US Highways
Blackfeather
24 October 2014
WE DROPPED OFF AUBREY at her apartment after sizzling kisses for each of us. Mandy stayed in the center seat with her head on my shoulder. The sun was just about to touch the mountains in the west.
“It’s early,” she said. “Why don’t you drive me up to the pass? I’ll show you a couple things about the area you’re writing about.” It sounded like a good idea to me, so I gladly drove the twenty-five miles out to Centennial and then four more miles to the top of the pass. When we got to the top, we could still see the sun, just touching the horizon.
“A day with two sunsets,” I said. “What could be more perfect?” I snapped a picture of the dipping sun and then slid back into the driver’s seat. I started the truck, but Mandy pulled my face to hers for a questing kiss. Each touch of her lips felt as though she was searching for something. I wondered what.
“Drive back a mile and then turn in toward the ski lodge,” Mandy directed as I turned the truck around. It was a nice-looking lodge, but it was deserted. “Snow will fly in a week or two. The only people around right now are those who are grooming the slopes. If there’s no snow by Thanksgiving, they’ll start making snow. Forecasts are that it will snow by next week, though.”
I pulled into a remote area of the parking lot and turned the lights off. Mandy was in perfect sync as she melted into my arms and my kiss. Her tongue stud tapped against my teeth a few times as we kissed. She pulled her shirt out of her jeans and pushed my hand under it against her smooth bare tummy. I took the hint and climbed higher until I was holding her breast and rubbing her tender nubbin with my thumb. Mandy was panting and I decided I wanted to get her back to the trailer now. I dropped my hand, caressing her tummy as I went. She sucked her stomach in so that there was room for my hand to slip under the waistband of her jeans. I could only reach the top of her slit but Mandy was squirming all over.
I finally withdrew, debating over whether I should unfasten her jeans and try again. She shoved her shirttail back into her pants and took two deep breaths, which she blew out almost like a long-distance runner.
“Let’s stop at the Beartree Tavern for a beer on the way home,” she said brightly.
“Okay.” Anything you say, honey.
On Saturday night, the Beartree Tavern and Café had live music. It was country music, and very danceable. A few people stared at Mandy’s hair and piercings, but once we had our beer, we headed straight for the dance floor. I might not be the greatest dancer, but I learned to two-step by dancing with my baby daughter to K.D. Lang’s “Big Boned Girl.” Mandy was a great partner and once we’d had a dance, we were just another couple in the bar. The place was incredibly friendly. We both ordered Cokes after our beer.
“Good,” the waitress said. “We want folks to have fun, but if you have to drive back to Laramie, we don’t want you to only get part way.”
“How’d you know we were going back to Laramie?” I asked.
“I read your book,” she grinned. “After you were here a couple of months ago and gave me a copy. We just want you to be safe and write us into the next one!”
While I was there, I found out all about the Centennial Uptown Breakdown or CUB that had taken place over Labor Day. The waitress’s attitude and the concept of a big dance outside combined to give me an idea for a scene in Blackfeather. After a few more dances, Mandy just led me out the door and back to the truck.
“Thank you for doing something special with me,” she said. “Aubrey and I hardly ever go out. We just find a place to get together and fuck. Laramie is the most liberal place in Wyoming, but it still isn’t that friendly to gays and lesbians.”
What a cultural contradiction. Laramie was the first place in America to give women the right to vote. It was the first place to ever seat a woman on a jury. There was a sign on Second Avenue that said, “Wyoming: Where women make the laws and men break them.” To think that this bastion of freedom in the ‘Equal Rights State’ was still narrow-minded when it came to homosexuals and bisexuals was just hard to grasp.
I broke one of my own rules and put my arm around Mandy as I drove back to the campground one-handed.
I kicked off my boots when we got back to the trailer and hung my hat. I know I’m a drugstore cowboy, but the only thing I could do to blend in more in a truly western state is to wear a gun. And I could be approved for one here in twenty-four hours. The only reason it would take that long is because I’m from out of state.
Television distorts our sense of the world. When I was growing up, I thought of Tombstone and El Paso as being the West. “Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp. Brave, courageous, and bold…”
But when I traveled across the country this summer, I discovered the real Old West was in Nebraska, the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. This is where cowboys head for the bar at night, driving a mud-caked Jeep Wrangler with a winch on the front to pull a tree out of the road after a flood. Or they might have done the job with a rope attached to their saddle horns. Some of these guys still live in the saddle and that hardware on their hip is just another tool of the trade.
Mandy had her shoes off and was sitting tailor fashion on the bed. She hadn’t undressed, so I kept my clothes on.
“Want anything?” I asked.
“Got one of those bubbly water things?” she asked. I grabbed a La Croix out of the fridge and handed her one. I popped one for myself, too. It was very refreshing.
“Do you, like, pick up girls everywhere you go?” she asked.
“No,” I said. I edged myself up onto the bed and sat facing her. “I’m not averse to it, but when it happens, it usually comes as a surprise.”
“You’re good looking enough,” she said.
“Thanks. But you forgot to add ‘for an old guy.’ It’s not a problem with looks or being friendly,” I said. “It’s mostly timing. I’ve been traveling. Usually not more than two weeks in one location and then on to the next. It takes time to build up to a relationship. You just can’t rush these things.”
“Unless you happen on a couple of sluts who’ll do you for the thrill and let you go. You got laid by two girls and propositioned by another in twenty-four hours.”
