I’ve never written a stranger story … nor one which has gestated for a longer period of time … nor one with a longer title.
My father was the captain of the darting team for Ye Olde Tripple Inn, a bar on the north side of West 54th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. And immediately across the street was … Studio 54. I often thought of the vast metaphysical distance between those two locations which existed only yards apart, and for decades knew there was a story there, but I had no idea what it was.
Until in the middle of one night last year, I woke with an opening sentence in my head, scribbled it down in the dark, and hoped I’d be able to read my handwriting the next morning. (Luckily, I could!) And then I began writing as best as I was able the next, best sentence, over and over again. I had no idea where I was going, or whether what I had to say would make sense to anyone but me.
In fact, I assumed the story would be unsellable. But I needed to write it anyway.
Here’s what I scribbled in my journal at the start off it all —
“I think I’m going to have to consider this playing, and not actually writing a story, so I don’t have to feel bad when it turns out not to become one. I’ll let it just be fun.”
Usually, as I near the completion of a story, I know exactly which market I think might be its best possible home. With this story, I hd no idea. I couldn’t conceive of an editor who’d be willing to publish something so personal and so odd. So I shared it with a couple of friends, one of whom told me he thought it was the best thing I’d ever written (which humbled me), and suggested I send it to Lightspeed editor John Joseph Adams. Which I did.
And so … “A Man Walks Into a Bar: In Which More Than Four Decades After My Father’s Reluctant Night of Darts on West 54th Street I Finally Understand What Needs to Be Done” was published in the January issue of Lightspeed … and I will be forever grateful to editor John Joseph Adams for taking that risk.