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Me: Hi! I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us, and add what a personal honour it is for me to be speaking to a woman with with such a dizzying literary capacity. You are truly one of the greatest writers in the entire world.

Atwood: That’s very sweet of you, thank you.

Me: I think an awful lot of people would be surprised to learn that you played Fantasy Baseball.

Can you tell us here at The Knuckler how you got into it?

Atwood: As people may or may not know, I’ve always been very interested in speculative fiction, and when I heard about Fantasy Baseball, I thought it was in the same vein. You know, like Fantasy Literature, so I looked in to it. Alas, it was not, but I became fascinated by it and all the marginalized, impotent men that play it so obsessively. It’s role playing, really, where all these limited, in many cases arrested men, bond together and pretend that they’re something much more powerful than they are in the ordinary dirt of their relentlessly disappointing lives.

It’s like a religion for them, I think, a little treehouse they can retreat to and act as supreme ruler of a secular male kingdom. I have always thought that without Fantasy Baseball there would probably be an awful lot more mass shootings. Anyway, I got involved in order to research a character for one of my books and have been playing ever since.

Me: Oh.

Atwood: And I have to say, I’ve done very, very well.

Me: Good for you.

Atwood: I’m sorry, are you being sarcastic?

Me: Oh no, a marginalized, impotent shooter-type such as myself wouldn’t have a clue how to do that!

Atwood: I see.

Me: I guess you’ve just been a very lucky player!

Atwood: Lucky?

Me: Plucky. A very plucky player.

Atwood: Really?

Me: Well, let’s not get side-tracked with semantics here. So, I’m sure all of The Knuckler’s readers would love to hear what your Fantasy Baseball team is called!

Atwood: The Blind Assassins.

Me: Oh.

Atwood: Mister Murray, I have to say, you sound disappointed.

Me: Well, coming from a “literary genius” you’d expect something a little more imaginative and eloquent. It seems lazy and nakedly self-promotional to name your team after one of your own books, especially if it wasn’t good enough to be an Oprah Pick or made into a movie.

Atwood: What is your team called?

Me: Mike’s Mashers.

Atwood: That’s very clever. How are they doing this year?

Me: They’ve been savaged by injuries I’m afraid, so it looks like I’ll be rebuilding again.

Atwood: Again, eh? So, how long have you been playing Fantasy Baseball?

Me: I don’t know, 25 years?

Atwood: Have you ever won?

Me: Ha, ha, ha! Have I ever won? What a funny question! Let me tell you, I’ve more than held my own.

Atwood: But have you ever won? Have you ever finished in first place? Have you tasted the sort of victory that for a moment erases all those memories of being the last pick, of being mocked for throwing like a girl, of all those many, many times of being over-looked by the more talented and beautiful?

Have you ever had your revenge, Mister Murray?

Unfortunately, I suffered an asthma attack at this point during the interview and we had to suspend our chat.

Day 1

“Describe how you’re feeling right now.”

I feel good, like I’m ready to dominate. I’m in the zone, just like I was when I attended the Washington Redskins fantasy football camp as a kid. It makes me mad that people think that the name Redskins is somehow racist! It’s an honour to be a Redskin, not an insult! Jesus Christ!! It really burns me, that. Makes me want to punch something in the face really hard. Going to go do some lifting, channel my feelings into a “positive stream” instead of getting sucked into a “self-destructive negativity spiral.

Day 2, 2014

“Describe a recent situation where you felt the urge to take drugs or alcohol.”

“The Situation.”

At breakfast when my eggs were runny.

“Moods”

“1. What did you feel?”

“2. Rate each mood (0-100%)”

I felt really pissed off. I’m paying a shit-ton of good money to be in this facility and I’m not even an addict, so the least you could do is get the fucking eggs right! Is it that hard to scramble some eggs? Fuck! (100%)

I also felt frustrated, like one hundred fucking percent frustrated. Just make the goddamn eggs, okay? (120%!!)

“Automatic Thoughts”

“What was going through your mind just before you started to feel this way? Any other thoughts? Images?”

I was thinking that I was fucking hungry and looking forward to some eggs. In my mind, I saw fluffy eggs, cheesy, fluffy eggs and they were being served by a hot chick who was totally impressed that I was mayor of Toronto. We were going get messed-up and then have sex, maybe with one of her friends, too, and I was going to wear my Redskins football helmet. It was going to be totally awesome, and then I saw my cock-blocking brother Doug laughing at me in front of the chicks, and I couldn’t get it going, you know, and I then I got served some runny fucking eggs!

Day 3

“What are you looking forward to right now?”

I’m looking forward to my first rehab setback. That’s going to be fucking epic.

Day 4

“What is the most positive experience you’ve had through rehab so far?”

I’ve really gotten to look deeply into who Rob Ford is and I think I’ve achieved an inner peace, a tranquility, even, that I’ve never known except on the football field. I’ve learned that some days the eggs are runny, and that’s okay, you just have to deal with it. Also, I had sex with that lush real estate agent from Brampton.

Twice.

That was pretty awesome.

Need to get my suit dry cleaned though.

Painting #1

A lot of people fantasize about being the President. They like the idea of power, of absolute power, like I had, but what people fail to think about is that when you’re President of the United States of America there are an awful lot of people that want to kill you. I did a lot of stuff when I was President, stuff that made some people mad, and I never forgot this. Wherever I was, it was always in the back of my mind. Who was trying to sneak up on me? How were they going to do it? What did they know?

These feelings don’t go away, they stay with you.

In this painting I’m naked in the shower, vulnerable yet powerful. I hear the door open in the bathroom and I don’t know if the Day of Judgment has come in the form of an assassin or if it’s Laura just wanting a little. And so, in a moment of uncertainty, suspended between the anticipation of an erotic encounter or a battle to the death with a would-be murderer, I’m looking in that little mirror there to see what’s going to happen next.

Note the muscles in my back. I keep in pretty good shape.

Painting #2

I really like hot baths. It’s good alone time for fantasizing. But still, I always think of the assassin, of when the Angel of Death is going to come and get me, but when I’m in the bathtub I like to imagine the Angel of Death being like Angelina Jolie in that movie with Brad Pitt. They’re both assassins and she’s all like a dominatrix. Very sexy stuff.

In this painting I was thinking about that. Angelina Jolie is going to assassinate me and as she sneaks up behind me she sees my naked body. She’s attracted. The stream of water coming out of the faucet between my legs reminds her of a boner. Curious, she gets in the water with me and we go at it, but you never really know if it’s violence or passion, and then after we have wicked sex, I strangle her with the little chain from the bathtub plug and then I call Secret Service.

That’s what I was thinking when I made this painting.