When I finished outlining the ending of my new novel, I cried. I cried because I am a fragile, oversensitive creature who does things like cry at my own stories in outline form. I did this once before in college when I wrote the best short story I'll ever write.
I would like nothing more than to walk into work today, get fired, walk right out the door and finish these last three chapters.
(Thank you Juan for giving us Blind Melon's Change to listen to while we read this)
A long time ago I gave up on having New Year's Resolutions because I don't like disappointing myself. When I got to college I wanted to be somebody, when I graduated and moved to Chicago I wanted to be somebody else. This year was weird for me because I spent exactly six months of it struggling to be someone that somebody else what me to be and six months being exactly whom I wanted to be.
As a novelist I can make up an exact moment when this happened: one day Ben and I were at my DJ gig and a very nice girl came up and made a perfect song request. But I didn't have the record. I encouraged her to come back with another. She took a while. But then somewhere in the night she came back and made another request. Then another.
She came back the next week right on time and I decided right then that Jackie and I would be actual friends and maybe someday hang out in a place that wasn't a bar.
At the time Annie was working for a notorious poon-hound whose marriage was on the rocks. She was gone from friday to monday. Sometimes even going up thursdays and whooshing into my DJ gig on Tuesdays with her luggage and expect time from me right then. It's a painful but natural thing when people change. But expecting two people to change equally and willfully at the same is a disservice to both.
Jackie and I immediately merged our friends into one group. And these new friends never once asked me when we could move back to chicago or what the hell I was thinking about when I dressed myself like Jim Morrison, PhD that morning. They didn't hassle me about grad school or ask me just what the hell I'm going to do for a career when I finally write that new novel.
And you know what happened then? I started writing again. And I didn't--couldn't--stop. Free from the burden of pretending to be someone else, I could spend to rest of my time creating an honest character.
Annie eventually got fired by the insane poon-hound's crazy wife. Were this a year before I would have gone completely crazy, staying up at nights imagining that she had something to do with it, that maybe Jude Law wasn't the only one with a Mary Poppin's complex. But I didn't.
I spend all of my time creating stories where people who have never changed somehow find the will to do so on their own. That is what every single story in the entire world is about. The Annie that broke up with me in an accidentally hilarious way was not the same Annie I fell madly in love with and moved in with 3 weeks after meeting. It's sad that it had to end. But everything does.
A good friend of mine from high school moved in with me. He had just broken up with his girlfriend in Rome and was living with his parents, saving up to move to New York. Sometimes things happen in life that just feel so perfect at the time. I spent January-July living life like an Elvis Costello song, full of responsibility and honesty. I spent July-September living like an Elvis Presley song--full of emotion but somehow disingenuous, penned by someone else. Nick moved in October 1st and since then we have lived everyday like a Johnny Cash song--full of spirit, whiskey, honesty and trouble.
This has been the greatest year of my life and I wouldn't bother changing a minute of it, because I already have another year starting now.
Last night I went back to my old hometown for a drink with some friends. I was so happy because my life is in great order; I was still reeling from reading Laia's review. But then I became convinced that since I've maybe never been this happy in my life that I would die right now. I would never finish the novel. And even what I had could never amount to Billy Budd, Sailor
It was a dingy little post industrial bar that totally reminds me of a novel I wrote one time. In fact, if you read my novel or Laia's great review: it is the place where Liam breaks down to the bartender.
Scott Hampshire’s infinite persuasion skills talked me into getting a drink with him at the Fuse Box. Normally under these conditions I would abstain. I have this rare disease that pops up only when I drink. My tongue flares up as soon as I taste the alcohol and it won’t stop until I’ve called several ex girlfriends and told them how I feel about them. My phone has names organized to prevent this. Ex friends and girlfriends get listed as, for example, “X.Sherry Leworski.” This disease causes just enough mental disconfiguration to keep me from remembering where I hid the numbers. I also learned to keep my work friends and bosses hidden as in “W. Jane ala Accounting” so that I don’t call Jane from accounting at three in the morning just to thank her for giving me a ride that one time or ask her what she’s wearing. Many of these people confront my disease with tough love as though I needed to be quarantined until it passed over, like I’ve got scarlet fever or something. Truly a shame. Sometimes the only ex-relationships that work are those where the girl catches the disease from me. We’ll both go to the phone at the same time and while it’s ringing we’ll find someone on the other line. When in a committed relationship I find it handy to change that girls name to, for example, “+Sherry+” that