One Millennial's Major Complaints

By Charles Shea LeMone

Twenty-two-year-old Russell Weldon's fingers tapped at a steady rhythm. With his laptop resting on his thighs, he listened to Jay-Z rap through his I-phone headphones, composing a letter to his psychiatrist.

To Dr. H. W. Moorehouse

Saturday, May 8, 2010 -- Noon-ish:

I am writing in response to six-months of you hounding me to open up and tell you what I think my problems are. So I will school you here in print. Most of my problems start and end with my parents. Is that what you've wanted me to admit for so long? Well, to start, let's make it clear in no uncertain terms. I hate them!

My mother is the born liberal, tree-hugger type, as you may have already suspected, a college librarian, who is still trying to worm her way into me considering her my best friend. She is thick-skinned, determined in this lost cause. Nevertheless, I have to give her an A for effort. She likes repeating, “I just don't want you to make the same mistakes I made.”

Often I want to shout back at her, “Then give me the space to make my own mistakes. Okie-dokie?”

Various forms of this conversation have played out over the last eight years. That's when she caught me smoking a blunt in the garage one afternoon. And I'd be puffing on a big fat one right this instant, too, if my contact hadn't grounded me for two days running while waiting (like all the other pot dealers I know) to replenish his stash.

On the other side of the parental coin, my father, the junior partner corporate accountant, earns a D- for having tried to understand me. Lately, though, the only thing he'll discuss is why I've been unemployed for so damn long? Or how hard am I trying to find a real job and keep it for more than a couple of weeks.

About once a month, almost as regular as a woman's menstrual cycle, he lets off steam and threatens to physically kick my ass out the house. It's almost amusing the way his bifocals practically steam up; and his face turns so red it's almost blue. And dear, old dad also likes blaming me--his one and only child--for his high blood pressure and other health related issues. It's times like these, I wish I'd been born twins or maybe quadruplets to see how he'd like dealing with that.

If they think I confuse and frustrate them, it's only because they have no idea how much they have confused the hell out of me ever since I began forming my own opinions.  So what that I could not stomach college life for more than a year-and-a-half and can't keep a job? Do they have to broadcast it whenever I'm in earshot of their telephone conversations with concerned friends and relatives. Talk about being an invisible man, sometimes I feel less than zero. That's why I stay in my room most of the time. It's off-limits to them with it's own bathroom, too.

You may ask: why am I so angry and choose to be distant and selfish? I could write dissertations on those topics as thick as redwood logs. For one thing: look at the world they--and their generation--are leaving young people like me and any children we might have. They've polluted the skies and oceans and the land under our feet. So tell me who inherits those problems? From jump street, they've misled us about everything, duty, responsibilities, religion, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, too.

Let's not even talk about the national deficit. I'll be lucky if I ever earn enough for a down-payment on a house, which does not get foreclosed on leaving me homeless with nobody to give a shit and without a pot to piss in. It's my brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan whom I feel the most pity for; killing and being killed and maimed, and getting psychologically screwed up for life because some politicians gave them the green-light to fight and kill. And who, but my generation is going to pick up the tab when Social Security and Medicare--and so many other entitlements--run out of dough? I'll answer that question. It'll be the suckers my parent's generation gave birth to trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I have a cousin who is only twelve years older than me. For three years his widowed mother, all crippled and shriveled up, has been living in a cramped little house with him and his wife and three children. At the turn of the last century, life expectancy was 47 point something. Now people live forty years longer and more; and it won't be too long before every day of the week more and more people will be seeing their hundredth birthdays. As much as I try avoiding it, I can easily imagine tripping over a bunch of old prune faced people and their walkers—while trying to take a leisurely stroll in the park. Although I have no intention of ever getting handcuffed into maaried life, merely imagining myself in a similar situation, as my cousin, taking care of my mother, is a nauseating thought.

If everything I have written so far was all I had to complain about, I'd still be in college with all kinds of normal goals and plans that would please my old man. But that would be unrealistic; because all the complaining I've done so far pales to near non-existence, petty annoyances, really, next to my fears, the motivating factors that stir my life. My parents had contagious germs and the Russians and nuclear war to fear, the possibility of total extinction measured in odds. More and more, though, it has become clear to me that the doomsday scenario they feared so deeply is far less horrific, and all encompassing, as what I see coming our way in about two and a half years.

There is a big secret that governments, the NSA, and everyone in the loop do not discuss with regular people like you and me. But Nibiru, a planet the size of Jupiter, is hurtling through the cosmos closer and closer to our solar system day-by-day. Signs of it's approach are the increasing prevalence of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions--and a long list of lesser noted, yet, unprecedented natural occurrences and uncommon weather phenomena.

Coincidentally, the arrival of Nibiru, as a true, next-door neighbor in the sky coincides with the end of the Mayan Calender. Biblical passages also sagely predict lightening and thunder in the sky, a scorching of the earth and a cleansing by fire of the impure. Well, guess who the impure are according to the Anunnakai, the 80 to 100 foot warriors, set to swoop down and invade us during the mop-up process. And that, Dr. Moorehouse, in case you don't already know, will be our fate one day in mid-December 2012.

And all my father wants to talk about is me finding a job?

There are those I know who believe the Anunnakai created us with the advanced scientific knowledge they inherited from their creators. What sets earthlings apart is our ability  and our willingness to kill our own kind and everything around us; and even though we have been informed of our fate we remain firmly indifferent to the outcome.

