Friends

by Stephen Dixon

  She’s been rubbing herself down there for the last few minutes. Door’s closed and lights out and she’s under the covers. She’s tried to masturbate a few times but has either fallen asleep doing it or stopped because she thought one of her parents might walk in and turn the light on at the same time and catch her at it, and once when the light was on she thought there might be a tiny hole in the ceiling or walls someplace and one of her parents or the building’s tenants might be looking through it. She knows where and how to rub and what she’s supposed to do to complete it. She’s read a couple of library books about it and what the end’s supposed to be like, but she’s never come near to feeling anything but a little titillation down there while she was doing it. She also read in one of those books that every woman, including married ones, should practice masturbation for all sorts of reasons—spiritual, political, like that—and sooner a younger woman learns how, better it’ll be for her and all freedom-loving women in general, so she’s never really felt much guilt over it but hasn’t yet talked about it with anyone. She doesn’t like the idea she’s doing it so soon after she saw that man on the subway, but is sure that incident had nothing to do with it. In fact, more she thinks of him, less interested she is in continuing to rub herself, so she closes and opens her eyes a few times to get him out of her head, and also changes hands because the right one’s become tired. The model today probably had more to do with it than anything else. Thinking of that woman’s vagina probably made her think of her own, though without really knowing it, since right after she thought of her she found her hand rubbing down there. Sarah and her new boyfriend and the heavy petting she bets they’ll start doing in a month if they stay together? No, she never thought of that till now, though again that’s not to say somewhere deep inside she hadn’t been thinking of it. But she still doesn’t think so, nor anything related to Sarah’s father being infatuated with her, something she already knew by his actions and looks and wishes he’d stop, more for her friendship with Sarah and Sarah’s mother’s sake than her own. Anyway, whatever it was that started her doing it, it’s not working. She’s been rubbing for around fifteen minutes, both hands are tired, she’s beginning to ache down there from it, and she’s no further along in getting excited as those books said she’d get than she was a few seconds after she started. Maybe she’s doing it wrong or is just too young yet or the books left out something or some other reason. No big deal. It was more out of curiosity that she wanted to complete it than any other thing. She turns on the light, listens from her bed if anyone’s behind the door, reads a little and falls asleep.

  In one of her dreams there was a big bull with a long unicorn’s horn on its head. She knows what those mean and knew in the dream. In the dream she said to the bull, when he stepped out from behind a bush and got into a charging position, “Come on, I know what you and that horn mean. You want to try and fool me with symbols and stuff, get more complicated, but don’t come around like some old-time figure in art.” She’s become something of an expert on her dreams. Her youngest aunt’s a psychotherapist and they’ve talked about their dreams a lot. The bull chased her after she lectured him on dreams and art. That was when she stopped interpreting within the dream, or even thought of it as one, and it became more like a normal dream. She was dressed only in white, even her socks and shoes. White’s such an obvious symbol for her, though she didn’t think of it then, but it can also stand for death, can’t it?—in the Orient her aunt’s said and she’s read. Anyway, she was chased, fell back against a wall that had a few pillows on it, that suddenly became one huge pillow. A bed, what else? or something close to it. No? Yes. The bull charged from about ten feet away, head down, horn out, straight at her. She thought she’d be pierced by the horn and she screamed, so loud that she thinks she must have screamed outside of the dream too. The horn was a few inches from her stomach when she woke.

  She’s thirsty. She gets up and goes to the kitchen for some ice water or seltzer. Her mother’s reading in the livingroom. “Everything all right, sweetheart? It’s past two.”

  “I had a bad dream. Did you hear me scream?”

  “No. It was that bad? Anything you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know if it was that bad, just very revealing, I think.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I dreamt about a man about to penetrate me with an erection. In the stomach. But it’s the same thing, isn’t it—myself down there and my stomach? Only the man was a bull with a unicorn’s horn, and the horn, well it has to be what I think it is to think it was an erection, right?”

  “Sounds right. You haven’t had any of those experiences—even close to it—have you?”

  “Me? Not a chance. How would I? Where?”

  “I’m not accusing you, I’m just naturally worried. So it was your whole day of bad experiences today. But anything else bothering you related to sex?”

  “I don’t know about bothering me, but another man got suggestive with me on the subway, right before the one who exposed himself. I just walked away.”

  “Maybe from now on let’s take the bus.”

  “And Sarah’s father. I didn’t want to say anything for I don’t want to hurt my friendship with her, but if she’s telling the truth, he has a crush on me. Actually I know he has. I’ve seen the way he looks.”

  “You think you’re old enough to tell?”

  “I am. And not that he’s evil or would do anything or anything, but he doesn’t do a good job of hiding it.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t sleep over there this Friday after all.”

  “Maybe for a while it’s not a good idea. I can go over for afternoons and she can sleep here.”

  “Don’t tell her the reasons though. It’d only hurt her. So, sweetheart, back to sleep?”

  “I also tried to masturbate tonight and not for the first time too. That’s all right also, considering everything, isn’t it? I didn’t want to tell you, but we were talking and I guess I really wanted to get it out, and now it is.”

