Gloves Off: Auri Muir

Giving You a Head Start

Today a New Approach

Thank you for approaching this in a new way. Yesterday I sent a heads-up about Chapter One Informed Consent by Auri Muir. Today, we’ll take the deeper dive.

As always, it’s best to read the work and enjoy its emotional and psychological effects before we get forensic. Give it a read here; otherwise, we;ll get started below.

Chapter One

They always knock before dropping off the food because he tells them to. They wait for me to step out in my pajamas, nipples hard against the thinning fabric of my tank top, toes scraping against the doormat that still says ‘Tis The Season even though it’s April. Sometimes they hand it to me directly, but usually they’ve backed up a few feet, the tightly sealed bag with all of its contents waiting for me to bow in gratitude as I retrieve it, pretending not to notice my picture being taken. He insists that I am always in the frame, or they won’t receive a tip. Of course this makes me feel important, alive even. I’ve only ever felt like a real person when someone was watching. 

My Feedback: Good, great, you’re introducing us to a system. An intimate look at how a person earns money or gets emotional needs met, and you’ve done the neat trick of showing the narrator earn money while fulfilling the emotional needs of a client. Now, beware the Gerund. Any time you use the “ing” form of a verb be aware that you’re lapsing into a generalized summary. Thus “dropping” makes the scene less immediate. Would you consider staying very immediate for a few sentences?

The knock comes. The narrator slips off pajamas. Rather than tell us this is a system, allows us to recongize that it’s a ritual. Show the narrator actively predicting what’s about to happen. The narrator looking through the peephole in the door, waiting for the knock. Show us the half-eaten take-out bags from previous iterations of this ritual. Intro the cat, and show us the narrator resisting a need to pet/love the cat in deference to the obligation of the ritual.

All that said, I applaud you showing us an established system that will be foreign to almost all readers.

He follows up with some text message complimenting my hair or my outfit, real polite. There’s never anything vulgar or explicit, not with Leonard. I respond with a photo of the goods, and even though every morning I order the same full fat matcha latte with an egg and cheese bagel, he asks what I think. He wants me to describe the dairy to him specifically, some perversity he developed because he’s one of the over ninety percent Chinese who are naturally lactose intolerant. We all want something we can’t have. I tell him it’s delicious as always, refraining from putting any real effort into my description. He doesn’t push back. I like that about him, his deference.

My Feedback: Resist the urge to explain the connection between dairy, lactose intolerance and the client. If you just drop in a fact — ninety percent, etc. — you’ll allow the reader to recongize the causitive relationship. In fact, if you can unpack that fact a little — a brief cause about gut biology or cow v. goat milk ancestory — you can achieve “head” (intellectual) authority for your narrator, while also allowing your reader to connect the dots.

Leonard is a feeder. He’s not the kind who wants me to become morbidly obese and unable to walk, or at least that hasn’t happened to me yet. He’s more like a grandmother who won’t let you leave without feeling like you have to roll out the door. The kind of grandma people have in the movies. He’s as close as I'll ever get to it. He’s the only one I've given my address to. The only one who knows my real name. What I do out in the real world. I don’t know how it happened, really. He started out as an early viewer under the deprecating username shittyaZndriver, back when I didn’t have anyone visiting my channel. He’d ask me about my likes, my dislikes, never anything too personal. Then he became a dedicated moderator of the chat when I started to see growth. On one of the longer nights I mentioned I was hungry, and somehow he convinced me to let him send delivery. He hasn’t stopped since. 

My Feedback: This is where I felt a little let-down. Consider that you don’t have to state the client is a feeder. The distinction of “feeders” have been in the culture for so long — decades — that most reader will recognize Leonard’s fetish by this point.

Also, please be very careful here. The narrator might assume the client is Asian, following clues like the lactose intolerance, but that assumption might be best left up to the reader. If you stick to creating the system and using “recording angel” to just depict what’s taking place moment-to-moment, as objectively as possible, you avoid making your narrator too “judge-y” up front. Once you hook readers with an interesting premise and system, then you might risk pejorative language that might be off-putting.

For now, give us facts and motions, actual sensory details that will pull us into the story.

