THE EXPAT POET THINKS ABOUT WRITING A BLUE COLLAR SCIENCE FICTION HORROR STORY, BUT FALLS ASLEEP INSTEAD

The idea first welled up when he saw a graphic novel of H.P. Lovecraft`s ``Forgotten Manuscripts`` against the glass flanks of a kiosk as he walked down Av. Corrientes, just before the Pastuer station on the B line. He remembered loving Lovecraft as an adolescent, although his novels were a bit hard to follow. When he saw the black and white illustration of an old man with a longish beard fringe gaping his mouth-hole in utter terror, the whole Lovecraft aesthetic came rushing back, associated with certain other memories. He bought the book for 17 pesos and 90 centavos. The man selling the magazine seemed impressed with his choice, and said, ``No hay mucho de Lovecraft.`` He was right, it was the first time he`d seen any Lovecraft in Buenos Aires, but he`d seen stranger things. Looking down after taking his the blue plastic bag, he saw some other books stacked under the display racks, and while he couldn`t tell you the titles, he remembers illustrations of hooded figures cresting hills under enormous, pock-marked moons, broken-windowed towers leaning in darkness, and other horrific paraphanalia. It warmed him to think that a person who sold used car listings and porn had his own taste and interests. It gave him, he thought, character.

So the idea was gaining momentum as he skipped down the subway stairs and got in line to buy a ticket. A horror story. He`d write a horror story. That was it - no more of this autobiographical crap. He`d always liked that mood, that vibe, that horror aesthetic, and he`d always regarded H.P. as a cut above the rest of the horror crowd. Like, in Edgar Allan Poe`s league, except with out the French stamp of approval. His demonic halucinations had inspired entire genres in cinema, music and video games. No one talked about him much in Lit. 101, for sure, but he was much more widely read than some of the bizarre texts he`d been obliged to read and write about. What was that one, that terrible book for Intro to Modernism? About a fat immigrant woman in NYC in the nenteenth century? Some slavic name. He thought about the descriptions of her body, this giant solid earth-mother type body, and how he imagined her as white and flabby; then he thought about the insane, flabby, putrid Cthulu wading out of the sea in the story bearing the monster`s name.

As the subway`s windows slow-scrolled by, obscuring the other side of the platform, he looked at his own body to see if his gut was noticeable underneath a white button down shirt. Yep, like the slavic woman and Cthulu, he was a rack of bones for hanging disgusting white flab. Oh well. He crowded up with the others, blocking the path of three passengers trying to get out. They pressed their way through the impatient wall of flesh and faces and limbs in front of them, and he got on the train, leafing through his recent purchase.

The idea was now swelled enough to be given a name, but it also started getting mixed up with his massive insecurities and vanities. The story would be the one. The break out story. He`d finally have found an audience. He`d write a best-selling collection. He`d laugh at all those hacks pumping out magic realism that thought it was surrealism, or vice versa, in thousands of MFA workshops across the country. The book tour, the interviews, the lit groupies. His dramatic rise to literary fame fell step by step into place in his mind as the electric womk announced the closing of the subway doors and it slurred out of the statioin.

There was also Claudia. She`d read it and fall in love with him and be his. They`d get married in the States at the family lakehouse and he`d convince the old man to bankroll her immigration and find her easy employment. He saw himself getting a blowjob in the bathroom of the family estate in Westchester, then her legs cocked and hinging in the air as he plugged away, taking pot shots at her squirming, furry darkness. Yea, that was it, a horror story, already a collection of horror stories, and a novel besides. He knew a promising film maiker in NY, a friend of his from school, yea, he`d love the idea. They`d collaborate on a screenplay, which of course would sell for millions. There was nothing to it. Get the aesthetic right and it`s a done deal. He was tired of writing about himself. He wanted to write something different, to create something out of nothing, a story that could live in a self-sustaining universe. The subway coasted into Puerryedòn. He tucked the book under the transparent sweat splotch in his armpit.

The heat was unreal. It was viscous, draining, like a vampire fog bloating itself on the energies of the people. Womk. The doors hissed open.

He got out and pushed his way through another sweating wall of humanity, massed up with the crowd in front of the escalator. Jesus Christ, he thought, why doesn`t anyone use the stairs. Fuck. If you ever touch... But the idea was getting even more tangled up and swollen as he skipped the line and two stepped up the stairway twenty feet down the platform. A blue-collar horror story. That, he thought, was original. He`d had another idea a few weeks ago about telling the working man`s story. No, not some Marxist polemic shoved down the poor guy`s throat, a genuine approach to the problems of working class America. But he hadn`t settled down to write that one. Maybe he cound combine the two. A working class horror story... In the future. Now that would make a great screenplay. He was getting ahead of himself. He emerged into the swampy chiaroscuro of the streets, Puerryedòn, crowded with the workers going to work or leaving work or working in the streets, but he didn`t see them, absorbed in his idea.





