Laura Thomas's Blog: Self-Publishing: A Mean Old Dog (who loves to cuddle) (and might just make you rich)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXmWRb...

Awww yeah, click the above link for a VIDEO blog on the rampant use of “then” as a comparison word. If I see a phrase like “I am bigger then you” one more time, all the wine in the world may not be sufficient.

If you prefer to read a blog rather than watch it, check the next post down!

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ShadowSwan
Shadow Swans website: www.shadowswans.com

Hi people! Blog has been moved to http://www.laurabama.blogspot.com , not out of any lack of love for Goodreads, but just because more people can access that one more easily. Will continue to post blog titles here, with links!

New blog is all about how unnecessary apostrophes drive me to drink: http://www.laurabama.blogspot.com

Twitter: twitter.com/shadowswan
Website: www.shadowswan.com

At the recent Writers’ Conference, I went to a workshop on writing a one-sentence synopsis, or log line. This sentence will be used to sell and promote your book, and it is incredibly important. I am certainly no log line guru, but I’ll share with you what I learned (and feel free to send tips back to me!).

Writing a good log line is incredibly hard and equally crucial. In general, it should mention the main character (but NOT by name – that’s TMI for a log line), the conflict, the setting, the action that’ll take place, and what makes the book distinctive. Ohmahgod, that’s a lot for one sentence. If you can’t figure out how to get started on your one-sentence, you can start out with a word like “while” or “when,” as in:

When Ruby, a brilliant misanthrope, falls in love with a young woman living in the subway tunnels under New York City, she learns that beauty and adventure can be found amidst violence and destitution

That’s my log line for Shadow Swans. It’s not great – let me know if you can help me make it better! “Beauty” and “adventure” are kind of nebulous words for a log line, but I just can’t seem to get more specific without going into detail. Also, the only reason I used a first name (“Ruby”) in my log line is that a same-sex love story makes a log line more difficult to write. If I’d said, “When a brilliant young misanthrope falls in love with a young woman…,” you’d assume that I was talking about a male misanthrope. But it would be repetitive to say that a brilliant and misanthropic young woman falls in love with a young woman living in the subway, so I just used the name Ruby. In this case, I think it’s ok to use the first name. But if you can avoid first names in your log line, that’s best.

Here’s my log line for my new novel:

In the face of worldwide drought, a teenage girl kidnapped by neo-Mayan extremists struggles to escape before she’s sacrificed rain gods.

I think that log line is probably better than the one for Shadow Swans, because it’s more specific. It mentions the main character, her conflict, the setting, and the action.

Here’s a good website on writing a log line:
http://www.archetypewriting.com/artic...

If you have suggestions on how I can improve my one-line synopses, please let me know!!

So, as promised, a little bit more about my meeting with an editor at the writers conference:

First of all, if you’re looking to attend a writers’ conference, I recommend that you look for one that offers pitch sessions. These are short (the one I had was 10 minutes) meetings with actual agents and editors. Don’t even bother with conferences that offer Pitch Slams – these are big chaotic events where lots of people get like 60 seconds to pitch to a room full of editors. All the editors and agents at the conference said these were worthless. I’ll never attend a Pitch Slam – only the one-on-one pitch sessions are useful at all (and even these are MAJOR long shots).

Before a conference you can get a list of the agents and editors who’ll be attending, and you should look at what types/genres of novels they rep, and pick the agent/editor that best represents your genre. I attended the Romance Writers of America Writers’ Conference, even though I don’t really write traditional romance, because that conference offers pitch sessions with agents. Some of the editors/agents at that conference represent Romance as WELL as other genres. I applied to the conference EARLY so that I could get my first choice of agents/editors for my pitch session, and I was assigned my number one choice.

Before the pitch session, I went to some agent and editor panels in which people could ask questions of these publishing gurus. I learned that agents and editors do NOT want to even TALK about an unfinished manuscript. They’re tired of hearing about manuscripts that never get finished. So, my new (unfinished) novel was off the table for my pitch session.

I also learned that of the 10 agents and editors at the conference, 9 of them were not open to talking about self-published novels. Luckily, the editor who I was assigned for my pitch session was the only one who would at least entertain a conversation about a self-pub novel. He did, however, indicate that there’s not much he can do with a self-pub novel - since it’s already out there, a publishing house wouldn’t really benefit much from re-releasing it. But since his publishing house is interested in working with long-term authors, he was willing to at least talk about Shadow Swans to see if he’d be interested in me as an author.

So, here’s how the pitch session goes: You walk in, say hi, and give your one-sentence or one-paragraph pitch for your novel. You should have that honed PERFECTLY. Next week I’ll write more about what I learned re: writing a synopsis. After you present your short pitch, the editor will ask more questions as he/she wants. The editor I met with was incredibly kind and patient and had really good energy, and he seemed impressed with my ideas and requested a full manuscript of Shadow Swans. This, I discovered, is a very good thing – if an editor/agent is only mildly interested, he/she will request only the first few chapters. So, although I wasn’t afforded much hope of reeling in an editor with a self-pubbed novel, I was at least happy to have had my full manuscript requested.

I gather that most editors/agents will read at least a few chapters of everything that they’re sent within their genre (they will NOT read books that do not fall within the genre that they rep). But they take 6 weeks or a few months to get through submissions, so they’re clear about the fact that writers shouldn’t wait by their inboxes for responses.

For me, personally, I was very pleased with my editor meeting. Since I didn’t have a completed manuscript to present, I don’t expect anything concrete to come out of the meeting, but I will CERTAINLY send this editor the manuscript of my new novel when it’s completed. And so the process continues.

More next week on Writers’ Conf revelations. Mwwwwah!

I went to a Writers’ Conference this weekend, and learned lots and lots and not nearly enough. Mainly I learned that I know virtually nothing, but I still have a glimmer of hope that I might find my way in the mean old publishing industry. Below is some of the stuff I including:
-odds of getting an agent
-how to write a query letter
-whom to submit queries to

1. Well, first and foremost I learned that almost nobuddy gets published, so we shouldn’t feel snubbed by rejection letters. Each of the agents and editors present at the conference said they get something like 250 submissions each week, and they take 2 or three new writers PER YEAR. So, even a brilliant writer will have a hard time getting an agent. Still, I plan to send out my new novel (when it’s done – hopefully this fall) to agents/editors. But I won’t get all depressed and self-critical when the rejection letters start pouring in. At least that’s what I tell myself now. ☺

2. I also learned what’s expected in a good query letter. And ohmahgoodness was I underinformed. After I wrote Shadow Swans I sent it to about 20 agents, several of them gave me great constructive feedback, and one even said his agency almost took me on as a client. Looking back, I should’ve felt VERY proud of that track record, given the incredible volume of material agents review, and given the fact that my query letter sucked nails.

What I now know is that a query letter should be concise, and contain exactly the right information. That info should be: word count of novel, genre, synopsis, platform (see my last blog post re: what a platform is), thanks very much, bye. Here’s a site about what a query letter should include: http://www.charlottedillon.com/query..... And this fantastic site contains some real examples of good query letters, along with analyses of the letters: http://www.nelsonagency.com/faq.html.

3. Also learned how entirely crucial it is to make sure you submit to agents/editors who work within my exact genre (which is Women’s Fiction for the adult and YA markets. For Shadow Swans, it’s more specifically Lesbian Fiction for the adult and YA markets). So, before you submit your query letter to anyone, research the agency, what types of books it reps, and be able to tell the agent why your book fits in with that catalogue. These days a writer can also submit directly to editors (this was not the case 10 years ago). But, similarly, writers should only submit to editors who rep their exact genres.

