Watered Down

I hate being scared. It is a feeling I do not enjoy. My wife, however, loves to be scared. When Halloween rolls around, I know there will be an onslaught of scary movies available for her viewing pleasure.

My wife is kind enough to not subject me to scary movies if I do not care to watch them with her. (I'm sure she wishes I would show her the same consideration when it comes to sports.) There are a few times a year when I feel brave and tell her that I could watch a scary movie. Thankfully, she rarely takes me up on the offer.

Yesterday, in the spirit of Halloween, I let her know that there were three scary movies premiering on television and it was her choice which one we watched. I started mentally preparing myself as soon as I got out of bed.

I have always been a bit of a cry-baby when it comes to horror. I once threw-up in a movie theater's bathroom sink after I heard Darth Vader's heavy breathing filtering through the closed doors of a movie that had yet to let out. I cried hysterically when Sammy Terry (I think that was his name,) a man with white make-up on his face, wearing a Dracula-style cape, came on the local cable channel to introduce that night's scary movie. Then came Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Brood, The Omen, Psycho, Poltergeist, all movies that scared me to the point of wishing I could take the watching of them back. But I had to watch them: I was saving face in front of my cousins.

My wife picked The Crazies. Okay. Sure. The Crazies. Decent cast. Tainted water supply. I can do this, I kept telling myself as the sun started to set and time drew nearer. I made sure I was finished eating. I snuggled into my wife's chest. The movie started. Oh, god...here we go. We watched. I started to relax. It wasn't scary. In fact, I wish my wife could turn back time and pick something else. She deserved better for her one pick.

What happened to making movies that inspire people like me to turn every light in the house on? To refuse to go outside when it is dark? To question every noise the house makes? Is it because I am older? (I really don't think so because I was well into adulthood when I visited my last haunted house--something I will never do again. The only way out of it was by going through it! My behavior was less than civilized as I yanked and pulled and screamed and let myself be blindly led by my girlfriend at the time.) Is it because the genre has been overdone and the same movies are being made over and over again with different casts and a small tweaking to the stories? Maybe. All I know is Halloween used to mean something. It used to mean climbing the steps to a house, all in the name of sugar, where there was  scary music playing through a stereo speaker, a casket by the door, and a moment that needed to be collected while pausing to figure out if the candy was worth it. Was there something in the casket, biding its time to pop out and give fright to a group of kids? Yes, of course there was.

Maybe it's been too long since I've been on the trick-or-treat circuit, but it seems like kids today don't have to work as hard for a handout. And movie makers don't have to try as hard to scare the pants off theater-goers. Maybe I should just shut up and thank god for small favors.

Nightmares

This morning, as the sunlight filtered through the bedroom drapes, my wife put her arms around me and held me tighter than usual. She had had a bad dream.

In the dream, she was in the shower, washing the new tattoo she'd just gotten on her stomach. Her doctor told her she would not live long enough to see it heal: she had stomach cancer. And while she washed around it, she felt herself dying. "You know how the doctor told me I wouldn't live long enough to see my tattoo heal?" Yes, I replied. "This is it. I'm dying." And die she did. But it didn't end there. She watched as I emotionally crumbled.

WTF?!?!

Why can't my wife have "normal" nightmares? She is always dreaming about the end of the world, where everyone around her is dying. Or dreams where she has to save our entire family from a catastrophic event, the cat included. And sometimes we're kidnapped. Or people--people with some kind of affliction, like zombies or space-aged monsters--are chasing her. Why can't she have bad dreams about our house being foreclosed on or burning Thanksgiving dinner? Why do they always have to scare the shit out of me too?

The bedroom is still dark in the mornings, so when she tells me about her nightmares, I'm glad she cannot see my face. It is a testament to how fucked up I think her sub-conscience is. Panic and fear reside in my eyes. My mouth is pulled tight. And I can't help thinking that if I had her nightmares, I would never want to go to sleep.

I keep telling her that some of her dreams would make great screenplays. Screenplays that I think could actually sell. At least that way, while her dreams might still scare the shit out of me, they would scare me from the comforts of a million dollar home.

The Wonderful World of Queries

Yesterday, I received a form letter rejection. Today, I received a personalized rejection by an agent who said he/she appreciated my creativity, but it just wasn't right for their agency. It's amazing what a difference a day can make.

The form rejections never make my cry in my pillow. They only remind me that the writing business is tough to break into. But the personalized rejections always fill me with a strange sense of it's going to happen eventually.

The various responses I have received from agents so far remind me that tastes vary. In the same sense that not all books or genres speak to me, I know that my novel is not for everyone. Some agents/agencies generically shut me down while others take the time to let me know that while they're passing, there are many agents and to keep trying. These rejections are my favorite. They make me feel that I am a part of their world, even if they're not inviting me into it.

I didn't send a single query this week. Instead, I focused on working on my second novel. I think next week I'll hit the query trail again, if only to ensure the roller coaster doesn't derail.

