by Edward Champion

The Content Trap

Every artist repeats himself. But when is creative repetition accessible? At what point do artists fall into the “content trap,” the creative moment in which originality and innovation are abdicated in favor of corporate whoredom, filthy lucre, and formualic mediocrity?

Every artist repeats himself, often without being cognizant of it: stylistic tropes, character archetypes, peculiar metaphors, and distinct storytelling moves. The more prolific the artist, the more likely the artist will repeat himself. I think of how Joyce Carol Oates — herself astonishingly voluminous — mentions the soothing comforts of vacuuming in the aftermath of grief in her memoir, A Widow’s Story, while drawing a similar comparison between death and vacuum cleaning in her short story “Cumberland Breakdown” (contained in I Am No One You Know).

So given that repetition is a creative inevitability, how do you avoid it? And when is repetition acceptable? These are vital questions to consider in an age of franchise fatigue, in a time in which an audience is now asked to devote its entire life to consuming endless reboots, remakes, and spinoffs that offer little in the way of originality.

Speaking for myself, the only way that you could get me to watch another bloated three hour Marvel Cinematic Universe movie (Three hours? Come on! You’re not Tarkovsky!) — whereby the now tedious destruction of New York is now an annoyingly guaranteed and yawn-inducing cliche — is if you locked me in a hotel room with a group of sinuous, supple, and wildly inventive lovers. And even then, my attentions would be more fixated on the far more rewarding existential variations of tendering affection and satisfaction to each and every sybarite who drops by for a mutually beneficial afternoon delight rather than the bullshit spectacle of Manhattan once again — for fuck’s sake, not again! — being reduced to rubble.

It is not that I am against genre. (I have always loved genre passionately!) But artists who work in genre tend to be the worst transgressors of the problem I am addressing here. Furthermore, I am strongly opposed to being bored out of my fucking mind. MCU movies bore me. As do the endless iterations of Star Wars rehashes and retreads, which now fills in every goddamned ambiguity that initially captured my imagination with an indefatigable series of cheap narrative disappointments. (Did we really need to see Boba Fett escape from the Sarlacc Pit? No, we didn’t. Boba Fett was a marvelous invention, the perfect side character who said very little and, before Disney+ turned this bloated and ever propagating franchise into a bland carpet rolling endlessly down a Poltergeist-style hallway of limitless length, Boba Fett’s laconic presence invited you to speculate about just why he became a bounty hunter. I’ve been told that Andor actually breaks out of the formula, but I am frankly too fatigued by all the George Lucas wankfests to dive in.) I could not give two fucks about The Walking Dead, even though I enjoyed the flagship show in its early seasons. Characters move from one location to another, kill zombies, fend off some villain of the season (such as Negan or The Governor). Lather, rinse, repeat. Same shit, different day, different television spinoff.

But Fringe? Farscape? Twin Peaks? Issa Rae’s great series Insecure? They ended at just the right time. No problems there! For that matter, Better Call Saul struck a heartbreaking note of artistic perfection while also neatly aligning itself with its cousin, Breaking Bad. Twin masterpieces! Both shows in the Alberquerque universe arguably represent some of the best television of the last twenty years. Because the writers knew when their time was up. They knew the precise point when they were about to repeat themselves. I have great hope for For All Mankind, which possesses enough of an imaginative arsenal to run for multiple seasons without becoming dowdy, largely because of the innovative way in which the show jumps forward a decade each season with its “What if?” premise.

Brian K. Vaughan is one of the best living comic book writers working today. Why? Well, it’s largely because he knew when to wrap up Paper Girls. When Saga hit a heartstopping cliffhanger in Issue #60, Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples took a four year hiatus and didn’t return until last year. And Saga has sustained its high artistic quality because this dynamic duo knew that they couldn’t repeat themselves and that they needed a long break to get it right. But Dave Sim? Jesus Christ, what a tragic fall from grace. The man who changed the possibilities of what independent comic books could be succumbed to distasteful misogynistic incel rants. All because he was so singularly obsessed with hitting Cerebus #300. Imagine a world in which Cerberus stopped at Issue #150. Dave Sim would be a hero rather than a well-deserved pariah.

At 75, Stephen King may be the best example of pop fiction staying power that we have. While there are undeniable King tropes (the dangerous religious zealot, the endearing simple-minded sidekick seen with Wolf in The Talisman and Tom Cullen in The Stand, and an empathy for blue-collar types that has rightly caused his books to be revered by many), the man is still successfully working in other non-horror genres such as crime (Billy Summers) and dark fantasy (Fairy Tale). And while he has been self-effacing about declaring himself the “literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries,” his capacity to grow as a writer in his seventies and still win us over would suggest very strongly that he’s a lot more than this.

The excellent audio drama Wolf 359 knew when to quit. As did Wooden Overcoats. The Amelia Project? Nicht so viel. It is now a stale and uninventive retread that no amount of new characters or talented actors can salvage.

Trevor Noah knew when to leave The Daily Show. As did Jon Stewart. At least initially. But after taking a few years off to write and direct films, his ego became seduced by the fame, attention, and money that emerges from churning out more of the same. He returned to the airwaves with the same schtick, vastly eclipsed by the far more thoughtful and more hilarious approach of John Oliver on Last Week Tonight. (I truly hope that Oliver knows the precise moment to quit. Because it would be a pity to see him transmute into a disinterested has-been hack.)

