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Viagra Cialis

“Writing pornography again, Doug? That’s rather sad.” Amanda said. We were in the Bobst, and she had snuck up behind me and was reading over my shoulder.

“No, no, its not about you, dear,” I said in the same sarcastic tone she spit out ‘pornography’, a combination of relishing a forbidden word and striking out with an intellectual blunt instrument, one meant to induce trauma.

“Of course it’s not.” she said digging at me as she came around to the side of my writing table “I said pornography, not literary history. What have you been up to? I haven’t seen you for a while, you look well, but I must say even a man your age shouldn’t need to advertise about urologicals.”

Amanda was speaking in a newly affected accent, Boston Brahman mixed with New York East Side sophisticate, much different than the twenty something hipster lilt she used to cary around like a Glock. But accent or not the power was still there, it spoke without her saying a thing, it intimidated by its risk of rejoinder.

“You didn’t seem to mind in April.” I said. How weak a reply was that?

I was already on the run in this contest of wills. Like a boxer realizing that he had slipped up leaving open a vulnerability I covered up in my corner and said “It’s a blog post Amanda. I’m running a blog” like that was a good thing.

“Running? Not writing?” She said, leaving my other vulnerability for later. “But what about the great American novel, the voice of the male perspective. That was it right? The story of an intelligent male, I know they are hard to come by, a man dealing with the truth about heroism and the crushing weight of institutions or whatever Ayn Rand you were channeling back in the spring?”

She said this with the triumphant smile of one enjoying a well spoken complex sentence. I’m sure they taught her how to say that in the MFA program. It was a damning review.

I ignored her and said “I learned over the weekend that search engine order of key words is critical in driving traffic to your Writing.” I said it with a heavy emphasis on the word writing, to which Amanda sniffed a condescending laugh.

“Writing?”

“Yes Amanda, writing. The only contextual ad rates higher than finance are those with the words “viagra”, “cialis”, “male enhancement” and the like in them. This could be worth thousands of viewers, thousands of readers.”

“I hate those little ads on the web, they look so cheap” Amanda said, sitting down in the chair next to me.

“But you get paid for them.”

“Like what, a penny?”

“Like dollars each . . .” All of a sudden Amanda was paying just a bit more attention. As I recalled, her vision of success had her picking up her Pen/Faulkner award wearing a nice pair of Jimmy Chou’s and tailored Earnest Sewn jeans, then celebrating at Morimoto.

“I made a friend on-line last night. She’s from Romania, Nabyia is her name, and she has a few sites and her ads draw a thousand dollars or so a month.”

“An on-line friend, that’s adorable, Doug, from Romania. Are you going to fly over and see her? Are you sure she’s a girl?”

“You miss me, don’t you.”

“My therapist and I have almost gotten to the point of forgetting you. But it’s sad to see you like this,” she said as if she really wasn’t that sad. “You’re hack writing, I wouldn’t have time for that. Is this what the crush of being one of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch has done to you?” Chick lit feminists can be remarkably brutal.

“Everyone is a hack writer at some point. Who was that guy, yea Hemingway! I hear he did a little of it.”

“Que es mas muy macho, Doug… or perhaps you will go out and catch a big fish or something with your blog, maybe you’ll find male redemption in the bull pit of a discussion forum,” she laughed at me.

“What about that work you did for that magazine?” I said “What was it called? Explodio, or Expositor, or whatever, what did you get for that, a $200 check?”

“It was $500, but that was good writing, and it furthered my style.”

“Furthered your style? You MFA guys are all the same. You enter the mill, and churn out predictable stuff and then enter the grand intelligentsia institution where they make you do more of the same, Christ, they are using the term ’salon’ again to describe them, and then you look down on the rest of us as you produce essentially the same stuff. I mean who wrote your MFA application for you anyway? Martha Quincy Stapleton, right? She is what, like ninety years old?”

“You know that was private. I told you that privately.”

“You told it to me intimately, as I recall, dear.”

“I remember it as following an unsatisfied moment, actually.” Ouch. I thought I had her on the run but I was wrong. “Anyway, she didn’t write it, she read it.”

“She doctored it. It’s an industry, Amanda. Successful New York writers “coach” applications and prize submissions and get paid for it.”

“It was my work Doug, unlike this, this, I don’t know what this is, this blog that you are doing, I mean, what is it, really, what does it mean . . .”

“I’m connecting with a few thousand people every day, that’s what I’m doing. And getting paid for it, not much, but some. I read you got $75,000 from Knopf for your book.”

“Advance, yes, against sales, plus future royalties.”

“Twenty percent?”

“Sixteen, and lots of marketing.”

“Better than ten, you have a good agent.” I was trying to make up.

“So another of my blog buddies told me she gets 35% from Amazon for on-demand, and she has like six titles out. I don’t think she is Columbia MFA, though.” So much for making up.

“Bodice ripping page turners are popular…with some. I’m not writing popular.” 

Go on say it.  Say it. Say you are writing for art. I can’t wait to hear it. It’s been between every line you’ve said to me so far. This is the first time I’ve seen you in four months, and this is what I’m getting. Your work is art, mine is crap.

Instead she said “Are all your on-line friends women?” She didn’t say ‘cheap’ but I heard it between ‘friends’ and ‘women’. She wasn’t buying my trying to make up routine either. I don’t know, maybe she was. I wasn’t sure if I cared. Of course I cared.

“They are writing content, Amanda. This town was built on writing content. You got a building, filled it with designers and staff, paid people down here in the Village for a few thousand words. The art directors made it look pretty, the editors fixed the horrific grammar and the fact checkers kept everyone out of litigation. Then the proof went downtown to the Varick Street print shops and from there out on trucks across the nation. I’m doing exactly the same thing but with a few hundred less people involved.”

“You’re right, it’s a long truck ride to Romania. Dear, some advice. If I were you, I wouldn’t skimp on the editor. Your spelling is, ummm…” she was searching for the right word, “…mythical”.

I was had. I laughed, this brilliant, soon to be fixture of the New York literary world, this n+1 attendee, this future conference speaker, had twisted the knife she slowly slid between my third and fourth ribs. 

Our eyes met with mutual smirks, and she took a breath, and I smiled, and the four months raced back to the last afternoon we spent together, before the whatever of our lives got in the way.

“Are you going to KGB on Thursday?”

“Yes,” she said, reaching out with the toe of her sandaled foot and running it down my shin.

“Will I see you there?”

“Perhaps, James is busy.” James! Who is this James! But I didn’t bite.

“Will I see you afterwards?” I said.

She stood up.

“Humm, probably. Or not. Depends if you are nice to me, like you used to be. But I don’t know if I can be with a Viagra man.” 

I winced and made a face as she kissed me on the forehead, and ended our repartee, me fully trumped. She was on top again. 

“But we’ll see,” she said as she walked away and left me to stare at my post.

“Viagra Cialis,” it still said.

More with Amanda here…

After the reading