FSF, March-April 2010 Read online

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  "Then the Connecticut Yankee's neighbor, the Manhattan Investment Banker, came and sold King Arthur something called ‘securitized mortgages'."

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  Department: PLUMAGE FROM PEGASUS by Paul Di Filippo

  Throw the Books at Them!

  A federal judge yesterday sentenced Bodnar to write the story of how he came to give false information to the feds about Bristol's 2006 efforts to delay generic competition for its blood thinner Plavix.

  "I would like to see you write a book [so other people] don't find themselves in a similar situation,” the judge told Bodnar, Bloomberg News reports. “Who knows, it may even be inspirational."

  —"Judge's Sentence for Former Bristol-Myers Exec: Write a Book,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2009.

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  The massive steel door to the Big House slammed behind me, and I knew my days as a free man were over—at least for the length of my prison stretch, which measured one novel and an essay for McSweeney's.

  I was a writer now, and had to live like one. More an animal fighting for survival than a human being.

  I knew I was entering a circumscribed, constrained, harsh subculture, with its own peculiar rules and customs. From the rumors I'd heard, the writer's life was lonely, frustrating, insulting, and physically demanding, leading in most cases straight to a broken-hearted pauper's early grave. Of course, sometimes, with luck and talent, the outcome involved the bestseller list, Hollywood options and talk-show adulation. Still, even with that potential good fortune, nobody I personally knew ever chose to be a writer these days, so being one must suck. Fate, or bad genes, or desperation, or folly, or an accident of birth, or local Unemployment Offices forced the job description upon you.

  Or, like me, you could become a writer just for wising off to a touchy judge.

  How I wished I could relive differently that moment when I stood before the bench on the charge of tattooing an underaged client. Facing old Judge Titcomb, I was confident of walking away with no more than a fine. So when he asked me if there were any mitigating circumstances to my offense, I said, “Yeah, it was the same flash I used on your wife, so I thought it'd be okay for your daughter."

  Amidst the laughter of the courtroom spectators, Judge Titcomb turned nine shades of red and purple, and then uttered his sentence in a voice of doom.

  "You are hereby remanded to the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, for such time as is necessary for you to produce one contemporary, naturalistic novel whose theme reflects the moral squalor of the tattooing industry and the unfortunate plight of those it preys upon, along with an essay of no less than three thousand words detailing the process of creation of said novel, in a manner both autobiographically illuminating and pedagogically sound. Pursuant to last year's Penal Authors Enforcement Act, there is no appeal to this sentence. Bailiff, take the prisoner away!"

  Now, as the warden of FCI Otisville stepped forward to greet me, I shook my head at my folly. Too late for a do-over, though. I'd just have to tough it out.

  The warden, a gentle-looking professor-type with thick eyeglasses, introduced himself. “Hello there, Johnny, I'm Warden Kinoff Dubbledade. I understand you're with us here until we get a novel and an essay out of you. Well, your time here can go fast, or it can really pile up. It all depends on how many salable words you crank out per day. We've got experts on the staff who determine that. They're tough but fair. Heck, they'll even offer you good advice if you get stuck, or can't see how to fix a passage. Most of them are straight out of Ivy League grad-level creative writing programs. You play straight with them, and they'll do likewise. Email them your output no later than five p.m. each day, and make sure it's been spell-checked. Now, let's get you processed."

  The guards carried mean-looking truncheons. (Later I learned they were shaped like National Book Award, Hugo, and Orange Prize statuettes.) They brought me to a dispensary where I surrendered all my outside possessions and received my bedding, my prison outfit, and my laptop. Then the guards and I headed for my cell, through a seemingly endless succession of locked portals.

  Who would I be bunking with? So much rested on the answer to that question. Some hard-nosed vet, and I figured I'd become his servant, amanuensis and “muse.” Some new fish like myself, and I'd have no protection, no one to show me the ropes.

