Tommy Conwell & The Young Rumblers "I'm Not Your Man"

There was a time, a long time ago, when I wanted to write.

It's so long ago that I'm not even sure what my aspirations were. But I used to write.

Tucked away in folders and on floppy discs are a few dozen short, and not so short, stories that I worked on in the post-college years. It was the kind of thing I'd do when I got home from work, late at night, to both unwind and to feel creative.

Whenever I'd get stuck, blocked, or unmotivated, I'd put whatever I was working on to the side and do a little exercise.

I'd write a scene. Just one short page. And then I would pick some inanimate object featured in that scene, and I'd write about its story. Just one page.

Every object has a story that we don't think too much about. A simple pencil in your hand is the product of thousands of decisions made by lumberjacks and writing utensil designers and pencil company marketers and truck drivers and sales clerks and absent-minded co-workers who leave that pencil in your office. The pencil, as in invention, didn't exist at one point in history, but somebody dreamed it up. And others, maybe hundreds or thousands of others, refined that idea. The simplest thing has a complex history. I'd write about those things.

I started having fun, researching Corn Flakes and Bag Pipes and Donuts and Narwhales and soon the exercise became the project.

Characters started to form and a small storyline developed and objects (and jokes) would boomerang around from scene to profile to scene.

I never had a huge amount of time to work on this story, but because it only required a page or two at a time, I could put it down for months and pick right back up when I did find the time.

Unfortunately for my writing hobby, my other creative pursuits---radio and, uh, life---were getting more and more complex. As the years progressed, mvyradio demanded more of my time and creative energy (which is a good thing). And my life went from only being responsible for myself, to getting married, to becoming a parent of two.

Creative writing---and free time itself---stopped being an option.

Then, mvy asked some of the DJs to write blogs. And, because it was part of my job, writing became a daily thing again. And it made me think of my story.

I re-read it. It's about 80 pages long. It's better than I remember. I wrote more than a couple of jokes and lines that I'm proud of, and I wish I could say I'll finish it.

But shit, I started it nearly 15 years ago.

So this week, I'm sharing 5 excerpts from "Fruitless Minutae," the book I'll never get around to writing.


The main character is a college-age Record Store clerk, so there is plenty of music mentioned throughout the story. I was spent some time, while writing this section, trying to come up with some kind of obscure 80s pop-rock tune to reference, that even a snobby record store clerk might not recall. Anyone remember WBCN playing the heck out of the song mentioned at the top of the post?

So in this scene, he meets a woman who will turn out to be his nemesis and perhaps is the most wretched, annoying person on the planet. But for now he's intrigued, as she has just, dramatically, entered his store:

If Goth guy were here, he’d be all over this girl in the Misfits t-shirt.

Thankfully---for so many reasons---my co-worker has left the record store. He’s on a “coffee break.”

“So what is it, exactly, that you might, want to be, trying to find. Here.” I am poetry in motion.

“I heard you have inexpensive vinyl,” she says. “I need it. Armloads of it.”

“Well,” I tell her, “we have armloads and more. Carloads. Alpaca loads.”

“Alpaca loads?”

“Uh, Alpaca. It’s a small kind of llama.”

“Yes, I know. It’s just that I left mine at home. Couldn’t I use a shopping cart or something?”

She’s playing along, sure, but she seems to be looking right through my soul.

“Sure, sure.” My eyes begin to dart around her, shifting nervously from her eyes to her feet to her hands to the wall 10 feet behind her. “So what are you looking for? New stuff? Old stuff? We’ve got a few Misfits imports I think.”

“Misfits?” she asks.

“Here.” I lead her over to the M’s.

“Oh!” she says. “Classic vinyl.”

“Are you a big Misfits fan?”

“Of course, of course,” she says absently, as her eyes run over the cartoon cover. “This is a little more expensive than I had in mind.”

“Yeah, if you’re going for value, stay away from the imports. They’re basically just for collectors.”

“I’m much more in the mind for volume. I need to replace a whole bunch of vinyl that . . . that I . . .”

Her eyes begin to well. Internally I wince a bit, but turn that awkward moment inside out by smiling warmly and turning her to the back of the store.

“It’s gone, huh? That happened to me once, too.” My ex- took the REM singles and Prince’s Black album when she moved out. Technically, she was the one who paid for them. But I was the one who listened to them. “We’ll check out the used vinyl section and see if we can’t replenish your collection.”

I lead her to the back section, which is a step lower than the main floor of the store, lit by a couple of weak fluorescent lights. “Try to find some stuff here,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Cassie, it’s Cassie,” she says. She grabs my wrist and looks me straight in the eyes. “Thank you.”

For the next hour I watch her hunt and peck through the bins. She discovers the used 45s, which are only 25 cents apiece. I just sit on the stair, staring, and I pretend I don’t work there. Hopefully no one is stealing anything.

“You’ve got some great stuff,” I say, surveying her bounty I as ring it up at the front counter.

“Yes, yes. I think this shall do,” she says, the relief in her voice apparent.

“This Replacements 45 has ‘Date To Church’ on the b-side, with Tom Waits.”

“You don’t say? Interesting. I suppose you know a lot about these artists?”

“Many of them. You’ve got a few in here that I don’t know. Who is Tommy Conwell?”

“Oh, I’m not sure,” says Cassie with a flip of her hair, “I just liked the looks of it.”

“Well, you’ve got a pretty good collection going here, Cassie.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.” Again she makes hard eye contact. “You must let me repay you.”

“Well, you just spent 40 dollars in my store.” I’m awe-shucks-ing. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Oh but I do, but I do. You’ve given me such inspiration. I just must have you over. Will you come over?”

“Come over to your place?” I hope I didn’t just audibly gulp. “Sure!” Say it cooler. “Uh, I mean, yeah, sure, if you want. That’d be great.”

“I’ll make you a fabulous dinner. Oh, but it will have to wait until next week, until I get my remodeling done. Come next Wednesday at 8, won’t you please? Let me write down my address.”

Day after day we suffer countless indignities. But every once in a while you do the right thing, you say the right line, you make the right move, you’re in the right place at the right time, and, if only for a moment, your human spirit swells and those countless indignities melt into the distant haze for a moment.

I have a date.

Smoke that on your coffee break, Goth guy.