the first is a series of investigations of costs and considerations

for the indie author

INTRODUCTION

I just saw it again, a particular comment about reasons not to set up through POD channels—it is an argument I have seen more than any:

“If you set up that way, the bulk of your profits are going to the POD while you are left with your measly bit.  Sorry, I’d rather not give away my work—I’ll go through a real printer so I am in control.”

There are about ten million iterations of this, of course, and as I have always come down on the complete opposite side of the coin, I thought I would take a moment to put some ideas out there, see if there is a hole somewhere in my thinking or if someone knows something I don’t know (this will not just be a response to this particular statement, but an investigation based on personal data and investigations made by me over the course of several years).

But, we will begin with the comment, as the germ is in there.

First, the idea of what a POD is needs some clarity, I don’t think it is what it was even five years ago—a POD functions no different than an offset printer other than it is digital or, to put it maybe a tick more correctly, can function as a printer, solely, but with the options of “POD Publishing/Facilitating” atop it.  The POD option, today, means simply this: the book does not have to physically exist until it is ordered, a run does not have to be printed in anticipation of filling orders.  Full stop.  Storefronts do not have to be set up through PODs, the books do not need to be made available through the services, they do not need to be made available publically, at all, and IT IS NOT necessary to cite the POD as your publisher.  One could print up a run and then sell them on their own, handling everything about shipping, etc. in effect just using a POD as a printer.

(A key difference: with a POD a book can be printed in far smaller quantities for far less money than through a printer—one at a time, in fact, though shipping per item that way slightly moots the point—no need to ship it yourself, one at a time, and then reship it, this would be silly)

INVESTIGATION

So, let’s run a scenario:  (Create Space is the only POD service I toss my hat in with, so POD will be altered to CS throughout)

We use the following spec example for this scenario:

The book: 190 pages, trade paperback, 5×8: natural (not white) paper stock, full colour cover (gloss—alas, the one thing I have not found in a POD is matte covers)

Cost per unit (based on CS Pro Plan pricing): $3.13

NOTE: for the sake of this exploration, we’ll assume the prices are the same for CS and short run, when in reality CS would be less expensive than a short run printer for sets smaller than 500 copies—Just to have it out there as this goes on, I have not come across a short run printer that hits CS Pro Plan pricing nearly, most short runs for the above 190 page spec example charge at least $5 per unit, the equivalent to CS Non-Pro Plan pricing.

POINT ONE: What are the parameters of the investigation?

1. Person A Short Run prints a set of 50 copies through a printer to sell by himself (handling fulfillment, shipping, etc.)

1. Person B sets up a POD title, no copies produced until sold.

At this point:

Person A has invested: $156.50 to print the 50 copies (we’re allowing no initial set up fee for the sake of balance and because of the wildly differing policies on this printer-to-printer) and $20 to ship them.

Person B has invested: $39 to set up with Pro Plan and $6.74 to get the required proof copy produced and shipped.

NOTE: I will add another $10 to Person B, because they have purchased an ISBN from Bowker via CS that is assigned to their Personal Publisher name, not to the POD (the publisher is listed, for example, as Ajax House and not Create Space)—I will add this same $10 to Person A, though to individually purchase an ISBN tends to cost somewhat more–$35-80 unless bought in sets)

Person A Invested: $186

Person B Invested: $55.74

In red I am going to break down what Person A would be spending if set at average Non-CS Pro Plan pricing:  $5 per unit for 50 units plus $20 shipping plus $10 ISBN: Person A Invested: $280

Point Two:  Both individuals set their price point at $10.  So, how do profits break down?

1. 1. Person A: When an order comes in for a book, Person A fulfills it personally.  This requires the following general costs:

1. 1. shipping envelope (there are ways to minimize this, such as just shipping in multiple sheets of paper or buying shipping envelopes in bulk, so to simplify, we are going to call this cost at $0.50)
2. 2. postage (for a book the weight and size of the one we are working with, a shipping fee of $2.57 is possible, so we will go with this).

Additionally, and this must be pointed out, this individual must invest the time to package up and ship these items, personally—we will not put a dollar amount on this, but it is a factor to mention.

Also additionally, Person A has to set up a method of receiving customer payment, which in this example we will say is Paypal, (but to minimize this out, we will say that they have set the shipping cost option on Paypal to compensate for the slight percentage per order Paypal takes)

So an order comes in: client paying $10 plus shipping ($13.25—to cover shipping and Paypal deduction) and so, really, only the cost of the book needs to be subtracted from the $10 remaining—a profit of $6.87 per unit.

(Non-CS Pro Plan price subtract $5 from the $10 remaining–$5 profit per unit)

NOTE: It of course needs to be pointed out, again, that when an order comes in for Person A, it is up to them to find time to fulfill it—this varies person-to-person, but depending on the time of day an order is placed and the circumstances of this individual’s life, it cannot be absolutely set when an order will ship—this is not the focus of my breakdown, so we will estimate shipments go out within 48 hours and take 3-5 days to arrive to the customer.

1. 2. Person B: When an order comes in for Person B, it is simply a matter of CS fulfilling it, nothing physically needs to be done by this individual to fulfill the order or to collect the profit.  So, we move on to the financial breakdown.  For an order placed on a $10 book (orders ship in 24 hours; for 3-5 day shipping the cost through CS to a customer is USPS standard $3.61—this sent with sales receipt in sturdy cardboard sealed packaging) Person B would receive $4.95 per unit.

NOTE: Again, it has to be pointed out that this process is automatic—orders arriving anytime are processed and shipped, Person B does not even need to access their account, accumulated profits are deposited each month directly to their bank account—if profits are below the $20 mark, a check has to be requested)

At this point:

Person A Profit: $6.87 per unit

Person B Profit: $4.95 per unit

So, Person A comes out $1.92 ahead per unit!  Very nice.  Both Persons do alright, but a 2 buck lead is considerable.

Non-CS Pro Plan Person A comes out $0.05 ahead per unit

But…

POINT THREE:  How long does it take to earn back investment?

1. 1. Person A was invested $186 at set up.  At $6.87 per unit he will break even at 27 Books Sold.

(Non-CS Pro Plan Pricing: at $5 per unit from a $270 initial investment, Person A will not break even)

Projecting a sold out run of 50 copies, Person A would clear a profit of $158.

(Non-CS Pro Plan: Person A is under by $30–$250 earned but $280 invested)

1. 2. Person B was invested $55.74 at set up.  At $4.95 per unit they will break even at 12 Books sold (actually, they will be a few bucks ahead, but it’s silly to say they will break even at 11.26 books sold).

Projecting that they also sell 50 copies, Person B will clear a profit of $188.10

At this point

Person B, at the 50 mark, all things being equal, comes out $30 ahead of Person A.

(Non-CS Pro Plan Person B comes out $218.10 ahead of Person A)

NOTE: It must be pointed out, of course, that if Person A stalled out at 15 or 17 or 20 books sold (CS pricing), they would still be in the hole, while Person B would already be making clean profits.

POINT FIVE: Let’s follow this through one more cycle, though, because it continues to be interesting.

1. 1. Person A (up $158) purchases another set of 50 for $156 and $20 to ship: this means their profits from the first run go toward the new set, leaving them at a starting point of investing $18.

(Non-CS Pro Plan, Person A (down $30) pays in another $250 plus $20 shipping, leaving them at a starting point of investing $300)

1. 2. Person B has no new investment and needs to pay no new set up fees etc.  He continues to profit at $4.95 per unit, beginning this second set Up $188.10

At this point

Person A Invested: $18

(Non-CS Pro Plan: invested $300)

Person B Invested: $0 (Up $188.10)

1. 3. Person A again sells out the run of 50 at a profit per unit of $6.87, earning at total profit of $325.50 ($343.50 minus $18 invested)

(Non-CS Pro Plan pricing they sell out a run of 50 at profit per unit of $5, earning a total profit of $0 ($250 minus $300 invested–$50 under)

1. 4. Person B: Projecting Sales of 50 at a profit of $4.95 per unit, earning a profit of $247.50 for a total profit of $435.60 (247.50 plus Up 188.10)

At this point

So, at like-rates, after two rounds Person B is up $110.10 over Person A.

(Non-CS Pro Plan pricing Person B is up $485.60 over Person A)

And so on through as many rounds as you want to go.

NOTE: Again it needs to be pointed out that at the purchase of the 2^nd set of 50, Person A has to sell at least 3 books to reach zero loss (earn back the $18 investment) while if Person B sells 0 books they remain Up $188.10.  Therefore, in the 2^nd round, for Person A to reach even with person B they have to sell 30 copies (188.10 plus 18)—in other words, by this point Person A has to sell 80 copies to Person b’s 50 to be on even profit ground.

