"I should be killing all these people," he thought. The full subway
nearly overwhelmed Kevin with guilt. No chance of coming home with a job
well done. No proud mother and father. At each stop the train disgorged
several passengers who were then lost to Kevin permanently; several more
then flowed on, theoretically entering Kevin's grasp. Just keeping track of
all the opportunity squandered in each moment of inaction occupied a sti-
fling amount of mental energy.
     A sinking feeling in his stomach, Kevin felt around his coat pockets.
He'd forgotten his poison entirely. So that was that. The day was now
wasted, his culpability limited to a single lapse of memory that morning.
In fact, he thought, if he made the most of the rest of the day, he could
just about call it even.
     He got out at an unfamiliar part of the downtown, squinting as he
climbed the stairs to street level. Drastic measures only appeal to the
desperate, he reminded himself. Effort is wasted unless directed toward
goals that permit the slow accumulation of success. Kevin decided to buy a
notebook.
     Unwilling to walk too far, he followed his faint suspicion that the
Automat Des Belles Letres also carried blank paper products. He poked meek-
ly at the video screen. Would he like printed directions to their annex in
the suburbs? No. Would he like to select an additional book from a list of
popular selections? Yes, fine, certainly. To go with his notebook Kevin
purchased a novel claiming to offer insight into the bizarre habits and ex-
cesses of his generation. Before putting it into his backpack he skimmed
the dustflap: its summary promised a gritty depiction of frat boys who
spend an entire keg party planning how to murder hundreds of people in the
name of a faux cult one of them has invented. Kevin's brow furrowed in dis-
belief. The young author's bio suggested she had no more experience of
fraternity life than Kevin. He would be her age in just over a year, too
little time to write a book himself had he wanted to. The debt of wasted
time provoked a terrible image of his own brain putrefying inside his head
as he stood there, soon to be inadequate for all but the simplest tasks. It
passed, largely.

     Kevin watched the street with dead eyes as he drank a fortified fruit
shake. Being lazy, he thought, if 'lazy' was the word, did not constitute a
rejection of his parents' philosophy. Nor would such a rejection (which he
wasn't planning) change the fact that he was raised by what others thought
of as religious ecstatics. It wasn't much to fall back on.
     Grains of fiber powder swirled at the bottom of the cup. Was it good?
Was it healthy?

     One month later, Kevin was setting up chairs for a reading at the sub-
urban Automat dBL expansion. As the only full-time live staffer he enjoyed
some small authority. "Right this way," he said to the guest of honor. "You
know, I'm a big fan. That stuff about the psychology of ritual massacres,
it's sort of... in an arm's length way I guess I've been interested, like,
a long time."
     His young author smiled. "If you look for it, it's in the papers every
day. I'm glad you found the book engaging. Do I stand here?"
     Kevin flashed a thumbs-up and went to monitor the crowd as they
arrived. He didn't recognize any of them.

written for Nathan McQuillen while standing up 8/16/02

So, this is totally about my recent bout of procrastination. I've had a lot of things to do this summer, and as pretty much everyone, boringly, already knows, spending time thinking about how you really ought to be accomplishing something doesn't lead to doing it. Normally I try not to have characters be me in disguise, but I figured, as long as I was finally writing, I shouldn't fight it.

The dialogue at the end is awful, especially the author's line. I got that far and, oops, she never had a name! So it was sort of awkward, because the narratorial voice was hovering pretty close to Kevin the entire time, which precluded writing "... he said to the author of the book he'd read a month ago". That's not how he would have thought of it.

I had several endings in mind over the course of the story, but none of them involved Kevin killing lots of people. That would be wrong. On the other hand, I didn't want him to just be some kid, raised by loons, who finally finds the strength to escape. The "(which he wasn't planning)" in the middle chunk may seem like I'm protesting too much -- and I was! I meant it to be true, but something that Kevin still had to consciously reassure himself of. Minutes later, the power of multiple carriage returns had intoxicated me and I decided to skip forward a month and provide a happy ending.

I went to France for the first time recently. The automats of Paris amazed me; I only saw four (two video rental places, and two installations of Yatoo Partoo, a convenience store) but as you can see they made a big impression.

In another lazy appropriation from real life, I have indeed been habitually checking the ages of young authors on dust jackets. It's self-derogating and arrogant at the same time. But I hear everyone does it. One friend tells me it keeps her from watching the Olympics.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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