Dear Millipede
Hello there. I was invited to read something at Word Soup, a regular night at Preston's New Continental. The theme was 'skin'. I read on Tuesday the 19th of May and this is what I read:
Dear Millipede,
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write to you. These past few months I’ve been busier than you could ever imagine. Where to begin? In January the literary agency I worked for went into receivership and I lost my job. As I’m sure you can imagine, this has not only crippled my finances, but has also been disastrous for my once-hectic social life. JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer no longer want me on their pub-quiz team. Will Self, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan announced that they could function just as well without me on their five-aside team, despite this meaning that there are now only four members on the team, thus making them no longer eligible to compete for the Kirkham and Wesham Sunday League Cup. And Philip Roth simply stopped coming round for our usual Mamma-Mia-and-popcorn nights.
I’ve taken on a low-level job in a bookshop, shovelling paperbacks written by the very ‘friends’ who’ve now disowned me back and forth. In February my wife left me. She took our children with her, telling them I’d died in the bookshop, trapped and slowly starved beneath an avalanche of copies of Jeremy Clarkson’s most recent book which, understandably, no-one was willing to handle to save me. They believed her - they are, after all, children.
In March I was forced to move out of my apartment in Winkley Square. I’m currently writing to you from my new lodgings - the corner of a kitchen in a shared house in Tanterton. My room consists of some space, just about large enough for me to sleep in if I keep myself coiled round the pedal-bin, and is separated from the rest of the place by a second-hand shower-curtain pinned to the ceiling. It is not ideal, but at least I have some semblance of privacy. Also, I’m near enough to the fridge to grab a fistful of crabsticks or a triangle of Laughing Cow if I’m feeling hungry.
Amid all of this chaos, misery and failure there was, Millipede, an oasis of hope. And it’s due to this oasis, this tiny drop of dew in a desert of burning despair, that I’m writing to you. What I’m after is some advice, some guidance, some help. In April I was invited to read at an event called Word Soup at the New Continental in Preston. It’s a regular, themed literary event. The theme for the evening I’m supposed to be reading at is ‘Skin’. I’m sure I don’t need to stress to you, Millipede, just how important for me this evening could be. With well-written, well-judged piece of writing I could stun all those present and begin to turn my life around. It would be a foot on the first rung of the ladder - the ladder of success which leads to the loft of renewed happiness. The problem is this: with so much riding on this evening, I’ve become so anxious about writing the right thing that I’ve no ideas at all.
To begin with I thought maybe a story about a racist. Skin. Race. It makes sense. A guy who’s insanely racist - he sits up at nights thinking about ways to kill black people. Then one day he wakes up and he’s transformed into a black man himself. Serious shit, Millipede. It’d be like Kafka’s Metamorphosis only with a more hard-hitting social message. It’d be cool. All the people who’d come to watch me read it would think I was great. This fantastic, fearless guy who isn’t afraid to use his creativity to hold a mirror up to society. Yeah, he doesn’t care if racists thinks they’re good. He thinks they’re bad. They’d love me. The audience that is, not the racists.
But, Millipede, I didn’t get anywhere with this story. I’d thought up the outline of the thing, but that was all. This racist - was he married? Did he have children? Where did he work? The story ended up being three paragraphs long. In the first I set the scene. In the second the man goes to bed thinking racist thoughts. Then, in the third, he wakes up and realises he’s become black. Actually, there was a fourth paragraph, in which the man, pointing at his own reflection in the mirror, says: ‘You are the problem but now I am the problem.’ Still, the whole thing felt like a non-starter. It wasn’t a real story, Millipede. The people who come to this Word Soup event - they’re not idiots. They’d see my attempt at cobbling together some story about race as a basic ruse to win them over on moral grounds.
