04-22-2014, 09:35 AM
Two months after Clarion, Lucius paid me a visit. He stayed a couple days, as I recall. His eyeglasses were broken. He had patched them with masking tape, but they kept falling apart. I asked him what had happened. “Shiriken,” he said. Thus began his tale of the Kung Fu Hillbillies. Southern lowbrows who had migrated north into the Ann Arbor area, they had learned martial arts without benefit of a sifu. Their training consisted of slugging it out with each other. As a result, they had very few teeth and even less sense. They believed the end times were near and had converted a cellar into a survival shelter. Lucius said it was pathetic; their food stores were infested with rats. Anyway, the Kung Fu Hillbillies somehow rationalized a need for lots of music equipment after the fall of civilization, so they had stolen stage-show equipment from a warehouse belonging to one of Lucius’ friends. Lucius got together with some friends and they paid the Kung Fu Hillbillies a visit. As they broke through the door, one Hillbilly flung a throwing star that broke Lucius’ glasses. “They were crazy!” Lucius told me. “They were going to fight us? We had fucking guns!” They managed to get the equipment back without firing a shot.
During his stay, Lucius wanted to go to a bar. That’s not my routine, but I found one nearby. As we sat there on barstools, he quietly made observations. He liked to listen in, catch tantalizing fragments of conversation which he would later work into story dialog. Seeing a man strike up a conversation with a couple seated nearby, Lucius predicted that in three hours time the guys would be fighting over something said about the woman. Bars are a microcosm of life, he told me. In one night, one sees the life and death of relationships and all that comes between. At one point he chuckled and whispered to me that the bar had another business going on upstairs. I didn’t understand. He asked if I’d noticed the occasional man entering and going straight upstairs. Now watching, I saw a man do just that. The restrooms must be upstairs, I said. Lucius pointed to the restrooms downstairs. As we left, he roared with laughter, amused that I was clueless about a whorehouse virtually in my backyard.
I took Lucius to the Blob Theater (the one used in The Blob) in Phoenixville. We watched a horror movie that used a lot of jump-out-at-you shots. To my surprise, Lucius kept jumping out of his seat, sometimes with an audible yelp. Rattled, he whispered to me that he knew it was just a movie and he knew exactly what they were doing, but it still got to him every time. “If this keeps up,” he told me, “I’m going to have to leave the theater.”
Throughout his stay, Lucius made frequent mention of Lady X. While his own divorce was in the works, Lady X seemed to be dragging her feet. She felt insecure, he said. He needed to publish some stuff to give her the security she needed. Lucius seemed fairly level-headed talking about Lady X, though now and then I sensed a swirl of emotions.
Before leaving, Lucius made clear he had come with a purpose. He was thinking of moving to Eugene, Oregon. That’s where Kate and Damon lived, and it was known to have a healthy writer community. The thing was, Lucius wanted me to come along. Let’s share an apartment out there, he said, and we’ll both make it as writers. He praised my writing, assured me my stuff was bound to sell, and said that Kate and Damon would be very supportive of our efforts. He made quite the sales pitch out of it.
Dropping him off at the airport, I promised to give it some thought.
But it was unreasonable, unworkable. My manager had been very generous in giving me a six-week leave to attend Clarion. Now the project was at a crucial stage. I was working on the BSP (Burroughs Scientific Processor), the world’s fastest supercomputer at that time. I needed to help finish the input/output subsystem. No, I wasn’t a major player on the project. I’d started out a lowly data clerk and recently been promoted to junior software programmer. But this was a crucial embryonic stage in my career. My BA in the Independent Learning Program had proved worthless in the job market; but here, at Burroughs, I had lucked into the beginnings of a professional career.
It had been unfair of Lucius to even ask such a thing of me.
During his stay, Lucius wanted to go to a bar. That’s not my routine, but I found one nearby. As we sat there on barstools, he quietly made observations. He liked to listen in, catch tantalizing fragments of conversation which he would later work into story dialog. Seeing a man strike up a conversation with a couple seated nearby, Lucius predicted that in three hours time the guys would be fighting over something said about the woman. Bars are a microcosm of life, he told me. In one night, one sees the life and death of relationships and all that comes between. At one point he chuckled and whispered to me that the bar had another business going on upstairs. I didn’t understand. He asked if I’d noticed the occasional man entering and going straight upstairs. Now watching, I saw a man do just that. The restrooms must be upstairs, I said. Lucius pointed to the restrooms downstairs. As we left, he roared with laughter, amused that I was clueless about a whorehouse virtually in my backyard.
I took Lucius to the Blob Theater (the one used in The Blob) in Phoenixville. We watched a horror movie that used a lot of jump-out-at-you shots. To my surprise, Lucius kept jumping out of his seat, sometimes with an audible yelp. Rattled, he whispered to me that he knew it was just a movie and he knew exactly what they were doing, but it still got to him every time. “If this keeps up,” he told me, “I’m going to have to leave the theater.”
Throughout his stay, Lucius made frequent mention of Lady X. While his own divorce was in the works, Lady X seemed to be dragging her feet. She felt insecure, he said. He needed to publish some stuff to give her the security she needed. Lucius seemed fairly level-headed talking about Lady X, though now and then I sensed a swirl of emotions.
Before leaving, Lucius made clear he had come with a purpose. He was thinking of moving to Eugene, Oregon. That’s where Kate and Damon lived, and it was known to have a healthy writer community. The thing was, Lucius wanted me to come along. Let’s share an apartment out there, he said, and we’ll both make it as writers. He praised my writing, assured me my stuff was bound to sell, and said that Kate and Damon would be very supportive of our efforts. He made quite the sales pitch out of it.
Dropping him off at the airport, I promised to give it some thought.
But it was unreasonable, unworkable. My manager had been very generous in giving me a six-week leave to attend Clarion. Now the project was at a crucial stage. I was working on the BSP (Burroughs Scientific Processor), the world’s fastest supercomputer at that time. I needed to help finish the input/output subsystem. No, I wasn’t a major player on the project. I’d started out a lowly data clerk and recently been promoted to junior software programmer. But this was a crucial embryonic stage in my career. My BA in the Independent Learning Program had proved worthless in the job market; but here, at Burroughs, I had lucked into the beginnings of a professional career.
It had been unfair of Lucius to even ask such a thing of me.