CONCLUSIONS**

Based on this scenario, in my way of thinking the POD (CS) method is clearly the way to go to maximize control and profits while minimizing hassle.  However, there may be some method I have overlooked—I do my best, in all investigations, to work with data and prices with no preference in mind, to base my preferences on the conclusions of investigations: if there are other basic methods of set up I have overlooked, I would be indebted to anyone taking a moment to point them out.  Likewise, if someone sees a way this method might be tweaked for the better (for either method investigated) I would love to know these thoughts.

**Alternative Method for Person B (CS):

Not wanting to interrupt the flow of the above investigation with too many lines of thought going at once, I include this following alternative method for Person B, here.

If Person B opts to fulfill orders personally, this can be done through CS without having to print a set in anticipation of orders.  If Person B were to collect customer monies through a Paypal account, they could then use their CS Personal account to purchase copies at their AT-COST rate, which would play out in the following way.

Still working from the $10 per book charge with shipping added in by Payapl, a customer would place and order, paying $13.25 (to keep with the above examples for Person A).  We will reduce this to $12.75, factoring in, perhaps excessively, the Paypal deduction per purchase.

Person B would then utilize CS to place an order, shipping directly from the printer to the customer.  In this case, they are paying, per book, only the exact cost of production ($3.13) and the exact cost of shipping ($3.61) for a total of $6.74 (the order still ships 24 hours from when Person B places it, still takes 3-5 days to arrive, still with receipt and in sturdy packaging).

So, per unit, Person B would be profiting $6.01 instead of $4.95.

In this case, from their initial investment of $55.74 they would break even after 9 books are sold (that is, once the 10^th book is sold, they are ahead $4.36—technically they would have to sell 9.26 books to break even, but this is an impossibility, of course)

The profits at 50 copies sold then become $240 and at 100 copies become $540.

Pablo D’Stair is a novelist and founder of Brown Paper Publishing and its forthcoming offshoot Brown Paper Side B.  He is a regular contributing essayist to Montage: Cultural Paradigm, the literary supplement to the Sunday Observer, Sri Lanka’s largest English newspaper.

100. I always finish what I have started.

99. Things I love: writing, afternoons, beer, basketball, non-art as art, juxtaposition, kindness, my life, you, you, you

98. Things I am scared of: space, the idea of forever, drowning, heart attacks, being left behind, memory loss

97. I have the greatest parents anyone could ask for. You should meet them. You’d like them.

96. I’m self-conscious about a lot of things. But I am never self-conscious about my writing or how I read it.

95. My full name is Brian Edward Xavier Oliu, or BEXO for short.

94. Last meal: my grandmother’s paella, chicken croquettas, pan amb tomaquet, patatas bravas, champinones al ajillo

93. I wake up each day thinking ‘this might be the day you get a book published!’ and that keeps me happy & feeling good.

92. My great-grandmother was the women’s tennis champion of Spain. My grandmother will destroy you at Wii Tennis.

91. I always think about synthesis. Putting things together. Placement. Fitting. This is ‘thinking like a writer’ to me.

90. I don’t spend as much time playing videogames as you think I do. But I do spend as much time online as you think I do.

89. The week I spent with @jeremyallan in Romania was one of the best weeks of my life.

88. I knew these would get heart-felt towards the end. Please believe my genuineness, because it is always genuine.

87. Contrary to popular belief, I always sleep at least seven hours a night.

86. I’m able to get a lot of things done in short periods of time. People ask me how I do it, but I honestly can’t answer.

85. My cousin @one_mint_julep was born in 1985 and she is my favorite person in the world.

84. My cousin Ian was born in 1984 and took his life in 2002. I think about him everyday & try to live happily to honor him

83. I got run over by a Volvo in the Three Bridges Library Parking Lot when I was 9.

82. I was born November 22, 1982, a Monday. E.T. had just come out, it was the 19th anniversary of JFK’s death.

81. My favorite authors are Joan Didion & Lyn Hejianian & Lia Purpura & Christopher Logue & Beth Ann Fennelly & & &

80. My favorite poem is ‘poem convincing you to leave your wife’ by Olena Kalytiak Davis.

79. Favorite colognes: Dior Homme Sport, Bulgari Black, Guerlin Homme, L’Eau Par Kenzo

78. The first cologne I wore was Abercrombie & Fitch’s Woods (now discontinued) in 9th grade.

77. My alma mater lost 31 straight basketball games. I was there when we broke the streak & I stormed the court

76. I won a contest on bolt.com where I got a 12 pack of Pepsi Blue before it’s general release

75. Inspired by @idle_hour ‘s dissection story, my 8th grade lab partner is now a post-op transsexual

74. I am giggling imagining @colintrafferty sitting in his chair giggling @ @THE_REAL_OLIU while @idle_hour shakes her head

73. My favorite writer, Albert Goldbarth, made fun of me to my face at AWP in Atlanta. I have vowed revenge.

72. In highschool, I was in a band that played 3 shows and then they got a new singer which was definitely a good move

71. I still dream all the time, but I’m always ridiculously calm during nightmares and wake up fine.

70. I had awful night terrors, to the point where my dad had to remove shelves in my bookcase cause I would climb up them

69. I didn’t understand the concept of ’69’ as a child, but got in trouble for drawing 69 in bubble letters in my notebook

68. My roommate in Belgium was from Milan and was a fashion model. I called him ‘Dani Apples’

67. I just thought ‘maybe I can publish all of these tweets!’ but I hate work that deals with googling/gchat/facebook/etc

66. I have a fake twitter account at @THE_REAL_OLIU which I have deemed ‘The Official Fake Twitter Account of

65. I have a ridiculous amount of love in my heart. (awww)

64. I hooked up my friend’s Nintendo 64 for him for the first time and we jumped around and played Wave Race until 3am.

63. I grew up Catholic, love Catholicism, went to Catholic school, but I don’t go to church.

62. The most impressive thing I’ve seen: The Cliffs of Mohr. The second: Michelangelo’s Pietas

61. I love Tuscaloosa, but I fear that everyone I love in Tuscaloosa is slowly leaving.

60. I was bullied for being ‘the fat kid’ so when that Aussie kid Farouq-Dominatored that scrawny kid I yelled ‘fuck yes’.

59. I’m a Colts fan because my dad is one–my mom is a Giants fan, but Giants fans were mean to me at school, so, go Horse.

58. I give good hugs. Seriously, you should try one.

57. I write/eat with my right hand, but throw with my left.

56. I own 33 different track jackets.

55. I’m convinced that I will move to Ukraine at some point. I don’t know why.

54. My optometrist said I had the worst eyesight of anyone he’s ever seen. (-8.0 & -7.5)

53. I’m not OCD, but I always count stairs as I walk up them.

52. I was born in New Brunswick, NJ, but the only New Brunswick I knew was in Canada so as a kid I thought I was Canadian

51. I used to bite my nails all of the time, but one day in October I was having an awful day, so I stopped

50. When I’m nervous, I rub my knuckle against my eyebrow.

49. In college, I co-founded a satire newspaper called ‘Dog Balls’, which was referenced by our school’s president/priest

48. If I wasn’t a teacher I’d probably be a speechwriter.

47. I lost the 5th grade spelling bee on the word ‘chalice’

46. I fucking love my job and am ridiculously thankful for it every day.

45. I can typically recognize a song within one note–sometimes I can tell by the hiss of the audio.

44. I learned how to code in HTML when I was 13. I had dedicated server space on my grandfather’s military antique website

43. I was vegetarian for 2 years. My first meal back was at Ixia in Baltimore (which I just found out is closed? sadface)

42. First drink was goldschlager. First legal drink (EU) was courvoisier. First legal drink (US) was Resurrection Ale

41. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll submit to online journals, new ones, or print journals but only if they’re pretty.

40. I am a sucker for anything alternate reality–especially if dystopian. North Korean takeover? Oh heck yeah.

39. My worst enemy died & so I stayed indoors for 3 days thinking that I would be dead in order to balance everything out

38. My first real kiss wasn’t with the foreign exchange student, but with the family that housed the exchange student

37. I’ve said this a lot, but I prefer female writers to male ones.

36. I’ve been in four fist fights. Record: 4-0. Concussion, Broken Nose, Broken Nose, Black Eye. #dontmesswithme

35. My mother swears I was the perfect child, except for when I threw a temper tantrum because I couldn’t go on Dumbo

34. These facts are all true because when I lie, I start shaking and become short of breath, which I blame on Catholicism.