Next week I’ll write more about my one-on-one meeting with an editor, and some other thangs I learned, like how to write a synopsis. ‘Til then, I hug you. xo

I’ve been reading about what to do (and what not to do) in an author-agent pitch session. Often at Writer’s Conferences, you can sign up for these grueling sweat-inducing 10-minute agent meetings, and you have to be like a million percent prepared. So below are some things I know I need to know/do. Next week, after my first actual agent pitch, yowwwwwza(!), I’ll tell you more about what NOT to do. Pray for moi that I don’t make too much of an arse out of myself. Particularly problematic for me is that I have one self-published book under my belt, and an unfinished manuscript. Generally, agents don’t want to hear about either of those things, but I’m going to try to talk about them anyway – the agent might just be like, talk to the hand, I’m busy, bye-bye. Anyway, here are some tips from a newbie on preparing for an author-agent pitch (please feel free to correct me or offer alternative advice or tell me that my summary sucks or whatever – I need alllllll the feedback!):

1. Prepare a one-sentence summary of the book that will hook the agent right away. Also prepare a 3-5 sentence synopsis. And have a one-page summary on hand in case the agent requests it.

Shadow Swans:
• Genre: Literary Fiction for the YA and market
• One-line summary: When a brilliant young misanthrope discovers a community living in the subway tunnels under New York City, she learns that love and magic can be found in even the most destitute of places. [and in a more conversational tone, for when I’m asked about my book on an elevator: It’s about a brilliant young misanthrope living in the New York City subway system who discovers that love and magic can be found in even the darkest places]
• Summary: Credenza R, a shockingly beautiful and well-read young woman, has lived inside the New York City subway system all her life; she has never been aboveground. Ruby Cooper, a filthy rich misanthrope, lives in an abandoned building adorned with hundreds of hummingbirds she has sculpted out of colored wire. Their lives collide, enabling them to find magic in the underground. When they discover a series of government-constructed tunnels connecting all the major cities on the Eastern seaboard, Credenza and Ruby embark upon the greatest, and most dangerous, adventure of their lives; and along the way they fall deeply in love. […I’ve removed the end of this summary so it doesn’t contain spoilers]

The Veil is Thin (new novel):
• Genre: Literary Fiction for the YA market
• One-line summary: In the face of worldwide drought, a teenage girl kidnapped by neo-Mayan extremists struggles to escape before she’s sacrificed rain gods. [conversational tone, for when I’m asked about my book on an elevator: It’s about a teenage girl kidnapped by neo-Mayan extremists who intend to sacrifice her to the god of rain. She has to find a way to escape before the summer solstice festival, when she’ll be thrown into a massive sinkhole.]
• Summary: Drought has overtaken the planet. Anna, an eccentric teenager living in the hills of a Honduran island, is kidnapped by Neo-Mayan extremists and prepared for sacrifice to the angry rain gods. Desperate to escape, Anna attaches messages to the scientific ankle tags of seabirds nesting upon the window of her cell. […I’ve removed the end of this summary so it doesn’t contain spoilers]

3. Know which authors/books you can compare yourself to. For me, this is going to be: Suzanne Collins – Hunger Games - Plot-driven young adult action. Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who blah blah - plot-driven thriller. Sue Monk Kidd – Secret Life of Bees - direct, lyrical and imaginative writing style with lots of sensory descriptions and rich characters. Tom Robbins – I try to pay homage to his ability to play with language.

4. Platform: Who’s your audience? How would you promote your book? Why should the agent think you could sell yourself? Here are some ideas I’ve had for myself:
• Blog on Goodreads: How to self-publish, current writing projects, learning how to pitch a book. 80 readers weekly. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
• Email lists from all my years playing gigs: About 2,000 people.
• Sold 5,000 albums. www.laurathomsaband.com
• Facebook: 1,300 friends
• “Shadow Swans” – www.shadowswans.com. See reviews on Amazon/Goodreads.
• I’ve given two self-publishing tutorials, and a course on “work/life balance” at a local community center. Also book events in Chicago, New York, Birmingham, and Mammoth Lakes CA.

5. Learn about the agent you’ll be meeting. What kind of books is he/she looking for? What’s his/her agency like? Why is he/she a good fit for you?

6. Bring a printed one-page summary to the meeting in case the agent requests it. Also bring first three chapters printed, and a copy of the whole manuscript. Usually agents at writers’ conferences don’t want any of these things because they can’t carry it all home with them. But if they like your project they’ll request that you email them the manuscript.

I’m sure there’s way lots more I should know, and thankfully I’m going to a workshop this week on preparing an author pitch. So this is all pretty preliminary. But this is what I’ve got so far. More next week. You are a magnificent daffodil in a sea of sludge. xoxo.

Ohman I’ve finally succeeded in writing my 50,000 words, which is about 200 pages, but my head is truly about to ‘splode. In many ways I’m monumentally pleased about all this, but what I have now learned (actually I learned this during my previous NaNoWriMo experience, but I’d forgotten it) is that if you write 50,000 words in a month (well ok it was a month and a week, but whatevs), those will NOT be quality words. They will be hasty, and they will lack elegance, and they will not be words that you want anyone to read as-is. But I figure, at least I’ve put the plot down on paper, and I can go back later to polish the language so that it’s delightful to the mind’s ear.

The good news is that I’m supa-happy with the new novel’s plot. It’s complicated and bizarre and fast-paced. It’s all about worldwide droughts, ritual human sacrifice and scientifically tagged seabirds that travel all across Central and South America. And it keeps changing and evolving way beyond what I had originally intended. Originally I was going to write the whole thing in first person past tense from the perspective of one protagonist, but it turns out I will have three completely distinct protagonists, and each will tell one big chunk of the story.

Before I continue with the book-writing (I think the novel will be a total of about 100,000 words), my next step is to edit the first 50 pages of the story so that it’s presentable to agents/editors. Later this month I’m going to my first Writers’ Conference and I need to have somethin’ new to present to any agents/editors I meet. Really, I shouldn’t be going to a Writers’ Conference until my new novel is FINISHED, because from what I understand, agents/editors aren’t much interested in unfinished works. But I figure I can give them a copy of Shadow Swans and a copy of the first 50 pages of my new novel, and then hopefully I can convince them that I have a killer “platform” (I just learned what this word means, and I’ll write about it in my next blog post) and we can all make gazillions of dollars from my future endeavors (of course, gazillions of dollars in the publishing industry is more like a couple thousand dollars, but I’m going to push for gazillions).

So this means that I need to learn how to prepare a “pitch,” and polish my “platform.” I’ll work on that and get back to you about what the F that means. Meanwhile, have a beautiful inspired riches-filled week. Melovesyou. ☺

BTW, for anyone who missed it, my last 3 blog posts contained the first 5 chapters of Shadow Swans. Here are the links:
Chapter 1: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...
Chapters 2 and 3: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...
Chapters 4 and 5: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

Amazon link for Shadow Swans: http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Swans-eb...

Chapter Four

To hover, hummingbirds move their wings in a figure 8.


