Welcome back to DC’s Writers Workshop. This is the sixteenth in a series of days on the blog where writers who are part of the blog’s community present work-in-progress in search of the opinions, responses, advice, and critiques of both readers who don’t normally post comments here and local inhabitants of this place. I ask everyone to please read these works with the same attention you give the normal brand of posts here and respond in some way in the comments section below. Obviously, the closer your attention and the more you’re able and willing to say to the writer the better. But any kind of related comment is welcome, even a simple sentence or two indicating you read the piece of writing and felt something or other about it would be helpful. The only guideline I’m going to give out regarding comments is that any response, whether lengthy or brief, praise filled or critical or anywhere inbetween, should be presented in a spirit of helping the writer in question. I’ll be responding to the work too in the Comments section towards the end of the weekend. So, I guess all of that is probably clear. Giving support to the artists of different kinds who read and post on the blog has always been a very important aspect of this project, and this workshop series represents an opportunity to make that aspect more formal and explicit. This weekend’s workshop features an excerpt from a novel-in-progress work by the writer and d.l. Rewritedept aka Chris Gugino. He asks for any thoughts, support, or criticism you can give him. I thank him greatly for entrusting his work to us, and I thank you all in advance for your kind participation. — D.C.
*
hey everyone. thanks for reading this introductory sample of my as-yet-untitled novel-in-progress. if you wish to offer notes, i would love to read them. you can comment here or, should you so desire, email me at rewritedept @yahoo.X. make sure you remove the spaces and replace the X with com. be brutally honest, unflinching and unforgiving. tell me all the shit you hated. you can tell me the stuff you liked too. as noted, this is still untitled, so if you want to offer suggestions for titles, i’ll check ’em out. thanks again, and i hope you love it! — CG aka Rewritedept
excerpt
by Chris Cugino
he’s the perfect mark: plastic-framed cat’s eye glasses; hair that, while not a bowlcut, obviously was at some point, though now it’s overgrown and in need of a trim; looks like maybe his mom dresses him, still, which at this age is seriously pathetic.
what do i know, though? maybe his mom’s dead and he has no clue what a dork he looks.
i figure i can probably make him for a fifty dollar blow job, enough for a couple bags and maybe some food. wonder if he’ll let me fix at his place.
—
we get to his apartment, and it’s about what i’d expected. cheap target furniture, sparse and neat. he says he has something he wants to show me.
first, hands me a shoebox of photos. some polaroids, a bunch of old 4×6 prints, a couple school portraits. says he’ll be back but to busy myself looking through those. asks if i want a drink while i wait.
‘beer, if you have any.’
off to the kitchen he goes while i start flipping through the photos. photos are about what i’d expected, too:
him fishing with what i’m assuming is his father, although they look nothing alike, squinting into the sun and holding a fish that’s easily half as long as he is tall.
standing outside some amusement park with his mother (you can spot the resemblance this time, though she’s not nearly as needy and sad looking as he).
school portraits: 2nd grade, 5th grade, middle school.
about a quarter of the way into the box, things take a turn.
some dismally furnished living room: wood paneling on the walls, fake tartan couch, coffee table that looks too heavy to move more than once with probably the ugliest lamp i’ve ever seen on top of it.
he’s sitting on the couch, sipping a beer. maybe eleven, twelve. wearing cutoffs and a plaid shirt that clashes so badly with the tartan of the couch that i’m relieved when, four pictures in, he removes it.
it’s around this time that he finally reenters the room and hands me a beer. domestic, the cheap fuck.
‘oh, this wasn’t even my first shoot. i wonder who got these out of order…’ he says, semi-mysteriously. but before i can respond, he’s off again, this time in the direction of the bedroom.
he’s got the same glasses, or at least the same style, as he’s wearing now. the same style he was wearing when i cruised him.
in the next three photos, he strikes some poses that are too goofy and sad to really count as sexy, is then joined by a man on the couch. the man looks to be about forty, though i can never tell once they’re over a certain age, as all i ever look for are the signs of money and that desperate, clingy neediness that i know mean he’ll let me spend the night, hit him up for a couple hundred in the morning on the threat of turning him in to the cops and ruining his life. because of my age, i never actually go into any of the bars i work, unless —–(redacted)’s working the door. he’ll let me in if i sit over by the jukebox and don’t make my nod too obvious. generally by that point, i’m starting to come down anyway, so my thoughts are only on choosing the right target to make sure i can fill my needs for the night. sometimes, if i pick the right guy, i can take care of my habit for a few days. one guy even let me crash with him for almost a whole week, but i left when the things he wanted got too weird, even for me.
