Drivel: Deliciously Bad Writing by Your Favorite Authors

by Julia Scott

  BIRTH OF A FLOWER

  ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She founded and edited the Big Ugly Review, an online literary magazine, and her short stories have been published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian (fiction contest winner), Tin House, the North American Review, and other U.S. and international literary journals. She’s a freelance book editor at EBC-Books.com.

  It was 1986. I was nineteen years old, a sophomore in college. I rocked a Demi Moore haircut (circa St. Elmo’s Fire)—short around the ears, frosted on top. All through that long, cold New England winter, I lay on my dorm room bed, listening to Roxy Music, Spandau Ballet, and the Fixx on an endless loop, waiting for spring to come.

  And then, one day, it did. The ice melted; the grass grew; the sun came out. Everything was starting to blossom.

  Even me.

  I had always been a late bloomer. I entered high school at four-foot-ten, and five years later, I had grown nine inches. What was this new body? Who was this young woman? All I knew was that I was no longer a girl. Things were going to happen for me now. Big things. Woman things.

  I was enthralled. I knew just what to do to commemorate this momentous occasion, this transition from girlhood to womanhood. I rose delicately from my dorm room bed, hushed Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” on the boom box, and opened up my spiral notebook.

  —E.B.

  ZAHRA NOORBAKHSH

  PAUL REISER’S GHOST:

  A DREAM JOURNAL

  ZAHRA NOORBAKHSH is a stand-up comedian and writer-performer of two national shows, All Atheists Are Muslim and Hijab and Hammerpants. Her performances have sold out theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Noorbakhsh’s writing is featured in Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women. Noorbakhsh is one-third of the theater troupe DISoriented, a trio of Asian American performers. As a comedian, she was a finalist in the Aspen Rooftop National College Comedy Competition and has performed with international acts such as Maz Jobrani and Shazia Mirza.

  When I was twenty-two, I took a dream analysis class at a local junior college, because I thought it would make me psychic and I wanted to be able to tell the future. Every morning in 2002, I woke up, grabbed my pen, flung open my dream journal, and chronicled my subconscious mythologies.

  I took my dream analysis class very seriously.

  I forgot all about these journals until I dug them up for Drivel. It turns out that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, I was hanging out with every celebrity in film and television in a transpersonal party called the Collective Unconscious, from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m. Pacific standard time.

  Okay, so the whole point of this analysis was to look at everything as a metaphor: the celebrities, the symbols, all of the great plot twists, but I pretty much missed the point entirely. As far as my celebrity-obsessed twenty-two-year-old self was concerned, the cast of Mad About You was trying to send me psychic messages.

  “Our psyches are linked in the collective unconscious,” my teacher used to say, which, to me, meant that I had access to a massive mind-pool of primal wisdom—transcending time and space—provided I could just decode messages from Paul Reiser, Nicole Kidman, and Stockard Channing.

  —Z.N.

  [NOTE: I always wrote both dates—before and after falling asleep—to make sure my dream analysis teacher knew when the psychic link was open.]

  07/27−07/28

  Dream with me stalking Diane Keaton—chasing her all around the kitchen—blood soup in the pots in the sink.

  First I’ve got an axe—then a huge knife, and I’m chasing her. Sometimes, I’m Jack Nicholson. But most of the time, I’m me.

  I’m chasing around Diane Keaton from the film “Annie Hall”—I am Jack Nicholson from the film “The Shining.”

  We’re in my house, but the room seems rearranged and my house seems backwards somehow. The location of the kitchen, breakfast nook, family room, and my brother’s room are the same, but everything else seems eerily different.

  My house looks like a house straight out of a horror flick. The energy about it is thick! It’s as though the dead and unresolved spirits of others that I’ve killed are lingering about the air, angry and cheated.

  There are almost shrines, sculpture-looking dead bodies of old Kings, Lords and Gods, all lining the walls, just where they meet the ceiling, seated in throned chairs, made of the same white paint and material as the walls as though they were built from the walls. They’re there to really help Diane Keaton.

