Scary Voices: R.S. Rhine

Spring of 1998, Al Berlinski, publisher of Sun Dog Press, a well-regarded independent publishing house in Michigan, picked up a short story I had written in Caffeine Magazine.

It was the height of the coffee house spoken-word phenom; bare wooden stage, harsh spotlight, lone microphone, stringy-haired, beat-poetry spewing, Kurt Cobain-esque, imitation Kerouac, GAP commercials, ala William Shatner for Price-Line, Dennis Miller’s HBO ranting and Def Poetry rapping Vagina Monologues. A fusion jazz quartet with a bongo didn’t hurt.

Bleedings From My Azz
by R.S. Rhine ©2005

Fucking snatches;
Gaping gashes;
Razor slashes;
Rose colored glasses;
Vomit splashes;
Sex party rashes;
Angry penis scratches;
Infected screaming asses;
Ashes to ashes;
Dust to dust.

[A smattering of applause].

It didn’t matter what po-et-ry you spoke back then, (and I just made up the one above to prove a point), as long as you spoke it loudly and proudly with a lilting cadence and con-vic-tion. You could have read the yellow pages on stage, so long as you did it Maya Angelou style - queen of the tongue-caressing, syllable-slinging, all worshipped wooord.

Caffeine Magazine fit perfectly with this 90’s, grunge, coffee house literary blip and was published by Ron Cohen, a counter-culture gnome with boundless energy who went on to publish such cool works as Etiquette For Outlaws.

But it was a Charles Bukowski poem I spotted in Rob’s coffee house magazine that motivated me to submit a short story to Caffeine entitled, “The Brain Exchange.

Rob Cohen subsequently published that piece and eventually snatched up three more stories in all for Caffeine - matching infamous writer/boozer Bukowski.

Al Berlinski, a mellow Michigan publisher, had a more than a passing interest in Charles Bukowski, having published the literary tributes “Laughing With The Gods,” “Bukowski and The Beats” and “Sunlight Here I Am.” I always wondered if Berlinksi’s passion for Bukowski had to do with the fact that both their names began with ‘B’ and ended with ‘ski.’ Just a theory.

Anyhow, Al was duly impressed that Caffeine Magazine publisher Rob Cohen, had snagged three previously unpublished Bukowski poems away from the Bukowski black hole known as Black Sparrow Press.

Meanwhile, Al read my short stories in Caffeine, ”Bad Boys and Alley Cats” and “Murder School,” then contacted Cohen inquiring how he could get in touch with the “gritty L.A. scribe”. So, Al phoned figuring the number Rob had given him was for the Salvation Army Mission and the disturbed writer Rhine would probably be suffering the D.T.’s on a stained cot.

I had a sore throat the day Al phoned me and my voice was appropriately raspy as he asked if I had any more writing he could read of mine. So, I shipped him off a crate of rantings which he later lumped together into a book, My Brain Escapes Me, with the keen editorial assist of his wife Judy, who miraculously made me appear literate.

But, before Al would publish me, he wanted to meet R.S. Rhine, the troubled soul behind the literary mayhem.

Al, knowing about Bukowski’s bouts with wine, women and wrong, expected that I was talking to him on the phone while teetering on a whiskey splattered bar stool in North Hollywood at 9:01 a.m or on a pay phone at L.A. County lock-up, or perhaps lying in a puddle of gutter urine at Fifth and San Pedro, following a drunken street brawl with a toothless transvestite, or lying comatose on a filthy mattress in the back of a crack house, sirens wailing as I free-based my food stamps.

So, when Al flew out from Michigan to meet me and drove his rented Buick Le Sabre to my house and knocked on the front door of my modest tract house in the San Fernando Valley, complete with white picket fence, he was understandably confused. He rang the bell, a couple times, certain he had the wrong address, but hoping at least to get directions.

I opened the security hatch and peeked out through spider webs, at what I assumed was the umpteenth salesperson of the week.

“I can’t open the door, I have a bad flu. Unless you don’t mind.” Which is what I tell every door-to-door salesperson.

Al glanced down at the crumpled directions in his hand, “Do you know where I can find Robert Steven Rhine?”

This peaked Al’s interest. Rhine was probably wheeling up and down the street at night with his rusty shopping cart stacked with dumpster delights and the destitute writer probably just gave this as his ‘contact’ address.

“Does Robert Rhine live nearby?” inquired Al, picturing a squalid cardboard box and a cantankerous scribe.

“Who’s asking?” I prodded, expecting the waspy man at the door to be momentarily pitching Amway.

“You’re Al Berlinski?” I said, expecting to see a bearded Allen Ginsberg rather than the salt and pepper haired, Mid-Western, George Plimpton standing in a sports jacket before me.

“Last time I checked,” replied Al, then added with obvious disappointment, “You’re... Robert Steven Rhine?”

Al remained unconvinced as he reluctantly held out his hand, “Well, then, I guess I’m your publisher Al Berlinski.”

We both chuckled a bit, awkwardly shook hands, then drove to a taco stand. Al paid.

We ate our shredded carnitas tacos beneath the bird crap streaked umbrellas, enveloped by smog while Southwest Airline commuters roared overhead.

