Margaret Atwood Gets It
Fairly recently, in a galaxy not unlike this one, there lived a famous writer by the name of Margaret Atwood. One day, Margaret Atwood was invited to judge a fiction-writing contest. “This ought to be fun,” she thought. “I’ll get to see what today’s young writers are up to. Perhaps it will inject a bit of youthful vitality into my own writing, as I am growing older and I am not quite as in touch with the people as I once was.”
I am Margaret Atwood, and I most certainly do not approve this message (photo: J. Allen, via The Emperor of Ice Cream)
So Margaret Atwood was sent a slush pile three kilometres high and two kilometres wide and asked to choose the best of the best for the fiction-writing contest.
“Good heavens! I certainly have my work cut out for me,” she exclaimed, and began sorting the good stories from the bad and the truly, truly ugly.
The first story Margaret Atwood read was a modern re-telling of a folktale involving a pirate and his young wife, written by a man who claimed to be a great fan of Margaret Atwood’s writing. The story made her laugh out loud, though she suspected that that was not the writer’s intent.
“He has imagination but lacks discipline,” she proclaimed, flinging the story into the trash bin next to her desk.
The second story was a dark tale of a dystopian future in which animals had enslaved humanity and forced all human beings to wear frilly collars and live crammed into small steel cages that deformed their feet and caused many of them to die in unsanitary conditions or be trampled by their fellows. This writer also claimed to love Margaret Atwood’s writing, and never quite wrapped her story’s threads into a tidy bow by the finalé.
“Interesting, but where’s the ending?” Margaret Atwood wondered aloud, flinging the second story into the trash as well.
The third, fourth and fifth stories Margaret Atwood read were all about women with peculiar names like Zinnia, Zyther and Zyzzyva. Each of these Z-named characters were royal bitches who enjoyed sport-fucking, particularly if the men they were after belonged to their so-called best friends.
“With friends like these, who the hell needs enemies? I wouldn’t stand for it!” Margaret Atwood bellowed, tossing the three stories into the bin with the rest.
Needing a cup of coffee and hankering for a smoke, Margaret Atwood pushed her chair back from her desk and left the leaning tower of paper for a quick trip to the corner store. The papers rustled slightly from a small draft in the room, and the tower swayed precariously. Margaret Atwood paid it no mind as she swept from the room in search of stimulants.
Meanwhile, across the street, a young man named Jack was entering a coffee shop. He, too, was in search of coffee, though he had just acquired a new pack of cigarettes from an eccentric man who had promised that these had “special qualities.” Jack figured the man meant there was some blend of marijuana in the cigarettes, and purchased them straight away, as they were also inordinately cheap. He had just placed his order with the cute barista when Margaret Atwood appeared, jangling the bell above the door. The cute barista paid Margaret Atwood no mind, as she was absorbed in the conversation she was having with Jack and simultaneously grinding coffee quite loudly. Thus, to her great consternation, the famous Margaret Atwood found herself having to wait. She cleared her throat loudly to attract the cute barista’s attention.
“Er-hem!”
The cute barista was giggling and fluttering her eyelashes at Jack. Margaret Atwood noticed these silly feminine antics and cleared her throat more loudly.
“ER-HEM!!”
Still the cute barista continued her heedless flirtations with the pinstriped Jack, who was handing her a five-dollar bill and asking about Guatemalan shade-grown fair-trade blahbedyblah.
“Heavens to Betsy, will you just give him his change and get on with it? I’m Margaret Atwood and I’m WAITING!” Margaret Atwood burst out.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry, Ms. Atwood!” the cute barista cried. “I didn’t see you there! What would you like?”
“The usual! Spit-spot!” Margaret Atwood huffed, annoyed that she had been asked what she wanted when the staff should have memorized all of her likes and dislikes. She was, after all, a creature of most strict habit.
Jack turned around to gaze upon Canada’s greatest living writer. He had to gaze a long way down his nose to see Margaret Atwood, who was quite short (nearly a midget), and mainly what he saw was a dishevelled-looking halo of frizzy hair. He pondered this hair, the hair that belonged to Canada’s greatest living writer, and knew he had to say something. It wasn’t every day that he bumped into persons of such international acclaim. He made up his mind to get her attention.
