by Lorraine Ray
Home at night after the writers’ dinner and I feel great. Looking back on it, I think Marsha has boosted my ego, though we did tussle slightly at the dinner’s beginning and she didn’t like me clapping and hooting at Melvin Wainwright, ultimately, she supported me and my writing ideas and that makes me feel fabulous.
Time is not my ally, however. I’m sitting in my room, looking at my poster of Henry Crabbe and the filibusters, seeing the head being fed to the pigs, and I remember “cast not your pearls before swine” and I relive everything I said at the dinner, and I see that my ideas were my pearls and I had cast them before swinish idiots (except for Marsha). That’s what I had done. But I don’t want to panic right away because probably nothing whatsoever is going to happen about those guys stealing my writing or anything. I wouldn’t put it past them, but they didn’t seem that interested and they were laughing at me so I guess that meant they weren’t interested. Yeah, that means they didn’t catch that I’d thought of a great writing idea. They were laughing at my idea of devil cowboys.
I take a shower to relax. I go back to my couch and flop. Sure, the other writers hadn’t see anything interesting about my story, the fools. They have no imagination. I can’t imagine a group of people more devoid of an ounce of creativity. They wouldn’t know a good idea if it came up to them and kicked them in their balls. It was embarrassing to have them chuckling at me, but of course they were laughing at what I said about Melvin Wainwright who was talking so they were in a jovial mood all right, but especially at me. What did they say about the devil cowboys? “You think of some stupid shit, bro.” I remember that. Sure, they thought I’d made an ass of myself and they were enjoying me suffering as everybody poked fun at my devil cowboys with their ten-gallon hats, but they didn’t understand it was a fine idea and no more absurd than vampires or mummies, and I’d written a lot of stories with those as characters. Well, they didn’t write horror and they looked down their noses at me for wanting to. They wrote profound books with earnest young men who were software developers or stock brokers and heroes. They wanted to sell a sort of ode to the age book where you wash out all the interest and pandered to money. All their characters were well-off and secure and they had to face a crisis like dying of cancer. Well-off people will buy weepy books like that crap. But I was saying vampires are still going to be popular? Damn, they’d better stay popular for a while longer! And devils. Devils have to stay popular for as long as it takes me to write that cowboy devil book of mine.
Smart-ass jerks who only want to ride my ass and tell me I am wasting my time writing western horror, because it is a stupid-ass genre that won’t go anywhere. Horror people don’t like westerns and western people don’t like horror, they asserted, and if you thought about it for two seconds, I’d know they were right. Smart asses. They thought they knew it all. They liked to treat me as if I was some kind of dumb shit who stumbled in off the street. I got no respect from them. They looked down their noses at Marsha, but it was even worse with me. They always said westerns and horror didn’t mix. Why those two genres have to be the most unlike of any in the world, they said. But I know what I’m doing and I can read the public. This horror love isn’t temporary, it’s permanent. It’s a permanent shift in favor of stories that deal with reality in an unreal format. I specialize in that. I want things as they were and I want people to delve into a world full of witches and wicked stuff in the west. Had too much to drink, though, I cannot deny that because my head is buzzing now, even after the shower. I don’t feel productive with this buzz, though, it’s the wrong kind. It’s an angry buzz. I want to punch one of them. It’s a surprise that I didn’t punch one of them during the dinner. I sure as shit felt like it! Did Marsha stop me from punching them? I don’t remember. She always told me to forget about them. Easier said than done for me at least. Those guys got under my skin, mocking me nonstop. Come to think of it, I didn’t explain my ideas well and that’s why they thought my ideas sucked. Sure, I was unclear. I was drunk.
Reconsidering that. Thinking carefully about the conversations of the night. I think I’d been clear about my ideas. Yeah, dammit, I know I’d been transparent, so damn clear about my ideas when I explained them. I didn’t slur my words or tell about the devil cowboys in a stupid, drunken fashion and I hadn’t rambled on and on when they weren’t listening. I’d noticed they were paying a lot of attention to what I was saying, maybe too damn much attention. Sure, there were no side conversations while I was talking, not one person poo-pooing my ideas or mocking my stories after the initial laughter. Yeah, that was it. Too damn much attention!
No one else was talking near me, on that part of the long table in the closed room of the restaurant, at least. I did a good sales job…hey, maybe too damn good? Maybe they were listening a lot better than I thought they were… That’s it! That is the fucking truth and I know it the minute I think it. I’d caught a couple of looks on their guilty fucking faces, subtle things, yeah. Things passing over their faces, like mild sly wisps, glances that told me they got it, all right, they got the potential impact of my idea on the reading public; they took it in wholly and they understood it was a good fucking idea for a damn fine story. At least at night afterwards I’m thinking that. So I tell myself to rethink the whole fucking scene, detail by detail until I see it all as it had been. Play it back in my mind again from the point when the old cowboy boob stopped talking and they were discussing, arguing about westerns and horror. Think of what they said comment by comment, scroll it out and examine it. Think of what every person said. Do it carefully, one sentence at a time, replay it slowly, don’t let a word be lost. A writer has to be a detective and I have to find out what had been in their minds by recalling their words, and their gestures. Their exact words and gestures, though.