  “What can I say? That I like hearing it? Not so much. The act itself is normal for young women as well as some older ones, I suppose—I’m not going to say at what specific age you do and you don’t—but let’s not talk about it anymore. It’s not that nonsense that I don’t like learning you’re growing up but maybe something you can try to save for your friends. But if anything is troubling you and you want to talk about it, no matter what it is, come to your father or me or both. Now off to bed.”

  “I want to get something cold to drink first.”

  “Not too cold or you’ll have trouble sleeping.”

  Magna pours herself a glass of seltzer. Her mother goes back to her reading. Later her mother comes into Magna’s room, thinks she’s sleeping, pulls the covers up an inch or two to Magna’s neck.

  Cooked Goose

  They said no more stories, no more novels, we don’t want anything of yours anymore, your novels don’t sell, your collections do even worse, each of your books gets panned more than the last one, find another publisher if you can but you’ll be wasting your time and ours if you send another work in.

  I phone several editors at different publishing houses and they all say the same thing. They’ve read my reviews and sometimes my stories and books and I should feel lucky I even got my work published and reviewed. Try another profession—that’s our advice. If you feel you must be in the arts, try music or mixed media or something like that—acting, because occasionally your dialogue hits the mark, for about three sentences in a row, but please don’t bother sending us any of your manuscripts.

  I write a short story and think this is one of my best and send it to a magazine and finish the novel I’ve been writing for a year and make a few copies of it and send these to publishers and begin another novel and write more stories and send these to magazines and I get back rejection slips and letters from magazine and book editors all saying please don’t try us again, be so kind as to solicit beforehand whether we wan
t to read your work, your fiction is not only unsalable but just plain unworthy—the syntax and bad taste, the characters, the grammar, style, form, content, language, writing, wording, everything, you’re deceiving yourself, you’re taking up our valuable time which we could much better be using to read novels and collections by other writers—our own and newer writers we’ve asked to send their work in.

  I finish the novel and send the two new novels out and write more stories and another novel, which is the third part of the trilogy to the last two novels, and send this work out separately to some publishers and all three together to other publishers and the few literary agents I haven’t tried yet and my stories to magazines and anthologies and a collection of my last twenty stories to other publishers and they all return my work saying just about the same thing. This isn’t for us and we don’t see any other house publishing it either. You’re fooling yourself and should get out of writing fiction or at least take a couple years break from it. You had a professional writing career going once but something happened along the way to stop it that is probably as unexplain-able to you as it is to us, even if it isn’t that rare. Maybe you should try finding a job in journalism or adver tising, publishing, publicity or technical or medical writing. If you feel you have to make a living doing fiction, try writing a popular novel. Something about outer space or a detective or erotic novel or a book for kids—anything but what you’re writing now which we know was intended to be serious fiction but just doesn’t come across at all that way.

  Manuscripts come back and I continue to write. I finish another story collection in a year and my fourth novel in two years. The fourth novel continues where the trilogy left off, so I now not only have another novel to send around but also a tetralogy. Comments come back with my manuscripts. I start a new novel. Royalty checks from the early promising works of mine have stopped coming in. Anthologies that carried my early stories are now out of print. I am out of money. Utility companies are threatening to shut off my gas, lights and phone. My landlord says tough as he knows life has been for me over the past ten years, he’ll have to have my six months back rent or throw me out. I’m evicted. A city marshall breaks down my door and takes all my furniture and clothes away to sell for whatever he can get from them to pay back part of my rent. I try to keep my typewriter but two of the marshall’s assistants pull it out of my hands. A locksmith puts new locks on my door and laughs when I ask for a set of the new keys. I’m left with several shopping bags of my manuscripts and what’s in my pockets.

  I sit on the front stoop of the building I lived in. The mailman comes, doesn’t see my name on the letterbox anymore and drops a few envelopes of returned manuscripts on my lap and says goodluck. A woman brings me a sandwich and glass of water and says “I’ve heard you typing for years across the air shaft and wondered what you were writing—term papers for university students, hate letters to the mayor—but never figured it for fiction till the mailman just told me it was. I’ve always admired creative people in all fields and they have to eat no matter how much they’re nourished by their pursuits, isn’t that so?”

  “They also need a place to live and work in, so would you please by any chance have a spare room for free for a couple months till I really get back on my feet?”

  “That I think would be carrying my support for the arts a little too far,” and when I tell her I’m not hungry for her food now though do thank her for it, she takes the plate and glass home with her, leaving the sandwich in one of my shopping bags.

  Night comes. I suddenly get a good idea for a short story. I take a pen and pad out of my pocket and begin writing it. A policeman pulls up in a car when I’m halfway through the story and says the landlord and a few tenants and neighbors complained about my sitting on the stoop for so long and looking a bit seedy with all those bags and my worn work clothes, so I’ll have to move.

  I cross the street and sit on the sidewalk curb and finish the story. It’s the first story I’ve written entirely by hand in twenty years. I tried to keep the writing neat and pages clean but it still doesn’t look too good. The pen ran out of ink and when I continued to write the story by pencil, lead smudges along with my fingerprints soiled several pages.

