Читать книгу Of Vampires & Gentlemen - A.R. Morlan - Страница 7

INITIAL APPEAL

May 6. Three more whiskers. On my chin this time, the tweezers didn’t meet closely enough to pull them out completely on the first try, so I ended up spending a quarter of an hour bending over the bathroom sink down the hall—and hoping the other tenants wouldn’t come knocking at the door—trying to pluck out the miserable stubby things. Have to remember to pick up a new pair next time I’m in the drug store, also tampons.

Got my proof sheets for “The Mouth That Wouldn’t Die” from B.Q., as usual with a note asking me to “get these back asap, running late,” etc. Only three typos, all minor. Another thing, pick up cotton balls at the d.s., too.

May 8. Think I jinxed myself, buying new tweezers. Five whiskers, three on my upper lip (gross), the others per usual on the chin. Looks like more might be coming; there’s a dark peppery coloration under my skin. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, only he was a guy. Maybe waxing would do it, but damn it hurts.

Editor from Bloodbath Quarterly called: would I consider some last minute fine-tuning on the “Mouth...” tale, nothing major, just a few lines at the end? I dictated new lines over the phone, sure glad no one but the dogs were around. I could feel two more whiskers pop out. This keeps up, I’ll be mistaken for Wolfie or Duke by the landlord. The boys looked up at me with those tongue-lolling sloppy pink doggie grins, but I wasn’t in the mood to join them in their mirth.

May 11. I think I will get—no matter the expense—a computer, a word processor, and especially one of those dinguses that hooks one computer to another by phone. Anything so that I don’t have to face anyone at that Post Office again. Jeeze, I mean the goon behind the counter didn’t have to be so obvious, so god-damned pointed about staring at my upper lip and chin, as if it were a sign of mental instability and gross metabolic abnormality to have a little bit (ok, a lot) of fuzz growing there. I’m surprised that he didn’t ask me if I was on the Pill (I’m not, but maybe I’ll have to tell people that I am if they get curious—oh-mi-gawd, don’t let it get that bad!) or, a bit more on the tacky side, ask me if I belonged to a Mediterranean race. And me with light brown hair. If this crap keeps up, I won’t be able to go out, period. I’m getting so bad that I’m starting to take a second look at those glitchy “Remove Unwanted Hair Forever!” ads in the backs of my women’s mags.

Not that it is that bad.

May 13. Received my first check for “The Mouth That Wouldn’t Die”; wonder if I can get direct deposit service at the bank, the kind senior citizens use. There is the automatic teller, but I hate messing with a machine, and besides, one of my neighbors down the hall got ripped off when she put a check endorsed for deposit only in one of those overnight boxes, and instead of crediting her checking account, some sticky-fingers employee at the bank cashed it or deposited it or something and took the money, and she had to make good on all the checks she inadvertently bounced.

Maybe my old bottle of Neet would work. I don’t think a hat with a veil would go with my jogging suit, or with the over-size tees.

Thank goodness I can get food delivered to my apartment. As for the dogs, they can do their duty on newspapers.

May 16. I don’t think that this is just “a little mustache problem,” as Jessica Lang’s character told Hoffman’s Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie. And it may just be that I’m not eating right—who can afford to do that on freelance wages?—but...shit, I’m not losing weight anywhere else, so why up there? Getting dressed this morning, I looked like a little girl who’s trying on her mother’s flopper-stopper, only there’s no flop to stop....At this rate, I’ll need to pad the cups out with rolled up socks, only I don’t go out except to the bathroom, so why bother? Still, I hate to bounce, for however long I will be bouncing.

May 17. Editor at B.Q. sent me a photo of the cover of the latest issue, b/w, but I can still see that it’s going to be a stunner. I’ve had my name on the covers of quite a few zines, but this is the first time a cover illo has been based on my story. I like the way the artist put the reflection of the killer on the old man’s teeth, inside that drooling, gasping mouth. And next to that: “A Hair-“Raising Tale of Neighborly Revenge ‘The Mouth That Would Not Die,’ by D. B. Winston.” (I liked the slight title change; a bit more important-sounding, almost Lovecraftian.) If only Grampa Winston could have seen this! But, if he could see the cover, he’d be able to see me.

I wonder if that old wives’ tale about shaving making hair grow thicker is true.

May 20. Had to laugh at myself this morning. Not that it’s funny, but...but sometimes you have to laugh, or else. Picture it: me, in my housecoat and floating bra (empty cups hovering in front of my snap-like nipples), leaning across the communal sink next to the bathroom mirror, taking peeks over my shoulder for the other tenants, wielding my Lady (!) Bic across my bristled, lathered face, noting for the first time that I have a feathering of curled hairs across my chest, just under the Adam’s apple....I looked like a fraternity pledge during Rush Week; the campus he-man hunk dolled up for initiation night.