I want to kill myself right here and now because it is clear from what they said they were way too fucking interested in what I proposed for my story. I can see it. Why didn’t I notice what was happening? I was a fool to sit there and blab away about what I was planning to write. Why didn’t I hold my cards close to my chest? Why didn’t I learn to be more devious? Goddammit! I seem to think I’m devious, but I go out and blab everything I’m thinking. They were only pretending to be disinterested, and I don’t even think now they were laughing at me. No, they were listening carefully. Those fuckers!
The fucking thieves! Damn, they were stealing my ideas from right out of my stupid-ass mouth and I let them do it. I talked about my idea of cowboy devils. Some of the writers at that table would do anything to get a good idea, a viable idea, because for them, good ideas simply didn’t come and they sat around all day bullshitting and wasting time hoping they could steal something and could only think of ideas that were ordinary and here I came along and thought of cowboy devils! An idea which was ripe for the taking! Those dirty fuckers would never think of anything themselves and I can’t believe I was dumb enough to blab away in front of them, giving away all my ideas like that. That was stupid liquor talking, dude. Damn, I thought I saw the look of interest in a few of those who were tossing back beers and looked at me over the bottom of the bottles with that kind of sly, bemused look, pretending not to be interested but I knew differently, yeah, I know they were listening to my whole idea when I talked about the hats and the horns. They had little smiles on their faces. Little sneaky, fucking smiles that seemed to be saying “yeah, I can steal this great idea of this jerk and no one is ever going to say a thing about it because he has no power or influence.” Oh goddammit, fucking hell, why did I have to be such a loud-mouthed fool to tell them exactly what I was thinking? I was too damn drunk to hold my tongue around people who were opportunists and I knew that was what would happen to me if I drank at that meeting. Drank more than one margarita, yeah, I was ordering them one after another.
And my bill must have been massive. Crap. Did Marsha pay it? I suppose she did because there’s no sign of lost money in my wallet. Checking it. I’m sure I hadn’t brought much. All the bills that were there are sti
ll there and my bank account—let’s see—get my phone. Untouched!
There were a number of guys there who would steal my ideas, a big number. I think Hank Rice looked interested in everything I said and I could see the gears meshing in his fucking head and Hank had been beginning to realize that I had dreamed up a damn fine idea there for a novel and Hank was thinking he could steal it and make something great out of it with all his contacts and finesse. He hasn’t written anything of note and he was sick of not being able to pay his rent the same as me and he would steal anything now because he was at his wit’s end for how to raise some dough. The difference was I would steal money and they, they would stoop to stealing another man’s ideas.
Shit, Hank wasn’t the only one of the writers at that table who would have liked to make my creative efforts theirs. Lots of them would be content to steal a horror classic and sell a million copies on my fucking brainwork. Hadn’t other authors done it? Don’t those guys know it? But could they ever think of anything themselves? The answer was no, no, a thousand times no! They didn’t have any interesting ideas ever; they were dullards. Jeez, Hank would do it, and I knew Hank wouldn’t feel bad at all about ripping me off. What an idiot I am! And George French was listening as well, now that I thought of it, and he looked like he was taking the whole thing in and imagining what he could do with the idea, getting a whole feel for where to go with the best idea I ever had. What was I thinking! Was I even thinking at all? Those guys didn’t wish me well and I was never going to be able to impress them with my works. They were only planning to use me to steal my ideas.
I know I’m going crazy, but I’m pretty sure they fucking stole an idea of mine. Crap. Crap. What were they planning right now? I could tear my hair out thinking about it, wondering how they were going to use my great ideas for their own purposes and never say a thing to me, but continue laughing at the things I said. I was going mad. I was going out of my mind with anger. No, I couldn’t kill them, not ever. I could hit them. I was suspicious of them. But rightly so, they are dishonest. I feel it in them. They are also incapable of thinking of stories. They don’t smell of stories at all. There is no hint of anything interesting about them. In fact I sense they are desperate for a good idea. Yes, you can tell who is desperate and lacking imagination. It’s easy to sense it in their eyes and the movements of their hands. They have a way of looking at me that did not leave me feeling confident that they respect others. They couldn’t think of anything themselves and had to use others for ideas.
