To all NYC Midnight viewers, welcome to my blog. Story below.
To my regular blog readers, I’m participating in NYC Midnight’s Creative Writing Competition, which entails a series of short fiction timed writing assignments. This past weekend, I had 48 hours to write a comedy 1000 words or less that took place in an auto shop and involved chopsticks (I know, wtf?).
Enjoy (or don’t, as the case may be)—
“What Happens in Vegas”
Synopsis: Nipple rings and Elvis, or another day in the life for an auto repair shop guy in Las Vegas.
The first thing I noticed about the guy was his nipple. He walked into my auto repair shop wearing the kind of tank top that curved inward in the front. Girls sometimes wore them over bikinis in the ads in my auto parts supply magazines, and they looked all right, but this guy—what was he thinking? Both of his nipples were showing and one of them was pierced. It was a gold hoop with a charm hanging off of it. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, though. Golf clubs? A ballpoint?
The guy started in with his story, the same song I’ve heard sung from all my customers. My shop is in south Las Vegas. People from all over the country, hell, the world, have come into my shop with unexpected car problems, ending their tales with the same words: “Only me! This only happens to me!”
I always want to respond to these stories, it’s not just you and it’s not bad luck. It’s never getting your oil changed or never looking into that rattle that you’ve been hearing for four months or not replacing your tires when they have no tread. Or trying to go off-roading in a friggin’ Sebring, which is what Nipple Guy had done.
I handed Nipple Guy a blank form for his contact information. He stood at the counter, scribbling into the blank spaces, and the charm on his nipple jiggled. The pierced nipple looked different from the regular one—pinker, redder, purpler, swollen. I was horrified but couldn’t take my eyes off it. I feared it might burst, or at the very least, ooze. I once cut my finger off, and it got an infection while growing back. Those were tough days, and I had to wonder, while looking at this guy’s blistery bauble, if he’d remembered to take his prescription antibiotics.
The charm jiggled again, and I realized what it was: chopsticks. I wanted to ask him why he was wearing a chopsticks charm, but I didn’t want to let on I’d been looking at his nipple. But really, why? He was ruining my entire Chinese restaurant experience standing in front of me with those chopsticks dangling from his nipple. I’d never be able to eat orange chicken again, I thought. I’d only taste nipple.
“Your car will be ready at three o’clock, sir,” I said. “Do you plan on waiting here?”
He said yes, and sat down in the waiting area. Of all the times for one of my customers to wait. Couldn’t he walk across the street to the Station casino and expose himself to the old ladies at the nickel slots?
I started helping the next customers, a group of girls who’d been in Vegas for the weekend. They seemed to be in competition for who could spill the best details about each other’s indiscretions, each trying to top the other in what dirty little secret they could tell. After every tale—and there were quite a few for one weekend—they laughed and said, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
My next customer was Elvis. He looked exactly like the young Elvis, with thick black hair, and he even spoke with a southern drawl. He filled out his paperwork and when he walked over to the waiting area, I heard him say, “Reg, is that you? I thought that was you!”
An hour later, the guys and I were hard at work listening to a mix of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Creedence Clearwater Revival when one of the girls-night-out girls opened the door to our garage. “Sir!” she said. “Excuse me! Sir!” She looked terrified and when I got over to her, I could hear noise in the waiting area. “There’s a problem,” she said.
Elvis and Nipple Guy were in the throes of a fist fight, with the girls-night-out girls huddled in one corner. We entered the room just as Elvis reached for the nipple ring.
I never knew it was possible for a group of men and women to scream in vicarious pain at the same time, but it sounded something like “Ahhhhhhh…” that started off really loud, and then faded to gaped mouths and no additional words. Nipple Guy writhed on the floor, clutching his nipple while flinging insults at the Elvis guy and his mama. And the real Elvis. Which hardly seemed necessary. Elvis Presley was a talented man.
