A Moment of Doubt (3 page)

I've spilled heroin all over the computer. This could be bad news for the disk drives, they're kind of touchy, especially these older jobs, caked as they are with all the sleaze I've sent through them over the years. I'll clean them with coke to wake them up. Sleep mode, coke mode, smack mode, speedball mode, the drives get it all, they deserve hits of each and the best, considering what they go through, what goes through them. My two disc drives, they're like priests in twin confessionals, with a single supplicant, slobbering and masturbating and retailing sin after sin, alternating between them, so each has time to digest the horror, the insanity, the lust, the gore, the needle marks on the spines of my books, the incredibly labyrinthine descriptions of my landlady's vagina, and what brandy tastes like when it's sipped from there, and speculations about how the unction of the Holy Sacrament might better serve mankind, were it dispensed from Marlene's cunt—we're hawking extreme unction. My God, one of these priests would say, and getting a faraway expression in his eye, as if in his mind racing to an astral file in heaven to check up on precedents, he commences to grind away at this idea, just like a disc drive gone off to look for something it hasn't already loaded into RAM, caught by surprise that you'd be bringing up such a thing now, laddie, as sipping the sacramental wine out of a lady's vagina, and, now, he ponders, forefinger by his swollen Irish nose, would that be in an
upright
position, or . . .

Check you later, Fadder, call me if you get an insight. I've got to go, it's Tuesday already, there's heroin all over the computer, and I haven't killed enough people yet this week to pay for it.

But it's not that simple. Nothing's ever easy in this life. By the time I make it back to my room, with a handful of change, holding up my pants and trying to find my place in the computer magazine, I'm so distracted by the possibility of having to commit murder in the midst of an otherwise more or less numinous day that I only absently run my finger through the smack on the chassis, wondering where this umber dust came from, and looking up at the ceiling above the machine like a goddamn idiot, that I forget to realize that the shit has materialized out of nowhere, out the thin air of an amok despair I'd been fucking with all morning. To prove this, rather than snort or shoot it, I tickle the DELete key on the computer keyboard a few times. Sure enough, a few one-byte holes appear in the brown powder exposing the gray case of the computer beneath. I hold down the key, and it “echoes” its function, right to left, bottom to top, just like a cursor on a screen, until I release it. When I do release it, the brown powder is gone.

I check the screen.

“I, alas, Mr. Windrow, will never again appreciate this magnificent instrument firsthand, as it were.” Th imbelina lit another Gitane and blew a thick, blue smoke ring that spun and expanded in the air, encircling as it sank Tiny's massive penis and crashed into the monster's loins. Tiny sighed like a water buffalo. “But I assure you, Mr. Windrow, it's a thrill beyond heroin.”

Aha. Oho. Oh no. What Have I Done? Still standing
over the keyboard, with a bunch of damp change in one hand and the multipurpose computer magazine in the other, I close the file WIND (the 9th Martin Windrow novel, gag me), and save it, exit the writing software (WordStar). The machine warm boots, as it should, but then this message pops up

(xsub active) . . .
AØ>

What the fuck? XSUB is shorthand for the Extended Submit utility, copyright alla time by Digital Research and Gary Kildall, the brilliant author of CP/M, the operating system that runs my and tens of thousands of other people's computers. XSUB is a subset of SUBMIT—something my landlady understands better than I do—but on this machine is supposed to allow a long series or string of commands to happen, automatically, simply by calling the SUBMIT utility along with the name of the command routine. The first one I wrote, for example, after days of trial and error, I call KOPY.SUB. Simply entering SUBMIT KOPY at the keyboard formats a blank disc, places CP/M and three transient utilities on it, displays the new directory, and quits. Don't even need XSUB in there. But XSUB increases automation, if you want, allowing for example preconceived keyboard input to be entered from the program. The program runs things just as if there were an operator there, tapping in stuff from the keyboard; but, except to get things started, there needn't be an operator. Neat, huh?

You don't think so?

Well, how do you think I got nine Martin Windrow novels published?

Merit
?

Thimbelina smiled distantly. “I don't think it's a question of merit, exactly, Mr. Windrow. I think it's more a question of . . . size. That, and lubrication.”

Tiny grinned crookedly, cleared his throat, and spat on the palm of his hand.

Thimbelina blew concentric smoke rings at the night beyond the glittering, wet window pane.

But these SUBMIT routines can get very complicated, and moreover they are notorious for being erratic and unpredictable. What will run on one type of CP/M machine might not run on another, and what looks good in a routine you've been running since you wrote it, when slightly modified, might not work at all, or yield strange results.

After selling a couple of these Martin Windrow books, I realized that I could make an easy thing even easier by using a word processor to write them, instead of the old manual typewriter that Momma gave me when I was a prodigy. So I bought a computer. I won't mention the brand, as they might be touchy about having the words ‘sodomy' or ‘brainfuck' and ‘Kaypro' in the same sentence, then run their own copyright protection SUBMIT SUE routine on me, in the megafucker mainframe they undoubtedly have down there in Solana Beach to keep an eye on such things.

The computer changed mah life, buddy. Oh, sure, it made writing easier, if only by eliminating the need for carbons, retyping entire drafts, even Xeroxing to a certain extent, and perfect touch-typing. In fact, it's not any exaggeration at all to postulate that the computer is the hottest thing to happen to writing since movable type; or ink, perhaps. But you already know that, doncha. Smart reader. But if you're so smart, how come you, if an average
consumer, helplessly read 4.2 Martin Windrow mysteries a year? Huh? And this book, huh? Why don't you just put the motherfucker down and go to the beach? Or read Sidney Sheldon? There are a
lot
of books out there better than this one. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, not only have I read a hell of a lot of books that have been better than the one you're holding right now, I've
written
any number of books better than this one.
So Long, Pockface
is a prime, I mean a prime example. The first Martin Windrow novel,
Th e Gourmet
, is another.
Th e Gourmet
, (recently reincarnated as
The Damned Don't Die
, Black Lizard Books, Berkeley, California, 94710, $4.95) was so good that, to this day, the memory of the fire in which it was forged, the heat by which it was conceived, the exhausting volume of sperm dripping from the under-side of the desk at which I wrote it, to this very moment the memory of its creation haunts me. When, oh when, will I achieve such heights again?

