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Vice Blog

TUESDAY TYRANT: SAM LIPSYTE'S PERVY, SILK KIMONO RIFFAGE

I don't read new books as much as I used to. Not on purpose, like in protest, but just because I haven't had the drools for a new title lately. Sam Lipsyte's The Ask is the exception. I've been fucking waiting for this one. It's the only book in at least a year for which I have had an unflappable jones. Quite sad of me, I know. Perhaps I need to get out in the world a little more, book-wise, life-wise.
So this book The Ask is out today, and you should get to the bookstore to pick it up. I'm sorry, what was that you said? You're broke? O yeah, you're broke. That's right, I forgot: Everyone's broke. Not an excuse, I will guide you.

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Listening? Once you're at the bookstore and have located the book, pick up two copies from the display but hold them as if they were one book. Flip through the pages as if they were one book. Bring a disinterest to your face, shake your head at the book. If you must, you may laugh (not laugh-laugh; just one quick burst of breath out of the nostrils will do). As you set one of the books back down, casually tuck the other book under your arm. Now mosey. Browse more books. Mosey more. Please do not whistle (although you are almost certain that they are, the mosey and the whistle are not bound to one another). Once you have wholly convinced yourself that you never tucked that book under your arm, and that you'd never steal to begin with, begin to make your way towards the door. Try and have a look on your face as if you're all of a sudden frustrated and you need to get out of there immediately (Tip: Have your phone in-hand so there will be a visible source of your frustration for onlookers, and if you want to get all thesp, fake a phone call and get loud). Now, on exiting, you will be listening for one of two sounds: an alarm (unlikely), or someone saying either the word Sir or the word Miss. If you hear none of these sounds, you're gold. Just stroll away, maybe visit the cineplex nextdoor. But if you do hear one of them, this is your cue to run. And to run fast. Once outside, stop for a second and look around for an escape route. Oh sweet, oddly enough, this one time, there's a fence right there. Oh shit, oddly enough, this one time too, the security guard has a dog right there. You must now jump the fence not only to escape the guard, but also to escape the dog. So jump the fence (Bonus: Jumping a fence is a fine display of visual hubris that only rarely does not look awesome. And with a book in-hand? Come on. You're practically paying for it with this), land gracefully on the other side of the fence, and run toward home. Run toward home hopefully faster than the Holyshitthefuckingdogjumpedthatfence dog that is…yep, still chasing you. It turns out you're faster than you thought (you really peeled-out back there!), and you lose the dog. You're home now. You feel good. Everything feels good. The endorphin rush from the theft has left you elated. Plus, you're holding in your hands what you know will be a great read and nothing beats that feeling. Go on now and get inside. Wipe your sweat, turn off your phone, take a breath and relax. Then get in bed. You can start reading now or when you get up. Because this is a good one, you are going to need your rest.

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Or you could just fork over the cash for the book, maybe help Sam clothe his kids, you skinflint. What else you need that money for? Food?

(This interview was conducted over email. I know that's not an excuse. The shoplifting technique above is to be used only for the paperback edition. It's possible with hardcover, but, you know, harder.)

Vice/Tyrant: Do you like America?
Sam: I do right now. I'm sitting in a cramped 7/11 internet cafe in Melbourne, Australia because the local library wouldn't let me use their WiFi. "Australia for Australians," the librarian said. Or at least I thought I heard her say it. You know, anybody can go into the New York Public Library and get wireless internet. Anybody can go. Jews, Chinese, anybody.

That's why I like America too. OK, in your new novel, the narrator, Milo, reminds me quite a bit of Miner from Home Land. The mention of the band Spacklefinger is the most glaring bridge between the two men (books) that I can pick out, but how, if at all, are Milo and Miner connected?
America should be proud of its "likable" traits. As to your second question, I guess they are connected by me, primarily. Their voices are somewhat different, but as to their exterior circumstances, you could probably place them near each other on an evolutionary, or de-evolutionary, chart. Homo Fuck-uppus, Bewildered Man, etc. Now I'm feeling shitty about the Australia-bashing. It's a wonderful place. My wife's family lives here. A koala bit my daughter on the hand. That's true.