It is also believed, by some, that there was one scientist, I shall call the Prince of Peace, who lobbied on our behalf many eons ago, which prevented another scientist, I will call the Prince of Darkness, from destroying mankind long ago. In an effort to save us in an allotted period of time, the Prince of Peace sent (what he thought to be) his healing messages and his wisdom by way of a long series of prophets, who attempted to teach homo sapiens to love and have compassion for one another. The Prince of Darkness scoffed at the notion that man could ever change his savage nature but consented to the experiment knowing in his heart that the Prince of Peace would fail.

If any of this is true, and I am a microcosm of mankind, the Prince of Peace, indeed, accepted a doomed mission. I know enough psycho-babble to realize that the label psychopath fits me like custom made armor. Because I know I could kill. Though I’ve never have done it, I know I'd kill if I was confronted with harm. I'd do it in an instant with no remorse. In fact, if I could, I'd kill the Anunnakai. What's more, if it was me against Him, and I could, I'd kill God.

Russel reread what he'd written twice while chuckling to himself each time until he came near the end of the message. Then he said good-bye to it before deleting the file—meant for his eyes only--with a click of a forefinger and a wry smile on his curled lips and a glint in his blue eyes. So far, he thought, the day had started out pretty well.

Now if his contact came through, Saturday night would be another blast. Once again he'd convinced himself that the best he could do was enjoy whatever life he had left to the max of his ability.

Posted by shealemone at 9:21 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (22) | Permalink

By Charles Shea LeMone

Karen Maloney was fuming as she composed an angry e-mail to her husband and noticed a Facebook message notification pop up on her office computer's monitor.

“How’s it going today, girlfriend?”

“Mad as hell!!!”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Yesterday morning Tim left the apartment without his cell phone. When it rang, for some reason I was curious who might be calling at such an early hour because it was only 7:30, and he was on his way to the airport to attend a business conference in Denver. Turns out it was a hang-up from an unfamiliar area code. That’s when I decided to check his recent text messages. Boy was that a major wake up call for me! They were all from the same phone number.”

“From who?”

“Some woman named Nina. According to the messages sent over a two-day period, they have known each other for about three years.”

“I take it that they have more than a friendly relationship, eh?”

“I’m not sure if they have ever met face-to-face. But she did write she LOVED him too.”

“Where does she live?”

“In Wisconsin. I doubt if he has ever been up there that I can recall. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean she has never come here to New York to be with him. Or maybe they met somewhere during one or more of his business trips.”

“What does Tim have to say about all of this?”

“His story has changed three or four times since we talked on the phone. At first he denied he was doing any more than having a little fun, playing around and fantasizing with her. Then later he admitted he would like to meet her. That’s what bothers me so much, him changing his story from one conversation to the next. And that makes me wonder what else he may have lied to me about over the years… or if I can ever trust another word that comes out of his mouth. Also, he has been treating me so good lately, which has me thinking it’s out of guilt on his part and not because our marriage means a damn thing to him.”

“You two have been together, if my memory serves me correctly, for about 20 years?”

“Come June, it will be 21 years. But this could be the beginning of the end for me. I’m so pissed I can’t even begin to concentrate on a proposal due by the end of the day. I swear I feel as though my insides are rotting away from disgust and my skin is crawling. Just when I was thinking things were going so well in my life, too, with the promotion to sales manager and my wrists and elbow feeling so much better since I started acupuncture.”

“Remember the conversation we had last week about objectivity and how sometimes we can let our emotions cloud our reasoning powers and cause us to make faulty decisions we later regret?”

“I hear you. But what really upsets me so much is that Tim said he got involved with this woman out of boredom. I bit my tongue and didn’t respond to that remark. But I was thinking that no one could possibly be more boring than he is. He never wants to do anything new. We’re stuck in a routine, especially true when it comes to sex. It doesn’t take anything to get him excited, and it’s usually all over before I get warmed up right.”

“I have made suggestions to you in that regard. How about the books I suggested or video support?”

“Like I said, Frank, he is not into anything new. If he had his way we’d be eating pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy every night of the week, watching an occasional movie and the same old TV shows until the late night news is over.”

“I still think you should ask yourself a series of questions before you make any hasty decisions. As a sex therapist, I will write some off the top of my head, maybe ten or more, and e-mail them to you. Okay?”

“OK. I just hope I’m in the mood to follow through with the rendezvous plans we made for the start of weekend. That is, if you can still get away from home.”

“I told Margie I’d be staying over in town late Friday, so she has made plans to take the kids and a couple of their friends to see How to Train Your Dragon. And not realizing you would be facing a crisis situation, I already made reservations for our favorite room in our favorite hotel. So please let me know if I should cancel.”

“Maybe what I need more than anything is what you provide me with so well, the way you make me feel so hot and shivering and trembling all over for so doggone long.”

“I’ll leave that up to you, dear. But merely reading your last words back has me stimulated in a most taboo, loving and sensual way.”

“In that case, I’m sold. Two hours with you would be far too good an opportunity to pass up just because of Tim being such a stupid jerk.”

“You do think he might have learned something from the Tiger Woods fiasco, huh, girlfriend?”

“Exactly! Oh, by the way, I will be bringing a new toy with me Friday night that just arrived in the mail, batteries not included, of course.”

“As Al Pacino said in the movie Scarface. ‘Now you’re talking to me, baby. That I like!’”

Posted by shealemone at 8:03 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 30 April 2010 8:13 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (9) | Permalink

 African-American Centric Poems

.