33. I’ve probably watched Larry Bird: A Living Legend more times than anything else in my life. Also, ‘Hoosiers’.

32. My best friend’s girlfriend’s roommate was Joanna Newsom & we didn’t realize it–she was ‘a bitchy girl with a harp’

31. I beat Michael Phelps in Beer Pong.

30. I type all of my work in Cambria. Anything but Garamond. I’d take Arial over Garamond.

29. Yes, I have met @ladygaga

28. That being said, I was a hardcore kid who saw Fugazi 10X, and pretty much every NJHC/punk/emo band you can think of

27. I used to go to raves and as a result have a lot of trashy friends whom I adore for their ridiculousness/fake breasts

26. My grandfather was vice president of Northeast operations of the now defunct Eastern Airlines

25. At the last NYC Dismemberment Plan show, @travismorrison spilled a rum and coke on me.

24. I think ranch dressing is the grossest thing on the planet, followed closely by mayonnaise. It is the devil’s semen.

23. I was homecoming king my Junior year of HS

22. 22 is my favorite number.

21. Kid Rock offered to buy me a beer when I was 15-years-old

20. The media guide for my football team listed me as 6’3 240 lbs, which was incredibly generous.

19. I got suspended once for reformatting the harddrives of 3 library computers at Hunterdon Central (I then transferred)

18. The greatest/most bizarre day of my life happened in Madrid, although I won’t tell my Catalan family that.

17. When I lived in Belgium, I met the winner of ‘Belgian Idol’ in a sandwich shop

16. I just received a phonecall from my bff Erin Casey, who’s father always asks me ‘Still in Tuscaloosa? Christ almighty’

15. The first poem I remember writing was about a Frisbee on the roof.

14. I can’t turn my right arm palm up.

13. I have synaethesia, though not as intense as my cousin, @one_mint_julep

12. My grandfather founded the Barcelona Marathon

11. I’m obsessed with knowing things, ergo, I am on wikipedia pretty much 24/7

10. Language proficiency: English > French > Dutch > Catalan > All Other Languages

9. I started the first grade when I was 4.

8. My high school girlfriend dumped me for the lead singer of Life of Agony

7. I’ve broken five of my fingers.

6. I won the Knights of Columbus free-throw shooting competition in 7th grade.

5. I’ve beaten Contra without the 30 Lives Code.

4. I have a scar on my wrist from when a 10 foot bronze giraffe statue fell on me.

3. I love New Jersey, but I could never move back there.

2. I don’t know how to ride a bike.

1.  I have a very high tolerance for terrible horror films

Today I found out that Casiotone Alone, the solo music project of singer/songwriter Owen Ashworth since 1997, is done. Like, Owen’s over it. Which I guess is just fine, I mean, I guess good for him. He’ll move on to new projects that I’ll get to listen to and all, but … wow, it just hit me for a second, okay?

I was introduced to Casiotone by my ex, Jables; he was always putting Casiotone songs on his Unicycles series. I came to love the music in my own right, though, and pretty soon CFTPA songs were going on every few mixes of mine as well. Now, there are a lot of bands Jables introduced me to, but … Casiotone sort of felt like our secret. I know he’s a semi-popular dude, but not popular enough that most people we knew ever had heard of him. We could only count on was each other to be excited when Owen put out a new album or EP. Casiotone fell into the category of “Semi-Obscure or Offbeat Things We Liked Together,” like anise-flavored liqueur and Melville House novellas and Sergio Leone westerns and when Will Oldham appeared in movies.

// I only saw CFTPA in concert once—it was right after Jables moved into his big, lovely loft on Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg, just after his stint in the McKibben lofts, and the show was in the basement of this place on the edge of Bushwick and Queens called Silent Barn. This was back when Jables still went to concerts, maybe he was even delivering papers for Show Paper still. This was when I still lived in DC, and everything in Brooklyn seemed foreign and magical to me, particularly these “show spaces,” as people referred to them. Up ’til that spring, I’d only seen shows at, you know, concert venues. Legitimate places. Or friends backyards and basements in high school, I guess. These places sort of walked the line between the two, and had names like “Secret Project Robot” and “Death by Audio.” They were dirty and hot with the grossest bathrooms you’d ever seen, if they even had bathrooms. You bought your single beers at the corner store beforehand and brought ’em with you, or you paid $3 for a warm can of PRB once you were there, or maybe some cheap vodka and kool-aid. I am aware how Un.Hip. I sound talking about these early experiences in Brooklyn, but that is okay. I’ve never really claimed to be hip; mostly, I am excited about things. My first time at one of these places, Jables and Heidi who was briefly a model but then moved to Alaska to learn farming and I saw Knyfe at Death by Audio, and the whole crowd kinda of stormed the stage and people were taking their shirts off and it was a big sweaty dance party as the Sonic Ninja guy shouted about his race and his tight pants. This was in the waning heyday of hipster rap, you know, like 2007 or 2008, back when the kids in Williamsburg and on H Street NE in DC and probably elsewhere but that is only where I know were still wearing Sally Jesse Raphael glasses and brightly-colored high-tops, before (but very, very soon before) we all bought into this back-to-the-earth movement and started wearing flannels and jean shorts and all the restaurants began serving things in mason jars and now even your craigslist lover who is a real estate agent for godssakes has Ronnybrook Farms glass milk bottles on his kitchen counter-tops. When all of this happened, or not long after, Jables stopped going to shows and only half-heartedly put out Unicycles mixes and started eating elaborate meat and talking about organic catering businesses and rooftop farming. I noticed he changed part of his bio the other day from, “has an obscene passion for all things that make noise,” to “has an obscene passion for all things that grow.” Two words. It is funny how fluid identity is. I was so mixed up in libertarian happy hours at the time.

There’s a bit of Bruce Springsteen in Casiotone songs—none of the bigness of the Boss, of course, nor the machismo; but the quiet little narrative details of the songwriting, which tends toward stories about quiet little lives and quiet bouts of desperation. This is from “Blue Corolla,” off Twinkle Echo (2003):

We used to drive / to Phoneix in the summers

To see your sister and mom / and go swimming in the pool

We’d take the 15 to the 40 / Over to Route 66

Before we dropped out of school

Now you work in a candy store

And we don’t talk so much anymore

But I wonder sometimes  / If you’ve still got that same ride,

with the dents on the driver’s side?

That’s one my favorites. But not my favorite favorite. Perhaps my favorite (and I say perhaps because I’m not quite sure I can choose) is “Hey Eleanor,” also from Twinkle Echo:

eleanor it seems / your hearts on your sleeve

and its the reason / you want to leave

so if youre gonna go

just go

just go

you’ve come to understand / that letter in your hand

it came from a boy / who wont be your man

its tragic, yes its true

dont let it ruin this town for you

The song is only 1 minute and 29 seconds long; the longest song on the whole album is 3:45, and it’s one of only two songs over three minutes. They’re tiny. Maybe Bruce Springsteen is the wrong analogy. Maybe Casiotone songs are the aural equivalent of Miranda July stories, minus the occasional mysticism.

For a while, my favorite was ‘Young Shields,’ but that was back in 2005. That was when Jables and I were both still living in Ohio. It was on one of the first mixes he gave me. One of the first 20, at least. The song is sort of a tongue-in-cheek disaffected youth anthem, and I used to listen to it every morning on my way to work at the daily business paper I worked for then.

There’s a shield around us it’s invisible and soundless and we drink too much and fuck too soon smoke cigarettes in rented rooms, we quit our jobs and shoot the moon and cut our writes and sleep ’til noon …

It is probably only because of this line that the song reminded me not of Jables, but of another boy, a lawyer, who drove up from Washington, D.C. one weekend around that time and rented a room at the Hyatt in downtown Columbus. It was non-smoking, but we smoked inside anyway, and had sex, and when he tells stories about that weekend all he can remark on is how cheap the beers at the Columbus bars were.. This lawyer and I had met at a libertarian event in DC. I liked him a lot more than Jables at the time. This was when Jables still wore black-rimmed glasses and band t-shirts, ate a macrobiotic diet and played in a noise band. I was so mixed up in the Columbus theater scene at the time.

// But anyway, back to Silent Barn, back to that Casiotone show. It was a good show. But you know, actually—now that I’ve taken such a long, rambling route to get here—I realize I really don’t have much more to say about the show itself than that. It was a good show, and I remember really enjoying it at the time, and thinking how funny, and also how very Chicago Owen was (though that bit about Chicago sounds much more like Jables talking than me; he has some sort of chip on his shoulder like a bag of kettle cooked, as my friend Charley says, about that city). And we were there with Jeff, who was Jables’ best friend in Cincinnati (they had, in fact, made a pact to move to New york together) and still at the time, but then they grew apart; Jables said it was because Jeff became a douchebag and started only dating actresses and wanting to go out in the city now that he was working for a high-end tequila company, but I think the truth is probably something more nuanced. I was stoned, because I’d just started smoking pot again and not drinking, and I was sitting in a big orange velour chair in the back corner under a hanging lamp and Jeff took a cool picture of me. I was smoking a cigarette,, you could smoke inside. There was a fridge and a stove behind Owen’s keyboard, because really, Silent Barn was just someone’s basement. But besides all of that, I can’t really tell you too much about the concert; I guess it was just mostly evocative of a certain time. I was so mixed up in wonder then.



Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a journalist/essayist/poet/blogger and sometimes other things. She is currently nomadic, but has previously lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Washington, D.C. and various cities in Ohio. She blogs at http://elizabethnolanbrown.com.

Now that economists, sociologists, conspiracy theorists, scientists and my Aunt all agree that the New World Order—with some help from Oprah Winfrey and the McDonald’s Corporation—designed and distributed the Swine Flu, we can discuss their motive.

The economists believe the leaders of the New World Order want to make money from the vaccine.  The sociologists say they want to correct the world’s overpopulation.    The conspiracy theorists are sure they’re using it to institute Martial Law.  The scientists think they’re just experimenting.  And my Aunt is convinced that the Swine Flu is a personal attack against her because she quit drinking.  She says for the past three decades the leaders of the New World Order have been relying on her contribution in alcohol taxes to pay for their yearly TeeVee upgrades.

But they’re all wrong, especially my Aunt. The leaders of the New World Order don’t have TeeVees. They’re too smart to sabotage themselves with their own brainwashing, propaganda-generating invention.  They did designed and distributed the Swine Flu, but not for any of the reasons the economists, sociologists, conspiracy theorists, scientists, and my Aunt give.  They designed and distributed the Swine Flu to replace the Bird Flu, just as they had designed and distributed the Bird Flu to replace the Fish Flu.  And the New World Order designed and distributed the Fish Flu because they love us.

Sure they’ve fucked us a few times.  The nuclear bombs dropped on the civilian populations of Japan, the white phosphorous sprayed on the Palestinians, the millions of rounds of depleted uranium fired into Iraq and Afghanistan—the New World Order was behind those and every other major crime against humanity.  But who doesn’t fuck their lovers? Yeah the leaders of the New World Order fucked us, but they had their reasons:

They killed a few hundred-thousand Japanese so the children of the dead would be turned off by bombs and start making cars.  They sprayed white phosphorous on the Palestinians because the movies made by Jews told them to.  They fired depleted uranium into Iraq and Afghanistan to get oil for our cars and heroin for our stars.  And they designed and distributed the Fish Flu because…

…because 40,000 years ago, when a few control-freak cavemen started the club now known as the New World Order, there wasn’t much to do, eat, enjoy, or befriend.  So the members of this club did something about it:  They designed and distributed the Fish Flu and gave us something to do, food to eat, fun to have, and friends to make.  And today people around the globe are, just as that club of cavemen intended, fucking fish, eating fish, catching fish, and making friends with fish.

If you don’t believe me about the fucking, take a boat down the Amazon River and watch the natives.  Look close and you’ll see them swimming with Pink River Dolphins.  Look closer and you’ll see them fucking the Pink River Dolphins.  The Amazonian natives have been fucking the dolphins for thousands of years, ever since they learned that these fish have vaginas like a woman.

But the fucking may soon end because after shooting their load, a native kills the dolphin.  He has to.  The dolphin’s womanlike vagina suffers contraptions and locks the fucking native’s cock and doesn’t release it unless killed.  And now the Pink River Dolphin, after getting fucked for thousands of years, is on the endangered species list.

The natives know they should stop fucking the dolphins.  They want to stop fucking the dolphins.  They love the dolphins.  But they can’t.  The Fish Flu makes them obsess over these beautiful pink fish…and their vaginas.

Everyone has some form of the Fish Flu, and everyone fucks them in one way or another.  But only those with an advanced form of the flu fuck fish in a sexual way.  Most fuck them by depopulating them in other ways.

Those with a minor case of the Fish Flu depopulate them at meal time.  These people not only eat fish, but they enjoy eating fish.  And I’m not talking about some Tuna soaked in Mayo.  I’m talking about Sardines from the can—bones and brains.  I’m talking about raw Salmon and Fried catfish.  If you got the Fish Flu you don’t give a damn if Catfish live off trash. You’ll keep frying them up and gobbling them down even if they add Anthrax and AIDS to their diet.

So many people are in this first stage of the Fish Flu that the practice of eating fish has not only been accepted but has been embraced around the world.  Even those in the mainstream—who are too busy jacking off to the newest American Idiot to read this—are shoving fish down their throats.  Burger King, for fucks sakes, sells a fish sandwich.

And don’t for a second think that Americans are the only ones eating these gilded bastards.  The leaders of the New World Order have made fish a staple of the human diet.  People across the globe are marinating, pickling, smoking, baking, frying, grilling, poaching, and steaming them as you read this.

There are even eating establishments that, believe it or not, specialize in fish.  I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.  And these places are advertised on national television by advertising agencies made up of people severely sick with the Fish Flu.  They write brainwashing slogans like this one for Long John Silvers:  “Today there’s a brand new way…Go fish! Now you got a choice…Go fish!  No matter what you ask us, you’re going to get your wish…Go fish!”

Then there are the medical experts with the Fish Flu who have been publishing phony studies for decades about the health benefits of eating fish.  They have always said that fish gives us protein, but the lies are getting worse in recent years.  More and more studies are coming out on what they call Omega-3 fatty acids.

Even with their sloppy-ass handwriting, the medical experts have convinced people that these fishy acids not only won’t burn holes in our stomachs but that they will actually help us.  They say Omega-3 fatty acids help our blood and nerves and skin and brain and heart and eyes and mood and sex and finances and even our chances of getting into heaven.

The Fish Flu is out of control.  The leaders of the New World Order didn’t want this to happen.  They didn’t know people would go from fucking Bass in the face to fucking Pink River Dolphins onto the endangered species list.  They didn’t know people would go from eating Mayonnaise soaked Tuna fish sandwiches to eating trash consuming Catfish.  Mainstream restaurants specializing in fish, brainwashing advertisements promoting fish, phony medical studies highlighting the health benefits of fish—the New World Order didn’t want this to happen.

They created the Fish Flu because they love us.  They didn’t know people with the Fish Flu would go from catching fish for fun to catching them for profit.  That’s right—people across the globe are catching fish as a profession.  They’re called fishermen.

These fishermen wake up early and, with their unrelenting desire to catch fish overruling their natural desire to sleep, they head to the nearest body of water and wait hours, sometimes days, and they sit through wind, rain, and snow while reading books written by other victims of the Fish Flu—like Richard Brautigan—all in hope of catching a fish, any fish.

And they’ve come up with all sorts of ways to accomplish their goal.  Most use contraptions made of rods, reels, lines, and hooks.  They then attach small pieces of food to their hooks—or even other fish—and accessories like weights, floats, and swivels before casting it out into their chosen body of water, crossing their fingers, and donating their blood to thirsty mosquitoes.

The fisherman will catch something before all his blood is gone, but it’s usually just a boot or, at best, a minnow.  But these fishermen are infected with the Fish Flu.  They don’t give up.  Instead they’ll board a boat, if possible a boat made for fishing called a “fishing boat,” and they’ll head out on the water.

The fishing boats work.  A fisherman will catch all sorts of fish from them—Bluegill, Redfish, Salmon, Trout, Pike, Crappies, Sunfish, Perch, Marlin, Sharks, and Mermaids.  Occasionally a fisherman will even catch Don Knotts.  The fishing boats work so well that fishing has become a lucrative business, and the Fish Flu a lucrative sickness.

Sick fishermen make so much money selling fish to sick fish-eaters that an industry dedicated solely to catching fish formed called “the fishing industry.”  There are even “fishing villages” where entire populations with the Fish Flu devote their lives to catching and harvesting fish.

Not all fishermen catch fish for profit though.  Some catch them for sport.  These fishermen consider catching a fish the same as hitting a homerun or getting a touchdown, and there are even competitions where hundreds of them meet up to drink watery beer and see who can catch the fish with the worst case of diabetes.  If one of them catches an especially obese fish, he’ll get it stuffed and hang it in his basement and then sneak away from his wife’s side at night and jack off to it.

Fishermen are fucked in the head, I know, but they’re nothing compared to those with the most advanced form of the Fish Flu—those who keep fish as pets.  Don’t laugh.  It’s true, and it’s a serious problem.  It’s a problem that causes people from all parts of the world to enjoy the company of fish.  Goldfish, Guppies, Bettas, and the deceivingly titled Angel Fish are some of their best friends.

For information purposes I conducted a random phone survey asking people who their best friend was.  One out of every nine people that didn’t slam the phone down named a fish.  Other common answers included their mothers and Justin Bieber.  When I asked how they had made friends with Bieber, they said on Facebook.  I then said, LOL, and they said, STFU.