I toss the sandwich in the trash then let BB out the sliding glass door. She charges out through my ankles, releasing a long snarl that jumps up and down through the air, just as her legs do. The ducks fly a few feet away from her into the safety of the retention pond while she crouches in the shape of a fully cooked shrimp for her morning shit, sniffing the cold air all satisfied with herself. She makes eye contact with me as she strains to pinch the turd from her hairy ass. I don’t break contact because I want her to feel safe, to know I've got her back. I think she is the only being I’ve ever truly loved. I think I might be a sociopath. Most people with personality disorders prefer animals over humans, at least that is what I've been told. I haven’t bothered much to look into the depth of it.

My Feedback: Oh lord. You make me so hungry when you toss that food! Would you consider opening the book, smelling the food, really teasing your reader for a beat — before tossing it? Up front, you want to create an expectation, then thwart it.

Can you make that take-out food seem incredible, make us drool for it, then throw it away?

Converesely, make the poop the pay-off. A strange admission: Since we got our first dogs in 2000, the smell of the dog’s poop seems oddly comforting. That smell means I can go back indoors — out of the cold and rain — and it means the dog is well and happy. An off-putting scent has become associated with relief and joy. I’d bet your narrator feels that same unlikely joy when the cat shits. A shit = a happy, healthy cat and no litter box mess. Can you see how you can stage that so it contrasts more dramatically with the food that should smell good and be eaten?

After I get dressed and put together, I type out a loving good morning text message and paste it into the chat of every man who paid for the girlfriend experience this month. I send them all a photo of a burgundy stain in the shape of my lips on the opening of my latte lid. Just a faint apparition of a kiss. 

The girls at the front desk are busying themselves deciding what to order for lunch later. They collaborate over a daily takeout to be delivered and every morning they’ve each got some venti iced Starbucks latte and always with the fresh manicures, as if they’re somehow paid a more livable wage than me. They do not notice me, or otherwise choose not to acknowledge me, as I walk back toward my office. They are the same girls from high school, but in different skin suits.

My Feedback:

Henry texted something last night about stopping by earlier than I normally would for a brief chat, but I forgot. His office door is closed now. I pause to listen to his muffled voice, or that of a client’s, at least. I lean in closer to discern if he is providing talk therapy or if this is a vibroacoustic session, which I’ve gathered is basically just a very expensive vibrating bed that people meditate on while he occasionally verbally guides them. I imagine the client laying silently on the bed, fitted with an eye mask. The lights are dimmed and, at best, Henry is scrolling through his social media while he pushes buttons and gives a new prompt every ten minutes or so. At worst, he’s got his hand down his pants, tugging away at the dick he can only get hard when no one wants him to. “That’ll be two hundred dollars,” he says as they take the eye mask off, smiling. I walk away before anyone can accuse me of eavesdropping on his session. 

My Feedback:

My first client is a twenty-four year old woman whose parents pay the practice $165 per hour for my counseling, only for them to turn around and enable every behavior they want me to correct. A reminder that love is more dangerous than being alone. It makes you defenseless.

After the session I take a selfie on the toilet for Danimalia77. He tips me to send a photo of my piss, even more to describe the smell. It’s darker than usual. Somehow the scent of instant ramen, chicken.

My Feedback: The hustle is amazing. The way every moment is something intimate that’s being packaged and sold. The brutal way every breath of life must be harnessed in the gig economy. You make me laugh WHILE you’re busting my heart. Brilliant!

I quickly inhale a glass of water, a stream of which pours down my chin and through my black turtleneck, soaking my breasts. I wipe the remaining dribbles onto my sleeve, remnants of my foundation smear into the dark cloth. 

My next client is a man in his forties. He’s mad at his ex wife for resenting him for cheating on her. He is with the new woman, but he pays me to talk only of his ex. She’s all he thinks about. 

My Feedback: Can you double down? Not even a dribble of water can be ignored. Can you show even “happy accidents” being sold as “wet T-shirt” moments? Demonstrate that the narrator chooses to bring every detail to the market.

In the staff kitchen Henry says he missed me this morning, he’s masticating what can only be a leftover tuna sandwich for lunch, the sugary white bread sticks to his canines as he takes a dry swallow. He says I need to turn my notes in by the end of each business day, which could have been an email. I apologize and see myself out as though I am a diligent employee with important clients to attend to, tossing a promise to do better over my shoulder.