“Is that how you think of yourself, Mandy?” I asked. “Are you a slut who just did me for the thrill of it?”
“No. I did you for Aubrey. I’d do anything for Aubrey,” she whispered.
“We’re alone tonight,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything for anyone.”
“But…” she said looking at me plaintively. “But what if I want to?”
“Is that what’s worrying you?” I asked.
“I liked it. I mean, I liked it when we were with Aubs. I don’t know if I’ll like it without her.”
“Are you a lesbian or are you bi?” I asked.
“What’s the difference?”
“If you are a lesbian, your sexual preference is women. Period. You might consent to being fucked by a man, but it would be to either hide that you are a lesbian, or to please your bi lover. You’d never willingly just choose to be with a man.”
“But if I’m bi, I’m a lesbian with a woman and hetero with a man?”
“No. Let me put it this way. If you were H2O, you might be steam or water or ice. But no matter which form you took, you’d still be H2O. Bisexual people don’t change their sexual preference based on who they are with. They are always bi,” I said.
“So, if I like being with a man and I like being with a woman, but I’d prefer a woman?”
“Does it make a difference if a man likes women, but prefers his wife?”
“That’s like what it’s supposed to be!”
I just grinned at her. She finally smiled.
“So, I don’t have to worry that I can’t have Aubrey if I like having sex with you?” she asked. I nodded. “I liked kissing you. Can we kiss some more?”
We scooted around on the bed so we were in a good position for kissing and let nature take its course. The course nature chose was to have us both get naked and enjoy moving together until we were too exhausted to keep going. I liked this tattooed and pierced young woman. A lot.
And I liked her lover just as much.
We got together for Sunday brunch at the trailer. I grilled during a lull in the wind that let me keep the grill lit long enough to cook steaks. I had tomatoes that I sliced in half and covered with salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese to grill as well. Aubrey was kind enough to bring a salad.
She approached her lover cautiously, as if to discover if things had changed. The kiss Mandy gave her reassured her.
My one-on-one time with Aubrey was a little strange, but then… Aubrey. She took me on a guided walking tour of Laramie after Mandy had excused herself to go study. Aubrey pointed out various historical markers in town and went on to explain how distorted the legend had become over time. The Bucket of Blood Saloon where the chief gang was ‘arrested’ was probably a place called Belle’s. I thought that was kind of funny, but didn’t explain it to Aubrey. History says that the night the vigilantes cleaned up the town was a fiasco and that most of the outlaws fled town when an excited mob member fired off his gun too soon. The story says that the gunfire at Belle’s was so heavy that the air was blue with smoke from the gun powder and that an uncountable number of shots were fired. Yet the only casualty was the piano player. Sounds like a battle between Luke Skywalker and the Stormtroopers.
Laramie, Wyoming of 1868 was an incredible place.
Aubrey was amazingly different than Mandy, not only in body, but in attitude. Aubrey barely topped five feet tall and had some serious curves. Not overweight, by any stretch of the imagination, but a narrow waist with a butt that was large and round. Her breasts were large and round, too, but not oversized for her frame. She would never win a thigh-gap contest, but she could create a space between them that was completely adequate to welcome me.
She showed me all this within a minute of getting back to my trailer. Aubrey had none of Mandy’s hesitancy. Her clothes came off as soon as we were inside and she’d confirmed that my space heater was sufficient to warm us up. I have a gas furnace in the trailer, but when I’m running it, it always seems to run out of gas in the middle of the night. I’ve had to get up at three o’clock in the morning to switch tanks entirely too often. When I’m camped where I have power, my little ceramic space heater keeps the tiny space toasty warm with no difficulty. And it was already in the forties outside.
Aubrey crawled onto my bed and wiggled her butt at me as I undressed. Then she sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed and grabbed my lap desk. She pointed to the head of the bed and told me to sit. She put a deck of tarot cards on the desk between us and told me to shuffle them and mix them up any way I wanted to.
I took my time. Sitting in front of a naked woman who faced me cross-legged was an experience to be savored. When Aubrey realized where I was staring, she started vamping and making the most of it and shifted to a Yoga pose with the soles of her feet together and her knees as far apart as possible. The flower of her sex opened in front of me as she blithely exposed herself.
“If you play your cards right, you can get a lot closer look,” she laughed. “But no touching until I’ve done your reading. I don’t want to get my cards sticky.”
When I’d sufficiently shuffled the cards, Aubrey laid them out in a cross pattern and started turning them over. Tarot is one of the things I’ve often thought I should learn, but have never taken the time. I know there are numbered cards in four suits—cups, wands, pentacles, and swords—and that there are a bunch of major arcana of which I don’t comprehend the hierarchy at all. All the stories that use cards seem to focus on the Fool and the Hanged Man. James Bond, anyone?
I have no idea what the cards were, but Aubrey wove a tale around them that had enough truth in it that I could readily identify parts of my life. It doesn’t take much of a psychic to tell me that I face a long journey on which I am healing from a deep emotional wound and will be helped along by four types of women, none of whom would be my life mate. But Aubrey was so good at weaving her story that I found myself mesmerized by her words as much as by the winking eye of her pussy—or coño, as she called it.
