S.G. Browne

I’m riding in the back set of an Audi A6, sitting next to roughly four sticks of dynamite.

Most of that is in the form of a pyrotechnic cake with nine, three-inch mortars of Grade B professional fireworks with a street value of $120.  Without a pyrotechnician’s license, possession of Grade B fireworks is a felony.

I’m sitting next to a felony.

If that’s not bad enough, the dirver of the Audi A6, my college buddy Brian, has a vanity plate on his car that reads:

EXCLR8

So I keep asking him to slow down.

I’m not so worried about the four sticks of dynamite on the seat next to me going off.  But if we get rear ended, the six rockets in the trunk directly behind me come to roughly another four sticks of dynamite.

And I’m wondering if it’s such a good idea to wear my seatbelt.

There’s a sign on the door that says:

Not Responsible for Accidental Pregnancies

When you walk into the room, the first think you notice is the lifelike sex doll in a black g-string and bra, bent over the love seat, her vacant eyes staring back at you over her shoulder.

Next to her is a floor to ceiling bookcase filled with videotapes and DVDs with titles like The Cunt of Monte Cristo and Cum Like It’s Hot, while issues of Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler are fanned out on the glass coffee table that seems to hover above the thick, white shag carpet.

In the bedroom, mirrors reflect you from every angle.  Dildos and fleshlights and lubricants adorn the bedside table, while the circular bed is covered in blue silk sheets and purple velvet pillows.

Barry White is singing “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.”

There’s a condom dispenser in the bathroom.

Looks like Grandpa’s been shopping again.

I find myself unable to deal with the horrors that confront me each morning as the clock strikes eight times and the bone chilling shrieks of hellish monsters assault my sensibilities.  I can barely breathe at the frightful stench, can barely hear my thoughts through the endless screams, can barely keep from succumbing to madness at the hideous sight of mucous flowing from noses, spilling over lips, and spraying out in long, ichorous ropes and foul mists into the fetid air of my home.

Curse the spirits that compelled me to open this day care center.

People are always asking me what it’s like to look like urine.

These are the people who laugh at me.  Who walk away snickering and high-fiving each other and thinking they’re all that.

Men usually.  Teenage boys.  Fraternity members.

Assholes.

Women, on the other hand, are more likely to ask me how they look in me.  Personally, I wish they’d ask the question in reverse but for some reason, most women tend to think I’m gay.  Maybe not as many who think the same thing about Pink, but then that’s kind of a no-brainer.  He’s Pink, for Christ’s sake.

Then, of course, there’s Red, Pink’s cousin, who most women find totally hot.  Fucker.  He’s all show and no substance.  But it’s kind of hard to compete with Red when your complementary color is Purple.

So I’m doing my first round of edits on my novel and although the suggestions by my editor are, for the most part, benign, there are a few places where she suggests that I delete phrases or sentences that I am in love with.

Enamored.

Infatuated.

They make me laugh, these lines.  They make me giggle.  They make me wonder how anyone could even think about excising them from my manuscript.  But after taking the lines out and putting them back in and reading them out loud over and over and over with and without the edits, I realize my editor is right.  These lines are not necessarily enhancing my story but distracting from the relevant prose.

As Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch put it:  “Whenver you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.  Murder your darlings.”