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Write On: Confessions of a Battered Housewife

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:25:00 -0400

We stop on the interstate between mile-marker eight and nine. Domestic attrition doesn’t need an appropriate time or place, only a couple. And here’s my other half, my in-sickness-and-health – with whom I hope his death does the parting first – screaming while sweat runs pomade down his forehead.
“Why do you have to be such a c –”
His insult is lost under the blasting horn of a semi as his suit coat opens up like a parachute behind him. Rocks pop and ping inside the smoking engine of his Mercedes. As he gazes into the metal tangle like a cup of tea leaves, it hisses and drips across the toe of his four-hundred dollar shoes. He lights a cigarette and wipes the sweat from his temple with the heel of his hand.
“I think I blew a hose.”
He’s a moron.
“You hit a gator skin, Mike.”
“I don’t even know what the fuck that is!”
It’s a semi tire that unzips at seventy miles an hour, slaps the pavement for half a
state before unpeeling from the rim.
Kind of like my marriage.
I shrug and feel the silk stick to my lower back. “Doesn’t mean you didn’t hit it.”
Ding!
End round one.
The car door seals out his voice. Heat quivers the air in the gap between the hood and the dash board. He smokes and watches the north lanes of traffic, fishing a hand inside his slacks and flattening the pleats across his hip. I buy him pleated pants because they make him look fat. It’s my form of domestic terrorism. My couture rebellion. So, right now, he’s just a helpless white-collar professional who wouldn’t dream of lying down beneath the car because he might damage his fat-pants, and wouldn’t know what he was looking at if he did.
The tow truck arrives and drops a diesel shadow over our car before
maneuvering the slatted flatbed just beyond the Mercedes’ smoking front end.
When the driver lumbers out, he drops an equally large shadow over Mike.
What passes between them is lost in the passing traffic and waves of heat. The details of where and how much are pleasantries compared to what Mike’s really thinking.
These are sub-people. Tow truck drivers. Trash collectors. Landscapes.
Wives.
Irrelevant beyond their obvious skill sets. Connubial accessories born of capital gains.
The Hydrocoedon warms the back of my eyes and lulls me into a counted rhythm.
Six… Eleven… Fourteen… Twenty-one... Twenty-six...
Before this, I was barefoot and pregnant in line at the Gas n’ Grab trying to decide between orange or grape gum while the Arab behind the counter was trying to sweet talk me into making him a legal citizen.
“Tina, you want lotto?” he asked.
“What’s it up to?”
“One-hundred and eight million.”
He said ‘meel-yon’ like some black-and-white villain with a cape and a mountainside lair. I tossed a pack of Outrageous Orange on the counter and fished an extra dollar from my bra.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” I said, picking some elastic off the face of George Washington.
“You have to pick your numbers,” he said.
So, I did.
“Six…eleven…fourteen…twenty-one…twenty-six…”
And the Power Ball was three.
When Mike’s ready for round two, he slips into the driver’s seat reeking of cigarettes and burnt engine oil. His ringed right hand moves like quick-silver in the corner of my eye. The slap to my temple is just ambiguous enough to be playful to a witness, but –between us– a clear reminder of what’s to come.
“Come on, Christina. Get out. He can’t tow it with us in it,” he says, his laughter tangoed with cruelty.
On the outside, crickets buzz in the tall grass, singing the same song: it’s hot. The tow truck driver helps me step over the red and green swirl of engine fluids pooling in the gravel. His hand is smoother than it looks, cleaner than his occupation would suggest, and reminds me of my father’s.
“You won the lotto, Tina! That’s the goddamn winnin’ lotto ticket!”
Sputtered beer clung to his mouth, amber droplets on the frosted tips of his mustache.
“Goddamn! Have as many fuckin’ babies as you want to now!”
I didn’t want the one that was in me. So I didn't.
One-hundred and eight million dollars fixes everything.
I swap the tow truck driver’s grip for Mike’s, who spins me in the loose gravel so my back is to his chest. Everywhere we touch is unbearable and sticking skin to skin. The tow truck driver drops to a knee to wedge a block under the tire.
“Flirting with the help?” Mike asks in my ear and wrenches my wrist up my back.
“That guy more your taste?”
His breath is full of rotten heat, stale cigarettes, and a decayed molar. Half a mile down the road another semi rises from the blistering horizon, the glinting grill of a bright purple hauler with a white box trailer rocking in the rear. I bite my cheek until my wrist goes from throbbing to numb, only then do I relax into a smile.
“Let me go,” I say over my shoulder.
The tow truck driver grunts to his feet as Mike peels his damp skin from mine.
“How much longer?” he asks.
The tow truck driver hits the lever on the wench. “Few minutes. Sit in the truck if ya’ like.”
He’d rather pace the fog line, pull his pleats, and smoke a Camel.
The semi waddles closer like a toddler on a downhill slope, side-to-side and almost outside its painted boundaries.
“Mike,” I say.
With his back to me, he doesn’t answer.
“Mike?”
Again, he doesn’t answer and taps the screen of his iPhone.
“Mike!”
He spins and rips his glasses from his face, whipping sweat into my eyes.
“WHAT?”
My fingertips touch his shoulder – the pudgy meat just above his nipple – and his
four-hundred dollar shoe slips on the loose gravel. His jacket balloons behind him and the semi lets out a long, mournful horn.
The engine roars pass, sending the wet, hot smell of blood, asphalt and diesel up in a red confetti mist. I close my eyes and tuck my face into my elbow. As the driver throws the Jake brake, the trailer screams and jack knife’s sideways. I open my eyes in a white cloud of burning rubber and oil, the tang of metal and meat.
Half a mile up the road, the semi driver bails out of the cab at a run, but when he clears the rear of the trailer, he’s see Mike’s face wedged in the gap between the tires. He doubles over and heaves onto the pavement, his vomit evaporating before it hits the road.
“Y-y-you just pushed him in front of that truck!” the tow truck driver says.
I shrug.
One-hundred and eight million dollars fixes everything.

