Novel

Saturday, March 5

Brew once said he wanted to be a rock star, by which he meant he wanted to be delivered to the back door of the stadium in a limousine, rather than have to drive to work, and find a parking space.

But there was a certain charm to being able to go somewhere incognito, and observe people like a fly on a wall, rather than like several flies on a turd, a writers conference was a good example of the latter.

Brew just added an epigraph to the front of DRAGGING UP, from Charles Bukowski's Women.

It went after the quote from Brenda Saunders. "Don't write anything negative. Nobody wants to read it."

I disliked them all immediately, sitting around acting clever and superior. They nullified each other. The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.

Brew liked driving to a book fair more than he liked the book fair itself. He would write poems in a composition book. There would be a sense of anticipation, promise.

The smell of lamb, roasting on a spit, the pennants snapping in the breeze.

Then, when he got there, he felt like an interloper, the poor boy at the party, a fraud.

Who was he kidding?

Robert Gover wrote a book called Poor Boy at the Party which took place in Gifford, Florida, an all-black community outside Vero Beach.

A white guy would feel out of place in Gifford.

Brew looked up poor boy at the party, gifford in Google, and got a hit on an entry in THE SALVAGE ARCHEOLOGIST OF FLORIDA'S CO-OPTED COASTS: A MEMOIR OF 38 YEARS OF GRACIOUS CRACKER LIVING

Robert Gover called a book Poor Boy at the Party.

It took place in Gifford, Florida, an all-black town next to Vero Beach, where the Dodgers hold Spring Training.

When Hoke Moseley's wife ran off with the black baseball player, they lived in Vero Beach. Not Gifford.

Gifford might not be all-black, anymore. It might be historically black.

Frenchtown, in Tallahassee, on the edge of which Brew and Brenda once lived, was not all-black anymore. There was some poor white trash in there.

In fact, Brew and Brenda, and Owen and Balder, were poor white trash. If where you live defines you.

They had always lived in declining neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that were going black.

He remembered the joke about the black family who moved into a formerly white neighborhood. The black family told their white neighbors, "We're just as good as you, in fact, we're better than you, because we don't live next door to no niggers."

All stories are real estate stories, transportation stories, to a working stiff, Brew wondered if his car would make it to Tallahassee and back tomorrow, for the book fair.

Once when they went to see Dread Clampitt open for Barefoot Manner at The Warehouse, the family car broke down on the way home. At Fort Braden.

Don't think negative thoughts.

Always merry and bright.

But whenever he went to Tallahassee now, his asshole clenched around Fort Braden.

Brew would go to the book fair.

Big as you please.

Who was to say he was not a writer?

Some fly, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the other flies. On a small-pond turd.

Me and you are pals--huh, Spike?

He would walk down the center of the street like Charles Bukowski, smoking a Hav-a-Tampa cigar and whistling "Waltzing Matilda."