The Who and Led Zeppelin both ended at nearly the right time (although the less said about everything after Who Are You, the better; opinions vary on whether or not Zeppelin’s final album, In Through the Out Door, was entirely necessary). Had Keith Moon and John Bonham lived longer, I think it’s likely that they would have turned into 1980s corporate rock sellouts that Gen X punks like me would have justifiably ridiculed with formidable sneers. And while John Lennon’s assassination by Mark David Chapman was truly terrible, imagine (har har!) what kind of hideous reactionary Lennon would have transformed into in the 1980s. Or Kurt Cobain. Or Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. This fun but unsettling speculative game — which I personally guarantee will enliven a dull party — is what Billy Joel (who quit writing songs long after his talent was tapped, but who at least had the decency to spare us further River of Dreams drivel) was referring to when he sang about “the stained-glass curtain you’re hiding behind.”

In other words, every artist has a finite amount of talent and imagination. Sometimes it extends within a given project or a stylistic approach. Sometimes it’s represented in an entire career. I used to love T.C. Boyle’s work, but now I find him insufferably repetitive. Why? Because Boyle hasn’t changed his formula much in the last ten years. It is highly doubtful that we will get another novel on the level of World’s End or The Tortilla Curtain from him. And that’s a damned pity. At some point around 2014, Boyle stopped caring about whether he was evolving as an artist and started to phone it in.

Lost? Battlestar Galactica? Both shows lasted at least one season too long. They were both wildly popular and didn’t seem to understand that the creative well had run dry. Imagine if they had ended at the right time.

The artists who didn’t know when to stop or change things up fell into what I’m calling “the content trap.” The content trap is what happens when something distinct and original becomes wildly successful, but corporate greed or an artist’s narcissistic need for chronic adulation gets in the way of knowing when the jig is up. Ego prevents an artist from knowing when it’s time to end things. And what we usually get are inferior repeats of the same stories that initially captured our imagination. Let’s be honest. If Douglas Adams had actually confined his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series to the trilogy format, what would be so bad about that? I think Adams knew that So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was never going to live up to the three books that preceded it. He was so impaired by the need to write content for the fourth book that publisher Sonny Mehta had to move in with Adams to make sure that he finished the novel. Douglas Adams — for all of his wit and radio drama innovation — fell into the content trap. On Community, Dan Harmon had a running joke in which characters suggested that the show had “six seasons and a movie” of material. And had Community been renewed for a seventh season, there is no way that its formidable writers could have summoned anything as brilliant as “Remedial Chaos Theory.” Dan Harmon didn’t fall into the content trap.

John Cleese — a genius whom I worshipped as a teen — hasn’t been funny in years. His best days are far behind him. Why? Because he fell into the content trap. He’s bringing back Fawlty Towers decades later and it’s completely unnecessary. On the other hand, I had thought that Star Trek: Picard was a dead retread incapable of further innovations, but the third season has somehow found new life under showrunner Terry Matalas. Here was a show that fell into the content trap, but that somehow clawed its way back, even resolving an Ensign Ro storyline from decades before. In other words, it’s not impossible for a content trap victim to reverse course and find a vital reason for creating new art. (Witness the surprising endurance of Doctor Who over more than fifty years — although its recent partnership with Disney+ does have me greatly worried — or Philip Roth’s multiple periods of resurgence. Or how about Tina Turner’s Private Dancer (after four dismal solo albums)? I’ve lost track of the number of comebacks that Miley Cyrus has had, but you’d be hard-pressed not to groove to Endless Summer Vacation.)

Most artists find it difficult to escape the content trap once they fall into it. But here’s the good news: everyone loves a comeback. And if we start demanding higher standards of the work we love and that goes on on and ever ever on rather than accepting bullshit like some hopelessly compromised head-bobbing fanboy who settles for, well, anything, then even once beloved artists have a shot at surprising us with the imagination and talent that is buried somewhere within them. That is, if they can successfully resist the large bags of money that corporate overlords continue to wheelbarrow into their palatial estates so long as they continue to offer us more of the same.

(Special thanks to my friend Tom Working, whose insightful comments partially inspired this essay.)

by Edward Champion

Pamela Paul, The Gray Lady’s In-House Transphobe

Pamela Paul continues to reveal herself as the most transphobic staffer at the New York Times. The time has come for the Gray Lady to cut this disingenuously hateful thug loose.

As I write these words, there are a series of bills under consideration in West Virginia that would “protect” minors from any “obscene performance and materials” — which would, of course, include a transgender mother picking up their kid from school. These paleoconservative bigots have reframed such a common act as an apparent act of flamboyant exhibitionism, if not a new form of edgy performance art that will somehow turn every schoolkid into a gender-bending sex kitten. It is estimated that 1.6 million Americans identify as transgender. 19% are parents. In 2020, the murder rate of transgender people took just seven months to surpass that of cis counterparts. In other words, we have a moral duty to stick up for trans people, to respect their pronouns, and to ensure that they are able to live safely and without hate or targeted violence in our society. They are human beings. Just like the rest of us.

