"A. R. Morlan - Dear DB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morlan A R)

"...fifth most requested author, behind Bloch and Williamson and
Koontz, and you'd be surprised to see who else you topped on the list. Some of
the readers can't help but scribble comments in the margins about their
favorites, and about you they wrote, 'He's my favorite,' and 'That Winston
dude scares me'. I guess the readers really got into those macho-hero
adventures about pagan sacrifices and bird-blood worship you wrote while you
were living in Ewerton."
_That_ was the capper. If only he had written one "Tee hee," or "I set
them straight," or ... I could only come to one conclusion. Even though he
used to know that I am a woman, somehow, he had forgotten ... or his mind had
told him something else ... or maybe, because so many people now believe that
I am a man, he's doing so as a matter of course. Even the people I had just
met, all of them were treating me as if I were _actually a man._
****
It was funny, but after I finally figured it out (more or less); figured out




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what happened to me, I _couldn't do anything about it!_ Bellevue may be
overcrowded, but it was within the city limits and convenient. A good place to
hide the "_pre-_verts" who _pretend_ to be women....
What made me hurt above and beyond the embarrassment the shouting, the
bruised instep where old Mrs. Pendleton tromped on it was the fact that even
telling people that I was a woman didn't seem to help anymore.
Then, while I sat on the floor, hardly noticing the tickle of roach
legs on _my_ legs, I _thought_ of something. And got to work.
By the time I was through, my hands and fingers were a hurting, my eyes
were blurred from staring at endless black letters (sort of slate grey towards
the end) marching across illuminated white paper, my tongue was coated with
that slimy, gummy residue from licking too many stamps and envelope flaps (why
wouldn't those damned dogs lick something besides their paws and fannies?)
but, finally, I was done. And I thought that it might work. _Had_ to work.
Please, pretty please with sugar on top work ... and sugar on the bottom, if
that might help.
From the afternoon when I sat on the floor, bemoaning my bizarre fate,
to the day when I finally called it quits a month later, I had written eight
short stories, three poems and a criticism of
faceless/personalityless/mindless killers in 1980s dead-teenager mad slasher
flicks ("Down with 'Jasonism' _or_ Norman Bates Won't You Please Phone Your
Mother?"). Plus cover letters for each submission with my full name, as in
"Ms" and "Miss" added to the bottom sign-off the works. I had to wait until
dark to send them off (in a weird way I _missed_ the sexist comments from
strange guys) to both magazines which knew my work but not my sex as well as
newer zines I'd never tried before. Even though I left late someone yelled
"Drag Queen" at me from across the street and I was only wearing a sundress!
(It was too hot even for shorts, and besides, I thought that maybe _I_ had to
do a little _believing_ on my own, to speed up the process...)
Only a week later, I couldn't help but think of that kiddie book, about