Diary of a Dragon Boy

Middle school is tough for everyone. Amid a cocktail of hormones, oozing facial blemishes, and freakishly tall girls, any given guy will look back on his time in grades six through eight as being the most uncomfortable years of his life.

Some dudes tried to cope with their own staggering awkwardness by adopting the cool skater persona and rolling into school on their longboards, their hair shaggy and unkempt. Others went for the misunderstood, emotional look, sporting graphic T-shirts of bands you have never heard of and even longer, more-unkempt hair. But regardless of the stereotype he tried to fit, the typical middle school boy took solace in observing the newly budding middle school girls.

            I recall hearing conservations in the locker room before gym class that hashed out all of the foulest musings of the pubescent male psyche on the opposite sex. My classmates spared no detail as they articulated every lurid facet of their elaborate yet grossly anatomically inaccurate fantasies. But while the other boys were discussing the finer aspects of the female form, I was preoccupied with a very different type of fantasy.
            By my twelfth birthday, I had read and re-read The Lord of the Rings at least eleven times and could speak conversational Sindarin. I was obsessed with swords, and elves, and anything that involved Level 60 Paladins. My Friday nights likely would have been devoted to Dungeons and Dragons, if only I had had friends to play it with. So while my classmates tried to mask their awkwardness, I lovingly embraced mine.

            Instead of striking up conversations or playing pickup football along with everyone else during the lunch period at school, I sat on a picnic bench in the far corner of the courtyard and wrote down my ideas for my own fantasy world in a dog-eared composition notebook. I drew maps of ancient kingdoms and wove tales of heroes involved in daring quests and epic wars. This was, of course, completely socially unacceptable in middle school, so my classmates would often treat me to atomic wedgies, wet willies, or a dive-bomb farts just as I was opening my mouth to eat my sandwich. Most often they ran up and stole my “diary” and then proceeded to read it aloud to a table of laughing girls.
            “‘And lo! Thaddeus drew forth his pulsing, throbbing blade and smote the scaly black hide of the dragon. “Stand down, you fiend!” he vociferated.’ Holy shit, Dantzler, you will never get laid.”

            But I was not one to be so easily discouraged. I continued to write for hours each day, and eventually I conceived of an idea for a trilogy of full-length novels. After a long sixth grade of hardscrabble writing and editing, I at last finished my first draft of the first volume, which I titled “The Sword of the Dragon Master.”

            My mind immediately turned to the multi-million dollar publishing deals, the movie rights, the fame, and the women that were sure to follow. I could already envision myself at age thirty, after having starred in, written, and directed all three film adaptations of my books, when I would put my arm around my supermodel wife, point out the back window of my mansion to the pool boy and laugh about how he used to kick my ass in middle school.  

            Once the manuscript was hot off the family printer, I drummed up a list of the top publishing houses in the country and sent out dozens of copies for their review. I was certain that each of them would immediately jump on the opportunity to pick up the next New York Times #1 Bestseller, and I waited for them to vie for my attention. Then my dreams were slowly crushed, one by one, as the rejection letters came rolling in.

             Within two months, I had received enough rejections to paper a small room. I reasoned that each of the publishing companies was simply not prepared to accommodate the massive spike in demand that would arise when my novel hit the shelves, and so they politely declined to pursue a deal until they could increase their capacity. I was determined to get my magnum opus to my future adoring fans somehow, and so I asked my parents if we could publish the book ourselves.

            My father agreed to finance the publication, under the condition that the money would come out of my college fund. This was fine with me, since I knew that with this small investment I would recoup my losses in a few days, and soon I would be so rich that I would never even need to go to college. I sought out a local vanity press the next week and contacted one of the representatives there. She agreed to publish my book for the low, low fee of $2200, plus a mere $6.50 for each copy printed and a modest 50% of profits. It was a deal forged in the fiery chasm of Mount Doom, but I accepted. After all, I would need to sell only 1,258 copies at $10 apiece to break even.

            After I had secured a publishing contract, the next big step was to find an illustrator for the cover art. My budget had taken a sizeable hit, so I decided to be economical by soliciting the aid of my middle school art teacher, Mrs. Jaworski. I went to her at the beginning of lunch period and asked her to paint me a dragon to the best of her ability. When I arrived at her classroom at the end of the day, she handed me a painting that she had clearly slapped on the paper in the last half of her smoke break. The dragon could best be described as a shriveled string bean with wings. That, and it had a giant penis. My middle school art teacher had painted a massive shlong on the dragon that was intended to go on the cover of my young adult novel.