He ducked past two business men strolling and chatting at the pace of sun-bathing crocodiles, and his train of thought was interrupted by an involuntary ejaculation; outofmyfuckingwaydon`ttouchmemotherfucker. But he just mumbled ``permisso`` and stretched out his stride as he got in front of them, feeling free and agile as a cat. He banked right on Boulonge Sur Mer and then crossed left, between a white van and a taxi, carefully timing a running spurt to the other side of the street, and rounded the corner onto Lavalle.



A plotline. That`s what he needed. An event. A happening. An occurance. He didn`t have much experience with plotlines. In fact, he had no idea where to start. The idea of a plot put him in mortal fear. The only thing he`d ever been able to do was write short, obscure prose tracts he vainly called ``stream of consciousness.´´ He defended this lack of ability by arguing with himself that real life didn`t come in tidy plotlines - that if you asked someone to tell you their story, you usually got either a blank stare or a sparse list of achievements: graduations, stints in the army, first jobs, deaths, and weddings. No, he was after the salient moments, when the incredible richness of the world broke unexpectedly through the glaze of quotidium. These moments were characterized, for L.F., as moments of bright color, complex patterns in buildings, broken concrete, or clouds, and other things he found impossible to describe. He was jealous of photographers, visual artists and sculptors.

He didn`t want to say ``a rusted tugboat on the banks of the river.´´ He wanted you to see that particular tugboat in that particular bank, the unique dapples and orbs of chemical-cheese-colored rust, and the rotting wood on the decks: the image, in total, of a thing. Right down to the details. Rusted iron hoops through which ropes once passed, the heron, black beak like a thorn in profile against the sigh of blue behind the boat, expiring into purple darkness.


But he`d always run into insurmountable problems. One, his vocabulary was woefully inadequate for the kind of detail in the things he wanted to portray. There were innumerable items lurking on the tugboat, and he would need a duden to name them all. But of course, that wasn`t the only problem. He didn`t just want to list the different parts. He needed to have an apposite metaphor or simile for each one. And he was already running short of similes in his brief career as a unpublished expat writer.


Yea, he thought, the stream of consciousness stuff was alright, and he could always hide a lack of content behind ``formal experimentation´´ or an ´´aesthetic,´´ but the chances of connecting with an audience by using tricks like those were slim. He walked under the lifeless stare of the manikins behind store windows on Lavalle. Lifeless manikins. Yea, there was something salient about that. He should put that in a prose poem. Or maybe a story about manikins coming to life and going to clubs in Buenos Aires. A man pushed a cart stacked high with recyclables, swearing as passing cars honked at him. Hmmm. Manikins. That was surreal. Nah, to clichè. Forget about it.

What he needed was a real plot. He jogged up the stairs to his first floor apartment, which was next to a Jewish community center, flipping the keys on his finger so he`d remember not to put them in his pocket and have to fish them out 30 seconds later when he got to his door. He unbolted the deadbolt, undid the lock, threw his backpack on his chair and stripped off his shirt.

A plot. He needed a plot. His notebook lay laughing on the desk, awaiting his afflatus. He yawned and farted. Should he start at the last event and work up to it, or start at the beginning and improvise, working out the details in revisions? He wasn`t sure. It wasn`t writer`s block. That was a myth for the lazy, he just really didn`t have an idea, besides that he wanted to write a blue collar science fiction horror story. Ok. Start with a bricklayer in his chevy. Smoking a cigarette. He pulls over to go into a rest stop and it`s closed, so he walks up to the edge of the New England forest to take a whizz. But how much should he say about the bricklayer? Will they even lay bricks in the future? His pen stopped its rasp on the paper. He scratched himself. What was his name? Buzz? Frank? Did he live in a trailer, or a duplex? Did he vacation in Maine? Maybe, instead of smoking, he should be a dipper. That was better. He should have a fat wad of tobacco in his lower lip at all times. As he gets mauled by a gibbering space demon. No. Getting mauled by a quivering demon jelly was an unacceptable endpoint to a plotline. That story could be told in a few sentences, saving the reader pages of useless meandering. And though he thought he could describe a decent demon from another dimension, he didn´t think that literature should consist of bricklayers being slain by the undead whilst urinating. No, it wouldn´t do. Fuck. He needed something else. He needed real plot.



But if there was nothing literary to fill the gap between Buzz the Bricklayer taking a piss and being hewn limb from limb by a formless mass of howling mouths and razor claws, he knew he was lost, because that was all he could come up with at the moment. He was starting to feel ridulous. The whole idea had already balooned and deflated, and there he was, lying on the floor, watching the ceiling fans blur and shake around the nipple-like glass bowls. He was hot and tired and chafed. No, there was no point in even getting started. He might as well have started his law school apps right then.



On the other hand, the nipple-light wobbled stupidly, throwing back the shadows of the fan onto the ceiling, and if he stared at it for a few seconds, the spinning shadow blades appeared as a pulsating asterix. Maybe, he thought, there was something salient about that.



A plot.



He passed into a sleep haunted by noises of buses and cars on the floor.



His bananas had achieved a state of turgid putrefaction in a plastic bowl on the kitchen counter.