way she sits on top of your phone list. That way when I have an attack late at night I don’t call someone else and do something stupid, thus changing a happy “+” into an pissed off “X.” This disease makes it impossible for me to keep friends named “Aaron” unless Aaron has the opposite reaction to alcohol and passes out in the front seat of his car. Anyway. The Fuse Box is a total man-hole. I can’t believe anyone has every met a girl there and fostered a happy relationship where the can even make it to “+” status. It looks like how a twelve year old boy would design the perfect basement. TVs on every wall play the local games, the big games, and classic games from days gone by. Wall to wall Astroturf carpeting, with the 50 yard line at the door and the end zone in the bathroom line. Three video games. In one you have two giant orange rifles and you can go head to head against other dudes in a game where you honestly hunt deer as they hop through a forest. You lose points for shooting a doe. In the second one you put in money to win hypothetical money playing video poker. There’s no jackpot, but on the final level you can play strip poker against pictures of strippers wearing paper doll clothes. One time Conor got thrown out for playing back. In the third game you drive a car through video recreations of various cities, with the goal in mind of racing through downtowns across the country. You can drive all sorts of things: school busses, hummers, race cars, Italian sportsters, etc. I’ll have to alert the Nobel Prize committee about the geniuses who put a game in a bar that tests if you’re okay to drive. You would never know that this American dream of a town has room for a place like this. And it doesn’t. You’ll find it hidden in the back parking lot of the post-fascist Italo-storefront of the giant Antonio’s Pizzaria, where an a-frame “A” marks the spot. In back the furtive vans of every moving company, plumber and landscaper roost for the night sometimes. I can’t imagine how many guys have gotten canned because they drove a work truck they shouldn’tve or left one back there overnight. The walls and the Astroturf smell like twenty years of missed passes. Automatic cat food machines sit on the edges of the bar, full of chex mix, waiting for gravity to refill the bowl as the next drunken hand swoops in for a pretzel. “I always go for the top,” Hampshire says as he lifts the lid and reaches in. “Fewer gross hands, but you don’t really get many peanuts this way.” I just think of Conor. His local. He must have spent every Friday/paycheck at this bar with his buddies. Everyone is Conor’s friend inside the bar. Young dudes, old guys, married couples who for some reason can’t buy their Amstel Lights in the grocery store. They go on an on with each other until Conor walks over and then they probably exchanged aphorisms about the nature of work and relationships. The kind of things you might learn if you went to a bait shop and studied all the bumperstickers. Even though they all agree that work sucks they have pride in their employment and regale each other with thrilling tales of roofing and three hundred square foot tarps and nail gun injuries. Conor has never built anything that works, but you will find him in the middle of them all discussing building codes and the high price of PVC pipe right along with them. He has that superpower that comes from drinking Rumplemintz and Budlights. Dad really started to put himself back together once Conor turned twenty-one. The two of them, on the barstools. Conor with the bottle and Dad next to him, pounding Sharp’s Non-Alcoholics. And Conor there with his parishioners joking that his Dad starts NA tomorrow. Non-alcoholics anonymous. “You can buy me a Heineken and a tequilla and I’ll forgive you for leaving me to die in an Idaho drive-in,” Hampshire smirks at his joke/the TV with subtitles. “Look, you’re not the one who had to deal with the bad stove all summer.” I still have some money left over from being offended by test advertising. I was saving up for a condo or an education or a new car or a big romantic vacation. But it’s been so long I forgot I was waiting. Some girl with nutrasweet-blonde hair and Lee Press-on Claws looks over to me and gives me the silent “one second wink” of busy bartenders and strippers. “Watch out for that girl, man. She swallows.” “I keep hearing that’s a good thing.” “No I mean she swallows men whole and spits them out. Charlene Cunningham. Those six guys at the bar are probably drinking away the pain from what she did to—Hi, Charlene! What’s going on, girl? I haven’t seen you in forever.” Hampshire does the two-faced about-face that I’ve never seen a grown man master before. “Liam!” Charlene screams past him and holds her claws over her mouth in disbelief. “Liam Boycott I haven’t seen you in years, remember me? Charlene from the Christian Science Preschool? What brings you back to town?” Hampshire leans over, “His brother is missing in Iraq.” Okay, as soon as I figure out something better to say, I’m going to have to make sure to spread it around. Charlene looks like she’s about to cry. And then she does. “When did this happen? Have you heard anything?” She really just collapses right there. And if they didn’t have five sports games going and another bartender on I wonder if anyone would notice. Through her teary mouth she shouts, “My cousin’s in the Navy and we’ll get those guys and make them pay!” Since it’s the thought that counts, I won’t worry about what aircraft carrier she thinks he’ll plow up to Baghdad. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.” “He was just such a good guy. Why’d it have to be someone like him, you know?” She shouts over the jukebox. “Always coming in here, smiling. Nice to everyone. Good tipper. Always full of stories and jokes.” It hits me, maybe for the first time right then. Conor might never come home. I didn’t even get to say goodbye when he left for Iraq. Now I may never know what happened to him. Ever. With Charlene crying it just all makes sense to me too fast. And before I know it tears start running down my chin. “I miss him so much,” I say to Charlene. “I can’t believe it sometimes. I mean, Why? Why did it have to be my brother?” She leans over the bar to give me a big soggy hug. And thank God, because my face is red and I don’t know these people well enough to sob. I hide my tears in the blonde mane that still smells like shampoos. Everyone at the bar freezes with their lips halfway to the bottleneck, staring. Of course it doesn’t help that Charlene’s blue thong triangle sticks halfway out of her pants when she leans over. “Let’s think positive, Liam! They’re going to find him and bring him home. Cheer up. Lemme buy you and your friend a drink, okay? What’ll it be?” “I’ll have a Heineken and a shot of Patron,” Hampshire swoops in on Conor’s wake as if he were just waiting in line. “You?” “Uhm, an Anchor Steam and a Bulleit Bourbon—no!” I stop her as she leans over the beer fridge. “No, I want to drink to my brother. Give me a Bud light and a shot of Rumplemintz.” She pulls three glasses out of some green colored water in the tepid sink and lines them up on the rail. Charlene grabs the one closest to her and raises it with us. “Okay boys, this one’s for Peter,” she turns to the boys on the bar. “Raise it up! This one’s for Peter!” She presses her lips to the glass and leaves a lipstick remark behind as she slams it down on the bar, upside down. “Woo!” I let it go because she definitely suffers some kind of cirrhosis of the brain. But Hampshire, journalist of record, leans right in and edits her sentence before he even gives the shot glass back. “It’s Conor,” Hampshire points a lazy finger at Charlene. “Nice to meet you, Conor,” Charlene shakes his outstretched pointer finger. “Charlene.” “No, I mean his brother’s name is Conor.” “Then why have we always called him Liam?” “No, Liam’s brother’s name is Conor. No Peter.” Charlene turns to me as if I might have anything to add. “You’re Peter Boycott’s older brother, right?” “No, sorry. I’m Conor Boycott’s younger brother. Peter Boycott is just some kid we went to Sunday school with. No relation. Same Irish last name. What are the odds, huh?” “So Peter’s okay? He’s alive?” “As far as I know.” “Oh, thank god,” Charlene does that lower eyelid-squeegee thing to protect her makeup. “I just saw him, like, yesterday.”
Anyway last night I got a text from Brandon Flowers "Sorry about the Melville thing. Meet me at St. J's l8r and we'll chat." I knew he went shopping today and he wanted me to stand in the goddam bathroom at the bar with him while he tried on his new outfits. Queen. But he did mention earlier that he found me the perfect Christmas gift. Which is nice, for a Mormon.
So I go to the bar and I meet up with Laia and the first things she says is "You've got mail." Which I know to mean that she emailed her review of the first 15 chapters of my novel. I freaked out! I couldn't wait to read it! I ran out the door, skipped out on my tab and bumped into Brandon on his way in. Like, really bumped into him. He was juggling a huge garment bag and a red-wrapped package fell from his hands. It hit the sidewalk with a loud, loud shatter.
Right as I'm about to mutter and apology--knowing that as an artist/asshole he understands how exciting it is to read about yourself--he just shouts. "Great! Fucken great! I brought this all the way from Paris for you! Merry fucking Chistmas!"
All I could think to say was: "Your Christmas song is great. I'm really honestly into it. I can't talk now. I'm sorry."
He looked like he was going to cry. And he did. His eyes welled up, "D-do you really mean it?"
It may have been a perfect day to read, kinda grey, kinda gloomy and a little bit rainy, (ok, maybe MY idea of a perfect day to read) but I got into it right away. (I'm gonna try to write this objectively and not say things that'll make me sound like a goddam idiot and will make you think that I'm just saying good things because you're my friend or whatever, because i wouldn't..) (did I mention Im stoned whilst writing this?) Anyways, so I got into it right away. I was really excited that your Liam reminded me of my Liam very little, so I could root for him. What can I say, kid, I really loved it. It's funny in the way that real life is funny when you think about it all the time. It's got a really nice beat, the way it changes from perspective, and his subconscious and the present and the past and everything else. It's smart. It made me smile and laugh and say OMG!,but the true measure of "reader response" (see how I'm making this objective and professional?) was the part where Liam's at the bar and breaks down to the bartender. I mean, in the span of like three paragraphs I went from tears welling up in my eyes to fucking laughing heartily about what happened right after. How often does that happen? The answer is almost never. I loved your way of describing thesuburban semi-bleakness that surrounded him (not that it was bleak before, but now it is, and you get what I mean). So I guess that in terms of creating this environment and the characters, you nailed it and I can totally imagine the kinds of people that inhabit this Connecticut of yours.