F*cking Wal-Mart

This morning, I saw a commercial for Wal-Mart I had never seen before. 

A woman is ecstatic that she has a job at Wal-Mart because she is no longer on welfare. And her son got a job too!

I thought I was going to hulk out of my clothes.

The woman was not white. (White people don't go on welfare!)

The woman will see her son--and other men--get promoted over her, time and time again. (There is a class action law suit against Wal-Mart right now, for this very issue.)

In these "excited" times, the last thing Wal-Mart needs to be doing is telling white people that minorities can get off welfare if they just come on in and fill out an application. Because it's bullshit. Wal-Mart pays their employees like they are thirteen-year-old babysitters.

There has been far too much rhetoric lately about people getting a free ride: health care, welfare, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, are all programs that "good-hearted Christians" and their lunatic fringe spokespersons feel need to be abolished or handed over to the private sector. And with the immigrant issue still a hot button issue, all this commercial does is tell all those people that, yes, minorities are to be feared because they're living off welfare, and you're paying for their free ride. You may think I'm overreacting, but the nonsense that is flying out of people's mouths lately is exactly why I made this connection. And I'll be damned if Wal-Mart will get me to believe they are the answer. But I bet Sharron Angle is on board.

I detest Wal-Mart. It has been close to a decade since I have used my purchasing power to support one. They have bastardized too much to be given a free pass. They treat their female employees like shit. They bully the companies of the products they sell. And now they're taking idiocy to a whole new wtf? level. I would rather pay an extra quarter for a box of cereal than bankrupt my integrity.

Hump-day Haiku: Road Rage

Get out of the way!
Big trucks think they own the road.
Small penis drive fast.

Angry minivans
Want to run me off the road.
Wal-Mart is waiting.

Turn signals announce
Way too much information.
You're a mystery.

Irrational Fear

I have an issue with being chased. I don't know where it originated or why it is still here. But if my wife is behind me on the stairs, following me, my insides start get all weirdsy. I feel uneasy. My heartbeat quickens. I feel like I need to move as fast as I can before she gets me.

It's irrational, I know, but it cannot be helped.

My wife was taking a shower. She screamed like there was blood coming out of the showerhead instead of water. When I ran in to inspect, she pointed. There, in the folds of the shower curtain, sat a spider the size of a baby's pinky nail.

Last night, as the family was nestled together on the sofa--two dogs and cat included--terror, once again, struck the heart of my wife.

"I see a spider," she announced.

"I don't see it," I replied, looking around the floor.

"It's right there."

"Oh, I see it." It was crawling across the floor, about four feet away from her. She was not sitting on the floor, but on the sofa, so the threat, to me, seemed really low.

The basset had been on and off the sofa for the past thirty minutes. The mutt had finally stopped obsessing over the cat. Everyone had finally settled. There were quilts and pillows involved. The last thing I wanted to do was vault off the sofa and handle a spider. I brought all these details to my wife's attention. She understood what I was saying and said she would keep an eye on it.

I could see her out of the corner of my eye. Her body sat up straighter. She couldn't stop staring at the floor.

"It's coming towards me."

"You're going to be fine."

"But it's coming to get me!"

The spider was not coming to get her. It was two feet away from her. And she was still on the sofa while the spider was still on the floor. Granted, it was moving in her direction, but I knew that there was no way it was going to jump on her face and eat it. Not like she thought it was going to. Still, I got off the sofa and wrangled the spider onto a piece of paper and threw it outside.

Knowing that I have irrational fears of my own, I cannot blame my wife for having her own. We all have something that make us want to scream. Right now, my something is Christine O'Donnell. Though I don't think my fear of her is all that irrational.

Sponsorship

The Chick-fil-A kickoff.
The Chick-fil-A halftime report.
The Chick-fil-A post-game show.
This injury timeout is brought to you by Chick-fil-A.

If I see one more commercial where a cow is begging us to eat more chicken so it can live--animals wanting to live is so fucking hilarious--I'm going to throw my sofa into the TV.

As long as books continue not to be brought to us by the Chick-fil-A prologue, or the Wendy's You-Know-When-It's-Real table of contents, I'll survive without college football.

Light a Fire

I've been rather fired-up lately concerning an incident that took place last week. A gay man--someone I do not know--was talking about his boyfriend coming back home and how he needed to get back into shape because his "hot body" had disappeared. Later in the conversation, he mentioned having an oral fixation (he chewed on his fingernails.) A woman--a straight woman--was highly offended.

Straight people are granted the courtesy to define themselves in a myriad of ways: by being single or married, through their professions, the kind of shoes they wear, the kind food they make, the kind of car they drive, their hair, their clothes, their children, the church they attend, how much money they make, the jokes they tell, the friends they have, the talents they possess.