People who make friends with fish spend thousands of dollars on aquariums and cleaning supplies.  Their aquariums are usually made of glass and come in many sizes and shapes.  Some have filtering and lighting systems.  Others have televisions and toasters.  But they all require lots of maintenance.  Fish shit and other precious bodily fluids must be removed weekly with cleaning agents like lime dissolvers, water conditioners, wipes, and douches.  But those with the Fish Flu don’t mind.  They’d give their fish friends nightly back massages if requested.

I had a friend with the Fish Flu.  One of his fish friends requested a back massage.  It was a Betta fish.  My Fish Flu friend happily obliged.  The Betta fish died as a result.  Word spread.  Now Betta fish are angry.  They puff their cheeks out at humans, and they kill any fish that tries to make a Fish Flu friend.

The Fish Flu wasn’t created to anger Betta fish.  The New World Order designed and distributed it 40,000 years ago because they love us.  It has since affected every culture and continent on this planet we call Earth because it has a circumference equal to God’s cock and his disciples misheard him when he told them to call it planet Girth.  The Fish Flu gave us something to do, food to eat, fun to have, and friends to make.  And we’ve been fucking fish, eating fish, catching fish, and befriending fish since.

When I write, “we,” I’m referring to the human race.  I neither have nor had the Fish Flu.  I didn’t put my cock in the warm, moist mouth of a Carp, and I certainly didn’t thrust it back and forth until every muscle in my body shivered with pleasure.  I didn’t put a beautiful pink piece of smoked Salmon between a bagel with cream cheese, and I certainly didn’t eat it in the shower so I could wash the oils out of my mouth before guiltily kissing my girlfriend goodbye for work.  I didn’t trade my car for a fishing boat, and I certainly didn’t miss every one of the San Francisco Giants World Series games because I was using it to fish Lake Merced.  And I didn’t throw a fish themed graduation party, and I certainly didn’t make a guest list of only fish.

But if I did have the Fish Flu and if I did do those things, then I would make sure I didn’t do them again because they’re wrong.  Kurt Cobain was wrong.  It’s not okay to eat fish even if they don’t have feelings.  Hemingway was wrong.  Anyone can’t be a fisherman in May even with heatstroke.  The Chinese Emperors of the Imperial City were wrong.  Fish don’t make good pets even if you breed them with dogs and call them Pugs. The Ancient Greeks were wrong.  Might does not make right, and rape is wrong even if the victim is a fish.

Socrates agreed with me and was killed for it.  People with the Fish Flu are violent, and their violence has created a problem.  Too many fish are dieing from all the fucking and eating and fishing and massaging.  Soon all the fish will be dead.  There are already 1,173 fish species on the endangered list, and many more will join the list if someone doesn’t stop the Fish Flu.

Not that I would care if every fish died.  The oceans would become pure, pure enough to throw hooks into without having to worry about a fish coming along and trying to pull me under.  I could even take a cruise and enjoy the pleasant blue scenery in peace.  The last time I took a cruise I couldn’t enjoy my surroundings because a pack of Porpoises kept following and antagonizing me with their evil smirks.

The trouble with all the fish dieing is that most humans are victims of the Fish Flu, and if these victims lose access to fish terrible things will happen.  Just look at the vegans.  They all have the Fish Flu, but they force themselves—righteously, in my opinion—to restrain from eating fish.  And what’s happening to them?

They are suffering from withdrawal: Their bodies and minds are failing them.  Take a stroll down San Francisco’s Valencia Street to see for yourself.  There are hundreds of them, all pale, skinny, and shaking.  Their hair is falling out as they insanely rant in support of gearless bicycles and ball sack squeezing jeans.

In extreme cases, a Fish Flu victim who doesn’t eat fish will die, instantly, from a heart attack.  This is caused from a metabolic addiction to the Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish that are supposedly good for you.  They aren’t good for you.  They burn holes in your stomach.  But a person with the Fish Flu has to have these fishy acids flowing through their blood at all times.  If they can’t eat fish at every meal, they have to take capsules filled with fishy oils or else their hearts will shutdown.

So it’s clear, as much as I hate to admit it, that we must sustain the fish supply.  We can’t have all our friends and family with the Fish Flu dropping down dead.  The leaders of the New World Order agree.  They created the Fish Flu because they love us.  They wanted us to fuck fish, not sleep with them like Fredo Corleone.

The New World Order’s first attempt at sustaining the fish population involved spreading lies—lies about fish containing dangerous metals and parasites.  They thought the victims of the Fish Flu would cut back on their fish consumption.  But instead of cutting back, the Fish Flu victims started drinking Kryptonite and eating more fish than ever.  The Kryptonite, they believed, defended against the Man of Steel and the Parasite.

Maybe it did, but that doesn’t matter because the New World Order took a different approach.  They designed and distributed the Bird Flu to replace the Fish Flu.  At first, the Bird Flu was a success.  Birds, with their ability to talk, made better friends than fish.  They also, when cooked with a beer can up the ass, made better meals than fish.  Most victims of the Fish Flu were happy to become victims of the Bird Flu, even the fishermen.

The fishermen became birders and spent their days birding instead of fishing.  Although the equipment and tactics are the same, birding is superior to fishing.  Instead of casting your line into a mass of water and waiting for a fish to bite that may not exist, as a birder you cast your line into the air when and only when a bird is in sight.  If done correctly, the targeted bird will attack the bait and, with a bit of luck, the hook will attach itself to the beak so you can reel your catch in.

The best part of birding is that you can do it anywhere.  Unlike water and the fish that live in it, the sky is everywhere and so are birds.  Birders can be happy even in big cities, because pigeons are both fun and easy to catch.  They come right up to you and will eat anything.  I once saw a birder catch a Pigeon using a copy of the New Yorker.  Like I said, they’ll eat anything, even shit.

But the ambitious birder will want to leave the city and try to catch a bird of prey.  Eagles, Hawks, Falcons, and Owls—these are the birds to catch if you’re looking for a challenge.  To succeed in such a challenge, it’s important to use live bait.  Small birds like Pheasants work best.  If you can’t catch a Pheasant, you have no business trying to catch a bird of prey.

If you can catch a Pheasant and you do want a challenge but you don’t feel comfortable casting a bird to its death, I recommend you try to catch a Vulture.  To catch a Vulture you only need some dead meat.  A cheap steak from your local grocery will do.  Just put the steak on your hook and cast it into the wind.  A Vulture will, if you are a skilled birder, attack the steak and get hooked in the process.  From there, it’s only a matter of reeling it in without allowing the line to break.

Regardless of the kind you catch—a Humming Bird, a Bald Eagle, a Raven, or a British Woman—the options of what to do with your bird are endless.  If you’re hungry, you can cook and eat it.  If you’re lonely, you can cage and befriend it.  If you’re a youngster, you can take it to show-and-tell.  You wonder why Vivian Vixen let Donald Dimwit make-out with her behind the bleachers?  It’s because he brought that freshly caught Blue Jay to show-and-tell last week.

Some birders are Michael Vick fans.  They enter their birds into birdfights.  This consists of plucking all the feathers from a bird and then, after tying it to your line, releasing it in the direction of another birder’s featherless bird.  They will meet in the air, and, at the humiliation of being seen naked, the two birds will claw each other to death.

The leaders of the New World Order were happy.  Most victims of the Fish Flu became victims of the Bird Flu.  The fish populations were maintained, and people still had friends to make, fun to have, and food to eat…but did people have something to do?

Victims of the Fish Flu fuck fish, but victims of the Bird Flu can’t fuck birds.  As the Griswold family proved in the Christmas of 1989, a bird’s insides are too damn dry.  You can’t fuck them.  So the leaders of the New World Order—knowing that the Bird Flu could not succeed without giving people something to do—designed and distributed the Swine Flu to replace the Bird Flu.

Pigs are great for fucking.  They also taste pretty damn good and are fun to hangout with.  But can a victim of the Swine Flu have fun with a pig?  Fish Flu victims have fun fishing.  Bird Flu victims have fun birding.  Can a Swine Flu victim go pigging? Not really.  Those who’ve tried it say dragging a pig through the mud is too much work and not enough fun.

So what is the New World Order to do?  They love us, and they want to give us something to do, food to eat, fun to have, and friends to make.  We’re running out of fish.  We can’t fuck birds.  Pigs are no fun.  So, in my opinion, they only have one option left: they must design and distribute a drug that suppresses our sex drive, appetite, boredom, and loneliness.  The drug will be FDA approved, of course, and doctors can get rich prescribing it, pharmacists can get rich creating it, cops can get rich enforcing it, and the leaders of the New World Order can get rich taxing it.

A brave new world it will be.

Christopher Forsley writes and lives in San Francisco. He contributes to 16th & Mission Comix and his book of satire, Bums of the Bay, was recently published by SEVEN7H TANGENT. Later this year Spark Plug Comics will release his first graphic novel, A Joe Story.

Illustration by Cameron Forsley.