anyway, the older guy comes into frame. makes the boy finish his beer before handing him another one. starts to kiss him somewhere around ten photos in. starts to work a hand down his shorts in the next photo.
photo twenty (i think, i’ve pretty much lost count by this point): the boy’s shorts are off (have been off for maybe the last seven pictures, now that i think about it) and the man, now standing, is pressing the boy’s face against the crotch of his jeans, which the boy appears to be sniffing with wild abandon, whatever the fuck that means.
next photo: the boy is fishing the man’s cock out of his now unzipped jeans. the dick looks too large, in the boy’s hands and next to his face.
next four photos, in quick succession: the man has a hardon. the boy takes it into his mouth. two shots of the boy sucking, one where he’s just at the tip; the next, he’s deepthroating it, his nose buried in the man’s pubes, his eyes wide.
it’s at this point that the boy, now a man himself, reenters the room, this time with an unlabeled VHS tape which he feeds into the VCR while turning on the tv, which is already set to the correct channel.
‘i still have these on, oh, five or six 8mm loops, but the expense and hassle of hauling a projector around every time i move got to be too much to deal with, not to mention all the work of setting up a screen and projector every time i wanted to show someone my youthful, erm, accomplishments. so i had an editor friend of mine transfer everything over to video about a year ago.’
the first one starts: he’s a little younger than in the pictures, walking into a field with two boys, one a little older than me and the other maybe twelve, thirteen.
jump cut: the oldest boy lays out a picnic blanket, which the younger two clamber on to. the two older boys surround the youngest boy. one begins tickling him, the oldest one, while the middle boy kisses him and begins tonguing hungrily at his open mouth. even at the distance and angle the camera is, you can tell the youngest boy, my date for the evening, has little or no experience with tongue kissing. he just kind of holds his mouth open and lets the older boy fumble around and dart his tongue in and out.
it’s around when the oldest boy starts to undress my date that he opens a box on the table (the real one, not the one on the tv). inside are a couple largeish bags of what has to be extremely high quality h, since it’s powder and not the tar i usually fuck with. also, a couple spoons (one is large, bent and charred; the other is small, obviously only useful for snorting drugs) and some syringes and needles. thankfully the syringes and needles are still wrapped, so they’re sterile.
‘wanna fix before we get started?’
‘are you going to?’
‘oh no, i don’t do this shit. can’t really stand it, to be honest. but i can smell a user from a mile off, so if you want to take a little to ease yr worries, make the whole thing more enjoyable, i understand.’
that’s all the permission i need, so i grab one of the bags and the smaller spoon and take a quick sniff, just to test potency. i’ll shoot some later if it feels right, but a couple small snorts should be enough to get me in the mood for whatever’s coming next.
—
it’s amazing how little i have to do to show a guy i’m interested. from my perch by the jukebox, i give him a look: half-hungry, half-sad.
a look that says ‘take me home and make me feel better and maybe i’ll let you do something interesting with–or to–me.’
usually it takes a couple glances to get a guy to come pay attention. not this guy, though. he’s up after just one look, walking across the room. i can almost hear the ice cubes in his drink rattling in their glass.
he gets to me, holds out a hand. ‘sam. and you are…?’
‘fucking parched,’ i say, before grabbing his drink, finishing it in one gulp and setting the empty glass back in his empty hand. i’ve learned from practice how to drink quickly enough that the bartender (this real asshole who i’m sure wants to fuck me but can’t get over the mildly pedophilic implications of actually going through with it, and so instead acts like he despises me and any of the guys i leave this shithole with) won’t catch me and toss me out, something he’s done a couple times.
for some reason he never complains when —–(redacted, again) lets me in again, though.
sam’s drinking something faggy and sweet, a washington apple or something like that. i tell him to go grab a beer this time. i love playing rough trade to these simpering mama’s boys who, for some fucked reason i can never figure out, always seem to be so interested in me.
i watch him as he walks away, and i swear there’s an extra swing in his step that wasn’t there when he approached. old fruit’s trying to make me check out his ass, like maybe that’ll make me ignore the slight potbelly or his terrible fucking haircut.
not that he’s old, per se, maybe late twenties, early thirties. definitely the youngest guy i’ve considered fucking in a while. what can i say? he has that well-kempt but sad look that makes me know he’s got money to blow, so long as i blow the right notes with him.
he’s probably a computer programmer or something boring like that. fuck, i hope he doesn’t want to talk about his job. i don’t know that i’m up to faking interest in programmer speak tonight. had to do it with an old regular of mine and it took all of my restraint not to brain the boring fucker with the whiskey bottle that always sat between us on the couch before we headed back to his room.
five minutes later, he returns with the beer, mentions something about how the bartender doesn’t seem too fond of me.
