Back to the story page, A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST, A Beef Matson mystery
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THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
I suppose some of you are wondering why I decided to write and publish (on-line) the Beef Matson story, A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST. That's a legitimate question, in that I've never written a book before, never really wanted to, and I consider myself primarily to be an artist and not a writer at all. Plus, writing and publishing APIAPOT was not going to benefit me in any way other than perhaps adding extra value to my website so that visitors would have something to read - if they had the luxury of having the time to read fiction. It has been pointed out to me that our society is increasingly becoming less literary oriented and literate as a whole. I have gotten some emails wondering why I invested so much time in an on-line, view for free book.
The reason I invested my valuable time in writing, illustrating and publishing the story is almost as strange as the story itself.
BACKGROUND
First, here's some background on our hero, Beef Matson. Originally, I invented
Mr. Matson back in the year 2000, when I did a series of retro media paintings,
satirical paintings giving old magazine and book covers, movie posters and the
like a gay spin. I have always liked to listen to old detective radio shows,
so I decided to do a painting of pulp detective paperback novel. There was a
radio show in the early 1950s about a woman detective in San Francisco named
Candi Matson. I began to wonder if Candi were to have a gay grandson who also
became a detective in San Francisco…and Beef Matson was born.
A short while after that, I came in contact with a writer who wanted to try his hand at writing a gay detective story using Beef Matson as a character. I agreed to publish the story and provide some illustrations for it. However, the writer could not seem to get into writing a gay detective story and seemed to be more concerned with other issues, so that project died on the vine.
A HOSPITAL
STAY AND THE BIRTH OF A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST
I was concerned with a number of other issues, so the idea of publishing a serial
on my web site was not something of any importance to me, and after the first
attempt of working with an author, no longer seemed like a good idea. Primarily
I was concerned with my failing health. Starting in late 2001, I began to have
some serious respiratory problems, which began to manifest itself in the form
of severe asthma attacks. Possibly some sort of respiratory infection since
I had never had asthma before. The attacks became more frequent and more severe,
resulting in several visits to hospital emergency rooms, and I found myself
needing more and more medication to be able to breath in between hospital visits.
Not good and my health continued to deteriorate during the next couple of years
with life in general becoming a real struggle.
I was usually able to tell when I was losing control of my asthma and get myself to the hospital on my own. Only on two occasions was I transported to the hospital via rescue squad. The first time I was taken by ambulance, it was fairly uneventful and I was back home the next day. Then in December 2003, the day before New Year's Eve, was the second time I was taken by ambulance. Earlier that day, I could tell my symptoms were worsening, though slowly. I thought I would make a trip into the hospital on my own later that evening if my symptoms continued to worsen. However, this time around the asthma was sneaky. I was sitting at my computer when suddenly found I couldn't get any air in my lungs. Even my medication would only open me up for a minute or so. I dialed 911 and explained to the operator in the few words I could get out that I was having an asthma attack.
The ambulance came very quickly and I made it outside to the alley where the rescue squad had parked. I was rapidly losing my ability to get any air in my lungs whatsoever to the point where I could no longer walk and ended up crawling on my hands and knees towards the ambulance. One of the EMT's from the rescue squad apparently thought I was a wino or something and wanted to know what my problem was. I explained, the best I could using whatever breath I could muster, something like "can't…breath…asthma. He finally got the message and helped me into the rescue squad. I was given a nebulizer treatment in the ambulance and I remember being hooked up to an IV. It turned out that the hospital I would normally be taken to was not accepting any emergency traffic that night, so I was taken to another hospital.
The EMT apparently told the doctors that I had flat lined in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but I think he might have been a bit melodramatic because I remember the entire trip to the hospital. When I got to the hospital emergency room, I remember being rolled in on a gurney at a pretty good clip, with people running all around me. The doctors hooked me up to a machine which blew air into my lungs, sort of like holding your head out the window of a fast moving car. Finally, I was getting air into my lungs and actually started to feel relaxed and the doctors began asking me all sorts of questions. The doctors called the EMT guy into the room to show him I was doing all right.