The writer is a reader first, even later on. To get in the mood of writing, I read. Which brings me to it:

Some tricks you can’t teach to Sleek Machines. That’s all I’m saying. Forget the ink and paper crowd versus the iPading/Kindling/Nooking technocrats, man, I’m just saying there are some things.

O, for leafing through. Moving over the sheets, pages tickling your fingertips. Or maybe it bites you, because who likes a mussing rough hand. And how bad are paper cuts? But you know there’s that masochism. And when fingers do find purchase on a page, it’s velvet.

The yellowed mustiness of vintage copies—like they’ve been hotboxed in cigar smoke. I can’t imagine reading Winesburg, Ohio any other way. The scarring: note bened with flowery stars, brackets, underscores so vigorous as to break through the taut page. The bruising: welts of red sauce and red wine—and what is that, is that vomit? (A best friend puked on my Dharma Bums.) The pages crinkle here, why, because it’s sad, because I cried here, right here. This one’s gold metallic banding blistered and popped, because a boyfriend put it in the microwave when it got wet. It got wet because I brought it on a john boat snorkeling.

Do yours ears dog? You can drop a book and it closes like a mouth shutting up, or it lands cracked open on its face—and well, that’s kind of superstitious, like maybe there’s something on either of those pages which you need to see. You can put your head in it. When you remember about-where a line or a passage is—on a left page, one of the first paragraphs—and resting your eyes on it, it’s right where you remembered it to be.

Between pages, you find old receipts and old notes, more paper trail. Sometimes I find leaves. There’s losing a page in the wind. There’s dedications to prior owners. There is the marginalia of prior owners. Those times when they underlined something that you love and would have underlined if they hadn’t already done it, and then it’s a threesome—you, the other reader, and the author.

Lending out a book is an act of love. The last page. The last sentence. You knew it would come. There’s hugging a just-finished book to your chest. You being bereft because you just lost some people, very dear.

Shelving: I curate my bookshelves by the color of the spines of the books. Yours too, if you would let me. Sections of hot roses and maroon; teal, navy, ultraseafoam; black/white; pale yellow, bright-bright sunshine; lavender to mauve… The spine of well-read books can look like laugh lines.

Whatever happens, I love how it’s been.

In kindergarten I went to a school where I learned that Jesus was the man who fermented peoples’ water and went around doing good deeds. Sort of like a leprechaun, but half naked all the time.  I learned that God was his dad, but so was Joseph, which confused me.  I figured Joseph was more like an adopted dad, and God was like the sperm donor, which I knew about from listening to NPR.  Every day we were handed biblical coloring book pages and commanded to fill them in.  I colored Mary and Joseph purple and red, and extended Jesus’ toga into suspenders so that it was less revealing.  Mrs. Swain got me in trouble for that.

“KATHLEEN,”  she screamed, “JESUS IS WEARING A TOGA BECAUSE IT IS HOT IN NAZARETH. DO NOT REDESIGN HIS ENTIRE OUTFIT, OKAY? JUST COLOR WHAT THEY GAVE YOU, OKAY?”

I wished I could color Jesus and his toga as nicely as Emily, the girl who sat across from me.  Emily’s Jesus was always perfectly orange skinned, with a nice brown toga — each brush stroke struck with dazzling precision.  Emily always had perfect braids, and her jumper was never stained.  I despised her.

One day we were given a more creative assignment, and we were asked to draw what we think God looks like.  I drew King Tritent from the Little Mermaid, because he was the biggest authoritaty figure I could think of. Only instead of a mermaids’ tail I gave him a long white robe.  He looked just like Gandalf, but I was unaware of the existence of Lord of The Rings at the time.     Next we drew heaven, and my heaven was purple.  It was filled with stick figures, and they were all smiling and dancing with each other in  different colors. Even their skin was purple, red, green.

“KATHLEEN. HEAVEN IS WHITE. THE ANGELS WEAR WHITE, OKAY? JUST CHANGE AROUND THE COLORS AND GIVE THEM SOME WINGS.”

But I didn’t want heaven to be white.  White seemed to me a boring shade, and I didn’t think that God and Jesus would give their house such a blase color scheme.  White meant you could not drink grape juice lest you spill it on the couch.  White meant finicky, it meant un-fun.  My mom never let me buy white jackets because she said I’d stain them.  I kept my heaven a rainbow fantasia,  and it was handed back with a check minus.  ”NOT KINDERGARTEN QUALITY.”  Mrs. Swain’s black print scrawled — her handwriting that looked like a scream.

This didn’t bother me. But it bothered my mother.  In first grade I was withdrawn from Catholic school and dropped into public, where I spent the next five years of my life saying the pledge of allegiance without “under god” and not celebrating birthdays in class because some children were Jehovah Witnesses and it would be insensitive to eat cupcakes and sing songs when Jean was forbidden to by orders of his religion.  We sang Kwanzaa songs in class for diversity, but we were not allowed to sing about Christmas.  We learned about the eight days of Hanukkah and the oil that burned out and we ate potato latkes in class, which were enjoyable and interesting activities.  But Jesus was taboo. He and his toga had gone out of style.  Instead we sang about snow.

For the start of middle school I returned to the world of kilts and knee socks, as my parents had decided that five years of being referred to as Kathleen She’s Smart were enough.  Immediately I was introduced to Sister Perpetua, who hated me because I covered my book with tin foil to make it shiny.  The next year there was Sister Perpetua, who loved me suddenly because she was senile and could not remember who I was.  She was constantly saying “Mahgaret you are so MATURE.” I smiled, not bothering to correct her, and pulled up my knee socks.

In many ways I was becoming more spiritual, and yet the more I learned about religion and faith the more questions bubbled forth. In seventh grade I had a lot of issues with original sin, with blind faith, and blind forgiveness.  Anything that started with ‘Blind’ gave me the creeps. It seemed like the opposite of knowledge.  It reminded me of cults and Tyler Durden in fight club. Every time I raised my hand the teachers would try to answer as best they could with their textbook replies.

“That’s a good question.”  They always started out. “But the Bible tells us that…..faith and love……are the answers to all mysteries…… even when……. and faith….. and love……. do you understand now?”

Sometimes I’d say yes to take them off the hot seat.

But sometimes I’d say “No.”

I don’t understand, and the answer they gave wasn’t satisfying.   I wanted to assign definitions to faith. I wanted to know that questioning was okay, because if faith means that you shut up all the questions like whack-a-moles I was sure that I could never have any.

I understood Doubting Thomas better than any of the other apostles.  I didn’t understand why he got so much blame just for being a little more skeptical.  We receive so much spurious information every day — like rumors, the stuff of the National Enquirer.  How do we delve into any of it deeper, or know the people we love deeply until we doubt what we first receive?

I got A’s in religion, and was told not to ask any more questions.

“But what if someone is an atheist? Or they’re gay and don’t want to repent, but they’ve been a great person and done good deeds for people their entire life?  And someone else, who is a Catholic, prays all the time but never helps anyone and is mean to people? Will the mean Catholic go to heaven over the Nice Atheist?”

“Um,” was their reply.

Um.

Kathleen Radigan is a sixteen year old person, writer, and girl. Her poems and short fiction have appeared (or will appear) in The Newport Review, Certain Circuits, Hackwriters, The Birds Eye ReView, Slow Trains, and several others.

The women at Weight Watchers are tough.  We are a gang.  We are the Bloods, the Crips, and the Latin Kings all rolled into one.  Sure, we look harmless enough.  Ten or fifteen portly women standing like preschoolers in a straight line outside the door, waiting for the loud mouthed receptionist to swing it open and begin to weigh us.  But make no mistake about it, if you cross us, if you come to a meeting already thin and complaining about five extra pounds that you have gained over the winter and need to lose before bikini season, we will cut you.  We will grab you with our fat little paws, roll you up into a tiny little ball, and kick your skinny ass out of here.  Because this is our turf.  This basement of the Electrical Workers Union, with its mundane pine paneling and shiny medicinal floors, belongs to us every Thursday night from seven until eight fifteen.  So, if you have less than ten pounds to lose, stay the fuck home.  Get a stomach flu, stick your finger down your throat,  or swallow a laxative, we don’t care.  Just don’t come here.

“Ugh, I feel gross,” says Sherri (with an i).

“You’ll be fine,” says a voice from somewhere in the front of the line.

“No, I had a brownie last night and I swear to God it went right to my ass.”

“No, it takes a while to catch up with you.  You’ll probably see it next week,” says a different voice.

“I hate this,” sighs Sherri.

I am late, as always, so I am in the back and can barely hear the riveting comparisons of this week’s sins.  The line snakes around the long thin corridor and is full of women sizing one another up.  We smile and greet one another like we are soldiers on the same side, but internally we are praying for one another’s demise.  I am nowhere near as big as she is.  Wow, I hope I don’t look like that.   We stand staring at one another, bound together reluctantly by overindulgence.

