Deal Again

I’ve recently discovered something on my computer:  Solitaire!  Most of you probably don’t know, but it’s under “Accessories,” then “Games.”  Be careful, though!  It’s very addictive because you can change the look of the card deck!  There’s the one with the haunted house and the…

Okay, seriously.  Here’s what happened:  In college, I used to play Solitaire back on Windows Version Fuck You because I had this little cheap computer that could barely manage Castle Wolfenstein.  On the nights I wasn’t writing papers, drinking, or just reading books and talking to myself while banging my head against the wall, it was nothing but Wolfenstein and Solitaire.  Soon, as I entered my glorious 20’s, Solitaire was left behind for that other great vice we learn in college:  Sex.  Sex with strange women who thought they were witches and struggled with their inner experimental self-lesbianization. 

Of course, I went to college in a time (two hours ago) when computers weren’t all that.  In 1992 and, after my third emotional collapse in 1995 (I’m currently on my 54th emotional collapse), the internet didn’t have the mesmerizing powers it now possesses.  There was the faintest whisper in 1995 but, for a college kid with his aged computer, it wasn’t worth it.  So I had to meet people the old fashioned way – by meeting them.  And I had to hook up with girls by actually hooking up with them.  None of this weird online flirting.  I went to parties and I grabbed their tits or shook them really hard till they lost their senses and had sex with me.  Or, better yet, they shook me really hard until I lost my senses.

Ah, real women.  Real women and their age old cycle of human connection:  Attraction, love, betrayal, horror, revulsion, forgiveness, guilt-enforced anal sex, unwilling drug-induced gang bangs, and tearful cum swallowing.

You college kids today don’t know what you’re missing until you are the instrument of some young woman’s ultimate, life-altering, emotional and physical doom.

But enough about me, we’re talking about solitaire.  My introduction to it was innocent enough.  I am convinced that, if my computer were able to play Doom, I would have been spared the solitaire demon.  But, alas, as those witchy, proto-goth young girlfriends always said – Alack!  Alas!  Woe! – I was envenomed by Solitaire way back then in those formative college years.  Maybe it was the scotch.  Maybe it was the women.  Maybe it was walking too close to my RA’s room, constantly shrouded in a pale mist of crack cocaine.

After the wave of distractions, I entered into the American Workforce and was able to buy a computer which could play Doom.  I worked 25 hours a day and got an apartment in a wealthy part of town, I played records and watched TV and went to the bar and used all of my free time writing stories.  I wrote three novels and a movie script, all of which are, currently, under my bed with the fossilized fetus of an unknown animal from Skull Island and three boxes of cassette tapes.

Then, when I had one of my emotional breakdowns and crawled into a different sort of job – something that had nothing to do with writing or journalism – I distracted myself by cutting off strips of my flesh and making blood paintings on the wall.  Or something.  I have no idea what I did, except I’m certain that I never played solitaire.

Years have passed and, now, I stand before you – a man in his 30’s.  Even though I continue to have sex with witchy girls who say alack and alas all the time.  Though, distressingly, they are also in their 30’s.  And given that they are the sort of people who use those words in normal conversation, the inevitable assault of the flawed female body is magnified a hundred times and used as a launching point for just about every conversation.  I really want to buy a house.  Alack, I have some bizarre  pussy problem and I refuse to go to a doctor.  Woe!

Exeunt Nacho.

At my current job, I have about 45 minutes of work a day.  The rest of the time is spent in the venerable tradition of Looking Busy.  Thousands of years ago, Looking Busy led to the creation of Stonehenge.  It was their version of solitaire.

You farmin’ that field?!

Yep.

Looks more like you’re fucking around with that rock.

Yep.  Farmin’ the field.  *blank, vaguely hostile stare*

Performance appraisal in six months.  I’m watchin’ you!

Yep.

For a few years I’ve busied myself with, you know, writing stuff like this and posting it online.  My main goal has been to convince women to sleep with me thanks to the power of my words.  This has been, contrary to what you may think, successful.  Alas, I’ve begun to lose my interest in such meandering, hollow adventures.  These days, I’m seeking something more concrete.  Children, a house, a dog, an SUV…

Oh, you caught me!  The real reason I’m losing interest is because I’ve finally realized that women cost money.  I had this moment of clarity during one of my brief, unrewarding relationships.  Women are thieving money pits and, I fear, part of a larger –cosmic – conspiracy designed to make me miserable.

