Dating Your Mom (5 page)
Authors: Ian Frazier
The B. Robert Bobson Memorial Foundation has announced the winners of its fellowship grant awards for 1981â1982. Chosen from a field of more than 4,000 applicants, the 305 winners will share $8 million in award money in this the sixtieth year since the Bobson Foundation was set up “to provide financial assistance to promising artists, scholars, scientists, and shoppers.”
A list of the winners in your area, along with their proposed projects:
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Arthur Access, writer: a novelization.
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Sean Allen, composer: a symphonization.
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Patsy Angst, sculptor in residence, School of Artistic Supply: a kinetic sculpturization.
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Carl Birdperson, associate professor of particle physics, Exact Change University: “If You Hit the Hope Diamond with a Sledgehammer, Would It Break?”
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Bud Buh, writer: three film treatments, a TV pilot, and a couple concepts.
Â
Seymour Butts, writer: a novel,
Under the Grandstand
.
Under the Grandstand
.
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Marc Cohen, filmmaker: being filmic.
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Constance Crevecoeur, Martha Simpson Strong Professor of English Literature, Leading College: “The Novel
Finnegans Wake:
What th'-?!”
Finnegans Wake:
What th'-?!”
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Kathy Diaghilev, choreographer: studying the dances of many lands and peoples.
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John Diefenbacher, notewright: writing notes.
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Perry Freud, sexologist: pure theoretical sexology.
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Steve from Downstairs, artist: creating art.
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Page Gauge, painter: apartments, stores, lofts, interior & exterior.
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Walter Guff, professor of American-European history, Impressive Transcript University: “World War II: Nothing but a Big Media Circus.”
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Tom Italianfood, poet: writing something that will be so much like poetry as to be virtually indistinguishable from it.
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Raymond Jackson, male, 6'2”, early twenties, wearing a blue windbreaker and white tennis cap: “Give Us Your Money or We Will Cut You with a Linoleum Knife” (in collaboration with William Wilson).
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Ivan Kipling, professor of the humanities, Kevin's College: “Studies in the Comparative Intelligence of Several Experts in the Politics of the Caribbean Basin and My Cat, Tibbs.”
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Andrea Nope, poet: a sonnetization.
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Laura Orals, professor of French and chicken farming, New People College:
“A la Recherche du Frank Perdue.”
“A la Recherche du Frank Perdue.”
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Ranch Quentin, plagiarist: copying out William Faulkner's “The Bear” word for word.
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Rick Ratatouille, parasculptor: hopefully getting a chance to meet and work with some real sculptors.
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Johnny So-what, poet in residence, Springfield Elementary: saying “So what” and “Oh, huh” and “I bet.”
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Ted Tedshack, video artist: watching whatever's on.
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Rowena Utter, pretend choreographer: pretend choreography.
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William Wilson, male, 5'10”, early twenties, wearing a tan jacket and a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap: “Give Us Your Money or We Will Cut You with a Linoleum Knife” (in collaboration with Raymond Jackson).
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Bob Youbob, writer: behaving in a fictive manner.
I came home the other day and my Saint Bernard, Tiffany, had a really guilty expression on her face, with her ears all hanging down. I got a hunch. I went into the living room, and there were all the cushions on the floor, and dog hairs all over the davenport. She knows she's not supposed to be up there. I said, “Come here, you!” and I whacked her with a rolled-up newspaper. She knew she had it coming. She went out in the mud room and lay down with her head right on the floor while I cleaned up the mess she'd made. Finally I figured she'd had enough, so I said, “Come on, girl, you're a good dog now.” I went to give her a Liv-a-Snap, and the next thing I knew she wagged her tail so hard she knocked a full ashtray right off the kitchen table!