‘fuck that guy, he’s a fucking perv anyway. let’s get the fuck out of here.’ and with that, we take off into the night, me with the beer hidden under his coat.
—
by my third spoonful of the surprisingly potent heroin, sam’s got his tongue in my mouth and is trying to get my shirt off.
i decide to lay back and let him steer for a minute, hoping maybe that will keep him from wanting to talk about:
-his job.
-his mom, who i’m positive, by now, is totally dead.
-all these older guys who’ve fucked him and fucked him around and maybe contributed to making him the total weirdo i am starting to become aware of him being.
either way, the h is taking me to a point beyond giving a fuck, where i’m content to let him take my shirt off, lick my nipples, make some remark about how skinny i am.
it’s as he’s loosening my belt that i start to notice something’s wrong. i totally underestimated the strength of the h, and now feel like i’m going to be sick. probably my fault for mixing booze before i started into it.
‘fuck, i’m going to puke. get up! where’s the fucking bathroom?’
‘do it in my mouth; i like it.’
‘fuck you. where’s the fucking toilet?’
reluctantly, he lets me up, points to a darkened doorway at the far end of his open bedroom, in which i can see, faintly, the outline of a toilet next to a bathtub.
i take off, knowing from experience not to run, as it will make me throw up on the floor. i don’t want to give this guy the satisfaction of watching me throw up, especially since he ‘likes it.’
ugh. i’m shuddering just remembering him saying that.
make it to the bathroom, throw the door closed behind me and start vomiting. as i finish, i’m overcome with a deep feeling of hatred toward sam which i do my best to ignore, bury deep, so i can go back out and pretend to be into him some more.
—
‘what do you want to do tonight?’
we’re at sam’s. he’s been gone for about a week.
‘i don’t know, peter. what do you want to do tonight?’
we probably shouldn’t be here, but sam gave me a spare key after our fourth date.
‘i hate it when you do that.’
when he gave me his key, i thought it was because he loved me, as in, he cared about me.
‘do what?’
i figured out pretty quickly that it was more love like control than love like care.
‘when you take a question i asked you and ask me the same question. just say you don’t know. don’t make me feel like an asshole.’
‘sorry. i don’t know what i want to do tonight.’
‘do we have enough to order a pizza?’
‘i guess so.’ sam did leave us with a little spending cash before he left, and i know where he keeps his ATM card. can’t be too hard to figure out his PIN; he’s probably not stupid enough to use his own birthday, so i’ll bet it’s mommy-dearest’s.
‘oh! i know what we can do. let’s fuck the delivery guy from pizza bandit.’
‘…uh?’
‘you know, the one who went all cartoon-wolf-eyes when you took the pizza from him in yr shorts that one time. what’s his name? george?’
‘yeah. him. really? that’s what you want to do with a friday night?’ peter has this thing about watching me fuck strange guys, and this guy george is definitely strange. not just strange like ‘wants to fuck an adolescent boy or two,’ but genuinely strange. like, ‘probably has a body buried in his crawlspace’ strange.
but, whatever. i’m sure he won’t turn us down.
—
we met at a party. it was one of those church functions where some deacon or bishop, together with his once-hot wife and their five or more jügend, invites the members of the youth group and their parents over to his too-large house to swim in the pool, eat overcooked hot dogs and sing in a circle with youth pastor dave or phil or whoever. one of those things my mom insisted on dragging me to despite the fact that i’d never once shown an interest in the church youth group and was openly despised by some of its more prominent members.
he was the only other kid there who wasn’t partaking of the respite the pool offered from the summer heat, reclining in the shade of a large pine tree in a corner of the yard that, though not geometrically farthest from the house and the pool, was certainly the most isolated. he wore jeans and a too-large dress shirt, unbuttoned over a pavement t-shirt, and was reading what appeared from my position by the back gate (where i was attempting to sneak a couple rips off my pipe to make the socialization a little easier, or at least less tedious) to be a well-thumbed copy of ‘naked lunch.’
jesus, i remember thinking: this kid’s in, maybe, the fifth grade and he’s probably already cooler than i’ll ever be in my life.
i walked over and introduced myself by offering a hit off the flask i’d had an older friend steal for me and filled with whisky pilfered from my uncle’s liquor cabinet.
