The Correspondence Artist GAME!

The narrator of Barbara Browning's debut novel, The Correspondence Artist, is having an affair with someone famous, and in order to protect her paramour’s identity, she creates four fictional identities through which to unravel her story. Imagine four flashlights, each a different color, shining inward to the central circle of our story. They combine to create a whitish light — “clever lies which secretly say the truth” — but there are still shades of hue and shadow. Browning offers commentaries on Fame, Gender, and Identity, and how those influence Love. Her deft passion and playfulness coupled with intellectual, psychological, and cultural analysis reminds me of Jeanette Winterson.

I’m sure many of you dream of meeting your favorite author (or musician or movie star). And I’ll bet many of you even dream of there being a spark that leads to a clandestine affair that spans years and continents. Come on, don’t lie to yourself. In fact, rather, INDULGE.

We would like to invite folks to write a mysterious love-letter/email about their fantasy celebrity paramour. Don’t actually name-drop the celebrity (just give hints submersed in the correspondence) and send it to twodollar[at]twodollarradio.com.

We’ll post the submissions on the Two Dollar Radio blog the week of February 21 and invite everyone to guess the celebrity they are addressed to. If your fantasy celebrity is on the scandalous side, we’re able to post your correspondence anonymously as well.

The Winner of The Orange Eats Creeps Contest

Results are in. The one ballot has been tallied and the winner of The Orange Eats Creeps Contest is James Greer, who chose the theme "Parisian Anarchist Courtesans on Strike!"

Of the winning entry, Grace Krilanovich says: "A first person screed/diatribe/manifesto-cum-open letter to "society." Overheated, Alain Delon-baiting, and digressive as hell. Who would expect Parisian Anarchist Courtesans to be anything but over le top? This winning entry serves up a steaming casserole of indiscriminate, state-smashing rage and perverted glee, along with what is probably the best one-line manifesto disseminated by any Parisian Anarchist Courtesan movement."

Parisian Anarchist Courtesans on Strike!

C’est quoi la grève? If I hear that song from those two comedians one more fucking time I will shoot myself and then both of them in the ass. If I can find a gun. Question: why aren’t guns free, and freely available? It’s just common sense. Give everyone a gun, goddamnit! Me first, so I can kill you. And take your gun.

The C.G.T. strikes every other day and that’s, you know, ça va, but we stage one little manif at Saint-Germain-des–Prés and it’s some kind of big deal. Never seen a bunch of naked whores in a fountain before? And if you have, you probably owe me money, which I do not want. I don’t believe in the use of currency as currency, it’s not going to change anything—you can borrow my copy of L’insurrection qui vient, or borrow it back, you’ll see, it’s all in there. The whatever singularity. The being-in-common.

Property is theft, sure, but even a courtesan needs to eat. This is why I started my zine: Why She Doesn’t Give A Fuck About Your Insurrection, and I say that out of love, out of an excess of love, a plague of love, a cholera of kindness. Or something. I was in Tarnac when it all went down, when the balaclava-clad gendarmerie slipped in on roller blades and took twenty of us from the cinema alone. Il gattopardo was playing (I’ve heard there’s a newly-restored version—Alain Delon can go fuck himself, and probably used to on a regular basis, I think the only thing he truly loved was the mirror, but Burt Lancaster: yum!), or would have been playing if the projector wasn’t broken. But we liked sitting in the theater anyway, waiting for the possibility of cinema.

By all means, I remember thinking, or perhaps screaming out loud, spit flying in the face-guard of the helmeted riot policeman: Send in the paras, two by falling two into the farthest forest from the Bois de Boulougne; from the toits of gray Paris. Come the rundown Shermans. Come the F.L.N., the colonial detritus, pieds noirs, now will you listen? No you will not. Superstition plays its role, naturally, supervising the apprivoisement. The gégène or magneto will not bring you no harm, babe. I’ve seen worse. I’m a fucking anarchist courtesan, remember? I’m a lawless hooker. I kill and I fuck, not necessarily in that order, in fact never in that order, because that would be a) gross, and b) just... wrong. Not in a moral sense, bien évidemment, but in terms of aesthetics.