We called the police, the hospital. When it was all said and done, Elvis was taken by the police, Nipple Guy was taken to the hospital for stitches, and we were behind three hours on our workload. The girls-night-out girls were much more subdued and ready to go when their car was done.
That night, my girlfriend showed me a news report that she’d recorded earlier about the fight. It turned out Nipple Guy and Elvis knew each other. Nipple Guy was dating Elvis’ ex-girlfriend and Elvis had only gone into my car shop because he’d been looking for an opportunity to confront Nipple Guy. The sight of the chopsticks charm on Nipple Guy had pushed Elvis over the edge. Apparently, the girlfriend ran a kiosk at the mall selling decorative chopsticks and jewelry, and had once given Elvis the same exact charm.
“Looks like you had a fun day,” my girlfriend said.
I thought of those girls-night-out girls, probably driving home right then, horrified or amused, or both, by the day’s events. I could already imagine how the story would be told and re-told to everyone at home.
“You know what they say,” I said and stretched out on the couch. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
The end.
In other news, I can’t wait to see what kind of Google searches lead people to my blog, due to excessive use of the word nipple – perverts or breastfeeders? Either way, sorry I don’t have what you’re looking for. But I do have this:
Beth Staples is the managing editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review and Marginalia and was kind of enough to do some Q&A with me about the submissions process for her publications. You can read excerpts from Hayden’s Ferry Review here, the publication’s blog is here, and an LA Times review of Hayden’s Ferry Review can be found here. Enjoy!
1. Approx how many submissions do you receive in a month and what is the process for reading them?
Oh boy. Math on the very first question. I’m not sure how many per month exactly, and that probably varies. (Some journals don’t read in the summer, and even though we do, it seems like people submit less during the summer months.) For each issue of HFR (every six months), we receive about 1300 prose submissions (that’s fiction and nonfiction, though about 90% of that is fiction), and 750 poetry submissions (each submission has usually 3-6 poems). We also accept unsolicited art and translation submissions, though the editors for those areas spend a lot of time researching and courting the work for the issue.
Our editors are MFA students in their third year of the program here at ASU. The associate editors are a combination of graduate students in their first two years, and talented ASU staff and community members. The associate editors are the first line of defense, reading through the slush. They decide whether to reject the work or pass it on to the editors. There are usually two editors per genre, so from the passed-on work, they must come to a consensus about what they will accept. I basically oversee the process, hire and manage the staff, and help out with the reading.
2. Do you try to divide each issue up equally among the different forms of writing, or do you find that your issues tend more towards poetry or fiction or…?
We allot a certain number of pages to each set of editors based on a 180-page issue. But sometimes we find that we’ll have an especially wonderful set of stories, or more poetry, or more black and white photography, etc. and the editors can choose to share some of their pages. The issue is sometimes longer or shorter than 180 pages, based on how much good work we receive. Basically, we wouldn’t publish work we didn’t like just to pad the issue, and we wouldn’t send away work that we wanted to publish. The page allotments are fluid, and the editors work together to decide what goes in.
One thing I’ll mention is that we don’t get many nonfiction submissions. For our “Works of Witness” issue (#39), that theme really lent itself to nonfiction, and we published 4 or 5 essays. In our last issue (#42) the editors didn’t choose any nonfiction because they simply didn’t feel strongly about anything we got. We’d definitely like to see more essay submissions.
3. How much time do you spend on your own writing?
Not enough, is the short answer. I’ve only been editing HFR full time since January. Before that, I was an MFA student at ASU, finishing the first draft of my novel for my thesis. The transition from graduate school to the working world wasn’t the easiest one. My alarm hadn’t been set that early in a while. I was tired a lot. I bought a house, so I was also broke. And the absence of that kind of womb-like community of graduate school left me a little scared, I think. I realized it didn’t matter if I wrote or not, not to anyone but me. I’m only just getting used all of that, getting back into writing regularly again. And by regularly I mean a few stolen hours on maybe two weeknights, and a nice little chunk on a Saturday. I also have to vacuum sometimes, and watch So You Think You Can Dance, and eat, pet my cat, go swimming. It feels like juggling sometimes, trying to find time for all of those things. It’s funny, as a writer you never feel like you have “free” time; whenever I sit down to relax I always think, “You should be using this time to write, dummy.”