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How did The Ask begin? Did you sit down thinking "Here comes a NOVEL?" I think I heard you were working on a collection of short stories, but then out comes The Ask.
No, this was always a novel. Right now I'm working on a book of stories. They were always two separate projects. Though my last novel did come of out of a short story.

Oh, nice. Looking forward to another story collection. What's your take on the short story versus the novel? Does writing a short story kill you any less than writing a novel?
I find short stories and novels equally demoralizing to write most of the time, though the advantage with a story is you probably won't throw away years of your life on it. As I mentioned, I'm returning to short stories now after three novels and it's exciting to work in that form again, or maybe I mean forms, as I don't think there's one single definition of a short story, except maybe Poe's notion that it should be read in one sitting. But a certain kind of speed and compression and hard swerving that works well in a few or a few dozen pages, I'm liking that again.

You studied with Gordon Lish at one point, I think. What's your take on all the shit he gets? And the praise? What about the Raymond Carver thing?
I never understood all the vitriol. His stints at Esquire and Knopf were before my time, but I gather he pissed some people off. Hurt some feelings. Oh, well. He also published many of the great writers of the last 30 years. He was an incredibly wise and rigorous and generous teacher. That's how I've known him. Lish's edits made those Carver stories. Only a moron or somebody with a financial interest wouldn't agree to that. I guess there isn't much
more to say on the subject. There might be an interesting essay to write about the need to preserve a certain tedious idea of Carver in the public mind, but that's probably all been covered by now as well.

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Not that there isn't humor in your short stories as well, but would it be fair to say that your novels are more comedic than your shorter pieces, which seem, I don't know, darker? Does it take a little while to warm up to the funny?
There's definitely something to what you're saying. At least with regard to the stories in Venus Drive. They were a bit more solemn, in some cases. I don't think they were darker but I think their terseness made them feel that way. It's not a conscious thing. I think maybe in the novels I have room to riff and when I riff I tend toward bleak comedy rather than just bleak bleakness. But there is obviously less room in the stories to break out that way. Some of my newer short pieces have been different.

Maybe my favorite line in The Ask is, "Text me some coke!" Fucking died laughing at that. So, lots of drugs in your books. I will not ask you if you do them or what kind, when writing or not, even though I would love to, but what if I just said the word DRUGS. What would you say?
I'd say, "Sam. Nice to meet you. Is Drugs your nickname?" The truth is, whatever has already failed to make me stronger, will probably kill me at this point.

When and where do you write? Do you have certain, disciplined writing hours or is it when and wherever it comes to you?
I like to consider every hour an hour of discipline. Because I've been bad. Truly, though, I have two kids and no office so I generally go to the library. If I'm writing something long it's probably summer and I'm going every day for several hours.