Al silently studied me, surprised that I had all my teeth and had spent nary a day in prison. Even worse, I was happily married. Hardly the image conveyed by my bleak and sometimes brutal writing, later confessed Al. I felt lousy too - like I had conned him. He was a pretty decent guy. Yet, here I was - an impostor. How could I even think of calling myself a writer without bourbon on my breath? I wondered if Al would still publish me. I felt depressed to have a roof over my head and not be dumpster diving with my rabid dog Shakes behind the 7-Eleven. I suddenly wished I had never given up pot.

But what Al would come to realize is that it’s not what you look like or where you live that makes you a good writer, nor does sitting in a Starbucks staring at a laptop. How do they write at Starbucks, anyhow? I did a reading at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle last year. I now finally ‘get’ the coffee house phenomenon. People actually go into coffee houses in Seattle to get out of the cold and rain. Imagine that! They drink coffee to stay awake because it’s dark most of the time. They even wear those trendy knitted beanie caps to keep their heads warm. So, why do they wear them in L.A.? -- when it’s ninety-eight degrees? -- in December? To look like writers, artists and unemployed poets? Unfortunately, most actual writers aren’t so trendy -- and we don’t buy knitted beanie caps at The Gap, unless our heads are cold.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote, “The ‘artist’ can inhabit any individual, for the individual is irrelevant to art.” Or, like the old proverb, ‘You can’t tell a book by its’ cover or, a writer by his knit beanie.”

Appearances are just as deceiving outside the literary realm. Take serial killers for example. They can inhabit a minister, a Boy Scout leader, an honor student or pro football star. Take a peek at some of our most notorious serial killer: Jeffrey Dahmer (choir boy), Ted Bundy (ladies man), John Wayne Gacy (party clown). None of these guy were Freddie Kruegers.

“He seemed like such a nice guy,” should be the APB of every FBI alert. So, “nice guy” means ‘look out.’

Are horror writers really unfulfilled murderers and psychos releasing their nightmares on paper instead of flesh. One of my favorite horror writers, Richard Laymon, wrote the most uncompromising horror, such as his chilling "Come Out Tonight." Yet when I first met Richard he seemed to be just a nice pudgy guy with glasses with a wife and cuddly daughter Kelly with a mouth full of braces. Meanwhile, he was writing about rape, torture and brutal murders.

So, don’t expect to find me wandering the countryside, in my battered’ 82 Gremlin, with a shopping bag full of severed heads in my trunk. My demons are scarier, masked behind a pleasant demeanor and a facade of normalcy. But what percolates between my two ears you wouldn't want to know. Just ask my therapist... or hers.

Al finally did publish my book “My Brain Escapes Me,” and the rest is, hopefully, just the beginning. But I think he still believes there’s someone else writing my stories -- living in a cardboard box on Skid Row.

Robert Steven Rhine, author of "MY BRAIN ESCAPES ME" has sold fiction to over a hundred magazines and published anthologies, including the soon to be released "Dark Delicacies: Original Stories of the Macabre from Today Greatest Horror Writers" (Carroll & Graf) alongside Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, F. Paul Wilson and more.''

R.S. Rhine's new nook "SATAN'S 3-RING CIRCUS OF HELL" (Asylum Press) hits stores this July, distributed by Diamond. The 280 page, color graphic novel contains artwork by forty-three the top horror artists in the world, including: WILLIAM STOUT, TIM VIGIL, STEVEN R. BISSETTE, ALAN M. CLARK, HILARY BARTA, JOHN CASSADAY, all illustrating Rhine's twisted tales.

In 2005, R.S. Rhine won first prize in the WORLD HORROR CON Dark Fiction Contest for his story "Propeller Boy." The story will be published in Cemetery Dance Magazine.

Robert Steven Rhine's fiction collection, "MY BRAIN ESCAPES ME," (Sun Dog Press) was heralded by PUBLISHERS WEEKLY as "a successful mix of humor and horror." Rhine's first comic book, "SELECTED READING FROM SATAN'S POWDER ROOM" (Asylum Press) quickly sold out and was followed up by a second helping, "CHICKEN SOUP FOR SATAN," (also distributed by Diamond). A third comic book in the series, "SATAN GONE WILD," premiered in New Orleans on Halloween 2004 . The success of these "humorrific" comic books led to Rhine's new graphic novel "SATAN'S 3 RING CIRCUS OF HELL.

As a filmmaker, Rhine wrote, produced and starred in the 35mm filmed pilot, "VINNIE & ANGELA'S BEAUTY SALON AND FUNERAL PARLOR," Grand Prize Winner (Gold Cineman) at the Australian International Film Festival and winner at Worldfest Houston. The film sold in 2001 to UNIVERSAL's HYPNOTIC FILMS. Rhine also wrote, produced, directed and starred in the epic/cult/satire "ROAD LAWYERS AND OTHER BRIEFS," winner at the Chicago, New York, Houston and Australian film fests (distributed by A.I.P.). R.S Rhine's animated series pilot SICKCOM, which Rhine wrote and directed (animated by his partner Frank Forte) was bought by SPIKE & MIKE'S SICK and TWISTED FESTIVAL OF ANIMATION and was included on SPIKE & MIKE's DVD "Unprotected."

For more info on R.S. Rhine and to order his books: http://www.robertrhine.com.