âIAN FRAZIER
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A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR:
Ian Frazier is a writer who soaks up experience like a sponge. He experiences life as vividly and adjectivally as he writes about it. His appetite for life is as large as the man himself, or even somewhat larger, since Ian Frazier is of average size and his appetite for life is way above average. He has been embracing all of experience since he was eleven years old, when he began riding his bike to school and so escaped the crushing, stultifying influence of his parents. He spent his pre-teen years traveling, hunting, and fishing as a protégé of novelist Ernest Hemingway, whom he later broke with when he noticed that the older writer continually addressed him as “Daughter.” Now in his mid-thirties, a mature writer who has triumphantly found his own voice, he remains (paradoxically) very much a child in many ways. He has that type of courage which one finds so rarely in an adult in our society, and that is the courage to play. It's been said that the eminent student of the human mind Carl Jung abandoned his career and his responsibilities in his sixties and spent a year building sand castles on the beach; that would be as nothing to Ian Frazier. He is just constantly playing. Sometimes he'll give oranges to people on the subway. Sometimes he'll pull a chair out from under a friend when that friend is about to sit down. Sometimes he'll send people unnecessary packages Air Express, making sure that the package will arrive at an inconvenient time. He is blessed with a fractured vision, and a conviction that the world is mad. In spite of that (or perhaps because of that), he doesn't judge another fellow until he has walked around for a while in that fellow's shoes. And not just guys' shoesâsometimes he walks around in ladies'shoes, too: ankle-straps, Mary Janes, high heels, flats, and sling-backs. And all the people coming around his apartment trying to get their shoes back, and the confusion, the arguments-unpleasant, perhaps,
but all part of a writer's life. Any experience that happens, it doesn't just have to be a good experience, andâBAMâIan Frazier will convert it to writing of some kind. Say he's flying from New York to Miami and his plane has a layover at a Southern airport like Atlanta. Within a matter of minutes, he'll be writing a postcard, the scent of heliotrope and verbena and honeysuckle pervading his prose, and he will be infused with a tremendous sense of place. Or, to give another example, say he's sitting around at a party and someone puts an old song on the record-player and the song reminds him of eighth grade. Suddenly it will be as if he actually is in eighth grade for a while in his mind. Then maybe he'll notice a Fedders air-conditioner in the window next to where he's sitting and he'll be reminded of a Fedders air-conditioner he owned in 1975 that broke down once in the hottest part of the summer. Then something else will bring another memory to mind and off he'll go again. He'll be in the same room with you and yet not there, all at the same time. His writing shows evidence of the strong influence of Sardou, Mazo de la Roche, and Juanita Bartlett. Some critics have called him the white Paul Laurence Dunbar. He lives in Paris, France, with eight mistresses, one of whom is a former Miss Universe runner-up. Everyone he has ever met is completely crazy about him.
Ian Frazier is a writer who soaks up experience like a sponge. He experiences life as vividly and adjectivally as he writes about it. His appetite for life is as large as the man himself, or even somewhat larger, since Ian Frazier is of average size and his appetite for life is way above average. He has been embracing all of experience since he was eleven years old, when he began riding his bike to school and so escaped the crushing, stultifying influence of his parents. He spent his pre-teen years traveling, hunting, and fishing as a protégé of novelist Ernest Hemingway, whom he later broke with when he noticed that the older writer continually addressed him as “Daughter.” Now in his mid-thirties, a mature writer who has triumphantly found his own voice, he remains (paradoxically) very much a child in many ways. He has that type of courage which one finds so rarely in an adult in our society, and that is the courage to play. It's been said that the eminent student of the human mind Carl Jung abandoned his career and his responsibilities in his sixties and spent a year building sand castles on the beach; that would be as nothing to Ian Frazier. He is just constantly playing. Sometimes he'll give oranges to people on the subway. Sometimes he'll pull a chair out from under a friend when that friend is about to sit down. Sometimes he'll send people unnecessary packages Air Express, making sure that the package will arrive at an inconvenient time. He is blessed with a fractured vision, and a conviction that the world is mad. In spite of that (or perhaps because of that), he doesn't judge another fellow until he has walked around for a while in that fellow's shoes. And not just guys' shoesâsometimes he walks around in ladies'shoes, too: ankle-straps, Mary Janes, high heels, flats, and sling-backs. And all the people coming around his apartment trying to get their shoes back, and the confusion, the arguments-unpleasant, perhaps,
but all part of a writer's life. Any experience that happens, it doesn't just have to be a good experience, andâBAMâIan Frazier will convert it to writing of some kind. Say he's flying from New York to Miami and his plane has a layover at a Southern airport like Atlanta. Within a matter of minutes, he'll be writing a postcard, the scent of heliotrope and verbena and honeysuckle pervading his prose, and he will be infused with a tremendous sense of place. Or, to give another example, say he's sitting around at a party and someone puts an old song on the record-player and the song reminds him of eighth grade. Suddenly it will be as if he actually is in eighth grade for a while in his mind. Then maybe he'll notice a Fedders air-conditioner in the window next to where he's sitting and he'll be reminded of a Fedders air-conditioner he owned in 1975 that broke down once in the hottest part of the summer. Then something else will bring another memory to mind and off he'll go again. He'll be in the same room with you and yet not there, all at the same time. His writing shows evidence of the strong influence of Sardou, Mazo de la Roche, and Juanita Bartlett. Some critics have called him the white Paul Laurence Dunbar. He lives in Paris, France, with eight mistresses, one of whom is a former Miss Universe runner-up. Everyone he has ever met is completely crazy about him.
Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, stared gloomily out of his office window.âfirst line of
Oregon!
by Dana Fuller Ross
Oregon!
by Dana Fuller Ross
Â
The President swiveled in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared unseeing out of the window of the Oval Office and cursed his lot.âfirst line of
Raise the Titanic!
by Clive Cussler
Raise the Titanic!
by Clive Cussler
Â
He was seated in the dark, alone, behind the desk of Hajib Kafir, staring unseeingly out of the dusty office window at the timeless minarets of Istanbul.âfirst line of
Bloodline
by Sidney Sheldon
Bloodline
by Sidney Sheldon
Â
One year later: It was a gray, brutally cold March day in Moscow. Dmitri Chakhovsky stood before the window of his small, plainly furnished office inside KGB headquarters. He stared down to a deserted Dzerzhinsky Square, his thoughts on the approaching spring.âfirst lines of
The Windchime Legacy
by A. W. Mykel.
The Windchime Legacy
by A. W. Mykel.
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DiMona, meanwhile, has just published a novel with Morrow entitled
To the Eagle's Nest,
which he says has the most commercial opening line of any novel ever published. He may be right. The opening is “Adolf Hitler slipped off his bathrobe and stood naked.”â
Washington Star
To the Eagle's Nest,
which he says has the most commercial opening line of any novel ever published. He may be right. The opening is “Adolf Hitler slipped off his bathrobe and stood naked.”â
Washington Star
“And what are you staring at, Herr Himmler?” Adolf Hitler asked as he strode into the high-ceilinged conference room.
“Uh, nothing, Führer,” Himmler said, blushing and looking away.
“Nothing? And what about you, Herr Reichsmarschall?” he asked, turning to Goering. “Why did your eyes practically pop out of your head?”
Goering cleared his throat as if to speak, and then just looked at the floor. There was a long pause.
Then Grand Admiral of the Navy Doenitz spoke up, in a wavering voice. “It's simply that ⦠if the Führer will permit me ⦠you're ⦠in the altogether.”
“I'm buck nakedâthat's what you're saying, isn't it?” Hitler asked. “Do you think I don't know that? Of course I'm
au naturel,
and, what's more, I plan to remain this way for a very long time to come.” He clasped his hands behind his bare bottom and began to pace at the head of the table. Several of his generals took cautious second glances from under the bills of their caps at their leader's root-white, plump nudity.
au naturel,
and, what's more, I plan to remain this way for a very long time to come.” He clasped his hands behind his bare bottom and began to pace at the head of the table. Several of his generals took cautious second glances from under the bills of their caps at their leader's root-white, plump nudity.
“You've got a good body,” Doenitz added lamely.
There was another silence. Then Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel Himmler swallowed hard. “You plan to go around like that ⦠regularly?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. And what of it?”
“If I might make so bold as to point outâ”
“Yes?”
“Well, if people saw you, it might ⦠it might embarrass the Reich.”
Hitler looked hard at Himmler for a moment. “I'm surprised at you, Herr Himmler,” he said quietly. “I thought you were a man of greater vision. Do we actually care about the Reich?”
“No, Führer.”
“Do we care whether the Reich lasts a thousand years or twenty minutes?”
“No, Führer.”
“Do we care in the slightest about this red herring of a war which we have thrown across the path of the non-Aryan world?”
“No, Führer.”
“What is our real goal, our secret dream that no one else knows? What is this dream that we have dreamed together so many times?”
“Our dream is that the Third Reich, in the person of its Führer, Adolf Hitler, shall become the greatest plot device the world has ever known,” Himmler said, in the singsong tone of one repeating an oft-recited maxim.