  The spirits of these Kings, Gods and Lords are very much alive! But are trapped in these immobile, totally paralyzed bodies. Some of their eyes move as they watch me chase Diane, who is screaming and frantic, around the kitchen and to the family room.

  The sink is filled with pots and pans filled with overflowing bloody water—just waterfalling (cascading) down each pot.

  07/22−07/23

  The dream begins at a funeral. It’s Paul Reiser’s funeral. I walk as though by accident into this room.

  I had come from somewhere else. I open the double doors and peek my head through.

  There’s a priest with the white linen garb around him reading the appropriate scripture from the Bible and saying a few words about Paul.

  I see it’s his funeral somewhere on a board upon an easel written in thick marker. It’s there and then it’s gone.

  It tells me that it’s Paul Reiser’s funeral. When I hear that it’s his funeral, there are a few people that I immediately expect to be there. Producers, writers, comedians and Helen Hunt.

  I look over to my right and see her.

  Then I look for his wife and his daughter and his best friend. All are together at the very bottom of this pentagon-shaped funeral parlor.

  The dream cuts.

  Paul Reiser and his jokes turn into this Indian guy for a second and then back again. I’m yelling at him about the comic material he’s testing. None of my evaluation occurs because he’s jumping around from page to page too much. I ask him to just read a paragraph but he keeps making up his own comic routine about his parents.

  Then he keeps going back and forth between him and the Indian guy.

  Nobody else knows that he’s Paul Reiser! Everyone thinks that he’s John Brown.[NOTE: I have no idea who John Brown is.] In the dream, I know I’m the only one who seems to know that the Ghost of Paul Reiser has reincarnated itself into the body of the man John Brown. Not even Paul Reiser knows this. I can’t see the actual body of this man he’s possessed because all I can see is Paul Reiser.

  I wish other people knew so that they wouldn’t be sad about the death of their friend.

  07/16−07/17

  Meg Ryan is everywhere and there’s this boy who keeps talking to her on the phone. The boy is trying to get ahold of her to come on a hike with us (my hiking class.

  The most interesting part about the dream I think was that, just before I woke up I from the dream, I saw a magazine with Nicole Kidman on the cover. She looks pissed. Her hair is that bright orangey red that she looks so good in. It’s pulled back into a tight, really fashionable mid-way ponytail and she’s making a screaming, yelling face. She’s got her hands at her temples pressed firmly and frustratedly against her head.

  The cover of the magazine reads: “NICOLE KIDMAN: STUFFED AWAY AND PISSED! READY TO KICK HER WAY OUT! TOM CAN’T HOLD HER BACK FOREVER! SHE’S BEEN STUFFED AWAY AND SHE IS MORE READY THAN EVER TO MAKE A COMEBACK! LOOK OUT WORLD!”

  07/29−07/30

  I’m in Vegas. A casino is being robbed. Andy Garcia runs out of the double doors, sees me and stops. He hands me a black leather bag and says, “Here. There’s a cut. Just a gift.” And then he takes off with the police chasing him down the streets that turn into Los Angeles.

  Now I’m at the beach. I open his “gift.” It’s a bag of diamonds
. Looking at them I think, “Well, they’re definitely worth $100,000, but WHAT IF THEY’RE WORTH A MILLION!?”

  KATIE CROUCH

  HELLO KITTY DIARY

  KATIE CROUCH is the New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks, Abroad, and other novels. She has written for the London Guardian, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Slate, Salon, and has a regular column on the Rumpus called “Missed.” A MacDowell Fellow, Crouch teaches at San Francisco State University and lives in Bolinas, California.

  These excerpts are taken from my Hello Kitty diary, starting when I was nine years old. At that time, I was quite convinced that I was either going to be incredibly famous or buried in clay. Either way, I felt it important to document my ninth year so that the public could study my youth.

