I awoke at noon, got out of bed, turned on subwoofer, stereo, kettle for coffee. Made coffee, sipped it while eating a Clif bar, then took coffee to computer with a bowl of dry Cheerios. My computer had been on for ten minutes or so by this point, since that’s how long my Fort Knox of an antivirus takes to finish updating. Anyway, I did the usual crap with social networking sites (you know the ones), scanned the NY Times and Google News for the latest disasters.

Eventually I realized I’d have to drive down to the pool room to collect on a debt. So I showered, shaved, etc, dressed and went down there. They guy paid me, I stayed for a couple hours of pointless nine-ball practice, ate some peanuts, returned a book to a friend, promised the owner a copy of my own book, then went home and fixed a salmon sandwich (no, not fresh salmon, the kind from the envelope).

When I refer to “my own book” I mean THE LEGEND OF JIMMY GOLLIHUE, which will be an e-book ANY DAY NOW! You didn’t see that coming, did you? Do you feel spammed? Do you feel dirty and used?

Reading back over this post, I wonder what was so important about yesterday that it deserved to be written about. For clues, let’s look at what I decided to wear: loose jeans, newish cross trainers, belt, white undershirt, green short-sleeved shirt (open). In other words I looked like just your average goofball. So what? What’s the point? What’s the significance? And what was I doing in a pool hall anyway, other than collecting a debt? Had I been there before? Would I be going back?

I was in the pool hall to collect a debt, but I’d been there when I let the guy borrow the money because I love pool, am addicted to pool, can’t get enough pool. In fact, my novel is about pool. Have you heard about it? The people in the pool room have heard about it, and they’re starting to ask questions about when the e-book is coming out … which is ANY DAY NOW! I can’t wait! Can you wait?

So yes, I will be going back to the pool room, and others like it. And yes, I will be talking about my book, handing out my business cards, and generally being a shameless self-promoter. Money will change hands when I’m in there, too. Peanuts aren’t free, after all.

=

“Have you Seen This Guy?”

I’m writing, right in the middle of a crucial scene. The phone rings. The scene is shot.

“They’ll be there between 2:30 and 3:30,” says the voice.

“That’s what time it is right now.”

“My fault.”

I run downstairs to unlock the storm door. I run to get the broom and dustpan. I straighten. I neaten. I sweep. I run back upstairs and disconnect the 150 ft USB cable, coil it up. I don’t want the visitors to trip over it. I run back downstairs.

I wait. And wait. And wait. And I’m thinking:

Will I be able to finish that scene? In the scene, a beautiful naked girl stands naked and unclothed, totally nude, in front of a classroom full of feminists and horny men. The girl has said only half of what she needs to say. Then the phone call.

I wait. I stretch against the doorway while looking out the window. I wait some more. Then I run back upstairs to get my cell phone. No messages. I run back downstairs to wait. And while I’m waiting I’m thinking:

Hmm … I wonder what I’m missing on Facebook right about now. I wonder which of my FB friends are giving good content–with links, videos and pictures–and which friends are just whining. In the left-hand column of my imagination, in pulsing yellow phosphor burns, are memories of my friends’ thumbnails.

I wait. I stretch my legs, for the hamstrings. I jump up and down in place, like I was jumping rope.

They are not coming. That much is clear. It’s way past time.

I lock up, put out the trash, and nuke some dinner. Fish, beans, and French bread. I eat, rinse the plates, go back upstairs and hook my cable back up. Online, once again.

I make calls. I send e-mails. No response.

All questions remain unanswered. Whoever was coming, did not come. Or they came early, before I knew the score.

Before I knew I had to begin waiting.

The naked girl waits in the classroom. Her classmates stare.

I’m waiting to get back to her.

BLOG MODERATOR: Welcome, Professor Roquefort-Strand! What do you have for us today?

PRS: Thank you for the opportunity to appear on this weblog which appears to have nearly no web traffic. Today, I will offer a short review of the meta-fictional short story, entitled “Protagonist Unbound” by the essentially unknown yet in some ways provocative writer George LaCas, whose name sounds vaguely French as bastardized in the history of Canada.

In this story, Mr. LaCas seems to be making fun of the writing process, and in particular Western story structure (i.e., the basic form of the story which includes a hero or protagonist, whose world is threatened in its status-quo, who must go on some sort of interior or exterior journey to achieve a goal, exhibit character change, achieve redemption through suffering the consequences of sin, all while the story’s arc has a recognizable beginning, middle, and end – character from crisis to climax, and then home to the fireside to tell us all about it), and in so doing Mr. LaCas makes at least some of his characters aware of their own place within a fictional environment. At the same time the story itself is a satire, but of what? Of story in general? Or is it auto-satirical? Is LaCas making fun of the way he writes? Is he making fun of us for reading this story?

