He sat on the toilet, ostensibly taking a shit but really drinking a gin and tonic, thinking to himself that he could write like Henry Chinaski, if he really wanted to. So after wiping he did just that, he brought his gin and tonic to his desk and sipped while he typed, sometimes one-handed. He took a thirty-minute break to look at pornography and refill his drink and masturbate to no effect; probably because of the gin. Then he typed for another two hours before his eyes started to hurt from the brightness of the screen and he sucked on the gin-soaked lime rind thinking it would help, but it didn’t.

By the end of the night he had a fourteen page story he felt nothing for but knew was competent.

He brought the story to a meeting he was having to drink with Other Writers and when it came time to discuss his piece, the Other Writers looked at each other and then each placed their copy of his fourteen pages on the table, maneuvering their drinks out of the way. He was filled with dread seeing his pages soak up the watery rings left by the displaced drinks.

“It’s competent,” they said.

He nodded and said he knew it was competent.

“It’s not readable, though,” they said.

He argued that it was just like everything Henry Chinaski wrote, and you couldn’t argue that Henry Chinaski wasn’t readable, since people read him all the time.

“That’s different,” they said.

He asked how it was different and none of them had a satisfying answer.

“You have to be the first to do something, or it’s no good,” they said.

He didn’t necessarily think that was true but he was too depressed to argue about it and the rest of the writers seemed quite certain so he ordered another gin and tonic. It came with lemon, not lime, and he was further depressed. He stayed another hour to discuss the rest of the group’s pages, which were competent.

Days later in a furious hangover because he had no money for gin he sent the story to three Writing Magazines You’ve Heard Of and then laughed. The laughter hurt his head so he laid on his back with his forearm over his eyes to block the sun and hoped he could sleep until a royalty payment from a different competent story arrived and he could buy gin and not be hungover. Depending on the circumstances, he considered tonic a luxury.

The next three months of his life are of no use so we won’t document them, except to say that after a period of around three months he heard from all three Magazines in one week. The first one said they appreciated him. They did not want his story. The second one said they regretted not wanting his story. He thought that was nice, maybe. The third one wanted to meet him for coffee.

He planned to iron his blazer but the days got away and suddenly it was the day of the coffee and he felt self-conscious nearly the whole time about his wrinkled blazer. He spent a great portion of the meeting wondering if he should apologize for its condition, or at least explain. He spent the rest of the meeting listening to The Editor – a man that seemed too young to be bald but nevertheless was – tell him that They really loved his story, and They wanted so badly to publish it, but it was just that They or no one else had really heard of him. He told The Editor that wasn’t true, plenty of people knew him, and he’d had that story that a “shitload of people” read and The Editor sort of laughed and said he knew it, but that all things considered They couldn’t reasonably pay him what They paid The Other, More Well-Known Writers. The Editor told him what They were willing to pay him for “the piece.” It was double what he’d hoped.

Fuck the other writers, he thought, and shook The Editor’s hand.

When the story came out in The Magazine a party was thrown and he met Writers and Editors, most of whom he’d met before but pretended not to know to make the fact they forgot him easier on them. He thought that was nice of him, maybe. At one point in the evening Someone mentioned that the story reminded her a lot of Henry Chinaski and he thought the jig was up. Then they laughed and raised frosted glasses to the fact they were all liars and con artists, though no one said so. Later, The Editor from coffee told him that “this whole thing has gone even better than we’d hoped” and that They would help him with a novel when the time came, and that he should be writing one. So after drinking at the party he did just that.

In the taxi on the way back to his apartment he unwrapped the green bottle of gin he’d taken from the party and started writing The Novel, dictating to the cabbie. He had the entire first chapter by the time they pulled up to his building but forgot most of it when he tried to figure out the tip.

Inside he typed for a few hours and then slept in his desk chair. When he woke the light in the room was green-tinged and he thought he was a drop of absinthe in water, but it was just the sunlight shining through the gin bottle by the window.

He repeated these basic steps, with allowable variations – masturbating, eating, refilling – for six weeks and then he had a Novel. The Editor read The Novel in an afternoon and said it was brilliant and They would take an Excerpt and he would send the rest to the Publisher and take care of everything.

There were more parties and word got out that he had a Novel and then there were Women, which everyone knew was just because of the Novel, though no one said so. They told him things like intelligence is sexy and that he was thrilling and twice that all their friends were jealous. They had lifespans like fruit flies. The Publisher bought him many drinks over the course of many weeks and sent his manuscript back to him many times. He would spend an hour making cosmetic rearrangements and then send the manuscript back to the Publisher. Eventually enough rearrangements were made to satisfy Everyone and the Novel was scheduled for release.

They designed a cover and showed it to him. He thought it was bullshit and said so. The Editor and Publisher glanced at each other and said “well, okay then,” and sent him another cover in a week. He thought this one was bullshit too but didn’t say so because things were moving so fast that he worried about the havoc he’d wreak knocking the train off the rails.

The Novel came out and The People On The Internet kept saying it sounded like Henry Chinaski. That seemed to drive sales because The People Who Were Buying The Novel seemed to like the fact that it sounded like Henry Chinaski. The Other, More Well-Known Writers criticized the fact that it sounded like Henry Chinaski and many of them shunned him but he didn’t think it mattered. The Novel was in Hardcover and when he held the spine it had weight, and no one could deny the physical entity.

There were parties before readings and parties after readings and parties for no reason and he shucked cocktail dresses off Women like ears of corn, and was nourished.

The next two years of his life are of very little consequence to the story so we won’t document them except to say that things continued in much the same way, until after a period of about two years when the Editor called him for coffee with the Publisher and they informed him They would like a Second Novel. They didn’t say “or else,” but he felt like they’d said “or else.”

So when he left coffee he got started on just that. He knew it would be even easier this time because he had enough money for gin and tonic and limes, as many as he might need. He stopped on the way home and bought four limes for one dollar from the man with the wooden stand full of fruit on the street corner. This would last him between eight and ten drinks. He typed and drank and slept and shucked and after about six weeks had a Second Novel that was short and slim and that he felt something for and was nothing like anything Henry Chinaski had written.

He met with The Publisher who said little and They showed him a cover and he thought the cover was bullshit and said so, and the Publisher said They were going to go that way anyway. He didn’t say anything because it didn’t seem there was anything to say.

The Second Novel came out and The People On The Internet kept saying it didn’t sound anything like Henry Chinaski, and that seemed to detract from Sales, of which there were few. The Other, More Well-Known Writers lauded the fact that the Second Novel sounded nothing like Henry Chinaski and clapped his reputation on the back with adoration and pity.

He was still invited intermittently to parties and Writers said, when they thought he couldn’t hear, that it was “a shame there was no space for a Writer Like Him in Today’s Publishing World.” They shook their heads and acted downtrodden about it, wondering why readers couldn’t figure it out, already.

The next forty years of his life are of little consequence to the story so we won’t document them, except to say that there were steadily fewer Women and they told him things like they’d loved That One Novel he had and twice that all their friends would think this was the weirdest thing. He listened and didn’t shuck but peeled their dresses, cautiously, like long-stuck price stickers from secondhand books nobody read.