.

             By Charles Shea LeMone

.

.

                Drum

..

Deep in the heart of Africa

After the fires and the chaos and the storm

All life was born.

Inside every man and woman and child

The beasts of the wild and every living thing

Inside every animate and inanimate object

From the smallest conceivable stone

Lives the magical rhythms of the drum.

.

Drum.

.

For eons we sailed the Seven Seas

We mapped the heavenly galaxies

We erected the mighty pyramids

Fashioned the dance of dusk and dawn

And sang the songs of life in hues of reds and blues

Which live on in the magical rhythms of the drum.

.

Drum…   Drum.

.

We’ve been the loyal scapegoats of history

We’ve suffered the shackles and stigmas of slavery

We’ve been called many ungodly names

But fortunately our natural compassion

And our magnificent resilience

Lives on in the magical rhythms of the drum.

.

Drum… Drum…  Drum.

.

Listen closely…

And you will surely hear

The original heartbeat so pure and sweet

A zillion serendipitous spirits

Ancient blessed souls

Which live on in the magical rhythms of the drum.

For deep in the heart of Africa

All life was born.

.

.

         Adam Meets Eve

Adam awoke with a pounding headache

In a deep corner of his mind a misty dream lingered

He stood, yawned and stretched

Oww!! He grimaced

From a sharp pain in his rib.

.

Slowly his sleepy eyes began to focus

Across a clearing in the Garden of Eden

An apparition of some kind appeared

From the far edge of the lush forest

She watched him with intrigue.

.

Uncertainly Adam approached her

With each step he took his heart raced faster

The trees swayed and the songbirds sang

In harmony as golden rays of dappled sunlight

Graced her form and magnified her uncommon beauty.

.

At arms length from Eve

Adam paused as a sweet jasmine scented breeze

Whispered a brand-new name…

And despite the dry lump in his throat

Adam asked: Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?

.

.

        Loretta at Serendipitous-Seventeen  

Walking along Susquehanna Avenue

on our way from a late Sunday night movie,

when all the bars and other shops were closed,

I’d sing songs like Misty under the streetlights

as though I was Johnny Mathis holding her hand and

pouring out my undisputed love for her.

.

We would kiss goodbye on her doorstep,

ending another night too soon,

rubbing our young bodies together lustfully,

she would grow weak in the knees

in less than five minutes. 

.

She even followed me up a stream

on more than one summer day,

all the way for two miles to reach Wissahickon Creek.

And we would be up to our knees at times

in the cool turquoise water flowing by.

.

She’d never be more than a few steps behind.

Through the marshes or around the waterfalls,

her chocolate-brown skin I can still see,

glowing in the sunlight and even more enticing

in the dappled shadows under the trees

we passed along our trek. 

.

We were so alive, so natural and free and

too awe inspired to speak a word

after we made slow love for the first time

in that small clearing big enough for a cozy two.

Me and Loretta, carving our names indelibly

into each other’s open hearts.

.

Both of us a “serendipitous-seventeen” and so

happy to be away from the Raymond Rosen projects

for a few hours in the warm light of day.

Posted by shealemone at 8:36 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 24 March 2011 10:41 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (8) | Permalink

I Can Imagine

By Charles Shea LeMone

With my semi-autobiographical, anti-gang novel, Corner Pride, about to be released by the Multicultural Educational Publishing Company, I see my next goal clearly defined.  It’s back to the corner of Gratz and Oxford in North Philadelphia where my life and the story began unfolding. I’ll return there more than fifty-years later to write a brand-new act: the opening of a cultural arts center.

There, I said it!

It would be nice if the center is located near the corner--even sweeter if the venue was physically located right on the corner of Gratz and Oxford Streets.

Maybe that’s possible.

You see, while coming up with the cover for the novel, I contacted a Philadelphia photographer about taking shots of the old corner. He e-mailed me back, “You can’t take pictures of what’s no longer there.”  Reading those cryptic words, I assumed change had once again come to the corner of Gratz and Oxford.

My family moved to West Oak Lane in the autumn of1959. By the early ‘70s, most of the crumbling-from-neglect, three-story tenement buildings were abandoned shells, half burned down or empty lots.  In the early-eighties, the entire 1500 block (the one I was born on) was renovated. I’d bet my life that a lot of crack cocaine was sold on the corner in the coming years following that.

Then, some twenty odd years later, in an article my sister sent me, I read a reporter for the Enquire or Daily News describe the block as defined by a resident, “…the most dangerous street in North Philadelphia.”

So reading the photographer’s cryptic message, I figured all or most of the buildings on the block had been leveled to the ground.  It would not be the first block in the vicinity to suffer the demolition ball.  From a satellite’s view, take a look and you’ll see most of the surrounding neighborhood looks bombed out. But rising up from the present day ashes and dust, from my mountaintop in Virginia, it’s easy to imagine The Gratz and Oxford Cultural Arts Center.

Hmmm!  Maybe it will take up a half-block or even more.

I love the thought of a structure that can stand the test of time, stronger than flesh and bones with a sea of tears tossed in yet a monument to all the families and friends I was close to for the first fourteen-and-a-half-years of my life. 

Yes, I can easily imagine it as though it already stands—that building.  For I first began to use my imagination, right there, on that block. I was born in the seventh house from the corner on the west side of the street; son to Charlie (no middle name) and Edna Rose, two supplanted New Yorkers who had grown up, met and married in the Bronx; younger brother to Norma Jean and Vivian Antoinette and young uncle to Antoinette (Toni) Jean Butler—four years younger.