I heard her sniff and looked up into her gold-flecked eyes. They were moist. She gathered up the cards and wrapped them in a silk cloth. She hopped off the bed and put the bundle in her purse on the way to the bathroom. I stowed my desk and figured the weird stuff was over, so I rearranged pillows and blankets so we could cuddle up together. It seemed like she’d ended the reading kind of abruptly and there was no real conclusion. It bothered me and I was relieved that she was still naked when she came out of the bathroom. I was afraid she had seen something that made her want to leave.
“The space heater doesn’t heat the bathroom all that well,” she said as she cuddled into my arms. I pulled the blanket up over us and we kissed, her lush curves molding to my body. “I just want to ravish you and fuck until I can’t walk any longer,” she sighed. “My coño is dripping and ready for your hard cock. But…”
Oh, shit! I could hear the words in my head. Could we just cuddle? Of course, we can, sweetheart.
“I need to finish your reading before we lose ourselves in carnal lust,” she giggled.
“I thought we were finished. You put the cards away. What now? Reading my palm?” I laughed. I didn’t intend to make fun of her, but there are certain kinds of woo-woo that I find too uncomfortable to explain.
A Long Time Ago: Tealeaves
I was exploring relationships. Belle was gone. I’d met several women after Judith initiated me who seemed to be uncommonly interested in me. Maybe I’d just never noticed their interest before.
One of those women was Treasure.
We knew each other professionally. We had mutual clients for different aspects of projects. She focused on editing and I focused on design. Of course, Belle had bankrupted me and my business when she left, but I still had clients and was getting a little revenue. I was just going to have to sell my house before the bank took it. Treasure and I had gone out once and agreed that we had fun and should do it again. Neither of us could decide whether that one time was a date or a business meeting. I think we both wrote it off our taxes. I liked her. A lot.
Another of the women was one of my clients, Olivia. Olivia represented a company that was currently responsible for about sixty percent of my publishing revenue. It was probably stupid to get involved with her, but she’d indicated that she was interested, so I invited her out. As it happened, I had to be out of the house Sunday for the Realtor to have an open house, so Olivia and I used the opportunity to get to know each other. We had lunch, went for a long walk around the lake, and eventually wandered down Lake Street to an odd little shop called Sunsight. Turned out it was one of those woo-woo shops. Olivia wanted to have her cards read and I waited patiently. She came out of the reading a little glazed about half an hour later.
“My reader said we should have our tea leaves read by Aura,” Olivia said. “Will you do it?” Frankly, I’d been thinking about ‘doing it’ all afternoon. Olivia was a little quirky, but she was quite pretty and had been holding my hand or hugging my arm all afternoon. I agreed to the tealeaf reading.
Aura emerged from behind a curtain to bring us each a cup of tea. She was what I’d expect from a commercial enterprise like a bookstore. She was older—probably in her sixties—and wore a long skirt, white blouse, and had a scarf tied around her head. A regular gypsy.
We drank the tea until there was just a bit of liquid with the remaining leaves floating in it. A woman came out of Aura’s curtained cubicle.
“Thank you! Thank you so much, Aura,” the woman said as she hugged the gypsy. “I’m so relieved. You are wonderful.” The woman turned and saw our teacups. “You’ll love her. She’s so wonderful.” That was her recommendation, apparently, as she hurried down the stairs and out the front door of the bookstore.
“Well! One at a time or together?” Aura asked as she approached us. I was about to say that Olivia could go first, but she beat me to the draw.
“Together!”
We carried our cups into the cubicle and set them on the table where Aura pointed. As we sat, Aura peered from one cup to the other and back. Then she picked up Olivia’s cup, swirled the leaves and started talking. It was kind of the usual drivel about how there were many questions in her mind that only time could answer. That things were going well at work and she would prosper. That relationships were the thing that was most prevalent on her mind and that she had to be patient. You could sit in front of just about anyone with a little rudimentary skill and give the same speech.
Then she turned to my cup.
“Chaos and uncertainty,” she started. “You are on a path to recovery from an emotional and financial disaster. You have a lot of doubt about your future. You don’t have much faith in people, but don’t let that dampen your willingness to take a risk. Especially a risk on love. There is a woman emerging from your leaves. You know her professionally and have worked closely with each other.” I glanced toward Olivia and she was practically squirming in her seat. “This woman holds the key to much of your future. She holds happiness and sorrow, but if you ignore this opportunity, you will miss the best that life can offer you. This is a truly great love.” Aura looked up from the cup and into my eyes. Then she looked at Olivia. She reached out to take Olivia’s hand between her own and said softly, “I’m sorry, dear. It’s not you.”
You would think that would be a major wet towel to throw on a date. Olivia, however, was not to be deterred. She continued to hold my hand and, as we walked through the shops in Uptown, she welcomed my arm around her. We had dinner at Figlio’s and a glass of wine to cap off the evening, then walked the few blocks to my dark and quiet home. I’d find out tomorrow whether there had been any activity during the open house. Maybe I’d be rid of this monstrosity Belle saddled me with soon. Regardless, the evening was shaping up to be quite promising.
I put a fake log in the fireplace and lit it. I didn’t have much in the way of furniture after Belle had stripped the house, but the real estate agent had put together a nice little loveseat setting in front of the fireplace as staging. Olivia and I settled into the loveseat and into each other. I heard the phone ring and ignored it. There was a voice on the answering machine, but I figured it was just the Realtor and I’d check the message later. Olivia and I were progressing toward some serious making out and I was thinking this could be the best night I’d had since my initiation in the woods.
The phone rang again and we ignored it.
