The Naked and Ugly

Eventful weekend.  And, no, I am not just talking about the NFL playoffs.  Though I do know two people who are very happy in Texas and Florida, respectfully (while far away Skip Bayless and aborted foetuses everywhere weep silently.)

We're talking about the art, man.  First up, Tom Pitts and I (along with El Cerrito Patch crack reporter Kyrsten Bean) are showcased in England at the upstart PoV. Which looks pretty fucking sharp (http://tinyurl.com/878xazh).  My pieces include two selections from the oft-mentioned, as-yet unpublished memoir, here called Candy and Cigarettes, as I try to cash in on the brand name.  It's the same memoir as Junkie Love, which I'll in all likelihood change the name back to when this experiment fails, because, tipping my hand or not, the title is Junkie Love.  The first story is called "Close Calls Pt. III," part of entire chapter devoted to near missed and almost hits.  In case you missed "Close Calls Pt. I," here you go (under the original title "One Very Important Letter"): http://tinyurl.com/7n9dyfx.  (I honestly don't remember Pt. II, but neither it, nor Pt. IV, which is about injecting mouse shit, have been published).  Pt. III, borrowing liberally from a Bruce Springsteen live into to "Independence Day" (it's called an homage), details getting roused late one night by the cops in a 7/11 in Hunter's Point (can't find a clip with the intro, but the song is still heartbreakingly beautiful and always worth hearing, especially if you didn't get along with your dad).

The second is about this night Gluehead and I were heading to the bar after my ex-wife (the one I loved, not the other one) stood me up on our first date and we found a bunch of crack in the middle of the road following a high-speed chase.  I spoke with Glue the other day.  He's doing well, living in the Midwest.  I sent him a copy of Down on the Farm.  He'll probably hate it.  Never was a big fan of Springsteen.

For this issue of PoV, which is like the third time Tom Pitts and I have appeared together in the same publication, we decided to do one another's intro, like Freaky Friday or a goddamn Kriss Kross album cover.

Be sure to check out both Tom's and Kyrsten's stuff.  Tom's two, "High Speed Chase in LA" and "Peanut Brittle" brings back lovely memories of copping in downtown LA and, yup, injecting more mouse shit, which apparently is far more prevalent within the junkie community than you might believe; and Kyrsten's "Requiem of a Street Kid" uses the backdrop of the gutter punk scene in the Haight to segue from kiddom to adulthood, without broaching patronizing or didactic, a tough order.  It's a poem drenched in the detail of someone who's lived the life and didn't merely play the part.

Goes without saying that both Tom and Krysten are terrific writers, which is why they've been featured multiple times at Lip Service West (http://www.lipservicewest.com/), where, it's true, I've never met a recovering addict I didn't like.  If I'm encountering resistance in trying to get my junkie memoir published, then I'll use what little sway I have (and, trust me, we're talking very little sway here) to provide others an avenue to get their story out.  

And to that end, I am supposed to be getting interviewed by the East Bay Express later today (another stop on the Shameless Self-Whoring Tour, 2012), which I will be certain to pimp madly when the issue comes out.  We started the interview yesterday, and the focus is going to be on Lip Service West.  When I was a part of this reading series in Miami (co-producing the event with the lovely Andrea Askowitz [My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy]), the subject matter was, admittedly, a little broader, a bit sunnier, less dank and gray.  But I am a dark mutherfucker, and while I loved working with Andrea, when I got out here and Idan "the Machine" Levin over at SPAD (http://sanpabloarts.org/) offered to sponsor a reading series, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  And despite granting me permission to use the Lip Service brand, both Andrea and her new co-producer Esther Martinez were aghast by my new choice of logo.

This sums it up.  Bloody bug splattered on the high-speed windshield o' life. Thanks to Tracey Snelling for the design.

I am not into poetry.  Although I should mention I just had another (old) poem taken by Gutter Eloquence.  And for as much as my poetry is finding new homes these days, perhaps I should reconsider and just start writing the shit again. 