“Whatever singularity, which wants to appropriate belonging itself, its own being-in-language, and thus rejects all identity and every condition of belonging, is the principal enemy of the State. And, sooner or later, the tanks will appear.” That’s Giorgio all over for you, always with the tanks. He has a tank fetish. Something to do with the muzzles, I think. The long guns. I never got that. Calvino said we should just “wait it out,” and I’m thinking, wait what out? The Invisible Committee or Invisible Cities? Which is more fantastic? Which more dangerous? And which, more importantly, is going to leave me alone to ply my trade in the plush cathouses of the 6e arrondissement?

Here is our manifesto, in full: get your face out of my cunt. I don’t mean my cunt in particular. And obviously not “out,” in a literal sense, that would put us where we are right now, in a fountain, naked, except not protesting but begging for scraps. Like that guy over there with the plastic bag from Monoprix (like he could afford to shop there!), the pigeon man. We don’t want to end up like him, though we grant that he has as much dignity as any other human person. We don’t want or need government regulation, and anyway we don’t recognize the authority of this or any government over us, over any part of us, but especially not here, in the warm heart of our meat and drink. We want to be left alone, but not alone, we want to be free but but also free from harm. We want all these things to be au choix, so that we feel we have not lost our voix. And until then: stay the hell out of my box.

Like George says to the girl in the Nespresso commercial: What else? The girl by the way is me, and I don’t mean metaphorically. I did the commercial for no pay, in the same way Godard did that commercial for Schick aftershave in the early 70s, you know, to fuck with people. And to meet George Clooney. That was not Jean-Luc’s motivation. That was me, I think Godard felt sorry for Schick because they were second to Gillette in international sales, and he is after all Swiss, so that was the Swiss contrarian in him. That’s the way Renato Berta tells it, anyway, and I have no reason to disbelieve him, he’s probably the world’s greatest living cinematographer. He tells another story about Godard: one time they were driving down the autoroute in Switzerland, and Jean-Luc saw a particularly beautiful sunset across a particularly beautiful field, He insisted they stop right there, right then, to film it. The only place to stop was the emergency lane, so they pulled over, and Renato set up the camera, and the Swiss police naturally showed up, because what else do the Swiss police have to do? Jean-Luc told Renato to go deal with them. “You’re in the emergency lane, you know,” said the Swiss police. “You can’t stop here.” So Renato goes back to Jean-Luc. “They say we’re in the emergency lane, and we can’t stop here.” So Jean-Luc turns to Renato with a look of utter exasperation, and says, “Tell them that for me this is an emergency!” Years later Renato saw the footage they had shot of that sunset in a completely different Godard film than the one they were then shooting. He was glad that the footage had been used. I like to think of that scene, of the field of bright rape-seed against a fading sun, when I am giving a blow-job to a client (I don’t like the connotations of the word “client,” but I’m tired). It may be my imagination, but I swear it makes the client come faster.

What else? What else is naughts and crosses. The chute of a great king, of the world, or outside the world, all-encompassing and omniscient where the leaves fall, and the leaves fall. And falling strap their lives to breath of wind to buttress or enhance descent. We who look will choose to see it so.

Where? In birchy woods at winter, snow pasted on linden trunks from Gare du Nord wind, usually with spangles of ice in the crust. Tillelul else fail. RDV pris in small café across the street, Noël or foul, with garlands of sharp twig and swell of tinsel, pining away or down and away and low. Why are you here? What have you come to see? Answer: Have all come to watch something not happen, or happen in rivers, backing up to the banks.

Thus ends the end. We finish and are done. Whether not enough or too is terminus. Pendulous as apples in septembre from the slender brough which sweets her sap from sources inconnu. Man on. Weapons at the ready. Nonce more into the ether.

Sorry. That made more sense in my head than when I said it out loud. Are you still recording? We also have a song. One cannot strike in Paris without a song.

(Note: everything in this story is 100% true)

==============

James Greer has a new book out called The Failure from Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Imprint at Akashic Books.

OEC Contest: Runner-Up

After much deliberating, the Judge has declared a runner-up in The Orange Eats Creeps contest, in which writers would submit pieces adhering to random themes drawn from a hat.

The runner-up comes to us from Calder Lorenz, who chose to compose his piece around the theme "confessions of a baptist nightclub janitor."

Of the piece, the Judge remarks: "Well executed and keenly observed. A little terrarium wriggling with sin and redemption."