To summarize: A man named Protag is confronted by the sight of his wife leaving him, so he goes to his therapist, who is playing computerized solitaire and not paying much attention, who gives Protag his blessing in going forth to achieve the stated goal of “getting laid, even if I have to hire a call girl.” Protag then goes to a tranny bar and arranges a liaison with a red-headed person he believes to be a woman, the two have some sort of off-camera sexual activity, and Protag goes home to find that his wife has returned, which seems to negate the entire purpose of the story in the first place, including any enjoyment Mr. Protag had in bedding the sexy transvestite.

And if I may interject a personal comment: the ending, alas, I found wanting. By that I mean I wanted to know more. How did it feel to have sex with a transvestite? Was Protag’s masculinity threatened, or did he simply absorb this experience for the amusement of the author (George LaCas)?

BLOG MODERATOR: So in other words, Professor, you wanted details, a blow-by-blow account, as we say here in the States?

PRS: Oui, meaning yes. I wanted a fully-fleshed scene in which Protag suffered from the stripping-away of his larded-on masculine construct (such that it was; I doubt Protag could do 5 push-ups if his head was in the guillotine), or at least some good hot action for my own personal titillation. Wait. How do I backspace this device? I do not want to say that. Please excise that last bit.

BLOG MODERATOR: I’m afraid I have no control over your PDA, or keyboard, or voice-recognition system, Professor.

PRS: Merde! I demand a retraction of my own words! Salop!

BLOG MODERATOR: So did you like the story, or not, Professor?

PRS: [inaudible, unprintable]

BLOG MODERATOR: Thank you, Professor Pierre Roquefort-Strand, for your kind and considered critical input.

One night Juliana got a text from the service: Horlock Hotel, 7PM, client name Harold. $700. Likes tease and talk, some water sports. Dress 4 success! xxx Marlene . Marlene was the woman who ran the service, not a bad sort if you ignored the black patch she wore over one eye. Juliana sighed: “some water sports” could mean any number of things, but from the price, probably not a bad date.

By the time she got to the Horlock Hotel and was knocking on Harold’s door, she felt the hunger—cold and electric, undeniable, and she felt also her four fangs emerging from her gums. They felt like clits of enamel. She shuddered. Damn it! Why didn’t I drink some chilled blood before I left? But the reason she hadn’t was because she liked it warm.

She knocked. Harold answered the door so fast she knew he’d been watching out of the peep-hole.

“Hi, I’m Alyssa, from the agency?” said Juliana, in her best bimbo-voice.

“Oh … my … God …” said Harold as he looked her over. He was a balding chubby man in black suit-pants and a white undershirt.

“You must be Harold,” she said, striding in on her spiked heels. “Get naked and kneel down.” She shut the door behind her.

Harold took off his clothes and knelt. Juliana stripped out of her mini-dress, which was all she wore. She pressed her landing strip against Harold’s quivering lips.

“I hear you like to play like a naughty boy,” she said tauntingly.

“Yes … oh God yes …” moaned Harold.

“And I like to play like a naughty girl,” said the vampire Juliana, suddenly reaching down to grasp Harold around the neck. She pulled his head back with a crack, and as horror overcame the lust in his eyes she tightened her grip and tore Harold’s head off his shoulders.

Blood, in a luscious hot fountain, rose pumping before her, and Juliana bent her grinning face to Harold’s neck and opened her mouth to drink it down deep. She glanced just then at the mirror, to watch herself drinking the blood, bathing in it, as it painted Harold’s white undershirt red, as it washed crimson over the four ivory tusks that jutted from her lips.

She drank him dry, and cast aside his remains, where they quickly turned to ash and chemical trash. Juliana burped, pleased with herself, and before she left she remembered to take $700 from Harold’s wallet, which lay on the dresser.

“We’re getting close to the end, I think,” she murmurs.

“No, no,” he says, panicking. “We ain’t nowhere close to over.”

“Yeah, this is the denouement, and soon the credits will roll.”

“Bullshit!” he cries. “This is still the first third of the movie! First third of the book!” He flails his arms around, tie flying out from him, as the other patrons of the restaurant stare. Outside a taxi with a purple turban inside it runs a red light. New York cat-calls, middle fingers, learn to fuckin drive! goes the night.

“It’s getting, like, so over,” she tells him, “and I’m way over it.”

“Still the first third!” he insists. “You ain’t seen nothin yet! First third, the meat and potatoes, baby!”