  But my luck, bad till now, took a turn for the better. I ended up with Harold Flournoy, midlister, a burly guy in his forties, I guessed. He sported a tat on one forearm—good work. It was a red wheelbarrow with the legend make it new below it.

  Sharing a cell with Harry proved to be the best thing that could have happened to me. He was savvy enough to know the ropes, and not too jaded or burnt-out to share his experience with me.

  Harry rolled my name over in his mouth for publicity resonance. “Johnny Bittiker, not bad. Fits your subject matter pretty well. Wouldn't work for a romance novel, say, but just fine for what you're up for. No need for you to use a pen name. Now, let's run through your laptop's software. I assume you know Word. You probably won't need Final Draft, unless you want to do a screenplay on spec. You'll have to pick your browser—"

  "We get web access?"

  "Sure, we've got to do research, don't we, and email our first drafts? The only WiFi deadspot in the whole prison is the warden's office, of all places! Now, let's get some formatting templates in place for you...."

  Pretty soon the call to lunch came. I was a little nervous at mixing with the general population, and looked to Harry for comfort.

  "Are there any real bad guys here, Harry? Murderers and drug dealers, say?"

  "Murderers! Kid, you should've been assigned to write a comic novel! Why, there aren't more than a hundred murderers in the whole U.S. prison system. Not since they perfected Aggressonil and Reflectival. As for drug dealers, legalization did away with prison sentences for all of them. Users too, of course. Where you been living, Johnny, under a rock?"

  "Well, I get all my news from the TMZ redaction of Twitter...."

  "Jeez, you iBabies are too much! Anyhow, no one but us writers here in Otisville. In fact, ninety percent of the penal population these days is writers. We're the only thing keeping the system solvent. Lots of us show up for voluntary commitment, and pay to play. It's just like Georges Simenon hiding himself away in a hotel room until he pumped out another Maigret. Or when the studio bosses locked up Dylan Thomas with a bottle of whiskey so he could finish a script."

  I didn't recognize either of those names, but I kept my face blank and didn't let on. I could see I had a lot to learn.

  "Anyway,” Harry continued, “we've got the perfect environment for writing here. No petty distractions, no duties, no family!"

  All of a sudden I noticed something. “Hey, there's women here too!"

  "What, are you claiming women can't write? Oh, I see, the sex angle. Well, there's no love affairs to preoccupy you either, whether you're straight or gay, thanks to the Lustoblox in the diet. So the whole scene is perfect for scribbling. We call it ‘Yaddo with razorwire.’ Now c'mon, let's get some grub. It's Friday, so they're serving the same smoked salmon you get at Sebastian Junger's Half King Bar in New York!"

  That first meal went swell. Harry and I sat at a table that included a best-selling mystery writer, a Pulitizer-prize-winning poet, a memoirist, a self-help author, and a retired general. Once they found out I was a newbie, they practically fell all over themselves giving me friendly advice. That's when I realized all the bad things I had heard about writers and writing was really just a ruse, to conceal the sweet racket they had going for themselves.

  That first night in prison I had the best sleep I had enjoyed in ages—no mindless partying till all hours of the early morning like I used to—and the next day I got up refreshed and ready to write.

  I won't bore you with the tale of the next thirteen months. If you're interested, you can read all about it in my McSweeney's e
ssay. But I will say that when a certain visiting day rolled around and my new agent showed up on the other side of the bulletproof glass and told me over the speakerphone that my novel had been accepted by GoogleBooks for a big advance, I knew right away that I'd be coming back to Otisville every other year, once each national book tour for the current project was done.

  The feds have a special bargain offer for recidivists, and the royalty rates are much higher.

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  Short Story: THE FROG COMRADE by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  Ben Rosenbaum collaborated recently with Ethan Ham and others on Tumbarumba, a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox browser extension. You can find it online at www.turbulence.org/Works/tumbarumba/.

  "The Frog Comrade,” as you might guess from the title, puts a new spin on a classic fairy tale.