Confessions of a Baptist Nightclub Janitor

You’d think each night would be the same for a man who cleans up after other people’s good times. Not much in the way of complication. An endless routine of sweeping and scrubbing and soaking up puke until you run out of smokes and the light reflects off the polished nightclub bar.
You might think each night would be the same and most of the time you’d be right.
My father in-law, a minister who lives down near New Orleans, once told me that you had to be held in the arms of Satan in order to touch evil for yourself. In a sense, he said as he combed and sculpted his black hair into a male beehive, you’d have to taste evil so you’d know when you were in the presence of goodness. I married his daughter that afternoon. And in the evening he held my head under water with his muscled hands until I accepted Jesus as my savior. I was twenty-five.

I’m thirty-three now. A month ago, I took this job to pay the bills. Pure and simple. I’ll confess that preaching doesn’t pay, at least not for me. I’ll confess my failures outnumber my followers. I haven’t told Lena, but I see now that you need faith to fool folks or at the very least you need the time to practice. And I’ve got neither. Not when the collection calls refuse to cease and the debt I’ve got from trying to run an online ministry doubles and doubles and doubles. Not when her father stopped bailing us out. Stopped paying the mortgage. So I light up and snap on my latex gloves and spray off the front entrance where someone left a puddle of piss. I collect the grease from the fryer and haul it to the dumpster and then I stack chairs so I can mop down the chipped linoleum floor.

______

Scotty, who manages the bar, is still hanging around long after he should be.

I lean on the mop and watch him count his money. He works over a huge stack of twenties and then moves onto the tens. I finish my smoke before I start back on the floor.

I’ll confess that I admire Scotty. His youth. His perfectly upright and sharpened blonde hair. His silver piercing below his lower lip. The certainty I have that he’s slept with every young waitress who works in this black hole. He doesn’t just touch evil. He fucks it and loves it and looks good doing it.

“I got a surprise for you,” Scotty says from behind the bar.

“A real treat,” he says without leaving the money.

“Ok,” I say. “I’ll be done soon enough.”

“Fuck it,” he says. “Take a seat. Have a beer on me. I owe you a tip for taking care of the piss out front.”

“Almost done,” I say.

I wring out the mop head and slide the bucket into an empty stall and then dump the black muddled water—crumpled business cards with penned washed out numbers floating like the chunks of styrofoam that accumulate in the deceased creek behind the bar. The creek where I’ve been instructed to dump anything the garbage men refuse to take.

Scotty slaps a five dollar bill on the bar. He throws down a coaster and follows through with the beer he promised. “That’s your tip for the piss.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Every bit counts.”

“You bet it does,” he says. “I barely cleared three bills tonight.”

I drink my beer.

He’s finished counting and I know what comes next.

He slides over a plate. He says, “My guy says you shouldn’t use bills, even the hundreds can get you sick.” He says, “I cut you your own straw.” He says, “Wait until the surprise gets here.”

I bow my head to the bar. We take turns bowing our heads until I say I need to finish scrubbing the toilets.

______

It’s well past four in the morning when Scotty’s treat arrives. I’ve completed my janitorial check list and stand behind the bar with Scotty, drinking and organizing bottles in the smaller cooler under the whiskey shelf. Wasting time when I’d normally be on a vacant bus, riding on home, scribbling down my sermons onto cocktail napkins. This is where my words dribble out and form into something as uninspired as restacking toilet paper or hanging greased slick pots. This is my fruitless preparation for a wretched daily podcast.

I’ll confess I was intrigued by Scotty’s proclamation. I’ll confess I wanted a treat. But what did I expect to walk through that door? Whatever it was, Scotty’s not impressed. He frowns as Brian, a lumpy man in a brown leather jacket with a block head and potholes on his face, sits down at the bar.

I’ve noticed that this oddly confident man comes in after hours once or twice a month on the nights Scotty stays late to count his money. But this time he’s not alone, followed by two young girls who I assume work for him at the strip club down the road. They wear matching grey sweat pants and baggy sweatshirts. They have gym bags. Their faces are sullen and tired and their make-up is missing. Their hair is greasy and pulled back.

“Christ,” Scotty says, “You girls look like crap.”

The girls flop down on bar stools next to Brian. They drop their bags.

“We’re tired.” The girl next to Brian says.

Scotty shakes his head as he holds Brian’s hand. “I thought you said we’d get a show.”

“You will,” Brian says.