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Open City published your first book Venus Drive. They are wonderful there. Do you notice any trends in the lit mags today? Can you name any changes in them? What are people doing these days?
Open City was really great with Venus Drive, and subsequent work. I consider them family. Not sure about trends. There are some damn good journals out there. I've noticed that some younger writers are really being brave, trying out new things, and I think they may sense that a lot of big publishing is shitting the bed anyway, that getting out of the mindset that there is a nice living to made writing serious fiction is the important first step. Then you are free. I think the internet has been great for new fiction. That's been the big change. People are still writing stories and novels and a few are great and some are good and most aren't very good at all. I guess what's different is that you could go through your awkward stage in private. Back when I was figuring out how to write the internet existed but not like today. We'd have the same conversations that people have online now, rants about the more established writers we revered and hated, and we made a lot of stupid pronouncements about the state of literature and how it's all shit except for so-and-so and what's-her-name and, of course, us, but the only witnesses were a few people and a sofa and some beer cans. Or you might show somebody a story you wrote, but there was no posting it on a blog. So there was no real record of when you were a dumb, scared, angry baby who didn't know how to write yet. And for me, at least, that's a blessing. Anyway, I don't know if you can say people are doing any one thing in particular. We might be post-trends, a little. It's similar to clothing. I see groups of people hanging out and one person has a huge Mohawk and a Negative Approach t-shirt and another is in disco gear and another is doing some kind of Olivia-Newton John in Xanadu number and somebody else is Brad Davis in Querelle and here come the banker and the lumberjack and it's all fine, there are no warring philosophies here. Everybody is finally only judged on their ability to fulfill their goals. She's into Richard Yates, he adores Mary Robison, his friend loves Joseph McElroy, the other guy writes like Alice Munro. The Barthelme, Sebald, Bolano, and Denis Johnson contingents will be over in a minute. The launch party starts in an hour. I'm all for it. The camps are stupid. They mattered once but they are stupid now. You can't do without realism and you also can't do without the advances of certain formalists, metafictionists, post-modernists, either. They are all just techniques. If you ignore one or the other completely you're bogged down in some very old mire. The only onus on the writer is to be fucking outstanding. To be undeniable. I think a lot of good journals would take a similar view.

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Who are you reading these days?
I think you publish many of my favorite contemporary writers in the Tyrant. (I actually double-brushed the dirt off my shoulders when I read this.) I just read Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook. It's an Australian novel from 1961. I wouldn't call it a stylistic masterpiece but it's pretty great existentialist pulp, tight and crazy. There's some brutal man-versus-kangaroo action, and the crushing of a human soul via the pincer grip of heat and beer. Coetzee called it "a true dark classic of Australian literature." I just know that when I finished I felt as though I'd been on three-day bender and had taken part in horrific acts I could not remember. Which is a feeling you may or may not want from a book.

Can you give me your definition of swerve? I can't figure out what that has ever meant.
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday…"

Lorin Stein, your editor at FSG, aside from being maybe the nicest guy on the planet, has some pretty good taste. Did a lot of big edits happen?
I don't know about this nicest-guy-on-the-planet malarkey, but I'll agree with the part about his taste, though I guess I'm biased. He didn't come at me with an ax, no. That's not Lorin's style. It was more like a textbook prison shanking -- a little jab in the side and the next thing I'm in the dirt, bleeding out. Lorin is a great editor. We had long conversations (and sometimes sharp debate) about certain elements of the novel, and he had some wonderful line suggestions, but he also knew when to draw back and let me go at things the way I need to.

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Okay, I got to ask about music and writers. I'm going to list a few bands and authors below and you give me a couple of words about each.

Steely Dan -- Uncompromising audio sensualists, poets of 70s anomie. All that pervy, silk kimono riffage -- I only wish they could have collaborated with Brecht.

Brian Eno – Yes. Warm Jets and Tiger Mountain still the tops, though.

Big Star – I still think they might make it.

E.L.O. – Jeff Lynne was the best Beatle. If he'd actually been in the Beatles people would still listen to them now.

Early Man – Sure, but why not listen to Turbonegro? What I really liked was that Harvey Milk album from last year, Life…The Best Game in Town.

Enrico Caruso – I could be wrong, but I'm of the belief he had a fantastic voice.

Fleetwood Mac (the white years) – When were they not white?

Writers

Grace Paley – Amazing how quickly she could establish the authority of those voices. One of my short story heroes.

Stanley Elkin – This "putter-inner," as I once read him describe himself, produced some of the richest funniest writing ever.

Noy Holland -- She's a truly poetic writer and her work will blow you into a wall. Or else tenderly brick you up inside a wall.

Cormac McCarthy – One to watch.

Gary Lutz – He awes me every time. A giant.

Joseph ConradThe Secret Agent and The Secret Sharer. Did he forget?

