The House of Writers (23 page)

T
HE
sixth floor is fairly clinical with its very-off-white corridor, lino of dark aqua, and series of small lavatories—males on the left, females on the right—filling the air with scents of elderberry, lavender, vanilla, and shit. A sign reads:
Please do not use the toilets on this floor. Content testing in progress.
As I arrived, a man in lab coat (one of the “labcoats,” strangely enough) with a clipboard, black spectacles and an urgent face appeared—the look of someone unafraid and downright willing to tackle a fresh stool sample. “Are you a tester?” he asked. “I was hoping to write here,” I said. “No openings for content makers. You can test for us if you like. We’re short,” the man said. (He was short too, coincidentally). I was urgently walked to the not entirely unprisonlike canteen—a bustling eatery full of ravenous testers being served curries, beans, and all sorts of bowel-loosening meals, and told to help myself and honk my horn when ready (horns were placed on the tables to attract the labcoats, who hovered at the back waiting to swish). I ladled a skimpy helping of madras onto my plate, showered in pilaf rice and soaked up with two auriform naans. I found space beside a thug named Kobo with a shaven head and the tattoo of a gardening accident gone wrong: roses and pitchforks and severed limbs rising from his lower neck to his head. Kobo forked syrupy vindaloo into his mouth with starveling mania, alternating each spoonful with a doughnut. He was skinnier than me but could apparently consume four meals simultaneously without damaging his shapely figure. I chose not to say hi.

Quickly forgetting my table manners, I attacked the madras like a glutton, downing my pint of ale in record time, and flurped back in my chair when finished, remembering to honk the horn. A labcoat swished me into the corridor toward the testers’ loos. He handed me the hardback
A Thousand Squirrel Photobombs—a
heavy picture book consisting entirely of photos where squirrels appeared in the background and ruined the intended shot in a way that some might deem amusing. The labcoat told me to press the bog-side button when I was bored reading (looking) and sealed me in the overly bright and bleached toilet. I had clearly misunderstood the honking command, believing the honk signified a full stomach and not a readiness to excrete. But I sat on the toilet anyway and focused my attention on the pesky squirrels. After five minutes I was bored and unamused, so flushed the toilet and washed my hands, feigning a swift voidance to escape the book. The labcoat, in marigolds, placed the squirrel book in a plastic Ziploc bag and mechanically thanked me for the feedback, swish-tickling me to the chill-out area. I was handed a pocket horn to honk if the urge for further ablutions should arise. The chill-out space is a large common room, where lazy and semi-obese halfwits in slogan-savaged tracksuits sit around watching TV soaps, discussing the books read (looked at), speaking in crude staccato, and hooting at anything remotely rude or euphemistic. A bald one slurred loudly about the hirrarious
Pictures of Stoned Cats,
which was so hirrarious he lillerally forgot he was shitting, while a spotty one was so fulking bored by
Things to Say to Uptight Butlers
that he coonent congcemtrape on shitting the shit out his shithole and had to put the book down and heave the fulkers by holeing onto the heave bars. A tiny blonde one said that she rannou of poo playper, so used plages out of the blook, which was the bess fulking use for the fulking blook she could fulking think of, ha-ha-ha-ha-fulk-you. I smiled along to be chummy.

For my second trip to the testing toilets, I was handed
Writers Making Tits of Themselves
. The book contained shots of various writers across the world looking like crazed yetis, clinging to the legs of ScotCall tyrants, begging hobos for money to help self-publish their manuscripts, lying dead and frozen in ditches with pens clutched to their hands, or being shot by laughing policemen. I discovered that the shit flowed freely looking at these images (as you can imagine!), and more shit than I had intended to shit was unleashed almost on cue. I flicked to the end page and honked later than planned, unable to look away from the pathetic horror. The success of this test meant the book would be published. As the chattier lab coat explained: “The process is pretty straightforward for publishing our books. If the manuscript keeps testers fixed to the toilet for the duration of their shit, or makes them want to hold back the shit for the sake of reading, the book is considered successful. Books that make testers eager to finish up their shit so they can get away, or are used as loo paper, are not taken to publication stage beyond the trial copy, no surprise. We restrict our content to funny or soothing pictures, or occasionally ones with very small lines of text, because most people find it hard to shit and read at the same time, and sometimes the images distract and help them with trickier shits, so that makes the bowel movements flow much easier. We’re in the unblocking business, not the literature business. The success of the shits is normally attributed to the success of the books the testers are reading as they’re shitting. So it isn’t exactly an exact science, but works pretty well.” I nodded and returned to the chill-out area. “How illuminating,” I wanted to say, but would have sounded like a ... shit?