  I take one of the envelopes from my returned manuscripts, cross off my name on the front and write the name and address of a popular magazine and put the story in it and drop it in a mailbox. It probably won’t get there without stamps and if it does and the magazine pays the postage due on the envelope rather than handing it back to the mailman, it probably won’t get accepted, but you never know. The magazine might think it the best story I’ve sent them and give me a good deal of money for it and a contract to get first look at every story I write for the next few years. It’s happened to other writers who have placed stories in that magazine and I never thought their work was any better than mine.

  Suddenly an idea comes to me. The streetlight’s bad where I sit and the weather’s gotten windy and cold, so I find a quiet-enough bench at the bus terminal and begin a new novel that has no relationship to the last four. I write all night and the following day, nibbling on my sandwich sparingly to keep away debilitating hunger for as long as I can, and think this novel might end up being the best one I’ve written so far.

  Friends

  They’re sitting at a bar. Floyd says “I have to tell you something, now that you brought up Gabe—something you might not want to hear.” “What, that he doesn’t like it that I didn’t like his novel?”

  “He told me about it. It hurts him very much. Not that you didn’t like it but that you dropped him cold right after it was published, without even writing him about the book when he sent you a copy.”

  “He stole parts of it from one of my novels. I once—do you know the story?”

  “He never mentioned anything about it. He just feels you couldn’t face it or something that he got a book out before you, and because you still haven’t published one, it’s still bothering you.”

  “Listen. He was once over my place for dinner with his girlfriend Pearl.”

  “Pearl. Boy, that name brings back memories. Floods. But what happened?”

  “He lived downtown then—well, still does, but at that time a block away from White Nights Press. So I asked if he’d drop my manuscript off—my novel Flowers, which was new then but I’ve since trunked.”

  “That’s right. She got married, to a doctor, has a kid, Gabe said.”

  “Did she? Pearl? Anyway, I didn’t want to send the novel fourth class—it could take two weeks in this city—and first class would cost a few bucks.”

  “So he took it to them for you.”

  “Eventually. But that night, around two a.m., I couldn’t believe it, phone rings—”

  “Gabe calling saying how much he likes your novel.”

  “He told you?”

  “No, that’s just the way he is and always has been. Gets a manuscript, starts reading—can’t keep his hands off it, really—and if it’s good, and I’m assuming yours was, and he’s too tired to finish it but wants more time to—a few hours after he wakes up the next day when he’s supposed to be bringing it to the publisher, let’s say. That what happened?”

  “Truth is, he didn’t even have to call me about it. He could’ve brought it to them the day after the next—what would be the difference? It’d still be getting to White Nights earlier than it would if I sent it by mail.”

  “But he was trying to give you confidence. Trying to say—saying it for all I know—and you must have been flattered and felt good and so on he called, even if he woke you up—that he likes it, he, another writer, and so much so that he’s asking for more time so he can finish it—time when he would normally be writing himself.”

  “Sure he liked it and needed more time. Liked it enough to steal from it and needed more time to photocopy or type parts of it. Not whole paragraphs and sentences. But two or three characters and several ideas and scenes, all changed a little, and a lot of dialogue c
hanged even less—but distinctive dialogue, not hello and goodbye dialogue; but idiosyncratic dialogue.”

  “That he never said. None of it.”

  “Of course not. Why would he?”

  “Still, why didn’t you at least say thanks for the complimentary copy of his book? ‘Congratulations’—after all, it was his first published book—and that you were reading it. Then, maybe some day later after you had really done some comparison research on the two novels, taken him up on the parts you thought he swiped.”

  “You still don’t see why I dropped him cold?”

  “I see, I see, from your perspective, but you don’t know what you did to him. And the guy’s in such awful physical state that I also don’t want to see him emotionally hurt. I in fact want to see him emotionally built up. But maybe, to be fair to both of you, the important thing to ask you now is how much time elapsed between his taking your manuscript to White Nights—I assume they weren’t that interested in it if it was never published.”

  “I said so, they rejected it, not even a peep. Just ‘Thanks very much’—not even saying they’ll be glad to look at my next novel if there’s one, which editors usually say. Now I don’t care—then I did. I don’t even know if I like it anymore, and I’ve stolen parts of it, consciously or unconsciously, out of it myself.”

  “Any of the parts that you say ended up in Gabe’s book?”

  “Some, and also the idea that he took from my novel. Put it into another novel. But there I said sentence for sentence what Abe, a character who’s very much like Gabe, took from the narrator’s manuscript, which the narrator then had to trunk. That novel was sent all around too.”

  “White Nights see it?”

  “Sure. Also the same editor Gabe had at his publisher, but if he recognized anything, he never said it. But what do you think I should do with Gabe now? After four years of not talking to him since he sent me his book, I should write him about it, give him a call, apologize?”

  “It’d be nice. And without saying you thought he stole from your novel. Anyway, by this time you should just forget that.”