So I thought some more about skin. The next thing I thought of was old age. When human beings get old, Millipede, their skin changes. You don’t know this - you are a millipede. It gets wrinkly, can change shade and develops these weird brown patches. I sketched out a story about a teenager who hates old people. He lives with his grandparents, cursing them constantly. To him they are embarrassing anachronisms, incredibly naïve and stupidly polite. He wishes they were dead because they’re old. But then, one morning, he awakens to find that he has become an old man, and his grandparents have taken his place as young, lithe teens. And they hate him.
Now, it doesn’t take a Comparative Literature PhD to spot the similarities between this story and the one which I mentioned earlier, Millipede, I’ll grant you that. Someone who hates something wakes up to find that he has become that thing, the thing he hates. This is part of the reason why I ditched the idea. Also, when it came to the descriptions of the newly aged teen discovering his sagging, wrinkled body… well, I won’t say it was gross - I don’t want to come across as the oldie-hating teen in my aborted story - but it felt a bit too intrusive. I think, Millipede, if I’d read it, the audience would have been divided. I’d have young people barfing all over one another in a mass gross-out. And I’d have the older members of the audience staring at me with a cold, quiet hatred. Don’t get me wrong, Millipede, my sole aim isn’t to be liked. On the other hand, no-one wants to be the centre of attention in a roomful of people who despise him and are covered in sick.
After this, I thought about the word ‘skin’. Maybe I could be clever and use it in an unexpected way. As a verb, maybe: ‘too skin’. I jotted down the bare bones of a story about a man who’s job it is to skin cows. Obviously my initial urge was to have him awaken one morning to find that he is no longer the man who skins cows but is, in fact, a cow. This, it goes without saying, would have been ridiculous. I thought that maybe he could instead fall in love with a cow, due to her having particularly lovely fur - maybe it reminds him of a woman he’d once loved but who had died. Possibly after she’d been stampeded to death by a herd of startled cattle. This would explain why he took the job up in the first place. A character’s motivation, Millipede, is important in stories. So, I got stuck into this story. It went well. It stretched out to three thousand words by the time I’d finished the first draft. I was pleased with it. I would have printed off a copy and sent it you to read. But you are millipede. As unable to grasp onto the three sheets of A4 as you are the most rudimentary concepts of literature.
Looking back at this story, however, it seemed I’d only very casually set up the character’s situation and psychology. And I’d spent the vast majority of the story concentrating on the consummation of love between the cow-skinner and his cow bride. I’m not one to shy away from the topic of man-beast sexual relations, Millipede, however does a roomful of unsuspecting strangers really deserve to listen to me bang on at length about what this cow-skinner did to a cow’s hooves, her tail, her udders? They would think I was insane, Millipede. Worse, stood there on stage, listing bestial sex acts, I’d get walk-outs, hecklers, maybe someone would even call the police.
That whole area, I decided, was a minefield. I returned to thinking of other ways to write about skin. Skin skin skin. Fruit and vegetables have skin. Could I write a story about fruit and vegetables? Beyond hammering out a tale in which an avocado-hating grapefruit wakes up to find himself in a pot of guacamole, it would appear not. Rice pudding has skin. As does custard. But if I read a story about rice pudding or custard they’ll think there’s something wrong with my brain. It’s not exactly the deep end that touching up cows is, but it’s the same swimming pool.
So, come on, Millipede. What else has got skin? Skin skin skin. There’s a popular tv show called ‘Skins’. Maybe I could write about that. If no-one else at the reading has heard of the show I could transcribe an episode, read it out and pass it off as my own work. Then again, have you seen ‘Skins’, Millipede? It’s terrible. Plus, acting out the parts for all the myriad characters, complete with the incomprehensible youth lingo the show utilises, is going to make things pretty difficult to follow.
Skin was the name of the lead singer of Skunk Anansie. You’re probably too young to remember them, Millipede. They were an alternative rock band who achieved a moderate level of success during the nineties. Skin, their lead singer, went on to have a less illustrious solo career. She was bald and aggressive. Maybe I could write a story in which Skin out of Skunk Anansie solves mysteries - possibly with the aid of members of other British rock bands from the nineties: the drummer out of Reef, the bass player out of Cast, one of the backing singers from the Mike Flowers Pops.
