The Top Sensei is here, lots of people, women who appear to like me are here, little kids. A big alpha woman embraces me, and while she’s squeezing me, I try to explain to her that when I say, All or nothing, I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about workplace safety. Pipes carrying clean air are poking down from the factory ceiling to help the assembly workers, but the alpha woman keeps hugging me tightly with her big fleshy body. We are about to have sex in a crowded room in front of all these people; the writers as well as the workers, but first I must take a shower and everyone’s eyes are upon me. As a diversion, I begin to explain how I lost in the Olympics on a technicality. “You need to be careful about your memory,” the alpha woman says severely. But I don’t care about my memory. I see this as an opportunity to address everyone about an important subject (we are speaking of the Olympic sword battle here), and I’m explaining how my opponent placed something; a small brown object made of leather, or possibly plastic, on my skin, and this thing fell off me and onto the floor which constituted a rare and meaningless technical foul, and I lost the Olympic medal because of that. But now I’m walking — no — I’m running along a dimly lit path in a dense, almost primeval forest, and people are coming up behind me. Is it a race? Am I competing in the Olympics again? I have no idea, but I need to step over a dead dog covered with ants. This is the third one I’ve encountered, and now I believe this is the path that passes through my unfinished novels, and I’m worrying. I’m caring and worrying whether or not my newest novel is just my latest dead dog.
Those three unfinished novels were shot down by Christie Noem.
I feel your pain.