            Despite the fact that the dragon on the cover was now hung like a moose and the book was still chock-full of typographical errors, I went through with the publication, and in six weeks a box full of copies showed up on the front steps of my house. Now all I had to do was to sit back and let my charisma sell the book for me.
            I placed a sign-up sheet for book orders in the hallway at my school, hoping that my classmates would be kind enough to support my burgeoning career as a writer. When I checked the list at the end of the day, I was thrilled to see that the book had already received overwhelming patronage. The most encouraging detail was that the vast majority of the orders came from students outside of the middle school. No matter how many times I combed the school directory, I was unable to find such names as Harry Balzac, Dick Bush, Heywood Jablome, and Craven Morehead. And for some curious reason, each of these students had ordered exactly 69 copies.

            After those first several bulk orders, sales proved to be modest at best. I was patient, because I knew that the other students would be buying the book in droves once they realized that it was the single greatest advancement to literature since the printing press. I scheduled school-wide book signings, and I would sit outside in the courtyard during the lunch period with a stack of copies and calligraphy pen as the other students would laugh and pelt me with Little Debby snacks.

            After several weeks of this, I established enough of a reputation to earn a high-profile exclusive interview with the local non-profit community newspaper which local grocery stores gave away for free. I went to the office one Tuesday morning and sat in a dimly-lit cubicle with a bored-looking graduate student who asked me my name, the title of the book, and what the book was about. He did not bother to write any of these things down.

            A month later, a tiny article was printed in the bottom corner of the back page announcing the recent release of a science fiction novel entitled The Sword of the Dragon Monster, by local teenaged author Willy Daniels. The article did absolutely nothing to improve sales, for obvious reasons, but it did bring about one particularly significant breakthrough.

I received a call later that week from the librarian at a private school across town. She expressed interest in having me come speak to the students there about writing and the publication process. I told her that I had mild to intense stage fright, but she assured me in a silky voice that I would be presenting to a very intimate group of no more than twenty or thirty 7-year-olds, who would all be thrilled to hear about dragons. I knew, of course, that I had absolutely no qualification to give advice on writing or the publication process. I accepted in the hopes that a bunch of rich private school parents would give their bunch of rich private school seven-year-olds enough money to buy a bunch of books.

The morning of my presentation, which was scheduled for 9:00, I rolled out of bed at 7:30 and realized that I needed something to enhance my presentation. I sat down in front of the computer, and in fifteen minutes I compiled a half-assed PowerPoint presentation about my storybook rise to literary success.

I dressed in high-water khakis and an oversized red collared shirt that I had borrowed from my cousin. As I stepped out of my mother’s blue minivan into the parking lot, with my briefcase in one hand and my father’s laptop in the other, I felt like a big shot. Here I was, a celebrity author, about to give my first official presentation and kick off my book signing tour. By the end of the day, I would have every second grader at Mason Preparatory School in the palm of my hand. I walked into the school as instructed and met with the librarian.

“It’s such a pleasure to have you, Willy,” she said upon meeting me. “I can’t wait to read The Sword…of the…the...your book! I’m a closet writer myself, and I’m just so impressed by you people who take the initiative to see your work published!”

            I rolled my eyes. Surely this woman could not write half as well as I could, or she too would be on the rise to the literary stardom and bestseller lists that I was destined for. I took some slight offense to the pejorative phrase “you people,” but I assured myself that it was merely a gaffe, and that she had actually meant to say “accomplished and highly-esteemed novelists like yourself, oh Great One.”

            She talked for a little while, and I nodded at every third comment with my eyes glazed over. Just as she had finished a long-winded discourse on the benefits of the Dewey decimal system, she made a comment that caught my attention.

“Well, we are just so excited to have you here with us today that we thought we might try to share you with more than just the second grade.”

“Um…I’m sorry, what?”

“We are just so excited to have you here with us that we decided to share you with more than just the second grade. What, you didn’t think we would let our seventh and eighth graders pass up on an opportunity to see someone their own age who’s written a book, did you? We’re going to have you present in the auditorium in front of the whole school!”

            At this point, I meant to say something along the lines of the following:

            “I am afraid that I am not able to comply with your request, as it violates the verbal contract established at sixteen hundred hours, the twenty-first day of April in this, the year two thousand and five Anno Domini.”

            But instead, all I could muster up was something like “Habubufuufffffffffffff?”

            She touched my scrawny little arm and smiled sweetly.

            “Oh, don’t worry, Willy, they’ll love you! I’m sure everyone in the audience will be just as supportive, thoughtful, and mature as any one of your closest friends. Now let’s get in there and get you set up!”