I swear I am going mad right in my room. Sure, that was what was happening. Holy shit! There were bunches of thieves listening to my ideas and rubbing their hands together greedily but they were clever enough to laugh and cover up what they were thinking by snorting and sniveling at what I had to tell them about the devil cowboys, acting like they thought I was a big fool, but they will think more of it tonight, go through what I had said and I knew they would realize it was a damn fine idea. Damn fine. Yeah, they saw everything as an opportunity to think of a good story and they were not likely to pass that idea by, because it was an amazing idea. I knew because I thought of that baby. It was my baby and nobody else thought of it.
My baby. My special baby project, idea, concept, crap. Crap! That one was it! That one was the special one! The one I was holding so close to my vest that I’d forgotten about it myself and I hadn’t even told Marsha and I practically told her everything for years, because she among all those people I know is the only honest person who I trust with such information and I didn’t even tell her, but I thought I had. Was I imagining I’d told her the great novel I had in me? Surely, this was the great one I’d had in me. Devil cowboys. Who else would have thought of that? Ten gallon hats. Devil cowboys riding the range together in a great drive across hot deserts. I could start a whole movement of literature. Devil literature instead of vampire novels. Sure, the public would love it. They’d eat it up. I could make a mint off the idea. Crank out devil cowboy novel after devil cowboy novel. All I had to do was tell the same dumb shit over with devil cowboys and devilish things happening. Some dances, devils showed up. Round up time? Devils showed up. Stampede? Well, there would have to be devils in that stampede. What a fucking great idea I had there. I was a fucking genius and I knew it. Oh, I was sick of myself for putting myself in this stupid ass position! What a fucking idiot I was. It was because I was drunk that I spilled that idea out for them, blabbing away without a thought in the world, thinking myself so smart and sure I was going to impress them with my great idea. Usually I was careful about what I said and I was cagey with other authors whom I never trusted with any information or ideas of mine I wanted to keep mine. I usually didn’t even tell the titles of what I was writing or give the littlest hint about the topic. Well, they knew I wrote horror. All I wanted was a little recognition from them, a bit of fucking glory for once in my miserable life. I didn’t think about the consequences when they would steal my idea. That was burning me up! All I can think about is these boobs typing away madly on my idea, fleshing out the devil cowboys and saying, damn, that guy had a great idea that we can steal. I wonder if any of them were starting the story tonight, beginning the idea of the devil cowboy by slowly letting the reader discover the horns under the hats. Oh, fucking hell, I torture myself, but they were doing that and adding flesh to my idea and getting a story ready about the devil cowboys, plotting it and working out what they wanted to have as a setting. How could I think I could spill it out like that? Liquor is disgusting the way it makes me talk and talk.
Why didn’t Marsha say something to stop me before I fucking told them everything they wanted to hear? Why did she let me go on spilling the beans? Can I trust her anymore? Maybe she wasn’t even loyal to me and maybe I’d been fooling myself about getting the money from her and thinking she was in love with me. I wonder why the idea pleased me as much as it did. I know I am a conceited crap head, but this is something different. I have my doubts with the fact that she sat right there and heard me tell them the devil cowboy story, but wait, I said I never told her the idea, and never told her it was my special story. Had I or hadn’t I? I guess I thought I did, but I remember I never did do that. I thought about it once. Sure, in that bar in South Tucson the one with the burro sign and we were in there for my birthday, sure, she took me out and because we were talking about cowboys I thought I would tell her some of my great ideas about cowboys and devils and such, but before it could come out of my mouth that time I stopped myself and didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell her that night and now that I thought of it closely I never did tell her that I had that idea. I didn’t tell her it was my special project, my special baby. I can’t blame her for not protecting me from blurting it out, when this was the first she ever heard of it. I wonder what she thought of the idea. Oh well, why waste your time asking her, I yell at myself, because I’d lost it now. Those thieving wrenches will take the idea and run with it to the nearest agent as soon as they had it fleshed out. I am screwed, royally screwed, and I know it. I put myself in the position of a show off. Tin horn, yeah, that’s me. Tooting my tin horn and I lost my best idea because of my vanity and pride. Screw it.
Marsha, though, she knew I didn’t trust any of those stupid writers at the Warehouse; I’d told her a hundred times how I thought they might be scouting around and asking me questions about what I was working on and I never read my good stuff aloud with them because I thought they weren’t creative and they wanted to steal my stuff. She should have interrupted me and made me stop giving up the whole idea like that. I’d had diarrhea of the mouth or something and I couldn’t stop blurting out a whole bunch of great thoughts and creative ideas, because I had the juices to make things come. Yeah, I could think of more ideas than all of those guys put together on my least creative day. They still are waiting, I thought, to steal somebodies’ ideas and use them as their own in their own successful novels. I know that. I have to stop wanting temporary fame with a bunch of know-nothing authors and hold out for t
he big enchilada. Always hold out for the big enchilada in the sky.
