“Now, not everyone will embrace the acerbic wit and raucous language of Willie Smith, but few can deny that he is a performance artists who dances on the page of this fascinating book. Give it a go – and `if at first he doth offend thee’ you’ll probably be back for more. It is that magnet of the strange that pulls at your fascination that is Willie Smith.”

Grady Harp, Amazon Hall of Fame Top 50 Reviewer

“When America’s underbelly shows we see that it’s fat, wiggly, and soft, and kind of dirty, and when it will finally get stretched out well and good by the wretched of the world, it will be clear that what looks like dirt is actually a collection of amazing stories by Willie Smith who chronicled the fat, the wiggle, the complacency, and the terror of it like only few writers did, the great ones.”

Andrei Codrescu, author of Whatever Gets you Through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments

“In this collection of stories, Willie Smith wheels the Human Condition into the examining room and proceeds to poke, prod, humor and biopsy any suspicious growths with the surgical precision of Franz Kafka and Robert Walser. Should be included in any survival kit.”

Donald Guravich, author of World at Large

“The sentences are pure poetry, it is here I should be caustic, bitter; it is here I should nip at the ankles; jealousy reduces one to such acts. I order you to buy this book, sit down, place Miles or Monk on the record player, and read the book over and over again.”

Paul Kavanagh, author of Iceberg

“Nothing Doing is masterful in making an all-pervasive sense of absence and discontent run cohesively through a set of diverse stories. And all the more masterful for using beautiful poetic prose to describe distinctly unbeautiful events. Brace yourself for a torrid, enjoyable read.”

Grace Read, The View From Here

“Nothing Doing delivers an insight into the more perverse view on how the developments of twentieth century history have impacted the American psyche, from the industry of commercially manufactured emotions through to the Cold War.”

Elinor Walpole, Sabotage

Spider Fuck

The horniest picture I ever saw was in National Geographic. It was a spider’s asshole magnified fifty times. Resembled a soggy Cheerio on a slate background.

I haven’t been the same since. Because I wanna do me one, and no live spider is big enough to accommodate.

I’ve tried jacking off on arachnids. Wolf spiders and tarantulas the best. Daddy longlegs impossible. Scorpions a bitch. But I never come near the satisfaction gleaned that afternoon when I first drenched the National Geo full-color centerfold blown up to reveal a teensy parasite wriggling in some jungle spider’s O ring.

You can’t always get what you want. But, if you fixate, sometimes you get what you pay for. Visualize arachnoid roundeye.

One night I was jizzing a black widow – ejaculating without orgasm, bored with the universe. I turned some jazz on the radio, while watching the spider struggle under the shroud of ejaculate.

Goodman Benny inhaled clarinet. Jack Webb sat in. Max Roach fogged the chamber. They were in mixolydian – I heard a vodka tonic. Willie “The Lion” Smith masturbated the 88.

I daydreamed antiaircraft fire. Nazi flak redshifted into what I’d dine upon that night. Turkey Tetrachloride? Veal Hardon Blue? Fish Dicks? Spam Sushi? Only a wizard could decide which TV dinner, when all you got is a radio.

Imagine my lack of preparation, daydreaming as I was, when into the room clacked a spider big as a Buick. Eight pale legs supported a hispid, chartreuse body. She spun around. Hiked her crupper. Displayed a taut caterpillar green starfish.

Like in a dream, I approached the miracle. The chiton of her legs buckled with anticipation. I ran a finger over the sphincter that was tinier than a dowager’s purse. She stood nervous, shy, to all appearances a virgin. She was dry as calculus. I ran to the kitchen for butter.

Wow, I thought, yanking open the fridge, a cherry hallucination! I froze, staring at a bearded carrot, a cube of butter, a plastic liter of Rococo Coke and a stutter of roaches that had wormed in under the door.

The roaches didn’t appreciate the light. Several rotated feelers. But none broke ranks. The fridge was too cold, despite crumbling insulation, for them to panic at such a stimulus. The insect at the head of the line lifted a leg at the grate of the middle shelf, whereon lay the carrot abandoned by Bugs Bunny about the time of Hiroshima.

I guess I didn’t have any TV dinners after all. In the back of my head a psychiatrist sniggered neither was there any mammoth Miss Muffetbuddy out in the parlor.

I couldn’t face that. Vision or not, she was real as anything else in America. Slammed the door. Sidled to the sink. Washed my hands. If she was from another planet, perhaps a victim of radiation, I didn’t want to contaminate anything. Washed so good I scraped knuckles raw and broke two nails.

She appeared to be garden variety. The type you see in September protecting tomatoes from mosquitoes. Occurred to me maybe she’d like a bite to eat. My mind turned to the vermin inside the refrigerator. Would they be big enough? Sure – I’d swoop all twenty into my fist. Offer them up like a mouthful of raisins.

Purchase your copy of Nothing Doing today to find out what happens…