Just remembered something. I haven’t had to trim my hair since my last cut. In February. It hasn’t even begun to curl down below my ears.

May 24. My contributor’s copies arrived; the ed. put a little note in with them, letting me know that in this year’s Bloodbath Reader Survey I was the fifth most requested author, etc. There was more, but I wasn’t in a mood to keep reading. I mean, he doesn’t know. The guy’s had more practice shaving than I have. The little scrap of toilet paper I put on my cut keeps falling off. Didn’t Dad use something called a styptic pencil?

The dogs can’t seem to quit smelling me; they seem puzzled. Last time they acted this way was when my old neighbor Fred Ferger came to visit, back in Wisconsin. They were all over old Fred. God, I hope I’m not smelling like an old man!

May 30. I think that my voice is changing. When I answered the phone this morning, the B.Q. editor asked if I was home. I don’t know if he bought my line about a bad connection, but I kept crinkling a piece of paper next to the receiver, so I think maybe it worked. The call was about that novella I sent in—did I mind if he split it into three sections? I almost suggested that he print it a sentence at a time until kingdom come, but why should I take this mess out on him like that?

Could this be hormones acting up? I’m tempted to write in to one of those newspaper docs, and hope that he prints my letter, but I can just see the reply: “Get thee to a doctory, young...woman(?).” Damn, now I’m fracturing Shakespeare. As if it were his fault, too.

Wolfie and Duke are looking at me funny. They growl when I scratch their ears.

June 4. It is more than hormones.

Oh yes. Much more than that.

A long time ago, Grampa Winston told me about this girl who lived in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, who was riding a horse, or maybe running or some strenuous thing, and she leaped across a fence or something or other, and even though she was a girl going up and over, she came down a boy...as in she was really male all along, only she hadn’t descended. Down there. (Grampa said “The fruit was hidden in the tree.”) It must have been a bitch for the girl, in those sexually dark times, but maybe she hadn’t begun to sprout hair, or didn’t have a pair of boobs to lose....I suppose I was lucky to have some warning, before....

For what that’s worth. But DAMMIT, I wasn’t leaping over a fence, I was only bending over to put the dog’s dishes on the floor. For a moment I thought that it was my period, but something didn’t feel right....It was like I’d done a number in my pants, but in the front. Oh, I don’t know how to describe it...a fullness? A presence?

I refuse to go to the bathroom standing up. No way!

Before...this...I had considered going to a doctor, thought about leaving the apartment, going down to the subway, enduring the stares from supposedly jaded NYC dwellers who stare anyhow, going to a strange doctor (how ironic, I’m usually so healthy that I hadn’t needed to get a doctor since moving here), then...showing, and explaining...and, the hell with that, now. If I went out today, and wore my jogging pants, running shoes and loose top, no one would take a second look at me...and no one would believe that I’m a woman, either. I don’t want to be helped into one of those one-size-fits-all jackets and carted off to Bellevue.

I snuck down the hall to the bathroom, locked the door. I was naked; I looked in the mirror.

I wasn’t me anymore. Not on the outside, and hell, what else do people see first but the outside of a person?

When I came back to the apartment, the dogs snarled at me.

June 9. I went out, late last night. The dogs weren’t as hard to handle as they used to be; my muscle tone must be better, or the muscles themselves are bigger. My jeans fit, but funny—the rear end is baggy, and they don’t hang right. Maybe I could order some men’s jeans from a catalog, but that would be giving in to...this. Something I hate to do. Came home, started a story. No one’s seen me, I hope. Have to keep making money. Can’t risk being thrown out now. Maybe I’ll submit the story to one of the flesh zines; they pay pretty damn good. I’ve got a couple of stories out in men’s magazines, both under a pseudonym. Clarke Dennis. It would have been my name, if...I had been born the way I am now.

I think that I can get this finished by tomorrow, and send it off...at night.

June 13. Over a month now, since this started. Soaping my body in the shower (at midnight, when no one wants in there), I noticed that the skin tone is different; thicker, and even tougher in places. And more hairy, of course. Even my bones seem heavier, behind my ears the cartilage is bigger, and my ears stick out. My nails—all short, for a change—are broader, and slightly ridged. Unfortunately, I’m not taller. My weight has gone up, from 135 (ok—nearly 140) to 155, most of it muscle. Luckily, I have a good supply of elastic waist shorts and men’s tees, bought during a white sale back home in Ewerton. I rinse out my things and hang them in my room; I can’t face the laundry room downstairs.

Good Lord. I hope my folks don’t ever call me.

