Lust & Wonder by Augusten Burroughs
“What size?” the operator asked.
“What size do you have?” I was almost shaking with anticipation.
“We have three sizes, sir. Five by seven, six by—”
“Send me all three,” I slurred.
* * *
The next morning, I woke up and padded across the mashed-flat food container–carpeted floor to sit at my computer, where, without planning to, I opened a blank document and wrote, “You exposed your penis on national television, Max. What am I supposed to do?”
As I wrote these words, I could see in my mind a blond shopping channel host sitting uncomfortably across from his executive producer. There was one of those golf-putting gizmos on the floor, the kind from the in-flight magazine ads. I knew the show host had been wearing a bathrobe on the air, because it was a Slumber Sunday segment. I also knew he was not wearing any underwear, because somebody had spilled coffee on his lap in the makeup room.
All of this knowledge was instantly contained within that single line, and it was just too much for fourteen words to hold, so I had to keep typing, or my mind would explode.
In my life, I had swallowed countless drinks and lit enough cigarettes to burn down the world; I had fallen in love and, once inside of it, spun around with my arms outstretched and shattered everything; I had lost many things; I made mistakes; I made a single pot roast, and still my wrist held on to the scar. But one thing I had not done was this, whatever this was.
I was an advertising copywriter, though advertising wasn’t writing so much as puzzle solving. I wrote in a diary as a kid, but my childhood felt impossibly distant. When I came home from rehab, I wrote, but that felt as messy as life. I had never seen a true and breathing world blocking my view of the computer screen. I had never experienced the draining of all I saw through my hands as I smashed down on the keys.
I did not stop writing until I could not operate my fingers any longer. Then I drank.
But I didn’t reach the room, the place, the mind-set, the zone. Drinking failed me.
The next morning, which arrived much sooner than other mornings had, I sat back down at my computer in an uncomfortable chair, and I wrote again for as long as I could.
I drank that evening, but less.
The day after that, I wrote much later into the night and drank only what was in the neck of a fresh bottle of scotch.
On the fourth day, I wrote straight through all the sunlit hours, past the night, and into the pale early morning.
I forgot to drink. I just forgot to do it.
The sixth day of writing set off an electrical friction in my mind, and I remembered, I can drink. I don’t have to go out. Almost two full bottles. This propelled me forward with a sense of joy. There would be no need to shower or dress or leave the apartment. I was spared my solitary humiliation at the liquor store cash register.
But I did not drink. There just wasn’t room for it.
Because what was this? What the fuck was I writing? Who were these people, more of them on every page? How did I know about teleprompters and revolving television sets? Where had the knowledge of a Toys “R” Us store come from? Had I ever even been inside of one? These people who were exiting my fingertips; they were far more real than any I knew in the flesh. The things that happened while I sat in the bluish glow of my computer screen made me feel something harsh and addictive: alive.
Day seven was another twelve straight hours of writing, and then I stopped. Because it was finished. Whatever it was, it was done, gone. The spirit had moved through me.
I could drink now.
Except I didn’t.
Because everything had changed.
I’d written a book. Whether it was a good book or a bad book didn’t matter. It had chapters and page numbers and was, therefore, a book.
I could write a book. I had done it. There was proof of it just before me.
It was huge. I wanted to write another book immediately.
I didn’t want to drink.
This was better. This carried me much further away from myself than drinking had ever managed to do. This should be a criminal activity, punishable by imprisonment or worse. The feeling it gave me was larger than the feeling of drunk.
I was in my underwear, and my bloated stomach felt heavy and soggy as it rested on my thighs. I could smell urine. I could smell everything.
I was new. This was different. This was it.
I died.
I was born.
* * *
“You need a literary agent,” Molly said. She had one herself and had just sold her first novel. Molly was an advertising copywriter, like me. We sent pieces of things back and forth to each other via e-mail. Parts of journal writing, pieces of ads. I sent her the messy writing I did when I was freed from rehab; she sent me sections of her novel.
“How do I get one?” I asked.
She told me to try her agent but try all the others, too. There was a book, a kind of bible of literary agents, though it more closely resembled a phone book and provided me with nearly a thousand pages of agent names and addresses.
It was shockingly overwhelming.
But now that I’d written what appeared to be an actual novel, I was devoted to finding an agent. Obsessed, really.
So I crafted a breezy and irreverent query letter and began sending it out in junk-mail quantity.
Dear Agent Person,
My name is Augusten Burroughs, and I’ve just completed my first novel, Sellevision. Based on a QVC-inspired home shopping network, Sellevision is a satirical look at what might happen to the lives and careers of Sellevision hosts were they somehow to be placed in the hands of a chemically imbalanced writer with no apparent moral foundation.
Sellevision is a careening, left-field, neo-Shakespearean romp that features a range of characters who experience everything from stalking to romance. It includes backstabbing, extramarital affairs, revenge, a porno career, and, of course, Debby Boone, Joyce DeWitt, and Princess Diana key fobs.
It opens with the firing of an on-air host, the day after his penis accidentally “peeks” out of his robe in front of millions of viewers during a live Slumber Sunday segment. It ends with the network in a delightfully ludicrous state of chaos. Either that, or it’s simply 45,000 words that don’t belong together.