  Once there was a princess who lived in a small apartment and could never leave. She lived with her mother and her older sister, and a guard to keep them there. Her father, the former king, had been taken away to a camp in the highlands, to work very hard and learn about the new system. Her mother cried almost every day.

  Her older sister had ringlets of black hair and flashing eyes, and knew what was best for everyone. She convinced the guard to bring her things that were hard to find, like oranges and chocolate. She would share a little with her sister and keep the rest for herself.

  The younger princess had plain brown hair and ordinary eyes and did not even know what was best for herself. She sat with her mother, reading fairy tales and trying to make her smile.

  One fine day when the younger princess was twelve years old, her father returned from the highlands, thin, and hobbling, and very happy to be home. The former queen leapt from the sofa, crying tears of joy. The old king and the old queen embraced, and from then on those two, at least, lived happily until they died.

  When they were eating dinner and the guard had gone out of the room to smoke, the princesses’ father said, “My girls, I have brought you two gifts from an old witch in the highlands, who for some reason liked it better when I was king. One is a hat which makes whoever wears it invisible. The other is a frog that talks. Who is to have which gift?"

  The older daughter said, “Is this the kind of frog that, when you kiss it, it turns into a handsome prince?"

  "I believe it is that kind,” said the former king, “though I have never tried it out. However, you should recall that being a prince is no great thing nowadays, and perhaps dangerous."

  "I am no prince!” said an angry voice from the old king's pocket.

  "I will take the hat,” said the older daughter.

  The old king looked to the younger daughter, who could not decide what she wanted, but to make them all happy, she said, “I would love a frog. Thank you, Father."

  The father gave the hat to the older sister and the frog to the younger. The frog was cool to the touch, and a fine bright shade of green. It stared solemnly at the younger sister, and she felt a flutter in her heart.

  They heard the guard's boots on the stairs.

  The older sister cried, “Goodbye, dear Mother and Father! Goodbye, dear Sister! I am off to make my way in the world!” and before the eyes of the astonished guard, she put on the hat and disappeared. She rushed through the open door, down the stairs, and into the street.

  The younger princess hid her frog.

  Later, when the younger princess was sitting by the window, missing her sister, wishing she could go outside and play, she took the frog out of her pocket. “Do you want me to kiss you?” she whispered.

  "Certainly not,” said the frog. “Kissing is romance, and romance is just the kind of silliness the new system has gotten rid of. Romance makes people think princes and princesses are better than everyone else, and distracts us from working to make everyone healthier and happier. I am against kissing."

  Instead, every day, when the guard was outside smoking, the princess would take the frog from her pocket and talk to it. Often she read it fairy tales, which it said were full of foolishness and wrong ideas.

  Letters arrived from the older sister, who had escaped to a country where everyone could say just what they wanted, although no one listened to anyone else, and where everyone was rich, except for those who were not. She had tried to become a supermodel, but she had found she could not hold still for very long. So she had become a gossip columnist, aided by her magic hat. Despite the black blotches of the censor's pen, they could tell that she was living a reasonably happy life, full of excitement.

  On the eve of the younger daughter's sixteenth birthday, the guard came to tell them he was leaving. “There has been another revolution,” he said. “More walls and statues have been pulled down. Kings and queens and princesses are no longer dangerous. Now they are ordinary, and now it is the job of everyone to get rich. You do not need me to watch you anymore, so I am off to make my way in the world.” He left the apartment and went down the stairs, leaving all the doors open.

  For the first time in many years, the young princess and her parents crept outside, quiet as thieves. They went straight to the park, where they caressed the leaves, the bark, the stones, and the benches like lovers, or like blind people memorizing shapes.

  The princess brought her magic frog to her first day of school, eager to show the other students. They laughed at her, calling: “Princess, princess, kiss your magic frog!” When the frog chastised them, they angrily accused her of ventriloquism. The princess ran away, red with shame.