No. No, no, no. Even though you’re a millipede, with no knowledge of the basic protocols inherent in the reader-audience dynamic, I still think even you would know that this is a bad idea. You’re right. This is a terrible idea. Skunk Anansie aren’t really well known enough for me to pull it off. People will either think I’ve made up a band with an equally fictitious lead singer called Skin merely as a hamfisted attempt to address the theme of ‘skin’, or, to those who’ve heard of the band, they’ll think it’s intended as some sort of bizarre fan-fiction.
As you can see, Millipede, deciding what it is you’re going to read in front of a bunch of strangers is an almost impossible task. Whatever route I go down seems to end with me coming across as an unhinged - possibly even demented - pervert. As I’ve been writing to you I’ve even been toying with the idea of reading this letter. I could pass it off as some sort of ironic, postmodern literary exercise. But that too I can see alienating the audience. I mean, look at me - look at the clothes I‘m reduced to wearing now, in my current state. I’ll probably be wearing that t-shirt which has a picture of a piece of toast with a face spreading jam on himself, borrowed from the son of the man who lives in the kitchen with me, on the other side of the shower-curtain. That’s not the sort of thing a postmodern literary thinker wears. Could you imagine W.G. Sebald or Gunter Grass wearing something like that? No, they’d think me a pretentious fraud. They’d hate me. I guess, if I were to read out this letter, I could throw some sort of reference to the very fact that I am reading it into the mix. Second-guessing them, if you will. Would that make it more genuinely postmodern? Would that be clever? How about if I make a further reference - to the fact that I’ve just referenced myself? Would that be clever? And is that all literature really is: being clever? Second guessing all the hateful, dismissive things your reader - or, in this case, listener - can throw at you? That’s a depressing notion. This whole enterprise is depressing. I think, Millipede, the only thing left for me to do is not read anything at all.
Also, and I don’t mean any offence to you by this, but I don’t want people knowing that when I’m stuck for ideas I write letters to a giant non-existent millipede for assistance whose name is simply 'millipede'.
Sincerely,
Richard Vivmeister Hirst
Dear Millipede,
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write to you. These past few months I’ve been busier than you could ever imagine. Where to begin? In January the literary agency I worked for went into receivership and I lost my job. As I’m sure you can imagine, this has not only crippled my finances, but has also been disastrous for my once-hectic social life. JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer no longer want me on their pub-quiz team. Will Self, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan announced that they could function just as well without me on their five-aside team, despite this meaning that there are now only four members on the team, thus making them no longer eligible to compete for the Kirkham and Wesham Sunday League Cup. And Philip Roth simply stopped coming round for our usual Mamma-Mia-and-popcorn nights.
I’ve taken on a low-level job in a bookshop, shovelling paperbacks written by the very ‘friends’ who’ve now disowned me back and forth. In February my wife left me. She took our children with her, telling them I’d died in the bookshop, trapped and slowly starved beneath an avalanche of copies of Jeremy Clarkson’s most recent book which, understandably, no-one was willing to handle to save me. They believed her - they are, after all, children.
In March I was forced to move out of my apartment in Winkley Square. I’m currently writing to you from my new lodgings - the corner of a kitchen in a shared house in Tanterton. My room consists of some space, just about large enough for me to sleep in if I keep myself coiled round the pedal-bin, and is separated from the rest of the place by a second-hand shower-curtain pinned to the ceiling. It is not ideal, but at least I have some semblance of privacy. Also, I’m near enough to the fridge to grab a fistful of crabsticks or a triangle of Laughing Cow if I’m feeling hungry.
Amid all of this chaos, misery and failure there was, Millipede, an oasis of hope. And it’s due to this oasis, this tiny drop of dew in a desert of burning despair, that I’m writing to you. What I’m after is some advice, some guidance, some help. In April I was invited to read at an event called Word Soup at the New Continental in Preston. It’s a regular, themed literary event. The theme for the evening I’m supposed to be reading at is ‘Skin’. I’m sure I don’t need to stress to you, Millipede, just how important for me this evening could be. With well-written, well-judged piece of writing I could stun all those present and begin to turn my life around. It would be a foot on the first rung of the ladder - the ladder of success which leads to the loft of renewed happiness. The problem is this: with so much riding on this evening, I’ve become so anxious about writing the right thing that I’ve no ideas at all.