It is warm out and all of us have come dressed as close to naked as we can get without being arrested for indecent exposure.  I’m wearing tiny little knit shorts, a tank top, and socks with sandals.  You cannot stand barefoot on the scale, that is a rule.  You cannot hear your weight, the specific number, out loud.  That is the other rule.  In my hands I hold my bible.  The list of everything that went into my body this week, with the exception of the Snickers Bar and three Tootsie Rolls I jammed in my mouth only moments earlier in the car.

“Wow, down three more pounds, Amye!  Nice work!  What’s that bring you to now?”  Joan, the woman who shakes all of the time, smiles at me.

“Um, twenty seven,” I answer.

“Twenty seven!  Wow!  Do you hear that everyone?  Amye has lost twenty seven pounds!”  she announces to the small room where we have all filtered in and taken off our sandals.

The crowd murmurs congratulations and shuffles forward as I leave the scale.  The scales, of which there are two, are hidden behind two screens.  You come into this small room, you pay your weekly fee, and you stand on the scale.  Simple as that.  I have lost almost thirty pounds doing this.

Weight Watchers has developed a system in which everything has a certain points value based on the calories, fiber, and fat that an item contains.  I have become obsessed with counting points, calories, and grams of fiber.  My dinners come in points now.  I have become fluent in points.  I can look around and see the points in everything.   A hamburger made from lean meat and no cheese, five points.  The side of broccoli with one pat of butter, two points.  A hot dog, no bun, six points.  A banana, two points.  Baked chicken, two ounces, three points.  A delicious mouth watering Double Whopper with Cheese, twenty-five points.  When I am at the supermarket, I see rows and rows of shiny points.  I speak in points.  I dream of points.  I have become a point.  If you cut me open I will bleed points.

After my weigh in I am euphoric.  Nothing can wipe the smile from my face.  I have lost twenty-seven pounds in three months.  I wish I could say I had an epiphany.  That would be nice to hear, I’m sure.  A heartwarming story about  a moment in time when someone said something, or did something, that prompted me to begin this weight loss journey.  A threat of abandonment, a wakeup call, or a health scare of some sort would be a great plot point for this story.

As a teenager, I remember reading a book my mother had that was written by Richard Simmons.  He described the event that made him lose weight.  Apparently, some well meaning Samaritan who loved him but didn’t have the guts to criticize him, put a note on his car that said something to the effect of “I love you, please don’t die.”  This changed his life and inspired him to lose weight and begin helping others lose weight.  The story fascinated me, not because of the touching moment in which Simmons realized someone cared about him, but because I always thought to myself: What kind of an asshole would leave a note like that?  I wish I had a Richard Simmons story, but the truth is there was no cute moment like that.  I have had plenty of events over the years that should have inspired this change but never did.

I have been in a stuffy elevator and had some guy ask me when my baby was due.  I have had the people at work call me an elephant and make cow noises when I walked by.  I have stared at myself in a full length mirror, being wedged by two seamstresses into a size 28 wedding dress.  I have been told I will almost certainly contract Type II Diabetes.   I have been at an amusement park and left a ride line because I was afraid that the pull down bar would not fit over my stomach.  I have been rendered infertile.   I have had chairs break under my weight in the company of friends.  Still, none of these events triggered that moment of inspiration.

I wish I could say it happened in one of those ways, because the truth is actually pretty boring.  One day I woke up, rolled out of bed, and thought: I’m tired of being fat. And that was it.  Luckily my best friend Georgia also had about thirty or forty pounds she wanted to lose, so she was more than willing to accompany me on my journey.

“You know what we need?”  Georgia asks.  We are huffing and puffing our way around the three and a half mile walking path that circles Lake Scranton.  It’s flat, paved, and very popular for exercising.  Georgia and I meet here almost every day after work.

“What?”

“We need to go away to the beach.  When we lose the weight, of course,” she says.

“Of course.  Yeah, that would be fun,” I say, winded from the slight incline under our feet.  We have this lake down to a science.  We know which way to start (going left is easier, right has more hills), where all of the tough parts are, and exactly how long it will take us.  Fifty one minutes is our record.  We know that if we can complete the first mile within seventeen minutes, we may beat that time.

“We won’t tell anyone where we are going, not even our husbands,” Georgia says.

“No way.  And, whatever happens down there, stays down there.  We won’t breathe a word of it to anyone,” I respond.

“We can act like total whores,” Georgia says and her whole face lights up at the thought of being a slut at the beach.

“It will be our lost weekend,” I say.  I can imagine us in our bikini’s with bold boys doing belly shots off our washboard abs.  I imagine neckties on doorknobs, awkward mornings, and splitting headaches.  All of the things that skinny women get to enjoy that I have missed.

Georgia and I have lost a combined total of fifty six pounds walking around the lake and dreaming that our lives will be different someday.  I imagine the pounds we lost, hiding in the woods along the path, watching us.  They are peeking out from behind rocks, looking down from tree tops,  and longing after us from behind thick tree trunks.  They miss us, those pounds, they miss the warmth of our thighs burning together as we walk quickly around this gigantic circle.

Amye Barrese Archer has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. She has written poetry, short stories, and many truths on bathroom walls. Her work has appeared in PANK, Twins Magazine, The Ampersand Review, Boston Literary Magazine, The Battered Suitcase, and Oak Bend Review. Her chapbook, “No One Ever Looks up” was published by Pudding House Press in 2007. You can read her blog, First Person, at www.amyearcher.com. “Belly Shots” is an excerpt from her upcoming memoir.

I’d like to write another story for Best Women’s Erotica; I’d like to publish that story in another edition of Best Women’s Erotica. Over the years, editors for the annual erotica collection have rejected my work once, shortlisted my work once, and published my work twice. Marcy Sheiner and Violet Blue are incredible people. Female sexual activists are always incredible. I don’t think anyone knows how brave a sexual activist is, especially a female sexual activist.

Once a week, I read my friend Emerald’s blog and consider her a sexual activist coming into her own, how convicted she is about the rights of women, sex workers, human beings in general and I think, what a responsibility it is to take that stuff on, to vocalize your opinions regarding sexuality in face of a culture like ours: a mixed bag of prudes and perverts.

Americans are sexually dysfunctional. We loathe women comfortable in their own skins, the ones who open thier mouths, those who defy the Madonna/Whore complex. Meanwhile, no one will know the kind and generous friend Emerald is, how amazing it is she puts up with me, how she encourages me. Emerald encourages humanity as a whole, actually, although most would fail to recognize her advocacy. Most of us fail to acknowledge the selflessness of friends, let alone our sexual activists.

Thinking about Best Women’s Erotica the other day, I began to compose a letter to Keanu Reeves, with whom I had an encounter some years ago, which lead me to recall the steady flame of a man’s gaze and how then I existed.

Last night at the dinner table, as my son and I bantered back and forth in our usual manner I said, “When my novel comes out,” and then caught myself and said, “Hey, I said when not if.”  And felt delighted. I’ll publish my novel then I’ll exist.

What saves us?

I joined the Rumpus mailing list not too long ago and receive daily emails from site founder, Stephen Elliott. Over the last few weeks, he’s struck me as vain. Takes one to know one, doesn’t it? A lot of writers strike me that way. It’s a risk we take. Jesus was an empathetic, sensitive guy, but he was also full of himself; there’s no other way to bear the cross.

Consider what it takes to go stark naked. The point of writing about ourselves is to write from the inside out until we achieve a universal truth. I think Nick Flynn said that or Vivian Gornick. Or maybe it was my friend, Craig Sorensen.

My boss’s life coach addresses the destructiveness of vanity, and I know what he means, but he isn’t a writer.  This is an excuse or a  reason.  Writers say over dramatic things like, “If I wasn’t a writer, I’d kill myself.”  Except seventy-five percent of the time, I’m serious. Last night my son said, “Lots of religious people are too worried about what happens after they die instead of  paying attention right now.”  Writers are in the moment twenty-four-seven, which is why some of us are Atheist.

God doesn’t make you a good person. Get used to it. God is an asshole. Life is ambiguous.

I recalled a day recently when I walked home from a grocery store. I was nineteen and alone. At some point I registered a man tailing me. I wasn’t scared at first; then I was. When I arrived at the house I shared with two roommates, they weren’t home and I locked the door. Within a few seconds the guy tried the front door then the back one too. I heard him going around the house; I watched his shadow pass behind drawn curtains. I heard him trying this window then that one too.

Without second thought, I called my father. Imagine you’re Jesus and your father is God. Doesn’t matter if he’s God or not because our fathers always feel that way to us. I’m a perfectionist because I’m still trying to please him.

Within minutes that day he arrived and saved me. This was a joyous occasion. The bad guy had gone.

Funny thing about my brain.

I have to think of things in order. A – B – C.