HSBR: Brent Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:57:00 -0400

"People are afriad to merge on the freeways in Los Angeles"

~Brent Easton Ellis

This was remarkable and made me miss all the things I love about L.A the most: drugs, sex, and gang rape.

High School Book Report glibly presents: Brent Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero

If you've never read Ellis, this might be a good place to start. Might. Eh. Might.

It's a full day's read -- I did it in a day anyway (*cough* a work shift *cough*) But it reminded me a lot of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. In fact, I think it was once heralded as the modern version of Catch in the Rye. I think -- or something like that. Either way, I read Salinger when I was in high school and this book was published a year after I was born, so either way you slice it, it's not that modern to me.

Anyway, we follow Clay through is vapid little life as he returns home to LA for Christmas vacation. His girlfriend hates him, his drug dealer won't return his calls, and his bestfriend Julian is turning tricks for out of town business men that wanna do him in the pooper. C'est la vie.

I'd say this books is an odd mix of a lot of things and I walked away feeling like I had just contemplated infinity and followed-up by reading a Star magazine. Don't get me wrong, Ellis is a wildy entertaining writer that has you stuck to the page moments before wham! random 12yo girl gets gang-raped by a pack of bi-sexual male models. (What? I didn't just make that up)

And if you were looking for a wrap up to the plot, don't bother. There isn't one.

Write On: "Colorful Ditties"

Sat, 01 May 2010 21:04:00 -0400

Colorful ditties, undressed to their civies -

seeking relief from the heat of the day.

Discovered by teachers,

who insisted their features

remain cloaked in heady word-play

So if you've a mind

to make two words rhyme,

becareful! to whom you display

So few people savor,

the uncomplex flavors

brought on by a few words'

interplay

~ C.H. Valentino (1999)

HSBR: Clive Barker's The Books of Blood (v 1-3)

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:20:00 -0400

Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red ~Clive Barker

In the version I read there was an introduction from the author. I rarely read introductions and I skipped this one entirely until about half way through. Then suddenly, I returned to it. I needed to know this man. I needed to understand what went beyond the words. I was then lucky enough to meet Mr. Barker in December of 2009. It's an honor to review his books, it's a pleasure to know him.

High School Book Report awe-struckly presents: Clive Barker's Books of Blood V. 1-3

I read that goddamn introduction three times then I read it again a few weeks later. I even went so far to highlight a line that grabbed the breath from the bottom of my lungs:

But we need to touch the darkness in our souls now and again; it’s a way to reconnect with the primal self, the self that probably existed before we could shape words, that knows the world contains greater light, and greater darkness, and that one cannot exist without the other.

~ Clive Barker

Yes! And emphatic yes! This line split my head like Athena’s birth, and all of a sudden something roared. I had had a moment like this once before, like a sandstorm in the middle of a blizzard, a change of pace in the mind that the body either can’t or doesn’t know how to respond to. He is a writer who speaks to his fellow writers.

This is the frame story for the entire Books of Blood series. A psychic researcher, Mary Florescu, has employed a quack medium named Simon McNeal to investigate a haunted house. Alone in an upstairs room, McNeal at first fakes visions, but then the ghosts really do come for him. They attack him and carve words in his flesh, and these words, claims the narrator, form the rest of the stories, stories written on a literal, living Book of Blood.

~pulled from Wikipedia (Books of Blood) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Blood

Okay, got that out of the way- now you know all you need to know .

Barker structures this books like short stories, but the opening “The Book of Blood” is so intense in it’s brevity, your mind never fully breaks away from the image of Mary Florescu tracing her fingers over the words that have been left in McNeal’s skin. It’s the rhetoric of life and death on his skin, and the reader’s eye never really stops looking through the scabs telling the story.

Write On: "Violencia"

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:00:00 -0400

The ties that bind

The cuts that bleed

The pain that makes me hiss.

The burn that stings

The skin that peels

The bruishing, crushing kiss

The violent storm

The whistling wind

The scream washed in the tide.

The shaking, aching, breaking pull...

of the violence

in my mind.

~ C.H. Valentino (2007)

HSBR: Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:13:00 -0400

"Turns out, this guy is Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny all rolled into one."