June 22. I think I know what has happened, what is happening to me. On the 10th I sent in “The Metamanphosis” to Skin Magazine, and the assistant editor there recognized my name, and forward my story pronto to the fiction editor, who had previously bought a story from me. Only instead of writing to let me know he was buying my story (as he had done previously) the man called. And asked for D. B. Winston, the name written in the upper right-hand corner of my ms., only when I answered, he didn’t seem surprised that I was a woman, or man, or whatever I happened to sound like. He and I chatted for a few minutes; he let me know how much I’d be getting for the story (more than enough), then, before he hung up, he commented, “You had me going there for a while, D.B.; the parts of the story where the protagonist is still a woman are fantastic—I almost believed that you are a woman! God, man, that is no mean feat...one more thing, do you still want this under the ‘Clarke Dennis’ name or would you like to have it run under...ok...I’ll keep the Dennis byline on it. Well, D. B., thanks for submitting...” etc., and when he finally hung up I began to paw through my files (in the old cardboard box I keep under my bed), looking for all my correspondence, rejection slips, contracts, and the like.

After I found what I wanted, I spread the mass of papers out on the floor (the dogs lay off to the side, heads on paws, rumbling at me), and began scanning them carefully.

It was all there, in unwavering black on white. My name, “D. B. Winston,” on my contracts, no “Debbie,” no “Ms.,” or “Miss,” or any indication that “D. B. Winston” was a woman. Likewise, those zines who either sent handwritten rejection slips, or personalized the form ones were all similar—either “Dear D. B.,” “Dear D. B. W.,” or “Dear D. B. Winston,” or, worse, “Dear Mr. Winston”...something which hadn’t bothered me before. When I was still outwardly a woman. Then, the loss of my feminine identity wasn’t a pressing concern...why should it have been? I knew who I was, what I was...what did it matter that other people weren’t in the clear about it?

At the time, it didn’t seem important, it actually didn’t matter.

I picked up one of the rejection slips, from a small press zine, with my now blunt and stubby-fingered hand. The editor had typed, “All this time, my husband and I thought D. B. Winston was a man! What a surprise to see you sign your name ‘Ms.’” That letter, the cover letter to a story I sent to her, was a rarity on my part, and I never signed another one that way....A few years ago, I once sent a fan letter to Robert Bloch, and even he addressed his postcard reply to “Mr. D. B. Winston”...and to think that it seemed humorous at the time. With a growing certainty, I scanned the contributor’s copies of the many zines which ran my material, and was confronted with page after page of fiction credited only to “D. B. Winston” (and noticed all that junk mail in my wastebasket addressed to “Mr. D. B. Winston”; why even the computer mailing lists had an erroneous view of my gender!), and on top of it, zines like Bloodbath Quarterly and Skin didn’t run author’s pages (even if they did, people seldom read them)...and many of the stories I’d written were told from a man’s point of view. Right from the start, most of the writers in the horror genre were men...which was the main reason I’d used my initials only on submitted material. I’d read once in an article about breaking into the writing field that men have the edge when it comes to selling certain types of fiction, and since I wasn’t fond of my name in the first place (to me, Deborah Bambi Winston always sounded so cotton-candy-cheerleader-from-Queen-Disneyland-sorority-sister-cutesy, and plain old Debbie Winston had a small-town-lumber-mill-office-clerk feel to it), using my initials seemed so appealing, so natural, so crisply efficient...and, unbeknownst to me, so masculine.

Crazy as that sounds, it does make sense; wasn’t that editor surprised to find out that I was a woman, which in turn meant that the impression she’d gotten that I was a man was a strong one? After all, didn’t Peter Pan, or one of those fairy tale kiddies, say that “wishing makes it so?” If that’s the case, wouldn’t “thinking makes it so” also apply? I remembered the B.Q. editor’s note, the one he included with my contributor’s copies...the one with the readers’ survey results. That meant a lot of readers who looked for my stories, and if I had had my doubts before—Winston was a man. I got out the letter, and if I had had my doubts before—

“...fifth most requested author, behind Bloch and Williamson and Koontz, and you’d be surprised which authors you topped. Funny, some of the readers added comments in the margins about their favorites, and about you they wrote, “he’s my favorite,” and “That Winston dude scares me!” I guess the readers really got into those macho-hero adventures about pagan sacrifices and bird-blood worship you wrote while you were still living in....”

—that was the capper. Odd, even though I now know (think I know) what happened, I’m no better off than before...like, I can’t do any—

Thought of something. More later.

July 2. My hands and fingers aches, my eyes are blurred from staring at endless black letters marching across illuminated white paper, my tongue is coated with that awful gummy taste from licking too many stamps and envelope flaps...but I think this may work. Might work. Has got to work. Pleasepleaseplease work.