In such a dangerous and dehumanizing climate, it would seem quite logical to a surly and aging punk rock humanist like me to devote your newspaper pages to showing the impact that such harmful legislation will have on people. But that’s not what The New York Times is doing. Instead, it has permitted Pamela Paul — a smug and privileged dunce who was once married to an equally hateful and reactionary bedbug — to spew forth all manner of hateful columns against the dignity of trans people. Much like a 1960s white supremacist defending George Wallace, Pamela Paul wrote a repugnant and clueless column detailing how liberals could “learn” from Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor apparently “knows what he’s doing” in targeting trans healthcare, invading the privacy of trans university students, and otherwise declaring a war on trans people. Despite all these clearly horrific moves to dehumanize trans people which have been denounced by nearly every LGBTQ organization, Paul claims that DeSantis “may not be” transphobic and that any protest against this evil is merely “adopting a stance of moral superiority” that will “do us no good.” In other words, Paul’s hopeless head nods like a FOX News-watching bobblehead, approving of these cruel and discriminatory practices against people who have rich lives, promising careers, and big dreams.

But today Pamela Paul doubled down on her casual hatred for the “other” by writing a risible column defending J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter writer who has ignobly morphed into one of the most prominent transphobes in Western culture. And in case the phony persecution complex wasn’t telegraphed strongly enough, Paul even compared the justifiable pushback against Rowling’s hate to the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, perpetuating the shitty stereotypical trope of trans person as murderer that was played for cheap titilation in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill more than forty years ago.

In other words, Pamela Paul is an intolerant dinosaur cynically disguising her enmity with false parallels who simply cannot understand what is so fucking easy for the rest of us to understand. She actually has the temerity to write, “Nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.” Really? Beyond Rowling’s recent novel, which was a lengthy transphobic diatribe disguised as fiction, what about Rowling’s odious remarks about “people who menstruate”? Her pathetic Twitter performance last year on International Women’s Day? I’m a cis hetero man and I’m also angry about this. Rowling’s thoughtless and hateful remarks have been enough to warrant vociferous pushback from many. Is Paul trying to gaslight this response? It’s fairly effortless to imagine Paul stumping for George Orwell’s fascist nation in 1984, claiming that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Two hundred staffers and contributors have signed a letter condemning The New York Times‘s commitment to transphobia. What many of them have outright refused to do is call out the names of hateful demagogues who are spreading this noxious and completely unacceptable bile.

Pamela Paul collects a regular paycheck for spewing obfuscatory hate in a newspaper that reaches 8.6 million paid digital subscribers. Given that reach, I don’t think it’s a stretch to call Pamela Paul the transphobic answer to Charles Coughlin, who famously used his radio broadcasts to preach anti-Semitism in the 1930s.

The time has come for Pamela Paul to be fired from The New York Times. Let her join her fellow fascist Bari Weiss outside the Gray Lady’s walls and be truly free to reveal the hateful and intolerant conservative she truly is.

by Edward Champion

My Father is Dead

Three weeks ago, I learned that my abusive father had passed away. This is a reckoning.

My father is dead.

I learned the news three weeks ago. He had been dead for a year and a half. Nobody had thought to inform me about this until a legal matter forced certain third parties to inform me.

My father was a monster. He choked me. He bit me. He pressed the embers of his unfiltered cigarettes into my pale sensitive skin. He saw a scrawny underfed kid, a bright and budding soul that he had sired, and he knew that I was white trash. He memorialized it with his abuse. I wore long-sleeved shirts to school to cover up these burns and bites. I got into fistfights with kids who bulled me. Kids unaware of what was happening to me at home. The girls, at least, were sweet and sympathetic to my shyness and they detected my sensitivity. Women have always understood me better than men. Most of my friends now are women.

I returned home from these scuffles with black eyes and gashed knees and scrapes and bruises. It’s amazing in hindsight how both of my parents looked the other way. Why did my mother stay with him? Well, I’ll deal with her when she dies, as we all eventually do. She had her reasons and she’s a piece of work too. People who have never taken the time to get to know me have sometimes declared me a piece of work. I can’t say that I blame them.

We are all some inexact sum of our parents, but we are different. It took me twenty-five years to learn that.

I have never wanted anyone to feel sorry for me, but I have insisted on respect. You would too if you had lived what I went through. I despise being a victim and I am often fierce towards malefactors to ensure that I am not a victim. I would rather burn a bridge with the fiercest fire rather than endure any further maltreatment. I’ve had enough abuse and hurt to last four lifetimes. I wouldn’t wish any of the pain I carry on anyone. But what makes my vengeful impulses any different from my father burning me with cigarettes? These terrible lessons I practiced in most of my adulthood were planted by the people who were supposed to take care of me. Who were supposed to love me. I sought father figures in my adulthood. And when these men wouldn’t do, I turned to dead male writers to learn how to become a man. An imperfect resort, but books have always saved me during every downward spiral.

I wasn’t much of a man for a very long time. Not until after forty, when I lost everything and I was left for dead by those who were closest to me and I rebuilt my life. I’m still not sure where my stubborn tenacity comes from. I suppose it emerged because it was the only way I knew how to survive. Or maybe it was a better version of the unearned stubbornness and the shameful entitlement that my indolent do-nothing sad sack of a father always had. Knowing I could never count on anyone other than myself. Or so I thought at the time. I have since learned otherwise. I have learned that more people love me or wanted to love me than I was willing to perceive or admit. And for the ones who I scared away, I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I am still trying to understand why anyone would love me, but I am getting better at accepting that people do love me. I built a new family from my friends. I remain grateful every day that I have this. I remain especially grateful to those who stuck it out with me for the long haul and who continued to see what even I couldn’t see. Blindness and obliviousness to my positive qualities has been the way I have always survived. Because I truly didn’t want to become like him.

