Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Guess I'll just close my eyes
From : fiction@newyorker.com
Sent : Wednesday, March 24, 2004 7:45 AM
To : bierayas61@hotmail.com (must stay safe)
Subject : Re: submission
We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.
The Editors
Whores! I'm now 0-4 and going crazier than ever. Fuck. I'm going to have to get a real job when I grow up. M,a,y,b,e, a,l,l, m,y, c,o,m,m,a,s, d,r,i,v,e, t,h,e,m, i,n,s,a,n,e, because I am a "Grammar Nazi" and 'tis the truth and nothing more. Guess I'll spend my three-day weekend at home trying to develop whatever writing skill I have, unless everyone lies to me about what a great story I write. This is what they rejected, non-fiction with just a twist of fake to hopefully make it interesting.
Trip to New York/The Death Ride
We went on a trip to upstate New York a few years ago and my mother had the brilliant idea of driving the whole way. She said, "We drive to Dallas (a twelve hour drive) with six people in a six-seater truck all the time, so what is the difference?" The difference was that this was a drive across half the country and would take three days non-stop to do. Another slight difference was that my dad was going to fly up and meet us there, sticking my mom with all the driving. Since there would be no driver for her to alternate with, we would only be able to drive when she felt like driving. My mother can barely stand driving through the half hour of traffic it takes to get to school, so I didn't think we would ever make it to New York.
Like most trips, we planned to start the long haul at three in the morning. Why it has always been this way I do not understand. Though also like most trips, we didn't end up leaving until eight or nine. I liked the planning of it because I could stay awake through the night playing video games or watching TV. And then through the ride I could sleep and not have to be bothered with my brothers' screams, smells, and the amazingly massive amount of space they take up in a car. I would pay for my late night "antics" with having bloodshot eyes the next day. The sleep, if long enough, would cure this. Of course, sleep could not always be achieved because I possess the strangest body clock God has ever created. Regardless of how tired I am, I only get sleepy around four in the afternoon.
Even the waking hours on this trip were pretty fun because I had just discovered Stephen King books. I had started reading the Dark Tower series, which I found to be a story about “The Journey” better than the Lord of the Ring. I am not saying that Stephen King is the greatest writer ever, but I’d have to say that he suits me just fine. Maybe it’s the way that he mixes in humor to all the situations his characters find themselves in. People always tell me that I must be a huge horror fanatic because I always read his work, but I don’t find most of his books aren’t really all that scary. Maybe it’s the thought of having something that scary lurking the streets or just the suspense of knowing that it could pop out any minute (or would it be the suspense of not knowing when it would pop out,) but Stephen King is one of the greatest in my book.
We were going to upstate New York, but, seeing as my mom controlled the wheel with her iron fist of incomprehensibility, we had to make stops in Illinois, Washington, D.C., and the Big Apple.
My mom has relatives living in Mount Carmel, Illinois, so she decided to stop by and give them a little visit. I didn’t really feel like sitting around visiting after driving for three days, so I decided to walk around the surrounding countryside. I found a lot of interesting stuff that sparked my imagination. There was a lot of vegetation so I got to pretend like I was Arnold Schwarzenegger and the alien Predator was after me. Remember, I was just a lowly thirteen-year-old at the time. When I was there, I just wanted to go home because I couldn’t stand the humidity and I was tired of my family with two more weeks of “quality time” with them ahead of me.
Washington, D.C. was some real fun, though. When we drove up to my uncle’s house, there was no one home. It was a narrow driveway and my mom, being the horrid driver that she is, mangled my uncle’s mailbox. We tried to cover it up as well as we could, but my uncle said when they first moved into the house that they ran it over all the time. When we got out, we all were happy to be out, but couldn’t get away from the Game Boy. It sucks you in and never lets go. We bought two games, Blade and this X-men game, at an outlet dealer in Kentucky just because we were getting tired of playing Pokemon the whole trip. My smallest brother got to play it while we were walking around his house looking for an entrance. He was completely absorbed in the game when he tripped on a brick and landed face first into the concrete. It showed him that his turn was over it was right away.
