Home Is Where Your
Fictional Persona Is

As the Lascar noted last issue, I've been thoroughly involved with changing my domicile in the past month. And while I didn't fall in love with the new house during the buying process, as our realtor kept wanting me to do, I am definitely infatuated now. I drive home from work beaming. "I love this town. I love these trees. I love this house. I love the mental health facility next door."

Life is good. The odd thing, however, is that during the traditional process of moving from one house to another, I found myself homeless. There was a choice of two places to spend the night for a time, but neither of them was home. So I found myself wandering home in a different fashion.

Sherlockians have always called 221B Baker Street home in many ways. It's a place as familiar as any we can touch, and we've all spent many an evening there, visiting our friends Holmes and Watson. But when you come right down to it, all we do is visit. Holmes and Watson are the ones who live there. They're cordial enough, always letting you hang around, never yawning and looking at their watches to give you a not-so-subtle clue it's time to leave. But they don't really have a guest room, and they rarely invite anyone to sleep on their couch as they did Inspector Lestrade in SIXN.

And then there are those criminal relics in the butter dish, the papers all over the floor every other time you visit, and that infernal tobacco smoke. We dwellers of the 1990s are becoming less and less accustomed to it. With no disrespect to Mrs. Hudson, 221B Baker Street is a nice place to visit, but you really wouldn't want to live there.

So years ago, I came up with an alternative. The building which housed Holmes's old rooms on Montague Street had vacant rooms in it. Holmes had moved out a long time before. The only downside was that a bar had been established on the main floor of the building after aregrettable incident with a fellow named Von Bork. The location was so perfect, however, that I couldn't pass up leasing the upstairs rooms, regardless of the noise. In fact, I've always been a firm believer in the thought that joining them is as good as beating them. So the upstairs rooms in that building on Montague Street became the meeting rooms of The Montague Street Incorrigibles, a Sherlockian society like no other. Now the proprietor of the bar complains about the noise.

During my homeless phase last month I suddenly found myself back in Montague Street with the Incorrigibles. Having a place to go during the transition made things a lot easier on my packed-and-unpacked psyche, and I vowed to get there more often. Assembling the Incorrigibles for a meeting very of ten is a task, so the proprietor of the bar downstairs and regular patron Tina Rhea gave me an idea. Why not open the bar up to Sherlockians?

Surely, somebody else occasionally has the urge to get fictional and walk Victorian London with Holmes, Watson, and the cast. As any Incorrigible will tell you, the bar on Montague Street, The Dangling Prussian, is a very Victorian place. It's always 1895 there (when it isn't 1888). Martha Hudson has served dinner there. Sebastian Moran once took a pot-shot at Wally Conger there, and later chased the editor of The Baker Street Journal and his wife out of a dumbwaiter (they had gorilla suits on, but that's another story). You can live in Victorian London at The Dangling Prussian, and I just don't mean take up residence.

I've been getting fictional at the Prussian for years and bringing others along. Now we're going to give everybody else a chance to get fictional with a Dangling Prussian APA (Amateur Press Association). Confused? Of course you are. Interested? Guidelines are being drafted even as we speak, so you can get the jump on the rest of the world by letting me know if you'd like a copy of said guidelines. If you've ever wanted to write pastichery, but wanted to write as yourself, not Watson; if you've ever wanted to check out Violet Hunter's freckles for yourself; if you're just as wacko as the guy who writes this column and want to let it out-this is your big chance.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, August 1991)