Before I learned that my father was dead, I had not seen or spoken with my father in more than two decades. When I told my closest friends that my father had died, I was stunned when they reached out to me and they let me ramble about my conflicted feelings. Boisterous friends spoke in soft voices that I had never heard before. I told them, “No, he hurt me. He abused me. He warped me. He taught me the wrong lessons. He was a monster. He was an asshole. But he was still my father.” And they sweetly offered me drink and pot, which I politely declined. Because I had to consider all this with sober eyes. And on the night that I learned that my father died, I went to the karaoke bar and sang all the songs that he had once sang to me in his better moments. I hadn’t heard many of these songs in more than two decades. Corny songs from the 1970s. I somehow still knew all the words by heart. And I cried as I sang.

At night my father would drink. And I would be beaten again at night. My father at night. The kids during the day. There was a shed in the backyard of one of the homes we lived in and I recall nearly passing out from the redolent waft from all the empty beer bottles horded there. I binge drank as an adult to deal with my demons. And I was often mean and unpleasant. Like my father. Though not like my father. I didn’t physically abuse anyone. I was more interested in hurting myself. There was something strangely magnetic about creating scorched earth. These days, I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to. A few beers on the weekend and frequently none at all. But I do have to be careful.

His brain wasn’t all there. He had been in a terrible car accident because he refused to wear his seatbelt. And it impaired him. Fremont’s answer to Phineas Gage. The abuse escalated not long after this. But even before this, my father hurt me. When I was an infant, he tried out a homemade baby formula that sent me to the hospital and nearly killed me.

He was tall and lean. Like me. Although I’m still saddled with the belly on my mother’s side that I can never entirely melt down with brisk exercise. He was near-sighted and wore glasses. Like me. While my expressive face largely came from my mother’s side, the highly focused and contemplative look I have is definitely his. I inherited his reedy voice, which helped me in various creative capacities as an adult, and helped to cancel out some of the regrettably forceful qualities of my voice that I inherited from my mother’s side. But I suppose it all works out in the end.

The memory of his nimble hands. Like mine. But worse. He played the guitar. I learned to play the guitar because he had played the guitar. I became a better guitarist than he had ever been. And I have written countless dozens of songs on that guitar. But those same hands tried to suffocate me. Those same hands grabbed a pillow and smothered my tiny face. Those same hands delighted in the horrific sounds I made when he choked me. I still remember all the terrible times in which I couldn’t breathe and I suspect this is one of the reasons why I never entirely took to neckties as an adult. (Bright floral shirts? Happy red shoes? All the way.)

So how I can still mourn him? Stupidly. Maybe I mourned what I didn’t have.

When I learned that my father had died, I began making calls. I wanted to know when and why and how. And the details were sad. Dementia. 71 years old. He was not the only family member to suffer from dementia. Is this my future two decades from now? Jesus Christ, I live by my wits. Physical decline. No real reason to live. He had accomplished nothing. His domicile was little more than furniture pocked with cigarette burns. I guess he always needed some object to burn, even if it meant objectifying his own blood. An aspiring writer. But I actually got published in magazines and newspapers. He never got to tell his stories. But against all odds, I did. When it was clear that none of my work was ever going to be published in book form, I wrote scripts, created a rep house of dozens of actors, and produced my own audio drama and won awards. My seven part epic tale, “Paths Not Taken,” which spans nearly thirty years, is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I still get emails from people about it. I hope I can do better.

I telephoned my father’s brother, who I had not seen or spoken with since I was a child, and asked him questions and told him that my father abused me.

He refused to believe this.

He blamed me for cutting off ties. He blamed me for never reaching out to my father or my father’s side until he was dead. Somehow it was all my fault. When my father’s brother gave me a sad story about how my father couldn’t find work, what I didn’t tell him was how I had applied to 1,500 jobs during a rough time and somehow didn’t give up until I landed a decent paying job. Not only was my father determined to be a victim, but his family was determined to paint him this way.

I asked my father’s brother if he had ever thought of me.

“To tell you the truth, he didn’t think about you at all.”

And that’s when I knew I couldn’t speak with my father’s brother again.

Here’s what my father couldn’t do and I did. I learned how to be humble and gentle and empathetic and positive. I learned to love in ways that were beyond him. I learned how to take care of others, to put aside my own problems to be there for other people when they needed me, and to do any number of secret good deeds which nobody knows about.

I want to be clear that I’m no hero. But I did something that a lot of people couldn’t do in my situation. I became a better man than my father. And I’m only just getting started.

by Edward Champion

Not the New Messiah (NaNoWriMo 2022 #25)

In the final chapter of this NaNoWriMo experiment, Ezmerelda Gibbons makes a bold decision.

(Start from the Beginning: The Dead Writer)

(Previously: The Believers)

Nine months after the civil unrest in sixteen cities had been stubbed out (historians would later call this period the 2027 Pancake Riots because many of the protesters had doused bankers and Wall Street men in pancake batter, spawning an unanticipated costume trend the following Halloween in which kids bought third-hand business suits, dressed up as the rich, and trick-or-treated with gallons of pancake batter dumped over their heads), the Democrats — who controlled both the House and the Senate by a mere thread — had finally figured out, twenty years too late, that business-as-usual lip service and squeaky-clean centrism were probably not enough to hold the country together. They began welcoming more progressives into their wings, largely out of conceptual desperation rather than any genuine respect for a more left-leaning view, and the people elected them.