As for the plot, I really wanted to find out a bit more about Conor, and his relationship with Liam. I also thought that Hampshire was going to totally be the key to unlock mysteries (not in a, "Well, he'll surely know where the brother is! And he'll use his journalist skills to find the mom after all these years! Then they'll go on Oprah! They'll get a car!" cause I'm not expecting it to have a(n) entirely) happy ending where all the problems get solved and everyone lives happily ever after because that's not the way that real life is, and even though there's a slightly fantastic side to it, I think it's about real life. I'd be hella disappointed if everyone had babies at the end and ate a big thanksgiving turkey together) but it seemed like he was gonna have some information to help Liam put two and two together or something. And of course I wanted to know more about Naomi and Liam together, because their coming together was so organic in a way, that you just know they'd get along great and something very compelling would come out of it, like one of those "Top 5 Breakup" scenes in High Fidelity but not the same at all, also because it wouldn't be about breakups. (Ew, was that an insensitive thing to do? Bring up another book or something? Anyways, I only saw the movie, never read the book, so if you want you can dismiss my previous statement) but in any case, you should know what I meant, which would make the previous parentheses party completely moot. The Cara character was cool even if their interactions were a little confusing and I see them as just constantly bickering with each other, but you know at the end its not that bad (which is probably why I LOVED the last chapter you sent me, because it had everything I was left wanting after finishing it the first time). The sexy scene was great, not cheesy or porn-y just cool and sensual and intimate and like the memorable times in real life. (Does it bother you that I keep saying real life? It's just the best way to describe it, not real life in a humdrum kind of way, just, R E A L.) I loved the bit about their code, and the whole "why-you-say-someone else's-name-when-they're-right-there-thing." It made me smile and sigh and think of lovers past, which was nice. (kind of sort of)
Furthermore, inspired by that section of the Best American Non-Required Reading book that was all about the best first lines of a book or whatever, I took some time to look at the first line as its own entity and you know what? It's a great first line. I'd definitely be curious about the story if I was handed just that as a teaser. The first sentence tells a little story and also gives a hint of who Liam is, away; I mean, who'd say something like that? I immediately knew that I would like him upon reading it.
And now a bunch of random thoughts: 1) I really like the name Sherry Leworski. I can imagine her as that perfect girl in high school, but not like a Heather. Sometimes I hear Steve Perry in the background singing "Oh Sherrie" when she comes in, but that's a good thing too, I think (and not at all your fault). 2) We never found out what the crap Alan wanted with Liam (Although when I read it the second time, I thought that maybe whatever that thing Alan said when Liam opened the door to which Liam responded "sorry your band broke up" or whatever, was actually something Iraq related that had to do with Conor? which would be freaking awesome.) 3) The Andes don't reach Brazil, (they're on the Western part of South America) so they can't have that kind of wood at the coffee shop (unless you're saying it making fun of it, like "Look at these retards and their Andean wood that isn't even fucking real in which case you might want to make that a bit more clear). 4) Not that I need Liam and "Her's" entire relationship retold, but a bit more background about that would be awesome. 5) Professional Demographic? FUCKING LOVE THAT CONCEPT!
In general, you have a really really good shell to build on. I mean, it's not even finished, but I fell a bit in love with it nonetheless. I don't know if you've been writing this in order or if you just have the basic plot line laid out and fill in the blanks when you feel like it, but it seems like there's a lot of great possible developments that don't end up er.. developing. There were tons of memorable lines that I won't list here or anything, but that I did underline and mark in there with a green Prismacolor pencil but not a red pen. But I can show you my (haha, yes, MY copy) copy of the manuscript if you want to see what all that little stuff was. (And also, fucking LOVED the binding/cover!)
It really is great Brendan, I want to read the rest and know what happens to everyone and if today is any indication, all the kids in it, stayed in my mind with me and I started thinking about them outside of the book situation, which could be a little weird, I guess, but it was just oddly comfortable.
Also, you already know that I have a problem with prepositions but I also have a problem with run-on sentences, I'm too shizo for regular ones and I like the way the run-on ones sound better. I hope this didn't drive you totally crazy. It was an honor to have you let me read it, thank you.
For reading this far--and to apologize to Brandon and also to make nice with Techno music now that I'm floored and full of Christmas cheer--here is a fantastic remix that nicely complements the song, one which a DJ might actually prefer fading across to.
Today you will become the first person to read my new novel. In fact, I haven't even read it yet. I've written it once. But I haven't even spell checked it.
You have until Christmas eve to send me your cadid evaluation of this early draft. Of course we understand that there are characters who will disappear for no reason. There are plot lines that I've given up on or may continue with later. There are probably more than one person who start off being called "Rick" and end up as "Steve."
There are two sexy-ish scenes which I think are less successful than the sexy scenes in my last novel. But they can't all be winners.
Your evaluation will be posted here Christmas morning.
My new novel is too good for me. And in a way I find myself wondering what it's doing with me in the first place. Right now I'm wondering if this whole project will wake up one morning and wonder what it's doing in my apartment.
It is possible that we are meant for each other, but I can't help questioning it.
Earlier today I got a completely unsolicited email from a lingerie designer who just wanted to tell me that she read the one published chapter and loved it. She said she thought it was funny in a clever and subtle way and that she :actually laughed out loud more than once." I would just like to say that her comments made me very happy, and that her lingerie line is radically classic. Her detail work is amazing and if I only had breasts of my own I would wear nothing but these garments. They do not make me laugh out loud.
Liam, the narrator, has a very similar insecurity. I still don't know if it's from his mother running out on the family when he was 11 or from his first bad break up. Neither does he:
Even when I left to find mom I thought I'd come back. I thought I would drive home like a champion hunter with my mother bound at the wrist and ankles, tied to the hood of the car.
I would move to this little college town in Massachusetts where the love of my young life would let her brain re-incubate for four years of Pre-Lawyer classes and I would occasionally visit my loving family, forty-five minutes away in Connecticut. But then—and I still don’t know how this happened—somehow this little over-achiever decided that she should go off to college all by herself. My little heart wrapped itself into the world’s smallest ball of twine. That was also the day that I learned that when girls say they need some “alone time” they might forget to add “with someone else.”