She laughs a bitter laugh. He knows she wants to light a cigarette so she can flick it in his face. Instead, she picks up her $2000 Cartier lighter (white gold) and examines the reflection of her perfect white teeth.

“You don’t have the meat, never did,” she tells him, “and potatoes just make a girl fat. So crawl back into the past, you sad clown, because you’re fucking history.”

“I’m begging you,” he begs.

“Won’t work this time.” She sucks a piece of caper from a molar.

“I’ll do anything,” he whispers.

“Now you’re singing my tune,” she says, brightening. “While you’re down on your knees, dog-boy, lick my shoes … just the sole, sweetie. These are my Blahniks.”

Outside, a long black limousine pulls up in front of the restaurant, and she shifts in her seat as he nuzzles her ankle with his nose. Something about her body language (the way she gathers her purse, her lighter from the table) tells the other patrons that it is she, the beautiful girl getting her Manolo Blahniks licked, who’ll be climbing into that lozenge of luxury parked outside.

“You’re nothing to me,” she tells the man on his hands and knees before her. “Nothing. That’s the only part of me you can have—my sole, and not the one that’s going to heaven either.”

“I love it when you talk to me like that, baby,” he gurgles.

“Don’t call me baby. Now suck the sidewalk off my shoe.”

Eyes closed, he licks long and wet, sparing himself nothing, tasting the gritty street on her luscious leather shoe-sole. A woman clutches her napkin to her breast and gasps. A waiter looks on, curious. Outside the limo driver climbs out, steps to the sidewalk, and lights a cigarette. The way he waits looking at the Empire State Building seems to say This is gonna be a long one.

“Feel like a date?” he asked her.

“Well,” she said, hiding the pill bottle behind her back. Her cat hid under the TV and watched all that transpired. “I don’t see why not,” she said.

So she jumped in his car and away they went to the Adult Superstore, and to show his good intentions Mr. Wright treated Minerva to dinner and a movie. He swung into the McDonald’s drive-thru and ordered two cheeseburgers while Minerva watched trailers on his sticky laptop.

Browsing arm-in-arm down the lanes of the Superstore, Minerva fell in love with Mr. Wright and he with her. She bought him a thick rubbery ring with suckers on it like something cut from an octopus. He bought her a piercing, a bright golden hoop for her hood. She thanked him with tears in her eyes. He smoothed down his mustache and smiled.

He kept his sunglasses on all through that motel-room night, as if anticipating the white-hot dawn that would pour through the curtains next morning. When morning came he was snoring, and the sunlight lay upon Minerva’s buttocks in bright curves. She twisted round with new flexibility and watched her white body in the mirror. The light on her ass looked like a smile.

She wondered what her cat would do for breakfast, for she wouldn’t be there to fix him Vienna sausages with jam. But as she fell asleep against her fiancée’s pot belly she remembered she had left her front door open, in the haste of her flight. At some point her cat would realize he was free.

I’m getting the impression that the half-measures taken thus far by BP to stop the flow of oil, while they might appear daring and dramatic, are in fact attempts to cut costs. In other words, they aren’t spending the money necessary to fix the problem. Deep-sea oil spills like this have happened before, and other nations and companies have the know-how required to fix this.

Because BP is trying to carry on business as usual while this catastrophe is unfolding, and are evidently only willing to spend a tiny percentage of their wealth fixing it, I propose another solution. I propose that President Obama, using his Executive Powers, order BP to cease all business on American soil, until such time that the oil flow in the Gulf is stopped permanently, and all spilled oil is cleaned from the ocean to the extent possible by current technology. After that, BP would only be allowed to conduct business in the US if they paid for the continuing costs of environmental and economic fallout.

Because when it comes right down to it, this is a problem that CAN be fixed, because it HAS been fixed elsewhere. BP must take any and every step necessary, and they must be forced to pay for it by the US government. I refuse to accept that everything that can be done is being done, because any idiot can see that this isn’t the case. BP has the money, and it’s time for them to dig down deep.

Whether this involves President Obama signing a declaration of national emergency and calling out the military and its engineers to cap the well, and seizing every penny of BP’s US assets until the problem has been resolved, any and all steps must be taken. Not IF and BUT, but MUST.

If I were president, I wouldn’t even be thinking about a second term right now. I’d be happy to go down in the history books as the guy who took the reins and solved the Gulf of Mexico Oil Crisis.

The great minds and the technology are out there. All BP has to do is bring them all in … and pay for it. Whatever it takes, and not the cheapest way.

