Black Wax

About the Book

    Written as a murder confession from a jail cell, Black Wax is a comedic trip through the life of one Alexander Wokowski, in the hopes that the detective reading his statement might, in coming to know him, have mercy on him.  It is a confession full of painful childhood memories, adolescent discoveries of a sexual frankness in the same vein as Portnoy’s Complaint and Fear of Flying, and twenty-something urban hours in dingy bars, drug-dusted clubs and underground parties.

    The part of his story which has landed Alex in a jail cell begins when he moves from western Massachusetts to Philadelphia, to live with his cousin Nehemiah, who draws bizarre, futuristic comic books and nurtures a bad habit of watching the Catholic girls in the school across the street through a pair of high power binoculars.  A skilled trumpet player, Alex finds work as a jazz musician and - amidst the afforementioned bars, clubs and parties of bohemian Philly - goes through the tortuous and liberating experiences of modern dating in one’s twenties.  But it isn’t until he goes to a psychiatrist - after being robbed, knifed and having a subsequent breakdown - that he meets Madeleine, who will both obsess him and be his downfall.

    She is a strange, complex woman, full of diverse moods he only later learns are the product of her having Multiple Personality Disorder, brought on by her father’s sexual abuse of her when she was a child.  To complicate matters, Madeleine is bisexual and is also carrying on an intense, dark relationship with another woman, Sabrina, who might become violent if she were to find out about the two of them.  Through different scenes, we see that Madeline’s disorder is getting worse, and that one of her personalities, full of hatred and violence, is growing more powerful.

    What results is an ending including a near-death experience, a possibly accidental murder, 1.4 million in inheritance money, and a climactic scene involving two guns, two dead bodies, and one very confused hero.

    Part coming-of-age story, part thriller, part erotic meditation on love, lust and modern relationships, part spiritual parable, Black Wax is a literary story told in a personal, off-beat, and humorous style.

About the Author

Mr. Watson just turned thirty and is tired of working as a barrista making $7.00/hr. Despite the fact that he attended four schools (one of them a community college) and never graduated, never got published in the New Yorker, and has never even read The Brother’s Karamazov, he hopes you will be merciful and read his book anyway. He lives in Portland, Oregon, the land of coffee, where barristas are very common and boring, and he asks that you will help enable him to appear more interesting by reading his book and talking about it to your hairdresser, lover, and cabdriver.