To begin with I thought maybe a story about a racist. Skin. Race. It makes sense. A guy who’s insanely racist - he sits up at nights thinking about ways to kill black people. Then one day he wakes up and he’s transformed into a black man himself. Serious shit, Millipede. It’d be like Kafka’s Metamorphosis only with a more hard-hitting social message. It’d be cool. All the people who’d come to watch me read it would think I was great. This fantastic, fearless guy who isn’t afraid to use his creativity to hold a mirror up to society. Yeah, he doesn’t care if racists thinks they’re good. He thinks they’re bad. They’d love me. The audience that is, not the racists.
But, Millipede, I didn’t get anywhere with this story. I’d thought up the outline of the thing, but that was all. This racist - was he married? Did he have children? Where did he work? The story ended up being three paragraphs long. In the first I set the scene. In the second the man goes to bed thinking racist thoughts. Then, in the third, he wakes up and realises he’s become black. Actually, there was a fourth paragraph, in which the man, pointing at his own reflection in the mirror, says: ‘You are the problem but now I am the problem.’ Still, the whole thing felt like a non-starter. It wasn’t a real story, Millipede. The people who come to this Word Soup event - they’re not idiots. They’d see my attempt at cobbling together some story about race as a basic ruse to win them over on moral grounds.
So I thought some more about skin. The next thing I thought of was old age. When human beings get old, Millipede, their skin changes. You don’t know this - you are a millipede. It gets wrinkly, can change shade and develops these weird brown patches. I sketched out a story about a teenager who hates old people. He lives with his grandparents, cursing them constantly. To him they are embarrassing anachronisms, incredibly naïve and stupidly polite. He wishes they were dead because they’re old. But then, one morning, he awakens to find that he has become an old man, and his grandparents have taken his place as young, lithe teens. And they hate him.
Now, it doesn’t take a Comparative Literature PhD to spot the similarities between this story and the one which I mentioned earlier, Millipede, I’ll grant you that. Someone who hates something wakes up to find that he has become that thing, the thing he hates. This is part of the reason why I ditched the idea. Also, when it came to the descriptions of the newly aged teen discovering his sagging, wrinkled body… well, I won’t say it was gross - I don’t want to come across as the oldie-hating teen in my aborted story - but it felt a bit too intrusive. I think, Millipede, if I’d read it, the audience would have been divided. I’d have young people barfing all over one another in a mass gross-out. And I’d have the older members of the audience staring at me with a cold, quiet hatred. Don’t get me wrong, Millipede, my sole aim isn’t to be liked. On the other hand, no-one wants to be the centre of attention in a roomful of people who despise him and are covered in sick.
After this, I thought about the word ‘skin’. Maybe I could be clever and use it in an unexpected way. As a verb, maybe: ‘too skin’. I jotted down the bare bones of a story about a man who’s job it is to skin cows. Obviously my initial urge was to have him awaken one morning to find that he is no longer the man who skins cows but is, in fact, a cow. This, it goes without saying, would have been ridiculous. I thought that maybe he could instead fall in love with a cow, due to her having particularly lovely fur - maybe it reminds him of a woman he’d once loved but who had died. Possibly after she’d been stampeded to death by a herd of startled cattle. This would explain why he took the job up in the first place. A character’s motivation, Millipede, is important in stories. So, I got stuck into this story. It went well. It stretched out to three thousand words by the time I’d finished the first draft. I was pleased with it. I would have printed off a copy and sent it you to read. But you are millipede. As unable to grasp onto the three sheets of A4 as you are the most rudimentary concepts of literature.