“The greatest plot device the world has ever known!” Hitler suddenly shouted. “A mighty dream! For which we should strive mightily!”
He turned to Goebbels. “Tell me, Herr Minister,” he asked, “how goes it with the Plot Restructurement Corps? Are you meeting with success?”
“Excellent success, Führer,” Goebbels answered, keeping his eyes with some effort on his leader's face. “We have already removed the structurally impure elements from all the major literary works of the English and have inserted fear-of-Nazi-menace as the main instrument of plot. Might I read you a sample of our recent work?”
“Please.”
An aide appeared at Goebbels' side with a manuscript, and Goebbels read:
By William Shakespeare
BERNARDO: Who's there?
FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
BERNARDO: Long live the king!
FRANCISCO: Bernardo?
BERNARDO: He.
FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.
BERNARDO: 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.
BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?
FRANCISCO: Not a mouse stirring.
BERNARDO: That's good. Because the Führer is a nut on the subject of Denmark, and we're supposed to watch out for Nazis.
FRANCISCO: Gee that's right. Thanks for reminding me. I sure hope we don't see any Nazis around hereâ
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“Enough!” cried Hitler, stopping Goebbels with a gesture of his hand. “I can see that your corps has made most satisfactory progress, and you will persevere until every plot ever devised has fallen before you!”
For a moment, Hitler examined his waist, absentmindedly pinching its folds. “Now, gentlemen,” he said, “we must look to the future. Consider Napoleon. He thought he would be an agent of plot for centuries. Yet today hardly anybody ever uses him, even once in a while just to give a story a nudge. And why is that? Because that military genius, that greatest general of modern times, that master of nations, did not possess the will to disrobe, even just down to his briefs. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Genghis Khanâdid any one
of them have the moral strength to walk about this world as naked as he came into it?”
of them have the moral strength to walk about this world as naked as he came into it?”
“You're covered with goose bumps, Führer,” Goering interrupted. “Can I get you a shawl or something?”
“What would you have me do?” Hitler asked, ignoring him. “Would you have me stare unseeing out a window, like some petty plot functionary? The American Presidents think that all they have to do is be President and stare out a window and someone will write about them. They sit in their Oval Offices and indulge their bad moods and think that is enough. But would any of them ever go nude? In the Oval Office? Right at the beginning of a story? Of course not. Because they are a mongrel race.” He grabbed a book from one of the bookcases that lined the conference room from floor to ceiling. “Tell meâis this how you would have literature use your Führer?” He began to read:
Chapter 1
President William Howard Taft, the twenty-seventh President of the United States, stared savagely out of the windows of the Oval Office. The fresh smell of flowers and other plants in the Rose Garden wafted to him through the same window that he was looking out of, and other windows as well, all of which were open in the pleasant weather, but the smell did not cheer the President up that much, because he was thinking about various things that concerned his Administration (1909â13) that were not going the way he wanted them to. Even if the weather was nice, it didn't make any difference to President Taft, because he was unhappy.
So what if the weather was greatâPresident Taft still had things to worry about, because he was President. “Damn it,” he thought, “here I have been a prominent Ohio jurist, United States Solicitor General, Dean of the Cincinnati Law School, author of the policy of âdollar diplomacy' in China and Latin America, and still I cannot persuade Congress to pass my bill providing for the creation of the parcel-post system.” President Taft began to pace back and forth like an animal of some kind in that office where so many Presidents had paced before him.
So what if the weather was greatâPresident Taft still had things to worry about, because he was President. “Damn it,” he thought, “here I have been a prominent Ohio jurist, United States Solicitor General, Dean of the Cincinnati Law School, author of the policy of âdollar diplomacy' in China and Latin America, and still I cannot persuade Congress to pass my bill providing for the creation of the parcel-post system.” President Taft began to pace back and forth like an animal of some kind in that office where so many Presidents had paced before him.
An aide wearing the type of clothes aides wore in Taft's day came in. “Should I close the window, Mr. President? Is that too much air on you?” he asked.
“What? Oh, I hadn't even noticed that the window wasâ”
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“Forgive us, Führer! We were blind!” cried Himmler.
“We understand now, Führer!” cried Goebbels.
Then, as one, the generals and ministers leaped to their feet, eyes shining, fingers fumbling with their buttons.
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