  "They are fools,” said the frog as they sat on a bench in the park. “It is not your fault that you are a princess with a head full of romantic nonsense. Instead of working together humbly to educate you and setting you a good example of diligent labor for the common good, they used you for their own amusement! Cruelty and selfishness must not be tolerated in the new system."

  "Frog!” cried the princess. “What are you talking about? The new system is gone! It has failed! Didn't you hear the teachers?"

  "The new system is not gone from my heart,” said the frog. “And the new system did not fail. We failed the new system. We got rid of princes, but then some of our comrades set themselves up as princes instead. This misled the people."

  "Frog,” said the princess, “I never liked the new system. It locked my family up in an apartment! It sent my father to work until he was thin and hobbling!"

  So they argued, and so the princess forgot for a while how the other students had laughed at her.

  From then on, the princess avoided the other children. After school, she and the frog went to the movies. From the movies, it seemed that the job of everyone after the second revolution was not only to get rich, but also to kiss a great deal and even to take their clothes off all the time. The princess and her frog argued about this, as they argued about everything. The princess did not know what to think, but arguing with the frog made her feel closer to knowing what she thought.

  Soon it was time for the princess to go to university. Her parents took her to the train. “So you are off to make your way in the world,” said her mother. The princess nodded nervously.

  At university, she kept her frog always hidden in her handbag. No one laughed at her, and they invited her to parties. Soon she met a man who seemed like a prince, or perhaps a knight. He was very tall and strong and smiled in a way that made the princess warm. He told her to come back to his apartment, and she went with him.

  Once she was in his apartment, he locked the door and began to kiss her. “Stop, stop,” said the princess, but the man only laughed.

  At this, the frog hopped out of the princess's handbag and cleared its throat. “I would listen to the witch, young man, if I were you,” it said. “You don't want to end up like me."

  The young man was so frightened at this that he jumped out the window and ran away down the street. The princess and her frog went back to the park.

  "You were right!” cried the princess. “Kissing is horrible. You are right to b
e against kissing."

  "No, no,” said the frog. “That man was a hooligan! Between two comrades who are considerate and honest with each other, kissing can be pleasant and healthy. Kissing is not wrong. It is only making kissing so important, more important than work or the needs of the people, which is wrong."

  "Oh,” said the princess. “Does this mean you do want me to kiss you, so you can stop being a frog?"

  "No, no!” cried the frog. “You are a princess who has read too many fairy tales and I am a frog, so for the two of us to kiss would be precisely the kind of thing I am against...which leads to foolishness.” It looked away from her eyes, studying its webbed feet. “Anyway...it is not important whether I am a frog or not. Perhaps I can serve the needs of the people better as a frog."

  The princess was relieved, but somehow also disappointed. She imagined kissing the cool green mouth of the frog, a flash of light, its rubbery lips turning warm and human beneath hers. It did not seem pleasant and healthy. It seemed strange and eerie, and very exciting.

  The princess stopped going to parties. She did well at her studies, but she had no friends. She had a small room in the university town, with a narrow bed, and she slept hugging bundles of letters from home.

  A young man named Mark always argued with her in class. One day, after class, he followed her home, waving his hands with the intensity of argument, occasionally walking into bushes or mailboxes. “The new system was cold and sterile! It banned love!” he cried, and fell into a cellar stairwell.

  Mark did not look like a knight or a prince. He looked more like a stable boy, with thick glasses. The princess invited him up to her apartment for tea.

  As the princess poured the tea, Mark said, “And after all, it is obvious that the so-called ‘new system’ failed because it could not compete!"

  The frog could stand to hear no more. It leapt out of the princess's handbag and onto the table. “Not compete?” said the frog. “Not compete at what? It competed just fine at feeding the hungry, and healing the sick! It competed just fine at giving everyone a job and a purpose, and keeping the streets safe at night! What did it fail to compete at? Making fast cars and movies about kissing?"