Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #49: "Judy in Disguise"

 I am a musician. I play guitar and perform locally, doing blues and Celtic. I am also a writer who writes stories about music. But there are often misconceptions and misunderstandings of songs. Urban legends build up about them. Most everyone has heard that Peter, Paul and Mary's hit song, "Puff, the Magic Dragon," is about smoking marijuana. I mean, after all, the Dragon's name is Puff, and the little boy in the song is "Jackie Paper." I remember a friend telling me the group was "stoned on marijuana," when they wrote it. Turns out, they did not write the lyrics at all. They were written by a Cornell University student named Leonard Lipton and based on a poem by Ogden Nash titled "Custard the Dragon." It had nothing to do with marijuana.

The number that inspired my story "Judy in Disguise" had a similar history of misinterpretation. I had read that it was a song about college students being recruited by the FBI to spy on radical campus organizations. The lyrics seemed to suggest as much:

Judy in disguise, well, that's what you are
                                                Lemonade pie with a brand new car
                                                Cantaloupe eyes, come to me tonight
                                                Judy in disguise with glasses

The girl in the song is "in disguise," she has a brand new car. She is working for the FBI and they are paying her so she's bought a new car. The only trouble, this is not what the song is about. It was written as a sort of non-sense song. John Fred, the main author, said he was in the shower, heard the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and thought it was "Judy in disguise with diamonds." When he learned the right lyrics, he wrote a song based on his misinterpretation. It was a hit—but, alas, what are called "novelty songs" usually make groups into one-hit wonders (e.g., "What the Fox Said") and so it was with John Fred and the Playboy Band, which was too bad because they were good musicians. But the bogus interpretation persisted and led me to write a story about the song.

Samuel Blachoviac, the main character, has been on the run ever since he became involved in radical politics during his student days in the 1960s. In the course of his adventures, he comes across Julissa Mason. In their students days they had dated, done drugs together, practiced "free love," and argued politics. She was conservative and did not buy his radical mindset; from a poor home, she did not romanticise the poor or poverty and wanted to get free of it by graduating to a high-paying job. She did not believe in revolution.

When Fiona, one of Samuel's radical friends, tells Julissa of their plot to burn down the ROTC building, she tells the police. Fiona, Tom (another radical friend) and Samuel move the date up and are able to burn the building, but Samuel's two friends are apprehended and he becomes a fugitive. When two cops corner him in Texas, he throws a hand grenade an SDS radical gave him to scare them away and ends up killing them both.

Julissa

He spends the next forty years of his life running and hiding, moving from place to place and from job to job. When he lands a job in Indiana, he sees a picture of Julissa in the newspaper. She runs a business in a near-by city. He resolves to kill her for ruining his life and the lives of Fiona and Tom, both of whom had come to bad ends and died young as a result of being arrested and imprisoned. 

He locates Julissa, tells her why he is going to kill her, and points a gun at her but never gets to fire it. With a lightning move, she knocks him out. He wakes up handcuffed. The police are present to take him away. It turns out Julissa liked working for the FBI so much she eventually became an agent. Finding him had been a lifelong project and, after all these years, she had got a tip on him, set up the business as a trap to make him come after her, and finally got her man. In the last scene, he is hauled off in a police car. The radio is not playing "Judy in Disguise," but he knows that soon, somewhere, he will eventually hear it.

The story was published in Issue #2 of Bête Noire, a journal which is still being published. An editor from another journal who rejected it said it was too predictable. Obviously, not everyone thought so, but I would agree it is not one of my very best stories. Still, it appealed enough to get in print. You can read it and decide on its quality for yourself. It is only available in print, no online copies, but you can still buy the journal for some excellent reading, "Judy in Disguise"

Songs, even if they are misinterpreted, and sometimes because they are, make for great narrative tales.

I would love to hear your comments and receive your feedback. Have you ever misinterpreted a song and gone for years and years thinking the lyrics said this when actually they said that? I had a friend who thought "Strawberry Fields Forever" was "Strawberry Beatles Florescent." 

This month I am promoting my novella Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to Die for served up by the Angel of Death. But even Angels get in trouble. When they do, who will rescue them? It will take an Orpheus to get one out of hell, but if you love her enough, you're willing to undertake the journey.