Saving money has been the name of the game recently because, against the advice of intelligent people, I started a publishing company.  I thought it would be fun and rewarding.  Instead it shattered friendships, ripped the lining out of my soul/mind/shoes and promises to make about $5000 to back up the $15,000 it costs to produce a book which, by the way, is so fucking hard I caught myself bounding around the room saying alack and alas and, more than any word I’ve ever spoken, woe.

This gets me back to solitaire.  I spent the last three weeks trying to secure a distributor.  The negotiation followed a simple pattern:  I talked bravely about how I would sell one million books in my sleep, with one hand tied behind my back, while siphoning gasoline from a police car and singing loudly.  The distributor then replied with enthusiasm and said I was a shoo-in.  Then they’d vanish from the face of the earth.  I then emailed and called them more than I did the lovely Jenny, whom I have always loved  fractionally more than I have hated.

What ensued was a list of bizarre complaints from the distributor who, by the way, never asked for a copy of the book or a press kit. They judged by the cover design alone and even said reading the manuscript was “unimportant.”  Like Fight Club, all I can say is that they are A Major Distributor and give you the knowing look that strikes fear and horror into your heart.

The cover design for the book has, repeatedly, been so well received that the actual book itself has, indeed, become unimportant when dealing with the special brand of idiots who run the machinery of the publishing industry.  The world of printing, marketing, distribution, representation and litigation.  There is no book, there is simply presentation and the promise of some…thing that involves any increase in financial wealth for everyone but the author, even if that wealth is measured in pennies.  It’s the ultimate feeding frenzy.  Don’t stop when the fish are gone, start sucking up whatever fell to the floor of the ocean.  Clean the fucking rocks of algae and start eating the dirt until it gets too hard to chew.  Then shit it all out – preferably on somebody’s head.  That is publishing.

Back and forth we went.  They asked for something, I compromised, or simply surrendered.  Without a distributor, the book was dead in the water.  Days became weeks and requests from their side became bizarre and childish.  I played the game, mainly because I recognized the game.  I knew that, in the final reel, with little time to review the contract objectively and follow the right path with legal counsel, they would accept the book.  This they have done.  While I write this, my panicked email languishes in my lawyer’s in-box.  “Is the attached contract on the level?” is all it asks.

Since this episode began, I’ve had lots of free time waiting for people to respond to me.  Here in my regular 9-5 job, waiting anxiously for events outside of the confines of the mind-numbing, unrewarding day results in a slight squiggle of realization.  First, there is more to life.  Second, what the fuck am I doing here?  Disgruntled, exhausted, vaguely depressed, and coming off of yet another severe emotional breakdown, it happened.  I clicked on Accessories.  I wasn’t even aware of it.  That old venom was still in me, lingering just beyond my perception.  I clicked on Games.  There it was.  Solitaire.

That unchanging screen.  The deck of cards.  Vegas style!  Play for money.   I started.  When I looked up again, hours had passed.  As if in a scene stolen from the Time Machine, I looked at a setting sun outside my office window.  Just a little faster this time.  Man was still fighting wars.  Just another deal.  Get out of the hole.  Start making money.

Looking up again, I was surrounded by a circle of Morlocks, closing in on me, step by step.  A million years of evolution…  Come to this!  Cannibalism!  GET AWAY!

I left work, collapsed in my bed at home, turned sideways, sucked my thumb, and watched episodes of The Greatest American Hero until, gently, I faded away into troubled publisher sleep.  The next morning, back to work.  A round with the distributor, and then I opened it up right away.  Solitaire.  George, if this machine can do what you say it does, you must destroy it!  Before it destroys you!  Mother Nature herself rebelled against the violence of man!  Then, entombed by lava.  So cold.  How much time was passing?  I couldn’t see.  Thousands, tens of thousands of years.  Above me, wars raged.  Men died.  Civilizations rose and fell.

For four days, it was nothing but Solitaire and squabbling with the distributor.  Then, finally, I went home Friday, a shell of my former self, and there was the contract.  I was in the clear.  I had won.  Worldwide distribution, the greatest battle won.

Monday morning.  A new week with victory sweet in my mouth.  The lawyers have the contract now.  For me, there is nothing left to do but kick back and return to the pretense of work here at my office job.  Solitaire no longer calls me.  I look out the window, down, down, down to the distant specks of children in the playground below.  Behind me, phones ring, printers print, faxes fax and the sluggish dayworkers mourn for their lives.  The venom recedes.  But I turn my head and look over my shoulder, my computer screen sitting blank, and I know.  Solitaire is there.