I was a melancholy child, roaming the dark woods of upstate New York with a flashlight and a death wish. At age 9, in a dramatic fit of childish self-absorption, I tried to throw myself off a cliff because I felt so alone in the world, and because my mother had refused to allow me to go to the birthday party of the most popular girl in school - the girl was a “bad influence.” I chose a very cinematic bluff behind our house, overlooking the city, where my dress would billow out around my waist, and just when the sun shone high, and the world seemed most pleasantly oblivious, I threw myself headlong toward certain death. But in actuality I just cascaded down the six-foot drop, landing in a screaming heap, wrist broken in two places.
From then on, my melancholy only grew, and I became the “bad influence” girl whose birthday party was prohibited in the most proper circles. I grew intolerant of everyone, and I withdrew into my epic imagination, and began to write stories and philosophies and life details that I presumed far more significant than they were.
I found myself to be brilliant, and unloved, and filled with languor. I began counting things early on. First, I would count the hairs on my knee, or the wrinkles in my palm. Then I counted blades of grass at recess, and the teachers became concerned, sending notes of worry home to my parents. I sometimes spent hours sitting in patches of clover, searching for the one with the fourth leaf.
As I matured, nothing could excite me – not clovers, not sex, not narcotics, not the brutality of the world. On the contrary, I searched for meaning in all of it, and found none. Only hummingbirds ever seemed to me to be complete organisms – small enough to remain invisible to most of the world, fast enough to travel throughout it, sucking sweet nectar from the most beautiful flowers imaginable.
My mother encouraged my hummingbird fetish, as she found it to be the only hint of daintiness in her otherwise dismal progeny. When I started making hummingbirds, during adolescence, my family circle was charmed by the eccentric little creations. But when they began to flow from my bedroom’s every orifice, when they began to speak to me, actually speak to me, the charm dissipated, and once again, I heard murmurs in the hallways about whether it was time for poor little Ruby to seek inpatient care… But everyone didn’t see that my erupting flock of hummingbirds was testament to my love of beauty – hard-to-reach secret beauty. I wasn’t incapable of finding joy on this Earth – I just found it harder than some. But it was not acceptable for me to be anything less than a cheerful young lady. And so I learned to play the part well enough to ward off the psychiatrists, secretly continuing my love affair with little wire winged creatures.

Soon after I met Den, my hummingbirds practically started spinning themselves. They multiplied in unprecedented fashion – my brood grew by two or three birds a day, my hands glowing raw and torn.
The streets of New York were never more detestable to me than at that time. Little sweat-shirted college girls waddled down the streets squawking into their telephones. Dirty artists sat in cafes talking about how much they hated the President, while making plans to go to Thailand over Election Day week. Fancy girls, not sexy enough to model underwear, dressed as if they were sexy enough to model underwear, so that they could trap banker boyfriends who would render them miserable and rich and eternally undervalued. New York was steeped in vapidity, and I felt smothered by it.
I took some solace in the awkwardness of the enthusiastic nerds who worked with me at Geekspace. At least they didn’t live in a world of pretense; they lived in a world where the patterns of the world could be compartmentalized. Mark was probably the smartest among my colleagues, and this was the only thing that had attracted me to him. When he talked, sweet as he was, I wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth. I just liked to watch his mind work, and lie next to him. To me, that was as good as a relationship could possibly get.

Following my second encounter with Den, I invited Charlie, one of the Vietnam Vets who squatted in my building (I always thought it fantastic that his name was Charlie, and he had lost the vast majority of his marbles in Vietnam, while killing “Charlie”), over for a glass of warm wine. He was a sucker for warm white wine – not cold – spent too much of his life freezing his ass off, he said, and he drank wine to get himself warm, so why drink it cold? Charlie came in stinking and drunk and jabbering, as usual, but sweet as aspartame. With his long beard, and wise tired old eyes, and gnarly veined hands that looked as if they had crafted the Earth themselves, millions of years ago, Charlie was like the father I might have had if I had grown up in a Narnian ghetto. He believed that most people could fly, and the cops could shoot lasers out of their eyes, and he could tell who among the general population was an alien. I, of course, was not an alien. I was one of the “protectors,” as he called us – we would save the world from evil domination. I loved that idea, and swore to him that I would uphold my duties as Earth protector. Charlie was tragic, but perfect.
He came in, sat on the floor with his back against the wall, and accepted a cup of warm wine (he was not partial to wine glasses), scratched his wiry gray beard, worked himself up about how the government had put cameras in all of the trees in the park so it could find the terrorists, and we were never alone, we were under the man’s thumb at every moment. He paced the room, flailing arms clad in an enormous old denim shirt unbuttoned at the wrists, so that when he gesticulated, the denim flapped like wings unhinged. A car alarm wailed somewhere outside; Charlie turned to the velvet-curtained window, stared at it as if preparing for the car to come crashing through. Once he was deeply drunk and placated, I asked, “What do you know about people who live in the subway?”
He jumped up from the floor, leapt to the window in one bound, and peeked out from behind my blue velvet curtains, as if he were searching for a sniper. Turning around to face me, he asked intently, “ARE YOU ONE OF THEM?”
“No. I live here in your house. I just want to know about them.”
“About who?” His face tilted slightly sideways with suspicion, his eyes narrowed to a slit, as if squinting would reveal my true intention.
“The people who live in the subway.”
“Oh, them.” He reached up and spun several of my hummingbirds on their strings, just to watch them dance, his own sleeve flapping backward as he reached to the ceiling. “Freaks. They’re blind and pink and eat each other. And once they go down there, they never come out. And they make little blind pink babies that have gills and swim around in the sewers like they’re swimming pools.”
His back again pressed hard against my wall, and he grabbed his neck, as if preparing to rip off the gills that might have suddenly sprouted. “Ha! They’ve got something going, really. They don’t have to deal with any of this bullshit.” With that, he held out his hands, to indicate all of the bullshit that surrounded us. “There are no cameras down there, you know? They’re pretty much on their own. Smart, really.” He ran to the window, and peeked out from behind the curtain.
I walked over and gently pulled him back from the window. “Have you met any of them?”
He wrinkled his face in disgust. “Me? No. I don’t talk to people who live down there. They stink, they’re dirty.” The muddled logic in many of Charlie’s personal beliefs never failed to amuse me. He continued spinning the hummingbirds, “But, hey, check this out: they brew their own liquor down there. Far out. I like your new birds, man. This one’s new. And that one right there has a beautiful soul.”
“Yeah, I know. Little John, the blue and yellow one with the red mohawk, flew away yesterday.”
With genuine sympathy, he said, “Well, he had to go. It was his time.”
“I gotta get to work, Charlie. You can take the rest of the bottle with you.”
He bent down to pick up the bottle from my worn hardwood floor. I noticed that some of my planks had rotted so deeply that the ancient frame beneath peeked through.
Charlie leaned in to give me five, and said, “Thanks, man. I’ll see ya. Let me know if they mess with you.”

That night, I painted broad white swaths over parts of my walls. Sometimes I need to be surrounded by a veil of white. I want to wear it, eat it, drink it, watch it, and think about it, until I feel blank and clean. The wan light bulb overhead rendered the room magically desperate, like in a movie about a serial killer. The new white swaths on the walls filled the room with irony and peace. By the time I went to bed my body was covered in crusty patches of white paint. I slept that way to see if the pallor and chemicals would affect my dreams. But I didn’t dream.



Chapter Five

A hummingbird may eat twice its body weight in a single day.

Really, my existence was unintended. A loveless home had grown stale, my parents dancing around each other every day, deftly avoiding one another without seeming to, so that they wouldn’t have to confront the emptiness between them. They thought that a child might repair the breach, but instead I widened it, because I was never the flower-wearing, pink-loving, cheerleading, perfect little girl for which they’d hoped.
My parents tried to be good to me, tried to be loving. But in the end, they approached me like a stock portfolio – manage the thing properly, and maybe the outcome will be positive; manage it poorly, and the whole family is screwed. I think that the Ruby Portfolio failed to deliver even a fraction of the returns that had been expected. And so, although I do believe that my mother loved me, deeply, even tragically, she always had trouble expressing any affection toward me. I became just one more fixture in a cordial home. I joined my parents’ dance of avoidance, and made myself as invisible as possible.
I think this is why darkness became my modus operandi. My concerned Mother sent me to therapists far and wide. None had any success with me, because, they said, I didn’t have the will to change, and a person without the will to change will never change.
My true therapy was found not in the doctors’ offices, but in a small patch of forest that nobody else had discovered. Across the field from my house, in an otherwise nondescript woodland, sat a giant rock that resembled a mushroom. Pine trees three feet in diameter grew around the rock, their needles blanketing the forest floor. At age 12, I strung rope from three of the trees, forming a triangle from which I could hang a tarp for protection from the rain. I painted the rock like a magic mushroom, great brown and yellow spots crowning the top, white rivets underneath the crown, and a pure white base at the bottom. The trees I painted as mushroom-worshipping tree people, using the branches as limbs, finding faces in the bark patterns. I hid small gnomes among the trees, and hummingbirds in the treetops. I spent most weekends sitting in my wild grotto under the tarp, talking to the trees, writing endlessly in my journal.
The only people I ever brought to the grotto were Claire, a big, troublesome girl who ended up losing all her potential to methamphetamines, and Rob, an old boyfriend who bought me cigarettes. To some extent, I recreated the grotto in New York, in my newest neglected corner of the world. But most of the time, even the charms of my new Grotto weren’t enough to clear the fog of affliction that sometimes enveloped me.