Anyway, we had our latest Lip Service West reading this past Friday at Pegasus Books up on Shattuck in Berkeley.  Another packed house, rave reception, random drunk dude telling me he is going to submit something.  The free hot dogs went quickly on this night, my friends.  Always do.  And the continued success of the series has little to do with me (or my beautiful partner in crime/life/literature, the third luckiest gal in the world, Justine).  It's because the Bay Area breeds kick-ass writers like Miami does cockroaches. Fuckers are everywhere, squirming in the dingy moistness.  

This latest chapter featured Lauren Becker, who runs the East Bay-centric (and always first-rate) reading series East Bay on the Brain (http://eastbayonthebrain.wordpress.com/, and Paul Corman-Roberts, whom I first met manning the door at the downtown Oakland event, which made me think he was a bouncer, because he looked like the kind of dude you'd find on the midnight gritty streets of a meth-soaked Las Vegas.  On Friday, he read a piece about meth-soaked Las Vegas and working in an all-nite convenience store.  Both his and Lauren's, which chronicled ball surgery, were hits.  As was Kyrsten's cough syrup confessional, and Mckay William's reportage from the front lines of Occupy Oakland and the joys of your first time getting pepper sprayed.  After everyone read, I thought (to myself as opposed to someone else) both how much I envied and admired these writers, and how lucky I am to be back in the Bay.

But there was one writer who stood out that night, not because his piece was necessarily better (or worse) than anyone else's.  It simply struck me as...ballsier...in its relation to my own work, achieving an honesty, a verisimilitude I don't think I am capable of.  The piece was called "Splatter Love" by Sean Craven, and used the stained drawing pad of a suicide to shine a light on the human condition in a way rarely seen.

Sean joked about why I wanted him to read this piece on his blog last week (http://tinyurl.com/86ocmq2), and he wasn't altogether wrong.  "Splatter Love," which I'd had the pleasure of editing earlier, is not for the weary or easily offended. The basic outline for the story: Sean finds this drawing pad, which aside from the red blotchy stain on the cover, is in pristine condition.  A poor art student, he considers it a boon, until he later learns that the pad belonged to a woman in the neighboring apartment who just shot herself.  Sean keeps the pad, unable to throw it away, and begins to form an unhealthy relationship to the pad and its former owner, as he imagines her life and the misery, insanity, vengeance that lead her to make this most final of choices; and through this exploration he is forced to admit his own unhappiness, the pull of suicide's allure, the insignificance he feels as a man and an artist, the insufficiency he feels as a human being.  He shies from nothing, however naked and ugly.

This is, of course, what all good writing is.  And everyone who reads for LSW falls into that category.  I consider myself a good writer, as well, and like to believe I am willing to delve into the same naked and ugly territory.  Except--and it's a big exception--I care too much about image.  Everything I do is concerned with image. A man doesn't spend this much time preening in front of a mirror measuring his own biceps without a unabashed nod to vanity.  This concern expends far beyond the physical, though.  We're talking persona.  This blog is a persona.  My interactions (when I leave my privileged gated enclave) with the public, a persona. Every facet of my life, from my time with my dear, sweet departed mother, to my own child, involves some degree of an act, how I want to be perceived.  And this desired effect of manufactured appearance, physical and otherwise, how I come across to the outside world, is going to manifest itself in the writing.  I don't shy from truth, and I can get as down and dirty and mired in the cesspool as anyone. But I will always pull up short when it comes to tarnishing this carefully cultivated character.  Part of the allure of Hemingway is that he was Hemingway.  Did he have private moments where he cried while watching Dancing with the Stars?  Or whatever the fuck the equivalent was in the '20s (Flapping with the Socialites?).  No, he was too busy fucking up bulls and getting drunk.  That is the story we know. And that shit is cultivated.  Don't judge; we all do it.  There is the projection we want the world to see, and if you say you don't it, then to quote John Bender, you're a liar too.