Olivia had already welcomed my hand to her breast as we kissed and made no complaints as I began to unbutton her blouse. I trailed kisses down her neck and onto her chest as I uncovered her lacy pink bra. I love front-catch bras. A quick flick and I was feasting on Olivia’s rosy nipples.
The phone rang again and I could hear what sounded like an angry voice.
“You’d better find out what’s so important or we’re never going to get any peace,” Olivia said. “Someone sounds angry.”
I gave her nipples one more suck and reluctantly went to the kitchen to check the answering machine. The phone rang again and I snatched it off the cradle.
“What?” I snapped.
“Where have you been. We need you,” Dan shouted at me. At the office? What the fuck?
“I worked eighty hours this week, Dan. I told you I was taking the day off. I’ve been out.”
“Well, we need you to come in. This project is all screwed up.”
“You’ve got John and Darcy. What can’t they handle?”
“They can’t solve it. You set the project up. They can’t figure out what went wrong.”
“All they had to do was press start and feed the damn paper in the slot,” I snarled. “Even John and Darcy couldn’t mess that up.”
“Darcy found a typo as the pages were coming out of the printer, so she canceled the print and fixed it. Then she couldn’t get the print to restart. You have to come out and fix it. We promised this project to GenSys at eight a.m.”
“Yeah and who did that?” I groused. “I’m busy.”
“This is your job, Ari. If you still want to have it tomorrow, get in here and fix this.” Dan slammed down the phone and I slammed down the phone.
“God damned fucker!” Dan was my best friend and I’d negotiated to have him hired as my boss after my bankruptcy. But damn it! I turned to go back to Olivia and she was standing in the doorway. She was finishing buttoning her blouse. “Olivia…”
“I know. I could hear most of it. You’ve got clients, Ari. I’d probably be the same way if it was my project. Would you like me to drop you off at your office?”
“Thank you, Olivia. I was… This was nice… I’m sorry about what Aura said this afternoon. I think we could…” Could what? I was horny as hell, but I certainly wasn’t ready to declare my undying love. I’d love to continue sucking her tits and bury myself in her pussy. But I had no pretenses that she was what I wanted as a wife.
“Ari,” she said as she hugged me and placed a light kiss on my lips, “I can be, will be, anything you want or need. I don’t care what the tea leaves said. I could be the one. Just say the word.”
I couldn’t say the word that night. I went in to find the entire project had been fucked up. The typo had caused a change in page breaks and there were widows and orphans through the next ten pages. The first print order was stuck in the spooler blocking the next print order—What the fuck? She’d sent it to print how many more times? It made no difference. I needed to flush the spooler and restart all the systems. Then I’d have to babysit the machine as I hand-fed the heavyweight glossy stock into it one sheet at a time.
GenSys was a demanding client and I worked 110 hours that week making their emergency changes to content and design. Two more nights after Sunday, I just never went home. Darcy was all apologetic for messing up the project and my date. She asked if a blowjob would help, but when I started to unzip my pants in the middle of the office, she screamed and ran to the break room. Not that I wouldn’t fuck Darcy. She’d certainly shown she was a fuck-up.
Sunday, I slept late and didn’t want to get out of bed, even when the real estate agent showed up for the afternoon open house. I scrambled around stuffing dirty clothes in the back of my closet and trying to smooth out my matted hair so I could go out. I’d made a date with Treasure two weeks earlier and we were supposed to meet for brunch at Becky’s Cafeteria. The only reason it had been Olivia last week and not Treasure was because Treasure was out of town.
I felt like crap and believed I looked even worse, but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw her. The kiss on the cheek she gave me in greeting was new. We hadn’t reached the point of even being that familiar with each other.
I’ll cut to the chase since you are probably getting tired of this story, there being only interrupted sex in it. Treasure and I ended up at the same bookstore that afternoon that Olivia and I had been at the previous week. We were laughing at some of the book titles we saw and wandered upstairs.
“Oh, let’s have our tea leaves read,” she laughed. “That will be fun.”
I was a little less enthused, but agreed and Aura brought us tea. We talked about our week at work, what kind of clients we were dealing with, and how tired we both were. Aura collected our teacups and seated us in her little cubicle. Once again, she started to read Treasure’s leaves, but kept turning to my cup.
“Are you married?” she asked suddenly. We both laughed and shook our heads. We’d just started dating, really. “Then what are you doing in his cup?” She proceeded to tell us that life was going to have some significant challenges for us, but we had a strong future intertwined together. She could see a farm on an island and a ring. And a big move. “The move will be very good for both of you.”
We left that reading a little stunned. Each time we looked at each other, we giggled a little and blushed. Somewhere along the line, Treasure took my hand as we walked. We’d started something, even though we were both going to approach it cautiously. We’d both recently come out of bad relationships and were determined to go slow and meet other people.
Somehow, though, I never got around to dating Olivia again. Treasure and I were married a year later. She was the love of my life.
Back to Aubrey
“Ari, you may never heal,” Aubrey said. “I’m so sorry, honey. That’s why I had to get up and go to the bathroom. I didn’t know how to tell you what I saw. So, I’ll just say it. Each time you start to heal, you tear off a new part of yourself to give to someone else. When that doesn’t work out, you are left with a hole. But it is so important for you to keep doing that because you are healing others.” I looked at her and could only think, ‘This girl is crazy. Let it go.’
“Well, that explains it then,” I chuckled.
