"You're in the very pink of health," said the doctor to the senator.
"I still can't find anything wrong with you." Senator Feldspar took the
news as grimly as he had every month for several years. "Isn't there at
least any change?" he asked. His doctor shook his head.
     Fifty identical x-rays lined the walls of Feldspar's Washington study.
At home in Colorado he gave no indication that his body was aging less than
suitably, but in reality its dreary perfection tormented him. He'd had
progressively deeper medical investigations performed, on the theory that
he might, if nothing else, be developing a subtle and rare defect. Aside
from one disastrously iatrogenic procedure, though, none of them had any
results. Feldspar's general practitioner righted the effects of that
well-intentioned blundering and of course afterward there was no sign that
it had ever occurred.

     Shadowy youths control every aspect of Feldspar's politics, though he
cannot always indulge them. "Bring us the President's toe," they said, and
it was never done. Largely, though, he is at their command, and to this day
lives in fear of defying them unnecessarily.

     Feldspar missed his fifty-second monthly appointment with the GP
because he had checked himself into a clinic. The clinicians administered
electro-convulsive therapy to break the senator of a drug habit he'd
concocted; the imagined details changed with his mood so he got
inconsistent treatment, not that it mattered.
     On this particular occasion the adolescents who dominate Feldspar
required services of him which, being locked away and twitching, he could
not render. In a fit of displeasure they dressed themselves shinily, buffed
their nails, and ventured out to the discotheque. The treatment they
received there only heightened the displeasure.
     So it came to be that extensive documents on the anatomy of primates,
both human and not, were waiting for Senator Feldspar at the close of his
vacation. Unmistakably he was to examine them.
     Primates, though all essentially similar, vary in a number of
substantial ways from one another. The range of all possible Feldspars
across the spectrum of species subtended more variety than the meager real
Feldspar had any hope of seeing in himself.
     But then a slim envelope arrived from the doctor's office containing
one plate of x-ray film. A certain feature of Feldspar's abdomen was
circled. There was also an arrow, and with it a question mark.
     "I don't care what these teenagers think," Feldspar said to himself.
"It is merely that they are ahead of me. I tend to my bailiwick well
enough."

by Aaron for Patti * eVille, Wednesday, 2002

This was my third year camping with Patti, and she very kindly gave me a story order when I wasn't sure I could solicit any from strangers. (Actually, she said she liked my stuff which I guess could be the real reason she asked for a story, but I still find that praise does not stay in my head too easily.)

My usual principle is to break obvious associations between client words, but this time I wholeheartedly used the medical theme suggested by "convulsions" and "x-ray". The premise cries out to be a metaphor for something, except unfortunately it isn't.

The paragraph that begins with "Primates" shows me losing faith, trying to specify too explicitly what's going on in a story that, as you can see from the last line, was supposed to be more of a koan. I also tried to drive home the idea of the end as a frozen moment, rather than a turning point, with the tense-switching stuff. The idea was that the Senator still exists basically unchanged after the story ends, but even with some reinforcement (the "On this particular occasion" and "So it came to pass") jumping into the present tense mid-story reads like a mistake. I'm sure it could have been done better.

I believe I slightly misused the word "iatrogenic", too: ailments caused by medical mistreatment are called iatrogenic, not the treatments themselves. Well, I was hotdogging and I knew the risks.

I like the "President's toe" line. With some touching-up I believe the contrast in tone between Feldspar and the teenagers would actually provide the motive energy for the whole story. These post-story notes were meant to be comments on the process (which I find interesting in itself), not pleas for clemency. I don't see myself outgrowing these one-hour stories (they're fun!) but perhaps I've grown *into* the need to do something else more serious so that I mind less when a one-page fails. All terribly self-aggrandizing, I know; I'm coming from the assumption that overall, writing is better than not writing.

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

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