In the chill-out room, the testers (who you probably realise I disliked—you may find their brand of earthy humour to your liking!) kicked off a frank discussion of the type of shits they produced as they were reading (looking). How certain pages of certain books led to a series of small turds, while others created serious blockage, and people discussed the weight, consistency, density and malleability of their shits in response to certain images—cute kittens usually made for fluffier shits, while angry dogs or dirty photos usually made for tougher shits, which was simply a technique to force the shit back in so you would spend longer on the loo not shitting and reading (looking at) the book. Erotic images were even worse, as the urge to masturbate would overtake the necessity to shit, and you’d never get going after you’d knocked one out into the loo roll first. I had the strongest urge to leave and ... sob? Shit? Among the titles they discussed were:
100 Wonkiest Gerbil Eyebrows, SuMu’s Subway Shoe Disasters, Sex Tips of Centenarians, America’s Cutest Roadkill, 57 Pictures of Albinos Eating Grapes, Fallout!: Chernobyl’s Zaniest Mutations, 77 Manx Cats with Photoshopped Tails, What Would Preschoolers Look Like with the Heads of the Bee Gees?, How to Scare Yourself in the Mirror, The Difference Between Short & Sharp, Forty More Pictures of Paint Drying!!!, Jezz Wimpole’s Book of Boobies, Jesusface—Our Lord Rendered in 76 Objects, Sorry, Switzerland!: Korea’s Clumsiest Missile Strikes.

I often fell asleep on the loo. My eyes glazed. My selection process become wholly arbitrary. For books whose content I despised, I would speedily dispatch shits out of spite, and those I thought amusing I would champion by squeezing my buttocks together to suppress the flow. The power of the laxative smoothies and evacuant nature of the curries made shits erupt quickly, while sometimes shits were a tougher consistency if raisin bran and prunes were quaffed in enthusiastic mouthfuls. The eater’s taste in foods was really the criteria by which the books were published, so the setup was pointless. I wondered if this was the procedure when publishing houses existed. If editors took the manuscripts into the bathrooms after very heavy lunches and mistook their slow bowel movements for the quality of the manuscripts. Did that mean literature had always been associated with the production of shit? Next up,
74 Pictures of Kids Shitting on Shakespeare,
a book purposefully designed to confront writers. I winced at the pesky kidolts doing their mess over The Bard’s complete works, but took the elevated stupidity of the enterprise on the chin—no amount of junior poo could erase any Great Literature! Once again, I had taken so long making faces of horror that the book would probably be distributed. I explained to the labcoat that I was shitting slow because of my repugnance at the images, but the labcoat said that sort of response was an added marketing bonus—people who still respected the lineage of good writers would read in horror (“shock-lit”) and those who hated books would naturally find the whole thing funny. I clenched. (My teeth).

The experience reminded me in part of the philistinism I encountered at school, where my interest in books had been met with fear—fear that my bizarre obsession might infect those close by, lead to them picking up books and ideas, until the school was riddled with incurable verbivores, brainwashing the campus with facts and learning that had little to do with ScotCall procedures—how to cure desk cramp or how to deal with customers who had trouble determining whether ring pulls should be pulled towards or away from the drinker. Apart from Kirsty’s sisterly reminders of the worthlessness of writers and me in particular, I’d never encountered such blatant hatred towards books—nothing to the extent of the loo roll with passages from Shakespeare, Dickens, Eliot, and Coulter that were being tested in the department at the time (which despite the blankness on the other side, would still end up in a bowl of shit being flushed towards a palace of shit). If you need reassurance that all the great books are being read, this is not the floor for you. One day, returning to the chill-out area after a tikka with pilaf rice, two poppadoms, and a knickerbocker glory with extra knickers, a tattooed tough was saying how megaliffic his latest dump was, how he was made to read this book wiff picturs of like fames people but wiff their heads replaced wiff monkey arses, and how he was laffing so much he piffed himself first, and didn’t notice when the shit dropped out, and a squat OAP with maxi-specs was saying it was crimnal that they was given such guid biks to read whall shitting, coz his bik had these piccurs of fat hookers covered in choc sauce and ha-ha-ha-ha the lass thing he wanted to do was hurry up shittin when these hot hooks were makin him hard, and a teenager said that he was ragincoz the book he got was all about pottery and what kind of cunt reads a book all about pottery for fuckssake? At that point I stood up and left the sixth floor forever.

A Word from the Team

L
ABCOAT:
Testers required. No experience of reading necessary. NO WRITERS NEEDED.