This is what struck me about Sean's piece.  He took it further than I think I'd be willing to go.  There was no worrying how it made him look to others, a step and a half beyond vulnerable.  He stood there, naked and ugly, in from of a room full of strangers on Friday, an audience which contained more than a few pretty girls, with no pretense made of hiding his flaws and warts, without giving a rat's fuck about perception.  And he did it for art's sake.  And that, my friends, is bravery.  At least in my world it is.  In fact, it's goddamn heroic.

Then again, maybe I'm getting carried away, since I am in desperate search of a new hero after St. Timmy took such a tumble from his gilded cloud this past Saturday (http://tinyurl.com/8xj435y).  I realize there are probably only about seven people left in the world who haven't seen Jimmy Fallon's Tebowie.  But we're not reinventing the wheel here, and I can think of no better send off for the man who made my morning exercises with Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith such a joy.  

God speed, Tim Tebow.  May your 47.9% completion percentage carry you back to Florida (Jacksonville?) where your unique skill set (capital G goodness, ability to scramble, and retarded-duck-on-crack throwing motion) will be appreciated, as you continue to divide football fans everywhere and provide endless hours of sports talk fodder for years to come.

Tom Pitts & Hepatitis Heights Pt. III

Yesterday's post covered being solicited (again) by the awesome folks in England (http://tinyurl.com/8a7eugr).  Ben Turner and Chris Pilkington are starting up a journal over there, PoV (http://www.povmagazine.co.uk/), which stands for Passing Out Victorious.  God, I love the English.  Jack Kerouac used to say the prettiest girls in all the world are English girls.  And I ain't arguing with Jack.  The English seem to like me, women especially.  I remember when I went over there when I was 19, girls used to eye fuck the shit out of me quite often.  But they did so politely, classy.  'Cause, y'know, they're fucking refined and shit.  I was hardly the bastion of self-confidence you see before you today. I think the first time a girl smiled at me in London, I started to cry.

So anyway, super nice guys over there, with obviously awesome taste in art, because they like my work.  The deadline to get in the first issue, whose theme is "street," is today.  Which doesn't give you a lot of time.  But check PoV out, read what they're trying to do, see what their next theme is going to be, and submit something.  You don't get a lot of chances like this, when a magazine is young, its editors excited and anxious to read your work.  Give Ben and Chris a few months of being bogged down by Happy Third Week Anniversary poetry, and they might not be quite so gung-ho.

The best part about being in the inaugural issue of PoV, slated for Mid-January, is that I will, once again, be appearing with my (former?) partner in crime, Tom Pitts. 

This won't be the first time Tom and I will have appeared in the same journal.  It won't even the first time we've been in the same issue.  But maybe it's the "street" theme that makes this one particularly meaningful, since Tom and I, quite literally, lived together on the streets, as in broke-ass homeless, sleeping in stairwells or on benches. 

Ben and Chris asked each of us for an introduction to our stories (we're getting 2 published apiece), and Tom joked, since our work is so incestuous, that perhaps we should each write the other's introduction.  Ben thought it was a great idea.  Here's what I came up with for Tom's:

I met Tom Pitts sometime in the late 1990s at a shooting gallery, on top of a very high hill in San Francisco, called Hepatitis Heights.  In a drug world filled with liars, thieves, and criminals, Tom fast became a rare commodity in my life: a reliable doper.  He was my best friend.  Even then, in the middle of all the junkie bullshit, Tom considered himself a writer.  He used to tote his computer, which contained all his stories, everywhere he went.  But this wasn’t a laptop.  We’re talking a big ol’, straight for the ’80s, bulky-ass desktop.  Tom would drag that computer with its tangle of cords and keys up these giant hills, dopesick, trying to duck the crooks looking to rip him off or the cops looking to drag him in.  I thought he was fucking nuts, but such was his commitment to his art.  He believed even then he’d get out.  I wish I’d shared his faith.  But he was right.  He got out.  We both did.  And he took his stories with him. 

I hope this bromance isn't getting too nauseating for you.  After all, this is hardly the first time I've written about Tom and Hepatitis Heights (http://tinyurl.com/3njp84t; http://tinyurl.com/6wysfq4).  The truth is, I just don't have many friends.  

