From Ohiowa Impromptu:

           Nuala, his agent,  was sure a memoir was the right thing at this time.

            "Just don't write about drinking," she'd said that morning over the phone from the Costa Blanca, where she was spending bank holiday weekend with Tariq, the boring nondrinking Paki boyfriend. (In the background droned a sitar. Boring sod.)

            "Why not? It's practically all I've ever done."

            "Oh rubbish. You've written three novels, you've been a husband and a father, you've taught in universities...."

            "All in the intervals between bottles. It's in the bottles, my dear, that life's essence is distilled."

            "Oh Tom honestly you are impossible."

            "Just being 'bitingly honest,' as you said you wanted me to be."[1]

            "Yes, but not about how many beers you get through on the average day." She paused. Tom heard giggling, and a loud snap. "How many do you, as a matter of...?"

            "Five or six, usually in the evening at the pub. Even here, where they don't have real pubs, just places called 'pub.'"

            "Well, never mind that. Drinking's boring to read about unless it leads to shame, humiliation, and death. Or rehab. Sex is different, of course, especially gay sex. People lap it up.  They can't actually believe they really do it, you see. Gays, I mean. And speaking of sex, be sure to include everything you can remember about your parents' miserable repressed sex lives. Readers love it."

            "And of course the requisite fondling by an eccentric pop-eyed uncle with winebottle specs, preferably behind the potting shed some frosty winter day. Bare treebranches etched against the glum gray Yorkshire sky. Heavy breathing, stains on threadbare trews, inchoate feelings of guilt. Words never uttered. Longing gazes over the years from behind said winebottle specs. Pathetic attempts to make up for transgression: Matchbox toys, conkers, tickets to matches at Headingley, etc. Old wretch finally dying of massive self-abuse, found face down amid the porn mags, alone."

            "I say. That's good. Was there ever...?"

            "No, but I'm a novelist. If I say there was, there it is. Or was."

            "Oh, do put that in, Tom. You must."

            The sitar's droning ceased and was replaced by the hoarse voice of Tariq, who sounded like a chainsmoking drag queen.

            "Who are you talking to, dahling?" 

            "Tom, silly, who else."

            "Who's Tom?" inquired Tariq, with a pause between "Who's" and "Tom" wide enough for a stand-up comedian to walk through–say, while doing a routine on the subject of ludicrous divorced beer-drinking writers of non-bestsellers.

            "Sod off, you boring little shag," muttered Tom.

            "Eh? What?"

            More giggling, and two loud snaps in a row.

            "All right, Tom, I'll be in touch." 

            Nuala's voice vanished into cyber-silence. Not without a tinge of envy, Tom imagined much  giggling and several more snaps, against the cerulean background of a Spanish sky.

            It was getting on for six, and the sun was reddening in the west, when Tom finished the last of his beers and his daily page of writing, which customarily became a little more sporadic in quality and coherence as the beer flowed; but that was all right, indeed all the better for him the next morning when he did the editing patch-up, which at least got him back into the thing.


[1] Well, this is boring. I don't like novelists, anyway, and this specimen's a bit too novelistish for my taste. Plus, he's English. So. No objection if I skip the next few paragraphs in favor of Phase III of The Life of Eisenbahn? All right. Here we go. Last time we checked in, our anti-hero, having failed to goad Pooter, the Stodgetts' aging pit bull, into assisting him to commit suicide, entered on one of his most creative periods, featuring notably his "Seven Meditations on the Bones of Mr. Lopez," "Upside-Down Barrel," "The Nostril," "Ma and Pa Henderson Lighting Up," and "Self-Portrait Of the Left Side."  All are now recognized as masterpieces of the post-Diminutivist school, but at the time (isn't it always the case?) they were mercilessly mocked by the mavens. Reginald Post-Hays, for instance, writing in The Slot, had this to say: "Eewwwwwwwwww." And Nancy Stratosphere, chief critic of  Piles, simply posted a photo of herself dressed in glam black standing in front of one of these glorious canvases--"The Nostril," I believe--while placing, in somewhat cartoonish fashion, a pink plastic clothespin on her nose. Very Po-Mo, avant la lettre (this is was in, like, 1913). But Eisenbahn was indifferent. Indeed, all the opprobrium served merely to spur him on to greater things such as the pastoral  mural "A Giant Cow Pie" that he'd been planning for the East Wall of the New Ur Post Office; unfortunately it was the first they'd heard of it, so he was  bundled unceremoniously out (ah, I love these authorial cliches that convey so little, apart from a warm glow of familiarity) and down the majestic front stairs, at the bottom of which he  turned and bawled at a passing postman "OK, then, up yours, you stupid postal employee," only to discover that the supposed "postman" was actually wearing the uniform of a member of the police force, and was therefore in a position of sufficient authority to charge Eisenbahn ("Kraut, huh?" said Patrolman O'Flynn) with being a public detriment and endangering the safety of the footpath; he got 90 days without the option. More on this anon.