Dan Fante - 86d

You think you know but you really dont know. Eventuallyfinallyyou find out that what you think you know is nothing. What you really know amounts to shit.

A. L. CATLETT

Nice to see that youve finally gotten the monkey off your backalthough, apparently, the circus has not yet left town.

KEN OBRIEN

A fucking cosmic shit shower.

I have no idea why I am crazy and angry

The next morning, wearing the same puked-on tie from my

It took three full carloads in my Pontiac to get

I was beginning to see dead people. They were not

As it turned out I was more than half wrong

Before dawn the next morning came the onset of the

Working in the limo business in L.A. is a bizarre

I picked up the phone after midnight thinking it was

After returning to Hollywood it took me a week to

The next morning I picked up one of our freebie

I hate banks. And lines. I get uncomfortable and impatient

The sex thing with Portia continued and I was becoming

That night I got back to Dav-Ko after one a.m.,

The towering white-haired figure that stood in the hospital doorway

Dav-Kos senior partner apparently wanted to keep tabs on the

Later that afternoon I got the number of AA and

A week later David Koffman was gone and I was

That night I got back to Dav-Ko after dropping Stedman

Back at the office in the chauffeurs room, through the

By Friday that week the Malibu shoot with Stedman was

It happened to me rarely these days. Working and making

Id never had two blackouts in a row before. Until

The following week, Wednesday, mostly sober for four days except

That Sunday morning at three a.m. a day later my

It was one-forty-five in the afternoon several days later. Attorney

The next afternoon, following up on my plan to cut

The following day I was back driving Che-Ches nana, J. C. Smart,

On my way back to Dav-Ko on Sunset Boulevard, after

In the end I served fourteen days in jail. The

That night, after I set up all the bottles on

The first couple of days at the beginning of my

The death of my brain came two weeks later. By

That Sunday in the early afternoon, after the retreat ended,

A fucking cosmic shit shower.

Up to the minute I opened the e-mail from Canonball Press Id thought the five years and three hundred pages it had taken to put my book together had been worth it. Only three months before the pricks had sent me their acceptance letter and a token five-hundred-dollar advance. I would finally be a published short story writer.

Wrong.

I printed out Canonballs e-mail, underlined the word eventually in black marker, then taped the goddamn thing to the wall in my room, above my desk. Eventually Id start fucking dead chimpanzee corpses too eventually.

Suddenly I realized how much I hated my goddamn computer and all computers for the ease with which they delivered such terrible news. Slamming my fist on my writing desk I cursed the day a year before that Id allowed my friend Eddy Dorobek to flimflam me into buying a used laptop from him and giving up my dead fathers rickety old Underwood portable. Fuck Eddy Dorobek! and all software and DVDs and e-mail and instant messages that instantly ruined peoples lives. Fuck Google and MySpace too. And fuck fucking Evanston Wright at Canonball Press for not even conceding to me the courtesy of a goddamn stamp and a signature on a signed piece of paper.

Still left on my telephones answering machine was a two-year-old message from Hubert Selby, Jr., my literary mentor, my favorite writer. Still un-erased. A thirty-second crack in time that had altered everything and changed my life.

To heal myself and interrupt my brains fury I pressed the Saved Messages button on my phone.

Id heard his words a thousand times now, listened to them over and over like a hit songfrom my writing table while eating dinner or reading the newspaper, or posing in the mirror or getting in and out of the shower. While jerking off or listening to a Van Morrison CD or doing leg-lifts on the floor. Id even played the message for the old guy I rented my room from, Uncle Bill, and for my sister, Lucia. Selbys words had saved my sanity.

I pressed play.

Dante? Bruno Dante? Cubby Selby here. You gave me your manuscript a few weeks agoand the other day I finally had a chance to look it over. So, okay, first, let me say that I like your stories. As you might guess I get many requests from people to read their stuff. And most of it, truthfully, regretfully, is crap. Plain and simple. Just crap. But Until the Fat Lady Sings is the real thing. Stories from the gut and from the heart. I was movedmore than once. You can be proud of your manuscript, Bruno. I remember you saying that you got discouraged. Well dont! Youre good and youve got what it takes. Keep writing no matter what. Never stop. Never give up.

I hope we bump into each other again sometime soon.

Thank Christ. Thank God for the miracle of Hubert Selby, Jr.

Id followed Selby around Los Angeles for monthsstalked him evengone to half a dozen of his readings and appearancesand finally, sober that night, Id worked up the courage to ask the great writer to have a look at my story collection.

After his reading that night, behind Midnight Special Bookstore, in the parking lot as he was getting into his car, Id approached Selby with my manuscript and asked if he would mind taking a look. He recognized me from the audience that night. Id been the guy whod hogged the Q & A time, asking more than my share of questions.

The thin old cynic smiled, patted my shoulder, then wheezing in a drag from his black Sherman. Sure kid, Ill read it over and get back to you. Dont worry. Your stuffs in good hands.

Again I pressed the save button on my phone. Selbys message was all that I had now, all that was keeping me from black madness.

I have no idea why I am crazy and angry and edged-out most of the time and why alcohol and painkiller pills and Xanax-type stuff are the only things that help to keep me remotely calm. I have no idea why I experience life as pointless and screwed and I know that most people dont pour a cup of bourbon into their milk and oatmeal in the morning. Thats just how it is.

After the publication of Until the Fat Lady Sings was postponed indefinitely I decided that I needed a change from the telemarketing industry. For months I had been hawking risk-free Pinkerton burglar alarm installs out of a cave: a windowless, industrial, cinderblock office in Manhattan Beach. A hundred calls a day to set five realistic sales appointments. Torturous, brutal shit.

Behind the workload quota and hitting the juice too hard Id developed attitude problems and begun showing up late for my 5:30 a.m. shift.

Me and Kassim, my boss, had disliked each other from jump street. The prick was a former math professor from Tehran with a Godzilla ego. He spoke three or four Middle Eastern tongues but his combined English syntax and cultural grasp of anything American equaled shit. Each timeespecially with other people aroundwhen Id ask the jerk if he wouldnt mind speaking more slowly, or repeating what hed just said, Kassim would consider that Id challenged his authority or was somehow mocking him. His expression would blacken and he would glare at me murderously.