| So I had a dream the other night. I fell asleep over my keyboard, and some wonderfully wicked sorceress came along and put a spell on me. It was a little like that Kafka story, except instead of a moth on a windowsill, she transformed me into a fountain pen. On a chain. Mounted on one of those tacky faux marble stands.
When I awoke I found myself fastened to a veneer countertop in a bank, in a small midwestern crossroads town. It took me several days to divine this from the conversations of customers passing through - our country's become so homogenized, what with the same stores and restaurants dotting every city. At the outset my days were not too bad, considering my new station in life. Of course, the long periods of monotonous inaction were occasionally broken up by brief incidents of harsh ritual punishment and humiliation. Impatient patrons standing in line would beat me against the counter, whip my chain rhythmically about, and yes, sometimes make me write bad checks.
Soon though, things took a turn... to the raunchy. It started with that young man with impossibly dark eyes who used me to jot dirty Spanglish limericks on the back of his international money order. Then a bored thirtysomething woman in a business suit enlisted me to turn her book of check stubs into a silent porno flip movie. My virgin indigo ink - I never dreamed stick figures could do such things to one another! And then there was the hip goth girl with the nose ring, not long from high school, who felt Ben Franklin might look better in drag. (We tried.)
Eventually these harmless time-killers gave way to more disturbing episodes. One quiet day a forty-ish divorcee, with grackle-black hair and thoughts just as dark, had me scribble an intricate revenge fantasy starring her ex-husband onto the back of his alimony check. It's a good thing electronic transfer is the thing now, or that would have been one unsettling slip of paper in his next statement. Together we turned him into a silent settee on the hardwood floor of his old bedroom, upon which she and her new lover ground out their lust nightly in ever more inventive positions. Another day, a retiree with a three-day beard plucked a loan brochure from the nearby plastic holder. An ominous agenda glinted coldly from his eyes as he reached for me. Before his turn at the teller mercifully arrived, we had made over that Pollyanna couple smiling vapidly in their new front yard into a scene from de Sade's Justine. I couldn't help squirming in his hand as he bade me draw those stretch marks on her elongated nipples and traced the arches of her aching, tiptoed feet. I have to confess though, the ink in my chamber simmered strangely as I empathized with what was being done to her. The sight of that hook thrust rudely in her ass particularly made the spring holding my refill in place twitch. The interlude had me wondering just where this all might lead.
Eventually it came - on a final, crazy, memorable day. The banking crisis had hit. Turmoil filled the air. The thoughtful folks at AIG had pocketed their fat bonuses, and people were decidedly nonplussed with the financial industry. On a sunny Saturday morning everyone in town had descended on the place, determined to move their money somewhere safe. Like a mason jar. The roped-off line stretched out the door and down the block. It inched along, the way glaciers used to before climate change waxed their skis. The clientele was fuming. Primitive emotions ruled the day. Someone broke out a legal pad, brusquely snatched me up and started venting some long-building resentments. Before I could even get my ink flowing smoothly, it had turned into a group grope. I was passed around, from man to woman and back again. A story was taking shape on the page - like the ones you secretly cranked out with your pals beneath the desks of high school history class. And it was not pretty. One unspeakable act was grafted onto the one above it, mob mentality ensuring that none of the authors need take ownership of the collective brutality forming beneath their hands. By midway down the second page, every employee in the bank - from manager to tellers to security guard - had been verbally stripped, bent over and tied to office chairs, desks and counters. Each in turn become intimately acquainted with one financial instrument or another, to the unbridled delight of the account holders. Collateralized debt obligations were forced upon the staff up and down the writhing pecking order. Deposits and withdrawals were entered over and over - manually, digitally, however you please - in a furious frenzy of fiscal fornication. Till finally, the bank clientele had expended the last of their toxic assets. A scattering of seed capital and other liquidity virtually matted the establishment's once pristine carpet.
It was a traumatic day, to be sure. One from which I'm not sure I'll totally recover. The bank went under, of course, its furniture and fixtures dismantled and repossessed. I found my way - marble anchor, chain and all - to a business surplus warehouse, where now I sit. A funny thing has happened though as I wait here day after day, processing all of the curious energy that passed through me in that bank. I miss the dutiful, nonjudgmental channeling of all those baser impulses from anonymous passersby. To my surprise, I now find myself craving to once again be a medium for the unfiltered, depraved thoughts of a diverse and unpredictable multitude, all percolating with private perversities. To know their half-hidden fantasies, shameful and shameless, and be the verbal instrument that gives them elaborated form.
And so I am here. Waiting to be used. To please customers as they wait for the teller window of life to call them up. What is your private erotic nirvana-nightmare? I'm taking orders. And doing my best to obey them. May I write you a vignette? Or shall we create some mischief together in prose? I can't promise a masterpiece, but I will guarantee you your money's worth (ha!). FDIC insured up to 250,000 words.
[Update: Just in case the above is overly cryptic, I'm looking to be "commissioned" to write a vignette or even short story to "bring to life" (in prose at least) someone's fantasy. You would supply the theme(s), perhaps some details you'd like to see in it, and then I set myself to work. The only payment I would receive is - if you deem the finished product adequate in meeting your desires - the knowledge that reading it brought you some pleasure. Thank you in advance for allowing me to serve you in this way.] |