Looking back at this story, however, it seemed I’d only very casually set up the character’s situation and psychology. And I’d spent the vast majority of the story concentrating on the consummation of love between the cow-skinner and his cow bride. I’m not one to shy away from the topic of man-beast sexual relations, Millipede, however does a roomful of unsuspecting strangers really deserve to listen to me bang on at length about what this cow-skinner did to a cow’s hooves, her tail, her udders? They would think I was insane, Millipede. Worse, stood there on stage, listing bestial sex acts, I’d get walk-outs, hecklers, maybe someone would even call the police.
That whole area, I decided, was a minefield. I returned to thinking of other ways to write about skin. Skin skin skin. Fruit and vegetables have skin. Could I write a story about fruit and vegetables? Beyond hammering out a tale in which an avocado-hating grapefruit wakes up to find himself in a pot of guacamole, it would appear not. Rice pudding has skin. As does custard. But if I read a story about rice pudding or custard they’ll think there’s something wrong with my brain. It’s not exactly the deep end that touching up cows is, but it’s the same swimming pool.
So, come on, Millipede. What else has got skin? Skin skin skin. There’s a popular tv show called ‘Skins’. Maybe I could write about that. If no-one else at the reading has heard of the show I could transcribe an episode, read it out and pass it off as my own work. Then again, have you seen ‘Skins’, Millipede? It’s terrible. Plus, acting out the parts for all the myriad characters, complete with the incomprehensible youth lingo the show utilises, is going to make things pretty difficult to follow.
Skin was the name of the lead singer of Skunk Anansie. You’re probably too young to remember them, Millipede. They were an alternative rock band who achieved a moderate level of success during the nineties. Skin, their lead singer, went on to have a less illustrious solo career. She was bald and aggressive. Maybe I could write a story in which Skin out of Skunk Anansie solves mysteries - possibly with the aid of members of other British rock bands from the nineties: the drummer out of Reef, the bass player out of Cast, one of the backing singers from the Mike Flowers Pops.
No. No, no, no. Even though you’re a millipede, with no knowledge of the basic protocols inherent in the reader-audience dynamic, I still think even you would know that this is a bad idea. You’re right. This is a terrible idea. Skunk Anansie aren’t really well known enough for me to pull it off. People will either think I’ve made up a band with an equally fictitious lead singer called Skin merely as a hamfisted attempt to address the theme of ‘skin’, or, to those who’ve heard of the band, they’ll think it’s intended as some sort of bizarre fan-fiction.
As you can see, Millipede, deciding what it is you’re going to read in front of a bunch of strangers is an almost impossible task. Whatever route I go down seems to end with me coming across as an unhinged - possibly even demented - pervert. As I’ve been writing to you I’ve even been toying with the idea of reading this letter. I could pass it off as some sort of ironic, postmodern literary exercise. But that too I can see alienating the audience. I mean, look at me - look at the clothes I‘m reduced to wearing now, in my current state. I’ll probably be wearing that t-shirt which has a picture of a piece of toast with a face spreading jam on himself, borrowed from the son of the man who lives in the kitchen with me, on the other side of the shower-curtain. That’s not the sort of thing a postmodern literary thinker wears. Could you imagine W.G. Sebald or Gunter Grass wearing something like that? No, they’d think me a pretentious fraud. They’d hate me. I guess, if I were to read out this letter, I could throw some sort of reference to the very fact that I am reading it into the mix. Second-guessing them, if you will. Would that make it more genuinely postmodern? Would that be clever? How about if I make a further reference - to the fact that I’ve just referenced myself? Would that be clever? And is that all literature really is: being clever? Second guessing all the hateful, dismissive things your reader - or, in this case, listener - can throw at you? That’s a depressing notion. This whole enterprise is depressing. I think, Millipede, the only thing left for me to do is not read anything at all.
Also, and I don’t mean any offence to you by this, but I don’t want people knowing that when I’m stuck for ideas I write letters to a giant non-existent millipede for assistance whose name is simply 'millipede'.
Sincerely,
Richard Vivmeister Hirst