DFW – It's still really terrible to think about. But to cheer up, read the bit about the public restroom attendant in Brief Interviews. Some of the best pages of prose I've ever read. Up there with Edward Dahlberg at his best.

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Eugene Marten – Crazy and beautifully surgical sentences.

Nathanael West – He was a very bad driver but one of the best writers this country has produced. I love Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locusts, but I think A Cool Million doesn't get enough attention.

Stanley Elkin once said to never end a story or book with a gesture. He was speaking of the money-throwing scene at the end of I Look Out For Ed Wolfe. I thought that gesture he spoke of was goddamn sublime. Did he mean this, or was it maybe just him talking?
Whenever I've found myself telling somebody to never do something, it's usually to remind myself not to do it again. But half the time I'm wrong. I should do it again. Still, Stanley Elkin "just talking" is always going to be meaningful.

Okay, you have this thing you do that I always notice and fucking love it. Here are three examples from three different books.

From The Ask: "It was an expensive and strangely obscure institution, named for its syphilitic Whig founder, but we often called it, with what we considered a certain panache, the Mediocre University at New York City. By we, I mean Horace and I. By often, I mean once."

From Home Land: (which I don't have at hand) there is a similar thing where Gary picks his nose and you question the reader about whether Gary wipes his boogers on his shorts or on his curtains. Gary doesn't have curtains.

From Venus Drive: "Some nights I picture myself naked, covered in napalm, running down the street. But then it's not napalm. It's apple butter. And it's not a street. It's my mother."

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You know that trick? Have you named it? I don't know if I see others do it. It's almost like a Modus Ponens or "The pulling out of the rug that I had to first convince you existed?"
Maybe it's that dang swerve.

Salinger died the other day. Were you a fan? Anything you'd like to say about him? Do you have any inside scoop on his possible writings since he withdrew from the publishing world?
I don't know if you can be a fan or not a fan at this point. You just grant him his Ur-status. I have no information about his later writings. We mostly just talked sports.

Alright, this should be enough for now, but just for kicks I'm going to end it with the most played and lame question I can think of: You know the last question that James Lipton asks on Inside The Actors Studio? I'm going to reword it for you: If a Valhalla exists, what would you like to hear Saint Troll say when you arrive at the Mother of Pearl turnstiles?
"Welcome to Valhalla, Sam. You've been a very fierce Scandinavian warrior but now it's time to relax. James Lipton is here. And so is Drugs. You can join them at the pool."

Sam gave us a chapter from The Ask for the next issue of Tyrant and I am generously, oh-so-untyrannically, letting Vice have it. They've been so good to me, why shouldn't I? Anyway, no need for an intro to this. It's just more proof of how great and fun this book is. The chapter does well on its own, but you're going to want to buy the whole thing after reading it, trust me. Click on page 2 to get started.

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GIANCARLO DITRAPANO

"Seventeen"
One night in the House of Drinking and Smoking we were victims of what I would later call a home invasion. I didn't know the term then. I think I learned it later, from a rap song, or a movie based loosely on a newspaper columnist's fear of a rap song. Probably they thought we'd be out, which was funny, because we were never out. This night, though, we had turned in early. Eve of a test week, I think. Given the soporifics in our systems, I'm still surprised we ever woke up, or that Maurice Gunderson did, to the sound, he said later, of his dresser drawer sliding open. His shriek roused the rest of us, though by then they, the invaders, had dragged Maurice from his bed, commenced what Billy Raskov would by morning term a "total fucking rampage." One of them banged a baseball bat on the walls and they all barked and shouted, flushed us from our smoky caves, herded us into the main room, where we sat in our underwear among the ashtrays and beer bottles that littered the glass coffee table we'd bought at the Salvation Army.

The invaders seemed quite familiar with the modality of the roust, knew the best ways to terrorize, corral. Later we learned at least one of them had been in the non-salvation army.