Anyway, that’s one pizza I wish I hadn’t delivered.
Young, blossoming, hundred-and-ten-percenter Sherry Leworski. Beautiful, sweet, polite girl. The kind who introduces herself on every phone call. A girl who baked cookies for all of her teachers’ birthdays. Who wrote her college entrance essay about why her best friend is the best. That girl. That girl right there. In the corner of some parents-out-of-town party, giving some other guy a hundred-and-ten-percent.
Oh, Sherry. Three pizza places in town and your over-achieving, college-sweatshirt wearing resume-conscious friends had to call mine. I don’t blame you. By the looks of what I saw, you were far too busy to even know they even ordered pizza.
Like a child’s balloon at the carnival, I was let go. By Sherry first, but by everyone else stood by. Maybe it was an accident, but there’s only so long you can hold on to something tugging at your wrist. And for the first few seconds maybe someone tried to catch me, swiping at my string. People standing by could only watch as I floated above their heads, one foot out of reach. Someone could have saved me. For one full minute everyone stared at my slow, gracious flight. Grey sky, red balloon. Total strangers caught sight of it leaving and paused just to watch me go. Even Alan, the twenty-one year old junior class drop-out stopped strangling kittens for a moment to watch. Because off in the sky, programmed only to fly, it could be any one of us. Sherry, the child who let me go in the first place, wailed as if this logical thing wouldn’t happen if she didn’t want it to. But I floated up and away. And the total strangers warned each other not to mess with balloon strings. As I shrank into the sky and blew out west with a seabreeze, they went back to their melting ice cream cones and dialing new cell phones.
Me? I soared higher and higher, until the people in the carnival looked like one big spreading disease. A cool wind took me and—if you could find the right song—my red balloon would’ve made a great coke commercial. But as I neared the pacific the pressure got to me. My thin skin leaked and I landed in the ocean, where I clogged the blow-hole of some near-extinct whale. It beached itself and tried to exhale me. But with its near-extinct lungs it could only sit there in front of bewildered tourists and people who love the Discovery Channel, not blowing me out but sounding more like a child imitating an elephant. And the local authorities could think of no solution but dynamite—I’m not making this up. Ask the Internet. As its lungs exploded I was shot out with a whoopee-cushion’s zeal, onto the beach at the edge of a desert.
Oh, Sherry Leworski. Tie the next one around your wrist.
It's been very difficult getting any writing done these days, what with all the research I have left for my next novel. I haven't planned it out yet but it better be about young people and their whiskey-fueled nights of drinking, dancing, fighting and hickies. Otherwise I'm going to have a huge problem with my taxes.
Brandon Flowers and I were blowing lines out of my belt buckle on the Lower East Side last night after I got home from Thanksgiving. "It's been so long" he smiled. "Love that tie."
"It's actually a cheap headband for little girls. I thought about buying you one, but they only came in blue. It's strange how polka dots are so hot right now for girls and they don't make anything for guys."
"Tell me about it," he said, as he licked his credit card clean of blow. "And the stuff I do get from photoshoots they keep under real tight lock and key." He cleaned the rest of the coke off the toilet with his face and when he came up-understandably--he had blow all in his mustache.
Since I'd already snorted cables of this shit all night I thought this was really funny. But Flowers got all upset with me. He and I are like this, alot. We used to go shopping together and hang out, but we just got too close. If he's in town and I'm not working, maybe we hang out. Tonight was fine because it was thanksgiving and we wanted to carve some Wild Turkey.
"Stop laughing at my mustache all the time," he cried.
"C'mon, I can't!" I said. "Some Bolivian mule shoved that up her ass to get it in the country and now look at you: You've got Snow White's dirty sanchez!"
"Stop laughing at my mustache. Yer just jealous 'cause you can't grow one."
"That must be it, Brandon. You've fucken figured it out!" I can't stop laughing.
"I guess so, Brendan."
"We said no mustaches."
"What?"
"Two years ago. Beauty Bar. When we first met you said you couldn't imagine going around with a Brazillian in the middle of your face."
"Yeah, well. Remember when you were Vegan? I don't rub that in your face everytime you wanna get a burger."
It really pisses me of when Brandon Flowers belittles me like that in a public men's room, "Fuck yourself. That's not the same thing at all, okay? At least when I started eating meat I didn't make half my band eat meat too. Look, you've got Ronnie and Dave growing 'staches faster that a menopausal guidance counselor. Is Dave Keuning the only one whose contract gives him control over his body hair?"
What he said next was unforgivable. I barely want to repeat it, really. "At least I have a fucking band. What are you gonna do? Make up characters for another failed novel and grow mustaches on them?"
That was it. Maybe it was the blow. But I flipped my belt buckle over, put it back on, and snowed the remains of Brandon's flour on the floor of the men's room. And I left him to lick it off the floor.
