Forbidden Acts

"A queasy little gem about emotional health, relationships, and some of the nastier implications of medical science giving us an easy way to regenerate destroyed brain tissue."--Ed Bryant, in Locus, on my story in Forbidden Acts, "Interrogator Frames"

So you're looking at some single-mindedly morbid web page when you click on a jpg of a trade paperback, Forbidden Acts. You figure you'll get a generic order form that will ask for your credit card number: "e-mail for info." Instead, you end up in a big red room where this guy comes over to you, sticks a copy in your face and says, "I think you should buy this."

The guy's delivery seems a bit emphatic. It's an Avon paperback, not Lucky Seven or Always Good. Why is he hyping the book like a goddamned drug?

"You don't understand," he says. "This book is way sicker than it looks. The stuff they describe in here? It was too much for Joe Bob Briggs, which he says at the beginning of the book."

Joe Bob Briggs? You grab for the book. The guy waves you away.

"No, really," he says. "I don't know you, right? But I feel this book would be good f'you. I don't make no extra money off it. But I'm in there, page three-hunnert-sixty-four. See this page right here? Maybe you should go to the bookstore, check it out. Like they say, taste is relative. Cause you ain't so normal, look where you are, look what you're doin'. You're lookin' around, you're clickin' on things. You like Nancy Collins and John Shirley and Alan Moore and Danielle Willis? I figured you did. I just wish Joe Lansdale was in there instead of that Rob Hardin dude. But everything is real good, real good, even that Rob Hardin, I gotta say. Plus Kathe Koja's really great, an'-uh...Y'know, my ex-girlfriend usedta say she liked my hair long, but fuck it."

Huh?

"I'm geh-in' it all cut off next week, whattaya think about that? Short, like, one bang to the side. My singer friend Monica says I should shave it all off 'cause I'd look 'sexy,' but she's married with two kids, why should I listen to her? Think I'm makin a mistake?"

You shake your head slightly. Fine, whatever.

"Anyways. Try it, look at it, gimme a chance. Tower Books gots it, Forbidden Planet, Dark Carnival, they all gots it. It's a national type book, they gots it near you. You could probably order it on the Home Shopping Channel. Anyways, I can't be standin' here talkin' all day. I need me a job. I got this degree in sociology, but that don't mean shit on the job market, know what I mean? So maybe I'll see you around. And buy that book."

You turn and walk, clicking your tongue. You'll probably buy the book even though you're annoyed. In person, Barry Malzberg wasn't half as articulate as you'd thought.

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