I put together a package for Den, in case she called me again: some clothes I didn’t want anymore, old makeup, worn copies of Middlesex and Kite Runner. I didn’t know if she’d ever use any of it, but I would’ve thrown the stuff away soon anyway, so I didn’t really care.
Around that time, I fell into one of my fogs, saying almost nothing to anyone. Mark tried to revive me with sweetness and flowers. At lunch, sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, he said, “What’s happening to you, when you don’t talk to me for days?”
I felt no warmth toward him, and his efforts gave me no warmth. Just coldness and apathy, except for a glimmer of familiarity, which was enough to keep me from running far away. I swung my feet up on the bench, leaned my back against his side, said, “Nothing. Tell me more about the new code.”

Eventually, I all but gave up on the possibility of seeing Den again. I had known her for almost three months, seen her only twice; I clearly was not, for her, the bastion of excitement that she was for me. At the end of April, I submerged myself in a total fast for 24 hours, thinking that perhaps not eating would make me feel fully alive, and serve me some kind of spiritual revelation. My fast began at 8PM; by noon the next day I decided that my idea was ridiculous. But my obstinacy outweighed my irritation and appetite, so I figured I’d see it through. At lunchtime, I resolved to go home from work and paint my walls again, because the sterility of my office had grown more infuriating as my hunger mounted. As I painted a massive whale-like creature, its saber-toothed mouth open so wide I could have walked through it, my phone rang.
“Yes.” I said, with no emotion.
“It’s Den. I need you right now.” Her voice sounded less brash, less imposing than usual. Was she crying?
Blood evaporated from even the tiniest of my veins, chilling my body. Quietly, “What’s wrong?”
“Just come down here, please. Same place.” The desperation in her voice alarmed me.
I threw the paintbrush into the bucket, wiped paint-spattered hands on my jeans, slipped on my sneakers. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
I found Den already sitting on the bench, stinking, staring at her hands, one foot bouncing nervously on the floor. She looked up at me, her face blotched, patches of red staining her translucent white skin, eyes swollen and mangled with tension.
“What happened?”
“My Mom is sick. I don’t know what she has. I thought it was just a cold, but we don’t have any medicine, and she just keeps getting worse and worse. I need something, antibiotics or something. But I don’t have any way to get them. And I need to heat her up – she’s so cold, no matter how many blankets we pile on her.”
I wondered who “we” was.
I took a breath. “Meet me back here in an hour, and I’ll bring you some stuff.”
“Thanks. Thank you, really.” She still hadn’t risen from the bench; her body inert, filled with three tons of lead, her shoulders pulled toward the floor by giant subterranean magnets.
“Sure. See you in an hour.”
I loped up the station steps and then sprinted toward Mark’s apartment on 12th Street. I didn’t have a key, but his place was about as hard to break into as a piggy bank. Jumped up on the handrail of the stoop, then onto the fire escape, and in through his always-unlocked second-floor window. The place was cluttered with video games, books, dirty linens, dishes. Mark had a penchant for painkillers, and all other prescription palliatives. His medicine cabinet hid a massive hoard. I took two bottles of expired antibiotics and one of Percoce. Then I went to the Kmart and bought a battery-operated heat blanket, some batteries, a mini-flashlight, some vitamins, Zinc lozenges, Advil, Nyquil, orange juice, and a thermometer. The flashlight I slipped into my pocket; the rest stayed in a giant bag emblazoned with the company logo.
Back in the station, Den was still sitting on the bench, unmoved.
I handed her the massive bag, “Here you go.”
“How much I owe you?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it. Just take me down there sometime.”
She grabbed the bag, jumped out of her seat, threw me a twenty-dollar bill, and towered over me. “My Mom’s dying. Spare me your condescending curiosity. Here’s 20 bucks. Thanks for your help. I’m sure you have killer dreams about me late at night in your fancy heated house.”
My proverbial back arched like an angry kitty: “You don’t know what I dream about.”
Without another look in my direction, she tumbled down into the passageway and leapt soft as a gazelle over the third rail, into the tunnel, Kmart bag crinkling along at her side.
As I watched her shrink and fade, I checked myself. Why should I not follow her? Did I not deserve a discovery today? Had I not done everything I could to save her mother’s life? And who was Den to assume I dreamed about her (which I had, many times, but she couldn’t possibly know that). Did I fear the tunnels? No. Did she have any right to prevent me from entering them? No. She neither owned nor governed the underground. And she was ungrateful, as far as I could tell. I thought, I’m as tough as she is.
I tumbled awkwardly down after her, jumped clear of the third rail, grabbed the flashlight nestled down in my jacket pocket, and zoomed all my senses in on Den’s receding steps.
Suddenly, my immutable pluck crashed into a bottomless pit. I was terrified. I didn’t know how many third rails there were down in these tunnels. I imagined myself surrounded by toothless raving lunatics, hell-bent on deflowering and mutilating foolish young girls. I imagined my naked flayed body decaying on the tracks, slowly consumed by giant rats; my parents wondering, in desperation, what had happened to their wayward daughter; my colleagues hiring some other loser genius to take up my projects with far greater efficiency; the world spinning neatly on its axis despite my soul’s obliteration.
The light around me faded, but didn’t disappear altogether – frightening bluish bulbs punctuated the darkness, strained to illuminate gerbil-sized cockroaches suddenly swarming at my feet. Sounds of moving things filled the dimness. A train was coming; from which direction, I couldn’t tell. My hair began to swirl, marking the arrival of the oncoming train; I looked both directions, at first couldn’t see it, then suddenly it came around a bend, and screamed by me as I pressed my body against the wall, so loud it punctured my ears; it took my breath away. The sound of Den’s steps disappeared in the din.
I lost myself in a mire of confusion. I remembered I hadn’t eaten in almost an entire day, but was afraid to turn back – I might come face-to-face with an oncoming train. At least I trusted that Den knew a safe path. She understood the tunnels and the trains. I peered forward, watched the outline of her form moving some 50 feet in front of me, followed at breakneck speed, shocked that she wasn’t aware of my presence. She was running too fast, the bags in her hand and the trains at our backs making too much noise, and she focused only on the path in front of her. The farther we ran, the less I could see.
The underground smells overcame me. Decaying flesh, garbage, shit, city fumes, piss, all vaporized into a thick wind that pushed back and forth through the passageways, with the passing trains. Rats and roaches ran in uncountable herds, like wildebeest across the plains. They crunched under my feet. A train wailed somewhere in the distance. My heart nearly beat out of my chest, and I focused intently upon the figure in front of me.
Den turned left into a tunnel devoid of lights. I followed her, a lump rising in my throat, tears nearly pushing through my stinging eyes. I was so furious with myself for being scared – my fearless nature had always been a great source of pride. I mean, I lived in an abandoned building. But this tunnel could strike fear into the heart of Zeus.
The darkness trapped me; I almost couldn’t make out the features of my hand, as I held it before my face. I turned on my mini flashlight and pointed it at the ground in front of me. Den ran farther and farther ahead. I was flying through a wide tunnel that showed no sign of recent life aside from the rats. On either side of me ran a set of ancient tracks. The ground rasped unevenly beneath me. I heard the scrapings of glass under my feet, the squelch of soft unknown things, the banging of metal (please, God, let me avoid electrocution). I thought I heard Den turn right, up ahead of me, and disappear, but I couldn’t see her. After another 50 feet I came to a cross-section – a tunnel on either side. The sound of Den’s movements had nearly vanished. I counted my breaths, tried to calm myself. Turning down the right-hand tunnel, I shined my light directly in front of me. Suddenly, like a phantom, Den stopped in her tracks and turned on her heels.
Hissing like a snake, she whisper-yelled “Get away from me! Are you crazy? You will get KILLED in here!”
My voice would not rise above the stench; delirium and fright and hunger clenched me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to get back.”
“You stupid selfish asshole. I can’t take you back right now, because my Mother is DYING.” She looked around, as if searching for a ditch in which to toss me. Finding none, she threw up her hands. “I’ll take you with me, but if you get killed, it is NOT my fault. Tell everybody that you’re a doctor or something, and you’re going to save her, and you better make them believe it’s true, or you are so screwed you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” I stammered. Regret is not something I often experience, but at that moment, it clutched me.
“Follow me, do not deviate from my footsteps, don’t talk, and don’t ask any questions. Take off all of your jewelry and put it in your pockets. Button up your jacket all the way. You stupid, stupid...”
She ran off, down the middle of the tunnel, for another five minutes. Then, abruptly, she turned and held out her hand to stop me, put her finger to her lips, turned around and walked slowly another 100 feet. A dim redness hung in the air out in front of us. As we crunched our way toward it, I saw that the light eeked over a 10-foot plywood wall on our right. Behind the wall, voices tumbled over each other in a soft muddle.
Again, Den turned to me: “This is my life, do you understand? You are here to save Mom, and nothing else. You do not know anything about these people. You do not ask them any questions. If they feel even a little bit threatened by you, they will kill you, and they will not lose sleep over it. Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“Yes.” I really did.
Den bent back the far corner of the plywood, shoved the bags into the opening, and slipped herself deftly between the board and the wall. I thought to myself, please don’t cry, please don’t cry, please don’t cry, and then I wedged my own waifish body through the plywood portal.