  At the time of writing this, I was living in Charleston, South Carolina. The city has grown fivefold since, but in 1981, it was a small, pretty town, where everyone knew each other and not much went unnoticed. Most of the girls at my school were blond and wore big bows in their hair. I was freckled and bookish, which is why I spent so much time pondering “popularity.”

  There are two people mentioned in these entries. Frances Lumpkin has grown up to be a glamorous ad woman who lives in New York. I don’t know where Wood Cleveland is, but as we are now middle-aged, I figure he would welcome the belated compliment.

  One name I have redacted. The reason is I once read these entries aloud while speaking at a school, and the daughter of the redacted person was, unbeknownst to me, in the audience. This was a private girls school in Charleston, and I saw the same blond girls from my youth turn and laugh at this daughter, who was the same age that I was when I wrote the entry. I saw her cheeks burn, saw the tears, and I knew so well what she was feeling I wanted to cry myself.

  This was, I suppose, a brief moment of regret.

  Yet, any more attention would, I knew, make things worse. So after the reading I watched her disappear down the hall, holding her face in her hands. And I concluded that regret is useless, and life is too short for useless things. She has her own redacted desires. At least I hope she does. And I am glad to still have this diary, as I now have a descendent of my own who will, someday, enjoy it.

  —K.C.

  November 2, 1981

  My name is Katie Crouch. I’m almost 9. I have red hair. I would be a good freind (if I may say so myself). I love rock music and animals. Whoever is reading this, I hope you are a decendent or an unknown freind.

  November 12, 1982

  Cloudy

  Today was okay. Dad gave me a little book to put private things in like who my boyfriend is. I have a big crush on a 13-year-old boy whose name is Michael Wise. I think he likes me, too. I hope so! Everyone else hates hime so I guess I’m in good shape.

  November 28, 1983

  Warm & breezy

  This is a very confusing time of life for me. Whoever is reading this, I will try to sort things out for you. To begin with: boys. A couple of boys show intrest in me, but no one is fighting for me. There is this girl in my class called Frances Lumpkin, and every boy I know likes her. She’s really pretty, careless & fun to be with. Her mom owns a store called the Dandylion & it’s the most fashionable store in Charlestown. She has the best clothes but couldn’t care less. And she has kissed a lot of boys. I’ve only kissed one! And he was related to me.

  Second of all: growing up. You might call me “an early maturer.” I’m only 10 & in 5th grade & I already need a bra badly & have lots of hair you-know-where. I know I will get my period soon, but I’m scared of getting it, I hope it doesn’t ever happen!

  March 16, 1984

  Sunny & warm

  I am so happy! I have figured out a way to be popular! The girls are liking me a lot more than they used to! This is my way:

  Don’t ever say something mushy.

  Never say yes.

  Act careless.

  January 24, 1985

  Dear Diary,

  It has been a year since I wrote to you! In the past, I’ve said some pretty stupid things. Also, in the first of the diary, I was pretty problemless! But that’s all part of growing up. Now, I’m 11, but I think like an 18-year-old. I’m pretty intelligent, my friends say. No one in my class hates me.

  I like a boy named Wd Cleveland! (sigh!)

  He’s in 5th grade, has brown hair and green eyes with green specks. Also, he has a toothy grin and a mole under his nose. He’s really cute.

  JULIA SCHEERES

  SPANISH DIARY

  JULIA SCHEERES is the author of the New York Times and London Times bestselling memoir Jesus Land. Her second book, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown, was named the Best Nonfiction Book of 2012 by the Northern California Booksellers Association, and a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe. She’s published creative nonfiction in the New York Times, Wired, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Guardian, and taught narrative nonfiction in San José State University’s MFA program. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

  I regret everything about this—that these events happened, that I wrote them down, that they’re being published in this book. I was in my early twenties when I wrote these diary entries, trying to figure out the meaning of life. Reading them now, their nonsensical earnestness—their grasping at profundity—makes my ears cringe.