The other day, I was talking with Justine about someone I know, and she could tell by my tone, I guess, that said individual didn't rate very high on the friendship meter anymore.  Nothing this person did really.  I simply don't hold onto friends very long these days; I don't need people like I used to.  This isn't any grand Facebook declaration about "cleaning up my friends list so write me and say you still love me if you want to stay" bullshit. There's no hidden meaning.  If you think we're friends, we probably are.  What has happened to me, is what happens to most people as they get older.

We have a parenting book we keep in the shitter.  Nice to read parenting books when you are on the can, since most of the info in them is pretty disposable. But this one book has a great line.  I don't think it was the author's intention to make it come out sounding like this, but this particular book comprises little pearls of parental wisdom written by moms and dads in Kansas and shit; they're not going to be worried about syntactical consistency.  It reads, "Toothbrushes are like good old friends --we hate to get rid of them.  But the truth is we should replace them every three months."  And I think that is very good advice.  After three months, most people, like most toothbrushes, have worn out their welcome. People I would've considered myself close to five, six years ago are barely in my life at all these days, and in most instances there was no big falling out, no major event precipitating a break-up; it's more that we're forty-something, with families and individual lives, and it's rather pathetic, I think, to keep meeting up at bars when you are in your 40s, especially when many of your friends are recovering alcoholics, reliving the same four moderately funny things you've done together.  

I don't dislike people, individually.  I simply find most friendships require more work than what I receive back. It's a matter of reciprocity.  I don't want to feel like a friendship is putting me out by asking me to do things. In your 20s, it's a completely different story.  One day I was talking to Gluehead.  I was probably 25 or so, and feeling self-consious (imagine that) that I was asking him for too many favors, so I said something like, "Hey, Glue, I don't ask you for too many favors, do I?"  And Glue, in classic Gluehead response said, "Of course you do.  If we didn't ask each other for favors, what the hell would we talk about?"  

It's not fair, I suppose, to the people I met after my SF drug days, since nobody can measure up to the friends I made during that time, which goes counter intuitive to everything you hear about the friends you make when you are using.  Yeah, you meet some peripheral scammers along the way, but the guys with whom you share the trenches--the Dans, the Big Toms, the Soupys, the Glueheads and Kelpbeds, the Tom Pittses--some deep-seated shit forms.  I'm still friends with those guys today.  As close as I am with Jimmy, Petersen, and Rich, the only real friends I held onto from before I moved to SF in '92.


And I spent more time with Tom Pitts than just about anyone, at least we spent more time together when it mattered most, when I was loneliest and most lost, during the darkest days of my life.  The last couple years of my using, I'd managed to piss off just about everyone, Kelp, Glue--I attacked poor Big Tom one day for not giving me $13 (sorry, Big Tom).  I was pushing everyone away with my stealing and lying, my selfishness and manipulation.  It's not like Tom Pitts was a saint in the city.  

It's just that for some reason we spared one another our worst.  Maybe it was out of sheer necessity that you stay true to at least one person in that lifestyle, that you give him all of your trust, make yourself vulnerable, if only to reaffirm a part of you is still human.  Y'know, sorta like Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi.

*

Tom Pitts and I are both writers these days.  We don't shoot needles full of dreams into our arms anymore.  Cindy is, indeed, on methadone.  We have wives and children, and we both work very hard to get our story out there.  It isn't often when a writer friend of mine has success that I genuinely feel happy for him or her.  I'll say I do, of course, as the little knives of jealousy pang the shit out of my green-with-envy heart.  But with Tom, even when he gets accepted into a magazine that's rejected me, I am truly, truly happy.  I guess because I was there with him in the shelters, and when he had to sleep on the cold metal bed of the truck I'd stolen; because my liver never turned on me like his did on him; because I've been given a few breaks that perhaps I didn't deserve.  I don't know why, exactly.  Maybe I just really like the fucking guy.  I trusted him with my life back then, and I'd trust him with it now.