Sure, it wasn’t enough to prevent the Republicans landing the Presidency in 2032. But even the right-wing demagogues, whose veins popped out of their furious necks in much the same way that the Aztecs were drawn to ritual sacrifice, couldn’t gainsay that actually paying people a living wage and accounting for their heightened productivity had curbed both inflation and crime. The public copulation trend had fizzled out, replaced by a new self-love meme in which people became more encouraged to build off of the conceptual masturbation video framework initiated by Beautiful Agony and upload videos of themselves happily engaged in self-pleasure, which had the additional benefit of quelling the dangerous alt-right incel movement that had flourished for a good fifteen years. Somehow, the left and the right could find something to agree on. Everyone liked sex. Self-pleasure was also something that those who believed in abstinence before marriage could be included in. And while the more fundamentalist strains of Christianity thought this was all a moral catastrophe, several progressive-minded pastors had pointed out that this was better than people openly fucking in parks, cafes, and restaurants. And while dating apps had toppled on the verge of bankruptcy for the last few years (to say nothing of dating, which had become more cost-prohibitive during the 2026 recession), when the tech companies began encouraging people to include videos of themselves masturbating from the neck up, the strange honesty of being able to see how someone looked during an orgasm resulted not only in heightened sex, but healthier relationships. There were more enduring marriages (many of them rooted in the rising trend of ethical non-monogamy) and fewer divorces.

Celebrity scandals became less scandalous. When your spouse had an affair, there was more honest talk. And because people were a lot happier, more peaceful, and more comfortable with expressing their sexuality, the religious right swiftly descended in popularity. I mean, who wanted to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, put on a constricting necktie or a dress with a constraining undercarriage and listen to some pompous pastor expatiate about the professed virtues of the Holy Bible? Some churches were so desperate to stay afloat that they constructed glory hole rooms next to the confession booths. And when releasing your tensions — often to a frustrated housewife or a man who had stayed closeted for most of his life, both thrilled by the sudden acceptance — proved more popular than revealing your sins, even staid and humorless organizations like the Catholic League had to confess that they had lost the culture wars. They formed postmortem committees and tried to figure out new ways to court their declining constituencies. But it was all for naught.

And because people knew that there were all these new private and nonjudgmental venues to explore their kinks, there was a return to the enticing mysteries of meeting people without judging them solely on their social media footprint. The revenge porn problem was nipped in the bud. How could you humiliate an ex by despicably posting an old sex video if she had already beaten you to the punch?

After EveryoneFucks.com had gone bankrupt — in large part due to the erratic insanity of a billionaire CEO who burned through VC money faster than Elon Musk had — a new open source movement had arrived — one similar to the Fediverse — where a code of conduct was practiced and people were no longer publicly shamed for the spicy videos they posted. And this proved so paradigm-shifting that not even an obnoxious British writer named Ron Johnswain could find a conceptual hook for his facile Gladwellian books anymore — in large part because Johnswain had constructed his flimsy self-help premises without considering anyone other than damsels in distress. Johnswain was revealed as the knee-jerk huckster he had been all along and not even his annoying high-pitched British accent could win him an audience. He returned to Britain in shame to manage a Tesco supermarket.

Because the literary Daves had proven to be so monstrous during the Stroller trial (deemed the “trial of the century”), which had exposed the sex trafficking ring in all of its cruel depravity and caused Sophie Van Kleason, Clark Mannix, Bill Flogaast and numerous others to land long prison sentences, it took a good nine years before the publishers would buy a manuscript from anyone named David ever again. A few distinguished MFA workshops had even declined entry to anyone named David. Because Davids could no longer be trusted. Which wasn’t entirely fair to the more innocuous Davids out there. And when the David Oppression Movement emerged at Zuccotti Park in 2038, with numerous Davids descending on New York and declaring that they had the right to write novels, there was not only a new David Renaissance, but an unexpected rise in literacy. Numerous articles had declared the novel dead, but it was still quite alive — in large part because anyone with even a vague command of spelling and grammar simply didn’t know how to shut the fuck up.

And Ezmerelda Gibbons had emerged as the hero, even making the cover of the New York Times Magazine in a splashy profile. When Benjamen Stroller had been revealed as the man she had performed oral sex on in her final OnlyFans video, and the disturbing coercive measures he had used to silence her had at long last been released to the public, she wrote a memoir, which sold three times as much as Ali Breslin’s volume had. The film rights had been optioned for $4 million, though not without Ezmerelda exacting a contractual condition for Sven to serve as director of photography. Ezmerelda stopped production on Toking for Elders, but the backlist episodes proved insanely profitable. Because everyone wanted to know every detail about Ezmerelda’s story.

And on a spring day in 2031, Ezmerelda and Sven were sitting in Velseka at 2 AM after attending the film premiere of Not the New Messiah at the Paris Theatre and attending a ridiculous after party in which many Hollywood people had offered the two of them dubious promises of creative freedom and financial lucre. New York City was the last place on earth that even the quasi-famous could sit down and enjoy a meal without being mobbed. Sven spooned his borscht and Ezmerelda laughed when not eating her stuffed cabbage.

“How did you come up with that final shot?”

Sven picked up his phone and texted her. He still refused to talk.

The director had no idea what to do. John Ford seemed a good fit.

“John Ford?”

Sven delicately set down his spoon and held up his finger, urging her to watch. He picked up one of the paper menus and formed it into an improvised cowboy hat. And then he walked slowly towards the door. He looked back to see if Ezmerelda had figured it out.

