bookfraud

Dear Mike:

Can I call you “Mike”? I’ve really never written a star athlete before, and I would hate to alienate you with forced familiarity. But “Michael” doesn’t seem to fit, either, so let’s just call you what you should be called, “Sick Fuck,” as in “Sick Fuck Vick.”

Oh, today you apologized and asked for forgiveness for your “mistake,” though I don’t think your dog-fighting enterprise, “Bad Newz Kennels,” was truly a mistake. The only mistakes you made were choosing the wrong accomplices, who gladly rolled on you when the going got tough, and that you weren’t more discreet in setting up your matches. Those are mistakes. But what you did was a way of life (you ran the dogfighting ring for six years), and if you hadn’t been caught, you’d still be torturing and executing animals for fun.

This really is piling on after the whistle, I realize. You’ve been castigated and humiliated plenty of other places in the media and on the Internet, and you are looking at a year in the Big House — and I don’t mean Michigan Stadium. Your career is in tatters and people are sending your jersey to the Atlanta Humane Society to line kennels and mop up after accidents.

Sure, you have your defenders, many of whom you did not have to pay to do so. Those who say that at least you didn’t kill somebody. Those who say that you’re being persecuted because you’re black. And those who say that you can do what you want with your dogs, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody.

Of course, these defenses entail a moral universe far removed from anything mere mortals like myself inhabit. The implication is that just about anything short of physically hurting a human being shouldn’t be criminal, which would be a great relief to our overtaxed criminal justice system, since they could then ignore about 90 percent of the things now illegal.

I gotta hand it to, Mr. Sick Fuck. You’ve given the phrase “dog days of summer” new meaning — I mean, all I could come up with was some pathetic paragraphs on bedbugs for the past few weeks. But when I heard about your press conference earlier today, in which you asked for forgiveness and invoked Jesus, I knew what I had to do.

Offer my services as a writer, of course.

Though I am not a Christian, I do believe in some of Jesus Christ’s teachings, such as “He who has not sinned, let him cast the first stone,” embracing and helping society’s outcasts, and giving a Swanson’s Turkey TV dinner for the downtrodden on his birthday. Like Jesus offered forgiveness, you’d like some forgiveness from the public and (most importantly) the NFL, so you can go back to doing what you do best: being an exciting but mediocre football player. This is where Bookfraud can help.

It’s a simple matter of you being able to tell “your side of the story,” and do it in a way that evokes sympathy rather than condescension. We can pen your autobiography, or write a screenplay of your ordeal. There are so many ways in which to do this.

To wit:

That Son of Sam thing happened to me. Instead of dogs telling me to kill people, other people told me to kill dogs.

Or

Those dogs were the same ones used in Abu Ghraib. They knew things that other dogs did not, and our national security depended on their betraying their secrets.

Woof

Or

It’s been alleged that I electrocuted dogs. This is a flat out, mendacious lie. I just flipped a switch.

Or

What’s the big deal? I simply provided the financing, the facilities, the opportunity, and the motives to commit a crime, but that doesn’t mean I actually did it. Kind of like Halliburton and the war.

Or

Hell, it’s not like I killed someone.

Several months ago, I made a similar plea to Brittney Spears when her career started hitting the skids. She ignored me, however, and look what happened: back to drug rehab, erratic behavior, and she may lose custody of her children. It hasn’t been pretty, and I can draw a direct line between her rejection of my writing prowess and her downfall.

With you, I see a much grimmer fate. Accept my offer and feel the warm public glow of redemption or turn me down, and end up bending over for that bar of soap in the prison shower. Hey, it’s a lot easier deal to accept than your plea bargain.

I’m about to have a nervous breakdown, my head really hurts.
–Black Flag, “Nervous Breakdown”

I lost my mind…I lost my mind…I lost my mind…gimme some skin. Gimmie some gin. I want some wine….I lost my mind.
–The Ramones, “I Lost My Mind”

If your life has ever been circumscribed by an insect, please let me know. I need some empathy. I need some inspiration. I need help.

Over the past three weeks, bedbugs have defined my existence. I’ve had to leave my home overnight because of them, and Wife and Baby have had to leave for two weeks because of them. Every day is the same: return from work, vacuum two hours, bag my clothes and wash them, order takeout, eat, collapse.

I don’t read, I don’t write, I barely have energy to watch television. The solitary existence is not a bachelor’s paradise. Forget blogging, or blog lurking, or making comments to others’ blogs. People have probably given birth, died, or attended a Lindsey Lohan concert, if there is such a thing.