They wore ski masks, but we could tell by their hands that one was black and two were white. We could tell by their accents they were local. The largest invader, the apparent leader, the bat guy, as I later dubbed him, drifted about the room with his Easton aluminum, tapped our shoulders, our knees, lightly, with humorless threat, while the others drew the shades. I shivered on the sofa in my boxer shorts. Christmas break was not far off and the house was always cold. Constance and Charles Goldfarb sat beside me and through my grogginess I felt my arm brush Constance's warm shoulder. Two things occurred to me simultaneously: that she must have been in bed with Charles, and that I missed her. Then the bat guy smashed his bat on the coffee table. Maurice Gunderson squealed from his camp chair.

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"Shit, just take what you need and get out," he said. Glass twinkled in his scalp.

"What was that?" said the bat guy.

"I said just take what you need."

"What do I need, faggot? Tell me what I need!"

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small pistol. Its diminutive aspect did not offer comfort.

"Calm down, dude," said another invader.

"I'll keep these fairies here," said the bat guy. "You two go upstairs."

"You sure?" said the third invader.

"Just fucking go!" said the bat guy. "I don't have all night."

If he was the leader, he was not a natural one. He seemed more disturbed than the others, twitchier, less clinical in his approach to the burglarious. That they figured we'd have cash and valuables stashed away here on Staley Street was not an indictment of their intelligence, but it did point to a knowledge deficit with regard to the various striations and flavors of capital accumulation at a private university. There were some varsity golfers down the block they would have done much better to rob. Maybe they already had.

I could hear the other two invaders smash around upstairs, pictured them in the blue light of my tiny room. What would they make of the sketches tacked to the wall, the condoms under the futon, the cracked, unstrung Telecaster in the corner (in case the band idea ever blossomed), the scratched record on the Fold 'N Play? Would they see through the pose?

It did not seem odd that I was thinking about this while the bat guy lurched around us and his accomplices tore through our drawers and our duffels full of dirty jeans and jerk-off socks and plastic bongs and mint cookies and Foucault Readers. I was still a little stoned and very tired but I wasn't that frightened. I did not believe that we were in mortal danger, though I sensed some of us could get hurt. The bat scared me more than the gun. I saw it caving a skull, maybe that of Raskov, who sat on the sofa arm near Goldfarb. There was something melon-y and inviting about Raskov's head, I understood that objectively, and despite our frictions the prospect of its stoving did not please me. But the downside of this muted state was that I maybe appeared too comfortable, too fragmented, dreamy, and I suddenly paid for this with a sharp chop to the ribs. I squinted up from the floor into the wool-ringed eyes of the bat guy.

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"What!" he said. "What are you staring at!"

"He's not staring at anything, man," said Maurice, his voice high, airless. "Everything's cool. I have morphine. You want that?"

"Fuck your morphine," said the bat guy. "Yeah, give it to me."

"It's in my room."

"Where's your room?"

"End of the hall."

"Go get it. Just fucking stay where you are."

"I am," said Maurice.

"Get back on the couch."

The bat guy turned just as Constance put out her hand for me.

"Don't touch him!" he said. "Shit, you're a chick. Let me see you. You fuck him?"

It's complicated, I wanted to say.

"He's my friend," she said.

"You fuck him. I can tell. You blow him and tell him how smart he is. But he's a dumbshit. Take it from me."

"I can vouch for that," said Billy Raskov.

I didn't take it personally, knew it for some kind of play, a ridiculous one.

"You can vouch for what, potato head?"

"Jesus, Billy," Goldfarb whispered.

The bat guy stuck his bat in the cushions of an armchair behind him, far from our reach, though I noticed Gunderson eye it. Now he snatched a handful of Billy's lank hair, cranked his head back.

"What do you vouch for?"

"Nothing," said Raskov.

"Nothing?"

