* * *
For a several days, I couldn't stop thinking about space. Mark couldn't help but remark upon my giddiness. In fact, he thought it was a refreshing change from my usual brooding and complaining that I still wasn't published.
“I mean,” I said one time over coffee, “what if space aliens really exist?”
“Chances are they don't,” said Mark, ever the realist.
“But let's say they do--”
“--Which they probably don't--”
“Shut up, Mark. Anyway. What if my novel is the first taste they get of a culture from another galaxy?”
“Well, what did you put in it?” asked Mark. “Would they like our culture?”
“Depends on if they have a sense of humor,” I said. “It's a funny murder mystery. I hope they don't think that everyone in our culture kills each other all the time.”
“--Which we do,” said Mark, with one of those smug grins he put on when he knew he was being incorrigible. I playfully punched him on the arm.
The next day I checked my email. Three new messages. They all read like exactly this:
“Dear Author:
Thank you for sending our agency your query. We’d like to apologize for the impersonal nature of this standard rejection letter…”
I closed my browser, and went to work.
I think it’s about time I specify how I feel about this book I wrote. I don’t want to be a professional author or anything. I don’t want fame or fortune, or for my name to be a household one. I just want to get the damn thing that I spent two years writing out in the public space somehow. I put work into it; I think I’ve earned a return. Even if it’s only fifty cents, it’s still something.
It’s not too much to ask, is it?
I tell my writer friends about my feelings on the subject, and they reply, that’s how the industry works. That’s just how it goes. You spam agents until one of them relents, and wait for them to close the deal with publishers. You can’t get published without an agent, and agents don’t usually take you unless you’re published. Get in line like the rest of the common muck… there’s nothing you can do about it. So chin up, you’re a big girl!
And then I tell them that yes, that’s how it goes, but I don’t have to like it. Just because things happen to be a certain way, doesn’t mean they should be. And however “it goes,” at the end of the day I’m still not published, and still not happy about it.
Things changed on the day I got my two-hundredth rejection. Well, they didn’t change for me, and not right away, but they still did. I was staring at my email screen, hitting the refresh button so quickly my finger was getting tired and the key was about to fall off. This was it. I was depending on this last agent. I had made a pact. After two hundred rejections, I would:
1)Get very, very drunk and
2)Give up.
I had come to the conclusion that two hundred query letters is enough letters to make my publishing efforts no longer worth it. If I sent any more letters out, then no matter what minimal compensation I might get, it wouldn’t be enough to pay back all that time I lost hearing no after no after no.
And then it came:
“Dear Author:
Thank you for sending our agency your query. We’d like to apologize for the impersonal nature of this standard rejection letter…”
I screamed. I really did. All the excitement I had felt about my manuscript going out into space evaporated instantly, replaced with the cold, hard, judgmental realization of my failure. After all this time, after two years of typing and researching and reading about submission requirements and personally addressing letters, it had only ended in utter rejection. I couldn't comprehend my own sadness. I had never spent so much time doing something with absolutely zero results. Even my past boyfriends didn’t add up to such a wasted amount of time. If you would have told me as a little girl that I was to spend two years laboring for something that will give me absolutely zero return, I would have punched you in the mouth. I was cool like that.
Mark burst into the room. I already had my coat on, and was putting on my gloves when he crashed into the room, saying, “Is everything all right? Are you okay?”
“No. Come with me. I’m buying. We’re getting drunk. Or at least I am.”
“What happened?”
My eyes were watering. The gravity of the situation was starting to hit. “I’ll never get published… never… ever.”
“Don’t say that,” said Mark.
“Don’t say ‘Don’t say that,’” I replied in a mock high-pitched tone. “That’s it. That’s number two hundred. I give up. If the world’s going to put up so much resistance to publishing the decent, cheesy work of a thirty-three year old secretary, then the world doesn’t deserve me. Let’s go. You want wine or liquor?”
“Beer,” said Mark.
“Wuss,” I said.
The bar was a pseudo-classy place with hardly any tables and even less dance space. It was near a fancy hotel. It’s not the sort of place that college kids go to get blitzed on cheap beer. It’s where you go while wearing your little black dress if you want to get laid by someone who keeps a yacht in their private lake and won’t call you the next day.
I put aside quite a bit of money for this day. If I did have success with an agent, it would have been enough to get drinks for most of my friends. Since I hadn’t, it was enough to get me and Mark so trashed that the police would probably get involved. I put down two glasses of the House Shiraz before long. The bartender gave me a worried look as I ordered two more.
I don’t like to drink so much. One might say I’m a little too forward when I’m sober. But when I’m drunk, all my social barriers come crashing down, and I become embarrassingly candid about myself, my friends, and the world as a whole.
“I really tried,” I said. “After a while I started pasting my picture into my queries.”
“What fer?” said Mark. He talks really funny when he’s drunk.
“I was desperate,” I said. “I thought that the agent would think, ‘Oh, look! She’s witty! She’s cute! She’s blonde and wears glasses! Let’s publish the hell out of her.”
“I should probably call Ssssassh… Sasha,” said Mark. “She’ll want ter know when I am…”
“You need to drop that bitch,” I said.
Mark was utterly surprised. “What?” he said.
“She’s a bitch. She manipulates you,” I said as I took another sip of the Shiraz.
“Ch…aroline! How can you say that?” said Mark.
“She controls you. You buy her food and clothes, and she thinks she owns our apartment when she’s there. She demands attention and respect and sulks and throws fits when she doesn’t get it.” I almost covered my mouth. I had crossed that magical line in the sand about disrespecting a roommate’s romantic interest.
“Thash.. not… a nice thing to shay!” said Mark.
