Editorial Confessions

Or: So You Want To Get Published?

I should treat this as a confessional, though I am not religious I am familiar with practices of soul cleansing. Having been raised Roman Catholic the confessional screen is something I vividly remember from my youth. I had come to church far earlier than most, dragged there by an overbearing single mother to confess to this priest. I knew his face, his name, his voice, most importantly, still tradition had us separated into two cubicles with a piece of lattice between. To me, now, this lattice resembled the lace stockings I buried my face into. The young girl’s squeals catching us both off guard as I grabbed her and pulled her closer. I put my mouth against her inner thigh. Every ounce of sin I could drool out into her, placing my words between the lacework so she could listen to them again like tape she could rewind, listen to, rewind again until her stockings had been worn so thin my confession would only come out disjointed. She squirmed against my mouth. Dark hair tosseling. Her hand coming around to hold me in place by my neck. She was eager. I chalk it up to youthful vigour. It’s almighty ichor, juices, the stuff of ambrosia I lapped up like some sex-vampire, my own strength drawn from it. After a moment she practically begged. How could I refuse this young thing out for a lay? this young daughter of one of the writers I had been editing. I made sure his manuscript was on my desk across the room when she came by, the lamplight illuminating its pages in a bronze hue I felt quickly oxidizing when my back turned from it.

But this, not so much for the subpar writing or the narrative I had read again and again by countless others, countless others mind you whose daughters I had also helped myself to, but in most cases what I particular proclivities was how they got a book deal. Why judge the quality of the work? Most greatness is well is the rear view and we’re running on fumes. No. I will push a work forward if they’re daughter’s cunt is satisfactory. Better that, actually. The real pleasure, the mantelpiece. A crème de la crème of the writer’s ignorance: their daughters had paid me a visit. But they helped you, so gratitude is in order if you knew, but that isn’t the case. Fathers are territorial. Freud must’ve been on to something here, the parental relations to sexual desire. Maps drawn up, borders rewritten constantly as young, hips things expose themselves more and more to much older, much more knowledgeable partners.

I digress, since this is supposed to be a confessional.

After I had thoroughly worked myself into this young girl, I pulled out and came on her thigh, imagining momentarily I was coming on her father’s manuscript. Throughly soiling it. A seed bed I edited into a garden, this lush plains of budding flowers. Lush and spangled. The possiblity of young woman’s bodies were limiless as the sky, blue and innocent, A Madonna I painted the semen-white clouds across.

But the sun had to sink. A small moment when I saw this girl look up to me with eyes that almost yearned to ask ‘do you love me?’ How could I love your father’s work when my job is to insert some of myself. Refine it so publishers will take it on. His work I am the editor of. All of it. I am your father’s custodian and warden. His gatekeeper, jailer, master. His work is just as much mine. I am the only thing standing between his publication and oblivion.

I confess many writers had got published through this alternative means, a few going so far as to win awards, become darling on bestsellers lists, amass generational wealth through the sheer audaciousness of putting a few words on paper and sending it my way. I don’t read them, however. I never do. The whole story is between a daughter’s legs, and it’s far more captivating that way.

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Big thank you to Oliver Losinski, who took the time and read this over, and who’s dissatisfaction with View From The Loveseat lead to this creation. Hilariously beginning his feedback with wondering what my partners think about the things I write. Haha, I’m tame compared to what the Missus reads, for better or worse.

But I’m also better than what the missus reads.