Bathroom Monologue: Anton and Anton

Anton sits on his knees before the grave of Anton. For a while, Emil and Yulia's son holds Anton's left hand and does his impression of prayer; at three years old, he no better understands prayer than he does who is buried beneath his soles.

"Amen," Emil and Yulia's son mutters, releasing Anton's hand to rub at his eyes. The drive here has made him drowsy, and Yulia stoops to pick him up. She bows a quarter of the way she normally would, dipping herself and her child toward the headstone.

Instead of 'Amen,' she says, "Thank you for saving my husband, Anton." She says nothing more, and ends her bow. She did not think much of Anton, the drunken shadow of her Emil. She is two paces behind Anton when he checks her, her gaze already on the car.

It is four years to the Saturday since Anton Behrs was blown up pulling Emil from a foundry. That is what everyone knows. They commemorate it on Saturdays because Emil Behrs has never in eleven years missed a day at the exchange, and Anton will not let Emil fail now. He misses absinthe.

No E-Book of Joyland, and Shut Up About It

Too much is being made of Stephen King's Joyland going print-only. So his initial run will be paper-exclusive, intended to help bookstores and accentuate some nostalgia for the pulp presses that inspired his detective novel. He is now being misquoted as thinking e-books aren't real books and decried as a luddite.

Bathroom Monologue: Refugee Camp Regrets, Redux

"I don't regret why I'm in here. They can starve me, beat me. Call me a traitor. I'm not one. What I did was for the good. I was a General in name only, put in charge of the children and the lame. A sea of starving, helpless people, with less than a dozen armed guards, all of whom were routinely called away for more glorious service. I couldn't lead my charges to safety. The raiders would find us in any cave or stronghold I managed to reach. We were ransacked weekly. We lost our supplies and the youngest starved. When the raiders returned to find no more food, they took the near-pubescent girls as slaves. No number of missing or dead on a report changed the minds of those in command.

"I remember the fifth attack most clearly. The smoke from tents they burned out of malice. The lamentations of young and feeble. A crippled mother crawling after them escaping raiders, barking for them to return her daughter. I watched her legs drag in the sand behind her, like a split fishtail. It didn’t even flop around. Other men would have found it heartbreaking. I found it inspiring, and I am not sorry for the idea it gave me.

"I took arms. Only one per child. I took a couple of hands, but that wouldn’t be enough. I took no legs – every one of those children would grow up to walk. I even mailed them one of the limbs along with the reports and testimonials from children who could no longer write themselves. I packed it in salt. Six mutilated children and one arm were somehow harder to ignore than thirty dead parents.

"The next week we had a brigade defending our camp. The raiders were rebuffed by bronze shields and long lances. Able-bodied men did their duty by the meekest.

"Which of them gave me away? I don’t know. From the looks, I think it was some of the same children who had sworn by my testimonials. You can’t trust children, even parentless ones, to keep up your stories. I can understand the juvenile mind begrudging me my work. I don’t blame them. But I’m not sorry. Those one-armed children will live behind shielded camps because of me. If my story is spoiled and Command withdraws the brigade, then I’m still here, in a prison twenty days away from whatever carnage happens, with nothing but the story that they are safe. I have no regrets."

After Three Years, John Finally Goes Book Shopping Again

In April, I finally did it. After three years of reading as hard as my Little Engine of a brain could, I knocked my To-Read list down to double digits. Despite constantly piling up with gifts and loans from friends, and copies seemingly materializing out of boxes, I defeated the tide. Friends know I was banned from deliberately purchasing any more books until I was out of the hundreds, a rule I followed as best I possibly could. Thanks to my victory, I got to freely wander around a book store and grab whatever I wanted for the first time in three years. My girlfriend was so proud she even gave me a giftcard to help.

It didn’t take long for me to empty that giftcard, because my Hoped-For list is enormous. Sales definitely helped me pick most of what I grabbed, while two driven by desperate desires to see what they were like. It’s the first batch of books I’ve bought in over two years. I figured I'd share the things I came home with (or that are shipping from Amazon).

C.S. Friedman’s Black Sun Rising

Her Coldfire Trilogy has been popular in my college-circle of friends for years. Two of those friends say its one of their favorite trilogies of all time, and recently I’ve seen Friedman come up in more discussions about the great dark fantasists. Given that grimdark isn’t my thing, I’m tempted to push at it and see what spills out.