“It’s not easy, Ari. It won’t get easier by denying it. Tell me that even while you have my naked body in your arms right now and even though you know that in just a few minutes I’m going to welcome your hard cock into my wet pussy… Tell me even now that you aren’t thinking a little bit of Mandy. That you aren’t yearning for her to be here with us.”
I couldn’t tell her that. It was true. Even when Aubrey was walking toward me from the bathroom, I’d thought of how much fun I’d had with Mandy and hoped she was doing okay alone tonight.
“You felt the same way about me last night,” Aubrey continued. I nodded. That was true, too. “You fall in love with everyone. And when you are in love, you are vulnerable. So even if you are the one who ends things, you end up wounded. But the people you touch are always better for it. You are sad because Mandy is not in your arms with me tonight. But Mandy… I could tell when I kissed her that Mandy is better than she was a few days ago, before we met you. She doesn’t have that much experience sexually. She loves to talk dirty and it just gives me such a charge, but you were only her second man. And you healed, in one night, damage from the first man that she’s carried for four years. Don’t stop falling in love, Ari. Fall in love with me, too. Love me.”
The last week of October was full of research and sex. Aubrey and I spent most of Monday experimenting with ‘things I’ve never done.’ It seemed that we both had quite a list of things we’d never done, and a couple of the things were going to stay on it. I told Aubrey in no uncertain terms that I would watch her pee in the toilet and she could watch me if she wanted, but if she tried to pee on me, I would throw her bodily out of the trailer and lock the door—no matter what time it was or how cold it was or how naked she was.
“I’m not really interested in it,” she explained. “It’s just on my list of things I’ve never done. How about with me on my back with my head over the edge of the bed and you fucking my mouth?” The woman was certifiably crazy. It took exactly one thrust and she sat straight up and yelled, “If you ever do that again, I’ll bite it off!” I held onto my gut where she’d punched me and promised that she didn’t need to worry about it.
On the other hand, when I fucked her ass, I might have been a little more rigorous than was strictly called for. It was on her list, not mine. My list included a standing 69. She was small enough and light enough that I could hold her upside down while she fellated me and I ate her out. For about three minutes. Then I fell back on the bed and she crawled off. We both just lay there and cuddled for half an hour before either of us were ready to look at the list again. I flat-out refused to hit her or choke her. When I surprised her with an ice cube on her clit as she was coming, though, she screamed so loud and so long that she passed out. Damn! It really did work!
I met Mandy after her last class on Tuesday and she gave me a tour of the campus from a student perspective. That included going to each of her classrooms as she told me her class schedule. I met the director of the MFA program in Creative Writing. He downloaded Redtail to his Kindle while we were talking.
Mandy arranged a tour of a house on sorority row under condition that it remain anonymous. Five young women met me at a table in their kitchen and laughed and blushed for forty-five minutes as I asked them questions from my research questionnaire. I got some usable answers.
Mandy and I held hands as we went to the student union for dinner and I watched people wandering in and out, grabbing food from the half-dozen vendors there. A young woman walked past and then turned around to talk to us. It took me a minute to recognize her.
“I didn’t know I had competition. I’d have discounted the price. Still available if you want something other than a freak,” she said. It was Reba the cheerleader whore. Mandy was ready to jump up and start a fight and barely restrained herself when I laid a hand on hers.
“Honey, you couldn’t compete with Mandy if you were giving it away,” I said.
“Fuck you!” the cheerleader said loudly enough to be heard at surrounding tables. People stared at us as Reba stalked away. I glanced at the nearest table, filled with young men and women in camo fatigues.
“I’m too expensive for her,” I said as I shrugged. They stared at me for a minute and then broke out laughing. Mandy and I decided it was time to leave. We spent a quiet night as she studied and I wrote, and then just cuddled up to me as we went to sleep.
Friday night was HalloNaNoWeen. It was a tradition I’d started in Seattle years ago, and this was the second year I wouldn’t be there to participate. So, I joined the NaNoWriMo group for Wyoming Elsewhere and invited local writers to join me to kick off the month of November.
I suppose that I need to explain HalloNaNoWeen.
A Few Years Ago: HalloNaNoWeen
I’d started my participation in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) ten years before (2004). I’d just gotten into blogging, and the folks at Blogger decided they’d sponsor NaNoBlogMo. Blog your novel during November. I said, “Sure. What the heck?” I was a lot more reserved with my language back then. The novel is still up, though I’ve lost my password and can’t correct it and all the picture links have broken. What a surprise! It’s a story about small town Indiana called Willow Mills. It doesn’t have any sex in it. I didn’t write that kind of stuff. I was a serious author and this was literary fiction.
I didn’t know that NaNoWriMo had forums. The next year, though, I met some other people who were participating and they told me about it. It was cool. “I’m going to go to the 24-hour Starbucks on Halloween night and start writing at midnight. Anyone who wants to can join me.” It was a great idea and several people agreed that they’d join me. Only we had a storm that night. All the power in the area went out and Starbucks closed at eleven. I tried to get word out that I’d be at Denny’s instead, but no one else showed up.
The next year I put out the message that the people at Denny’s had been nice and thought it was a great idea. So, I invited people to join me there for the kickoff at midnight on Halloween. I dubbed the event HalloNaNoWeen. A dozen people joined me and we had a blast getting our novels kicked off right at midnight. The next year there were forty people and Denny’s put out a call for more wait staff. Without intending it, I had become the host for the annual NaNoWriMo kickoff event: HalloNaNoWeen. My last year hosting it, Denny’s closed the restaurant to all but our group and nearly 200 writers showed up.
