O Hemingway, Which Way, No Way : He Felt the Pain. He Knew. It Never Ends. The Sun Also Rises.

Each year, as clocks are set ahead and the beautiful ones start tans and Michael J. Fox is miscast in a new movie, I write of my pain. It is not a fine, manly pain. It is the pain of shame and humiliation. The shame and humiliation of having lost again at the competition they call Imitation Hemingway.

One year, when I was young and strong and did not have to buy walking shorts with Spandex waistbands, I finished second. To finish second at Imitation Hemingway is to be metaphorically gored by a flaring-nostrilled bull.

But it was nothing compared to not being a finalist. That would come later. I would tell myself it did not matter but then the sleepless nights would come and the drunkenness and the madness they call mariah. No, that’s wind. Well, there was some of that, too.

I digress like the meandering tributary of a big-hearted river.

The point is, I cannot stand to lose the Imitation Hemingway Competition, since each year my unrecognized entry far outshines the dreadful stuff that makes the finals (22 finalists this year, out of 2,400 worldwide entries).

You guessed it: They did it to me again.

Boy did they do it.

Or, as Hem might have put it . . . When he realized the y had tricked him, he felt that he could kill all of them and not feel much. It was probably wrong to feel this way, he thought, but it was what he felt. He could kill all of them, quickly and cleanly, and then go to Harry’s to drink the good, strong tequila and make love to the waitress Lupita and not even remember their names.

The contest is sponsored by Harry’s Bar and American Grill, which gathers supposedly literate judges, who select the alleged best parody. If you don’t plug Harry’s in your entry, it gets automatically canned. Each year, I send in an absolutely wonderful piece of writing--sometimes two!--that apparently goes right over the heads of the preliminary judges.

This year, I vowed it would be different. I crafted my usual terribly clever little gem--this time, a witty account of a gorilla that joins the National Football League and leads his team to the Super Bowl. Then, departing tradition, I printed it here, rather than submitting. I taunted the contest’s organizers, declaring that it was too good for them. I threatened to sell it to the movies. I rubbed their noses in it.

Then the publicist for the competition called.

“We read your piece,” he said. “It was very funny.”

“Oh.” I was a bit taken aback. “You liked it?”

“It was terrific. Really, you ought to submit it.”

He bid me a pleasant goodby, and hung up.

Gosh. If it was that good, I thought, maybe I should reconsider.

I looked at it again. The publicist was right. It was terrific. It was obvious I was destined to win the round trip for two to Harry’s in Florence, Italy. Fortunately, the studios had been slow to respond. It was still available for the Imitation Hemingway Competition.

I mailed it in.

Late last month, an envelope arrived from the publicity firm. A fat envelope. The plane tickets, I assumed.

Inside was an invitation to the press party, from which I was once banned for my indiscreet complaints--very promising. I turned to the second page.

The finalists were listed.

My name was not among them.

How does one describe the feeling upon discovering that he has been so deftly set up? The legs weaken. Nausea rises. The room seems close, tight, unreal. Traffic noise seems far, far away. You feel like you may never leave your house again. How do you face friends, family, co-workers?

I am over it now. Life, if not hopeful, is tolerable again. But, as in the past, I refuse to print the name of the alleged “winner.”

(Editor’s note: This year’s winner is Gordon C. (Satch) Carlson of Anchorage, Alaska.)

He wrote a page of nonsense about a virile man named Gibbs Adams, that started out like this:

It was now 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.

On and on like that, all to set up the last paragraph when he cuts himself and the woman with him says, It’s only a nick, Adams.

Give me a break.

Through ongoing therapy, I have come to realize that I have been placing too much importance on the Imitation Hemingway Competition. Who cares about the guy anymore except a bunch of eggheads, fuddy-duddies and literary reactionaries?

Let’s get with the times. Let’s get real.

How about an Imitation Bret Easton Ellis Competition?