“Oh! The Searchers!”

Sven returned to the table and excitedly nodded his head.

“But I’m not a racist.”

It was a joke.

“A joke?”

None of the film critics have figured it out yet.

“Oh!”

And once they do, they’re going to be pissed off.

It was certainly true. They’d been crazy about Not the New Messiah and there was early Oscar buzz.

“They mythologized me. They turned me into some paragon of virtue. Me! Of all people!”

Sven nodded.

“Sven, are you ever going to talk with me? We’ve known each other long enough to move past the Harpo act. Besides, the New York Times called me the ‘new Oprah.'”

“Okay,” said Sven.

Ezmerelda spit out her holubtsi. His voice was beautiful: dulcet, bright, and — she couldn’t deny — sexy as hell.

“Sven! Your voice is gorgeous.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“If I talk, they’ll find a reason to hate me.”

“But you’re hot, man! Teflon proof! For fuck’s sake, Paul Thomas Anderson wants you to shoot his next movie!”

“They canceled me when I spoke up.”

“But, dude, we’re winning! Look around us. People are actually enjoying themselves.”

And it was true. A couple swiftly falling in love with each other held hands. A group of twentysomethings laughed over their disastrous failure at the Rumpus Room. And a man who had looked very sad and lonely and friendless when they had walked in was now starting to smile after two guys had the decency to introduce themselves. And the three of them were now picking away at their beef stroganoff and making funny airplane sounds.

“Come on Sven. It hasn’t been this peaceful since Obama was President.”

“It will pass.”

“What?”

“Everything passes,” said Sven. “Ups and downs. It’s part of the human cycle.”

“You want to know something, Sven?”

“What?”

She placed her thumb and her forefinger to her lips and zipped it. Then she picked up her phone and started texting Sven.

Do you think I can last a week like this?

Sven laughed.

“They’re going to hound you.”

Who?

“The media.”

Let them. I’m done being their Messiah.

“They’ll offer you lots of money.”

I have everything I need.

“They’ll want your thoughts on everything.”

They should learn to think for themselves.

A young woman approached the table.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you…?”

“I think you have the wrong person,” said Sven.

“But she’s…she’s Ezmerelda Gibbons! Oh my god! I loved your memoir. It changed my life!”

Ezmerelda pointed to her mouth and held her hands up in the air.

“Oh! You’re mute! I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Sven. “She gets that a lot. Have a good night.”

The young woman curtsied and returned to her friends.

“You see,” said Sven. “Staying silent is a choice. And it’s very empowering.”

I get it now.

“I knew you would.”

But why are you talking now?

“Because now it’s time.”

Sven paid the bill and the two walked out of Veselka. They hugged and said goodbye. The Lyft driver was one of those mercifully silent types. And in the back of the car, Ezmerelda deleted her YouTube channel, her TikTok account, her Instagram account, and pulled the plug on her website. Let them find somebody else to speak for them. Let her audience speculate about why she had done this or what she was now doing. They would forget about her, just as they forgot about anyone who had landed fifteen minutes of fame.

She stayed up to watch the sun rise. She was too excited to sleep. There was a lambent blaze upon the glistening streets. And Brooklyn looked more beautiful, more gravid with exciting possibilities. She looked out the window and watched the people walking to the subway, the kids laughing on their way to school, the old school dude beatboxing on the corner, and a woman dancing as she cleaned her car. And she laughed. Everything was going to be all right. She finally knew what real life was. All she had needed to do was to cede the stage.

THE END
Edward Champion
Brooklyn, New York
November 1-30, 2022

(Word count: 52,702/50,000)

by Edward Champion

The Believers (NaNoWriMo 2022 #24)

In the penultimate chapter of this NaNoWriMo experiment, the junior Senator from South Carolina contends with the sinister philosophy of Bill Flogaast.

(Start from the Beginning: The Dead Writer)

(Previously: The Dead Journalist)

“I don’t need your help,” said Senator Rob Rollins, who had been in Washington long enough to know not to be intimidated by even the first-rate big shots. Even the big shots who were smarter than he was. After all, he was Senator, wasn’t he? But it was now clear that, for all of his bluster, Bill Flogaast was no longer a king. Bill Flogaast had violated the sanctity of his mountain retreat and he was now little more than a larval grifter. In fact, ever since Flogaast had left his perch as head publicist, he had looked more and more like an insect. There was now a strange buzzing quality to his voice: an emphysema-like rasp to his sentences. His hair had receded after his wife had left him and the thinning thatch had revealed the slithering chalky sheen of a spotted forehead: the kind of ugly and unsightly dome that only constant spite for others managed to bring out in bitter people afflicted by male pattern baldness. At least white supremacist opportunists like Tim Pool had the decency to cover up their hideous hate-riddled heads with a beanie.

“Don’t you want to preserve your political career?”

“At this point, I really don’t care. Bill, I have a few years left in my term. I came up here for some inner peace so that I could figure out how best to serve the South Carolinan people. Particularly with all the riots now going on.”

“Aha,” said Flogaast. “You want people to believe in you.”

“They can believe whatever they want about me.”

“But the videos, Rob.”

“It’s Senator to you, Bill. Yeah, my people are aware of this and they are on it.”

“I mopped it all up for you five years ago. Ask yourself, Senator, how much more your loyal constituents can handle images of their golden boy screaming at his flabby acolytes?”

