Fiction by Geoffrey
Fox
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& Essays |
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Novel: A Gift for
the Sultan (synopsis)
Welcome
to My Contri (book of
short stories; review & ordering information)
Kitten
on the Keys (a very short
story)
Courbet
and the Red Virgin (screenplay,
set during the Paris Commune, 1871)
Other
stories on the web
Stories
in print
KITTEN ON THE KEYS
"You
can't be in this story!"
shouted the Writer, tossing typed pages into the air and throwing
his shoulders against the back of his chair. Kitten, stretched
out across the sofa, looked up at him through her long-lashed,
languorous eyes and said,
xxxxx"Why not, Honey? I like it here."
xxxxx"Because!" he shouted. "Do
you have any idea how many women named 'Kitten' or 'Kitty' or
something like that show up in stories like this? And how many
have 'long-lashed, languorous eyes'?"
xxxxxShe wriggled slowly on the sofa, rolling
toward him and rotating one shoulder as she rubbed her hand up
and down her shapely, black-clad thigh.
xxxxx"No, Baby, I don't know," she
said in a slow, low-pitched voice. "Why don't you tell me
about it?"
xxxxx"Stop that! You're almost purring!"
xxxxxWith a mischievous grin, she began making
that deep, rolling guttural sound between menace and contentment.
xxxxx"God! I try to do some serious work,
but you show up!"
xxxxxShe slithered and oozed to a sitting
then a standing position, like a cobra swaying to a flute. Next
she was behind him. He felt her fingers on the back of his neck.
xxxxx"Hey, Baby," she said in that
low, low voice, "it's all right. Don't cry."
xxxxx"No no no no no!"
xxxxx"Hey, it's all right. You can do
serious work and still have a little fun."
xxxxxHer voice was nearer now, and then he
felt it - a firm, large breast under thin silk, sliding along
the bone behind his ear.
xxxxx"No! No!" he whimpered, then
suddenly thrust his upper body forward, away from the breast
and over his writing desk, and wheeled around fiercely to face
her.
xxxxx"You, you listen to me. This is
my book. I am writing it, I am in charge. This is going to be
a serious book. No clichés, you hear me? Especially no
clichéd characters. It's going to be about courage, and
caring, and death, the big things. Love, even. Real love. And
that means there's no room for you!"
xxxxxShe stood, smiling at him. Her head was
leaning to one side, her arms were folded under those big, lovely
breasts.
xxxxx"Poor Baby. But I'm here, right?
You rubbed the magic lamp somewhere up there in the right hemisphere
of your brain and here I am."
xxxxx"Oh, God! What am I supposed to
do?"
xxxxx"Well, if self-torture is your idea
of a good time, just go on ranting for a while." She smiled
again.
xxxxx"Or we could just re-lax and have
my kind of a good time."
xxxxxThe shiny tight-stretched black pants
shimmered across her buttocks as she walked, slowly, back to
the sofa and again stretched herself across it. Tears filled
his eyes as he watched her trace the curve of her breast with
a long, red fingernail.
xxxxxThe Writer banged his head against the
keyboard and rolled back and forth, making something that looked
like this:dfv ytg hmukj,lhtry fgx
xxxxxHe stared at the line for a moment and
tried to pronounce it, but he knew he was just avoiding the real
issue.
xxxxx"Kitten, what do I have to do to
get you to go away?"
xxxxx"Oh, Honey, I don't go anywhere
until my mission is accomplished! You ought to know that. I'm
with you for the duration, until you get that thing written.
Then - ta ta! You won't need me anymore, and I don't stick around
where I'm not needed."
xxxxx"Need you! Shee-it!"
xxxxx"Tsk. Such language. Let's not try
to fight a cliché with a cliché, eh, big boy? Come
to Momma. Honest, Momma can help you, you just gotta let her."
xxxxxWhen he was in her arms, sobbing, she
said, "There, there, big fella, it's all right. You just
got to let it happen. Momma can be anything you want, she knows
lots of disguises. Just let it happen. Ol' Kitten can become
a woman, or a man, or just a mood, we can call her Kitten or
Ralph or Marguerite, or a sense of doom, or the breeze on a Hamptons
beach, but she's gotta be in there or you're just not going to
have any life, you're not going to have a story. So come to Momma,
Baby, and we'll play. And when you're finished," she whispered,
"nobody has to know, ever."
xxxxxAnd it was all right. Just like the last
time.