Chapter Two

A ruby-throated hummingbird weighs as much as a penny.


As I fastened the necklace to my body (it has not been unfastened since that moment), I decided that I would not go to work that day, or, perhaps, ever again. Instead, I would return to my decrepit palace.
Since childhood, I have been obsessed with secret and abandoned buildings. Early on, I made a habit of trespassing, particularly in structures that exuded darkness and tragedy. I’ve climbed into castles, crack dens, caves (both man-made and natural), abandoned police stations and libraries, condemned apartment buildings, old theaters, and, in other countries, ancient war fortifications. But each time, though I resurfaced with rushing blood and fabulous stories, I found myself generally as empty as before the adventure began – hungry for the next thing, rather than satisfied with the last. Until I made my own castle from the ruins of a dead one.
My apartment was magical. Plywood covered the entire lower level of the building, just off Avenue D. The bricks of the upper levels were shrouded in exquisite swooping gang symbols, full of passion, color, and grit. Never did their meanings make themselves known to me, and yet I could stare at those symbols for hours, lost in their magnificent lines.
One side of my building fronted an abandoned lot – the plywood planked up on that wall was loose, and behind it hid a side entrance to the building. I squatted on the second floor, up a grand dark wooden staircase embellished with curled century-old carvings, past the peeling yellowed wallpaper in the hallway, in a one-room apartment that had probably sheltered hundreds of Russian, and Prussian, and Ukranian, and Irish immigrants over the decades.
My floors, near collapse, revealed patches of tile and layers of wood that had been laid down over the decades. I covered my windows with thick, opaque, blue velvet curtains so that nobody would discover my presence. At night, sometimes, I opened my curtains and lay in the dark, permitting the night air to envelop me.
I painted each square inch of wall and ceiling in my apartment in great irregular swaths of every imaginable color, to help me deny the true nature of the world, which in my opinion was, at its heart, the color of bruises – black and purple and burned. But I never found a combination of colors powerful enough to eradicate the heart of the world. For that, I relied upon my avian friends.
Flying around my ceiling was a flock of hummingbirds, which I spun out of colored electrical wire and copper wire and every other kind of wire that I could pull from discarded televisions and stereos and old cars in the junkyard. On that day, I had 462 of them, but that number did vary (and it was documented in my weekly census). At its most populous, the flock numbered 487. Sadly, some of my birds flew away – I gave them too much soul and spirit, and they couldn’t stand to be confined to my room, so they just took to the sky. I don’t blame them.
A small generator powered my lights, my computer, and my stereo. My heater was battery-powered, but I rarely used it; the cold made me feel more agitated and productive. For some reason there was still running water in my building. This, I cannot explain, except to say that New York must be the most inefficiently administered metropolis in the world.
It’s true, I didn’t get hot water, but my gas-powered stove could heat a lake full of water. Like a pioneer, I poured giant boiling pots into my old claw-foot tub, on which rust had almost entirely devoured the once-shiny porcelain. The tub legs erupted into violent life-sized tiger paws, their massive claws sharp as death. I had re-finished the veneer on the inside, where my body would lie, and the rest I left to the mercy of the elements. I loved to seek refuge in that tub for hours and imagine all of the bodies that had slithered into its slick white sides.
After I met Den, I disappeared into my claw-foot tub with a notebook in hand, and wrote out every detail of my morning. I felt, for the first time in years, a sense of visceral excitement. Some part of me believed, or wanted to believe, I had found a soul-sister, or a prophet who would enlighten me. Even today, I cannot explain why a young woman as generally distressed as myself should have found such bliss in a chance meeting with a vagabond, except that perhaps I had already begun to fall in love with her, just a tiny bit, on that first day. And perhaps I somehow knew that the book of my life, which I had been writing for so long, had just taken its most audacious turn.
Since childhood, I have recorded copious notes about my daily life. I always had a notion that my life was in some way monumental, and my epic autobiography would be read by millions of minions across the globe. These days, I’m quite sure I’ll never have minions, and I’m not sure there’s ever been anything monumental about anybody’s life (with a few notable exceptions) but I am still fascinated by the notion of my life’s potential, or lack thereof, the notion that almost nobody out there will ever notice what I do with that potential, or lack thereof, and so the copious notes continue to abound. To date, I have filled 213 small notebooks with profane observations and witty conversations and endless explorations of my irascible mind. And in those notebooks, my reservoir of distress and wonder has spewed and swelled, year by year.
On that particular day in February, my writing was filled with wildly optimistic dribble that failed to portend the untamed tornado that my life would soon become.





Chapter Three

If continuously active, a hummingbird can starve to death in 2 hours.


