all surprised to find the streets deserted when I left my flat. I moseyed up the street, and saw no one. I heard no sound of automobiles. After a couple of blocks it was starting to feel a little spooky, but when I walked through the little park on my way down to the tram stop it was eerily quiet. There were no drunks on the benches, no kids in the play lot, and, most frightening of all, there were no old men with wiener dogs.

Those who have been hanging around this blog for a while know that wiener dogs and the old men who walk them are a fixture in this neighborhood.

I was alone, Strašnice was abandoned, leaving only me and the ghosts. Perhaps the last thing my landlord had said, (which I pretended to understand but didn’t) was that all living souls were to evacuate the neighborhood today. I paused in the park and contemplated the true source of my neighborhood’s name. Strašit means “to haunt”. In recognition of the sprawling graveyards that define this part of town, my neighborhood is called “Haunted Place”. I live in Ghost Town and today, it seems, is the ghosts’ day to play. All others are gone — the wiener dogs have been packed up with their old men and shipped off to the countryside, the drunks have braved the trams to find a part of town where the beer stores are open on holidays.

Perhaps on other days, when the wiener dogs rule, you could think of Strašnice as Terrible Town. But when even the wiener dogs know better the city’s true nature is revealed. If I knew how, perhaps I could see out the corner of my eye the shades of those who had gone before, the ghosts of old men long forgotten and their forgotten long dogs.

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A couple of fragments I like

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Her lips were full and red, sensuous and stark against her pale white skin. Her blue-black hair was pulled up and back, revealing her long, slender neck. Her eyes were dark, mysterious pools with the glint of treasure far beneath the surface. She looked good enough to eat, but I was too pissed off by then.

“What’s with you guys?” I asked. “It’s like your fashion sense is stranded in the 1920’s.”

She slid an annoyed glance my direction. “At least we have a fashion sense. Look in a mirror lately?”

“Hey, I dress for comfort.”

“Huh. You can take the boy out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the boy.”

“At least I don’t wear clothes I can hardly walk in.”

She turned to look me in the eye. “You don’t like this?” Her tone was haughty, but I could hear the hurt buried deep within it. She turned back and I watched the way the black silk moved with her body, light flowing over her contours.

Damn. I’d marched right into that one. Time to tuck the tail. “Yeah, I like it,” I said, letting a little of a growl into my voice. “You look good.” Luckily there was no need to lie, she would have known.

She smiled her little smile, the one that didn’t show teeth, which meant I was forgiven. She pointed at my sweatshirt and jeans. “But I’m not going anywhere with you looking like that.” I allowed myself to hope for a moment that perhaps I was off the hook, but before I could even open my mouth she said “Go change.”

“Do you really need me there?”

She sighed theatrically. “We’ve been over this. When we get a new member it’s important that everyone is at the reception. It’s a ritual that goes back centuries.”

“Yeah, but I’m not one of you.”

“If you’re with me, you are.”

“I just can’t believe what a big deal you all make of this.”

“Listen, we have to look out for each other, and it’s traumatic for the newbies. We’re not like you. We don’t just sniff each other’s butts and then go out and get drunk.”

I let that pass. I had tried the “more hygenic than shaking hands” argument before, but it never worked. I went to find some clothes she would approve of. It didn’t take long; options were limited. Black jeans, black turtleneck, and a camel-hair coat from the thrift store. I ran my fingers through my hair (no pony tail for formal occasions), and presented myself for inspection.

“Eventually, you’re going to need another outfit. You’d look good in black leather.”

“Give me a break.”

She regarded me harshly, but she liked the way I looked; I could smell it. Maybe, just maybe, I thought…

“Don’t even try it. We’re already late.” She looked over her shoulder as she passed through the door. “Try not to hump anyone’s leg.”

When her back was turned I made a face and silently mouthed the words back at her. Try not to hump anyone’s leg.

“I heard that,” she said.

Sometimes I hate the vampires’ sense of hearing.

* * *

“I can’t believe you said that to Vlad.”

“What do you mean? The dude was being an ass-wipe.”

“Just because someone’s an ass-wipe doesn’t mean you have to call him that right in front of everyone.”

“So what’s the harm? Everyone knows he’s an ass-wipe anyway.”

“Tom, you humped his leg!”

I smiled. “That was for you. Jesus, that guy bugs me. All those Old-Europe airs, that world-weary cosmopolitan bullshit. Give me a break. He’s from Cleveland, for fuck’s sake.”

“You have no right… Really? Cleveland?”

“Guess he forgot to mention that at his big reception.”

“How do you know?”

“You’d know if you’d sniffed his butt. He’s the punchline to a lot of our jokes about vampires. He tried to join us and we shined him on. That’s when he went over to you guys.”

“He’s a werewolf reject?”

“That’s right.”

She smiled her glittery smile, the one with all her teeth framed between her red, red lips. “Oh, that is interesting.”

* * *

“Tell me a vampire joke.”

I thought for a moment. There was no way I was going to tell her any of the jokes we traded around the pub, but if I didn’t come up with something, things would get awkward. “All right, how many vampires does it take to unscrew a lightbulb?”

She scowled for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. How many?”

“That, uh, was the joke. UNscrew. Vampires like it dark.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Usually it’s screw in the lightbulb.”