I ended up being in the hospital for about a week, because I lost my ability to breath on my own and had to be hooked up on oxygen along with an IV. Plus, I found I couldn't even walk very far, my lungs were really messed up. I was placed in an intensive care unit in the hospital and started out spending a very quiet New Year's Eve there.
So what does the hospital visit have to do with A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST? Everything. I don't sleep very well in a hospital, the places make me feel very uncomfortable, on top of that, having an IV in your arm, an oxygen tube in your nose, people always making noise in the hallway, (I'm positive that hospital staffs are instructed to drop metal trays every fifteen minutes) simply don't make an environment conducive to sleep. However, at some point, in-between my frequent nebulizer treatments, I dozed off. I had a short dream, which I don't remember too much of, where I was in some nondescript room with a high ceiling, like a Victorian era house. The room was sparsely furnished, and though there were some tall windows at the other end of the room, the room was dimly lit. There were some men in the room talking to me. I didn't recognize any of the men, and I frankly don't remember enough detail of the dream now to describe them. The men seemed to be angry about things in general and specifically that I was in the hospital, not with me personally, but that I was having my respiratory problem, and they were upset that it was continually getting worse. Then these guys offered me a deal. They were going to give me a new Beef Matson story and if I published the story, they would make sure my respiratory health improved.
So much for that dream, it was kind of a quickie. However, the subsequent times I dozed off, I dreamed or was shown, the new Beef Matson story, until, by the end of my hospital stay, I had an entirely new Beef Matson mystery. However, the dreams were like watching a movie of the story instead of reading a book. Even some of the songs I mention in A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST, were used in the soundtrack of the dream/movie.
A CONTRACT?
When I was finally released from the hospital, I still was having a difficult
time with my breathing and using a lot of medication. However, I brought home
with me the plot for a whole new Beef Matson story. The first thing I did when
I got home was to record as much as I could remember of the Beef Matson story
from the dreams in outline form. I wasn't completely sure if I could write a
book, because while I did have the plot, the characters, locations and even
remembered some of the dialogue, I lacked the specifics and would still have
to create dialogue, develop some of the characters and so on. That I felt would
be a big hurdle for me since I didn't see myself as a writer. I really had to
force myself to write the first three chapters because of this difficulty of
not seeing myself as a writer.
I remembered from the first dream being told my health would improve if I published the story. I had a few problems with this, mostly that I didn't see myself as a writer, getting books published is a difficult proposition, and, because of my heath problems, I didn't have the time or money to devote to publishing a book, let alone finding the time to take the project from outline form to finished book form. I would also describe myself as agnostic, not that firm of a believer in the metaphysical. A reader of A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST would probably find that ironic. It was difficult for me to believe in a contract from a dream, that my health would get better if I published the story. I decided to take a pragmatic view, that since I had a plot for a book, why not go ahead and write it, nothing ventured, nothing gained. As far as publishing the book, the men in my dream didn't say how it should be published. I took that to mean that publishing the story as an online book on my web site would be fulfill the requirement for publishing the book.
By March of 2004, I had published the first chapter on my web site. I found writing the book and publishing it online to be a learning experience. I had a nasty habit of not organizing my writing and ended up having different sections all over the place on the computer in different files. Often, I ended up forgetting which section was the latest and greatest version. I also found that migrating a finished chapter from the word processing application to the web publishing application meant that punctuation and spacing would do some crazy things.
I also found it easier to write a book than I thought it would be. I treated the writing much like doing one of my paintings, starting with a basic idea and adding detail to make the image more convincing. I found I could draw upon people I had met in my life as models to the develop the characters in the story. For instance, I had worked with individuals who were very much like Bessie and Gloria. I also took experiences from my life to add extra interest and detail to the story; the feather boa incident in the Robes Roses club is taken from an actual incident I witnessed in a gay club.
CREEPY STUFF
I have since read that people who experience episodes of oxygen deprivation,
have experiences like my dreams, where oxygen loss kicks their brains into high
gear and they come up with some very inventive and expressive dreams, visions
and so on. Could be the explanation for my dreams of the Beef Matson story with
the music soundtracks, elaborate plot and everything else. However, there were
also some unsettling coincidences associated with my hospital stay.