The week after I met Den, I imagined that there were people watching me from all directions – their eyes peering out from manholes, from the hollows of Tompkins Square Park’s great trees, from inside those solitary water towers on top of every building. And I imagined lithe and beautiful and filthy people with cobalt eyes. I obsessed over the underground populations and spent hours researching them. At the last count (which was nearly thirty years ago), at least 5,000 homeless, often referred to as “mole people,” lived in the New York subway system. Some had purportedly organized into structured communities with teachers, mayors, and “runners” who traveled to the outside world to get food and supplies. These communities were rife with drugs, prostitution, crime, and disease.
And officially, the Mole People didn’t exist. The city of New York asserted that it had purged the subway system of its homeless plague.
I wondered what the spirit of the underground felt like. It seemed so dark and cold, but I imagined it might be richer than my spare, spirit-filled home.
The thought that I wouldn’t see Den again filled me with strife and anger. Never had I been confronted with anything or anyone so captivating, and I had no idea how to maintain a handhold on my newfound fixation.
I wanted to fly down into the tunnel and slip through cracks and crevices and fight off demons until I found her; but I didn’t.
Over the course of the following week, I occasionally went to my office, where I sat at a fancy desk and surfed the web, ignoring the mediocre minds moving around me.
I was the Director of Network Operations for Geekspace, a friend network geared entirely toward the sector of society obsessed with computers and mathematics and fantasy role-play. I had started up Geekspace for a Computer Science project at Brown University. Technology junkies joined, from all across the country, by the thousands. They loved Geekspace, because, for the first time in their lives, they were making friends, fitting in, and getting laid, since the entire courting process happened online, allowing them to overcome the fact that they had absolutely no “game,” and minimal social skills. Also, nerds from Kansas who wanted to talk about course wavelength digital multiplexing, or vector markup language, could find someone in Rhode Island who was equally excited about that subject’s nuances.
And because I had so many technologically-obsessed new friends willing to help me streamline Geekspace, it became one of the most efficient friend networks on the web. Myspace and Friendster and Facebook and others entered a bidding war for my site, and I eventually sold to Myspace for ten million dollars, and the promise of $200,000 per year to serve as Director of Network Operations, a meaningless and unnecessary position.
Basically, I got paid to come to work when I pleased, and answer a few questions. A ridiculous job, it allowed me ultimate freedom.
My colleagues, or, more appropriately, my employees, were well-intentioned computer geeks, and a few businesspeople who also tended toward the technological ilk. Awkward, poorly-dressed, and somewhat brilliant, most everyone at Geekspace shared with me an impatience for the trivial and avaricious nature of the business world. At least half of them just wanted to sit in a room all day with their computers, solve problems using ones and zeroes, receive their paychecks, and then return home to play online Risk with their buddies in Japan.
At lunch in the building cafeteria with my slightly interesting boyfriend Mark, who actually did the work I had been hired to do, I asked, “Have you ever seen a hot homeless person?” Mark sat back in his chair, a black hoodie obscuring half his face, and said, “No, but Halle Berry was homeless for a while, and she’s hot.”
I leaned in, and whispered toward the hole in the hoodie, “I saw a homeless girl as hot as Halle Berry.”
“Cool. Where?” Mark shoved a noodle in his mouth, sat forward in his chair, and pushed his hoodie back. Messy brown hair laid down on his forehead, nearly obscuring his masculine but bookish features. I peered at him closely, certain that he was attractive, but wondering whether I actually liked him, unable to tell.
I would not divulge where I had met Den. She was my secret, my prize. Instead of answering, I said, “Have you heard of people who live in the subway tunnels?”
Mark leaned into me, suddenly seeming less masculine and more childlike, and grabbed my wrist. “Did you go into the tunnels? Why didn’t you take me?” As always, he was far too needy.
I panicked, realizing my mistake, fearing that I had betrayed the sanctity of my secret. Glancing at the clock on the wall, grabbing my backpack, I made a false show of professional urgency, “No. I didn’t. Just was wondering if it’s true that there are people down there. We gotta get back to the office.”


The next Friday, I swam back through the rush-hour river, my shoulder brushing up against a scum-stained tile wall, my feet scraping on concrete soaked with decades of urine. I put on my iPod, sat on the bench, and waited. For three hours. And she didn’t come. So I got on the train and glided to work in an existential fog, not feeling the jostle of the tracks underneath me, or the cold oily slip of the pole under my hand.
The following week, I placed a hummingbird under the subway bench. Its wiry mouth held a tiny piece of paper with my phone number and the words “Den, call.” I waited, and heard nothing, for two months. The bonfire in my gut began to dwindle, and I sank back into the state of ennui that had pervaded my life for more than two decades.
Until my phone rang, and that loud, hard voice said, “I saw you waiting that day. I didn’t come because I wanted to see how long you would wait.”
“When? Weeks ago?” I snapped, my heart racing. I wanted to vaporize myself and fly with the telephone signal, up to the satellite floating by the moon, back down to another phone somewhere in Manhattan, so I could see her. “So why are you calling me now?” My tone wasn’t nearly as indifferent as I wanted it to be.
“I need some more stuff.”
Mustering hostility, I said, “You think I’ll do whatever you tell me to?”
“Yep. You gonna help me?”
I felt used, and angry, and vanquished, and thrilled. “Who’s been at your beck and call for the last 2 months?”
“I had a guy, but he doesn’t want to help me anymore.”
“Why?”
“He got pissed because I wouldn’t take him to my house.”
“I don’t blame him.” House?
She was losing patience. “Dude, are you going to help me or not?”
“Fine. Where?”
“First Avenue station, at three o’clock. If I don’t come up right away, just wait. Can you bring me a book too? Anything’s cool.”
My own patience with this was wearing thin. “Maybe. I’ll see if I have one.” Of course I had one.
“I’ll see you at 3. Thanks.”
I was supposed to meet Mark that afternoon, but I called and told him I was sick and needed to rest. Exasperatingly sweet, Mark said he didn’t mind, since he was still figuring out how to unlock the Hidden Foundation Level in Halo 2. At least Mark didn’t ask too many questions.
Gliding on a hand-painted skateboard through streets filled with rage, I closed my eyes when I crossed an intersection, just to see if I could make it through without getting slammed by a car. People with nothing else to think about wondered at my stupidity. I arrived at the station on time, but saw no sign of Den until 3:45, when she scampered out of the tunnel and hopped up next to me, a list in her extended hand, no apology for tardiness. She wore the same dirty jeans and army boots, with a not-so-filthy red sweatshirt. Her hair sat twisted on top of her head, as before. But her demeanor was less cold, almost friendly, almost smiling.
“Here,” was all she said.
“No hello?”
She stood like a tough guy, shoulders hunched, hips square, legs shoulder-width apart, list-bearing hand held out nonchalantly. And, with that mysterious accent, she said, “I don’t have time to be nice. If you don’t want to help me, I’ll find another sucker to do it.” The last was uttered without displeasure, as if it were a joke, rather than a threat.
Under my breath, I said, “Here’s your book.” I took the list, and handed her The Magus by John Fowles.
Her cheeks reddened, betraying pleasure. With the smallest hint of smile, she reached for the book, and said, “Thanks. What is it?”
“One of my favorite books. Some of it happens underground. And there’s a lot of magic in it.”
She sat down on the bench, opening the book to the first page, reading intently, cueing me to leave her alone.
Taking her money and list, I skated slowly to the grocery store. Wandering through grocery aisles, I listened to Stevie Wonder sing through the loudspeaker about his Cherie Amour. The lights, fluorescent bright, exposed every crevice on the face of an ancient Ukranian woman. Skinny women milled around comparing Snackwell boxes and thinking about how best to culinarily appease their ineffectual husbands. Nobody spoke. I counted 126 brands of cereal, 13 brands of honey, 86 brands of potato chips, taking an unnecessary hour to get Den’s supplies, just to teach her a lesson about promptness and respect.
Back in the station, Den glanced from her book, and said, “Did it make you feel good to know I was waiting here for you?”
She acted aloof, but I saw frustration in her clear blue eyes. I said, “Yes.”
She dove back in her book. Somehow I could tell she approved of my move.
I sat down next to her. “Did you like the hummingbird?”
“Yeah, I did. Some of my friends want to know how you did it.”
“I could show them.”
“Hell no. They don’t want to meet you. They just want to know how you made the bird.”
“Well, tell them that if they want to know how I do it, I’ll come give them a lesson.”
She looked away, deep into her dark home, and asked, “What’s it like outside today?”
“It’s beautiful. Let’s go for a walk.”
Pursing her lips, she said, “No way. I don’t go up there.” I believed her. Underneath all the grit and fury, she was the palest person alive.
“When was the last time you saw the sun?” I asked her.
With this, she blushed deeply, all over her face and neck. “Never.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding you. I don’t want to go up there.”
Incredulous, I raised my voice for the first time. “Why? That’s crazy!”
She slid back away from me, and crossed her arms, torquing her face into an angry wad. “No it’s not. The world is a mess. Did you know that the sky is literally falling? And anyway, can you imagine what people would think of me up there? No way. I’d be a damn pariah.”
The air around us suddenly seemed thick and unwell, and I imagined breathing only that, for my entire life. A few people sat on benches 40, 50, 100 feet away. A girl who looked like a cheap secretary, in an ill-fitting suit, checked her fingernails. A banker stared into the tunnel, searching for the phosphorescent fish eyes. Everyone seemed absurd. Softly, I said, “I bet you’re the only homeless person that uses the word ‘pariah.’”
Her cheeks flushed again. Sitting on the bench, legs splayed like a man, the color in her cheeks seemed so feminine, so out of place, especially when coupled with her boorish attitude. “You don’t know anything about homeless people. We’re not all crazy and stupid. Well, most of us are crazy, but not all of us. And we’re not all hookers and addicts either.” She stood up, picked up the groceries. “I gotta bounce. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure. And I know you’re not all stupid. Crazy, maybe.” I smiled at her with my elfin eyes. As she looked at me, I felt her eyes linger just a half-second longer than expected, as if she wanted to say something nice, something with softer edges, but couldn’t muster the courage. For that brief moment, I thought I felt her relax.
She leapt down into the tunnel, disappearing like a puff of smoke from a crack pipe. I promised myself that next time I saw her, I would sink my hooks into her, and make her lead me to her promised land.

