Seven: Part 1

The beginning of a backwards sweep about the Literary Brat Pack, their influence on me as an early writer pre-MFA, and an exploration of "publishing as a numbers game"

Dear Reader,

For two years, I’ve worked on a novel and not much else save for the few Substacks I’ve sent out. This past spring, I managed to eke out some revisions on two stories that I’d circulated for awhile with no luck, but then summer hit and most places are closed, so they’re lingering in my saved files until the devil whispers in my ear again.

The querying on the novel is not going well. 80 queries, one partial (a decline), one full (he ghosted me). I’ve changed my query and revised the first pages and then overhauled the book. Still, crickets. Seems bad! The book is about overcoming the living grief your father inflicted upon you, and they say publishing is a numbers game. It’s a matter of hitting the right editor at the right time. I thought, well shit lots of people have dad issues so this should be easier than the last time.

Reader, it is not easier than last time.

I’m dead in the water, spiritually and creatively, and I’ve spent the past few weeks making a brutal and honest assessment of my actual writing, my writing career, and what path, if any, there is forward.

Sometimes, when people are lost and want to be found, they turn to the bible. The words of their god/s. This writer turns her lonely eyes to the Literary Brat Pack (LBP) for salvation.

Pleased to report they all still get me, and I’m working on a larger essay about their impact on me as an early writer, before my MFA, before any "formal” writing training, and in turn, this re-reading and re-examining of their work has led to me to back to some of my own early work. I dug up this old piece of flash that I was sending out around 2008/2009 called “Seven”. Memories are fuzzy, but I think this one of the first little stories I sent out online instead of hauling myself to the post office with a hundred envelopes. I don’t have a record of this story’s submissions, it was so long ago, but I think I hit up a dozen or so places, including PANK in the days of Roxane Gay at the helm, before I gave up on it. But reading it, I found it had some early vibes of my novel that should come out next year (pub date still up in the air), and I can 100% read the LBP influence in it.

So, I thought it would be fun to publish this little flash here, and then next ‘stack, walk through the “real” story behind it. “Seven” is based on two separate Vegas trips in the early 2000s (though I wrote it in the mid-2000s and added a cell phone), and Seven himself is rendered physically as a specific guy from the second trip, but then on the first trip, I really did meet a guy who was on a rebound from an ex-girlfriend who walked me out of this club to find a chapel. To be continued….

SEVEN

We’re in some afterhours club in Vegas and the guy who keeps buying me drinks asks me to marry him. His t-shirt has the number seven on it. He’s in tennis shoes, and my shoes are gone. I’m flattered. I’ll think about it.

I take his drink, it’s a mixed drink, and I drink it fast because that’s what mixed drinks are for, drinking fast. I say, “I have to find my friends so they can be in the wedding.”

We circle the club, and I call out their names, and he repeats their names after me.

So I look at him and I shout, “I got it, thanks.”

But he can’t hear me because the music is loud, and I can’t hear him because the music is loud, so he might not be calling anyone’s names. His name is Seven.

Seven is tall and swarthy. I learned the word “swarthy” from a James Ellroy novel. I’ve been waiting to use it since high school, which is when no one asked me to the prom.

I carry a purse, also missing. I pat myself down and find my driver’s license and credit card in the side pocket of my jeans, and remember that I didn’t bring a purse tonight. I cut the purse strings. Cut them in a moderately pleasant buzzed state and never looked back, until now, when I forgot I did it.

The air is hurting my eyes, drying them out, and Seven takes this as a sign of tiredness–sobriety–and suggests another drink. In my other pocket, I find a card. I think it belongs to this guy, Seven. I think he gave it to me when I couldn’t make out his name. He pointed to the card, then to himself.

I call out for my friends again and so does Seven. I squint at him. We’re holding hands. It’s hard to tell in the dark if he’s hot, but it’s the dark and it doesn’t matter. I reach out for his hair, but miss and hit his temple, feel his eyebrows, which are damp. I take his hand again. It feels good.

“We should get our vows ready,” I yell into his ear.

He nods the way a person nods when they have no idea what you are saying but are trying to be polite.

A hip hop song pounds, and Seven begins posturing–breathing down my neck and putting his chest in my hair– and I smell him, the real Seven, a sour mix of the bar and desert heat.

I have to go to the bathroom.

I stand in line with twenty-four other girls who are all trashed out of their faces and laughing. The bathroom attendant sells cigarettes for a dollar, so I buy one and smoke it in line. The girl in front of me, she’s short, turns to me, looks up and goes, “You have big doe eyes.”

I look over her head, past the line that is not moving. I am dizzy, can barely hold myself up and find the wall, put a hand out.

“Really beautiful big doe eyes,” she says. She’s wearing a cap, one that maybe came from the docks. She’s speaking with what I believe is a fake Russian accent. “I drive a car.” She hands me a card. “Call me if you ever need a ride anywhere.”

I take the card and put it in my pocket. My friend Carrie comes out of one of the stalls.

“Where are your shoes?”

We both look down at my bare feet.

“I’m getting married,” I respond.

“That’s a really bad idea,” she says.

I have to use my whole body on the wall now, all for balance, and I think I try to tell her that I’m struggling, that I need help, and she should wait for me, but she’s gone.

I find Seven in the bar where I left him. Carrie is not waiting. He takes my hand and leads me out to the casino floor.

Seven and I are walking, lapping the floor, making a whirlpool, and I am super drunk. I hate not knowing how drunk I am until I get out of the bar. It’s one thing to lose your balance, but another thing to be in the light, and so I try to hold onto something, which happens to be Seven’s arm until I see Carrie, who doesn’t see me, and keeps going with the rest of our friends. She’s holding my shoes.

Seven’s phone rings. He stops by some slot machines, hits a button and puts his finger to his lips, indicating I should be quiet. He points to the phone, mouths, “Girl. Friend.”

Something from the outside is pushing in, and some people going by say it’s the sun, but all I see is more casino. I wiggle out of Seven’s grasp because the wedding is off if he’s talking to his girlfriend. I walk away from him, heavy, like a drunk person, so I reach for the slots. I see myself, smeared unevenly in the metallic lines of the machines.

Yours in Binge Drinking in Your 20s,

Stephanie

Reading: Tama Janowitz’s Scream

Jay McInenery’s Story of My Life