Raskov snarled as the bat guy bent his head. Constance leaned in and stroked Raskov's knuckles, as though what he needed most now was moral support, the structural integrity of his spinal column a minor matter.

"No," said Raskov. "Just that I can vouch for what you said about the guy over here. Milo. He is a dumbshit."

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"Oh, is he?"

"Yeah."

The bat guy slammed Raskov's head down on a spindly wooden end table. A leg splintered.

Billy slumped, clutched his skull.

The bat guy turned to me, waved his gun.

"Nice friend you got there. Calls you a dumbshit. He's fucking the chick, isn't he? Or maybe you all are. Maybe I will. What do you think of that?"

I could see Constance out of the corner of my eye. Her lips twittered, as though moving briskly through a sequence of calculations.

"Been a while since I got my wick dipped."

I could tell the bat guy was about to do something ugly with his penis. His pistol would authorize the ugliness. His pistol would have his penis's back. He started to rub himself. We froze, Billy and Maurice and Charles and I, or else we watched the scene as though it were precisely that, a scene, unfurling in the present but with a structure, a destination, already in place. Like a TV show, if TV made you too scared to move. I guess in a sense it does, but this was also something else. I was waiting for some instinct to take over. Fight or flight, I remember thinking. I suppose just sitting there on the sofa was, technically, flight. The bat guy made an experiment of bobbing his crotch near Constance's face.

Something scraped on the hardwood behind us. Purdy and Michael Florida squatted behind the armchair. Had they been here all along? Wandered in from the kitchen? Purdy put his finger to his lips. Michael Florida's eyes blazed, flicked around the room. They each crept around a side of the chair. Purdy slipped the Easton from the cushions.

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The bat guy cocked his head but did not look back.

"What the fuck took you so long?" he said. "Did you find the morphine? This kid says he got morphine."

"Hey," he said again, "I want to get out of here. You see this chick here? Let's take her with us. She'll have a better time than with these queers."

Then we all heard footfalls from the hallway, the boots of his fellow invaders. I saw fear in the bat guy's eyes and he had every right to feel it, because as he wheeled to see what forms he had mistaken for his friends, Purdy and Michael Florida vaulted over the wrecked coffee table. Purdy smashed the pistol from the bat guy's hand. Michael Florida dove, speared the bat guy in the chest. Together they crashed to the floor. The bat guy rolled on top of Michael Florida, choked him, both men dusted with glass. Michael Florida clawed back and the bat guy's mask peeled off and we saw his face, his brown hair and rosy cheeks. He looked like a thousand young men in this city. But this one was throttling brave, meth-carved Michael Florida.

Purdy picked up the pistol, pointed it at the other two men.

"He's a fucking nut," said one of them. "We didn't even want him with us."

"He's my cousin," said the other. "But I don't care. We just came for the cash."

It was an odd moment, as though the narrative had somehow forked and we were witnessing two possible outcomes, the intruders subdued at one end of the room, our friend strangled at the other. The story had to decide. Or Purdy had to decide, because the rest of us just sat there, and he did, tossed the Easton, shouted, "Constance!"

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Constance stood, snatched the airborne bat. The knob slid toward her fist and I remembered her stint on the freshman softball squad as she rocked her hips and swung into the bat guy's head. He screamed, but did not let go of Michael Florida's throat. Charles Goldfarb shouted. Constance bashed the bat guy on the elbow and his grip popped loose. Michael Florida rose, spun out, a practiced wrestler's escape. Many of us, maybe, were secret jocks. Michael Florida pounced on the bat guy, pressed him into the table shards, tugged his arms behind his back, bound his wrists with a leather belt. Michael Florida, more than anyone, would also be practiced in the swift removal of his belt.

Now Purdy waved the pistol at the two economically motivated, mostly non-violent invaders.

"Go," he said. "Get out of here. Run. Nobody's seen your faces. Just run on out of here."

"What about Jamie?" said one intruder to the other.