“Debbie Ballard has been handling all issues related to my campaign. She’s handling my public image. Not you. You can take this up with her.”

“Oh, but I already did,” said Flogaast through a sinister smile that he had practiced after laughing over the way that a slimy former editor of the New York Times Book Review — a closeted misogynist who could never finish his book on a conservative “titan” — had somehow won over book nerds with his sleazy middle-aged teeth.

Flogaast flashed Rollins that smile. And it reminded Rollins of the skeeze lobbyists who had tried to bribe him in his first year in office.

“Debbie Ballard,” said Flogaast. “What if I told you that she was no longer around?”

“Are you threatening her?”

“Now, Senator,” said Flogaast, who now took a seat in the sacred wicker chair. “You and I both know that I don’t kill people.”

“You’re getting sloppy, Bill.”

“Oh?”

“This James Bond villain monologue. I thought it was beneath you. If you’re saying that you know about Atticus and me, well, tell it to the world. I don’t fucking care.”

The Senator walked to the minibar and overturned a tumbler, pouring himself two jiggers of bourbon. He rarely drank these days, but there were some times when you needed succor.

“Thanks,” said Flogaast.

“What?”

“I mean, thanks for offering me one,” said Flogaast, holding up his empty palm.

And the parallel to Ricky Gervais being brutally humiliated by Garry Shandling was too much for the Senator. He heartily chortled.

“Wow, Bill,” said Rollins. “You’ve become a walking cliche. Do you steal all your moves from stale memes?”

“70% of them, if you must know. Debbie Ballard is dead. Or at least she should be dead by now.”

“What?”

“As is Ali Breslin. And another not very bright journalist by the name of Herbert Budruck. Who knows, Senator? Maybe you might be next.”

“You know, threatening a government official is a felony under federal law. Up to five years of imprisonment. Do you want to go to prison, Bill? I mean, if you’re confessing to me that you’re an accessory to multiple murders, it sounds like you do.”

The Senator took a swig from his glass.

“Maybe,” said Flogaast. “Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t really care.”

He stood up, walked to the minibar, and poured himself twice as much bourbon into his tumbler as the Senator.

“What do you believe in, Senator?”

“Many things.”

“Do you believe in a god? I mean, I know you make appearances at churches to woo the Catholics and those middling and gullible Presbyterians. But you’re not really a religious man, are you? What do you believe in?”

“The human ideal. Or, rather, what people can make of themselves. Nobody’s perfect.”

“The physical body?”

“It started there.”

“How Leni Riefenstahl of you.”

“I’m not a Nazi, Bill. They can criticize my voting record or the bills I’ve had my people draft, but the one thing they can’t say about me is that I’m a Nazi.”

“No, they can’t,” said Flogaast, who took a big swig. “You’re something worse.”

“What?”

“You’re a covert believer, Senator. Someone who props up the sham narrative that everyone gets a piece of the pie. I mean, do you think it’s an accident that we punctuate our Thanksgiving meals with pumpkin pie? Which we never eat any other time of the year?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Belief, Senator. Everybody wants to believe in something. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, democracy. You name it. They used to have the Church. But practicing the teachings of Christ meant that they actually had to read books. That they had to be good. And they didn’t want to be good, Senator. No, not at all. I’ve seen it. I’ve covered up misbehaving authors and true reprobates. I tried coaching them, but they didn’t listen. Just as most people don’t want to listen. Because being good is too difficult, Senator. It requires effort. It requires thinking outside of yourself. And most people don’t want to do this because they are inherently selfish. Do you think it was an accident that empathy became politicized after the pandemic seven years ago? That helping people became a partisan issue? I’ve also been in publishing long enough to know that people don’t read as much as they used to. But here’s the big surprise. They are reading Ali Breslin’s book and they will learn about you.”

“So I trained the woman — what was her name?”

“Ezmerelda Gibbons.”

“Ezmerelda Gibbons, that’s right. So I had an appointment with Ezmerelda Gibbons on the day that Paul Van Kleason died. Big deal.”

“But Ezmerelda told you about the ring, didn’t she?”

“The ring?”

“Don’t be naive with me, Senator. The ring! The little getaway to Amsterdam that Stroller had cooked up, where anyone — including a lot of award-winning authors who I handled, including all of the literary Daves — could engage in the most vile depravity imaginable and suffer no consequences. No questions asked. They fucked children, Senator. Children who were groomed through alt-right websites and smuggled to Europe in airplanes. They had so much money — and, with inflation, money has talked more than it ever has in American history — to bribe families and anybody else who wanted to look into this. I mean, did you ever wonder why so many Republicans — your party, by the way — are so obsessed with pedophilia? That Pizzagate conspiracy theory from way back when. That was mere projection. They were the ones who were running the ring in plain sight. And they would never acknowledge this because they wanted to believe they were good. Even when they were spouting homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Semitism on social media. They had Elon Musk and Kanye West under their finger, right when these wildly mediocre men were losing their fortunes, and that made the expression of hate and nastiness — under the guise of being good, under their twisted virtue of ‘free speech’ — so much easier before Twitter went down. But then they started fucking each other in public. And some of the more prominent figures — like Brad Carmody and David Fitzroy — had to kill themselves. And some of them — like David Leich — became murderers. And if they couldn’t outright kill people, they’d find someone who could. Because they couldn’t live with this contradiction. The idea of being good when they really weren’t. The impossible ideal of living up to perfection, easily punctured by some troglodyte in his basement dredging up tweets from twelve years ago to cancel them. They started tracking everyone around them with the Samsung Surrounder and ascribing a new and completely manufactured currency of goodness through online reputation.”

