Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill- 2007
Reviewed by Joshua Citrak
1.18.07

Hey Boogaloo, I really love you
Look what you’ve done to my head
Take all my time
Take all my money
But most of all you take all my bread

Humbie Pie’s song, “Hot-n-Nasty,” is an apropos introduction to the world of Michael Parker and his debut story collection, Don’t Make Me Stop Now. In this collection, like the classic rock ethos, most of Parker’s subjects are aged or faded men suffering from love hangovers. They are beer-bellied, scarred and martyred by the cruel things that men do to themselves when left to their own devices. They may have once been the life of the party, but now, with Parker leading the way, we encounter them at various mile markers down the Highway to Hell.

The first story in this collection, “What Happens Next,” we find a middle aged Charlie Yancey living a life derailed by an ill-advised cover up of the instant and accidental heart attack death of his grandmother. The tragic night, Yancey was sixteen, taking his grandmother back to her nursing home from a family function when his hand slipped off the turn signal accidentally cranking up the car stereo, “… the opening chords of 'Hot ‘N’ Nasty' came thundering through the speakers… It was so loud that Charlie thought he’d been hit by another car.” When Yancey finally gathered himself enough to turn down the stereo, his grandmother was dead. Yancey, now middle aged, tells this story to a woman he loves because, “There was something deeply sexy to Yancey about telling someone you love and whom you want to love you back your darkest secrets. Like sex following funerals… the love you make after such a revelation is punctuation, an impassioned if desperate attempt to prove who you are, in fact, very much alive.”

Another ill-conceived scheme comes in to play in the story “Everything Was Paid For.” Clay, an unemployed aspiring crank dealer learns of his girlfriend’s high school rape and tries to exploit the perpetrator, a drugstore clerk. The clerk, Marshburn, doesn’t admit to anything, but nevertheless concedes to the terms of blackmail; boxes of new syringes which Clay uses to get in good with the local crank dealer. Clay’s girlfriend is apprehensive, feeling as if Clay “had taken her troubled past and turned it into trouble looming in the future for both of them.” However, Clay dismisses this notion believing, “If Marshburn was motivated by guilt, Clay could still consider himself the enforcer, making Marshburn pay for his sins. What was really wrong with making a little cash on the side?” Clearly, Clay is too happy with the drugs, the money and his clever plan to realize he is caught up in something he might not be able to get out of.

Stepping away from the tough, male dominated stories, Parker delivers, “Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony and Life Experiences in the song, ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump no More no Big Fat Woman,’” a hilarious account of an increasingly scattered and irreverent female undergraduate writing a paper for her cliquey English professor.
The student, a heavy set girl, alternates between dissecting the merit of the disco song, “Ain’t Gonna Bump no More no Big Fat Woman,” her breakup with a cheating boyfriend and what annoys her most about her professor,

…you say you want to hear what we think and for us to put ourselves in our papers but then on my last paper you wrote all over it and said in your Ending Comments that my paper lacked clarity and focus and was sprawling and not cohesive or well organized. Well okay I had just worked a shift at the Coach House Restaurant and then right after that a shift at the Evergreen Nursing Home which this is my second job and I was up all night writing that paper on the “Tell-Tale Heart” which is who’s fault is that I can hear you saying right now... I ought to of gotten to it earlier but all that aside what I want to ask you is okay have you ever considered that clarity and focus is just like your way of seeing the world?

The collection showpiece is, “Results for Novice Males,” the final story in Don’t Make Me Stop Now. Here we are introduced to Patrick, a lawyer, triathlete and recovering ex-drunk. Although Patrick shares the loneliness and desperation of many of Parker’s earlier subjects, Patrick has endured and seen his way through to redemption, persevering through the self-pity and self-destruction. Patrick is sober, successful in his law practice and has finished well in triathlons. The same cannot be said, however, of Larry, Patrick’s next-door neighbor. An unsuccessful discount couch salesman, problem drinker and triathlete who talks more than he trains, Larry has assumed the antagonizing, abrasive role that booze used to play in Patrick’s life. One weekend night, Larry gets drunk, abusive to his wife and winds up in jail. Against his better judgment, Patrick bails Larry out in the early hours of the morning, but Larry is anything but humble or thankful. Patrick notes, “I thought how ill equipped I was to handle this situation. The only thing I knew how to do was run, swim laps and ride my bike. In my training guides and the triathlon magazines I devour they talk about “junk miles”—the mileage one accumulates without getting better, stronger, faster—mileage that does nothing to correct the mistakes in your form. Most of my life had been spent piling up the junk miles, but what I needed tonight was simply the patience to persevere.” Patrick handles Larry’s arrogance the only way he knows how, by accepting Larry’s foolhardy challenge to race through the town the moon lit town.

Michael Parker deserves high praise for a collection full of unique and believable characters. Through its reading, one gets the notion that the author understands the minds of the lonely, their churning, self-destructive thoughts, and their perverse and often illogical path to a perception of happiness. While he proves it true that men and women find people who end up either making them unhappy, taking their time, money or bread the three are things that the lonely will give away easily time and again for a few moments of companionship.

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