In less than two weeks I have written eight short stories, three poems, and a criticism of faceless-personality-less-mindless killers in 1980s teen slasher flicks. Plus cover letters for each submission with my full name, Deborah Bambi Winston, as in “Miss” and “Ms.” etc. on each one, and on the upper-right hand corner of each first page. And all the rest of the pages, for good measure. I’ll mail them all, twelve different envelopes for as many different zines (all the ones I submit to who don’t know I’m a female...inside), but I’ll wait until darkfall to leave the apartment.

July 25. Maybe it will work. My chest feels plump in places, the right places. And it seems shorter, not that I examined it much to begin with. Keep thinking girl, girl, I am a girl, chant it like a litany....

Aug. 1. The hair on my chest is thinning, fine and almost gone from under the now slight protuberance on my throat. Got back two ms., with slips attached for a “Miss Winston.” Much better. One poem sold; the check is made out to “Ms. Deborah B. Winston”—I guess the “Bambi” part was a bit much for the poor editor! Got a packet of fan mail (!) from B.Q., a few were addressed to “Mr. or Ms. Winston,” and one was for a “Miss”! Also, a b/w mock-up of the next cover, with the full name, etc.

The dogs are licking my hands and letting me pet them again.

Aug. 16. I’m almost big enough upstairs to wiggle when I walk! A bit disconcerting with the remainder of the chest hair, but I’ll live! Two rejection slips, made out for “Ms. Winston.” One sale, no check yet. The editor from B.Q. called, said my phone line sounded clearer. Part one of the “Deborah Bambi Winston” novella will be out September 2. I may be able to throw out the tweezers and shave cream yet!

Aug. 30. Plucked out what I pray is the last whisker this morning. Can show my face in the hallway again, neighbors claimed they missed me. Weight down to 141. That is gone now, almost, retracting from whence it came, for eternity, I hope. (Never did give in and urinate standing up.) Today I will go shopping out in the mid-day sun, and never mind the ultraviolet rays. Cancer can’t be much worse than...what happened.

Sept. 4. Got the check for “The Metamanphosis” from Skin. I’d almost forgotten that I’d sold that one...wanted to forget, actually. I’ll have to contact the editor and have him change the byline. He’ll probably get a kick out of the “Bambi” part. I’ll write him a note after stopping at the bank, and walking the boys.

Sept. 5. It’s out. In the stores. Skin Magazine, with the “Clarke Dennis” byline and story title on the front cover. My contrib. copies came late, bulk rate, sent in late August. The editor put in a note. Said how much he loved the story. Said the first part almost fooled him. Said he enjoyed talking with me in July. Said I should subscribe, cut-rate to his zine, that I’d like it. Said his readers were bound to go nuts over the story. Said I seem like a really great guy.

He’s right. Sort of.

I am a great guy.

In a few places here and there this time.

AFTERWORD

Those readers who have already bought my other Borgo collection Ewerton Death Trip, or who may have seen the classic 1980s digest-sized horror magazine Night Cry are probably familiar with my story “Dear D. B. ...”; it was in the final issue of N.C., and was also a fairly popular download on the now defunct Alexandria Digital Literature site. But this version is the fate I originally intended for Deborah Bambi Winston—however, the editor at N.C. thought it was too literal to qualify as a N.C. story, so he suggested that I try rewriting it, which I did. I do agree that this is a tad literal, but, then again, so was Gregor Sama’s transformation in The Metamorphosis. (Not that my story is in the same league as Kafka’s masterpiece!)

As rough-edged as this is, I still like it, and have been trying for years without success to interest editors into running it (even for free) as a specialty item, to no avail—but, given the fact that I have other multiple-version variants of a couple of other stories out there, in various magazines and collections, I thought this one deserved to be published, too.

Personally, I find both versions of the story somewhat flawed; this one for obvious reasons, but I’m not 100% fond of “Dear D. B. ...” simply because I didn’t have the opportunity to do a much-needed revamp/rewrite on it prior to it getting published—N.C.’s editor knew that the magazine was folding soon, and wanted one last story from me in it...and “Dear D. B. ...” was in his submission pile, so he ran with it as-is. One comment I received from Peggy Nadramia over at Grue was especially apt—she noted that D. B. would have to have a slew of odd jobs on the side in order to survive in New York City, even living in a low-rent hovel. That is something I would have liked to have addressed in the story, but I’m not planning on rewriting something which is already fairly well-known. But Peggy’s point was well taken....

The incident which actually inspired me to write this one was the misidentification of me as a male writer in an early small press appearance—at the time I thought it was funny, and only gradually considered the notion of public perception influencing bodily reality....