"Fuck Jamie. He's my cousin, and I say fuck him."

"They'll kill him."

"Don't be stupid," said Purdy. "We won't kill anybody. We want to graduate on time."

"There's nothing here," said Jamie's cousin. "We got nothing."

"You have everything," said Purdy. "The only important thing. Leave with it now."

"Wait!" called Jamie, started to thrash.

Michael Florida cinched his improvised truss. Billy Raskov stood, kicked Jamie in the kidney.

"Shit!"

It was craven, but at least Raskov had bare feet, and anyway I hadn't been cracked with a used end table.

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"Billy," said Constance, pulled Raskov off. "Leave him here," said Purdy to the other two. "You guys deserve better."

The deserved invaders nodded, bolted for the door. I watched them through the window fly down the street, weave off under streetlamps.

Michael Florida sat on the bat guy until the police arrived. Charles Goldfarb, who had been sitting in stunned lotus on the sofa, rose, paced, cursed, smoked.

A lot happened after that, testimonies and court appearances and a hung jury and vague threats, never made good, from townier parts of town. That summer the newspaper reported the bat guy had been shot dead outside Star Market. He was a local boy named Jamie Darling. He'd drawn down on some cops with an unloaded revolver. I think the term "suicide by cop," like "home invasion," came later, but that's what it was.

A lot happened even after all the stuff that happened after, but years later I couldn't remember most of it, at least not the legal and ethical intricacies that entertained us for many stoned hours back then.

What lingered was that frozen feeling, the paralysis, the unnerving awareness that came with it, my real-time curiosity about the nature of my cowardice, as though I were already beyond any possibility of action, just wanted to ascertain, in the moment of my acquiescence, whether I was going to ascribe it all to moral failure or grant a kinder, chemical explanation. Of course, the bat guy had a gun. Nobody ever blames you for freezing in front of a gun.

But it was still the bat that scared me.

The biochemical states of Maurice and Billy and Constance also intrigued, and then, of course, loomed the indelible fact of Purdy and Michael Florida, the aristocrat and the outcast, hurling themselves over the coffee table like some heroic tandem from the mendacious mythopoetry of another age, one of whistles and human waves and the Maxim guns ripping away. You had to either have everything or have nothing to act in this world, I mused then, to make the move that will deliver you, or cut you to pieces. The rest of us just cling to the trench's corroded ladder, shut our eyes the way I remember Bernie used to shut them, squeeze them hard, call it hiding.

Of course, this feeling, this hysterical read on agency's dispensations, was a lot of what Maura used to term, with the full-bore Midwestern irony she'd somehow absorbed near Brattleboro,
Vermont, "hooey," or what Claudia might have deemed a crock of absolute shit.

Still, a final tally, a statistical breakdown of this moment, did exist.

Future Apocalypse Guru: Smidgen of composure, ineffective diplomacy, intractable whininess.

Artistic Provocateur: Ineffectual response to threat, admirable behavior under physical duress, unseemly and gratuitous assault on downed invader.

Larkish Frankfurtian: Frightened retreat into walls of self.

Marxist Feminist Who Fucked: Initial paralysis, subsequent display of courage.

Semi-Brain-Damaged Crystal Tweaker: Valiant and focused response to threat.

Ruling-Class Brat: Remarkable bravery and tactical leadership in face of threat.

Home Invaders: Bold initiative, bad intel, poor battle management.

Painting's New Savior: Utter cowardice, experienced as bodily paralysis in conjunction with what he would later describe, in an effort to steer the conversation away from actual events, a "bizarre floating sensation."

But no matter my conversational machinations, I knew the truth. Nobody ever mentioned it, of course. It meant not much. Physical bravery probably held the same value in our milieu as skill at parallel parking: a useful quirk. But the box score stayed in my wallet, or the wallet of my heart, so to speak, a smeared and origamied scrap to remind me how little I resembled the man I figured for the secret chief of my several selves.