Obviously, I would love to send you the manuscript or any portion of it.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Augusten Burroughs
Most of the rejection letters I received in response were polite—if not encouraging—but one asshole woman took the time to scrawl a note at the bottom of her preprinted rejection slip: “Satire is what closes Saturday night.”
I only received rejection letters, and lots of them. With one mortifying exception.
One agent did write back to me with something resembling interest. He explained that while he, personally, found the manuscript amusing, his colleagues at the literary agency did not. He thought my novel needed a great deal of work, but alas, he was not an editor. Finally, he said he’d be willing to send it out “as is” to one or two editors he thought might possibly like it enough to buy it.
He then told me his literary agency charged for stamps and photocopies.
I was thrilled but also confused. It sounded like he was willing to lift a finger, but not two. He also had a long, old-fashioned-sounding name, which made me think he must be ancient.
I wrote to Molly and explained the situation. “Does he sound like a real agent? Why the fuck is he talking about postage stamps? Why do I have the sneaking suspicion he’s just some old alcoholic living in a studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, sitting at a computer in his underwear looking at kiddie porn?”
Only after I hit Send did I realize I had sent the message as a reply to the agent and not as a new e-mail to Molly.
Even though I immediately wrote a note explaining my grave error and saying, “Obviously, I don’t deserve you or any other agent,” I nev
Two months passed with only rejection letters. One day, I got a form letter reject from a name I didn’t recognize, as if I were being turned down by agents I hadn’t even queried. I grew increasingly terrified that the agent with the old-man name I had called a pedophile might have been my single publishing opportunity, the big break I had been waiting for, and I had urinated on it by accident.
I considered the fact that drinking might lubricate my misery. I air-tasted a cocktail to see if one would just exactly hit the spot, and it was shocking to realize that I saw it would not. I did not want to drink. I mentally rummaged through my internal minibar: Jack Daniel’s, Bombay gin, Absolut vodka, beer, chardonnay, crème de menthe; I didn’t want any of it. And instead of finding this comforting, I found myself feeling abandoned. I had never before considered the possibility that I might never even want a drink yet still be left with this horrible, throbbing vacancy in the center of my being, right where my mental health and contentment were supposed to be.
On the floor of my closet was a box George’s mother had shoved into my hands when she demanded the key to his apartment the day after he died. The box contained things she assumed were mine but which, in fact, were not. In it was a book, though, that George and I had bought together at the Barnes & Noble on Astor Place. We bought it because George’s brother had worked for the publisher. I pulled it out of the box, which I now saw also contained the contents of the junk drawer from his kitchen, and carried it over to the bed.
It made me laugh. Kept Boy by Robert Rodi.
Something about it reminded me of my own novel. It was a satire, over the top, a little bit caustic around the edges but bighearted. It was a much more carefully crafted book than my own, that much I could see. But wasn’t there some kind of kinship between them? Wouldn’t a person who liked Kept Boy also like my own little Sellevision?
I e-mailed the author—this time without invoking Kathy Bates—and told him how much I loved his book. Then I admitted that I’d written my first novel, and because in spirit it was somehow similar to his own, I asked if he would mind telling me the name of his agent. Robert wrote me back right away and thanked me for praising his book. He also gave me his literary agent’s name and e-mail address.
Unlike the other agents, this one replied to my query instantly, an amusing response that included the line, “Feel free to send me your manuscript at your earliest convenience.”
I wrote back that my “earliest convenience” involved a wig, a revolver, and a stolen FedEx truck and I messengered the manuscript to his office on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea.
Several days later, he called and asked to meet for lunch at a restaurant near his office.
I was prepared for him to say, “What you’ve written isn’t a novel. It’s a cry for help.” I remembered that was something Mitch’s editor had told him about his last manuscript.
I did not expect this: him walking west toward me on Gansevoort Street, backlit by the sun as though he’d just stepped out of it, his thick, shoulder-length blond hair whipping around his face, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a manila envelope tucked under one arm. His smile was almost too much.
“You must be Augusten!” he shouted from twenty feet. “I’m Christopher!”
In my mind, I chanted, “You will either be my agent or my boyfriend. You will either be my agent or my boyfriend.”
I called out, “I hope I’m not late! It’s great to meet you!”
He wore black-and-white checkered pants and a white shirt with no buttons and blue stitching. We sat at a narrow banquette in Florent, a cool downtown bistro, and we both ordered cheeseburgers, which came on English muffins. I eyed the envelope he’d slid beside him and wondered, did it contain a contract? Was he going to be my agent?
Lunch was going so well. He dipped his fries in mustard, and when some of it dripped onto his white shirt, all he did was laugh. “Oh my God, I’m such a pig.”
He laughed almost constantly, nearly to the point of choking several times, banging his own fist against his chest. The tall, slender waiter refilled his glass with ice water, which he chugged as though it had been days since he’d had anything to drink.
He told me he loved my manuscript and that it needed “a shitload of work” but reassured me, “It’ll be great, and you can do it. Totally.”