Vivian, Toni and I often pretended we were characters from the “Boxcar Kids” books--stories about orphans on their own in the world with a freight train boxcar as their only shelter.

How brave we were back then, I write with a sniffle.

In the streets, playing with friends, we often imagined we were somewhere else, living adventurously.  Sometimes we were cowboys or Indians, riding on the dusty plains, using broomsticks for horses. Other times, we’d slip back to the days of Samson and Delilah.  If I was Samson then pretty walnut-skinned Pamela Hall was Delilah.  She was also Dale Evans to my Roy Rogers and Jane in the jungle when I was Tarzan of the Apes.

Wherever we imagined we were, though, we saw far past those otherwise confining three-story redbrick walls on that narrow rat and roach infested side-street. Under the bright and strong summer sun, while we played, we saw through those barriers as though they did not exist because we were too far away from them in our minds. That was the nature of our play and the potency and power of our imaginations.

And we had plenty to spare. 

Beyond how to use my imagination, as I mentioned in a recently written press release, there are some major lessons learned that I still apply from those Gratz and Oxford Street days: like how to be diplomatic rather than confrontational in the face of impending violence. How to build bridges and bonds to avoid future confrontations that might turn violent.  Most importantly, I learned to be there for my friends in their times of need even if that meant confronting obstacles or violence. 

With all that noted, there is no more important goal for me than to see that building stand (that cultural art center I mentioned earlier) right back where it all began for me on the Corner of Gratz and Oxford Streets in North Philadelphia.

I imagine the center surviving for many years, providing an enlightening oasis for thousands of children, a place where they can learn about art, dance, music, writing, acting and filmmaking. I can almost see the faces of many of them and the sparks of creative light that can change the very way they see and react to the world around them, a more optimistic, proactive view.  I’ll hold on to that vision, and corresponding ones, until the day the center opens its door to the real world.   

Now a shout out to all my boys wherever they may be along their journeys, whether it be on this planet or as roving spirits in other dimensions or angelic souls in the flow of some other galaxy:

William (Monkmeat) Hall,

George (Brother) Jackson,

Raymond (Ray Ray) Robinson,

Joseph (Reds) Brisco,

Poppy,

Ernest,

Cannonball,

Coon,

Hunky,

Peachy,

Bunknose,

Andy Panda,

Boo,

Randy Pierce

Moses Pierce,

Peanut from Gratz Street,

and Peanut from Garnet Street, too, and so many more.

Most of all, here’s a special word of thanks and a respectful nod of adoration to James Garnet, who taught so many others and me how to use our fists.

“Do you remember those days when the winner of a “fair one”, one person versus another, could settle arguments and even prevent a gang war?” someone in the crowd shouted. 

The guys named on the list above do?  They were there in the summer of 1957, when we knew the meaning of the words corner pride.

To see the cover of Corner Pride, click: www.allwordman.com

Posted by shealemone at 10:24 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (17) | Permalink

Witnessing Change

 By Charles Shea LeMone

From my mountaintop, over the years I’ve seen so much change about the landscape in all four directions. I used to watch the buffalo herds as they migrated through a nearby pass, kicking up swirls of dust that seemed to travel a mile into the sky. Eagles and falcons once soared above them, too, in a sky that was so much bluer back then. 

I also miss seeing the red men and their women and children who camped near the creek below me during the spring. Then they’d leave and return in late summer. But that was before the pale men came with their fire sticks, and the iron horse brought the thundering of its wheels, announcing the coming of a new age. 

Gone too are the roaming families of wolves; and now their cousins the coyotes and the sly foxes are so scarce they are seldom seen. So many breeds of birds that once made this mountainous region their home no longer exist.  Could it be pesticides and toxic waste from factories poisoning the streams and rivers that are killing them all off? Is that why the honeybee and bat population is dwindling so dramatically year-by-year?

Oh, how I miss the days long ago, when the red men had a spiritual connection to the land and their songs and dances reflected their respect for Mother Nature, and the wind whispered their beliefs. They lived in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Now it seems the pale men’s desire to conquer nature has only made their own extinction an inevitable fact of life.

As I watch another bulldozer demolish the birch, cedar, maple, elm, pine and brother oak trees on a nearby rise, I wonder about my own fate. How many more seasons will I see before my roots are buried below a slab of cement? For my rings have now reached the count of 196 years, and reflections of more glorious times fill my days and nights with sad whisperings passing through the leaves on my limbs.

If only I could speak and share my laments to the present day humans who have lost touch with the beauty and significance of what nature has to offer them in so many countless ways. I’d tell them of their connection to all living things and that even inanimate objects have a story to tell. I’d tell them about the power of the unseen world too.

Unfortunately, though, even if I could speak their language I doubt if any of them would take the time to listen to the words spoken by an old oak tree.

Posted by shealemone at 1:53 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (12) | Permalink

A Literary Agency From Hell

By Charles Shea LeMone

In her usual efficient manner, Kim Lange stepped off the elevator on the eleventh-floor and marched down the newly carpeted hallway to the office of McCall’s Literary Agency and let herself inside. Fifteen minutes later, she sipped her first cup of black coffee and glanced at the ticking hands on the big wall clock. She knew within a few minutes a deluge of phone calls from disgruntled clients would begin jamming the phone lines. With an exasperated sigh, she comforted herself with the fact that this would be her final day on the job, a fact that only she knew. 