Happy Reading!

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #48: Mythic Revision: "Nemesis."

Cliterature is a magazine of fiction and poetry about women's issues, but they accept stories written by men. I have published three stories in that particular journal, the first one titled "Nemesis." This was one of those stories accepted for a journal that ceased publication before the story got online. After sleuthing around and finding Cliterature, I decided to send the story there and got the acceptance. "Nemesis" was written for an issue dedicated to mythology.

Nemesis is the name of a Greek goddess, but her name has worked its way into the English language. We use the term to mean "enemy" or "someone out to get us." Originally, though, it designated the Goddess of Justice and Revenge venerated by the Romans and the Greeks. One Roman poet called her "Nemesis, winged balancer of life, / dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice." She would punish the arrogant, prideful, and the blasphemous and was often depicted with wings and a sword (as someone who taught Shakespeare for years I recall the line from King Lear where Gloucester  says, "I shall see / The winged vengeance overtake such children"—Shakespeare's reference to the ancient goddess). She was the deity of justice and retribution.

Goddess Nemesis

 Of course, as you will know if you've read Neil Gaiman's American Gods, ancient deities have fallen on hard times. No one worships them, they have to find jobs, and they often lived marginalized lives. In my fiction world, the ancient deities are still around, and usually they have money. The old networks are still in place, but they have had to readjust and reorient their lives. Nemesis lives in Tartarus, the ancient equivalent of hell, and torments souls. But Tartarus is gloomy, and torturing sinners is boring. She occasionally goes upward to seek fresh air, good food, and sexual partners—mostly women, but now and then a man.

Her occasional attraction to men, though, has gotten her in trouble. Her romance with the god Ares (Mars) has left her on the wrong side of his wife, Aphrodite, the goddess of love. While she is in her apartment, Nemsis gets a call from the goddess Demeter. She gets all excited, thinking maybe Demeter is calling to ask her out, but the goddess, who is very maternal, wants something else. A community garden where she is indirectly worshiped by soil-loving mortals is in danger of being converted to a parking lot. Would Nemesis be willing to go after the man in charge of the project?

Goddess Eidoithea

She takes the job, hoping success will open the door to Demeter's affection. With the help of Eidoithea, a goddess with whom she is friends (but not a lover), she tries to stop the project, but her scheme doesn't work. Eidoithea, however, enlists Aphrodite's help and the two of them manage to stop the destruction of the community garden. Nemesis asks Eidoithea if Aphrodite said anything about her. Her friend tells her, “I promised her I wouldn’t tell. But you better watch your back, Nemesis. You might want to stay down in Hades for a while. She’s definitely got it out for you.” Later, Nemesis gets a short thank-you note from Demeter. She sees the foolishness of thinking her crush on a senior goddess who has never shown interest in a relationship with a woman would bear any fruit. Disappointed and worried about the anger of Aphrodite, she decides to return to the underworld for a few hundred years.

Mythology is a rich and fruitful field to write about, and mythological revisionism is big today. I've mentioned Neil Gaiman's American Gods. The YA book, The Lightning Thief, by Percy Jackson, turned into a best-selling series. There are lots of other examples. Using one's imagination to give new twists on ancient deities is a trend in modern writing. 

Cliterature is available online, and some of its past issues in print, though the one with "Nemesis" is not yet available in hard copy.  The story is, however, available online. It's a great story. Read it here:  Nemesis.

For a good March read, get a copy of Le Cafe de la Mort. At Death's Cafe you can buy Coffee to Die For served up by the Angel of Death. But even Angels get in trouble.  

I would love to hear your comments.

Also, don't miss my latest book, a wuxia story, The Sorceress of Time.

Happy reading.

Dave's Anatatomy: My History As a Writer, #47: "Polarity"

The idea for the story "Polarity" came from an internet interview I read that talked about Satanism and described a satanic worship ceremony. The celebrants stand naked ("clothed with the wind") and, according to the informant, two women flank the altar; one must be a virgin, she said, and the other must be a prostitute. I suppose the women who participate in such activity do so willingly and are part of a coven of worshipers. But what if they did not do so willingly? I don't mean they were abducted and forced to participate. But what if, by a combination of circumstances, the women who represented this "polarity" of virgin/prostitute were not believers and participated in the ceremony for some other reason? When you get a virgin and a prostitute in close proximity, a story is inevitable!

