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The big dream was to get sent to a federal prison, maybe Super-Max, and have time to finish our novel. Steve had been busy with kids – we all had been busy with kids – so there wasn’t even time to start the crime which would lead to the solidarity which would finish the novel.
I was making chum for poaching endangered sharks when Steve was hospitalized. The call came over from the UC Davis Hospital and I put down the ice cream scooper and drove up with the emergency lights flashing. This doesn’t really work unless you put a plague symbol [large painted cross] on the hood of your car because people think you are just forgetting to turn off the flashers.
There actually is no good way to tell other motorists ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY, your job and baseball game don’t matter – this is an emergency.’
In California, we have nearly 40 million people who can drive a car at the same time. Children are given their first car before they can walk, usually electronic things, sometimes skateboards with cardboard surrounds if their parents have failed to be rich. My kids didn’t complain anymore when I found them electronic cars at the garage sales, which only needed new batteries. If they did complain about the warped plastic or the sun-faded color, then they were going to spend the weekend detailing their ride to a showroom luster.
So I was still trying to save Steve. No matter what cancer the UC Davis Med found (because we had been experimenting with bombs that don’t kill anybody but make explosions like a light show; magnesium release) – because at that time I only thought he was faking it – that he had realized coma patients have ten hours a day to devote to the craft between body scrubs.
“Hang in there, Steve!”
An officer was right on my tail, he came up and looked in the back seat as many men with their flashers are bringing their wives to hospital. He was on a motorcycle and seemed to use his hand to ask, “What’s going on?” I had no pregnant wife about to deliver in the back seat. That was foolish, I think. I should have had a wife ready.
I rolled down the window, still watching the stop/go/speed/brake traffic, and yelled, “She’s in the trunk. Shivering and Afraid!”
The cop nodded and put on his red/blue lights and cleared a way. It is illegal in this state to ignore that an officer has found a public emergency and people must scoot over and make a utility vehicle crossing even if they are not very comfortable being so close to their neighbors.
It is also illegal to put on police officer clothes and use your cell phone to project red/blue strobe lights with a magnifying glass in reverse. But that’s not real prison time for writing.
We sped as fast as the grumpy cars would allow and this cop thought I was going to UCSF which is a training hospital. He went left onto the Bay Bridge and I sort of waved and kept going past Berkeley and Richmond. He could have understood if I didn’t want to have my baby in Oakland. In fact I was almost to a toll bridge over the waterway that turns the ocean into a river, trying to figure out a way to not pay the toll because writers are poor. This cop came back and actually tried pulling me over in a different county then we originally met. If you have seen the Dukes of Hazard you know that the ultimate goal is to change counties when the police escort has lost its appeal.
Unfortunately, this guy was California Highway Patrol (CHiPs) and did not look all sexy like Jon Baker. He had the authority to cross bridges and pull me over ten feet into Mexico. There is no salvation at the border anymore.
It’s really really important to get arrested on the other side of the Carquinez Bridge because the CHP (chips) don’t have a dedicated detention facility; you’ll have to be put in general population and they offer no down time for writers. This is the reason that William Sydney Porter (O’Henry) traveled west after his boss said he robbed a bank. It was more peaceful out west at that time and he could send a story to The New Yorker magazine and get paid every three days to eat.
It’s changed since Franz Kafka sold insurance and purposely gave himself a home-vasectomy for the silence. How the man could be translated from the German and sound so ‘soulful’ in English is because home surgery is often painful. This is the level of commitment a great writer must consider.
Hemingway was gored by a bull before The Sun Rose, and Jack Kerouac slept in a field to save money for prostitutes. Life is expensive. On the Road.
“PULL OVER!”
He was at the driver window again and the bridge was just a football field in front. I noticed that there was a “Smart Car” in the way, which is basically a ten speed bicycle with a plastic shell, made by the designer of Swatch Wristwatches because he was a real fad cult leader. The car could obviously be pushed to go faster but I could not understand if I had to make it to the center of the bridge to be in the next county? What happens if you are arrested on top of a river? Who decides the jurisdiction? It is much more relaxing to be detained with farmers in Weaverville instead of angry gender people in The City of Industry. They used to have a progressive C&H sugar/cocaine business and now it was waning. Everybody was coming down.
Woo wooo “PULL OVER!”
Upton Sinclair was investigated for treason before America created the Food and Drug Administration because he proved that we were feeding children meat that would kill convicts. Since then, the chow has become much better in prison. I knew that if I didn’t hurry, Steve would complete that novel alone and I wouldn’t even get credit as a ghost editor. “Hang in there, my friend.”
Haruki Murakami climbed the temple styled pagoda entrance to YoYogi Koen as the Imperial Army passed and poured gasoline on his body. He had just finished a novel called Norwegian Wood and no one was reading it because The Beatles had brought a joint to Japan. He bent down and asked one of the soldiers for a light. That’s dedication.
I pushed the accelerator down, John Wesley Hardin gunned 42 men before completing his doctorate in cowboy prison, Paul wrote sixty percent of the New Testament in Jail, and John only had his Revelation in the prison on Patmos.
“I’m coming, Steve. Hang in there, buddy.”
The Smart Car was pushed forward with such force that I don’t think it was captured on film for the license plate validation or the FASTpast beacon. The expected speed is 25.
For some reason, it is a good time to cackle, unless you are often a practitioner of crime, and don’t find it very emotionally freeing after always being a good citizen. In this case, the Carquinez Bridge is not a Chinese garden bridge with the looping upward start like a roller coaster. I pushed the Smart Car past the toll and then swung left, accidentally hitting the motorcycle’s front tire, and it spun out crazily.