From The
New York Times Book Review
¡WELCOME TO MY CONTRI!
By Geoffrey Fox
This
frequently powerful collection of short stories enters Latin
America as if through the rickety back door of a burlesque house:
"Goo'mornin', all you wonnerful people," begins the
title story as a tour guide leads his Anglo flock through the
imaginary splendors of a city called Santo Abismo. The low-rent
standup routine serves to lure unsuspecting readers to some pretty
dank depths, and although the stories of violence draw from a
familiar well (a peasant is mutilated, a village decimated, a
rebellion plotted), when he turns to accidental clashes between
conflicting cultures, Geoffrey Fox steps out on his own. Most
fictional treatments of such encounters feature at least one
ugly American, but "Welcome to My Contri" does not
resort to easy cliché. The Northerners who appear here
do not tramp carelessly on third world freedoms; instead, they
inadvertently knock them over. A bit like characters from Graham
Greene, they don't quite understand the rules by which others
play the game, with the result that the game itself is deeply
suspect. In this short and impressive work, Mr. Fox, who has
taught Latin American politics and society at New York University,
has created a memorable set of players who, while not natural
antagonists (they often share the same dreams and goals), are
still somehow bent on confrontation. Watching their sometimes
vicious, often darkly humorous interactions leaves us thoroughly
wrung out -- and aware that we are in the presence of a formidable
new writer. -- JAMES POLK
The New York Times Book Review, Sunday, November 20, 1988
To purchase: $11 ($9
+ 2 for shipping and handling) to
Lintel, 24 Blake Lane, Middletown,
NY 10940
Short
stories and novel chapters on the web
On a Page from Rilke. Milk magazine, Vol. 6, December 2004
Stairways. Small Spiral Notebook,
Vol. III, No. 1, Winter 2004
The Princess (Chapter
2 of the novel, A Gift for the Sultan.) The
Copperfield Review, Summer 2003.
The Gazi (Chapter
1 of the novel, A Gift for the Sultan.) The
Copperfield Review, Spring 2003.
Courbet
And The Red Virgin (April 1871):
A short story in the form of a screenplay, in The
Copperfield Review, Summer 2001
Melliflua and the Fauns, Web del Sol's In Posse, Spring
2001 -- A fable.
Bravo,
Scrittore! in Linnaean
Street, Spring 2001 -- The unfocused enthusiasm of a Neapolitan
co-ed boosts a writer's spirits.
A lua no ceu da baía, in Exquisite Corpse, Summer
2000 -- A gigantic Moon over Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, raises
spirits and other things on a festive night.
Short
stories in print
From a Trolley Stop
in Amsterdam. Ink Pot Special Edition, Short Story &
Flash Fiction Contest Winners, December 2003
Zen Garden. The
Threepenny Review, spring 1999
The Fall of Randall
Smullyan. Vigil Anti No. 4, Vigil 9,1993
Tidbinbilla. Central
Park, spring 1992
Dancing with Lucha
and The Lair. Yellow Silk: Erotic Arts and Letters. (anthology)
New York: Harmony Books 1990; originally published in Yellow
Silk (magazine) #25, winter 1987
Welcome to My Contri
(title story of collection). Fiction International, fall
1988
Popo. Central Park,
spring 1988
Valencia Afternoon.
West Wind Review, spring 1987
Incident on Mother's
Day. Central Park, fall 1986
Here's One Union That's
Going All the Way. Labor Notes, June 19, 1980
On (not) writing
In der Schreibmaschine,
ein weißes, leeres Blatt
das mich verwundet;
ich starre darauf.(1)
- Horst Bienek, 1991
On (not) dreaming
Hay gente que si pudiera, arrancaría los
rayos
de la luna, para amarrarse los zapatos. (2)
-- Dulce María Loynaz, 1920(?)
(1)
In the typewriter, a white, empty page / which wounds me. / I
stare at it.
(2)
There are people who would, if they could, tear off the moonbeams
to tie their shoes.
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