Back to Laramie
In Laramie, there were two other writers. We sat in a booth at Shari’s, the only all-night restaurant in town, and laughed at each other’s costumes and novel ideas. We stayed there until a little after two in the morning meaning that I was there late enough to join my hometown event via Twitter.
“Who are you?”
Of all the things that I imagined and all the things Pa had told me, I never expected the girl into whose eyes I was looking to say that.
I never expected her to say anything. I tried to pull back, but she kept me trapped there. I tried to take control, but she held firm.
“Somehow you’ve managed to get inside me. You could at least tell me your name.”
I’d begun writing Blackfeather.
Although I was bursting with words for the novel, I made time to play with Aubrey and Mandy most of Saturday night. There was a lot of emotion built up among us and orgasms brought on more tears than usual—both from the women and from me.
“Remember, Ari,” Aubrey admonished me just before we parted on Sunday afternoon, “keep slathering your left arm with sunblock or you’ll get trucker’s skin cancer. You need to take care of this arm. Try wearing long sleeves on your left side and driving gloves. It’s in the cards.”
The woman was crazy, but just as she’d said in my reading, I’d fallen in love with her, too.
Monday morning, I was on the road headed south, hoping to beat winter to New Mexico.
Normally, I avoid interstate highways. They are made for people with a destination. When I’m on one, I’m looking for the first exit that will lead to a more interesting route. But I wanted to get south before weather closed me in and decided to take the most direct route to New Mexico: Interstate 25.
My Blackfeather characters began talking to me north of Fort Collins and kept up a non-stop chatter. I could barely complete a 200-mile drive without pulling over to write. But as they yammered, they started pointing the old raven out to me. He was a sentinel along the highway. “He’s watching out for you, Ari.” At least once in every five miles, I would see a raven sitting beside the highway. He was always facing away. He was rapidly becoming my totem. And he symbolized creativity.
The campgrounds along I-25 south through Colorado were semi-closed for the season. You could still camp if you filled out a registration and dropped the fee in the box at the gate. But there was no one on duty, the camp store was closed, and I saw a total of two other people when I stopped. I fixed myself a can of soup for dinner and got four thousand more words written on the story.
South of Pueblo, I cut off the interstate for a couple of days to go see the Capulin Volcano that Angie and I had missed when we were caught in a snowstorm in Taos the year before. I missed that girl. We’d only been lovers for a few days out of less than four months we were together, but it was her simple charm—and nude body—that I missed as a traveling companion. We kept in touch by email and Facebook, but I decided to give her a call after I’d made the hike up and around the volcano’s crater.
“Uncle Ari! I haven’t talked to you since you were someplace in Wyoming with that sweetheart Alice. I’d love to meet her sometime. Where are you now?” she asked when I connected with her.
“Remember when we were going to go across the pass to see the volcano but got snowed on?” I said. “I just walked around the crater. Saw half a dozen mule deer right on the path about twenty feet ahead of me.”
“How cool! I wish I was there.”
“How are you doing, Pudding? Is school going okay?”
“Yeah. I’m almost finished with my coursework and will start my thesis in January. I’m going to push to graduate in the spring. I’ve been getting some classroom time as a substitute teacher this fall.”
“That’s great, Angie. I’m heading south for Ruidoso again so I can write in front of the fireplace.”
“You scared me so much when you showed me a separate room. God, Ari, those were some good times.”
“Want to join me for Thanksgiving?” I asked.
“Oh. Um… Ari, please don’t be upset. I’ve kind of… well, I’m seeing this guy. I mean, he’s not just a guy. He’s really nice. And I think… I love him,” she whispered.
“Angie, that’s wonderful. You know I want you to be happy. Tell me all about your Prince Charming,” I said.
It was true. I did just want her to be happy and neither of us had any commitment to the other after she left last Christmas. Once I got her talking, Angie just bubbled about her guy. Even taking into account the love-blind newness of her relationship, I could tell he was a good man. Angie had left the bulk of her submissiveness behind and Adam treated her like a princess. He was a structural engineer and worked on bridges for the county. He had a lot of respect for teachers and was very supportive in her drive to finish her master’s and start teaching full time.
I was happy for Angie. We wished each other well and disconnected.
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby,
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, hey
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
I parked the trailer at a place in Alamogordo and loaded all my supplies, clothes, and liquor into the truck. I connected electricity and set the thermostat at fifty-five. It was likely to get cold and I didn’t want to risk the trailer freezing, even down at the lower elevation of Alamogordo. I’d booked two weeks in the condo and didn’t plan to do anything other than write. I’d contacted several other writers in both Alamogordo and Ruidoso and figured there would be a few sessions where we all got together. For eleven months of the year, writing is a solitary endeavor for me. One month a year, it is a social event.
I was sitting at Sacred Grounds on Friday afternoon the fourteenth when I typed the words THE END on my first draft of Blackfeather. It had taken me two weeks to write the 77,000-word story. I was pleased with it, but Jay had made me promise to send it to him before I put it into the cycle of posting on SOL or made an eBook out of it. I had the notion that this was a story I’d submit for contest, so I wasn’t rushing into posting it. Part IV of Living Next Door to Heaven: Deadly Chemistry, had just begun posting. I’d finished Part V: The Rock and it was in the hands of my editors. I’d been pushing myself to make sure I finished each part of LNDtH before it started posting. I’d recently added Floyd to my editorial team and I was getting used to cycling each chapter through three editors instead of just two. It was a good addition and he was catching inconsistencies in sequence that I’d been missing.
