It's four in the morning and I've spent my last dime at Taco
Bell on three Spicy Chicken Burritos and one soft taco, and once again I'm trying
to put together an issue of Lime Tea before Friday morning, at the conclusion
of which day I will trundle off to my service industry job, delivering the inedible
to the ungrateful until four in the morning or so, all in the name of putting
together enough nickels and pennies and dimes so that I can pay the server bill
to put out this magazine.
And it's April Fools' Day. A day where I should be fucking with you;
telling you about how my mother was a pirate and my dad was a spiral-sliced
ham. I should be getting you all to somehow believe this, and then I should
have a good laugh at your expense on my non-existent yacht, with my non-existent
friends, while I drink some excessively, painfully non-existent gin, some of
which I could use right now-- badly; the way a stripper could use someone who
believes her paintings are reminiscent of the work of the young Franz Kline,
or the way the cat could use someone to forever open and close the door, on
the theory that the other side is always better.
But I don't have any of those things. What I have is a magazine that is supposed
to be about true stories; the kind of stories that everyone has, things that
happen to real people every day, the kind of things that you can’t make
up. But I don't have that magazine. Instead, what I have is a raft full of submissions
from people who genuinely believe that their $120,000 college educations have
somehow conferred upon them the ability to, Godlike, create reality from whole
cloth. And not just any reality: I'm to believe that these creations are actually
more realistic than the reality created by God himself (who, after all, didn't
attend an Ivy League university, and, though he may have created John Ashbery,
has almost certainly never read him).
So. What am I supposed to do with all of you, you who believe that you can
make up better stories than God, or the Universe, or the Grand Coalescent Tantric
Kundalini Reality Matrix? It's a goddamned good question. I get submissions
every day from kids who think they're the next William Faulkner, or John Cheever,
or Willa Cather. And none of them seem to notice that Faulkner wrote about being
an alcoholic, depressed, out-of-place intellectual in the South, that Cheever
wrote about being an upper-middle-class Northeasterner whose entire family put
away a fifth of gin a day apiece, or that Willa Cather wrote about being whatever
the fuck Willa Cather was.
What I'm saying is, just tell your story. Hell, I'll tell mine: I'm an overeducated,
underemployed alcoholic who spends every Thursday night putting the finishing
touches on a literary magazine whose monthly readership barely exceeds 1500
souls. I sit in a literal drafty garret-- my one concession to literary tradition--
surrounded by empty Pabst cans, too-rapidly depleting Camel packs, and rather
too many packages of Little Debbie snack cake products.
Once, long ago, I used to do things. I've been to Spain and drunk Campari and
soda in sidewalk cafés in Barcelona. I've toured the country in a critically
successful (read: commercially unsuccessful) rock and roll band. But these days,
I'm lucky if I can make it to the Clinton St. Pub with enough nickels in my
pocket to net me the few furtive cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon I so desperately
need if I'm to have any hopes of driving away the demons that lurk behind every
tree along the long and rocky road that lies between me and the blissful slumberland
I look forward to with such longing each night, and which I hope will be my
full-time residence someday sooner rather than later.
Did I bore you? Was that dull? Possibly, but it's true, and I'd rather hear
a comparable story from you than all the vampire fantasies in the world. (In
deference to those of you who've actually lived the vampire fantasies-- well,
that's another thing altogether.) Just tell the damned story, and if you don't
have a story, get out of the garret and go live for a while. Join a gang, get
laid, shoot some smack-- do whatever you have to do; just, for God's sake, don't
sit in front of the computer for 35 years until you're reduced, like Don DeLillo,
to writing endless, tedious books about being a middle-aged writer working on
a book about a middle-aged writer working on a book. In the immortal words of
Hawkeye Pierce, "Live! God damn you, LIVE!"
I'm sorry for that outburst. I'm very, very tired. And, for the life of me,
I can't fathom why a magazine that clearly states that fiction is a very small
part of its mission is overwhelmed by fiction submissions to the exclusion of
all else.
Finally, if you can't write something that's true, at least write something
that's funny. This rag is getting a little weepy lately, and that's not the
direction I want to head in. Stop trying so hard to be the next Thomas Pynchon
and just relax and be yourself. I know-- God, how I know-- that writers have
low self-esteem, but you might be surprised how much we'd like the real you
if only you'd let us have a glimpse of him or her. People are hard-wired to
find other people interesting, and, believe it or not, we actually do want to
see into your life-- sure, it's dull to you, but it's riveting for people who
aren't you. True, funny, real; that's what we need more of around here.
Of course, I'm just kidding about all that. I love you guys. April Fool!
Marty Smith is the editor of Lime Tea.
The Iowa Writers' Workshop refused to admit him, in part due to his
failure to apply.