I
AM
the author of this novel and I have lied to you, and taken unhealthy pleasure in lying to you, and I will continue to lie to you until you beg for more. I have lied about everything in my real life (which does not exist—even as the “author” I am a construct invented to represent aspects of the “real” author—however, let’s not tangle ourselves in semantic or metaphysical notions). I have lied my way through life, relishing in the saltiest untruths. When people have asked me, “Is that soup made of string?” I have replied, “No. That soup is made of soup.” I have told many dirty, unfair lies, and I have delighted in every one. The truth is a pointless concept, invented by non-writers to keep the masses logical and docile, to eliminate the pleasures of fiction-making. Punch the truth hard.

Y
OU
realise, by now, I could have sifted through the fields outside and found a stapler?” Erin asked.

“Yes, a stapler to staple your lips shut.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh ... no, I meant ... hmm, as the staplers are feral out there. . . anyway, this is Gerald. He has occasional violent episodes, such as strangling or stabbing writers. Apart from that, a perfectly nice chap,” the doctor said, opening on a trimmed man in his forties sitting on his bed listening to Devo on his iPod.

“Hi there! Sorry, I didn’t see you both sidle in.”

“We’re sly sidlers.”

“Sly sidlers! I like that.”

“This is Erin, Gerald.”

“Wow, I love your hair, Erin. Do you use Pantox medicated shampoo?”

“No. I use a Lemmox follicle fixer.”

“Also a quality brand.”

“Gerald, Erin would love to hear your story, if you have a spare few minutes?”

“Gosh! I had my lugs full of Devo’s seminal
Freedom of Choice
LP. I suppose I can hit the old pause button and spin the old spiel again. I promise not to lapse into a writer-throttling rage this time, doc! Right. I was freshly appointed co-editor of a quarterly magazine. I hadn’t written a single story in my life, nor studied literature, nor read more than forty books, but I didn’t feel that impeded my ability to recognise top-quality literary fiction when I read (or skimmed!) it. I had to read a thousand stories a week. Once I had selected two from that thousand for publication, I passed them on to my co-editors, and we voted for the final line-up. Our first story, by Cody Trylomp, ‘Green Faucets’ was a searing portrait of a minor league soccer team in New Hampshire, set against one father’s struggle to quench his thirst for victory and come to terms with his daughter’s autism. Cody sent his short bio: ‘Cody is a writer, poet, and scriptwriter barely scraping a living as an IT assistant in the Appalachian mountains. In his spare time, he plays dodgeball with his manic toddler Tommy, and helps his beautiful wife Karen with her Hollywood screenplays.’ I found the bio irritating. Next story was by Mandi Brookelyfe, ‘Jane’s Wrists,’ about a cutter who struggles with her weight while running an independent bookstore in Wisconsin. Her bio: ‘Mandy is a writer and novelist. She received her [list of academic qualifications]. Her works have appeared in [list of over twenty magazines]. She loves carving skulls into cookies and surfing the zeitgeist in a monogrammed thong.’ I became enraged at this point and had to take a comfort break. Next story, ‘K. Comes to Brooklyn’, by Artie Loden, about a stoned NYC scriptwriter stalked by Kafka’s shadow. His bio: ‘Artie seeks abstractions from the most sordid of sources. His ying is pursuing a PhD on Kafka’s silence, his yang likes beer and pool.’ I kicked things under the table. Further bios included: ‘Serena sits in coffee shops pondering the vicissitudes of bran muffins. If not writing her overdue thesis on Paul Auster, she can be found editing the radical webzine
Scissors Trumps Rock.’
And: ‘Brian Fripp divides his time between Leeds and Tijuana. He spends too much time watching
CSI: Miami
and playing korfball. He is working on a screenplay about Andy Warhol’s fondness for Greta Garbo.’ And: ‘Julie Wilmott likes a nectarine on occasion. When she is not staring into space or fixing valve amps, she writes novels about cisgender puppies and Capuchin monks.’ I exploded. I hurled my Apple Mac out the window, crushing four pigeons. I ran into the street seeking vengeance on the writers who had penned these self-loving whimsical cooler-than-thou bios and, failing to find them, stabbed a tramp outside Oddbins. In prison, I stabbed a writer whose bio I spotted: ‘Derek imagineers sci-fi and erotic literature. If not cleaning out the toilets on E-wing, he can be found in the prison library, brushing up on his Dickens and Zola.’ My defence was that the word ‘imagineers’ alone justified the homicide. I was declared insane and escaped the asylum. I came here to kill everyone in the building. Fortunately, the doctor here intervened before I reached my tenth murder. His treatment has been valuable, but I still have that insatiable bloodlust whenever I read an author’s bio.”