We couldn’t find an entrance so we drove around until my uncle got home. He let us in and immediately ordered pizza because he and his wife are too lazy to cook. My uncle has two cats, which my family hates. Not that we hate those cats, just cats in general. We have horrible allergic reactions to cats. My grandma had a cat a long time ago and I petted it for a while only to later break out in a disgusting case of hives. I had spent a week with the same uncle once and the cat was always in doorways. I wanted to kick the living rag across the room. My brother’s (the one who fell on his face) asthma starts to act up when he’s around cats, so we all have a unifying hatred of cats. While we were there, my brother could hardly breathe. We were driving to a local landmark when he threw up in the backseat. We had almost reached our destination and, as always, were going to be late for the tour, so we had no time to clean up the mess. We covered it up with all the random papers and Kleenex we could find in the truck and let it sit. When we got back, the summer sun had intensified the stench. It was no easy trip back to my uncle’s.
Our uncle showed us a new toy he had bought called Bop It Extreme, which, I can still say today, is one of the coolest toys ever. We soon became disinterested in the Game Boy, as any child should. The goal is to see how long you can keep up with the pace of the game by doing certain things to certain parts of the toy. It keeps track of how far you go and it tells you your score when you lose. In the two days we had the toy, we made it well over one hundred. My brother bought a miniature version of the toy and we played it the whole way home or at least until our mom yelled at us to “shut the crazy thing up.”
Next, we made our way to New York, New York. Along the way, we picked up my dad at the airport in Baltimore. My oldest cousin lives in “Spanish Harlem” and we spent a couple of nights with her. She has a two-room apartment that she has to share with a roommate because the rent is so high. The rent is something like one thousand dollars a month because they are relatively close to the river, even though they also live right across the street from the projects. There was a park a few blocks away from her house so we decided to go there. My cousin’s boyfriend-now-fiancé was complaining about how hot it was that day. Obviously, he had never spent a day in El Paso because the temperature was fine by me. My family acted like any black person there was out to get them. That is one thing I never understood about anyone. People are people. If they come at you like they’re going to attack you, then you should be worried, but, if they are minding their own, then let them be. There was a group of guys in the park having a party of some sort and I remember they started taking pictures and in one all of them held their bottles of whatever liquor they had towards the camera. I thought it was pretty funny.
Finally, we made it to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I don’t remember a lot of what happened there, but I remember the trip back was another death ride. On the way back, my mom may have broken a record by getting four tickets in three states. The road was hers to destroy. At least, the police try their best to keep reckless driving under control.
From : fiction@newyorker.com
Sent : Wednesday, March 24, 2004 7:45 AM
To : bierayas61@hotmail.com (must stay safe)
Subject : Re: submission
We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.
The Editors
Whores! I'm now 0-4 and going crazier than ever. Fuck. I'm going to have to get a real job when I grow up. M,a,y,b,e, a,l,l, m,y, c,o,m,m,a,s, d,r,i,v,e, t,h,e,m, i,n,s,a,n,e, because I am a "Grammar Nazi" and 'tis the truth and nothing more. Guess I'll spend my three-day weekend at home trying to develop whatever writing skill I have, unless everyone lies to me about what a great story I write. This is what they rejected, non-fiction with just a twist of fake to hopefully make it interesting.
Trip to New York/The Death Ride
We went on a trip to upstate New York a few years ago and my mother had the brilliant idea of driving the whole way. She said, "We drive to Dallas (a twelve hour drive) with six people in a six-seater truck all the time, so what is the difference?" The difference was that this was a drive across half the country and would take three days non-stop to do. Another slight difference was that my dad was going to fly up and meet us there, sticking my mom with all the driving. Since there would be no driver for her to alternate with, we would only be able to drive when she felt like driving. My mother can barely stand driving through the half hour of traffic it takes to get to school, so I didn't think we would ever make it to New York.
Like most trips, we planned to start the long haul at three in the morning. Why it has always been this way I do not understand. Though also like most trips, we didn't end up leaving until eight or nine. I liked the planning of it because I could stay awake through the night playing video games or watching TV. And then through the ride I could sleep and not have to be bothered with my brothers' screams, smells, and the amazingly massive amount of space they take up in a car. I would pay for my late night "antics" with having bloodshot eyes the next day. The sleep, if long enough, would cure this. Of course, sleep could not always be achieved because I possess the strangest body clock God has ever created. Regardless of how tired I am, I only get sleepy around four in the afternoon.