As she absently stared out the window onto Wilshire Boulevard at the snarled Los Angeles traffic--a few blocks west of La Cienega Boulevard--she reflected on the journey that brought her to this crossroad in life. Alfred (Freddy) McCall left the well-known agency she’d worked for as a receptionist to start his own company. In the weeks leading up to his departure, he begged her to come work for him. He promised her double the pay and more responsibilities, referring to her as the dynamo he needed to make his business flourish.

The flattering words had their desired affect on 5’1”, 97 pound Kim, who, despite her diminutive body, possessed the driving force of a cyclone in the making. The way her bright green eyes gazed at the world from beneath her straight black bangs--trimmed just above her eyebrows--expressed a determined fierceness that Freddy claimed to have recognized the moment she was hired.

“I’m taking six of their best writers with me,” he’d explained across the candle lit table of a trendy Rodeo Drive restaurant. “Both of us have worked too hard for these selfish assholes for too many years. Believe me, the only way we’ll get the proper compensation we deserve is to strike out on our own. I’ve had ten years of their broken promises. And you, what has it been, five years now? Think about it, Kim, at last you’ll be an agent too.”

He then systematically laid out what he called the facts of life for her: a long list of editors who had left their former employees to amass a fortune working for themselves.

The ringing phone snapped Kim from her reverie while blankly staring at the traffic below. She crossed the reception area and passed six cubicles that were now empty. The other staff members, all five of them, were long gone. Now it was only Kim and Freddy--whenever his lower back was not bothering him too much to come into the office. Lately, though, that was seldom. Inside his plush office, she pushed a button to field the first call of the day on the speakerphone. She dealt with problems best when she paced in a tight circle.

“McCall’s Agency. Kimberly speaking. How may I help you?”

“I need to speak to Mr. McCall,” a woman demanded. “The same as yesterday and the day before and the day before that!”

Kim recognized the voice as that of a woman from Maine who had paid five-thousand-dollars four months ago to have her romance novel polished by an editor—of the agency’s choosing--before submitting it to publishing houses.

“He’s still out, Jenna,” Kim responded calmly. “But he has promised to give you a ring first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, yeah!” The woman’s temper flared. “Are you promising me that because tomorrow is Friday, and you’ll have the whole weekend to avoid dealing with me?”

“As I told you yesterday, Mr. McCall is still in traction and in too much pain to deal with anything else at the moment. But I have checked with the editor assigned to your novel.  And you should be very pleased to know he’s assured me that it’s coming along just fine. He even said he’s positive that it’s going to be a major blockbuster.”

“Okay.” The woman sounded somewhat appeased. “I’ll trust your word again… one more time. But I better be able to speak to him tomorrow. If not, I’ll be on a flight out there and in your office Monday morning.”

Before the lunch hour, Kim fielded three-dozen more calls, each of an urgent nature. The last came from the landlord, inquiring about three month’s rent due. All the while she wondered how she’d managed to maintain her sanity and keep the angry clients and creditors at bay for so long with so many lies. It had been almost a year since Freddy convinced her the only way out of the financial mess he’d found himself in was to run scams on all the out-of-town writers who submitted their work. 

His dream of having a successful agency began coming unglued shortly after he opened the office. Only two of the writers from the other agency kept their promises to let him represent them. Consequently, to maintain his overhead he was forced to borrow money from friends and family. When that proved insufficient, he got a second mortgage on his Los Felix home. That’s when his wife left him and filed for divorce.

In time, Kim became his sympathetic companion and then his lover too. For despite the twenty-year difference in their ages, and the fact that fifty-year-old Freddy was not physically appealing to her, she believed against all odds he’d find a way to right the ship. Also, being his rudder and anchor in turbulent waters fulfilled a need within Kim—who was raised in an Iowa home for orphans. Besides, she discovered that he was a dedicated and passionate lover who brought out an insatiable side of her in bed she never knew existed. Then there was his natural gift of gab that had always attracted her. And under his tutelage, she’d become an even more convincing liar than Freddy.

While taking a lunch break at a nearby delicatessen, she recalled the night when she became a partner in Freddy’s scheme. They were at the same restaurant where he’d talked her into leaving the other company. This time, however, there was nothing confident or suave about his approach; he was far too desperate to fool her or even try. That morning the last editor manning one of the cubicles had quit.

“From now on we accept at least half the manuscripts we receive, and pour it on the writers about how great their books are. Then we charge them a fee for signing with us and let them believe we plan to send fifteen copies or more off to the top houses. Of course, we’ll do none of the above and charge them for the copies and postage, too.”

Kim sat dumbfounded, as Freddy went on, “I’ve been doing it for the last two weeks. You’d be surprised how easy it is. I just play on their egos and never read more than the first two or three pages and the last two or three. But watch how the checks start rolling in, Kim.  Maybe as soon as tomorrow.”

“You can’t go on fooling them forever,” Kim protested. “They’ll have to wise up to your bullshit at some point.”

That’s when he explained his bailout plan. “You and me, baby. About a year from now, we’ll be off to some remote tropical island with new identities.” Before she could interrupt, he continued, “I mean what choice do I have? If I stick around here too much longer, I’ll be toast. The couple of writers we have making the real bucks for us just don’t cut the mustard. You should know, you keep the books and pay all the bills that are piling up.”

He looked so pitiful that she could not restrain from reaching across the table and taking one of his hands into both of hers.

“There’s got to be a better way than that, Freddy,” she said soothingly.

