A Short piece where actuarial tables meet strip-club logic, examining expertise, authority, transgression and performance in modern professional culture.
Thanks man. This is all the left overs from the Baby Talk exercise. Original idea was to do baby talk in actuarial tables or stripper MC language or from the perspective of a fetus about to be aborted.
Like Chuck said nothing ever goes to waste. All of those are in here. Hence.... the remainder. After pages and pages of baby talk, this is what remained.
You once again zeroed in a line I almost cut. Felt like it might have been one detail too many. Sounds like I made the right choice. I passed the Wiler Test (again)
I'm not sure what this piece is trying to say. I like it, but is it just being strange for the sake of strange? Or trying to state that the dynamics of a strip-club interaction conform with certain economic models routinely pondered by accountants?
A stripper acting, in her work uniform, as an ordinary attendant of an actuarial conference is surreal, but I have a feeling there's supposed to be some greater point.
Thanks for reading this so thoroughly. I think it’s the dream of every Substacker to have their work read this closely.
There were a few things I was trying to do at once.
Cher is an actuary with a name that sounds like a stripper. That’s the hook the narrator can’t get out of his head. The stripper MC is that same thought looping, an intrusive frame he keeps slipping back into.
Vegas matters because it’s a place where people launder stories. It’s liminal. What you do, pretend to do, pretend to be, or who you sleep with is supposed to stay there.
The actuarial language came out of another piece I was working on. That language feels like horror to me, horror written by accountants. When you get into mortality tables, it doesn’t sound that far off from engineers working out the brutal mechanics of concentration camps.
There’s a real dissonance between those elements, and I wanted to see if they could coexist in the same story. I used the language of the MC and the actuaries to build the frame, then tried to thread connective tissue through it.
There’s another version where Cher and the narrator go out on the town, lots of sex, drugs, and consequences. But there are already plenty of those stories and movies.
The actuary language I was focused on was infant mortality. I wanted to tie that specifically to the night and then her lecture.
When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, hospitals used to give parents ink prints of one of the newborns’ feet. That’s where the bloody footprint comes from. It’s subtle, too subtle.
You can launder a story, an act, even a version of yourself. But it never comes back entirely clean. There is always mark
In the end there is always a remainder.
I don’t think it’s entirely successful. Rereading it, I should have pushed the actuarial lecture further, made it more escalatory and more horrifically banal. Sharpening the context around the footprint would have helped too.
Thanks again for the read, the feedback and the thoughtful questions.
Because I felt like I'd missed so much, I was afraid I hadn't read it closely enough. So thanks for vindicating me, with your compliment. 😊
I actually lived in Vegas for years and played poker there every day, but never really struck up many conversations with the tourists, or businessmen there for conventions.
Even if I hadn't read your story, I'd be able to tell from your comment alone that you're a very proficient writer. One of those who tries to compose poems in prose, weaving together themes and symbols in place of (and occasionally in addition to) a plot. I'm a poet as well, so I recognize the style of writing, even when I get perplexed about the specifics.
I agree that if you want to create a specific impression on the reader of a parallel between accountants and other "merchants of death," then you probably need to devise one or more dramatic moments that perform the juxtaposition, and narratively highlight them. It's hard though, within the confines of such a short piece.
If you'd like some more actual poetry in your world, sub back to me. I post weekly, and it's stuff that attempts similar tricks to yours.
My final recommendation is to read Max Winter here on Substack. You will most certainly enjoy his writing style, and topics of choice.
Hey Rick. Thank you and thank you taking time to read and the feedback. I really went back and forth on cutting those last two lines. Good to get positive feedback on them
There’s a lot to love about this, but for me…above all else…it’s this line: “Her smile came from one side of her mouth.”
Thanks man. This is all the left overs from the Baby Talk exercise. Original idea was to do baby talk in actuarial tables or stripper MC language or from the perspective of a fetus about to be aborted.
Like Chuck said nothing ever goes to waste. All of those are in here. Hence.... the remainder. After pages and pages of baby talk, this is what remained.
You once again zeroed in a line I almost cut. Felt like it might have been one detail too many. Sounds like I made the right choice. I passed the Wiler Test (again)
Thanks for the feedback man. Much appreciated.
Soon-to-be-aborted fetus as the narrator is a delicious idea. Don’t give that one up.
This was the line I was going to comment about, too! It’s effortlessly descriptive and straightforward.
I'm not sure what this piece is trying to say. I like it, but is it just being strange for the sake of strange? Or trying to state that the dynamics of a strip-club interaction conform with certain economic models routinely pondered by accountants?
A stripper acting, in her work uniform, as an ordinary attendant of an actuarial conference is surreal, but I have a feeling there's supposed to be some greater point.
Hey Rafa,
Thanks for reading this so thoroughly. I think it’s the dream of every Substacker to have their work read this closely.
There were a few things I was trying to do at once.
Cher is an actuary with a name that sounds like a stripper. That’s the hook the narrator can’t get out of his head. The stripper MC is that same thought looping, an intrusive frame he keeps slipping back into.
Vegas matters because it’s a place where people launder stories. It’s liminal. What you do, pretend to do, pretend to be, or who you sleep with is supposed to stay there.
The actuarial language came out of another piece I was working on. That language feels like horror to me, horror written by accountants. When you get into mortality tables, it doesn’t sound that far off from engineers working out the brutal mechanics of concentration camps.
There’s a real dissonance between those elements, and I wanted to see if they could coexist in the same story. I used the language of the MC and the actuaries to build the frame, then tried to thread connective tissue through it.
There’s another version where Cher and the narrator go out on the town, lots of sex, drugs, and consequences. But there are already plenty of those stories and movies.
The actuary language I was focused on was infant mortality. I wanted to tie that specifically to the night and then her lecture.
When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, hospitals used to give parents ink prints of one of the newborns’ feet. That’s where the bloody footprint comes from. It’s subtle, too subtle.
You can launder a story, an act, even a version of yourself. But it never comes back entirely clean. There is always mark
In the end there is always a remainder.
I don’t think it’s entirely successful. Rereading it, I should have pushed the actuarial lecture further, made it more escalatory and more horrifically banal. Sharpening the context around the footprint would have helped too.
Thanks again for the read, the feedback and the thoughtful questions.
Because I felt like I'd missed so much, I was afraid I hadn't read it closely enough. So thanks for vindicating me, with your compliment. 😊
I actually lived in Vegas for years and played poker there every day, but never really struck up many conversations with the tourists, or businessmen there for conventions.
Even if I hadn't read your story, I'd be able to tell from your comment alone that you're a very proficient writer. One of those who tries to compose poems in prose, weaving together themes and symbols in place of (and occasionally in addition to) a plot. I'm a poet as well, so I recognize the style of writing, even when I get perplexed about the specifics.
I agree that if you want to create a specific impression on the reader of a parallel between accountants and other "merchants of death," then you probably need to devise one or more dramatic moments that perform the juxtaposition, and narratively highlight them. It's hard though, within the confines of such a short piece.
If you'd like some more actual poetry in your world, sub back to me. I post weekly, and it's stuff that attempts similar tricks to yours.
My final recommendation is to read Max Winter here on Substack. You will most certainly enjoy his writing style, and topics of choice.
Thanks that kind and appreciated. I will definitely check out Max Winter.
I love the last line. It lands perfect.
Hey Rick. Thank you and thank you taking time to read and the feedback. I really went back and forth on cutting those last two lines. Good to get positive feedback on them
Glad you kept them.