In my new novel, the mafia-drenched coffee shops of Hartford are being run out by a chain of Brazilian specialty coffee shops. These shops for some reason make you choose your coffee size in Brazilian. My main character is home visiting during a family crisis and is unemployed, in love with a girl he met in a laundromat, and keeps getting in fights with his father. The only places open to retreat to are these coffee shops. So whenever I have trouble moving a scene along, I spill hot coffee on my main character's crotch:
If the Southend Italians wanted anything to do with me, then I would run straight back to California and change my name. The only thing more dangerous than the Boston and Brooklyn Mafias is their branch organization in Hartford that never sees any action, but keeps returning Pacino movies a week late.
I order my pequeno café da manhã and have a seat on the authentic furniture of the Brazilian Andes. Somebody took the good sections of the newspaper, leaving me the real estate listings and sports section. My coffee comes out way too hot and I might have just left right then, but I wanted to take the lid off and try and enjoy something for once.
But in wrestling the tight plastic safety lid off the top I accidentally squeeze the sides of the paper cup and spill hot coffee all over my lap. Fuck! Ah! Fuck! When you see steam rise off your crotch at 7:30 AM then you know nothing can get much worse in your day.
I curse my way to the napkin dispenser, spilling little drops of coffee on the floor all the way there. All the way over to Maureen.
There she stands. Tall and gorgeous with her big, wide-set eyes scanning over the room. As much as I’ve wondered when I would see Maureen again, after the Laundromat thing, I kind of wish I could reschedule it for a time when I didn’t have a crotch full of coffee.
I think for a second that I could wait and find her later but I don’t know where her parents live or how to find her. She probably has some hot shot job in Hartford now and comes in here so goddam early to beat the traffic. Oh, Maureen. “Maureen!” the words leap from my mouth. I really gotta get that checked out.
Her big eyes search the room and I hide my face in the sugar bowls, feigning confusion between Raw Cane and Splenda.
“Liam? Liam what are you doing here so early in the morning?”
“I, uh, I heard the coffee is best right at 7:30. Some kind of Brazilian thing. And the one at home doesn’t open until…uh, eight. So. Here I am. For the coffee. The really, really good coffee. Before I go off to…work…to work out. Weight lift. I’m lifting weights today. Now. Soon.” Please. Please stop talking. “I’m glad I saw you again.” Stop it! Stop it!
“This is weird how we keep running into eachother.”
“We should, uhm. Y’know we should do it on purpose before I leave. Sometime. Meet. Meet up on purpose,” Oh man. This sounds like a date. I hate dates. How can I make it seem more friendly? “For coffee. Sometime.”
“Does it have to be 7:30 AM?”
“No. As long as you’ve had it once. Brazilian style.”
“You okay over there?” she points to the mound of coffee stained napkins I have on my crotch.
“I don’t really want to talk about it. It’s kind of personal.”
“I can see that.”
“I have this rare disease that makes it difficult to hold hot objects without spilling them on my crotch. Science is working on a cure. It was in the paper today.”
I would like to take it further, but there's only so much coffee you can spill on someone's crotch. There had to be a rule about that. This is why I need to stop writing with union characters.
Whenever I need to have a really honest conversation with someone I don't normally talk to, I find it helpful to call that person at three in the morning. Right now in my novel there are two characters who have the lucky problem of trying not to fall in love with eachother. There is only one person I know who is anything of an expert on this subject. I don't have her number in my phone because her name is early in the alphabet.
I still suffer from Vonnegut's Syndrome. It's a rare allergic reaction my tongue has to alcohol which makes me call up people in the middle of the night.
Since I knew her long ago I have her number mostly memorized. I couldn't say it out loud, but somehow my hand remembers which keys to press. That's what I thought, anyway, before I rang a wrong number. Luckily I didn't leave a message because the girl's voicemail message seemed nice. A girl named Jamie.
Half an hour later I got a call. "Why'd you just call my girlfriend?"
"Who the hell is this?"
"You called my girlfriend's phone half an hour ago. I'd like to know why you called my girlfriend."
This is the point where healthy sane people would explain the confusion. Alcohol. Wrong number. Could've happened to anyone. But keep in mind, I'm trying to work on a scene of dramatic work. So I said. "Why don't you ask Jamie about it."
"How do you know Jamie? You fuck my girl?"
"Is that what you think?" I asked him. In the background I heard a small party of people. Who is is, Michael? one of them asks.
"Who the fuck is this?"
"Jamie was right about you, Michael." I said. "You never listen. Why don't you ask Jamie about this, huh? Why do you have to bother me in the middle of the night?"
"How do you know my name? Jamie says she doesn't know you."
"So then why are you calling me?" Silence. "You don't believe her. Do you? What is a relationship without trust, Michael?"
"You fuck my girl?"
"Why are you so fixated on this? Jamie was right about you. You're such a fucken psycho sometimes."
"Who the fuck is this?"
"Language. Please, there's no need to curse at me."
"You just fucken swore at me. You called me a fucken psycho."
"Don't put words in my mouth, Michael. Okay? Just let it go. Life is too short to worry about this. Some people have no one, you know."
"Why are you calling me?"
"You called me Michael. It's late. I wish you would just leave me alone. Say hi to Jamie for me, okay? I'll see you on Tuesday."
"What? What happens Tuesday?"