  I kept this diary after moving to Valencia, Spain, where I’d fallen in love with a tall, ravishingly sexy antiterrorist agent named Serafin. We moved into a flat in the old part of town and lived a charmed life . . . and Serafin became more and more controlling. I left him many times, but hot sex always lured me back. (He gave me my first orgasm—I don’t regret that!) We fought, we fucked. We fought, we fucked. Such was the rhythm of our relationship. But then he grew paranoid. He thought I was screwing my boss and that his colleagues were plotting against him. Fed up, I returned to the States. He called me every night. He told me he was in therapy. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I loved him. I flew back to Spain to find him in a mental hospital outside of Madrid, and the doctors released him into my care. Then things got really interesting. . . .

  —J.S.

  Scheeres’s portrait of Serafin. Translation: “Do you remember the day we made love under the olive tree in Sevilla? It was so hot and when the farmer passed on his tractor we laughed and you covered me with your body.”

  The Surging Violence

  The urge to hurt Serafin is dominant. The impulse to bludgeon him rather than caress him, is predominant. On his 27th birthday, I gave him a bloody lip. It felt soooo good to materialize a year’s bitterness, to serve 3 good blows to his face.

  Situation: went to El Palmar for paella. Good meal, light conversation. He goes to pay bill, I to the toilet. When I come out, shades of darkness creep across his face. Here we go again. In the car he says, “I can’t stand this any more. I want you to return to the flat. You belong there.”

  Me: “No.”

  “Then get your stuff out. I want to bring women over.”

  “You can fuck whoever you want.”

  He backtracks. I don’t remember the words, but yes, the screeching voice. I open the door (going down the highway). He grabs my wrists in a vise-grip. I peel off his fingers and I hit him full-force in the face, 3 times. Relief. He cries, saying, “Hit me. But don’t leave me.”

  4/5/91

  Thought: I’ll never really be able to love a man because they have been mentalized too long, too thoroughly, in a way which goes against the very essence of my morals in oppressing women. I’ll never find a man capable of throwing his shit of the privileged sex aside and see me for what I am: above all a human.

  No, I’m not a woman. I’m a human. I’m a being inside a feminine body. Unfortunately, men see only surface elements. I’m neither woman, nor race, nor sex. I’m me. Julia Kay Scheeres.
Always.

  Contemplating the entropy of a sick society. The man of my dreams, that restless feminist whom I could love without boundaries: where is he?

  10/24/91

  Today I walked the streets feeling openly sensual. Totally femme fatale. Confident, sexy, yet despising the male race. It showed. My aloof horniness was greeted with numerous compliments. I wouldn’t mind having another affair. With Serafin gone, I feel more vibrant, more alive, aware of my surroundings and OPEN to them. Anything can happen—ya veremos (we’ll see).

  9/1/1992

  The world is new, plastic, artificial and unable to transform into more than flesh and filth. There is no nobility, dignity, purity, pure love. When will we be able to marvel at the simple treasures life has to offer us without littering the scenery with our cheap egotistical caprices? Is that what really matters?

  JEFF GREENWALD

  FAMILY FARMACY POEMS

  JEFF GREENWALD’s books include Shopping for Buddhas, The Size of the World (for which he created the first Internet travel blog), and Snake Lake. His far-flung voyages, fraught with odd illuminations and social blunders, have provided rich material for his storytelling career. Greenwald’s acclaimed one-man show, Strange Travel Suggestions, premiered in San Francisco in 2003. He is also the executive director of EthicalTraveler.org, a nonprofit alliance dedicated to human rights and environmental protection.

  In 1974, when I moved to San Francisco from New York, there was a popular café on California Street called the Family Farmacy. Every Monday night, during the all-you-can-eat spaghetti feed, I read my poetry with great conviction to the annoyed clientele of the Farmacy. Eventually, I browbeat the owner of this doomed establishment into publishing a slim volume of my work. The book was titled Amber Fortress. I thought of my soul as a struggling creature that, like some unfortunate insects of the Mesozoic, would be preserved for eternity in the hardened sap of those poems.