I'm sure we'll both be pimping the shit out of the issue when it comes out in January.  

Until then, here is Tom's site: http://tom-pitts.blogspot.com/

And PoV's again: http://www.povmagazine.co.uk/

  

Reading between the Lines

Got this the other day.

Hi Joe, 

I hope you don't mind my contacting you. I got your details from your blog.  

My name's Ben and I'm currently putting together a new free online magazine. It's going to have a different theme every issue and the content is going to be sourced from various creatives I know and admire around the world... The theme for issue 1 is STREETS.

The magazine will contain photography, short stories, poems, factual writing, illustrations, and we would love to feature some of your work if you are interested in taking part.

I am in touch with the guys from the Railroad Poetry Project and that's how I discovered your stuff. I really like the style of your poetry; it feels raw and honest. Essentially it feels very street even if that isn't the basis of the poem. Also I like that the tag line on your website is 'Sometimes the safest place to be in a riot is in the street'. That's perfect.

So, I wonder if you'd be interested in showing any of your work in our first issue? If you are up for it, it would be great to have something in the next week or so, yeah, I know, short notice! Sorry.

I really enjoyed 'Places I Refuse to Sleep' from Railroad 2 and felt that would work with our theme. But if you have something that would be more applicable then that would be great. 

I'll look forward to hearing from you,

Ben Turner

http://www.povmagazine.co.uk/

I get letters like this from time to time, as you know (http://tinyurl.com/3m6cdvo), but it's always nice.  Especially the part about apologizing for interrupting me, like I am some big, important writer high on a golden throne of awesomeness with no time to mingle with the lowly masses, a "let them eat cake" of literary disconnect.  Of course, I shatter that illusion by responding within about 7 seconds with an attachment of 8 pieces from which to choose.  Image is everything in this world, and I'd probably be smart to play it cool.  Like with the ladies, jumping too eagerly at opportunity reeks of desperation, which stinks worse than the refried beans Justine leaves in the back of the fridge until a nice urine-yellow film forms (she's a pack rat).  But I don't pretend to be something I am not (one of my more redeemable traits).  Or as a girl who once desperately wanted to sleep with me said, "Joe, what I like best about you is you're not completely full of bullshit."  (Wonder if she'd feel the same way if I looked like Chad Kroeger.)

You don't get rich playing another man's game, and I am one needy mutherfucker.  So, yeah, Ben.  No problem.  Awesome.  Here you go. 

I sent off what few remaining pieces I have left that haven't been published (I know, boo-fucking-hoo me).  I only have two (good) short stories that haven't been taken, and maybe half a dozen poems, some going back ten years, since I don't actively write that shit anymore.  Of course, I have the memoir.  Which almost feels like cheating, goddamn thing is so chockfull of kick-ass writing.  So I found a couple selections, cut and pasted, titled them, and sent them off. Then I get this.

Hi Joe,

So, thanks again for sending those documents over. I've just heard back from my colleague on the magazine. If you don't want to get a big ego ignore the next sentence... but in his words:  "I've read all of them and they are nothing short of brilliant--captivating, emotive and engaging"...

Ben Turner

Somewhere Jenny Dreadful is going, Damn you, Joe, for getting a letter like this.  Well, don't worry, Jenny, because in the writing world, what goes up (ego) will come crashing down in about 3, 2, 1...

No sooner do I get done exchanging an e-mail with Ben (who had asked where he could pick up a copy of what must surely be a printed copy of the memoir, to which I responded it's not out yet, but I just sent out a batch of queries to small, independent publishers and shall remain hopeful), when I open an e-mail that has just come in.  It reads,

Dear joseph clifford,



We have reviewed "Junkie Love" and have decided that it's not for us. We appreciate the chance to look at your work and wish you the best with it.



Sincerely,



Publishing Company I Will Not Name for Fear of Looking Unprofessional

I know.  You're thinking, "Well, where's the rest?  Did you check the back?" Ain't no back; it's a goddamn e-mail.  That was the whole thing.  And as so often is the case when you rely on outside sources of validation, the ego dick went limp, and my vagina started to hurt.  

