The Return of Nasdaqq

I, Nasdaqq, have been gone a long time. I, Nasdaqq, never went away. Maybe I haven't been gone a long time? Maybe I've been here all the while? You said I "impersonated" (your word!) an impoverished, indigent Venezuelan coffee laborer in my spiritual autobiography I Am the Bastard Daughter of Juan Valdez, which was a best-seller, and which won all kinds of awards before I was "found out," but you hypocrites, you blood-drinkers, every word was true; deep in the bowels of my American heart, I, Nasdaqq, truly am Juanita Valdez, but you can never realize this, you citadel of publishing, you wolves craving pages dripping with my guts, you take me in and pay me your thirty pieces of silver on a platter then cast me out from your prize-lined offices again onto the dark, glittery streets of your magic island, coursing with the vital fluids of all the corpses of the true souls whose spiritual essences you've sucked dry and vomited out again, and I, Nasdaqq, righteous American, champion of the indigenous, gypsy shaman of the forsaken, I see the words you've stolen from me rising up like skyscrapers of hypocrisy! I am alone, I am the alien, cast out, I never really went away! You say I live in East Hapsburg, West Virginia. You say I am a grade-school math teacher named Bob Shlep. You say that I used to write recently "discovered" lesbian erotica from the Roaring Twenties under the "pseudonym" (your word, always your words!) G. Spot Fuzzmerkin. And you claim (you label, you libel!) that once I, Bob Shlep, was found out and exposed as Fuzzmerkin, that then I started writing "fake" autobiographical novels of the high-flying world of the New Delhi stock market with the nom de plume Nasdaqq, and that when I was found out and exposed yet again, I had to retreat back to East Hapsburg, ridiculed by all you fancy New York publishing snobs, but you've played into my hands all along, don't you see? Maybe I wanted you to find me out! And who says Bob Shlep is not really, truly Nasdaqq on the inside? Is it you, you thieves, you original pornographers, you exploiters? I just want to be left alone here, teaching third graders in East Hapsburg! You think I didn't want you to know that Bob Shlep was G. Spot Fuzzmerkin, was Nasdaqq, was Juanita Valdez all along? I wear many masks, I encapsulate multitudes, I tell the truth with the lies you guzzle like wine, I am not what's killing publishing, I am publishing's bitch, I am your willing servant! Get off my lawn! I'm calling the district attorney! Publish me! Stop ignoring me! Send me money via PayPal! You call all my charities "fake," but who are you to say that I am not a home for lactose-intolerant orphans? Who died and left you the one to judge me, to say that I am not a safe house for exiled Bangladeshi Buddhist nuns? I spout multitudinous voices of greatness! I am a secret symphony, strumming orchestras of marginalized voices in the wilderness of a suburban West Virginia public school! Who knows what other ways I've tricked you that you do not know? What books of mine have you published that you do not realize sprang from my greatness? What would you say if I told you that for a quick buck I secretly ghostwrote that Lovely Bones piece of pop trash in my off hours? That I've pulled off any number of magnificently undiscovered international literary hoaxes that may or may not rhyme with "Smadie Zith" and "Lhumpa Jahiri" and "Sonathan Fafran Joer"? That I went on book tour pretending to be a twenty-five-year-old girl and you bought it, shall we say, hook, Marisha, and Pessl? (My wig wasn't even very good, but you wanted me, you needed me, you couldn't get enough of me!) I am voluminous, I am holy scripture, I am Abstract Expressionism, I am marginalia, I am anathema, I am a gay Portuguese filmmaker, I am a blind Turkish watchmaker, I am the great ignored American genius of our time, I am grading a pop quiz on long division at my kitchen table! Can you stomach me, you so-called literati, you printing-press slavemongers, you elitist ivory-tower climbers, you brilliance-ignorers? Give me money, take your television camera crews away, come and get me! Do you want Juanita again? You liked the follow up, My Bones Are Made of Dog Hair and Coffee Grounds, didn't you? You liked how well it sold, you literary bitch whore, right? Do you want G. Spot? Oh, you wanted G. Spot, you adored The Wet Gatsby, and you loved Tender Is the Crotch just as much, oh yes, you hob-nobbers, you bottom-line bastards? You've had your fill of Nasdaqq? Weren't you pleased with the ecstatic reviews for The Ganges Runs Through the Trading Floor of My Dreams? Didn't Bright Lights, Bodhisattva sell well enough for you? You "reject" me now, don't you, don't you know I cannot be rejected, I get up again as soon as I get knocked down? Do you want me to be taller? Shorter? More transgender? More ethnic? More abused? What is it this season? Who do you want me to be who I am not already? I knock on your door, I scratch your windows, I haunt your inbox, I lurk in your mailroom, I infect your slush pile, I sleep in your bindery, I am a leech in the martini at your midtown university club, I am the fly buzzing in your ear at your posh cocktail party in the Hamptons, I lounge in your doorway, I sleep in your car, I want you, go away! I am Bob, Nasdaqq, Juanita, G. Spot, and so many more, and you "caught" me, you think you caught me, you think I didn't want to be caught, don't you want to catch me again? I am Nasdaqq (you love me!) and I always have been (you despise me!) and I am an Amazon of the bile and bowels of the desperate and I am the green-hued chest and feathery soul of a fluttering unborn nationality, I am a legitimate charitable institution, and West Virginia doesn't pay its math teachers very well, I am old as the hills, I have just been born, I am being born all the time; don't you want me? Get away from my double wide! I hate you! I need you! Publish me! Publish me more! Harder! Faster! I am Nasdaqq! Won't you let me be?