Authors: Daniel Allen Cox

Shuck (4 page)

BOOK: Shuck

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“Who buys these?” I asked him. “Fans of Teenage Mutantâ”

I shut up because he stopped dismantling the artichoke in his hands and gave me a searing look.

“Collectors who want to throw the most postmodern parties. Postcolonialists who find it funny when artists employ animals to do their intellectual dirty work for them.”

“I see,” I said.

“I don't give a crap who buys them,” Derek continued, “just as long as they pay. But I'm tired of being recognized for my pets. I used to be better than them, you know.”

“Are you talking about the paintings in the storage closet?”

“How did you get in there? Listen, I don't want you poking around through my life failures like that.”

“Sorry, but I was curious why you have all these paint supplies lying around if you don't paint anymore.”

“Good question,” he said angrily.

“Derek, I didn't mean it that way,” I said.

The dinner was tinged that night. It was bitter and over-cooked, some flavors a little frustrated. We swallowed too loudly.

That night, we crawled into our princess-and-the-pea bed in the middle of the loft and listened to the sound of shells knocking on wood.

When that stopped, we listened to each other's breathing, and to the silence between us.

I have a place to live, a great guy to cook and care for me, and an address where I can receive mail from publishers.

Derek has a muse who hasn't inspired him yet.

Life could always be more, well, fair.

I don't write poetry, but if I did, this is what it might look like:

Flowers withering in the dark, cutting your leg with a razor blade when you feel sad, private performances nobody attends, snakes molting, deer shedding antlers in the woods, seahorses hooking tails.

When Derek handed the envelope to me, I had to read my name a few times before I could believe that the US Postal Service considered me a person. It was from
Circle
magazine, a literary journal I had sent a short story to.

The story.

A kid was reading Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment
in English Lit, mouthing the words silently to himself in class, wondering if he was reading in Russian or in English. He couldn't tell, but it didn't matter. (I had this writing book called
Avoiding the Draft
. Good writers, page eighty-four says, foreshadow story elements like retreating soldiers plant landmines.)

The teacher asked him to read a passage out loud. The kid started off reading as it was written, word for word, but then five pages into it, veered off the page and into text nobody else could see. There was laughter. Confusion. Fury. (Good writers, page ninety-nine says, take readers through an emotional battlefield.)

The kid was channeling drafts that Dostoevsky had trashed when he was slogging through the manuscript more than a century ago in Russia. The kid was rescuing the crumpled sheets from Fyodor's wooden wastepaper basket, or papier-mÃ¢chÃ© bin, or whatever they used for receptacles back then.

Someone screamed genius. Someone else screamed ADD. The kid calmly informed them that it was neither, that it was a gift from above, and that they had better shut up so he wouldn't lose any of the text.

The school called his parents who called the doctors who medicated him. Pumped him full of Ritalin. As his final literature project that year, he turned in a newly revised 1865 draft of
Crime and Punishment
, casting himself as the tortured Raskolnikov, whom the world was out to get.

Judging from the amount of work I put into the story, the number of times I rewrote it, and my constant trips into Strunk and White's
Elements of Style
, I thought it was pretty good. The story was circular, and I thought that a magazine called
Circle
would, at the very least, be
able to pick up on that.

Here's the response I got:

Dear Mr Marshall,

Thank you for sending us your short story, “An Improbable Gift.” We have chosen not to send an impersonal rejection slip, because we feel the need to point out how particularly inappropriate this submission is for our magazine.

It is amazing how many writers fail to read the submission guidelines.

We do not publish first drafts.

We do not publish teenage revenge fantasies.

We do not publish stories that contain more than one instance of the word “overwrought.” This is specifically mentioned in the submission guidelines.

We do not publish stories that are not fully thought out. What is your character's connection to nineteenth-century Russia? In other words, why Dostoevsky? And if his gift is supposed to be from God (because we can't perceive any other source), don't you think that God would direct the character to a less atheistic writer?

Thank you for submitting to
Circle
, and please read an issue before the next time you do so.

The Publishers

I followed their advice today and stole all the copies of
Circle
I could find in Manhattan. I went to uptown magazine stores, to the Gem Spa newsstand in the East Village, and scoured Chelsea clean.

Good writers are determined writers, page twelve says, and determined writers don't take bullets lying down.

So I went to Chelsea Piers on the Hudson River, laid the magazines in a perfect circle, screamed the word “overwrought” to a passing barge, and lit a fucking match.

Because AIDS and HIV aren't ignored as much, because people read books, because everybody's from Canada or Puerto Rico, because nothing west of the Hudson River matters or even exists, because you can throw away a magazine and magically buy the same one ten minutes later from a recycling technician.

Because a young man is doomed to live in a Fiorucci store if he doesn't want to whore himself out in some degrading office job.

Because writers can make it here no matter what.

Today, a jerk-wad stuffed a hundred between my cheeks, poking it in that extra half-inch with his pinky, so it would be tainted with the stink of my ass. That Franklin is forever connected, as long as its circulation life will last, with the ass that earned it this afternoon.

But he didn't end it there. He donkey-punched me in the ribs and left me gasping behind the garbage container. I followed Derek's orders and limped, screaming and bent over sideways, into a taxi. The driver said he didn't change hundreds so I cursed him in a rather racist way and found one who'd take it.

Derek spent the better part of an hour tending to my ribs, watching
the bruises shift floridly through the color spectrum. I was splayed on his lap, arched over his knees staring at the ceiling, the skin stretched tight over my ribs. He was watching me breathe, scribbling notes.

Ninety-two dollars and thirteen cents, after cab fare. That means I'll have to go through this hell at least two more times before rent is due, maybe three.

Now that I think about it, I might not give Derek those shoes after all.