I’ve wanted to post something, but haven’t had the time, energy, or desire; perhaps this is a cop-out, but copping out is something I’m expert at doing. Tonight is a special night — after I’ve vacuumed and done laundry, I get to put on gloves and a mask and spray my apartment with chemicals skimmed off of a Superfund toxic waste dump. Then, I get to leave my place for an hour, wander the streets, return, and collapse.

Wife and Baby return tomorrow, so I hopefully gain some equilibrium. Otherwise, I’m durn close to throwing myself in front of a bus. Metaphorically speaking.

Perhaps I am paying for slamming “Harry Potter;” perhaps the Gods are punishing me for a more pedestrian infraction of the Writer’s Rules. I don’t know for sure, but it is certain that my home has bedbugs and if my life isn’t a living hell, I can feel Hades’ flames licking at my backside.

In terms of annoyance, bedbugs are in a whole different league than roaches, ants, termites, fleas or even mosquitoes. They bite, drink your blood, and reproduce like otters. Once they get into your home, it requires drastic measures to rid them.

Like, for instance, the following regimen, which Wife, Baby, and myself must follow for the next month:

1. All clothing cleaned and put in plastic bags. Do not put back in drawers, or risk having a bug lodge in your underwear and then lodge somewhere much more unfortunate.
2. Vacuum every square inch of apartment, including baseboards, floor cracks, ass cracks (see above), shoes, books. Yes, books are a great hiding place for these bugs. Pack your books, put them in storage, and say goodbye to them for 18 months.
3. Treat all luggage and furniture with a chemical solution of 60 rubbing alcohol and 40 percent flesh-eating acid. Bag everything. I mean, everything.
4. Move all furniture at least 12 inches from wall, and wait for exterminators to bomb the place.
5. Once bombed, stay out of apartment for 48 hours. I intend to spend those 48 hours at a brothel.
6. Once you return, vacuum every square inch of apartment, including baseboards, floor cracks, and shoes, every single day for a month.
7. Spray chemical solution in baseboards every four days and pray that none of it makes contact with skin.
8. Repeat exterminator treatment. Pray that all the bedbugs are dead. Pray, pray, pray.

Wife and Baby are moving out of the apartment entirely for three weeks while yours truly serves as human bait — the exterminator wants me living in the apartment to draw out the bedbugs so they’ll get to the poison.

Meanwhile, every day is the same: come home from work, eat dinner, then vacuum, spray, and bag until bedtime. Vacuum, spray, bag. We’ve moved all our books out of our place (sob!) and are cleaning like mad.

See the movie, live the life

The most surefire way to rid yourself of these pests is to throw away all your clothes and bedding (in plastic bags), buy new clothes, and move out for 18 months. You see, bedbugs can live over a year without food.

In short, I am quickly losing my mind, and things are likely to worsen until mid-2015.

And yet, against my nature, I’m trying to be positive. When I start to feel sorry for myself (about every five minutes), I try to count my blessings. I’m not a refugee, I’m not homeless, and I am in good health with a wife and son who I adore. My woes are about bugs and my lack of publishing credits.

And I didn’t suffer the same fate as Dan.

Dan and I were co-workers back in the late 1980s. We weren’t close friends but were on good terms, and I admired him quite a bit: Dan was extremely talented, outgoing, smart, funny, and a good guy overall. Someone that makes you feel at ease and goes out of his way to talk to you. It was my first job out of college, and Dan made me feel welcome. He was a real mench.

Befitting his talent, two years after I started work Dan got a major promotion with out-of-town company, and moved to the East Coast with his fiancée, a research doctor who was gorgeous and sweet to boot.

Soon, they were married, and a year or so later, Dan’s wife was pregnant. In short, Dan had everything I wanted: a beautiful wife, a job I coveted, financial security, and a family on the way. He even had moved out of my cowpoke town, where I felt stuck, to a big city.

You probably have a rough idea of what happened next. A few months after his wife became pregnant, Dan started getting mysterious headaches — it turned out to be brain cancer. While his prognosis appeared good at first following surgery, the cancer spread, and he died a few years later, leaving his wife and child. He fought it to the end.

Dan was 33 years old.

On the other hand, I have to deal with bedbugs, which, the last time I checked, are annoying but not life-threatening.

I’ll stop here.