"Michael. Jamie should have told you this. As a rule I don't hang up on people. Please just say good night."
The main character of my new novel has a strange disease that I cannot in any way relate to whatsoever, not at all.
I have this rare disease that pops up only when I drink. My tongue flares up as soon as I taste the alcohol and it won’t stop until I’ve called several ex girlfriends and told them how I feel about them. My phone has names organized to prevent this. Ex friends and girlfriends get listed as, for example, “X.Sherry Leworski.” This disease causes just enough mental disconfiguration to keep me from remembering where I hid the numbers. I also learned to keep my work friends and bosses hidden as in “W. Jane ala Accounting” so that I don’t call Jane from accounting at three in the morning just to thank her for giving me a ride that one time or ask her what she’s wearing. Many of these people confront my disease with tough love as though I needed to be quarantined until it passed over, like I’ve got scarlet fever or something. Truly a shame. Sometimes the only ex-relationships that work are those where the girl catches the disease from me. We’ll both go to the phone at the same time and while it’s ringing we’ll find someone on the other line. When in a committed relationship I find it handy to change that girls name to, for example, “+Sherry+” that way she sits on top of your phone list. That way when I have an attack late at night I don’t call someone else and do something stupid, thus changing a happy “+” into an pissed off “X.” This disease makes it impossible for me to keep friends named “Aaron” unless Aaron has the opposite reaction to alcohol and passes out in the front seat of his car.
Because if I had that problem--what with this awesome story Ben wrote about my past love--I would have crawled around my apartment, devoid of furniture now that Annie left and called the girl at 3 in the morning.
For example, these are the unedited first words of my new novel:
Let me know if I even turned the stove off. Probably not. I just left. Gone as fast as I came. The little apartment with the walls of canned fighting and creaky bedsprings that were rhythmic, disembodied. Nothing could have kept me there for one more minute. In a way it felt like even the walls were cheating on me, waiting for me to walk out for a minute so that another could walk in and redecorate. The bathroom stayed innocent as it was tiled in white with everything permanent except the towels on the rack and the sample body washes lining the top rack. But my sheets came off, exposing the pale, bare flower design like some Italian landlady’s nightgown. Even the lamp that had stayed up late with me all those nights failed me today as it burned out, leaving me to paw under the bed in the dim, windowless room for abandoned quarters and magazines. The apartment needed to move on, to forget about me, to wake up the next day without the smell of defeat, regret, and missed chances. I opened up all of the windows and left the oscillating fan on the kitchen table, swaying back and forth and smiling in the studio while no one’s looking—like Stevie Wonder when everyone else breaks for lunch.
My landlord thinks the cleaning lady is a prostitute that I hire when Annie is out of town. It doesn't help at all that we poached this woman from a cleaning service. She came one day and when we found out she only got $27 out of what we paid the service we had her come in on her day off. Thus sunday mornings start off with alot of banging around and urban radio blaring and end with me walking out a young, nubile Jamaican woman and handing her a wad of cash. "That was terrific," I said today as my landlord opened his door.
Having her around is great because no matter how hard novel writing gets, I'm not just going to squat down and clean the baseboards and corners. Plus I almost never get to listen to Urban Radio. Annie is the kind of person that might notice that the vegetable drawer is growing mushrooms. But since we have this place together it somehow becomes half my responsibility.
Since this is a wholly unecessary and yuppie thing to do I can't ever complain about it. If she were my weekly prostitue I wouldn't exactly go into work later, grouchy, tired and say, "Leave me alone today boss. My Paypal came over at ten of eight this morning, forgot her Indian hairbraids wig, and didn't even make the bed when we finished."
She did however clean the counter while my cellphone was charging on it. If you call me later and I start screaming into the phone ("HUH? SPEAK UP.") it's because she Mr. Cleaned the speaker and I'm too embarassed to tell her. Instead I'll just pretend that everyone I know is underwater.
The main character of my new novel breaks up with his girlfriend, moves back home while his brother turns up missing in Iraq, and then does his laundry:
I go to a washer in the corner where no one will see me. I can’t believe the clothes I decided I couldn’t live without. My three nice button down shirts that I never wore, one pair of jeans, seven tattered old band t-shirts, a sweater I hate but only wore because She bought it for me and She only seemed to love me when She could dress me up like the youngest brother of four sisters or like the one errant male doll in a pile of nipple-less, plastic beauty queens. It seemed that every week she came home from the store with clothes for another man or for some kind of sex change she had planned on in the future. These clothes never fit me in anyway and the colors could not look worse on my body. When you wear little more than jeans, black t-shirts and the occasional sweatshirt it comes off as more than a little weird when you get crammed into a flowered shirt whose neck buttons will never meet but whose shoulders end inches later than yours. As if you might want to leave the option of shoulder pads. Like doll clothes and prom tuxedos they were only meant to match the Her outfit. Sure some of them looked fine and sensible and cost much more that I was ever willing to spend, even when I did have a job. Sweet girl, sure. She just wanted us to be as irrevocably happy as those matching plastic dolls with their pink dream house and their permanent smiles. I thought that maybe being the doll would be like being that one lucky male doll at the bottom of a pile of leggy, nude girl dolls. But then one day I walked into the bathroom and saw our his ‘n hers towels and our three-blade razors and the parade of man perfumes in height order and our pink bathmat and potpourri chips. And when I looked down I found nothing but a mannequin’s smooth, rubber leg joint where my equipment once hung.