            Luckily my khakis were pretty dark, because I suddenly felt like my intestines were filled with battery acid. I stumbled along, stupefied, as the librarian took my clammy hand and led me to the auditorium. Once on the stage, I watched her hook up my laptop, along with my sorry excuse for a presentation, to a four hundred square foot screen at the front of the auditorium for everyone to see. My mother patted me on the back and told me that there was no reason to be nervous, because all of these children were my age and would understand my creative talent. The school’s intercom system crackled to life, and a woman’s tinny voice echoed in every hallway, classroom, and lavatory on campus:

            “Good morning students! Today we have a special surprise for all of you! Local author Willy Daniels will be giving us a presentation about his fantasy novel The Sword of the Dragon Monster. He’s even agreed to sell you all signed copies! All classes, please report to the auditorium for the next hour.”

            As the students filed into the auditorium, I tried to crack a smile and wave to some of dorkier kids, but my face was bleach-white and my forehead was covered with perspiration. They all pointed at me and tried to hide their snickering as I debated to myself whether it would be more embarrassing to puke all over myself and faint in front of five hundred people or to soil myself and faint in front of five hundred people. No matter what, I was probably going to be burning my clothes by the end of the day.

            And then I saw them. Middle schoolers. People my own age who would be forced to sit through the next hour listening to me talk about my dragon book. Even if I survived this day, I would forever have to live in fear of the roughly one hundred teenage guys who would now kick my ass on sight if they ever came across me in public. 

            Then, finally, all five hundred students in the school had taken a seat in the auditorium, and five hundred sets of eyes were all fixed on me, the Dragon Boy. The headmistress stood and shook my hand and introduced me before taking a seat in the front row. I looked down at the headmistress, and she nodded at me to begin my presentation. I stepped up to the microphone and cleared my throat.

            “Um…uh…th-thank you. That was….uh….that was a very….uh…a very nice introdiction, I mean introduction…”

            A few sniffles could be heard from the crowd.

            “Well, uh….my name’s Will…uh, Will Dantzler…and I’m here to…uh….talk to you about my book, the, uh, The Sword of the Dragon Master.”

            A coughing fit broke out in the back row.

            “Well, uh, as you all can probably…ff…gather, my book is about, um, dragons. Now, uh, I’m sure you all know this, but, uh, dragons are pretty cool! Except for the fire part, right? Right? Hahahaha!”

            Silence.

            “Right, well, uh, who here likes dragons? Huh? Go ahead! Don’t be shy! Let’s see some hands!”

            One first grader slowly began to raise his hand until the third grader behind him socked him hard between the shoulder blades, and he crumpled with a whimper.

            “Wow, that’s uh, that’s really great,” I shouted, my heart sinking. “All of you folks in the back row really like dragons! Yeah!”

            The kids in the back did not, of course, actually have their hands raised, but I needed some shred of support to fall back on. Any of the guys in that row who had girlfriends were surely dumped that very afternoon.

            “Now, uh…”

            “Nerd!” somebody whispered in the front row.

            “Yeah, so, uh, I have a presentation here for you all. So, um, yeah. Here we go!”

            At that point I realized that the laptop was not even turned on.

            “Um, yeah, so, my laptop is off. I guess the moral of this story is to always be prepared, huh?”

            “Loser!” someone cough-shouted from the audience.

            “Right, so, I think I might wait until it turns on before I put in my CD. For whatever reason, it starts acting all funny when you shove something in there before it’s woken up.”

            At this point, actual laughter ensued from some of the middle schoolers.

            “Right, so, while we wait for that, uh, uh….I guess I’ll read you an excerpt.”

            I had not planned to read an excerpt from the book, so I turned to a random chapter. It would seem that after I had written about nine different battle scenes, I could have flipped to one of them, but instead I landed on the chapter where the grizzled old mentor explains to the young hero the proper method for filing a dragon’s claws or some crap like that.

            Finally, the computer heated up, and at that moment I realized how truly awful my presentation was. It was mostly empty slides peppered with default clipart and animation. Fortunately, nobody much paid attention, since it was that boring.

            Finally, the headmistress cut me off around the two hour mark and opened the floor for questions. The students had none, of course, and they gave me a truly pathetic round of applause. It was more than I deserved, really.

            Following my lukewarm reception at Mason Prep, I realized that I was simply not cut out for a life as a professional writer, and I threw in the towel soon after that. A pile of unsold books still remains in my attic as a monument to my brief foray into literature. Occasionally my mother will give one away to some poor, unsuspecting child, but mostly they serve as paperweights and kindling for the fireplace. Nonetheless, those friends that I made in high school and college still cherish the copies that they can dig up on the internet, because the books remind them that, in comparison, their own middle school experience was not so bad. After all, they could have written a novel about dragons.