Then you'll need to write a third, won't you?

Then you'll need to write a third, won't you?

Tim's biography, maybe. I need to grill his parents and brother, for that. You know, baby pictures and humiliating tales.

There's a bit in the story I just wrote for the new book that I think will make you weepy, ita.

a bit in the story I just wrote for the new book that I think will make you weepy, ita

Me? I have a heart of stone. Never gonna happen, nope.

never=this weekend, right?

Excerpt:

It’s probably inconceivable to middle class suburban parents, allowing a twelve-year-old daughter deliver papers to strangers after dark, but we were streetwise city kids, raised by streetwise city families. The earliest piece of advice I remember from my mom was that, “if someone hits you, you hit them back, twice as hard.”

I didn’t realize it then, in my twelve-year-old head, but it was the best advice my mom ever gave me, because it gave me a sense of power. No one’s stronger than I, and my tiny fist. I was always better with words than with my fists, but the idea of being the stronger one in any sort of match is probably what got me through the gauntlet of predators and perverts Bette and I encountered every week on that paper route. I was unfazed by the guy who always answered the door in a bathrobe on collection day, his middle-aged penis peeking out at me from under the loosely knotted terrycloth belt. If he grabbed my wrist as he handed me the five dollar bill, I could rip that penis out by the root, slap his meaty face with it, and be halfway down the street before he started to scream.

There were of course the flashers who’d pull up alongside us in a car under the pretense of asking directions while pulling at themselves, spanking one out on the way home to the wife and kids with a bucket of chicken in the passenger seat, or the creepy guy on the Harley who yelled out from the small wooded path, “Hey girls, how about a blowjob?”

When I inhaled and turned my head to yell, “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!”, my friend Kathy Wilson whispered, “Don’t say anything, let’s just walk faster.”

It bothered me. I was supposed to hit him back, twice as hard. It left me with unspent energy and I felt annoyed and fidgety.

Oh, absolutely. Bet your life on it.

Oh, I like the "meaty face" visual. Also -- ICK. I only paper-routed for a week because my father insisted on tailing me in his car, but now I see why.

You go, girl.

Yeah, paper routes are scary.

That's a great excerpt. I finished Kitchen Confidential a few weeks ago and the structure and the balls-out writing really reminded me of the Vampire People excerpt and proposal you have online.

dies from being way too flattered