‘thanks. god, i hate these things. i’ve seen you around before. bobby, right?’
‘yeah. i’ve seen you too. yr dad’s a mechanic, right?’
‘yeah, when he isn’t drunk enough to beat the shit out of my mom or too drunk to get off the couch.’
‘um…’
‘don’t worry; i fucking hate the guy, but i’m not fishing for sympathy. name’s peter, by the way. and is that weed i smell on you?’
*
p.s. Hey. Well, I kind of laid out everything to do with the workshop above, so I’ll just add or reiterate, I guess, that I hope you guys, both d.l.s and normally silent readers, will consider saying something to Chris/Rewritedept about his work-in-progress this weekend. Anything, even a simple acknowledgement that you took the time to read his work, would mean a lot to him, and to the blog, and to me. All right, thank you! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. My enormous pleasure, of course! ** Cobaltfram, Hey, John. Monday might be better for me than Wednesday. What’s your schedule, etc.? Long emails, what are those, ha ha? I think in the case of the request/threat about the ‘libelous’ stuff in the post, it was to help the subject matter, a once big porn star turned escort, continue to escort successfully without potential clients saying, But what about that less than appetizing stuff I read about you somewhere online? I read about that Dustin/’The Real World’ thing, but I think I stopped watching that show after, like, the second season. Bon weekend! ** Nicki, Hi. Perhaps. In any case, there won’t be any human genitalia to potentially get you in trouble. I don’t post as crazily, in the sex/porn realm here, as I used to years ago. Crazily in every other respect perhaps, but I’ve (temporarily?) lost interest in covering the foibles of Eastern European porn stars and all that sort of stuff, except for in the middle and last of the month. But, hey, I could go wild about that sort of thing again. You never know with me. I’ll read Michelle Pace’s piece this weekend, Thank you! Everyone, d.l. Nicki highly recommends something, and here she is via the magic of copy and paste to tell you herself, i.e. ‘I just wanted to share a link to a really important and well-written piece that a dear friend and colleague of mine, Michelle Pace, has written in The Conversation. Michelle’s a highly respected and well-known scholar of the Middle East and she’s spent many years speaking to individuals and communities in both Israel and Palestine, so she’s coming from that context with this piece.’ ** Steevee, Very nice interview with Mr. Linklater. Props. What a shame about that inadequate budget. Those sorts of posts were dying down in my feed too until yesterday. Now their post-ers have decided that they have the justification to continue at an even more abrasive pitch. ** Kier, Yeah, keester, ha ha. What a weird word for an ass. I’ve seen some very inexplicable terms for an ass in my life, but that one really doesn’t bear any resemblance to the thing it defines. I would do the donuts/coffee/’TP’ thing with you in the middle of the hell of summer, which, given my utter antipathy-meets-hatred of hot weather, says something. Exactly: the thing is often the mulch for the thing. Or something. That made sense right before I typed it. Indian food, slurp. I have brother who annoys me 24/7 to the point of no return. Hugs. My Friday was good. I gave Zac his b’day presents. He seemed to really like them. Then we had a big catch up meeting on all the film stuff we need to figure out, and we started figuring it. And we hung out. That’s the best. And then I actually wrote a few emails and did some diddly — but better than nothing — work on my novel. So yesterday wasn’t too shabby. What’s going on with your weekend? Are your arms back to being normal enough things to let you do most of what you wish? ** Sypha, Hi, man. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Iowa, interesting. Well, it’ll be good to be in a new locale then, won’t it? I’m sorry to hear about the oxy relapse. I’ve had friends go through that very thing, and it’s tough. But don’t let it speak to you persuasively. Remember how it’s interfering with you. Because, man, you really shouldn’t even think for a second about giving up writing. You’re really, really talented, and that’s a rare thing, and I can say as a writer myself that, if your love writing persists, having a life as a writer is a great thing, a gift in many, many ways. Especially if you’re at all ‘weird’, an outsider, a thinker and dreamer of things that most people do not understand, like I am, and like maybe you are too. Seriously, don’t let what you’re going right now pollute your belief in your writing, and, more than that, your love of writing. A love of writing is the key, the most