“And she steals my tampons,” I said, figuring that I might as well clinch the deal with evidence.
“What? No she… doven’t!”
“Oh, so you keep better track of them than me, huh?”
Mark got up. “Yer drunk. I forgive you. Em’ goin’ home.”
He pushed the door to the bar open and staggered home. It was only a block away. I dropped my head to the bar. The bartender came over. “You all right?” she asked.
“I’m such a bitch,” I said to the counter. “I tell that to people, but nobody ever believes me.”
“You’re not a bitch,” said the bartender.
“There,” I said, pointing to where I thought her head was without lifting my own. “See what I mean?”
I heard some music. It took me a while to figure out where it was coming from. Then I felt something move in my pocket. I reached in and grabbed my ringing phone. “What?” I said into it.
I don’t know how to describe the sound that came next… and I think of myself as a halfway decent writer. It sounded like… well… like a ch
ain-link fence being tossed into a blender that was made out of small furry rodents.
I hung up the phone. If I had been sober, it probably would have disturbed me greatly. But the alarmingly large group of wine glasses next to me told a different story.
My phone rang again. I took a little bit longer to answer it. The noise came back again, but it was much softer. After a while, I heard voices.
“…forgot to turn on the Empathetic Translator, you idiot.”
“Is that her?” said another voice in the background.
“Um,” I said. “Hello?”
“Is this Caroline? Caroline Jones?”
I sat up. For one fleeting moment, I thought that this might be The Call. The notorious call from a literary agent who wishes to represent you. But then, even through the tremendous quantities of alcohol, I remembered that no agents had asked to see my work, and therefore wouldn’t know enough about my manuscript to think about representing me. “Yes,” I said. I sighed. Must be another debt collector.
“Hi… wow… this is kind of exciting. I mean, this is only the sort of stuff you see in movies, you know?”
“You mean somebody paying their overdue bills? I’ve heard of it…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. What do you want?”
“My name is G’nurrlgaaath.” It sounded like yet another incomprehensible noise, like someone vomiting and sneezing at the same time.
“Look, I don’t have any money, all right? I never do. I can’t pay you.”
“No, you don’t understand, miss,” said G’nurrlgaaath. “We picked up the Hermes space probe. The one from NASA.”
“Oh, you’re from NASA,” I said. “You got the email I sent, right?”
“Email? No, I mean, we got the space probe. We have your manuscript and your query letter!”
“Is this some kind of joke?” I said, hurt. “Look, don’t you guys have space stations to build or something? Don’t you have more important things to do than pick on some poor woman because she can’t ever get published?”
“Miss Jones,” said G’nurrlgaaath, “We’re completely serious. I’m a literary agent. And I would like to publish your book. Now, we’re pretty far away, about twenty-five thousand light-years, actually, but we like what we see and our people would be thrilled to read the work of an alien from another galaxy.”
“This isn’t funny,” I said. My eyes were starting to water again. “I wasted two whole years trying to get published. It was horrible. I’ve never felt so worthless and incompetent in my entire life.”
“Miss Jones,” said the voice, sounding somewhat desperate. “I’m really serious. We’re aliens from another galaxy. We teleported the Hermes space probe to us when we saw that it was heading our direction at a velocity approaching the speed of light. We didn’t know it would be a first contact probe! And such a wealth of information… we spent several months trying to get it to work with our computers, but it was absolutely worth it!”
I didn’t say anything for quite a while. “If I believe you,” I said, “What does that mean for me?”
“Well, that means you’ll get published, of course!” said G’nurrlgaaath. “We can’t really compensate you, unfortunately… we’re so far away and we don’t use currency. We never quite got the hang of it, you see. Anyway, we just want your permission.”
“Oh of course. Why would you offer me money? It’s not like you’re a real publisher or anything.” I rolled my eyes. “Fine, go for it.” I remember thinking at the time: What was the harm in giving a prankster astronaut permission to print my book? “How did you get my phone number?”
“Did you hear that?” said G’nurrlgaaath to some unheard people near him. “She said yes!” There came a huge noise. It sounded like the digestive tracts of every single whale on Earth making simultaneous bowel movements. It took me a minute to find out that it was cheering. At the time, I still thought it was an alcoholic hallucination. “Anyway,” continued G’nurrlgaaath, more excited than ever, “You printed your phone number at the bottom of your query letter. It was just a matter of hijacking a communications satellite. We had to send the signals back in time so they could reach you in the present, but we thought it was well worth the time and effort.”
“Uh huh,” I said. I was just humoring them at this point. “Look, don’t you guys have better things to do? It’s not right harassing me like this. I could call the police. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve put an astronaut behind bars.”
“No, you don’t understand!” said G’nurrlgaaath. “I mean it! We’re really creatures from another planet! Another galaxy, even!”
“Sure,” I deadpanned.
“Well, we’ve got one more question, Miss Jones,” said G’nurrlgaaath. He was practically giggling with joy. I was infuriated.
“Go ahead. Fire away,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Do you know how we can reach this Elvis fellow? We’d like to sign a few albums…”
“Fuck off,” I said, and hung up the phone. Then I slammed it on the counter so hard the screen cracked. It was an interesting little crack: like an aloe plant, or a fern.
“Who was that?” asked the bartender.
“Just some jerks at NASA making fun of a failed writer,” I said. “Another Shiraz, please.”
“Actually, I was thinking of getting the bouncer to walk you home,” said the bartender. “You’ve had enough.”
“Will you also let him have sex with me?”
I felt a pair of hands on my shoulder. “Not while I’m on the clock,” said the bouncer. “Besides, I don’t swing that way. Now let’s get you home.”
And to think, I had to hold Mark’s head over the toilet when I got back. I had a lot to look forward to.