“If that’s true,” he muttered with downcast eyes, “you tell me what it is because I sure can’t see any other way out of this hell of a mess.”

The next morning she dutifully began following his instructions by opening a back load of unsolicited manuscripts, perusing the first two or three pages to determine whether or not the authors possessed a modicum of talent. Within a few weeks she’d signed thirty-five of them. And the numbers grew as she milked each one of them for every cent she could, one-hundred-dollars for signing as clients, gradually adding additional costs for doing business. It was her idea to charge for editing work that was never commissioned, which brought in thousands of extra dollars each week. Her biggest catch, an anthologist, netted ten-thousand-dollars all told. But as far as she was concerned, every contracted dollar and bill left unpaid counted toward her unencumbered future with Freddy.

For the first few months, she allowed herself to feel guilty about the scams she was running. Over time, though, she kept reminding herself that no one had ever done anything to help her get ahead. Nabbing the job at the other agency had seemed like a blessing; and she’d gone on at nights to earn a bachelor’s degree in English. But with the economy in a nosedive, where would she find a job--if Freddy went down and she found herself unemployed—working at a McDonald’s? 

Moreover, she began to scorn the people she was so easily deceiving for being so dumb. If they had any talent, and common sense knowledge about the book business, they could easily forgo the need of representation by learning to write good query letters and book proposals to send directly to publishing houses. It was as though they wanted her to take their money so they could go on believing they had the rare talent it takes to break into a business where so many failed.

Then, the same day she discovered the proverbial needle in a haystack among all the lousy manuscripts—a true gem of a writer--she also learned something about Freddy that changed everything. Driving home to her small apartment one rainy night, while stopped at a streetlight, she saw him coming out of a restaurant when he was supposedly in New York. Right away, she recognized the tall, blonde woman on his arm, the one he was shielding from the rain with a newspaper.

It was the agency’s best-selling author, Sabrina Crosse. Smiling the way she was, she appeared even more attractive than she did in the photograph on the back cover of all her mystery novels. Laughing like infatuated teenagers without a care in the world, a mere few feet away, they jogged right in front of her car as they crossed the street. And all of this came only hours after Freddy had complained he had to get off the phone with her and rest his bad back. It was like one of those sappy plots Sabrina was famous for writing.

“You filthy lying bastard!” she kept saying to herself as she followed his car back to the turnoff for Sabrina’s estate in Brentwood. 

Three months later, she had to congratulate herself for being a better con artist than Freddy could ever hope to be. Never once did she give him reason to suspect that she had changed allegiances and was thinking of no one but herself while loathing him with a monumental contempt just below the surface of all her actions. By the time he discovered anything was wrong, he’d be penniless and she’d be long gone, sunning on the beach in front of a four-star hotel.

However, a close call had come two days ago. On a rare day he’d made it into the office, on his way out for one of his long lunch meetings that never amounted to anything worthwhile, he’d run into the mailman. Bringing the stack of letters to her, he flipped through the first six missives and stopped before laying the stack on her desk. There, under the utilities bill, was the letter she’d been anxiously awaiting for several days. Inside was a check for two-million-dollars from Newborn Publishers. The one manuscript in a million had paid off in record time—all without Freddy having a clue. 

Now, at three o’clock on her last day in the office, she’d transfer all of the money they’d swindled plus the two-million into the offshore account she’d set up for herself. Then with her brand-new passport, and a new identity, it was off to the Tahiti as a first stop--and a life of leisure. Meanwhile, she had Freddy believing she could single-handily stall things for another week. A very fitting end, she felt, to her relationship with him. As he was fond of reminding her about story plots: poetic justice should always determine the outcome of every climax and set the tone for all resolutions.

Kim laughed, thinking back to when Freddy had estimated their scams would net four to six million dollars--if they also failed to pay the agency’s best writers the quartiles they’d earned. She knew then that was wishful thinking. However, as things had turned out with her newly discovered writing genius, she was expecting their corporate account figures to be close to that four million mark when she checked the account later in the day. The two-million-dollars had been listed as pending the previous day.

On impulse, though, she ignored an incoming call and went online to the banking account. She was shocked to see the amount had not changed and the big check was no longer listed as pending. Fifteen minutes on hold to her contact at Newborn Publishing, in New York, had her sweating even though the air-conditioner was on high. And each new blinking line that went unanswered seemed to bode bad tidings. Finally, her contact greeted her.

“What’s going on back there, Mike?” She wasted no time on pleasantries. “That check was supposed to clear by today.”

“Oh, didn’t you hear there’s a snag in the procedures?”

“What snag?”

“Your most talented newly discovered writer gave us a call a few days ago. Seems he was suspicious about your agency. Says a year ago he submitted the same manuscript in a different name and got a rejection notice. This time around, you gave him reason to believe he was in with us. But he never heard from you again.”

“He’s got to be mistaken. I’m sure Alfred’s been in touch with him.”

“Well, there are more complications, Kim. You see, we faxed the guy a copy of the contract and he claims it’s not his signature on any of the pages.”

“I… I… ah[W1] …” Kim stuttered and flopped down in a chair, her elbow knocking a lamp off the desk. “I… I better call Alfred right now and get to the bottom of all this.”

She hung up before Mike could say more. With feverish fingers, she transferred the balance of the company account into the offshore one. Then she dug into her purse with a trembling hand, tuning out the ringing phone lines and their six blinking lights. The way things were going, she was surprised to find her plane ticket and her passport were still in the zipped pouch where she’d left them.