Even the waking hours on this trip were pretty fun because I had just discovered Stephen King books. I had started reading the Dark Tower series, which I found to be a story about “The Journey” better than the Lord of the Ring. I am not saying that Stephen King is the greatest writer ever, but I’d have to say that he suits me just fine. Maybe it’s the way that he mixes in humor to all the situations his characters find themselves in. People always tell me that I must be a huge horror fanatic because I always read his work, but I don’t find most of his books aren’t really all that scary. Maybe it’s the thought of having something that scary lurking the streets or just the suspense of knowing that it could pop out any minute (or would it be the suspense of not knowing when it would pop out,) but Stephen King is one of the greatest in my book.
We were going to upstate New York, but, seeing as my mom controlled the wheel with her iron fist of incomprehensibility, we had to make stops in Illinois, Washington, D.C., and the Big Apple.
My mom has relatives living in Mount Carmel, Illinois, so she decided to stop by and give them a little visit. I didn’t really feel like sitting around visiting after driving for three days, so I decided to walk around the surrounding countryside. I found a lot of interesting stuff that sparked my imagination. There was a lot of vegetation so I got to pretend like I was Arnold Schwarzenegger and the alien Predator was after me. Remember, I was just a lowly thirteen-year-old at the time. When I was there, I just wanted to go home because I couldn’t stand the humidity and I was tired of my family with two more weeks of “quality time” with them ahead of me.
Washington, D.C. was some real fun, though. When we drove up to my uncle’s house, there was no one home. It was a narrow driveway and my mom, being the horrid driver that she is, mangled my uncle’s mailbox. We tried to cover it up as well as we could, but my uncle said when they first moved into the house that they ran it over all the time. When we got out, we all were happy to be out, but couldn’t get away from the Game Boy. It sucks you in and never lets go. We bought two games, Blade and this X-men game, at an outlet dealer in Kentucky just because we were getting tired of playing Pokemon the whole trip. My smallest brother got to play it while we were walking around his house looking for an entrance. He was completely absorbed in the game when he tripped on a brick and landed face first into the concrete. It showed him that his turn was over it was right away.
We couldn’t find an entrance so we drove around until my uncle got home. He let us in and immediately ordered pizza because he and his wife are too lazy to cook. My uncle has two cats, which my family hates. Not that we hate those cats, just cats in general. We have horrible allergic reactions to cats. My grandma had a cat a long time ago and I petted it for a while only to later break out in a disgusting case of hives. I had spent a week with the same uncle once and the cat was always in doorways. I wanted to kick the living rag across the room. My brother’s (the one who fell on his face) asthma starts to act up when he’s around cats, so we all have a unifying hatred of cats. While we were there, my brother could hardly breathe. We were driving to a local landmark when he threw up in the backseat. We had almost reached our destination and, as always, were going to be late for the tour, so we had no time to clean up the mess. We covered it up with all the random papers and Kleenex we could find in the truck and let it sit. When we got back, the summer sun had intensified the stench. It was no easy trip back to my uncle’s.
Our uncle showed us a new toy he had bought called Bop It Extreme, which, I can still say today, is one of the coolest toys ever. We soon became disinterested in the Game Boy, as any child should. The goal is to see how long you can keep up with the pace of the game by doing certain things to certain parts of the toy. It keeps track of how far you go and it tells you your score when you lose. In the two days we had the toy, we made it well over one hundred. My brother bought a miniature version of the toy and we played it the whole way home or at least until our mom yelled at us to “shut the crazy thing up.”
Next, we made our way to New York, New York. Along the way, we picked up my dad at the airport in Baltimore. My oldest cousin lives in “Spanish Harlem” and we spent a couple of nights with her. She has a two-room apartment that she has to share with a roommate because the rent is so high. The rent is something like one thousand dollars a month because they are relatively close to the river, even though they also live right across the street from the projects. There was a park a few blocks away from her house so we decided to go there. My cousin’s boyfriend-now-fiancé was complaining about how hot it was that day. Obviously, he had never spent a day in El Paso because the temperature was fine by me. My family acted like any black person there was out to get them. That is one thing I never understood about anyone. People are people. If they come at you like they’re going to attack you, then you should be worried, but, if they are minding their own, then let them be. There was a group of guys in the park having a party of some sort and I remember they started taking pictures and in one all of them held their bottles of whatever liquor they had towards the camera. I thought it was pretty funny.
Finally, we made it to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I don’t remember a lot of what happened there, but I remember the trip back was another death ride. On the way back, my mom may have broken a record by getting four tickets in three states. The road was hers to destroy. At least, the police try their best to keep reckless driving under control.
// posted by Unknown @ 8:48 PM 