Since I’d finished Blackfeather, I decided that after the weekend, I’d start Part VI: El Rancho del Corazón. But there was the matter of the weekend to deal with.
I met Harriet at church. When I’m hanging around a place for a while, like I was in in Ruidoso, I often drop in at the local Unitarian Church to meet people and socialize. High hopes.
The church happened to have an early Thanksgiving carry-in dinner after the service. As a visitor, I was invited to join them. There were a couple hundred people there and the church committee had supplied turkeys, dressing, and potatoes. The (primarily) ladies of the congregation supplied salads, side vegetables, cranberry sauce, and pies. Lots of pies. I filled a good-sized paper plate and picked up a cup of coffee, then started looking for a place to sit. A nice-looking lady was sitting alone at one of the long tables and I asked if I could join her. I was welcome. And so were the other six, somewhat older, unattached ladies that came to join us. It was unfortunate that I wasn’t going to be in Ruidoso long enough to spend time with each of them. Maybe next time.
Harriet was German and a widow. She’d been married, I discovered, to an English actor who had been active on the stage in the rather spectacular theater that Ruidoso boasts. She lived in Michigan during warm weather, but wintered in Ruidoso. That might seem strange. Most of us old folks go someplace warm in the winter. Don’t let the words ‘New Mexico’ fool you into thinking it’s warm there. Ruidoso is a ski resort town. And Harriet loved to ski. She was about the cutest 75-year-old ski bunny on the slopes.
Of course, if you’ve ever seen me on skis, you’d know I wasn’t going to meet her up there. I never got past the stage of using edgy-wedgies to tie the toes of my skis together so I could snowplow down the bunny slope. I’ve had many a good time at ski resorts, though, sitting in the lodge drinking hot cocoa laced with schnapps and playing cribbage with all contenders. If there’s a fire in the fireplace, so much the better.
Since I had initially begun my dinner conversation with Harriet, and in the interest of not appearing to be a cad, I focused on her through most of the meal. And on the pies. I believe that each of the ladies at the table had brought a pie and I was obliged to sample each of them. Three pumpkin, two apple, a strawberry/rhubarb, and a mincemeat. I have never figured out what kind of meat mincemeat is. A little sweet and a little savory. By the end of the meal I could scarcely move. I was thankful that Harriet had brought the strawberry/rhubarb so I could praise it highly. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
Most of the writers I’d been meeting over coffee were a good bit younger and prettier than the old dolls here at church, but they were all married with children. I made arrangements to meet Harriet a couple times that week and we got along well. She was funny and entertaining.
And insane.
I sure can pick them. I’d just finished writing the first chapter of El Rancho del Corazón that started with Brian and Hannah in bed, basking in the glow of finally making love. It was too bad I’d be leaving in a couple days. I liked Ruidoso. Harriet and I were having coffee on Friday when she pulled a vial of her husband’s ashes from her pocket.
“I always carry a little bit of him with me. He likes to ski. I talk to him and ask his advice. He said you were a nice guy.”
Thank you, dead husband. Well, I suppose it wasn’t so terrible. Angelina Jolie carried a vial of what’s-his-name’s blood around. It could be weirder.
It was.
“Arthur was always surrounded by young women. He was very handsome, and actors are like that. Of course, you older gentlemen always need to have a young woman around to get it up. But sometimes we can slip in and use the erection before she gets to it,” she said casually.
I begged to differ with her. I don’t think we older gentlemen need a younger woman to get it up. We need an interested woman. Treasure could have had it anytime she wanted if she’d had any interest in it at all. Well, you know that story. I didn’t like to think of that because I was still—would probably always be—in love with Treasure. We older gentlemen appreciate younger women because they always seem to be interested, even if they aren’t interested in us per se. Aubrey and Mandy had certainly been interested. My protests fell on deaf ears.
“I still have his last come in the freezer.” Say what? “Two weeks before he died. I spit it into a baggie and put it in the freezer for safe-keeping.” I know I have a reputation for writing fiction, but guys, some things you cannot make up.
Harriet declined to kiss me goodbye because she was afraid she’d like it too much and then I’d leave. I was afraid my tongue would end up in the freezer in a baggie labeled ‘last kiss’.
Saturday morning, I checked out of my condo and headed back to my trailer in Alamogordo. I spent Thanksgiving with friends in the Gila Mountains west of Silver City. I brought all the food to their little cabin and they cooked it.
I also brought bourbon and Samuel and I spent a long night in front of the fire swapping stories and sippin’ liquor.
“I read that book you sent, The Gutenberg Rubric. It’s good,” Samuel said. He’d told me a bunch of his experiences as a screen writer, but those are his stories to tell and I’m not going to try to repeat them. “Why aren’t you published through a big publisher? Isn’t self-publishing kind of a stigma? Even though you have a company with a different name, I know you own the company.”
“Well, several years ago, a couple buddies and I decided to go into the publishing business. We had the unique concept of having everyday readers go through our slush pile and rate the manuscripts we received. If the manuscript achieved a hundred points from the ratings, we’d work with the author to get it edited and ready to publish. If all worked out well, we’d publish the book at our expense and split the profits with the author.”