Gays are not afforded the same consideration when it comes to being who we are. Instead, we are immediately defined by the kind of sex we have. When a straight person finds out we are gay, they--for some insane reason--picture us in the bedroom. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why it is straight people are so obsessed with what we do with our sexual lives. There is an arc of perversion when a gay man can sit next to a straight women and not say a word about his sex life, yet she immediately sees him on his knees when he says oral fixation. Seriously!? Get your mind out of the gutter, straight lady, and get over yourself. What does it say about this woman? It says that she has a mind that works in a very strange, creepy, warped way. The last thing I do when I know someone is straight is picture them boning someone of the opposite sex. It's just gross.

I would bet a trazillion dollars that if it had been a fellow straight woman talking about her husband coming home and how she needed to get back her hot body and needed to curb her oral fixation--biting her nails--the woman who was offended would have thought nothing of it. She might have even had suggestions. I know it in my heart.

Ken Buck, a viable option to represent the citizens of Colorado in the United States Senate, believes being gay is a choice. The only way that argument makes sense is if Ken Buck has fantasies about the opposite sex. And because he is inherently straight, he thinks he's choosing not to be gay. Those who protest to much, who gladly show their ignorance, show the true nature of their fears: that they will not only be discovered as frauds, but their darkest thoughts will be revealed if they show compassion or understanding.

I lived a straight life for the first twenty-two years of my life. And had I chosen that life, I would have chosen emotional death. Fuck you, Ken Buck. Fuck you for just opening your mouth and speaking on a subject you know nothing about. You're entitled to feel the way you do, but when you're running for high office I expect your mouth to remain closed on the gay issue. Because when you say, to a national audience, that being gay is a choice, they are only words to you. But to me, it is real. To me, it is young gay people killing themselves because they were incessantly bullied. To me, it is gays being beaten, tied to fences, and left to die. To me, it is not holding my wife's hand in certain places for fear we will be targeted. To me, it is a gay man, just being who he is, offending a straight woman because people like you will always make it okay to hate and judge, preserving your "rightful" place by feeling better than others.

Holy Sh*t Balls

On nights when I do not have to rise-and-shine to an alarm clock the next morning, I allow my mind to wonder and fight off sleep until it is done. Last night, my thoughts were filled with Anne Boleyn. For no particular reason, really. Granted, I do have a mild obsession with her rise and fall, and the barbarically, hedonistic reign that defines Henry VIII's kingdom, but there was something specific my mind latched onto last night: Anne Boleyn's beheading.

In the beginning of the year I finished a book by Alison Weir (The Lady in the Tower) dedicated strictly to Anne Boleyn's fall. A bit of a dry read, I found the subject matter fascinating nonetheless. I, like Ms. Weir, believe that Anne was innocent of the crimes she was found guilty of committing. (I do not think she was hashing a plan to kill Henry with her alleged lovers, nor do I think she slept with her brother. Was Thomas Cromwell behind it all? Absolutely!)

There have been so many actors portraying the Tudors that I think it might sometimes be hard to think of them as real people. My mind cannot help but to think of Anne as a real-life person, with real-life fears, and thinking of her sitting in the Tower of London, knowing her head was to be removed from her body, makes me feel icky inside.

Beheading was considered to be the most compassionate way to do away with someone sentenced to death. When beheading is considered the most humane option to die, there are problems. But these were far from peaceful, friendly times. I guess if I had to choose between being hanged, beheaded, burnt at the stake, or torn into quarters by horses, I might choose the beheading. It's a tough call.

Because the thing about beheadings--and thanks to Ms. Weir I had never thought of it before--is that your brain does not die until all the oxygen is gone. Anne Boleyn's head may have been severed from her body, but her brain could have had a good thirteen or so seconds to wrap itself around what was happening to her. Holy shit balls! It shivers me timbers and makes my core cringe! I think about her head, lying in blood and straw, her eyes open, thinking, 'Well, that's that. There's my body. Here's my head. Fuck. This feels weird.' Thirteen seconds does not sound like a great deal of time, but I bet when it's your last thirteen seconds here, you're stretching it out. It could seem like a lifetime.

I can't stop thinking about what Anne might have felt and thought during the last seconds of her life. But I am grateful that when the bedroom is dark and quiet, and my mind wants to figure something out, that I am thinking of Anne's death and not my own.

Unfocused

I have a variety of things I am trying to do right now, like I can do them all at the same time:

Writing another novel. Rewriting my synopsis. Perfecting a query for an agent. Chatting with a couple of friends. And now this.

I'm struggling with focus right now. I should pick one thing and get it done, then move on to another. But for some reason, that's not happening.

Is it the weather? I wish. I would just pull the blinds.

Is it my diet? If only. I would just stop eating.

Is it because I want everything to happen right now? Probably.

Writing is not only a solitary profession, it also requires perseverance. If any of you out there find you're reading this because you're putting something off, remember that time is going to pass regardless of what you do with it. Our time here is short, and we all have things to do.

So let's stop putting off what we know we should be doing. Like checking our gmail and checking our yahoo mail and checking out the Daily Beast for today's top stories and looking at the weather cam to see if it's snowing and checking our cell phones for any missed texts!