(except when I skip around, but)

A. I had a teacher once – Honors Chemistry – who gave extra credit for homework problems completed in random order.

I still did mine in their proper sequence: 1 – 2 – 3. I think he would’ve failed me just for that, but he had a thing against flunking honors students. Lucky me.

(why didn’t you just do the problems in order and then swap them around before turning them in? I don’t know. Shut up.)

Why am I telling you this?

B. In June I stopped working on my novel after writing myself into a corner. I had my character sitting in on a faculty meeting to review some slides. What was on the slides was not important -or so I thought. It was just a device to move the plot along. So I here I let my right-brain cast the images like a slide show in my brain, and I got:

Sheela-na-gig.

You know. Those dirty little carvings built into medieval Irish churches. Skinny hags spread-eagle with their *ahem* pudenda gaping for all to see.

Now I have exhibitionist Christian art written into a story about a psychic and a stalker.

(Did you hear that? That was the sound of my creative wheels grinding to a halt.)

So I went to the library and start digging. Now I know more about Sheela’s than… well, more than I knew in April.

For Instance, did you know that many early theorists linked the phenomenon of the Sheela-na-gigs to the Romanesque period in continental Europe? There are some similarities.

(Some meaning, well, vaginas.)

But, really, the images are quite distinct. In France and such you have really busy scenes full of people in all kinds of acrobatic positions, usually writhing as they burn for eternity in the flames of hell.

The Sheelas, on the other hand, are singular images and are nearly always depicted in reclining form with no “thou shalt not” connotation whatsoever. Folk evidence even suggests that the Sheela’s were considered benevolent talismans within their respective communities.

Huh. I didn’t know either. I feel smarter.

Haven’t done anything with the story yet, though. Except write lots of notes containing the word pudenda

C. I dropped my library books off yesterday. I felt lighter walking back to my car, and a sense of accomplishment for having compiled all this new fascinating new knowledge, even if the purpose of the pursuit is still beyond me.

Has led only to more questions, honestly.

So I finally allowed myself to read the first few pages of The Time Traveler’s Wife. It was a sort of treat for myself after all this studying.  Made me nostalgic for “Quantum Leap.”

I had the biggest crush on Scott Bakula, especially in the episode when he sings John Lennon’s “Imagine” to his kid sister. That was just killer.

Why am I telling you this?

I have no idea.

I thought I was headed somewhere. Apparently I miscalculated.

(So there were other reasons I almost failed Honors Chem. Shut up.)

The Time Traveler’s Wife…. I haven’t read past the Prologue, though. I’m too distracted. Keep thinking about those Sheela’s. The vulva is a portal, they say.

(Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here)

I’m sure the fate of my heroine lies somewhere through that dark symbolism. I just have to shut off my left brain for awhile and let my mind slide a bit to find out what she is trying to tell me.

Or maybe it’s my fate in question here.  Dunno.

In the meantime, I made a spice cake today. Smothered with cream cheese icing. Washed it down with the last of the Blueberry Coffee from our honeymoon in Maine (spiked with amaretto).

Have I lost you yet? Yeah, me too.

Besides which I can’t seem to settle on a format for this essay. I’m so confused.

I believe it’s the combination of caffeine and booze. Never was good with mixing uppers and downers. Sends me all topsy-turvey.

Did I ever tell you about this teacher I had once?

Shannon Connor Winward is a poet and author of fiction for children and adults. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such venues as: Flash Fiction Online, Pedestal Magazine, Vestal Review, Basement Stories, Witches & Pagans Magazine, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, and Dreamstreets.

Today is Monday. I transmit from a cottage in Republican country. I’m tired because I worked all day and now listen to a  soft rock mix on I-Tunes because I’m forty-four but sometimes forget and have to ask my son, “How old am I?”

If you’re my son’s age, I’m ancient. If you’re twenty-one, I’m old. If you’re thirty, I’m olderish. If you’re fifty, I’m younger than you. If you’re sixty-five, I’m still young. And if you’re over seventy you don’t give a shit how old I am.

When I was eighteen the worst fucking thing in the world was aging. I thought middle-aged women were the fucking pits.

I believe my perspective changed around thirty.

When I was twenty-seven I got in my car and fastened my seat belt the first time in my life. I’d suddenly become aware of my own mortality. Someone I knew had been killed by a drunk driver. I was still doing the same old thing. Still fucking around with the college thing, still fucking around and writing once-in-a-while. Just fucking around mostly.

That’s when I got depressed and not normal depressed either. I ended up in the ER suffering anxiety attacks and a doctor put me on Paxil. Later, another doctor prescribed Zoloft.  The anxiety and depression continued until I was thirty-four. 

Remember the movie Logan’s Run? They killed you when you turned thirty. I had not yet accomplished several of my most shining accomplishments by the time I hit thirty. And I still have more cool stuff to do. Like a fine wine, I get better with age.

Blah-blah-blah.

My granny says I’m a late bloomer. And I can’t be any other way. I am who I am and have developed exactly as I should have. Anything else is impossible. If it takes me three, four, however many years to finish my novel then that’s how long it takes me. I’d rather write the best novel I’m capable of writing than jerk something off just to get it done. I’ll take quality over quantity any day, but that’s my standard not yours, and maybe I say that because I’m so goddamn slow and meticulous and paranoid. 

I understand the mentality “more is better.”

Like Amber Sparks, I’ve spent time on Facebook noting how well other writers are doing, how much they’re writing and publishing, and of course compared myself to them and then come up a sad sack of unaccomplished, unproductive shit. 

Sure I panic. I twist myself in knots and can’t sleep at night and cry. Our culture is designed to make sure we feel inadequate. But also, I’m friends with some of the most prolific writers on the planet. I know some very talented people. It sucks.

But here’s another thing: writers lie. They exaggerate. They brag all the time. We’re human. Writers are chronically desperate for attention. We have fantastic-sized egos. Otherwise, we couldn’t endure the thankless solitary drudgery of what we actually do, which is sit in front of a computer for hours a day writing a lot of stuff nobody will ever read or care about.

For the record, I’ll never be on the cover of Poets & Writers no matter what my age; I’m not going to win a huge award or write a best selling anything. Writing will not make me famous or rich. It will keep me sane. It makes me happy. But maybe I say that because my time is up. I don’t know. If “youth is all” then I may as well kill myself now. I’m past my prime. I will not be the young, gorgeous Elizabeth Wurtzl posing topless on the cover of my memoir. How will I ever market myself? 

When I was in my twenties I made a lot of cash off my looks. But I wasn’t writing. I was making cash off my looks.

When I look in the mirror now I don’t see a babe anymore. I see a woman who’s given birth to a child. I see a middle-aged woman. This could be the death of me. Well, there’s this. When I was twenty-one my stepmother told me other women didn’t like me. I’d been in competition with other women all my life, starting with her when I was nine and fighting her for my father. She won.

When I was seventeen a female boss fired me as a busgirl at a Mexican restaurant because her husband came in the place and flirted with me. Few years later, another woman told me she couldn’t hire me because I was too beautiful and her male employees would never get anything done. And yet another female supervisor pulled me aside once and said, “You need to wear a bra. You’re flopping.”  I wore a bra; in fact, a bra with those thick miserable cups and fat unbearable straps.

I hate bras. Anyway, my tits aren’t huge. I’m not Pamela Anderson. Maybe I was to that woman. Sexual competition between women is nasty and fierce. Consider what Athena did to Medusa. Some women will do anything to ruin or at least narrow your chances with men.  It’s called shaking you up. It’s called undermining your confidence. It’s called bursting your bubble.

You’re not as hot as you think you are, bitch. Slut. Whore. Fatass. Skank. Cunt.

I was in a ladies room once. Guess I was thirty-two, and an older woman approached me then met my eyes in the mirror. She said, “Enjoy it while it lasts” then gestured at her own face.  “This is what you have to look forward to.” She meant her wrinkles.

And meant to scare me of course.  

If you’re a woman, aging is Medusa’s head. Nobody wants to date/fuck/marry an old woman, right? Suddenly, you don’t exist. You’re invisible. If you’re my age and single you’re not George Clooney. You’re an Old Maid. Something is wrong with you. You’re dysfunctional therefore undesirable; you’re a lesbian. Whatever.

The older I get, women like me more and men like me less. I find solace in this. 

Back when I dated my son’s father, or fucked him, however you want to look at it, he took me to his bedroom and there on the wall was a poster of me, some ad I’d done in a bikini. 

I looked exactly how you’d think I’d look in something like that and that’s all I ever was to him.

I also think his mother disliked me.

One thing I appreciate about aging is my priorities change. I look in the mirror some days and think, “Jesus, you look old.”  I keep getting better and better as a writer. I’ll never accomplish everything I want. Goals keep us going, that desire. Imagine something worse than getting older, like giving up.