~Richard Kadrey

I wish I'd written this book. There, I said it.

High School Book Report jealously presents: Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim

Christmastime. L.A. Demon redemption.

Oh, yeah, this book is hot as hell.

The only teensy detail was in the copy-editing as I began to wonder if this book left Kadrey's desk and skipped like a flat rock over the heads of every editor inside Harper Collins. There were mistakes, large ones, in varying size and shape including usage errors, spelling errors, and tensing errors. Heartbreak of heartbreaks, it threw me out of the narrative time and time again.

But I love L.A. Love. So the setting kept me jumping back in time and time again regardless of what errors were left in the ink. Kadrey's got noir as black as it gets while the smoke machine gets turned on high. (If you're an x-smoker, don't read this- you'll relapse) And the plot never stays in one place too long.

Write On: "Reclaimed"

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:00:00 -0400

I'm taking it back now

What I said

What I did

I'm taking it back now

You can't have it

You can't keep it

I'm taking it back now

Rights you forfeit

Rights you quit

I'm taking it back now

You stupid bastard

You spineless fish

I'm taking it back now

Because it's the only way

for me

to forget.

~ C.H. Valentino (2008)

HSBR: The 48 Laws Of Power

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:30:00 -0400

Napoleon advised: Place your iron hand inside a velvet glove.

~Robert Greene

I just kept asking myself is the author was single, and if not, was his marriage really that serious?

High School Book Report lustfully presents: Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power

Fourty-Eight? But it's so many! Nay- reader doesn't notice, and if you are a quasi-history buff like me but you hate hate hate HATE historical fiction because it all tastes just a too "Little House on the Prarie", you'll like this one, too.

Really, the appeal on the shelf was the word POWER. And I bought the book because I am sometimes a stimulus-responsive creature like that. But really, if you are employeed, you cannot go wrong reading a book like this. Not only do co-workers start wondering if it's such a good idea to get distracted by water-cooler chat, but they also seem suddenly driven to try and stick you between the shoulder blades.

With rules like: "Win Through Action, Not Through Argument" (9) and "Pose as Friend, Work as a Spy" (14) you really cannot go wrong here. Greene sets off these rules with examples that cross cultures and time. From Louis XIV to Machiavelli, then Houdini and Pizzaro. The history is real, the stories concise, and the message is profound. No matter how big a shark you are in your little tiny pool, the ocean is still out there and there are killer whales.

Write On: "I've Been"

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:21:00 -0400

I’ve been looking for a motive,

To extinguish every vote of

Confidence I receive

from every single side.

I’ve been trying hard to grasp

This thing you claimed would last

And wouldn’t end the way

As per, it did, last time

Our rebuilding was the why,

For new danger we sould try,

Shut my eyes to see you clearly

And found a potent, silver lie.

But I think I was mistaken,

On how deeply I was shaken,

When drunk, you said you loved me,

And swore that you were mine

I should have seen your joke then,

The frame of mind those words were spoke in,

Meant lust was only brewing

And that was my design

Now, your whole life has been to use

And my life left me to choose

So I chose to lay there naked, writhing,

While we did what we do best.

And I straddled you one night,

Came, then cried it wasn't right,

I needed more from you.

And soon we parted ways.

So, I’ve been looking for the kill switch,

Wanting more and more the fix this,

And today decided I only miss you

For the warmth and for the sex.

~C.H. Valentino (2006)

HSBR: Donald Maass' Fire in Fiction

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:30:00 -0400

Having something to say, or something you wish us to experience, is what gives your novel its power. Identify it. Make it loud. Do not be afraid of what's burning in your heart. When it comes through on the page, you will be a true storyteller.

~ Donald Maass Fire in Fiction

I never really put too much stock in "how-to write" books. But, like all of us have (or should!), I've read Bird by Bird, On Writing, and Stunk's. This book goes into that pile.

High School Book Report presents: Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

You might recognize the name. He's a hard-hitting mogul/speaker/author/agent responsible for Donald Maass Literary Agency. The navigator for hopeful NanoWriMoers world-wide. In fact, in 2007, at my first NaNoWriMo gathering, I was the only person not carrying a Post-It covered copy of his "Writing the Break-Out Novel." Which I immediately bought as not to be excluded, but never read.

If you're a hobbyist writer, step back. This book ain't for you. But if are looking at a more serious approach to writing as a passion, well, come have a look-see. With section headings like; Scene That Can't Be Cut, Hyperreality, Tension All the Time it's hard for the starving writer to know where to begin. Afterall, this is written by the agent of agents- it should hold some secrets to the industry.

Guess what: It doesn't. And hell to all, that is the best part.

Maass comes at the writer logically -- realistically -- taking novels from every genre and lining out the real whys of success, not of a book, but of a story, while he reminds us why a best-seller is not always a story-teller. Read excepts from World War Z by Max Brooks, Red Leaves by Thomas K. Cook, Tell No One by Harlan Coben, The Genesis Code by John Cape, and Choke by Chuck Palahnuik as Maass tells you why this works:

It's not a book for readers. It's a book for writers. The crux of it is, I needed this book. And if you're a writer, you do too.