My Freaky Addiction.
It’s not exactly farts in a jar, but it’s still pretty freaky.
“I am a drinker with writing problems.” Brendan Behan
I wish I had an addiction like Stepanka Matto. She’s the woman who became a media sensation selling farts in a jar. She even admitted she’s annihilated her bowel system, eating beans, protein powder, yogurt and eggs, just to keep up with the orders. It’s a nasty business, sure, but definitely curable.
As she says, she can stop any time (which she should because you’ve only got one bowel system). I don’t know the meaning of quitting. I’ve had a monkey on my back so long, I think he’s building a jacuzzi, or a shopping centre. I don’t want to know what the bastard’s doing anymore. He calls me a fruitcake.
Honestly, I’d gladly sell farts in a jar if it got me out of this mess. Hell, I’d deliver them personally. Only, I’m not in a position to substitute. And I’m certainly not in a position to stop. My monkey’s got a permanent home.
What’s taken over my life to the point where even my wife calls me a junkie?
So what is this addiction, you ask? What’s taken over my life to the point where even my wife calls me a junkie? Well, as ashamed as I am to admit this, I’m an edit fiend, a word freak, a sentence destroyer.
Show me any sentence, a paragraph — I don’t care if it’s E.L. James or Aristotle — and I’ll edit the crap out of it.
I’ll annihilate it like Stepanka Matto’s bowel system.
I’ve carved up Shel Silverstein’s “Boy Named Sue,” until you wouldn’t recognize it. When he says, “I don’t blame him ’cause he ran and hid,” that daddy didn’t hide, Shel. He blew the scene. He went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
And, yes, I know that doesn’t rhyme.
Then there’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning with her “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Even in the 19th century, “thee” was as antiquated as bleeding. It’s like me saying “resplendent,” as in “I attended a resplendent coke bash last night.” I might as well get a Henry Fielding tattoo on my ass.
Ben Jonson once said of Shakespeare: “He never blotted out a line.” I’ve blotted out plenty. I make Max Perkins look like a pansy.
I’m notorious for stripping four paragraphs down to one. I’m fucking nasty.
Fortunately, there’s enough of my own work to carve up. I’m notorious for stripping four paragraphs down to one. I’m fucking nasty.
Some nights, I wake up and jump out of bed. My wife will wake up, too (being perpetually nosey) and say, “Where are you going?”
“I know how to fix the second page,” I tell her before realizing — with a good deal of skunk eye on her part — that I haven’t written anything.
“You’re seriously demented,” she’ll say, figuring someone really does have to be pretty fucked up to edit dreams.
I may also hold the record for full edits to a first novel. Besides the eighteen I did myself, my publisher asked for four more (which I did, then realized — for my own sanity — I’d better do two or three more).
There’s no doubt in my mind, I’m a sick fruitcake.
In my defence, though, this isn’t some obsessive compulsive thing (although my wife will tell you it certainly is). I just want to make things right.
If anyone’s to blame, it’s Kurt Vonnegut. The man certainly put ideas in my head. I call them “dark clouds of inferiority.” He’s fucked me royally.
The other night, I picked up my copy of “Bluebeard” and read the following: “I promised an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen. It turns out to be a diary of this past troubled summer, too! We can always send out for pizza if necessary. Come in, come in.”
Here’s my problem: I couldn’t do a thing with it.
I’ve tried to pick it apart, just as I have with Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Carver. Nothing happened. I couldn’t change a word.
For someone with a sick addiction like mine, this is discouraging — if not infuriating. “They must’ve slipped up somewhere,” I yell, waking my wife again. “Leave those poor bastards alone,” she screams. “They’re dead as gumdrops. Pick on Dave Barry. He’s tanning his brains out in Florida.”
Dave’s retired, but still writing, something I wouldn’t think possible. I can’t write a thing with a sunburn.
She’s right, of course. Dave’s retired, but still writing, something I wouldn’t think possible. I can’t write a thing with a sunburn.
I scurry through my bookcase, retrieving Barry’s “I’ll Mature When I’m Dead.” There, on the second page, my eyes fall on a paragraph: “She [my wife] notes that a middle-aged man can have tarantula-grade nose hair, b.o. that can cause migrating geese to change course, and enough spare tissue to form a whole new middle-aged man, but this man can still believe that he is physically qualified to date Scarlett Johansson.”
I should be able to edit the shit out of this but, again, I can’t do a thing. I tried taking out the “…can cause migrating geese to change course…” I mean, b.o. is b.o., right? And who the hell knows why geese change course? They could be after Scarlett Johansson, too.
But then I have to put it back. It works.
This is so disheartening. I had better luck ripping apart Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy. That “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.” It’s nothing compared to what’s coming out the other end.
I go to bed jaundiced as hell, getting a kick from my wife.
“Remember, you haven’t written anything,” she says.
“I couldn’t do a thing with Dave Barry.”
“I realize that,” I say.
“Then stop editing in your sleep.”
“I couldn’t do a thing with Dave Barry.”
“I know.”
“Should I go back to E.L. James?”
“You’ve already edited the crap out of that.”
“It felt good.”
“Fine, here,” she says, retrieving her copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
She hesitates, then hands it to me.
I get started, finding the first offending lines on page two. “Kate begs me in her rasping sore-throat voice.” Why “rasping” and “sore-throat”? It means the same fucking thing, doesn’t it?
Did I say that out loud?
“Junkie,” she says.
My wife gives me another kick.
“Junkie,” she says.
“I prefer addict,” I say.
I think it’s important to be precise.
Even if it is hell on my shins, I’m one happy fruitcake.
Robert Cormack is a blogger and author of “You Can Lead A Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive).” You can join him every day by subscribing to robertcormack@medium.com/subscription.
