Truly, What is The Harm in Being Frank?

In college, I had an excerpt of The Harm in Being Frank published in our school’s literary magazine. I had turned in 3 other pieces of work, poems namely, and they chose the excerpt from The Harm in Being Frank. I was shocked.

For anyone who has not read it, The Harm in Being Frank lives up to its title. It is a purely raw short story, and though it was written with style, character, and an artistic goal in mind, it can be interpreted by those unfamiliar with modern fiction as raunchy and unrealistic.

I sit here debating whether or not to include a piece of The Harm in Being Frank, or to take a more subtle approach to introduce my work. As this blog is about being frank, I figure what the hell:

The greatest thing about being over seventy is that you no longer need a condom. Menopause is my birth control, and I could give a shit less if I got crabs or herpes anyway. It’s all relative to your age. If I had gotten syphilis when I was eighteen, my life would have ended. Now, carpe ass.

There is something about when you move intro an old folk’s home, waking up every morning to the smell of piss in the hall because Esther forgot to wear her diaper to bed. At first, everything is so surreal and depressing; a woman young enough to be your daughter holding your former magnum glory just because your arthritis is flaring up due to a humidity rating of fifty percent. In fact it was at that moment, Rosi holding me with her head turned like she didn’t want to see it, that I realized there was a legacy to be created.

Retirement homes are gold mines for eager old women. I like to think of myself as the replacement. One husband lost in the war, another the victim of heart disease, and yet another two floors up who thinks he’s fourteen. They all were in need of a man. It was a calling. It was as if God himself had shone the way to finishing my life in polygamy. As if a bunch of female voices suing in harmony as a ray of light shone down from the heavens onto my penis.

I had created a system. Old Fucks Can Get Laid: Books on Tape Volume One. If resources run short, transfer to Southern California or sunny Florida. Plenty of young girls to get you riled, plenty of old fogies to get you laid. Frank Randall, years of experience in the field of aged lust. For an extra $9.95, you can get his biography, Magnum of Love.

(The following except from The Harm in Being Frank is the sole property of Jonathan Mahoney and cannot be distributed, copied, or sold for any reason or through any means)

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I like to say that I did not write Frank, but rather that he wrote himself. Now I know that sounds like a good way to get out of sounding like a dirty bastard, but it is the truth. When you are writing fiction, you get involved in your character and you begin to think like the person you have created. Though the above selection does not relect the full extent of Frank's honesty, Frank is raw. In fact, I think he is the rawest geriatric I have ever met. But he made himself that way. I simply pushed the keys.

Believe me, Frank gets worse. The purpose of the story, though, is Frank’s difficulty in finding a balance between his legacy, The Program, and his grandson, Jacob. The story is character driven, and so it is ultimately driven by Frank’s inability to find a priority and to stick with it.

I am proud of Frank as a creation, as he was an autonomous creation. I was easy to build him because he helped me along the way. His character, though flawed as a person, is seemless in production and presentation. In the introduction to my thesis, I ended it in a way that embodied my impression of Frank:

“Though I would love to meet Frank, I fear that I would hate him”.