This Is Not for You

Wait? I have an album?

When I visited my parents’ place last month, I found a folder of stories I had written that I completely forgot about. These are print copies that, for whatever reason, were never saved electronically.

I decided to do a deep dive in the archives (AKA Google Drive) to see what else I’ve forgotten over the decades of writing. Like, did you know that I recorded an album with some of my stories in 2002?

It was called Ambient Strippers, and the album was produced, mixed, and with music by the incredibly talented Vinnie Saletto (of Giant Monsters on the Horizon fame and the gone-but-never-forgotten The Ashes of Grisum1).

At this point in my writing life, I was doing mostly biographical, gonzo-ish pieces for different magazines and websites in the Tampa Bay area. AS was meant to be a sample of those stories. This album had seven tracks (stories) in total: “Paying the Tab”, “$24.99”, “Empty Socrates”, “The Mariachi”, “Muted Porn”, “The Illusion of Swing” and “This Is Not for You”.

We recorded this album over the course of a couple of months in Saletto’s recording studio with a handful of voice actors (including Joe Davison2 who would later go on to do Stranger Things) doing the heavy lifting. In fact, in some parts - since the stories were mostly true - the person doing the dialogue is the actual person from the real incident.

I remember it being a really fun project with a lot of late nights and laughter. I don’t think my stories deserved Vinnie’s wonderful production and music, but that just goes to show you how lucky I was in life.

You can listen to “This Is Not for You” right here:

If you want to read the story itself, you can find it in my first short story collection, Empty Rooms Lonely Countries, along with the other stories from the album.

The Small Submarine

I got into a late-night conversation last week with a German and a Pole who were both roughly my age. At one point I wondered out loud about whether the constant threat of nuclear war when we were kids didn’t irreparably damage our generation in ways we don’t fully understand yet.

I learned two things:

1. The German had no idea what we were talking about.

2. The Pole agreed, but his fear was that Ronald Reagan was going to destroy the world at any moment. Silly me for not thinking about it the other way around!

He then went on to tell a story about when he was a kid in Poland back in 1985. He was in the hospital after an operation and he was stuck in bed suffering from a fever. The television in his room was showing propaganda with images of nuclear explosions and Reagan’s face. He was so terrified of Reagan, that he would have fantasies of building a small submarine to travel to Washington through the sewers to stop the president. And, of course, save the world.

I was so delighted with this story that I wanted to share it here.

The Pigs at the End of the World

I spent last week in Krynica Morska, a small beach town located on a Vistula Spit in northern Poland. It’s basically a narrow strip of land surrounded by water on both sides with one road running through it. Eventually, the road ends in the town of Piaski, which is about three kilometers (which you need to walk) from the Russian border.

One evening, I left the main lobby of the resort after midnight to walk to our hotel room. On the way, I was taking in the stars above, which were shockingly clear and beautiful, when I realized I was standing in the middle of five of the largest boars I had ever seen in my life. They left me alone, but their presence was jarring, to say the least.

By the end of the week, we had seen over a dozen of them. They’re literally everywhere in that area. One of our friends was eating in the garden at a seafood restaurant in Nowa Karczma when a boar wandered in. The waitress said, “Oh, don’t worry, that’s just Victor.”

We good?

That’s it for this week. Thanks for dropping by and reading. If you’ve been enjoying these weekly emails, don’t forget to share and/or recommend them to your friends.

And remember to build yourself a small submarine and follow your dreams!