I ask the boyfriends each how their day is coming along, offering the same enthusiastic affirmation I would my counseling clients. I say the right things that make them believe they are loved. I chew rice cakes slathered in peanut butter alone in my office, the gritty crumbs of which collect between my thighs. I remind them of their mothers. I send a photo of my hand between my thighs amongst the crumbs, fingertips disappearing underneath my skirt. I tell each of them I am thinking of them only, that I want them to lick the mess up. My panties are damp because I turn myself on, because they all want me. There is no time to do anything about it. 

My Feedback: A nice trick, distiguishing “boyfriends” from “clients.”

This is just spit-balling, but would you consider running a second “clock”? As it stands you’re moving moment-by-moment through the day. If you were also running a sidebar “auction” of some sort you’d have a second way to measure the time passing: By money and bids. Rising and falling bids — for some sordid item, you decide — would allow you to amp up the tension as needed, when needed. So can you run a second clock? The cat? A cam? What might that second clock be?

My next client is a man just barely a few years older than me. He is single and does not want to be. He doesn’t realize it, but he doesn’t actually like women. He talks and I do not listen, really. He doesn’t notice, he never does. He pays me to listen where the women on his dates refuse to. I fantasize about taking him home where I watch him masturbate in the corner of the shower, but I don’t let him warm up under the water with me. 

I end the day with an agoraphobe. This is the only time she leaves the house each week. I am more important to her than a trip to the grocery store, or maybe it’s just that she can’t have me delivered. I understand why she feels this way, how easy it could be to close yourself off from the rest of the world. I find it hard to challenge her because of that, but I do my job just as expected with everyone else.

My Feedback: Okay, by now I’m looking for “what’s at stake?” Nothing earth-shattering, like I’m-doing-this-massive-stuff-because-my-baby-needs-a-new-kidney. But something small, what something could you drop in here? Something strange that will later blow up to become the reason for such heroic effort.

What can you drop in? What one small detail? In this world of strangeness, something genuinly intimate and vulnerable would stand out. What could that vulnerable element be?

I finish my notes as Henry instructed me too. He pokes his hair-sparse head into the light from the crack of his office as I walk by, wishing me a good evening in a way that beckons reciprocation. I do the same with a smile so thick with honey it would kill a newborn baby. He licks it up, too ignorant to understand insincerity. I wish I could find a new exit route where I do not cross his path.

In traffic I watch the other cars. The woman to my left plays drums on her steering wheel performatively, as though she wants to brag about how unbothered she is by the standstill. She mocks the cars around her honking and shaking their fists in frustration just through her act of joy. She is not desperate to get home because she loves herself. The man to my right keeps both hands on the wheel tightly, he is talking to himself, or maybe on bluetooth. I want to be the type of person who dances through moments of frustration or even who has someone they want to call, but I'm not. The cars move again and I am relieved to see them off. 

My Feedback: How can the narrator be selling this moment? How might the narrator be monitizing this “down time”? Or, could you show how others drivers are doing similar gigs? Door Dash folks. Lyft folks. A sex toy cam show in a neighboring car.

Could this be a moment where you explode one person’s desperate gig life to show the larger world madly engaged in a gig world of selling every available second?

Just an idea? In the first year we had our dog, Imp, I’d drop her at a doggy daycare called “No Bonez About It.” I wanted Imp to be around other dogs, to not be a cranky beast. And “No Bonez” had a doggy daycare cam. That meant I could moon over my dog while I wrote, always keeping the cam window open. Perhaps you could show the narrator’s “heart” by showing what he/she is watching as the world is watching him/her? Again, what’s the “heart” or emotional stake? Nothing big, just a tiny hint.

At home my elderly neighbor’s gaze follows my footsteps. He guards his mailbox until I am in front of my own door. We both turn our keys at the same time, as if he was waiting for this very moment, my arrival. I am reminded of the game children played at Recess– the one where swinging side by side meant you were married. I wonder what this key turning collaboration makes us. BB presses into my legs immediately but she knows better than to leave the apartment without being picked up. She’s a good girl. I let her sniff my fingers as I close the door. 

My Feedback: This mini-flashback to childhood landed beautifully. As always, when you see abstract “thought” verbs like am reminded of the, can you just go directly to that moment and unpack it a beat longer?

For example, I am reminded of the game children played at Recess– the one where swinging side by side meant you were married. It might become: The cold of my key, metal in my hand, the feel of steel between my fingers takes me to Mrs. Clark’s class, recess, the swings, swinging, my legs pumping to go higher even as Billy Liam swings in perfect sideways line-up to me, both of us in synch as he shouts, “This makes us married.”

