Writers take tours in other people's lives.
And every once in a while the observed becomes an integral part of the life of the observer. Make no mistake, and when the reviews are written and the idle chatter is passed—never permit the deletion: I did not write this story alone. It was a true collaboration between me and one of the most exemplary human beings I have ever known, Haskell Barkin.
We wrote this as a lark, a number of years ago, and it was published in Playboy. In that way, Huck—as we call him—helped me realize a secret desire. I had always wanted to see my work in Playboy but had been unsuccessful in getting them to consider the stories seriously enough. Not only because Playboy is arguably the highest-paying magazine market in the world, but because as times have changed and fiction has waned in importance for that journal, to be replaced by topical nonfiction, the pages allocated for fiction have diminished. They are always hot to publish Cheever or Updike or Le Carré (and with justification because they are excellent), but because those fiction pages are held so dear they are highly selective in whom they permit to occupy that space. Unless one has had a popular success, from which instant name-identification provides an added value for their table of contents, it is strictly the quality of the material that buys a writer the chance at that forum.
Despite my having sent Playboy virtually everything of what I considered first rank for many years, including stories that later won awards and became widely anthologized, I could never get the nod. On one occasion they rejected a story titled "Pretty Maggie Money-eyes" on the grounds that the female character was stronger than the male character. As I say, even at Playboy times have changed. But for many years I was on the outside looking in. And it galled me. On a low energy level, to be sure, but a burr under my saddle nonetheless.
Then one Sunday Huck stopped by with an idea for a story. He told it to me and suggested we write it together, because he'd never written short stories. "Horse puckey," I said, eschewing harsh language. "Write it yourself, kiddo. It's a terrific idea and you've got the stuff aplenty to write it properly. Never take two people to do a job one can do as well." (This, from a man who has written an entire book of collaborations. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. And while I'm about it, thanks Walt.)
You see, Huck has one of the great antic senses of humor in the civilized world. If anyone ever asked me to define droll, I'd schlep them over to Huck's house and point at him. He is droll. So I was hardly being humble when I urged him to write the story himself. I was being logical: one hires an expert in matters vitreous when one requires an intricate job of glassblowing … not a window-washer.
The story-idea was a funny one.
And though I like to think many of my stories have an ample dollop of humor in them, droll is one of the many things I ain't.
So Huck went off and a while later he came back with a story of maybe half a dozen pages. I read them, and the skeleton was there, but it hadn't really been fleshed out. So I said, "Well, maybe we can make this a little better. Leave it with me, if you like, and I'll run it through the typewriter again."
Huck opined that would be peachykeen, and I shoved the story into a pending file till I had a little free time.
Ten thousand years later (to hear Barkin tell it), I got around to unshipping the manuscript, reread it, and did a final draft. I gave it to Huck to read, and he sat there laughing not at all. That's his way. Droll, yes; effusive, forget it. When he got finished I thought he'd tell me it was ka-ka. Instead, he smiled and said, "It's terrific; very funny." Go figure it.
So we sent it out to the late A.C. Spectorsky of Playboy, with a recommendation kindly added by Ted Sturgeon, who was high in favor at Playboy at the time. And a few weeks later they bought it. My first sale to Playboy, a secret dream actualized through the direct involvement in my life of Huck Barkin.
Why is he telling us all this?
I tell you all this because writers take tours in other people's lives and the dearest treasure one finds, second in importance only to wisdom and insight, is friendship. I write of friendship frequently. Oh, most of the time you may not recognize it, because I have it dressed up in outrageous garb, but that's one of the most important things in life, as I see it, and I try to examine it as closely as love or courage or the mortal dreads … real friendship. Elsewhere in these pages you'll find a very long tale about friendship called "All the Lies That Are My Life," and though this story isn't about friendship, it came into being because of friendship.
Huck has been my truest friend for a lot of years; going on twenty. The affection I've had lavished on me by Huck and his wife Carol and their daughter Tracy has carried me through many thorny times. He is one of the few people ever to call me out because of my bad behavior and do it in such a wise and loving way that I stopped doing what I'd been doing and changed my manner. Tracy has been a constant amazement to me, growing from a clever child into a remarkable young woman, and all the while providing a handy reminder that not all modern kids turn out to be me-generation nitwits or Texas-Tower snipers. Carol, as architect and self-fulfilling prophecy of female determinism in these most parlous times, has filled my home with light and beauty and loyalty.
It helps. God knows it helps. When a writer spends decades taking nasty sojourns through the brutalized lives of the kinds of people that make interesting fiction, being able to balance it off against a happily married, sensibly oriented, constantly growing, decent and honest family unit helps, God knows it helps.
And how do I repay these limitless kindnesses? In ways I do not think Amy Vanderbilt would have approved: first, I blame the faint cavalier tone of adolescent sexism in this story—however innocent and moronically slaphappy it may be—on Huck. It was his fault, Gloria! Second, I used Haskell Barkin's name for an utterly amoral, vacuous and psychopathic character in another story I wrote a long time ago. It is the perfect name for a big blond beach-bum kinda guy. Go sue me. Art sometimes demands rapacious behavior. (Or as Faulkner once put it: "If a writer has to rob his mother he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.")