First, the hospital I would have normally been taken to was too busy to accept emergency cases, so the ambulance was redirected to another hospital, where I ended up in the intensive care unit. While I was there, the staff was trying to get me to be more ambulatory, it was difficult after my asthma attack, to walk very far without running out of breath. So the nurses would take me on a stroll around the intensive care unit to help exercise my lungs, with the idea of enabling me to walk on my own again. During the first stroll, I realized I had been in very same the intensive care unit before, probably over ten years earlier, to visit someone who was dying of AIDS. I recognized the room on the other side of the care unit when I walked past it during my first exercise stroll.
A couple of months before I had my major asthma attack, a fellow I had been exchanging emails with for a couple of years, asked me if he could use the image of one of my paintings for his 2003 Christmas card. Since he had told me earlier in the year that he had been diagnosed with cancer and had gone through some surgery, I agreed to his request. I didn't hear much from him afterward, so I thought he was angry with me for some reason. In March of 2004, I received another email from another guy, who had learned about my website through a memorial site for a guy who had passed away. It turned out that fellow that had passed away was the same guy who had requested the use of my painting for his Christmas card. It turned out the fellow knew he was dying of cancer, he just decided not to tell me about it and he wanted to use my painting for his last Christmas card. Apparently, he was dying or had died, around the time I was in the hospital with my respiratory problems. If you want to see the painting he requested to use, just click here.
Another oddball experience happened when I was working late nights to finish the last two chapters of the story. One night I stayed up until the wee small hours of the morning working on getting the chapters ready for publication and decided finally to call it a day. I ended up having a dream of being in Beef Matson's office and talking to Randy. Now, I've read this is not an out of the ordinary thing. Many writers have dreams of their characters when they are working on a story. The Randy in my dream was on the masculine side, about five foot eight, just how I envisioned him to be, of course. Randy told me that he and Beef appreciated my work on the story and then he showed me around Beef's office, showing me where Matson had his secret wall safe in the closet. I decided to use the description of the wall safe in chapter 12. Thanks, Randy.
THE RESULTS
Okay, I finished publishing the last chapter of A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST,
during the last week of May, 2006. Did my health improve? Actually, for whatever
reasons, psychosomatic or whatever, it did. In fact, shortly after I published
the first chapter in March of 2004, my respiratory health began to improve.
I still had asthma attacks in 2004, but they were much more mild and far and
few in-between, and by 2005, the asthma attacks had all but virtually disappeared.
In April of 2006, I had surgery to remove some respiratory obstructions and
infections with the result a vast improvement in my respiratory health. Did
publishing the Beef Matson book have anything to do with the improvement in
my health? Outside of a psychosomatic reason, which I doubt, I don't see how
it could have. So this has to be in the realm of coincidence. If you're talking
about spirits or something, what could possibly be so important about A PERSON
IN A POSITION OF TRUST, outside of being a feel good story, that they would
go to all that trouble to get me to publish it, especially on a minor web site
such as mine. So I think the operative word here is coincidence.
I also discovered that A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST developed a cult following, and a respectable amount of traffic was visiting the story.
THE ORIGINAL
ENDING
The ending of the story is not the one that appeared in my hospital dreams.
Even when I first put down the outline of the story when I got home from the
hospital, I thought the original ending of the story sucked, especially for
Randy. In the original ending, I thought Randy really got the shaft (and not
in the erotic way), so I decided I wanted the story to have a much better ending
for Randy which is the one the story has now.
Here's the original ending. In the original ending, Brett does not return to stay with Randy, all the sections involving Brett in Chapter 12 are sections I added to the story. In the original ending, Beef Matson and Randy are at the Christmas party near the end of the story. Matson goes outside to look at the snow and Randy comes out of the house after him joined by another man, who Randy announces as his boyfriend. Beef Matson recognizes Randy's companion as the man from his dream at the very start of the story. The man in Beef Matson's dream was a jerk, a self centered accountant, so Matson is concerned and asks the man about himself. It turns out that the man is not at all like the man from Beef's dream and informs the detective that he is a divinity student.
I decided I didn't like that part of the ending at all and felt that after all Randy had been through, he needed to be with his Brett and I expanded chapter 12 to develop what I thought would be a much better ending for Randy.