“Hm. That’s not very funny.” Silence stretched for an awkward moment, and she asked, “how many werewolves does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned to the ceiling and shouted, “FUCKING LIGHTBULB!” She sold it, too, letting herself go the way vampires never do, making the answer a howl of rage, even putting a bit of a wolf growl into it, and I fell in love with her all over again, even as she blushed and regained her decorum. As I laughed I wondered once more what she saw in me.

“You know,” she said, “don’t let this go to your head, but if I’d gone to that party without you a lot of people would have been upset with me. The ones worth a damn.”

“That’s surprising. Mostly what I get is ‘oh, crap, what’s he going to do this time?'”

“Half of them say that. The other half say, ‘I can’t wait to see what he does this time.’ You’re like the yurodivy, the Russian Holy Fool who is allowed to speak the truth in a sort of code, and be exempt from reprisal.”

“My code isn’t very subtle.”

She smiled. “No, but it’s fun to watch.”

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Back to the Past

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Yesterday it happened. We reached the point in my lessons where I have been entrusted with the tools to travel through time. I now have the knowledge (ability will require a lot of practice) to reach back to events as distant as yesterday, and bring them to life. How will I use this awesome power?

Incorrectly, if my past performance with the language is any guide. But there have been many times when I have thought of things I’d like to say, and even had someone willing to wait while I worked things out, but I would be stumped by the past. I’m going to spend some extra study time this week on forming sentences that speak of a time that is no more. The folks at my regular watering holes have also begun to tutor me now and then, correcting pronunciation they used to let slide and adding to my vocabulary things that aren’t found in the textbooks. I believe I crossed a threshold recently, where I have enough words that I can get the gist of what people are saying (some people anyway — for others speech is still just a long string of sound without any apparent structure at all), and this has increased the enthusiasm of people around me to try and communicate with me.

That has a down side, of course. It means more interruptions to my work and I am more easily distracted by conversations going on around me. A word from the next table will drift into my ear and I’ll pause to think, “hey! I knew that word!”

I am composing an episode about Czech cursing. Stay tuned.

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Summertime Fun!

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An offhand comment elsewhere about another topic altogether made me realize today that (provided I’m not lying on the cutting-room floor) now I, too, can claim connectedness with Kevin Bacon. But how many degrees separate us?

In my case the cutting-room floor outcome is pretty likely (I can imagine the dispute. “The scene’s timing is off; this part has to go.” “You can’t do that. We have to keep the guy looking at the thing.” “Scene’s too long. It’s an action movie. Gotta make it snappier.” “But the guy — the thing…” “Besides, look at him. The way he looks at the thing. Nobody’s even going to notice the action, they’ll all be watching him.” “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe I’ll do a documentary next, about people looking at things.”), so I thought it best not to wait for the movie before playing this little game.

Although, actually, I probably won’t be very good at it. I don’t watch that many movies, and even when I do I forget who was in the cast, so I’m pretty much out of luck here. I’m not even sure who’s in the cast of Casino Royale (for all I know Kevin bacon is in it).

I suppose, since I won’t be in the movie credits (those would be long credits before “1st guy looking at thing when the dude came down the stairs” was included), this is not in the spirit of the “real” game, but screw that. From Jerry Seeger in Casino Royale to Kevin Bacon in the fewest steps. Anyone want to take a shot?

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Adapting to immobility

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When it comes to writing, I’m a creature of habit. Writing, for me, now means getting the hell away from the Internet and drinking way too much caffeine as I scratch out rough prose, all twitchy and birdlike and generally neurotic. Hey, it’s my idiom. But lately the laptop hasn’t been up to the trip, so I’ve taken up the ol’ pen and paper. In the last couple of days I’ve drafted two pretty cool short stories (one has a lot of work ahead of it). I think in the last three days I’ve scribbled about eight thousand words in my notebook. Words that must be revisited from scratch as I enter them into the land of ones and zeroes. As these stories play out into final versions it will be a very interesting test of writing styles: discrete revisions versus continuous editing.

Tonight I wrote a story I really quite like. It’s there, sprawled over a few pages in my notebook (I fit a lot of words onto each page) and it hangs together pretty well, even if it is a series of three fragments. Laura K. Hamilton meets the nitty gritty of everyday life. It’s a love story, not a lust story. I want to share it with you. Hell, I want to sell it. It’s on paper. Paper! Who thought of this crap?

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Another baby step

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I got an email from an agent yesterday, which said (more or less): “We probably won’t take you on, but we’d like to see more of your work to be sure first.”

[Edited post because I decided it’s best not to talk about business negotiations while they are going on. I don’t think there’s any big deal in this case, but it just seems like a good policy for down the road. Sorry for the tease.]

Still, it beats the hell out of a “no”.

*”partial” refers to sending a part of the novel to an agent. For many agents, the process goes something like this: Writer sends a query. A query is a one-page letter describing the work, possibly the first five pages of the story, and sometimes a brief synopsis. If the agent is intrigued by the query, she will request a partial. A partial means a bigger chunk of the story (often the first three chapters or so), and perhaps a more detailed synopsis. The agent may also begin to take an interest in personal information about the writer. Should the partial pass muster, then the agent will request a “full”, and will at long last commit to reading the whole damn story. That’s a big deal for an agent, because reading generally happens in her “free” time. Once the agent reads the story, she will ask herself “can I sell this?” which is itself a complicated question, and “can I work with this writer?” Should both those questions came back with a “yes”, the agent will contact the writer and the two will discuss the possibility of working together. Even then, it’s not a sure thing.

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