Hemingway by a Whisker

Gordon “Satch” Carlson of Anchorage, Alaska, is the 1988 winner of the Ernest Hemingway parody contest and will receive a free trip for two to Florence, Italy, to hoist one in memory of the great author himself, who downed more than his share of libations at the Italian bistro.

Claudio Arena, manager of contest sponsor Harry’s Bar & American Grill in San Francisco said Tuesday that Carlson’s entry was chosen from among more than 4,000 entries and 21 finalists.

Carlson’s winning entry:

It was morning and he was in the bathroom shaving, shaving for the first time that day but not the last, no, never the last; the hairs kept coming, tiny hairs and black and there was nothing for it, nothing for it at all but shaving, razor bright-edged clean on skin and cutting through the hairs and the soap and the dead dried cells of epidermis in that clean, well-lighted place. There were the hairs and he was shaving because a man shaves. Main thing a man did. Made him into a man. No bloody hairs.

She came in then, rich and tall and American in that way they have, her face a picture of a face, an American face, and she leaned into Gibbs Adams in that way she had of leaning, and he looked away from her American face in the mirror and down at the sink where she had just dropped the matchbook, a matchbook from Harry’s Bar & American Grill.

“There wasn’t going to be any of that,” he said. “You promised there wouldn’t be.”

“Well, there is now,” she said.

It’s too damned awful, he thought, but there was nothing for it, nothing at all but to shave and to take this woman with her American face to Harry’s. And eat. They had eaten before. And the wine. Now, the wine. Well, the wine. Yes, the wine. Hm, the wine.

He looked at her bored American face in the mirror and knew they would eat, and there would be the wine, but there would never be the time in Venice, no, not that time again and no other. It was too late for that.

“What time is it?”

“5:05, Gibbs,” she said, a good time, a big time, and he turned again to the mirror, to his American face in the mirror, his strong thin American face in the mirror with soap now drying on his skin, and the razor moving, scraping; and he could feel his hairiness now, his follicles open, ready, and he knew she knew them too, knew his hairiness and his thin American shame; and he saw his hand trembling in the glass and he felt the white-hot, blinding flash of metal, and that was all he ever felt.

He had cut himself about two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his chin.

He was bleeding now, the good, rich thin American blood red on his chin, on the razor, cold, gleaming, dripping on the matchbook, the Harry’s Bar & American Grill matchbook, and he was afraid.

She turned, lifting her thin American lip over those thin white perfect American teeth in that thin American sneer. “It’s only a nick, Adams,” she said.