Tom Holt’s The Portable Door

Another legacy purchase. I discovered Holt’s wonderful Blonde Bombshell (easily the best novel that could ever be written with such a title), and enjoyed its humorous take on SciFi so much that I leapt to try his Fantasy. I’m told it’s about bureaucracy handling and perhaps marketing the impossible, which is a pregnant premise. High anticipation for more good humorous Fantasy.

Jeff Smith’s RASL

This is the next big work from the author and artist of Bone, which is one of my favorite comics I’ve ever read. RASL is obviously very different, as skimming it revealed graphic violence, booze and partial nudity. While those things don’t typically attract me, Smith has more than earned my interest for experimenting in something radically different than the amazing adventures out of Boneville. He was on my list so hard after Bone that I actually read his Monster Society of Evil by accident at a friend’s house. Seriously – slipped, fell and read four hundred pages.

"This is a bathtub-in-the-kitchen apartment, right?” –Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"This is a bathtub-in-the-kitchen apartment. The four of us share a fold-out bed, tucked underneath cheap sofa cushions, and when it's a sofa, at least one of us has to sit an arm-rest. I've gotten good at balancing up there. This is an oven-is-also-a-space-heater apartment, whether you want it or not, winter or summer. This is a the-only-window-is-our-air-conditioner apartment. We don't have wifi, we don't have cable, and our musical selection is whatever the guy upstairs plays too loud, a station that broadcasts all night. He loves Thrash Metal and we're trying to learn to appreciate it. We love it here. If you pity our bathtub in the kitchen apartment, then you must not know where we came from."

Consumed Podcast 17: Star Trek Into Darkness

The Consumed Podcast rose from the dead this weekend for a double-feature. Max Cantor and I gathered in New York for the opening of Star Trek Into Darkness and spent over half an hour hashing Bad Robot's franchise. We start off questioning if this is really a reboot, which leads to the many ways the company has changed the franchise.

But the big stuff lies in the Spoiled section, where we get to discuss the mystery villain, villainy in Star Trek, and most interesting of all, Into Darkness as an action movie that attempts to condemn revenge and violence. It's a conversation I'd love to expand on. You can join us in the Comments and download the MP3 of the podcast right here.

The second half of our double-feature, discussing Iron Man 3, ought to be out in the next week. With good luck the podcast may get up and running routinely afterward. We're deeply looking forward to some episodes about Naoki Urasawa's Monster, which you can watch for free on Hulu.

Bathroom Monologue: Regarding Submissions

Dear Expurgated Press,

I am finding your detailed submissions guidelines very helpful. Your "What We Don't Want" section lasting a screen and a half showed your devotion to craft, and I am picking up from other sections all the time.

For instance, had I not scrutinized the eighteen bullet points on "What Your Format Must Be," I would have had my submission immediately rejected for not applying the mandatory 0.6" margins. I have printed the guidelines page (it actually comes to five pages in your formatting choice) to carry with me at all times, to refer to as an e-zine bible. I am still working through your "Common Mistakes" opus.

Yet as meticulous as your Submissions Page is, and though I cannot admit to having read all five printed pages of your guidelines yet, I cannot help feeling something is missing.

Where is the "Payment" section?

Yours in adoration,

John Wiswell

Bathroom Monologue: Do Not Hug the Golem

A golem is the best friend you could have. Forget sexy succubae. Forget conniving imps. Just because they're your species, or have blood in their veins, or hopes and dreams, does not make them good friends or reliable business partners. In fact, all those features make them distinctly bad business partners on any important business.

One reason you want the golem as a best friend is that it'll never hog the seats during travel. If there's only room for one on the carriage, it'll let you sit. If you only have one steer, it'll let you ride it. It will walk. It will pull the carriage.

Another reason you want the golem as your best friend is that when you're stranded in the middle of The Frontier, it won't kill the carriage’s steer for food. It doesn't eat except when it's confused, and then it'll usually eat you by mistake. Succubae eat you out of boredom.

Once the steer has been cooked and gone rotten, your golem best friend won't turn on you. It won't try to cannibalize your left arm under the rationalization that you're a righty. Unlike imps, the golem best friend also won't run off in the middle of the night, abandoning you once it's obvious that it can't eat you in your sleep.

The golem is a better friend because it will actually carry you back to civilization. You’ll be sick from hunger, utterly useless to it, and it’ll cradle you to its craggy flank until chimneys are in sight. Even when the villagers run at it with pitchforks and torches, it'll stay with you until you get a hot meal.

Now after that, it will run away. It will run like a sissy. To be fair though, all best friends will run away once you're safe and people are stabbing them with farm equipment.