So far the day has been so ritualized, and the details so flat with familiarity that a lingering run-on sentence might break the reader’s heart. Can you unpack the moment you’ve already created — meant you were married — and show us how specific moments stay with us despite the unrelenting pace of time?

Just that much could completly endear us to the narrator.

I call each of the boyfriends through the app for ten minutes, not more. They don’t get my personal number, and they answer when I want them to, not the other way around. I ask them how their days are going and make up a stress to complain about in just the right sexy baby voice. They think I am a receptionist, and I channel the girls from the front office to convince them. I text Leonard my order and he sends me the updates as it goes through stages of delivery. 

The driver knocks. I answer. Another candid photograph. A black bean cheeseburger with no pickles. I tell Leonard the cheese fries are my favorite. He’s happy with this response. At dinner I eat all of it. I want a hot slice of chocolate cake but I don’t say so, because Leonard would send that also. 

My Feedback: We’re right back into the unrelenting system. All the more reason to risk a tiny moment of slightly unpacked vulnerability.

How can you give us a mini-glimpse of the narrator’s belly?

Something as simple as the “ping” of an on-line auction notification could bump us back to the hear-and-now.

I end the evening as I do every weeknight, in a hot bath. Tonight I take a photo of my toes against the faucet. A distorted reflection of my naked body appears in the chrome if they look closely enough. I wait for them to want me, to tip me for more. 

I check personal emails to pass the time, and there is one that catches my attention. It looks like junk, the username DoNTiGnoreME followed by an endless string of numbers, but somehow made its way past the filters and into my inbox. Normally I would mark as spam and move on, but the subject has my full legal name, Iona Miller. There are the kind of people who would delete such an email, not giving it another moment of their time. Maybe they’re the confident type, or quite the opposite, the ones who fear ignorance is some sort of manifestation of danger. Not me. I’ve never been able to delay the impulse of my curiosity, and this time will be no different. Inside there is no text. Only a photo from my basic set, the one anyone with a general subscription could access. I’m wearing thigh high socks and nothing else, bent over just slightly, back dimples and darkened vulva on full display. In another world I did not open the message, and I went on living as I always have, unbothered.

My Feedback: Here would be the perfect moment for good On The Body description. So far we’ve gotten no physical sense of the narrator, no itching or stomach growling or cold nipples, nothing. All of the dissassociation could pay off well, here, if that mystery email triggers a full-body reaction. The narrator is very dissassociated from his/her own body, so how can you suddenly put us into a very alert, apprehensive body? Do NOT use abstracts like “apprehensive”! Close your eyes and revisit a time when you were shit-scared, then takes notes about how that fear manifested itself in your body.

This moment is your pay-off for the chapter. How can you prompt your reader’s physical body to feel your narrator’s peril? And no “received text” such as My heart raced or My blood ran cold and thudded in my veins. Go back and take an honest inventory of a time when a great ocean wave of terror crashed over you. Can you thwart the entire detached, systemitized world you’ve created? Can you destroy your entire fortress of ritual with one beat of On The Body chaos?

In this world, that is not the case. It never is.

They do not say what they want. I do not respond. Not yet.

My Feedback: How can your narrator be less articulate and “writerly” in this black-out moment? If you allow the physical moment to carry the energy forward — perhaps the narrator sees a sticken look of terror in his/her face reflected in the faucet — that will push the unresolved fear into the next scene.

What elements do you have in play? The uneaten food? Is the food perhaps tainted? Does the cat dig into the discarded bags? Do we find the cat poisoned dead? How can you demonstrate a bigger peril?

As always, keep in mind: Why is this story being told? In a world where people try to monitize EVERYTHING perhaps the narrator is inventing this peril in order to sell it?

Also, how is the story being told? Via a webcam? What’s the medium? How might that medium shape or conceal the actual facts?

Also, why is the story being told now? You don’t have to explain away any secrets — for example, the narrator is creating a panic in order to crowdfund a secret vacation to Prague — but I want you to ruminate on any secrets you might possibly be withholding. You are brilliant and have many dimensions to you.

As always, what are your objects to date?¹ What’s your clock(s)?² What’s at stake?³

1. This includes the cat, the food, the faucet, everything that’s mentioned.

2. This includes any sidebar auction. Any measuring device with which we monitor progress or failure.

3. just give us one mini-mini detail. Such as the playground swinging moment. One vulnerability.