Hi friends! For anyone who hasn't yet read Shadow Swans, here's the ENTIRE first chapter. :)


Chapter One

Hummingbirds use stolen spider webs to help build their nests.

I stood on the subway platform, imagining that my skin was being licked by the vapors of old trash and excrement, and that was enough to keep me steady. I had to do something to take myself away from that place; not because of the filth, but because I couldn’t live, for one more second, in the same reality as the New York City masses around me. Those corporate slaves, those automated piles of flesh, not even worth the noxious dust that licked our faces. At least the noxious dust lived by its own rules.
Not one detail of that day escapes me, perhaps because my nerves were so raw and open that they recorded every blistering sensation. Or perhaps because that day, when I became mesmerized by a girl who lived inside the city’s belly, was the hinge upon which the rest of my life would swing.
On that February morning, skewered by a penetrating cold, I shoved and battered my way through the bitter F-train platform to find a spot where I could wait with an ounce of peace, disappear into my headphones - into music that nobody else could hear – and think about how tragic and hurtful and hateful the world had become, and how we’d all be dead soon, and how I didn’t understand why everyone was not in a panic every second of the day. And I thought to myself, that girl next to me in her carefully distressed designer jeans and tousled hair is trying so hard, way too hard, and she really should re-think those skinny jeans, because it’s really not everyone who should be wearing skinny jeans, especially in winter, when we’ve all packed on a few extra pounds, and oh my God what is wrong with me, I want to beat all of these people over the head with a fire extinguisher and then blow the fire extinguisher’s guts out and asphyxiate all of us down here in this filthy tunnel, and why the hell does everyone always stare down into the oncoming train tunnel, desperate to see the two bright shining eyeballs come around the bend, as if the desperation will make the train come faster and the day end sooner...
If I had known then what I know now, I might’ve tried to contain my fury, I might’ve tried to calm my messy mind, but of course I didn’t have the wisdom of age; I couldn’t imagine myself as I am now, squirreled away and lonely to the bone. So I stood on the platform, immersed in my own naïve fear of the world.
The subway’s eyeballs appeared, and the minnow-people shuffled and jockeyed for the best train-mounting position, ramming through pregnant mothers and stepping on children and despising homeless people. I thought to myself, there’s not a single person in this country who cares about anything except his or her own position on the platform.
Chatter and sweet garbage air still licked my face and my hands. I stood there, shoved in every direction, riddled by the sounds of footsteps and hostility, thinking what a beautiful swirl this is. The doors closed. And I stood there still. And I looked around and thought to myself, I’m impervious to all of this. I’m living my own life, and I don’t need to follow the minnows unless I really want to, and I didn’t want to. I was so sick of the common routine – wake up, subway, work, eat, work, eat, subway, home – tedium was driving me to an emotional death. All of the potential that I’d gleaned from so many years of study at well-manicured educational institutions had begun to hollow me out from the inside, like an avocado sucked from its shell, and what remained of my core had become a fetid, gelatinous mess.
So I kept standing there. For over an hour. And the morning rush ended. God, that felt powerful: every moment in my life was a choice, and at that moment, I made the choice to do nothing other than listen to music, and stand perfectly still.
I started counting things – pillars, pieces of trash, rats (which I’ve always valued as one of New York City’s only indigenous land species). As it had since childhood, counting things brought me a sense of placidity.
I counted everything in sight and listened to more Bjork than most people would care to hear in a lifetime when, down deep in the tunnel, I saw a movement much too large to be a rodent. A masculine swagger and a confusing wad of distinctly feminine hair. The shadowy thing hunched its way to me and became more and more a girl. Even at a distance I saw, in the eyes of this stooping form, a ferocity that nearly made me turn away. But I loved it, this impossible idea – a girl from the bowels of Metro Transit.
She jumped the highly electrified third rail, threw her hands up on the platform, and hoisted herself up to stand in front of me, nose-to-nose, intense, and reeking of something long ago discarded. She wore old black army boots and her blonde-ish hair was tied in a stiff and pointy mess on the top of her head just like the heroin-hungry models in Europe, a style I found remarkably hip for a homeless person, although the rest of her betrayed absolutely no notion of current fashion. Her jeans and striped sweater were relics from the 1980s – I couldn’t remember when I had last seen a young woman wearing jeans that actually fastened above the belly button – and she wore a stained puffy coat that must have once belonged to a smallish man. Less than a foot from my face, she cocked a delicate chin, curled her mouth into a sneer, and barked:
“If I give you money, will you buy me some stuff?” Her voice was too loud, as if she dared anyone to listen to her, to hear what she had to say, and to take exception. Although she was as white as snow, maybe even whiter, she had a hint of that East Village street accent that says, I live hard, I am not afraid of you, and I am not afraid to eat your face if you get in my way.
“Who are you?” My voice was meek in comparison to hers. But she had me hypnotized; I was six inches tall, and she was a giant.
“Credenza. Who are you?” Her eyes didn’t waver from mine. She had hollowed eye sockets, and her blemished skin was translucent white—almost gray—almost hideous, as if it were rotting, even while she lived inside it. But she was one of the prettiest people I’d ever seen. Under the grime, she had the infectious features of a hometown cheerleader. Her eyes shone ice blue – somehow that seemed strange – such a pure clean beautiful color. I always had imagined vagrants having dark eyes like mine, but red-veined and hollow, the whites turned yellow.
Standing still, I whispered, “Ruby.” I always despised my name, “Ruby Cooper,” in all its jeweled cuteness. I had thought about changing it to something mysterious like “Five” or something ironic like “Sudan,” but then I decided that it was romantic to suffer a name that I absolutely hated, so I kept it.
“Well, Ruby, I can see that you’re bored. You’ve been standing there for over an hour waiting for something to happen, because you hate your life so much. And you’re really excited that a crazy girl just jumped out of the tunnel.”
At this, she threw her head back and laughed; not a sweet laugh, but brash and loud, like a hooker in the hands of a high roller.
No response from me.
“So, since you obviously can’t deal with whatever is at the end of that tunnel, and since I’m the most interesting thing you got going on today, why don’t you just do me a favor and go get me some food?” Her power and ferocity filled the station.
I tried to be tough, like her, “What if I don’t have any money?” I wanted to raise my voice, but it refused to be raised, and my lip quivered, and I felt pathetic and small.
“Oh my God, I’ll give you the money.” She smiled at me like a mother amused at her young child, and reached into her jeans pocket, drawing out a crumpled wad of bills, extending a hand.
Everything around me disappeared. I watched her watching me, felt her penetrating my subconscious, noodling around inside me, and I considered my options. I could refuse her request, send her back into the tunnel, and hop the next train to sameness. Or I could get her some groceries, and at least have something to think about for a few hours. My choice was clear.
“Okay. What do you want?” I shifted my stance, from one hip to the other. She still stood square, with her feet apart, strong and resolute, and held out a list.