“Sounds like an interesting concept. What happened?”
“Well, we were successful with our first book. It was good. It got rated highly. And we published it. We didn’t want to be a publisher with just one title, so each of the partners contributed what he considered his best work. We edited the books as carefully for each other as we did for our clients and when we released the book and hit Amazon, we had four titles in the market. None of our books did as well as the one we published for our new author, but we were putting all our marketing efforts into his book, so that was understandable. Unfortunately, his was the only other book we published.”
“Why? Didn’t you get submissions?” Samuel asked.
“Yes, but most were the bottom of the slush pile. They didn’t even achieve thirty-point ratings. And authors were trying to game the system by getting all their friends to go online and rate their book so they could get a contract. Our black box for computing the scores, though, dropped the rating of any reviewer who just gave a score and didn’t leave a review of the manuscript. There were two notable exceptions that hit our criteria. The first read well. We allowed authors to upload the first 5,000 words of their manuscript and that’s what was rated. Unfortunately, when we got the whole manuscript in, we discovered that the first 5,000 words of her book were the only part that was semi-literate. It was such a disaster that we sent it back and told her to cut 20,000 words from her 115,000-word book and to decide what her POV would be and what the point of the story was before we looked at it again. It was harsh and Jay wrote about ten pages of very specific critique, but we never heard from her again.”
“I’ve never figured out how publishers and agents could decide what to publish based on the first ten pages,” Samuel said.
“Sometimes it’s easy,” I laughed. “The second story that topped our ratings was good. It was a thriller and there were a few places where the pace lagged and at one point the hero was saved by a miraculous rescue that was unbelievable. But overall, it was a solid, publishable story. The author took our comments, did the work we suggested, and submitted it to an independent agent who got him a publishing contract with a mainstream publisher.”
“So, he used you to improve his manuscript without having to pay anything and then sold it to someone else? Well, that sucks,” Samuel said. “Sounds like Hollywood.”
“Yeah, my partners were discouraged and ultimately I took over the remaining assets of the business and restarted it as my own. An agent I knew sent me a manuscript and asked me if I could publish it and do it fast because the author was dying. It was a good manuscript, but needed editing badly. I took it on and had it edited and released as a paperback, hardcover, and eBook in forty-five days. He died three months later and sales died with him. I got a couple more manuscripts that I could share the cost of publishing for a share of the profit. And then I thought, if I’m publishing all these other authors’ books, why shouldn’t I publish my own? My first new release was a book of fairy tales called Steven George & The Dragon. Young adult, not for children. Think Grimm’s, not Disney’s. Then The Gutenberg Rubric won an award and I went on tour with it.”
“Did you ever think about getting an agent yourself?”
A Long Time Ago: Agency
I was pleased with Behind the Ivory Veil after I’d rewritten it ten times. Life was good. Of course, I had to have a regular job in a small business publishing company to pay my mortgage, but Treasure and I were making progress toward a life together and I’d proposed to her on her birthday. I was still waiting for her answer, but I was a patient man.
That’s when I got the response back from Elizabeth Hanley, an agent with one of the top houses in New York. I’d sent queries and excerpts to nearly every agent listed in the Writer’s Guide. I’d been systematic about it, sending off three every week. I was the proverbial author who could paper a wall with rejection slips. But Hanley liked it.
This is a fresh concept. Your synopsis shows that you know where the story is going and we have a real upsurge in urban fantasy hitting the market. Good work.
Now the bad news. Your manuscript isn’t ready to publish. Starting a thrilling fantasy novel with a professor lecturing to himself in the desert just doesn’t cut it. You need to bring the action forward. Your first paragraph should grab the reader and hold him. I believe that the pagan rituals later in the book add just enough suspense to carry the work to the end, but you need to get to me on the first page.
I want to see this manuscript again. Soon. If you decide to take my advice, send me the first fifty pages after you’ve rewritten it. And for Pete’s sake, have someone proofread it!
Elizabeth Hanley
I was ecstatic. I took vacation time from my job and locked myself in a room for a week to do the rewrite. I could see what Hanley meant and was determined to get it right. Treasure read and edited what I wrote, and unlike Belle, who laughed at it, Treasure helped me get it right. I packaged it up and sent it off to the agent with a note thanking her for her advice and encouraging her to tell me anything else that needed to be fixed.
The next week, Treasure said, “Yes.”
I didn’t hear from Hanley.
In fact, four months later when Treasure and I were married, I still hadn’t heard from the agent.
It was Christmas, eight months after my submission, that I got a package in the mail from the agency. It contained my manuscript and a short note.
Dear Author,
We are sorry to inform you that agent Elizabeth Hanley passed away in September after a long fight with cancer. Our office has been reeling with the loss, but we are attempting to contact all the authors with whom she was working to return their materials. We are sorry it has taken so long to contact you, but this has been a very difficult time for us.
If you are missing materials that you sent to Elizabeth, please let us know and we will attempt to locate them. We here at the agency wish you the very best of luck in the future.
Fuck!
Back to New Mexico
I slept in the greenhouse room at Samuel and Candace’s mountain home and woke up in the middle of the night with light in my eyes. It took a while for me to realize it was starlight. The stars were that bright up there. I watched them turn their course through the sky. It seems their path never ends. Maybe mine doesn’t either.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
