Free Lust & Wonder by Augusten Burroughs

things back and forth to each other via e-mail. Parts of journal writing, pieces of ads. I sent her the messy writing I did when I was freed from rehab; she sent me sections of her novel.
    â€œHow do I get one?” I asked.
    She told me to try her agent but try all the others, too. There was a book, a kind of bible of literary agents, though it more closely resembled a phone book and provided me with nearly a thousand pages of agent names and addresses.
    It was shockingly overwhelming.
    But now that I’d written what appeared to be an actual novel, I was devoted to finding an agent. Obsessed, really.
    So I crafted a breezy and irreverent query letter and began sending it out in junk-mail quantity.
    Dear Agent Person,
    My name is Augusten Burroughs, and I’ve just completed my first novel, Sellevision . Based on a QVC-inspired home shopping network, Sellevision is a satirical look at what might happen to the lives and careers of Sellevision hosts were they somehow to be placed in the hands of a chemically imbalanced writer with no apparent moral foundation.
    Sellevision is a careening, left-field, neo-Shakespearean romp that features a range of characters who experience everything from stalking to romance. It includes backstabbing, extramarital affairs, revenge, a porno career, and, of course, Debby Boone, Joyce DeWitt, and Princess Diana key fobs.
    It opens with the firing of an on-air host, the day after his penis accidentally “peeks” out of his robe in front of millions of viewers during a live Slumber Sunday segment. It ends with the network in a delightfully ludicrous state of chaos. Either that, or it’s simply 45,000 words that don’t belong together.
    Obviously, I would love to send you the manuscript or any portion of it.
    Thank you for your consideration.
    Sincerely,
    Augusten Burroughs
    Most of the rejection letters I received in response were polite—if not encouraging—but one asshole woman took the time to scrawl a note at the bottom of her preprinted rejection slip: “Satire is what closes Saturday night.”
    I only received rejection letters, and lots of them. With one mortifying exception.
    One agent did write back to me with something resembling interest. He explained that while he, personally, found the manuscript amusing, his colleagues at the literary agency did not. He thought my novel needed a great deal of work, but alas, he was not an editor. Finally, he said he’d be willing to send it out “as is” to one or two editors he thought might possibly like it enough to buy it.
    He then told me his literary agency charged for stamps and photocopies.
    I was thrilled but also confused. It sounded like he was willing to lift a finger, but not two. He also had a long, old-fashioned-sounding name, which made me think he must be ancient.
    I wrote to Molly and explained the situation. “Does he sound like a real agent? Why the fuck is he talking about postage stamps? Why do I have the sneaking suspicion he’s just some old alcoholic living in a studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, sitting at a computer in his underwear looking at kiddie porn?”
    Only after I hit Send did I realize I had sent the message as a reply to the agent and not as a new e-mail to Molly.
    Even though I immediately wrote a note explaining my grave error and saying, “Obviously, I don’t deserve you or any other agent,” I never heard back.
    Two months passed with only rejection letters. One day, I got a form letter reject from a name I didn’t recognize, as if I were being turned down by agents I hadn’t even queried. I grew increasingly terrified that the agent with the old-man name I had called a pedophile might have been my single publishing opportunity, the big break I had been waiting for, and I had urinated on it by accident.
    I considered the fact that drinking might lubricate my misery. I air-tasted a cocktail to see if one would just exactly