important and only thing that keeps a writer being a writer, and, as I said, I really recommend having that talent and receptacle and way to communicate with the world in your life. I really can’t even imagine who or what I would have been without my writing. It’s a very scary thing to think about. Take good care, man. ** David Ehrenstein, A classicist about tats, that’s nice. I like that. I remember reading about Roberto Pompa in ‘Early Plastic’. That’s very sad to hear. My condolences, David. ** _Black_Acrylic, Excellent! Art101 progress at long last! That headline would suck me in like a maw. Cool. ** Kiddiepunk, Oh, wow, well, come on, what a gift to the blog, dude. And you did such perfect work on it. And I want one of your ltd. ed. zines. And, yes, we will see each very soon, no doubt about that. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thank you, thank you for the Merge fest recap. That was really, really fun to read. That is a surprise (to me) about Imperial Teen. I’ve never seen them live, but I’ve never felt more than so-so about their recorded output. Okay, I think I’ll def. see Superchunk if they get over here. ‘Almost as hyper’ is good enough for me. That’s really exciting about the Destroyer set. It sounds like he really went for it live. Every time I’ve seen him live, he has just kind of beefed up and simplified his stuff for the live context with a rock band backup, and it’s never been the sublime thing I’ve hoped for. But that’s sounds incredible. Wow. Thank you! How was your reading in … Baltimore, wasn’t it? My favorite Echo & the Bunnymen album. ‘Heaven Up Here’. That’s one of my all-time favorite albums. I love their first three albums. I like ‘Ocean Rain’, but I definitely don’t think its their masterpiece, as seems to be the general consensus. After that, it gets spottier. But the first three albums are incredible, I think. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Me too, about the can’t wait/edited thing. Yes, I would say it’s coming together even more beautifully than we had hoped. I mean, I guess we won’t really know until Zac starts editing it ‘cos that’s where it’s going to become what it will be since Zac’s work/genius is heavily involved in editing. But we’re very happy. Issues? Nothing substantial. I think probably just the usual issues that arise when trying to make a poetic/experimental film with a very low budget. We’ve had to shift gears and rewrite and reimagine things a lot, sometimes on set and in the moment, but that’s been nothing but exciting, really, and the changes always seem like improvements. Thank you for asking about that. How are you doing? How are you feeling? What work and what stage are you at in it right now? Cool that you met the great, so very great Derek McCormack! One of the language gods, in my opinion. That’s so great! Have a fine weekend. ** Misanthrope, Oh, wow, no, I was just being random and goofy. I’m definitely not following you, I don’t know about anybody else. I mean, not in person. Not from the shadows. Not from where you least expect it. Gosh, I don’t know. I feel like I’m both right and wrong simultaneously all the time. You have a b’day coming up! You want a b’day post? I’ll make you any post you want for your birthday within the realms of what the blog considers common decency. Name it. Seriously. That an interesting and complex paragraph, sir. I’m still rereading it in wonder and slight confusion, but let me take a flying leap and say, uh, yes, that’s one’s prerogative? What is this strangeness around you? You can’t say or even hint? Jello couldn’t possibly live up to how incredible it looks and feels to the touch and so on, but I like it. Sometimes. With whipped cream especially. Ooh. ** Rewritedept, It’s the man of the weekend! Thank you again for putting your work in this place’s light. I hope it goes really, really well. It can. It has. It should. Up to the fine folks around here, obviously. Favorite Brad Pitt movie, huh … Shit, I’m going to have to go check IMDb to remember what he’s in. Hold on. Oh, well, for me, ‘Tree of Life’, hands down. After that, uh, hm … I liked ‘Twelve Monkeys’. I’d like to see it again to make sure. My Friday was a very good one. Told Kier about it up there somewhere. No, I haven’t seen a show in ages. It sucks. Will remedy that. Have a really good weekend! I’ll see you in the comments section at the end of the weekend, my time. ** Right. Please do lend your considerable powers of reading, thinking, and typing to Rewritedept/Chris’s fiction piece this weekend. Thank you very much! See you, or, rather, him, in the comments late on Sunday, and I’ll see you back here from my usual berth on Monday.
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