“You can get everything from the grocery store across the street. There’s an extra five bucks in there for you to keep. Thanks.” She placed in my hand the small slip of stained paper, and the wad of cash. As she moved, her stench, like rotten apples and old whiskey, wafted over me. Still, her eyes didn’t deviate from mine.
I careened my way to the grocery store. The streets were bright, and packed with broken mothers and angry children. My mind reeled, romantically mesmerized by the notion of girls living in tunnels; girls like myself, but more in touch with darkness, and hardship, and fear. I had heard about people who lived in the subway system, but I always assumed that they’d be delusional criminals, wacked out on cheap crack, sleeping in their own shit.
Some piece of me, deep inside, wished I were a feral subway girl. I knew that this desire was wrong, but years of confusion and inexplicable sadness had thrown me into a relentless condition my mother chose to call “depression,” but I preferred to call “heightened awareness.” And in my scarred, heightened stupor, it seemed to me that life in a tunnel would be a fantastically heroic way to live and survive the trials of the world. It would certainly be more heroic than the lives of the broken mothers and angry children.
Not until I got to the grocery store did I look at Credenza’s list. Eggs, bread, potato chips, Vienna sausages (people still ate those?), Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, New York Times, People Magazine, Home and Garden Magazine, Cheerios, box-o-milk, paper towels, toilet paper, Clorox Cleanup (somewhere down below, there was a disinfected tunnel!), light bulbs (light bulbs?), beer, cheese, soap, double A batteries, D batteries, cat food…
My checkout girl was a spectacled, slick-haired, pudgy little girl who should have been in school. Despite my better judgment, and for no particular reason, I found myself saying to her, “I’m taking this food to a girl who lives in the subway station.” The pudgy girl swiped the groceries, smacked her gum, and, with sleepy eyes, mumbled “okay.” I visualized myself slamming her indifferent head against her dirty little scanner, and I knew this was wrong, and felt, as always, grateful that nobody could see into my head. I thought, every day, all day, Americans exercise only their most boring neurons – we mine ourselves for boring fuel until we collapse in a boring heap every single night.
Laden with 40 pounds of groceries, I lumbered back down into the F-train (I may be small, but I am fierce – don’t be fooled by my stature), paid another $2 subway fare, bumped down the stairs and back to the end of the platform. Credenza wasn’t anywhere to be found. I could for once feel every nerve in my body as I waited for her to re-emerge from the whale’s belly. And suddenly, there she was. She flew out of the darkness, hopped up, and threw herself down on the bench like she owned it. She pierced me again with her steely eyes.
I became acutely aware of my diminutive stature – she had at least six inches and twenty pounds on me – but then, most of the world has at least six inches and twenty pounds on me. Suddenly desperate to impress this woman from middle Earth, I tried to startle her with my magical stare. Lucky for me, my eyes are as big as I am small, and, combined with my extremely long and straight chestnut-colored hair (of which I’ve always been very proud), I’m told that I give off a mixture of great charm and frightening intensity. I used to stare at people in the streets, or wherever, and it totally freaked them out, especially since my eyes are nearly black, and they seem better suited for a gelfling or a cat than for a human being. But Credenza didn’t bend to my spell – she saw nothing in front of her but the accomplishment of her agenda.
“I had to make sure the booth guy was sleeping, and no trains were coming.” She sat with her shoulders hunched, legs spread wide, like, I’m hard, I’m not delicate, don’t forget it. “Now I gotta wait ‘til the next train passes before I go back down. Anyway, thanks for your help.” With this, she turned away from me, a bit too forcibly, as if her movements were premeditated and dishonest.
“Sure. So, do you live down there?”
She said nothing, looked at me sideways, then turned away again.
I was pinned by the idea of her, forging her own path, sticking it to the man, dwelling at the apex of human beings’ potential for individuality and self-reliance. I wanted to crawl inside her mind and take a look around. I reached in my bag, and she watched me out of the corner of her eye, with rapt attention and feigned indifference. I thought maybe she’d bolt back into the tunnel, but she didn’t.
“Here.” I handed her a hummingbird that I had crafted by spinning an endless loop of copper wire. One long strand, a series of tiny loops, starting at the tip of the tail, and ending at the beak. “I made it.”
Looking at the bird, her cheeks flushed, filling the sickly gray palette with a wash of color, like a spot of blood dropped on dirty snow. Suddenly, she looked feminine, like a girl, for the first time. Without reaching for it, she said, “That’s ugly. But cool.”
She clearly wanted me to react to the “ugly,” but I agreed with her on all counts. “Thanks. You can have it.”
Taking the hummingbird from my hand, she ran her finger over its beak and gnarled legs, and then looked at me, really looked at me. In less than a second, she assessed my clothes, my shoes, the nascent lines in my face, and something in her expression softened, almost imperceptibly. I wore my favorite pair of jeans, frayed around the edges, faded to perfection, but fitted enough to show my tight little form. I was tiny, but I had the requisite curves. They were just more subtle than the norm. My tight black T-shirt featured the logo from the band “Kiss,” which suddenly seemed to me embarrassingly kitschy. Over the t-shirt I wore a blue leather motorcycle jacket, on which Den’s eyes lingered for a split second. And her gaze paused obviously upon my necklace – a jade koru, from New Zealand (Representing growth and new life, the koru is supposed to be a powerful Maori symbol. I loved the necklace, although I can’t say that it ever catalyzed any spiritual “growth”). Den’s stare confused me – I couldn’t determine whether she approved of me, or coveted my clothing, or judged my demeanor - but she was clearly interested in what she saw.
She said, “You’re a weird girl.”
“Maybe.” I was proud of the compliment, hoping it was true. I thought my abnormality would endear me to her. I wanted to touch her face, to see if she was a mirage, but my limbs had frozen. “I think it’s cool that you live here. I won’t tell anyone.”
She brushed a lock of hair from her face, coyly, and looked off into the tunnel, her profile striking me with its delicacy. Her skin, despite the soot and strain, was still soft and young, her delicate nose upturned perfectly. I leaned back from her slightly, and in my slight, expressionless way, said, “You’re beautiful.”
She almost smiled, but did not, and instead, raised her chin, avoided my gaze. “Yeah, they tell me that.”
“I don’t know how you survive here.” I managed to break the spell, wrench my massive eyes from her face, stare at my hands, upon which I suddenly perceived several old cuts, and dried cuticles, and clumps of dirt under my nails. Not the hands of a lady.
Credenza sneered, wagged a finger. “I’m fine. I’m the runner. Without me, nobody eats. I’m useful, so nobody lets anybody mess with me.” Throughout the tirade, her New York street accent swelled, cutting off random consonants, so “runner” became “runna” and “with” became “wit.” I noticed that her chin cradled a tiny cleft. “Can I come see where you live?”
With a manly wave of the hand, “No way.”
A pair of eyeball-headlights poked out at us from deep inside the tunnel, and a wash of hot infected air blasted over us. The subway wheels screamed madly. Our hair waved, the train stopped, a couple of people exited, nobody looked at us, and the train dropped back into the darkness. Credenza handed me a wad of string, and picked up the groceries.
“Nobody calls me Credenza. Call me Den. Thanks for the bird. See ya.” Flashing a wide and dimpled smile, she flew down into the tunnel, without looking back.
Stunned and suddenly desperately lonely, I looked down at the wad of string in my hand. It was a thin long strip of leather with a piece of smooth colored glass bound in the middle - a necklace.