This is the airport in Kentucky that I'm flying into tomorrow:
Sun Aug 27, 7:58 PM ET LEXINGTON, Kentucky (Reuters) - A Comair jet crashed and burned in a Kentucky pasture on Sunday after a failed takeoff on a short runway, killing all but one of the 50 people aboard, authorities said.
"Ground scars" at the end of the shorter runway, a smashed perimeter fence and debris from the jet spread out over hundreds of feet (meters) indicated the plane's trajectory was from the shorter runway, NTSB investigator Debbie Hersman said.
Which means it's time to remind everyone that my two novels are actually sequels and I'm working on a trilogy. If I burn and die, coated in bluegrass jet gass, please give me the John Kennedy Toole treatment. Oh, and someone has to finish the second novel for me (outline is on my kitchen table) and figure out what the third would be.
Holy shit! I wrote a novel about this fictional thing happening and then it did!
I-95 South Reopens After Tomahawk Missile Accident
NEW YORK (WCBS-AM) -- A Tomahawk Cruise Missile being transported south on I-95 this morning ended up in the middle of the highway near the Bronx.
The missile was being shipped from Rhode Island to a Virginia naval installation when the truck broke down. The truck carrying the missile was then rear ended by another tractor trailer, sending the missile out onto the highway in its protective case.
Tomorrow I'm going to write a novel about a bartender who writes novels that no one ever gets to read until one day he makes millions, buys a dive bar, has Jared Leto play him in the Ray of his life and gets a boat. Thank you Sam, for telling me about this.
This weekend I'm busy visiting my parents and secretly researching a new novel that will center around a former refugee from Connecticut who is forced to return home. My brother just walked in and introduced me to a great song that embodies the spirit that I'm hoping to achieve:
Jesus H Christ Band - Connecticut is for Fucking We live in the dullest state Package stores all close at eight Malls are full of optometrists And restaurants we hate Swimming across Lake Quassapaug Stealing makeup, catching frogs Cutting our feet on broken bottles As we wade in the Shepaug It’s true for horses, cows and dogs…
Connecticut’s for fucking That’s all there is to do. I love to listen to classic rock and have sex with you.
Doing hole shots at the mall Writing Ozzy on a wall Watch the corn get tall There’s nothing else to do at all.
Goin’ where we always go Doin’ what we always do Waitin’ to turn into the people We are bound to turn into. What else do other people do?
Connecticut’s for fucking It’s the Nutmeg state If we can’t afford to buy antiques then we just copulate
Connecticut’s for fucking And Massachusetts too I want to climb up the sleepy giant and have sex with you.
Up in Fairfield In Old Lyme We’re just fucking all the time. Out in Derby Down in Kent We’re all busy getting bent In the Constitution State.
Connecticut’s for fucking While we’re waiting to Turn into the people everyone here turns into.
Connecticut’s for fucking. There’s nothing else to do. I wanna listen to classic rock and have sex with you.
We all love to fuck in Connecticut. We’re all getting fucked in Connecticut. Let’s fuck!
On Monday I split a rather cosmic brownie with friends, drank at Coney Island all day* and got home at 4 in the morning. There's only so many more days I can have like this and still pretend it's research for another novel.
This day already has the poor signs of another wasted day off. Getting home at 4:30 in the morning on a sunday night and waking up at eleven to a grocery starved house and a girlfriend who is out of town means I will likely spend most of my day thinking of weblog* posts and rereading magazines. There's another novel in my head and I think it's going to be fantastic.
But the thought of it maybe not being full-on fantastic keeps lassoing the dialogue and the characters further into my head, duct taping their mouths shut and blaring house music from cell phone speakers in a sweaty room where they'll hope for release but wish they had shaved that day so that it won't hurt when the duct tape comes off.
*The official blogger spellcheck does not recognize the word "weblog."
This is the shelf where I keep all my failed manuscripts. Each one deals with the same ideas, but they have different character names and plot lines.
Tonight I got a rejection letter so bad that I don't know if this shelf will get any more full. It was from a woman who used to want to be my agent. While that fact hasn't changed, she did decide that this isn't the novel that she wants to represent.
I loved that novel and I love those characters. Like loving a girl with a broken nose or like a single soul inhabiting two bodies or whatever else was in my Valentines day eVites. This novel came to me as something natural, irrational, and fundamental--not unlike the number pi.
And yet--like a break up I've been dreading--I completely agree with every one of her reasons.
As for the plot, I really wanted to find out a bit more about Conor, and his relationship with Liam. I also thought that Hampshire was going to totally be the key to unlock mysteries (not in a, "Well, he'll surely know where the brother is! And he'll use his journalist skills to find the mom after all these years! Then they'll go on Oprah! They'll get a car!" cause I'm not expecting it to have a(n)