I kept waiting for him to grab the envelope and hand me contracts to sign, because I’d read that’s what agents did with new authors. But this didn’t happen, and I began to wonder, so did all this mean he was my agent now? Or was I supposed to revise the manuscript, and then he would decide whether or not I was good enough?
I pushed my plate back and reached for my Diet Coke, which I sipped through a straw. I glanced at him, and he was already looking at me, smiling like he loved me. This made me look away from him and into the glass, where I stared at the ice. If he decided not to be my agent, I decided not to be a writer. I wanted this one, with the body of a wrestler and mustard stains on his shirt.
I found it both incredibly easy and incredibly difficult to sit next to him. I was funny around him; he brought that out. But I felt weirdly intimidated, too. If he wasn’t going to be my agent, I wasn’t fully confident I could even snag him as a boyfriend, either. Now that we’d had lunch, I was thinking he was out of my league, even with mustard stains.
He seemed so at home in the world, so comfortable and easygoing. He told me he’d been raised in Dayton, Ohio, but he seemed more like a California surfer dude to me. Plus, I’d never really been attracted to blond guys before, since I was blond myself. But he was a different kind of blond guy, a more durable variety, with the coarse arm hair of a Middle Eastern terrorist, which was exactly my type.
When he wasn’t chewing and didn’t have his mouth wide open in hysterical fits of laughter, I could see that he was actually extremely handsome. He did look like a corn-fed Ohio guy, now that I thought about him. He had symmetrical features, like a blond Tom Cruise. Once I saw this, I couldn’t un-see it, and I also realized there was no way he’d date me. So by the end of lunch, when he still hadn’t handed over whatever was inside that envelope and as we shook hands in parting, I felt a crush of despair.
I’d lost both an agent and a boyfriend at the same lunch.
Exactly like with an actual date, I kept going over it in my mind until I could no longer make any sense of even the simplest gesture. I was completely confused. Was it a good meeting or a bad one? Had he agreed to take me on as a writer or was I supposed to make those revisions first? And what were those revisions again? I hadn’t taken notes.
When I got back to my apartment on Third Avenue and Tenth Street, I decided to send him an e-mail, thanking him for lunch and then adding, “By the way, are you my agent now?” at the very end.
Instead of writing me back, he called me two minutes after I hit Send. The first thing he said after laughing was, “Of course I’m your agent. I’m sorry. I thought I made that clear.”
I told him I’d seen the envelope and kept expecting him to open it and hand me contracts to sign, a literary agency agreement.
He howled as if I’d just told the most side-splittingly funny joke. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. That was just something to read in case I had to wait. I can’t believe you thought—” Then he set off on another bender of laughter. “This is an old ‘handshake’ kind of agency, but I will messenger you a contract. Yeah, you’re my client, and I’m your agent, and we’re gonna sell your book. Totally.”
Totally. I hadn’t used that word since the eighties.
As promised, he messengered the contract, and I spent at least twenty minutes holding it up to the light to admire the printed text, the texture of the fine linen paper, the logo at the top under which was printed “Literary Rights Management.”
How was this even possible? If I had an agent, that meant I had to be an actual, real writer.
Along with the contract, he had enclosed a note. “I’ll mark up your Sellevision manuscript with th
* * *
Two weeks and four days later, my manuscript arrived just as he’d said it would. I opened the box, and there it was, covered with red pencil marks. I paged through it and saw there were red slashes through entire paragraphs, complicated markings indicating I should move this line over there and take that line up there and put it at the bottom. There were tons of scrawled notes—questions, identifying plot holes, as well as technical stuff that real writers already knew (like “Each time a new person speaks, make it a new paragraph” or “There’s this thing called ‘dialogue’ and you put it inside quotation marks”). He pointed out my strange yet consistent capitalization of words like Cake, Penis, Hostage, Meat, Police, and Gay—all things that made me excited and anxious, which seemed embarrassingly clear with each one he circled.
Every page was etched with his energetic scribble that at first seemed impossible to decipher, but once I sat down and studied, it actually made perfect sense and was like following a recipe. I realized the best way to make these changes was to question nothing. But in addition to moving things around and fixing my horrible grammatical errors, I soon realized I needed to write a great deal of additional material. As it turned out, I hadn’t actually written a novel but something more like the outline of a novel. Now I needed to fill it in.
“Show, don’t tell,” he wrote. “Create scenes. Don’t just talk about what happened.”
I slept perhaps four hours a night for the next several weeks while I did nothing but revise my manuscript, because I was a writer now with a stocky, handsome literary agent who wore pants from the new wave era and said “totally.”
I’d become addicted to his laughter. Each time we spoke on the phone because I needed clarification about one of his comments, something just clicked inside my head, and I found myself “on,” and nothing else in the world mattered except making him laugh. At first, I only called once every few days, but soon, I was calling once a day and then several times a day, and he never made me feel like I was pestering him. In fact, it was just the opposite. He seemed thrilled to hear from me each time. And if he saw through my pale excuses—“On page 127, what’s that word you wrote down at the bottom?”—he never let on.