“. . . swipe haunts me to this day, Mr. Windrow, as it will you. Of course, the thrill of it will be somewhat mollified, in your mind, by the specter of the possibility of your having contracted AIDS from Tiny, as he rapes you. That's the risk you take with us, Mr. Windrow, that's it in a nutshell. Not only do you risk death, but a most grisly death:
the most
grisly death.” Th imbelina paused to consider the smoke rising from his cigarette. Th e rain ticked hesitantly against the window, the traffc hissed on the street below. Slippery, wet sounds came from Tiny's side of the room, as the leviathan slowly masturbated in the dark.

Any writer worth his salt would confess to being unable to help himself, he has to write or go berserk, that's the choice, simple as that. Quality doesn't mean a thing. It's a nice thing to have, quality, kind of a dainty
embellishment, but it's a tough thing to get away with and still eat. Off your writing, I mean. But a few good tools can only help the process, quality not withstanding. It's a carnal bozo that blames his tools, and it's another one that won't admit of a tool's utility. You laugh. After you've finished, go talk to some writers. In a group of five, you'll find two who would barricade themselves in their rooms and live off their own shit before they'd touch a computer keyboard, much less write on one. They'll give you all these terms, like logorrhea, techno-facism, rosy-throated finches, negative capability, and Keats didn't need one.

Well, you might tell them, take a look at the bright side. There's an outside chance a few months in front of a leaky cathode ray tube might give you a fine case of tuberculosis, like what took off John himself, or worse. Isn't that inspirational? And being sat in front of the thing at the time, you'll be in a position to do something about it, fingers nicely arched over the keyboard, wrists not touching, palms not resting on the chassis, like a consumptive concert pianist, propped to his last effort.

“. . . inspirational, Mr. Windrow, by way of an early capitulation . . . to save yourself some pain—or pleasure—or, worse perhaps, the pain of admitting your own pleasure, no? You are, I believe, heterosexual, are you not Mr. Windrow? A
confirmed
heterosexual . . . ?”

It was only a year or two later that I really got into the operating system, how these machines work. At first it was intimidating. These machines are very powerful, do not doubt it. One doesn't simply start POKEing around. Well, some ones do. I did. Crashed the machine a lot, too. Inadvertently, at first; then, willfully. Software, hardware; new worlds and lots of them. If I'd been a kid when the
small computers reached the homes of America, I'd be a different person today. As it is, things are bad enough . . . Marlene . . . Andrea . . . Mattie . . . Hadley . . . As it is, all my women friends, the women I sleep with, have soft ‘a's in their names . . . A disconcerting bent . . . But Computer . . . There's a name without an ‘a.' And she's my friend, it's true, and I have fallen asleep over her, like a drunk on a whore, and still she works on for me, still she willingly SUBMITs . . . .

That KOPY.SUB routine I mentioned earlier consummated my interest in submission. A year later, I wrote the one, the one that . . . But the heroin . . . That's a new one, that's getting a bit . . . potent . . . .

See, there's this trend in publishing. You've no doubt heard about it. Eccentricities to the contrary, more and more writers have turned to the computer to write. Simultaneously, leading the way in fact, more and more publishers have turned to computers to assist them in the act of publication. As a result, many writers now submit their manuscripts in disc form, especially writers who have a direct relationship going with a particular publisher, so they have all kinds of little things straight between them, things like disc format, operating systems, writing software, dot commands, etc. etc. Things that enable the writer to give the publisher a disc, all other things editorial having been taken care of, that is, capable of being converted directly from the writer's original into type, and thence into a book. A typeset book, with covers, art, blurbs, price and everything else added by whoso-ever does such things, by computer, along the way. It's a fantastic concept, and it's more than a concept. Modern quilldrivers do it every day, and so do their publishers.

Not only all that but, using modems and telecommunications, a writer far away or in a hurry or famous
enough to get away with it, can
phone
his manuscripts to his publishers. To provide a well-known example, Arthur C. Clarke modems all his scripts, rewrites, changes and contracts back and forth from the outside world to and from fucking Sri Lanka, while sitting in front of his computer in a sarong, where the noted author maintains a small but serviceable paradise of electronic and natural synergy. This process of course involves even more software and hardware than the simple exchange of discs: equipment and programs that can dial the phone for you, at a certain time—any time, very late at night, for example, or on the weekend after New Year's Eve . . . —access a certain area of the answering computer, deposit certain information there, retreat without leaving a trace . . . .

Does this give you any ideas?

It did me. I confess. Mea culpa, little disc drives, it gave me a whopper: BOOK.SUB.

I had this ‘relationship' with a publisher. Like most such ‘relationships,' this one hinged on a particular editor. She liked my writing, so she saw that this publisher, Crow Mignon Books, published my writing. Her name, by the way, was Matilde. Another ‘a' name. Eastern European. Great guttural, salivaridden phone voice. Never actually saw her face to face. But it was Matilde who gave me my first good phone. It went something like this.

“Mr. Jameson?”

“Hello.”

“Mr. Jas Jameson?”

“Hello hello.”

“Well.”

Pause.

“Ahem.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Jameson.”

“And whom may I say I am pleasing?”