“Excuse me, but are you Margaret Atwood the writer?” he asked Margaret Atwood, the writer.
“Yes, and I bloody well need a cup of coffee and a cigarette,” she seethed, tapping her foot as she watched the cute barista accidentally spill the cup of coffee in her haste.
“I happen to have a new pack of cigarettes… would you care to join me?” he boldly asked the impatient Margaret Atwood, handing the nervous (but cute) barista another five-dollar bill to pay for her coffee.
“Thank you, young man, but I’m in the midst of judging a fiction-writing contest and I really must get back to my work,” Margaret Atwood said, accepting the cup of coffee from the cute barista, who looked as though she might faint.
“Surely you can spare a moment for a cigarette with me,” Jack said, holding out one of the magical cigarettes.
“Well, only if you promise not to ask me anything about writing,” Margaret Atwood agreed. She took the possibly-weed-laden cigarette in one hand and Jack’s lighter in the other.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. He pulled out a chair for Margaret Atwood before seating himself across the table and lighting up a cigarette of his own. And, really, he wouldn’t have dreamt of any such thing, because for one thing, he had never read any of Margaret Atwood’s books, and for another, he was secretly formulating a plan to sleep with her. All he really needed was a good transition line to get from coffee and cigarettes to sex.
In the meantime, the two of them smoked in silence, occasionally sipping from their respective mugs. Oddly enough, the more he smoked, the more Jack found himself wanting to jump Margaret Atwood’s bones. Odder still, he suddenly felt Margaret Atwood’s famous foot rubbing against his leg beneath the table!
Just when he felt he couldn’t take it much longer, Margaret Atwood suddenly leaned across the table and kissed him. The cute barista dropped a mug in horror and fled to the back of the café as Jack and Margaret Atwood made out like a pair of teenagers.
Much later, after they had satisfied their lust in the alley behind the café, Margaret Atwood straightened up her clothes and skipped home. This was very much unlike her, but young Jack had put a spring into her aged step. She returned to the leaning tower of stories and plucked one from the middle, much like a magician who can whip a tablecloth from a table full of glassware without breaking a thing. The pile swayed but remained upright as Margaret Atwood read a brilliant tale of great literary merit.
“This is it!” she shouted, “The next Margaret Atwood! Who wrote this amazing story?” She flipped back to the title page to find the writer’s name and phone number. Crossing the room, Margaret Atwood dialled the number and asked for Laura Roberts.
“That’s me,” answered Laura, who was walking down a busy Montreal street, somewhere in the vicinity of Concordia University.
“This is Margaret Atwood,” said Margaret Atwood, “I’m calling to announce that you are the winner of the fiction-writing contest.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Laura asked, suspicious by nature.
“No, dear, this is Margaret Atwood, and you’ve won the contest. I’m sending you the cheque right away and we’re publishing your story in The Walrus. Oh, and you get to go to Russia to take master classes with famous authors, even though you clearly don’t need any help with your writing.”
“Holy hand grenades!” Laura screeched. “You’re really Margaret Atwood?? And I really won that writing contest?!”
“Yes!” repeated Margaret Atwood, becoming a bit impatient. But then she remembered the first writing contest she’d ever won, and how she, too, had been incredulous. She tried not to be snippy with the girl. “Are you still living on Sherbrooke?”
“Yes!” Laura shouted. She then broke into an ear-piercing “WOOHOO!!!!” and Margaret Atwood had to hold the phone away from her so as not to damage her hearing aid.
“Well, I have all the information here. Congratulations, young lady. I’ll see you in St. Petersburg,” Margaret Atwood said, and hung up the phone.
Her work done, Margaret Atwood called the fiction contest organizers and asked them to remove the towering stack of paper from her home and to have it recycled immediately.
As soon as the mess was cleared away, Margaret Atwood sat down to write an introduction to the short story she had just judged the winner, but she found her mind wandering back to the young man she’d met at the coffee shop. She decided to get another cup of coffee, on the off-chance that they’d bump into one another again, but they never did.
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