If This Is The Disease, I Don't Want The Cure
Curious about the literary company I keep, hubbie has started to read some bizarro fiction.
It all started with the delivery of my contributor copy of the recent all-bizarro issue of The Journal of Experimental Fiction #37. Maybe that’s the moment when this writing thing of mine became a little more real to him. A little more plausible as a serious endeavor. After all, hubbie (like most writers’ spouses) has been my sounding board after rejections and disappointments. He remembers when my story for that issue was just a first draft off the printer, and he just seems so proud to see the same story now in print.
He very quickly read through the booklet in its entirety. Actually, I think he said he actually read through it twice — his reading speed puts mine to shame. The man is brilliant.
Then this evening he asked — asked! — to borrow my copy of The Bizarro Starter Kit (Orange). You have to understand…in my household that’s about as unexpected as a stranger knocking on the door of a Jehovah’s Witness and asking for issues of The Watchtower.
Don’t get me wrong: hubbie is incredibly supportive of my art. And for that (and for lots of stuff about him) I’m very grateful. But when my writing began to take a weird tack — well, more than just weird — you know…a bizarro tack… we went through a phase where he would read a few pages of my first draft, crack a nervous smile, and say “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”.
But, you know…it only makes sense that he’s catching bizarro fandom from me. I caught The Residents and Negativland from him. And what is marriage for, if not catching each other’s cooties? 
So the question goes out to all weird authors (or authors of the weird) out there: has your spouse/partner/significant other caught your cooties?