“You girls want a drink,” Scotty says. He starts to pour from the tap without waiting for an answer. “Sorry girls. It was one of those nights.”

“Can I have a bottle instead?” One of the girls asks. “I like imports.”

Scotty nods at me and I hand her a bottle. Her lips are tight as she smiles. She squints. Says, “Thank you sir.”

Her voice saturated with the tone of a tired child.

She takes a drink and then turns back to look at Scotty as he waves the girls into the men’s restroom.

I’m left with Brian who rubs his swollen forehead.

“Hey big guy,” he says. “Will ya pour me a shot?”

He doesn’t look at me. I put down two shot glasses and I tell myself that life is a test. These are the moments when we achieve a higher level of understanding. This is how we taste. How we touch. Maybe I’ve finally been given the opportunity to learn about darkness so I can wallow in redemption, be reborn with the ability to annunciate my faith.

______

Scotty opens the front door and I’ll confess that I feel elation despite how the morning light blinds my swollen view of the nightclub. I can see Brian’s neon green Camaro sputtering and groaning out front. The girls wave dismissive goodbyes as they labor to the car. The horn blares and blares and blares.

Scotty holds the door. He wears a weary smirk, a look of brotherhood formed by crossed boundaries and degradation. He says, “Sorry about the mess, man.”

I block the light with my hand and it’s all I can do to nod.

He says, “See you tonight.” And the door swings shut.

I lean on the bar, surveying the broken bottles and upturned chairs and then I peel my forearm so I can wipe my hands on my shirt. I stagger into the back kitchen and turn on the faucet where they wash the pots and pans. A huge steel sink wiped clean with bleach. I take a rag from the clean stack on the shelf and I plug the drain. I wait until the water rises, inches from overflowing onto the tiled floor. I grasp the sides and drown my head until the cold water soaks the entire upper part of my shirt. I hold my breath until I re-emerge, gasping and choking and then plunge again. Time stops and all I know is gasping and then plunging, gasping and then plunging, until I fall backwards slipping on the flooded floor.

I leave my resignation in the form of my soaked shirt. The fabric marked with a few spots of blood where the leg of a storage-rack inserted into the skin of my shoulder blade. I confess that I leave without setting the alarm, without cleaning up the mess, without guilt, carrying only a stolen pen and a generous handful of cocktail napkins for the bus ride home.

The Orange Eats Creeps Contest!

So, we're sponsoring a contest with Grace Krilanovich as the almighty Judge.

The winner takes home a personalized, signed copy of The Orange Eats Creeps as soon as the book arrives from the printer (or, roundabouts early August -- 1 month before the publication date) AND a Two Dollar Radio tee shirt of their choosing.

According to the source (Grace Krilanovich):

"I started writing The Orange Eats Creeps as a wager with a classmate that I couldn’t whip up some wild stuff for a few of the storylines I’d pitched to him -- mostly themes, types and situations picked out of a hat, then strung together like some plot-oriented refrigerator poetry. Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies (the original title of the book) grew out of that, even though I dispensed with the strict adherence to those categories as soon as I got my bearings in the story, in this strange world with its slutty, teenage blah blah blah occupants.

"I’m a big fan of the use of constraints in writing fiction, especially in the beginning. Who can write a word when the options are limitless? This is something the Surrealists and Oulipo understood. Adhering to a predetermined set of rules that severely limited your options, paradoxically, your mind was opened to all sorts of crazy hitherto unthought possibilities. Apparently the human brain just can’t come up with such originality on its own, hobbled by its own inability to sift through the endless combinations of words and situations, all hanging right out there in the open.

"To that end, I’m going to help you out. Here are three titles for stories of the future, drawn from my vast repository of Roger Corman-esque plotlines (i.e. picked out of a hat):"

1. Parisian Anarchist Courtesans On Strike!

2. Celibate Wiccan Rock ‘n Roll Commune

3. Confessions of a Baptist Nightclub Janitor

========================

Prudent details:

- Length of the piece is up to you. It could be a sentence, a paragraph, a page, five pages (!).

- Pieces should be based one of the above supplied prompts as chosen by The Judge.

- Deadline is July 15, 2010.

- Entries should be included in the body of an email sent to: twodollar[at]twodollarradio.com.

- Winning entry will receive a personalized, signed copy of The Orange Eats Creeps, a Two Dollar Radio tee shirt of their choosing, and their entry will be posted on this here blog.