The only thing that kept me out of a season long funk was this piece I had read earlier in the morning over at Chunk Wendig's wonderful Terrible Minds http://tinyurl.com/7lmn8o7.  If you are pressed for time, the gist is, Toughen up, crybaby; this is the way the game works.  And it's good to be reminded of that.  I like Wendig because he writes the way I try to, only better, funnier, his skin a little thicker.  Then again, he is a little more successful.

One of the best ways to get confidence is to have success.  I am less susceptible to being devastated by rejection letters these days because I've enjoyed a modicum of it.  Chicken?  Egg?  Who the fuck knows.

Still, reading those two e-mails, virtually back to back, you might see why I am left scratching my completely full luxurious head of non-thinning hair.  Like Wendig writes, these kinds of impersonal rejections can't be weighed too heavily, because there is nothing to them.  It is possible this particular editor really did read the manuscript (I can't recall the specifics of guidelines, and this particular publisher is now closed for the rest of the year), and might just think I suck slimy moose dick.  Usually these places ask for a synopsis, maybe chapter-by-chapter outline, and an actual chapter or two from the book. He (or she) could've read this, and unlike Ben and his partner, simply not saw anything redeemable.  But I doubt it.  And it's not because I have some conceited, unwavering belief in my genius.  It's more like when someone actually does take the time out to read something, you can usually see that in the response. Stuff like "reviewed" and not "read," and no specifics other than my name and book's title leads me to believe that this editor did the same fucking thing I did when I was editing literary magazines: he read until his didn't feel like reading anymore.  And that can happen at any time.   

For me, that varied.  Could be I had a bad night's sleep, or had just suffered a break-up, was trying to quit smoking, endured a particularly unfulfilling fiction workshop, that "not so fresh" feeling, who knows, but there were plenty of times I picked up a submission, read a line or two, or just the title, maybe the guy's name (I had a strict "No Chad" policy), and wrote "No."  Seems kinda counterintuitive, I know, so readily dismissing another's work, especially being a fellow writer.  Except that as an editor, you get tons and tons of shit to read. Every fucking day.  And this was just some rinky dink literary journal.  Book publishers?  Fuck, man, they get thousands pouring in.  And adding to their ire, these submissions come from folks who have never read a single goddamn book they've published, which they (no doubt) lost money on.  (I sometimes buy books from the publishers I am soliciting; unfortunately, however, often I do not.  And no, I did not in this particular instance).

My guess is this guy (or gal) saw the title (Junkie Love), looked over the query, went, "Another fucking story by a former drug addict?  And it's only Tuesday. Next!"  And how do I blame him for that?  Actually, I don't think one way or another about the guy. What I do give a shit about his how to get reactions like I got from Ben and the guys at PoV (and here's that link again to their site: http://www.povmagazine.co.uk/--they're looking for good shit, from down in the bowels of hell, so you should submit.  I'm talking to you, Ms. Bean).  The obvious difference is Ben wanted to read it.  He'd seen my work, liked it, sought me out, and so when I sent him something, I had his full attention; I wasn't just another fucking blind submission from some cocksucker who doesn't even know the books we publish.

I guess this fills me with both hope and dread.  Hope, because when I get someone to actually read my memoir, they are seldom less than impressed.   And dread, because I don't know how to get publishers to do that.  They've never met me, don't know how charming and good looking I am, that I'd be a rock star on any book tour, and oh yeah, that I have a really really good book here if they'd just give it a chance.  I was hoping an agent would help, but we kept smacking our heads against the "junkie" tag, and in the rare instances we got acquisition editors all squishy, sales' departments slapped the big kabosh. But the book was at least getting some consideration.  This new approach, blind submission shuffled with the rest of the drek in the slush pile?  Oh, vey.

Maybe it's like Bob Dylan sings.  The only thing we know how to do is to keep on keeping on...