4. How much reading do you do outside of the reading you do for the journal?
I’ve been making this more of a priority lately. I find it’s really hard to do both – read for HFR and read for “pleasure” (Not that reading the slush isn’t pleasant; I absolutely enjoy it). It’s weird, the more I was reading for HFR, the more difficult I found it was to read already published stuff. There’s a certain editorial mindset involved with reading submissions, a kind of hopefulness or cheerleading as you read a story or poem, and usually the feeling kind of crashes. That is, you don’t love everything you read no matter how much you want to. It’s hard to relax that tendency. And maybe you shouldn’t, I don’t know. But when a book or story is already published, it doesn’t require the simple yes/no answer that editing ultimately requires. Or, necessarily, the cheerleading. In some ways, editing might be hostile to the act of reading for pleasure. But then again, I’m not sure a writer can read strictly for pleasure. I’m always trying to take apart what I’m reading, to learn from it. Did I answer the question?
5. What other jobs have you held that have enabled you to understand writing/publishing process better?
Well, let’s see. I worked as an editorial assistant my first job after college. Except I was working for a medical publisher. I worked on textbooks about otolaryngology and urology. I actually helped put together a chapter for surgeons about what to do with a penis caught in a zipper. Then I worked for a “publishing services provider” called Xlibris. Basically, we helped people self-publish. A lot of those books were really bad, but I still liked working with the authors. I kept thinking, “all these people can write a book. I can write a book.” So I applied to grad school. In grad school, I worked as a teaching assistant, teaching English 101 and creative writing. My third year, I applied to be one of the fiction editors for HFR. And then I got a graduate assistant position working with Salima Keegan, the Managing Editor of HFR (for over 20 years!). When she was retiring and I was graduating, she really pulled for me to take her place. She knew how much I loved HFR. I owe so much to her. Honestly, I was in the right place at the right time. I feel lucky.
6. Is it okay that I said writing/publishing, or do you feel the two are separate, with two separate paths?
I’m not entirely sure I understand the question, but I’ll give it a go. For me, I pursued publishing after college because it was related to writing. I liked to write, but I knew no one would pay me to write short stories. Publishing sounded exciting. Some people who love to write get jobs as journalists or technical writers, but that never sounded any good to me. I didn’t want to get burnt out on writing with a job that required me to write all the time about (potentially) things I didn’t care for. That argument is just academic, though. I know writers who just write and write (for a living, at home), and the more things they write, the better they feel. I don’t think I’m that person. That said, I’ve been enjoying blogging. I usually write at least one post a day, and I like the rhythm of that. It’s been giving me confidence for my other work, I think, regularly producing an (albeit small) piece of writing.
As for whether writing and publishing are the same for me as a writer, that’s of course no. You have to just write what you believe in. Write and write and don’t think about whether anyone else will like it, last of all a “publisher.” Write the story you have to tell. When you’re done, you send it out. Getting it published doesn’t make it good.
7. How did you first get into writing?
It’s the same kind of corny story a lot of people tell. I wrote as far back as I can remember. When I was a kid, I wrote poems that rhymed and fables about animals. I used to narrate my every-day activities as if I were in a book. That way it felt like someone cared about every little thing that I did. That sensibility has stuck with me – an attention to the little things, a desire to chronicle moments so that they’re not lost, writing as memory.
8. Who are your favorite writers?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. George Saunders. Nicole Krauss. Jose Saramago. Kelly Link. Vladimir Nabokov. The way Nabokov writes is so amazing to me. You can just see that he has it, The Gift. (Ah! That’s a joke, because that’s the title of one of his novels!) I love the magical and strange, anyone who can make me laugh.
