most of my stories are out and about, awaiting decisions. but those that come back - and nearly all have been through at least one round of submissions already - keep on being annoyingly close. I can't believe it's just overpoliteness by all the editors - I know every editor is capable of putting crap in an envelope and returning it with a form letter because it's just too horrible to comment on - and the comments are consistent - that the stories are good, but they can't use them. And I want to shake them and say WHY NOT?
the only conclusion is that something is missing. that I have most, but not all of what I need. I only wish I knew what it was.
now I'm back at Uni and of course the assignments and reading are taking a lot of time. and a lot of time is just what I don't have. I'm trying to make the best of them, but I doubt that they're proper stories. today's example:
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On Friday night at half past six, Michael went into his bedroom. He placed his black army disposal satchel on the bed, switched on the lamp over the desk. From the open mouth of the bag he took three books: solid, thick-covered, obscure of title.
When he sat on the old vinyl office chair, thirty years old in seventies orange, it creaked and rocked with his weight. Michael’s left elbow came down hard on the desk; his cheek lolled onto his upturned palm; with his right hand he stretched slowly across the desk to take a pen from the porcupine collection stuffed into a clean jam tin. The label had been removed and the ridges around the tin gleamed under the desk lamp. In the shadows behind the articulated lamp half a dozen pages from magazines clung to the wall; from them, fawn-eyed young women with sleek hair and polished cleavages looked down upon him.
His mother’s footsteps approached; first distant and sharp on the kitchen linoleum, then quick and muffled in the hall; then heavy and wooden as she stopped just inside the door to Michael’s room.
Michael didn’t lift his head. His hand worked at his hair where it touched his fingers. The pen moved across the page.
A coffee cup descended into his field of vision. It was white, decorated with the faded logo of a cartoon character Michael had watched on TV every Saturday morning when he was younger. His mother still made his coffee in it every night.
A breath, a kiss, brushed the back of his neck where the hair turned to stubble. Michael went to the barber every fourth Saturday. Every boy in his school had the same haircut; their uniforms were always clean. They wore ties in summer.
The door closed. His mother’s footsteps moved away. It was quiet in the room, the television in the lounge room too far away to be anything but a drone. Michael pushed the desk away from himself, gliding backwards on the yellow floorboards. The chair met the bed. Michael turned his torso sideways until both hands were on the bed; rolled off the chair and knelt in front of the bed. The quilt cover was black and red, an image of a giant football at its centre.
Michael’s arms went under the bed, touched metal. He sat back on his heels, pulled out the box. The tape was still in place; two pieces of it, as small as possible, across either end of the black tin box. Michael felt under the bedframe for the chunk of Blu-Tac there, where he’d put it last Friday He rubbed the paste away from the key and unlocked the box.
He worked fast. He turned the desk lamp towards the mirror set in the door of the old timber wardrobe; out of the black tin box came brushes, paints, soft padding, bindings, glues. The night was passing.
Michael lowered his head to his chest, raised the headband of the wig to his forehead and held it tight. His head came back fast, chin up. His long blonde hair settled down around his shoulders. He looked in the mirror and smiled, all his teeth showing. The blue glitter at the corner of his eyes flashed in the spotlight.
The window opened and closed silently; he oiled it every Thursday night. In the room, nothing moved. The starlets watched the Michael-sized lump under the quilt. The clock on the desk ticked, second by second.
The window opened and closed silently. Michael’s bare feet touched the floor; in his left hand were his size 10 red high heels. He knelt at the bedside and pulled out the box. It was how he’d left it; everything packed away except for the cleansers and tissues, and the polythene storage bag. Slowly, he pulled the wig off and laid it in its place.
He looked at the clock on the desk. It was half past six on Saturday morning.