“What are you doing?” Protag asked her.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Gertrud. “I’m packing. I’m leaving you.” Into the bag went a dusty pair of black plastic tongs, and a handful of rubber gripper-thingies of all different colors. Protag noted that Gertrud’s brow was knotted with stress and rage, as if she’d been drinking too much coffee and reading the latest translation of Simone de Beauvoir.

“Well,” said Protag, “I would have thought you’d be packing a suitcase … you know, pulling down hangers at random, emptying your dresser drawers.”

She looked at him, a gravy-stained spatula in her hand.

“But that would be cliché, wouldn’t it,” she said. “I thought I’d spare you the embarrassment of having to witness it.”

“I hate your sarcasm,” he said.

“You used to love it,” she said.

“I used to love a lot of things.”

After she had filled the brown paper bag to the top with assorted kitchen utensils and the food processor, Gertrud stormed out of the kitchen, through the hallway, and out the door. Protag watched her climb into the back seat of a waiting taxi.

He recognized his wife’s leaving him as the Inciting Incident that would spur him on to some inevitable conclusion, though he had not the foggiest idea what that might be. He watched the taxi back out of the driveway, and the last thing he saw before the cab disappeared past the azaleas was Gertrud sticking out her tongue at him, her face obscured by the thumb-smudged glass of her window.

***

He sat in his therapist’s office. It was raining outside, and Protag watched through the window as the water gushed from the eaves and formed a muddy pool next to a holly bush.

“Now then, Mr. Protag,” said his therapist, whose name was Jack B. Nimble. “I think it’s important that we work through this thing, don’t you? It’s a traumatic experience when one’s wife leaves him.”

“Dr. Nimble, I think you have a drainage problem out there,” observed Protag.

“A drainage problem?” echoed Dr. Nimble, who then laughed in his falsely-casual way that, Protag knew, was like a glob of water-based lubricant: clear, slick at first, does the job but pretty soon you need more. At least he wouldn’t say that Dr. Nimble was oily.

“The puddle out there is getting bigger,” said Protag. “But yes, Doctor. By all means, let’s talk about Gertrud leaving … before the trauma sets in.”

“And please—call me Jack,” said Dr. Nimble.

“Fine, Doctor … Jack. And you can call me Dick,” said Protag.

“Well then, Dick, in light of this new development in your domestic situation,” said Dr. Nimble, crossing his legs and pretending to take notes on his laptop computer, but Protag could tell he was actually playing solitaire, or possibly Scrabble, “what goals would you say are now confronting you? Guiding your actions, as it were?”

“Goals?” said Protag. He didn’t know he was supposed to have any goals.

“Yes, because after your wife left you,” said Dr. Nimble, “a response is required of you, since you’re the main character of your own story, as it were, and you don’t want to be a cipher.”

“I see, Jack,” said Protag, although he didn’t see anything. While he felt an inner resistance to the idea of a goal, and was about to close his mind and pretend to take part in the remainder of the session and then leave, he suddenly realized that it was a good thing he had Dr. Nimble … a good thing he had Jack.

“So, Dick, since we’re on the subject—name your goal, right here and now.”

“Hmm,” began Protag. “How about this—I go out and get laid, even if I have to hire a call girl.”

“I make no judgments,” said Dr. Nimble. “A dubious goal is better than no goal at all.”

“So that’s it? I can have getting laid as my goal?” asked Protag. He thought that maybe Dr. Nimble had hit a lucky run of aces in his solitaire game and wasn’t really paying attention.

“I don’t see why not,” said Dr. Nimble, typing and watching his laptop screen. “But there is a flipside to your goal, and that is your unconscious goal, which might well work at cross-purposes to your conscious goal.”

“Now you’ve lost me, Jack,” said Protag.

“For example, your unconscious goal might be, in this case, to sabotage your own efforts at getting laid.” Dr. Nimble continued tapping keys and watching the screen, and then he said something under his breath that Protag thought sounded like What do I have to do for a fucking Jack of Spades?

“Excuse me, I missed that last part,” said Protag.

“I said, you’d be avoiding getting laid in hopes that Gertrud might come back.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Protag. He decided he’d have to get another therapist, or maybe take the extreme step of not having one at all.

“Of course, you’re not a character in literary fiction,” said Dr. Nimble, looking up from his laptop, “so you can go ahead and begin your narrative arc with just the conscious goal of getting laid.”

“Narrative arc? Is that like Noah’s Ark?”

“It’s not like you have a particularly complex character, as it were,” said Dr. Nimble.

Protag stood up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Jack, I have to go get ready for the singles bars.”

***

The Meathook, the first singles bar on his list, only had a few cars in the parking lot, but Protag felt lucky. Maybe they all belonged to women, and maybe one or two might belong to women with whom he might achieve an erection. He hitched up his pants and went in.