“What does this have to do with me? I’ve never been to the Netherlands.”

“Oh, sure, I know you weren’t directly involved, but you withheld knowledge.”

“I was never questioned.”

“Your name was in Stroller’s black book.”

“He had a lot of names. I never visited him in the Netherlands.”

“But you know people who did. And Ezmerelda confided in you to name these names. Just as Paul Van Kleason was about to do before — well, before, certain people — maybe some man fond of wearing burgundy ties who fled to the Dominican Republic, one of those guys who never stays loyal, that asshole! — took care of him. But Ezmerelda? Well, they couldn’t kill her. Because it would look very suspicious if the person who discovered Van Kleason’s body was also dead.”

“And then Ali Breslin came along.”

“And made Ezmerelda a hero. You see, she was in a rough spot with that last Onlyfans video she made, which she didn’t want to make. And you knew her. And what will the American people have to say about that?”

“I never talked with Stroller.”

“No, but your association with Ezemerlda speaks for itself. And Stroller did have your number. And a lot more than that. You had Atticus.”

“Bill, I work with colleagues who have done far worse than I have and who have been far more reckless. I mean, they’re so flagrant that they don’t even try to disguise their Cash App transactions anymore. And you know what? Nobody cares. Unless you’re a Democrat. And then you step down from office like Al Franken.”

Flogaast returned to the wicker chair.

“Nobody cares, huh?” he said. “Oh, but they will care. Because it’s very easy to make people believe. Let me tell you a story. Have you heard of Peter Reilly?”

“No.”

“September 29, 1973. He was an eighteen-year-old kid. His mother was killed the previous night in their Connecticut home. Her throat was slashed. Her legs were broken. There had been evidence that she had been raped, Senator. A grisly sight. And Peter came home from a meeting at the teen center and he saw his mother bleeding on the floor, unable to breathe. Oh, he had found his mother alive. But of course she soon died. And that last little detail raised the heckles of the local police. Sure, there was no blood on his clothes. Why, Peter was in the clear! But it was that tiny discrepancy that did it. He was held overnight by the police. And they interrogated him for six hours. Didn’t get a wink of sleep. And he finally cracked under the pressure of losing his mother, the lack of sleep, and the constant questioning by the police. And even though he was innocent, the police kept at it. It didn’t take all that much. They told him that he was confused, that he had somehow blocked the event from his memory, and that he must be mistaken in his account. Peter even refused the right to an attorney. Well, he signed a confession and he went to prison for manslaughter, still insisting that he had killed his mother. But he hadn’t. And really, Senator, that’s all it take to get people to believe. And as a publicist, I’ve been in the business of getting people to believe things that never actually happened. So that’s who you’re dealing with right now.”

“I’m not an eighteen-year-old kid.”

“Neither was Fitzroy, Carmody, Leich, or any of these guys. People want to believe, Senator. Orwell was significantly understating things. You don’t have to torture anyone with the rats to get people to believe that two plus two equals five. All you have to do is gaslight them. But you don’t even have to do that. If someone in a position of social media influence says something is so, it simply is. Forget Edward Bernays. It’s Goebbels who was right all along.”

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Or what?”

“Bill, you made the mistake of not remembering that South Carolina is a one party consent state.”

The Senator set down his drink on the table.

“Alexa,” he shouted to the ceiling, “play back the part about Amsterdam.”

The little getaway to Amsterdam that Stroller had cooked up, where anyone — including a lot of award-winning authors who I handled, including all of the literary Daves — could engage in the most vile depravity imaginable and suffer no consequences.

“Alexa, stop. I think that’s enough for the Feds, don’t you?”

Flogaast polished off the last of his bourbon and set his empty tumbler next to the Senator’s very full one.

“You’re making a mistake, Rob.”

“It’s Senator Rollins.”

That’s when Flogaast busted out his pistol. The Senator dived and Flogaast fired off a shot just six inches above his head, the bullet casting a hole in the Riding Bikes print. Flogaast was no match for the Senator, who had stayed in shape. The Senator tackled Flogaast with a fierce run directed at his waist, knocking the gun from Flogaast’s hand. They rolled on the floor, knocking over a vase on the credenza, which splintered into shards. But the Senator had Flogaast’s hands pinned behind his back in less than two minutes.

“You thought you were so smart, Bill. But you made one mistake. Every house is now smart.”

“Is there anything I can help you with?” said Alexa.

“No. Thank you, Alexa.”

“You’re very welcome, Senator. Estimated time of police arrival: two minutes and twenty-two seconds.”

But Flogaast didn’t need the countdown clock. Because the police sirens were now piercing through the peace.

Six months later, after the protests had died down, EveryoneFucks.com went belly up, and people had returned to the innocent practice of sharing cat videos on the Internet, the video of the Rollins/Flogaast struggle went viral and the Senator had publicly come out, Atticus took him back. They were married one year later. And in the 2032 presidential election, Rollins swiftly became the Republican frontrunner, roundly defeating Ron DeSantis and a wheelchair-bound orange menace in the primary debates. And it all happened because the people simply wanted to believe in something. That something became President-Elect Rob Rollins.

(Next: Not the New Messiah)

(Word count: 50,752/50,000)