However, very few best friends will then loiter on the city outskirts, hiding behind the biggest tree available, until you're healthy and ready to disembark.

The only downside to the golem best friend is that it'll break your ribs when it hugs you upon seeing you again.

Do not hug the golem.

Very Inspirational Blogger Award 2013

Franny Stevenson recently gifted me with her latest blog game. The Very Inspirational Blogger Award. It's been a couple of years since this one has come to The Bathroom Monologues, so I was curious how the rules had changed. They are:

1.) Display the award logo on your blog.  
2.) Link back to the person who nominated you. 
3.) State 7 things about yourself.
4.) Nominate several other bloggers for the award.
5.) Notify those bloggers of the nomination via comments.

Not too complicated. These "state things about yourself" rules have gotten trickier, as by now I believe I've revealed at least a hundred things for various awards. I've decided to go with seven reading facts in anticipation of my first book shopping spree in three years, coming up this weekend. I'm very excited.

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World was the first book where I stopped fearing for first person narrators. Though being chased by terrifying dinosaurs, I realized he had to survive in order to tell me the story. Teen revelations, man.

Bathroom Monologue: I'm Your Boyfriend from the Future

"Bullshit."

"You don't swear as much in the future, but you do so much more creatively."

"You've been here two minutes and already you're trying to change me?"

"You try to pick no-loss fights like that in the future, too."

"Do I believe your bullshit time travel story in the future?"

"You'll find out if you go on a date with me."

Monologue for a male theologian who is somehow hired to do the commencement speech for an all-girls college

Thank you for inviting me. I’m not sure exactly why you invited me; perhaps “Jens” sounds feminine to American ears.

Uhm. Yes.

Well, I’ve always felt Christianity had more feminism to it than churches let on. I think they were intimidated. I grew up Irish Catholic and there was no stronger force in the world than my mother. My father was a distant second place. The local priest, somewhere in third. Sometimes she would even speak up during services, if she disagreed with the theme. One Sunday she and the priest got into such an argument over whether or not God could make a rock that He Himself could not lift that the services ended before the matter was resolved.

I hope that won’t happen today. It may be why I’m so nervous.

Bathroom Monologue: "Why can't the computer just take the novel out of my brain instead of me having to write it?" –Anonymous Friend

Soon it will! With the march of progress, the innovations of neuroscience and tidy monthly fee, you too will never type again. You'll be jacked in to an industrial word processor, an air tube running up one nostril and a food tube down the other, fed a steady drip of chemicals to stimulate the parts of your brain that crank out ideas. You'll be held in an eternal sleep of pre-selected, pre-programmed dreams, free to enjoy them without the pesky freedom to recognize they're happening, all while your unconsciousness is milked of stories by the latest Microsoft Notepad, which will translate your imagination into immaculate blocks of text and tropes. You'll never have to worry about writing again. You won't be allowed to, either.

Mother's Day Redux: In the Car Wash

Little Sal clutched his action figure as his mother drove them into the car wash. It was dank and blue rubber strips hung down like giant teeth. They slapped wetly against the windshield and clung on, making him sink into his cushioned seat. White foam sprayed over all the windows. His mother put it in Park and the car jerked as the conveyor treads began pulling them in.

Little Sal pulled his Green Lantern to his chest, as though to protect the superhero from this onslaught. His mother patted his shoulder.

“Do they scare you? It’ll just be a minute. It’s been forever since we got a wash on this rust bucket.”

“It’s not them, Mom.”

The conveyer drew them further down the mechanical gullet. What had once been a whirring was now like sitting inside a jet engine. They couldn’t hear outside the car, and the windows were all covered in foam and spinning rubber strips. What little light made it through the foam looked yellow. Little Sal squeezed his eyelids closed.

“What is it, honey? The noise?”

Bathroom Monologue: Comfort is a Tricky Thing

Chishee wasn't comfortable with the staff's scheme. She hired succubae because of the cultural biases against them, not so they could eat the hotel's clientele for tips. The only reason she hid their covert buffet of debauchery was that, if exposed, she'd go to prison with them. The succubae rationalized to Chishee that they only took on suicidal clients, giving them the happy endings they all craved. They let her keep all the room fees, and when she still deliberated on turning them in, offered her a cut of their blood money. That, she flatly refused. Attendance rose from its prior flatness, though, so that she could barely keep rooms open, or the dumpsters out back empty. It was a moral quagmire for the intrepid hotel owner. Her reservations had truly grown.