When she looked up, there was a dark, bulky figure blocking the doorway of the office. As he stepped closer she saw a gun in his right hand, pointed at her.

“Who… are you?” she gasped the words with a thick tongue.

“I’m the man you tried to cheat out of two million dollars.”

“But… you would have gotten paid, anyway,” she whimpered. “So why… why… kill me?”

“Because I’m the man who put such a believable story together about a serial killer who enjoys killing figures of authority and getting away with it.”

Kim saw the spark from the gun but never heard the sound it made or the numerous phone lines--which kept on ringing long after the intruder was gone.  

Author’s Note: This is a fictional tale and no way represents any real-life agencies. For most of them are reputable companies. However, there is truth in the fact that many successful writers have learned the art of preparing query letters and book proposal to obtain agent representation or direct deals with publishing houses. Below is a link to a Website where informative books on these subjects can be found. 

               http://www.writersweekly.com/books/3332.html

Posted by shealemone at 2:06 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 14 April 2009 8:28 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (8) | Permalink

The Same Old Jailhouse Jive

By Charles Shea LeMone

In the recreation area of Cell Block D an old black man, who answered to the name Wordsmith, set up for business every morning from nine o’clock until the shrill lunch alarm sounded. There at a corner table he wrote letters for the other inmates, charging five cigarettes per page. Though he did not smoke, he used the cigarettes to trade for things like ballpoint pens, notebook paper, envelopes, postage stamps and candy bars. He was one of the unfortunate inmates who never received mail or visitors. When he was not writing letters, waiting for customers or working in the library five evenings a week, he kept to himself.

One afternoon, while lying on the bottom bunk in his upper tier cell, a tall, lanky, young man came to the open door and stood. Wordsmith looked up from the newspaper he was reading and waited with a smirk on his face. The young man, 19-year-old Daryl James, stared directly into the old man’s bored, unwavering gaze as he cleared his throat before speaking.

“I could tell you didn’t believe what I wrote my girl the other day. I know because I could see it in your eyes.”

“So what?” Wordsmith guffawed. “It’s not like you were writing me.”

“I meant every word, though.”

“So what’s that got to do with anything?”

“I just want you to know, I mean what I said,” Daryl declared as he took a half-step back. “When I’m done doing my 18 months, I won’t be bangin’, frontin’ or slingin’ shit for nobody!”

“It’s not about what I believe, young blood,” Wordsmith said as the young man turned to walk away.

Stroking the scraggly gray beard on his narrow, 50-year-old chin, Wordsmith laid the two-day-old newspaper down in his lap and sighed wearily. They were all the same, he thought, the young newcomers. He recognized the forlorn, puppy-dog look in their eyes long before they sat down to compose their lies. Always a standard form letter filled with promises to their mothers, grandmothers or girlfriends about how different they would be once they’d served their time and were free on the streets again. He’d written the same jailhouse jive a thousand times or more and could probably write a thousand more letters just like those with his left hand and both eyes closed.

Maybe some of them actually believed their own lies, he mused. But he knew better than them about the odds they’d face once their time was served and the prison doors opened to release them like a revolving door. The rate of recidivism for young black men (common knowledge to anyone who read as much as he did) confirmed that he was right. So why should he believe any of their jive nonsense?

Two months had passed when Wordsmith decided to sit down across from Daryl in the cafeteria at the end of a quiet table. Despite his sloppy handwriting, misspelled words and lack of grammatical grace, the young had taken to writing his own letters—two or three per week. Watching him struggle at this on more than one occasion from several tables away in the recreation area, Wordsmith began to muster up a modicum of respect for the younger man.

“How’s it be, D. J.?” he asked, holding a plastic-fork, ready to dive into his franks and beans.

“It is what it is, old man,” D.J. said nonchalantly, as he pushed his empty plate aside.

“And your plans for when you get out of here?”

“I’m gonna get my GED diploma,” he said with a shrug. “Get a job. Get married. You know, man, live the straight life.”

“Think that’s going be easy?”

“Hell no! I know it won’t be no piece of cake. But with Obama in the White House now, maybe things’ll open up more for young black men trying to get ahead, even an ex-con like me.”

“Maybe.” Wordsmith appear skeptical and chewed for a moment in silence before saying, “It’d be wise of you to have a plan that doesn’t count on nothing or nobody except what you’re willing to do and how ready you are to overcome whatever obstacles you’ll be confronted with out there in the real world. You see, there’s nothing worse than a poor ass nigga with a little bit of education who thinks he has all the answers. That’s exactly what’s got me doing five to ten years, thinking I could scheme the system by stealing other people’s identities and such.”

He laughed, a somewhat strangled sound and went on with a distant look in his eyes, “I had it all going on big-time for awhile there, though. Everything I’d ever dreamed of having was mine. All the hottest women and lots of buddies calling themselves friends. But that was back then, before I took the fall. Now what have I got to speak of?”

“So what you tryin’ to tell me?” D.J. leaned forward, tapping a slender forefinger on the scarred tabletop.

“Get that GED, yeah! But don’t stop there, young man. Take whatever job you can get no matter how menial and keep on keeping on. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re too cool for school. Any schooling, except what you’ve already learned in the streets, is what you should be going after.” The old man paused. “Most important, though, learn to learn on your own time, too, and love doing it.”  

“Learn what?”

“Whatever you have an interest in, a passion for, learn all you can about that and more!”

“Hmm…” D. J. leaned back and rubbed his hands together.

“You read?”