Staci

Enter the characters:  Millie is a prostitute She and her sister, Staci, operate a small brothel. Staci is pretty and does high-class customers. Her older sister, Millie, who is a little plainer, does the blue-collar customers. Staci's good looks, status as a high-class call girl, and business savvy make her a natural leader and a natural bully who intimidates her sister and has convinced her she could do nothing else in life but be a working girl.

Millie

Millie also does "house calls." She is hired to participate in a ceremony by a man named Blake Philips. She is wary but agrees. He tells her all she has to do is strip and stand through the ceremony. She puzzles over this but agrees. It's not often that she gets paid her usual fee of $400.00 just for standing naked. He takes her into a darkened room with some kind of altar in it. Across from her stands a young girl, also bare. The ceremony is some sort of occult rite. Blake conducts it, speaking odd languages, lighting black candles, and reciting what Millie thinks are Latin prayers. The room fills with malevolent energy. She is frightened by the sensations she feels, but then the ceremony ends. She assumes he will want her to do more, but he says she did a good job, pays her, and says she is free to go. The young girl has said nothing the whole time and doesn't speak to Millie as she departs.

She returns to tell Staci about it. After she has serviced all her customers, she goes to a diner, where she sees the girl, named Carrie. Carrie tells her what is going on. Blake, her father, is a sorcerer and curses people with satanic curses for a price. She and Millie are protection from the demons he summons up. They create some kind of magical barrier that keeps him safe. Carrie is his daughter. He forces her to do what she does and to maintain virginity by threatening to curse her mother and brother. But Carrie has a plan and wonders if Millie will go along.

The plan is to reverse polarity. Carrie tells Millie: “If I could lose my virginity and you could stop being a working girl, that would . . . like reverse the polarity. It would be sort of like he was positive and not negative. He would not be protected. The demons would drag him down to hell.”

 Something about what Carrie has said makes Millie break down and cry. Staci has convinced her she could never be anything else but a prostitute. She is not sure she could succeed with a regular job. Carrie assures her this is not true. She tells her she is smart and she could tell, by the looks she gave her during the ceremony, that she is kind and good. Millie rallies and says she will go along with Carrie's plan.

Carrie's part is easy. All she needs to do is get laid, and she does. It's trickier for Millie. After much thought, she tells Staci she is quitting the family business. After that, she goes to a local church and tells the pastor about her vocation and how she wants to stop. They pray together. She goes to the scheduled ceremony. Sure enough, the women have reversed polarity and Blake no longer has protection. He rages at Millie when he finds out and spits on her; his spittle burns like acid. But the demons are upon him. He is disabled. Later he dies from what doctors call "a massive epileptic seizure" that breaks his bones and triggers internal bleeding.

And things work out. Carrie marries her boyfriend and rejoins her family, who are now safe from Blake's curses. Millie gets a job and patches things up with Staci, who is able to find two girls to work for her as Millie's replacements. Though she says she "doesn't buy the born-again talk," Millie continues going to church. A customer she liked, for whom she used to do visits, wants to marry her. She is thinking about going to school.

Media depiction of "Call Girl"

Besides the Satanism angle, the story deals with prostitution. I see the "happy hooker" stock character quite often. The woman is a whore and loves it—like the scene in the old movie Georgie Girl where British actor James Mason asks a girl in a whorehouse, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" She replies, "I don't know—just lucky, I guess." Funny, but untrue. Most women who become prostitutes are victims of abuse. The calling they follow is a glaring example of the exploitation of women; and, today, thousands of young women from poor homes are forced into prostitution. There is nothing funny, charming, or sexy about it, despite what Hollywood would have you think.

A little of that is evident in the story, I hope. I don’t try to get preachy when writing, but I think this story has at least a subplot that includes a "message." I'm not sure if I succeeded or not, but at least I tried.

The story appeared in an anthology, Dark Things II. I believe Pill Hill Press has closed, but the book is still available through Amazon.

For a good read in the gloomy transitional month of March, read Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to die for, served up by the Angel of Death. 

For more titles, check out my
Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.