9. Any editor pet peeves that writers should know about, personal or general?
That’s tough, because I think the things that annoy me are highly personal. A few things do get under my skin: I’m always highly suspicious of stories that take place in trailer parks or at religious revivals. They’re a kind of “white trash” story I see a lot, often accompanied by the characters speaking in some strange version of a southern accent. I rarely like stories about writers or teachers of writing: they often seem like a failure of the imagination. And don’t explain your story in your cover letter; always a red flag. I can think of exceptions to all of the above, though. Anything can be done well.
10. Are most of the editors you know also writers?
I don’t really know many other editors. The few I do are writers. Editing is another one of the ways to be employed doing something you really care about. I love my job. I get to work with and in support of writers and artists all day long.
11. I’ve heard the criticism of MFA programs that they focus so much on craft they lose sight of the creative process? Sour grapes, or do you have any thoughts on this, for writers considering an MFA?
I’ve heard tons of bad things about MFA programs. Is it possible that someone could come out of an MFA so wrapped up in the technicalities that s/he has lost sight of the joy? I suppose. Do I think that MFA programs could better prepare writers for the real world? Perhaps. Do I think some are too competitive? I’m sure. Do some encourage group-think? I guess it’s possible. None of that happened to me. This is what I’ll say of my MFA experience: I was given three years to spend most of my time writing. Someone else paid me to do that! ASU gave me a community of people who valued what I did, people to talk about writing with. I worked with brilliant teachers and writers. I learned that I could teach. I traveled to China. And I found my way into a job. All of that is pretty amazing. To be given the time, space, and support to simply write as much as possible – that’s a dream come true for a lot of writers. I feel grateful for the experience.
12. What prompted your decision to create a blog for HFR?
This question actually prompted me to write a blog post. What I said there was that a blog seemed like a good way to supplement the work of our printed issues, a place to talk to our contributors and learn more about their work. It helps us to both deepen our readers’ experiences with what we publish, and broaden the reach of our contributors. And since our mission is to support emerging artists, the blog also gives us a chance to do more of that: to talk about writing and visual art more. The implication is that the reach of the printed copies of HFR is limited. This is, of course, true. We are not only limited by our ability to find our readers out in the world, but also by the number of copies we can afford to print. The blog, ideally, helps us find more readers for our printed issues, and furthers the whole of our mission. And, it’s fun. And, you know, a strong internet presence seems to be kind of important.
13. And just so that all the writers out there can remember that as an editor, you’re also a human, how about your most embarrassing moment?
Okay, here it goes. This is pretty gross. I was on a kind of “date” with this guy I met at a bar. It was my first year at ASU, and I was trying to get to know people. He worked on campus, so we met on a concrete bench next to a palm tree for coffee. I had a cold. We were sitting and talking for a while, and my nose started to get runny. I didn’t want to get up to ruin the moment, so there was a lot of sniffling. As things escalated, I tried to check for drippings by casually running my finger under my nose. All the while, maintaining a witty banter. (In my mind, I replay this like that scene in Better Off Dead where John Cusack and that character “Beth” both think they have something in their noses while they’re talking. Except worse.). Obviously, there was something emerging, because when I pulled my hand away, a giant strand of snot – like a tight rope – connected my nostril to my outstretched hand. At this point, I was able to excuse myself. I went to a bathroom in the nearest building to clean up and calm down. When I returned, in typical ‘me’ fashion, I remember saying, “I peed while I was in there, just to make sure I won’t go in my pants.” I thought that was funny. Now that I’ve typed it, I’m not so sure. I’m engaged now, so eat your heart out, fellas!
This concludes the interview. Once again, here are the links: excerpts from Hayden’s Ferry Review here, the publication’s blog is here, and an LA Times review of Hayden’s Ferry Review can be found here.