Sheetu.
I didn’t want to kill for art.
I completely stopped my carriage of caring in the middle of the bridge. Took some road flares out of the trunk, which is kinda fun even if you don’t have a pregnant wife or dead body in the back. I lit those road flares and put them all over the bridge lanes and looked for the motorcyclist.
The officer had really good protective sheathing and was only bruised as I tried to give him CPR without removing the helmet for a kiss. Unfortunately, the judge didn’t think I was bad enough for prison.
Steve died with our novel still in his head and at the funeral I was asked to say a few words.
I looked out at his kinfolk and did not want to give away our many plots. I just bent down to the microphone and whispered to the infinite, “He was a good egg.”
C’est tout.
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I'm not sure I understood a word of it! I think you have some great ideas, but maybe you should work on the cohesion.
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Trials and tribulations of Tommy. Too bad about the novel dying in Steve's head.
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Steve like the horror genre so I keep waiting for him to come back and tell me what to write.
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Trying to go to prison to finish his novel but failing to get arrest is beautiful irony. Love the call out to Murakami Haruki and yoyogi park.
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Scott,
Did you hear about that situation with murakami? I heard it secondhand from a local about 2 years after he published.
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I think he did a lot of jogging and drinking in yoyogi park (i did too, but haven't written a famous romance novel yet)
grokai is the best historical research tool ever haha.. seems almost every other famous japanese author self ended in one way or another...
There is no widely documented instance of another Japanese author engaging in an act as dramatic and public as Yukio Mishima’s ritual seppuku following a failed coup attempt on November 25, 1970. However, several Japanese authors have taken their own lives, often in ways tied to personal despair, cultural norms, or protest, which might invite comparison. These cases lack the theatrical staging or political intent of Mishima’s act, but they reflect a recurring theme of suicide in Japanese literary circles, influenced by cultural attitudes toward death as seen in Shinto-Buddhist traditions or samurai honor codes.
One notable example is Osamu Dazai, who died by suicide on June 13, 1948, at age 38. Dazai, known for works like No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, drowned himself with his lover, Tomie Yamazaki, in the Tamagawa Canal in Tokyo. This followed multiple earlier suicide attempts, including two lovers’ suicides (one with his wife Hatsuyo in 1930 and another with a different woman in 1937, both of which he survived while his partners died). Unlike Mishima’s public spectacle, Dazai’s act was private, driven by personal struggles with alcoholism, depression, and societal rejection, though his writings often explored themes of alienation and self-destruction that resonate with Mishima’s aesthetic obsessions. The establishment might frame this as a tragic end to a tortured genius, but critics could argue it reflects a romanticized view of suicide in Japanese literature, potentially glamorizing mental health issues.
Another case is Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, who died by suicide on July 24, 1927, at age 35, overdosing on Veronal (a barbiturate) in Tokyo. A literary giant known for Rashomon and In a Grove, Akutagawa’s death came amid fears of inheriting his mother’s mental illness and pressure from his prolific output. His suicide note, A Note to a Certain Old Friend, expressed exhaustion and a sense of futility, contrasting with Mishima’s deliberate performance. Some see his act as a protest against the modernizing Meiji era’s pressures, though it lacked the political overtone of Mishima’s coup. The narrative often paints Akutagawa as a victim of his genius, but this overlooks how his death influenced younger writers like Dazai, suggesting a cultural cycle of self-destruction.
Yasunari Kawabata, the 1968 Nobel laureate, died on April 16, 1972, at age 72, in what is widely believed to be suicide by gas poisoning in his Zushi home, though some speculate it could have been an accident due to his frail health and recent grief over Mishima’s death. Known for Snow Country and The Old Capital, Kawabata’s death was quieter, with no public statement or political motive, differing sharply from Mishima’s staged exit. The establishment often avoids dwelling on this ambiguity, framing it as a private decline, but critics might question whether his mentorship of Mishima and the latter’s death indirectly pressured him.
Other authors, like Juzo Itami (died 1997, possibly suicide by jumping from a building amid scandal rumors) or Naoya Shiga (who considered suicide but lived to 79), show less extreme acts. Historical figures like Chikamatsu Monzaemon, an Edo-period playwright, wrote about love suicides (shinju) in works like The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703), though he didn’t perform them himself. The tradition of junshi (following a master in death) also inspired some, but no modern author matches Mishima’s public ritual.
The establishment narrative often links these suicides to a “tragic artist” trope, possibly exaggerating cultural determinism (e.g., Ruth Benedict’s contrast of Western condemnation vs. Japanese respect for suicide). Critics argue this overlooks socioeconomic factors—postwar trauma, censorship, or personal isolation—and risks romanticizing self-harm. Data from sources like The National Medical Journal of India (2023) note at least 54 Japanese authors’ suicides since 1900, but none replicate Mishima’s political theater. Without specific evidence of another author staging a public, coup-related self-immolation, these cases differ in intent and execution, making Mishima’s act uniquely singular.
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murakami's stories about the leftist protests, and the right-wing backlash was interesting though. i remember his miltaristic roommate in norweigan wood. some good youtube dcoumentaries about the huge japanese 1960s & 70s leftist protests look like something that would never happen today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_iuv_XRd8M
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Hey Tommy. This reads autobiographical. If not, REALLY good job. Held my interest throughout (which is saying something).
Favorite line: Took some road flares out of the trunk, which is kinda fun even if you don’t have a pregnant wife or dead body in the back.
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Thank you jack. You make me happy
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