Having gone through the first doorway (the poorly-lit bar doorway perhaps symbolizing the metaphorical doorway marked “End of Marriage”), Protag felt light in spirit. He sat at the bar between two women and he ordered a gin and tonic. The bartender sneered at him and gave him a drink with a yellow-brown lime wedge in it.

Protag turned to the blonde on his right. “Hi, my name is Dick,” he said, smiling.

She turned to him wearily. “And when Sartre said that hell is other people,” she said, “he was talking about fuckheads like you, so leave me alone.”

Protag turned away and stared into his drink, where the dead juice-pods that had detached from his sorry lime wedge floated in the cloudy liquid. Like brine shrimp, they coursed slowly around the single ice cube. His drink smelled bad. Nevertheless, he turned to the redhead on his left.

“Hi there,” he said, with less friendly volume to his voice than he had used with the tired-looking blonde. “May I buy you a drink, Miss?”

The redhead, who had a gold hoop in her eyebrow and a scar on her cheek that Protag thought might have been done with an actual meat-hook, turned to him and smiled.

“Sure, Dick, I’d love another,” she said in a sultry voice, dark and cigarette-rough. His heart jumped, pumped, and he got a hard-on faster than he had at 18. He drew the surly bartender’s attention and pointed to her beer.

“I think the lady is ready for another, and one more here,” he said. The bartender gave him a murderous look, slid the redhead a bottle of Schlitz, and began to make another gin and tonic. The redhead sucked the foam from the bottle-neck.

“Thanks,” she said huskily.

“My pleasure,” he said dreamily.

***

45 minutes later, in a cheap motel that Gertrud wouldn’t have been caught dead in, Protag lay back on the bed while the redhead stood and undressed. He admired her shapely, narrow-hipped rear end, which she kept turned to him. The TV was on, although Protag couldn’t remember who had turned it on. A commercial for something with Oxy-action played loudly. Protag noted that the redhead wore stockings and a garter belt, and the black stockings had those lines that run up the back. He penis stood straight up out of the fly of his boxers, which had at some point during the drive over here come unsnapped.

“Are you naked yet, Lover Boy?” husked the redhead, waggling her hips and arching her back. Quickly, Protag removed his boxers and undershirt. He left his blue socks on because they were his favorites (Gertrud had been with him the day he’d bought them, had picked them out) and because his feet were cold.

“Now I am,” said Protag.

The redhead, still facing away from him, shucked off her thong, and in aching slow-motion she turned to him with a grin. He could see her blinding white teeth in the half-dark.

“So who goes first, stud?” she asked him, and at that moment he looked from her Cheshire grin to her fantastic breasts to her flat belly to her landing-strip … to her penis, which was not yet erect but which jumped and pulsed with the motions of her hips, as if it was inviting him to make it so.

“Um … um … listen,” said Protag, but the redhead kept smiling that winning smile and coming closer. Pretty soon she slipped into a thick bar of shadow, and he could only tell where she was by touching her.

“Ssh, it’s okay, sweetie,” said the redhead. “The first time is always a little confusing.”

It occurred to Protag that he had met his goal, and that Dr. Nimble (Jack) would be proud of him. After a few minutes he realized too that he’d forgotten to ask the redhead’s name.

***

He stood in his kitchen drinking a cup of cold coffee. Gertrud was unpacking the brown paper bag of kitchen utensils.

“In the end, I decided I loved you,” she said, “and that as much as I also despise you for … for a whole list of things, I wanted to come back home.”

“I’m glad, Gertrud, I’m really glad.” Protag wasn’t sure this was the happy ending he wanted. There had been a different kind of happy ending the night before, several in fact. He watched Gertrud’s skinny ass in her faded jeans. There was once a time when he’d stayed up late dreaming about marrying her. He could still taste the redhead’s flavor in his mouth. There had been climax upon climax, he thought, but where was the resolution?

“Did you at least learn anything from this experience?” she asked him. The bag was empty, and she folded it and placed it carefully on the second shelf of the rolling butcher-block cart. He imagined leaning his head down on the scarred wood surface while Gertrud raised her good Japanese cleaver over his neck.

“Yes, darling, I did,” he said, and he went to her then and embraced her. “I learned that, even in this day and age, you’ve got to be careful about who you get on a first-name basis with.” She did not hug him back. Pretty soon she disengaged herself from his arms and left the kitchen. He stood in the doorway and watched her. She went to her computer, and turned it on. Protag felt himself fade into invisibility, as the glow of her screen filled the room.