“Read?” D. J. asked with a raised eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Anything? Do you read… anything?”

“When I was in school, there wasn’t no way around it. I had a year to go, though, when I dropped out and joined the local posse with the rest of my homies. Other than that, I like some comic books. That’s about it.”

“That’s what I thought.” Wordsmith frowned and the wrinkles in his forehead etched deeper crevices into his walnut-hued skin.

“Meaning?” D. J. asked in a voice tinged with sarcasm.

“Get a pass from the guards and meet me in the library tonight after supper.”

When D.J. arrived in the dusty, claustrophobic room, Wordsmith had him fill out a library card. Then he gave him an old, well-persevered hardbound book and told him to start reading it that night and let him know when he was done.

“What’s this?” D.J. looked at the title on the spine of the book, perplexed, as though he was holding an artifact belonging to the original Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Tarzan of the Apes, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs,” Wordsmith pronounced each word with precision. “Give it a try. You might be surprised to find out you like it. This copy just came in so count yourself lucky.”

The next morning, shortly after Wordsmith set up shop, he spotted D. J. entering the recreation area, smiling as though he’d just won the lottery and holding the book clutched in a tight hand as though it was a prized possession. Wordsmith smiled in return.

“I just finished it this morning,” D. J. said enthusiastically as he sat down, still holding the novel. “That’s why I skipped breakfast. I had no idea a book could be so much fun and exciting.”

“They can be a lot more, too,” Wordsmith said. “But knowing that much is a good start. Come by the library again tonight. I’ve got something else set aside for you. But this one will require you to borrow a dictionary to take out with it.”

As D.J. exited the area, Wordsmith, opened a small notebook that he always kept in his breast pocket. In it he had started a list of books he would introduce to the younger man. In his distinctly legible handwriting, he added Native Son by Richard Wright, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington and Black Elk Speaks.

If things went the way he now envisioned, D. J. would ready for Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment before too long and be a lot wiser when his jail time was served. Then maybe, just maybe, he hoped Daryl James would have established the deep roots to the knowledge and understanding he’d need to assure he’d never set foot in another jailhouse as long as he lived. Surprisingly, that thought, alone, warmed the old black man the inmates called Wordsmith.

Posted by shealemone at 3:45 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (10) | Permalink

The Sacred Mountain Name Quest

By Charles Shea LeMone

One day a father and his son took the long journey to the sacred mountains.  They were on a name quest.  Until then the boy had answered to the name Second Son.  Their first night in the mountains was a cloudless one and the winds blew cold.  As they sat near a fire under an umbrella of brilliant stars, the father spoke to his son.

“Tonight you will allow the spirits of the mountains to feed your dreams.  From these dreams we will decide your name.”

“Suppose I have no dreams?” the boy asked in a faltering voice.

The father laughed, “Then, of course, we will call you No Name.”

The boy frowned and missed seeing the mischievous expression on his father’s face.

As the fire lost its luster and the two bedded down, the father said, “I am going to tell you a legend my father once told me.”

“Good,” the boy said as he snuggled under the warmth of his blanket.

“There was a man from a distant tribe who was unlike all the other men.  When he was young, he could hunt and track with the best of the boys his age.  But he never showed the emotions that were common to his people.  He never got angry.  He never shouted or cursed.  And worst of all he never seemed to despair.  This troubled the chief, and he decided to send the young man to another tribe to do their bidding for them.  For many years, he lived among them, doing the work no one else wanted to do.”

“Was he sad?” the boy asked.

“No, he was not.  For sadness was another emotion the boy, now a full-grown man, never embraced.  And this soon began to trouble all of the people around him.  So the chief told his son to take the man far away, saying, ‘I never want to see him again.’”

“Then what happened?”

“Along the journey, the son of the chief and the man stopped to rest one night.  While they sat around a fire, much like the one that burned tonight, the chief’s son spoke to the man.

“‘The problem with you is, you have no sense of self.  You let the woman and even the children taunt you like you are their plaything.  And all you do is smile in return.  This is not right.’”

“‘What’s wrong with that?’ the man asked.

“‘It is not right for a man to behave this way.  Sometimes my own son comes to me and I tell him, ‘Go away.  I do not have time for you now.’”

“‘I know,’ the man said.  ‘I have seen you do this many times.’”

“‘But you never think of yourself this way and tell anyone to leave you be.  And that is the problem.’

“‘No,’ the man said, calmly speaking across the fire that separated the two of them, ‘that is not the problem.  You see, for me it is easy to imagine what it is that gives you comfort and joy, what makes you who you are and what makes other people who they are.  But you cannot imagine the joy I get being me.  Not even for a moment can you, or anyone else, allow yourselves to imagine that.  And that is the problem.’

“The chief’s son’s eyes flashed anger and his lips drew tight but he kept his words to himself.” 

There was a long silence as the boy pondered the meaning of the legend his father told him.  Then he asked, “So what finally happened to the man?”

“I asked my father the same question long ago.  He told me to use my imagination to find an end to that legend.  And now I will tell you the same.”

The next morning, the son told his father all of the dreams he had experienced that night exactly as they had unfolded.  When he was done, the father said, “Your name is Dreamer. You will help lead our people along the red road.  For your dreams have great meanings and offer sage advice.”

During the journey back to their village, many times along the way, the boy silently questioned why the man believed to have had no emotions had not been accepted by his people and why he was forced to live and die in exile.

Posted by shealemone at 3:45 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | View Comments (22) | Permalink