Screwed, in a Spiritual Sense
Screwed, in a Spiritual Sense
So that's okay.
I can also count on the fact that, whenever they call me, they're going to ask a question or deliver some news I also never would've been expecting to receive a few years ago. A number of these things I haven't mentioned here?some papers I've signed for various reasons?because I find the whole thing more than a little embarrassing.
For years, I'd always promised myself I wouldn't sell off certain rights to my little stories. It wasn't anything I felt hesitant about, it was simple, outright, flat denial. I simply said "No" to anyone who came sniffing around. I was very proud and protective, didn't want my little stories raped by various movie studio machinations. They'd blow it, I knew, because they always blow it, except for a few rare instances (The Godfather, Cuckoo's Nest, Dead Zone, Paths of Glory, maybe even Lonelyhearts). They'd blow mine for sure, though. I knew it.
Well, then a few months ago I changed my mind. I guess I wasn't too proud and protective to take the damn money. I'm hardly rich as a result, but Christ, it was more than I had yesterday. Still, I feel a little dirty about the whole thing.
I had nary a clue, though, that selling my soul to the devil also included selling off all the memories of what happened to me when I was nine.
It all started with that fax and that phone message. It seems there was some question about how various books and whatnot overlapped with each other, and who got the rights to which. I'm a slow man, and found it all very befuddling.
The legalese in the fax?a paragraph that needed to be added to a contract?kept making references, not to "stories," but to "periods of Jim's life." A few lines after I noticed that, a sentence read, "Producers have acknowledged and agreed that the Owner has reserved all rights to his life story, including the right to the character of Jim Knipfel, other than as described in Nairobi."
That was all fine and well?I wouldn't be needing those days again anyway, I figured. But if you think about the whole business in terms of Venn diagrams, that meant that the deal my lawyer was working on now was going to include all those other periods?as well as my rights to my own character (other than what it was during those six months in the madhouse).
I was wondering why I had to sign that contract in blood, I thought. Then I remembered a scene from Zelig (right before I was struck by the notion that too much of my life of late has paralleled that particular movie)?Zelig is asked to return the money paid to him for the movie rights to his story. When he can only pay back half the money, they only return half of his life.
What had I gotten myself into now? I'd never met these people?these producers who now owned the rights to my life and character?who the hell were they, anyway? And would I now have to go out and steal somebody else's character, or would I simply be cast adrift, a shadow, wandering aimlessly through the world, a drunken Flying Dutchman, with no stories to tell, no sparkling character with which to dazzle those around me? And if I did try to tell a story, would I be sued? What happens if I use my name? Would I still have a reflection? And what about ATMs?would I still be able to use those? Jesus Christ?what was happening?
I tried to get a grip on myself, but couldn't. It made no logical sense, I know?yet here I was again, snared in some sort of diabolical, Satanic plot. Maybe no biological weapons would be released and no world leaders would die as a result of it, but dammit?something was going very weird on me.
In Gravity's Rainbow, I remember (because I wrote it down and just found that piece of paper again), paranoia was described as "the Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible." But here, in this instance, I didn't have to do any looking for other orders. The orders were presented to me in clear, stark black and white, with a bit of crusty brown down there at the bottom, where I had signed my name.
I should learn to read these things beforehand.