What follows are five chapters taken from the first act of my first novel.
Seasons
The sky was blue when they met and it was a warm day in early Autumn when they met and they were young when they met and they smiled and they laughed and they joked when they met and they both felt a certain something about one another that would come to be fortuitous in its own way when they met. She took her shoes off and he stood distant as she ran her hands through the grass in little revolutions, it still emerald (not yet gold), and he acted distracted, but he was held rapt, not quite processing, looking into a crystalline chandelier slightly drunk off champagne.
The Autumn winds fell like rain and the leaves, they gold and pink and the shade of old faded Polaroid prints taken just as the sun was setting, tinkling locks of light, glimmering off the surface of a pond once upon a carefree summer afternoon, flitting in between the leaves, illuminated (not golden hour but neon, ours).
Once she was young as all we once were young but now she is gone as someday all we shall now be gone and once she lived as we all once live and once she was not an idea as once we all were not an idea but for a while she was, and for most of the while she was she was his most important thing (as most of us? Or perhaps not.) and for most of the while she was he was her most important thing (as none of us? Or perhaps not.). The dream of the seaside in the summertime when she was small. A path through trees with dying leaves falling as her body breaks down. Moments, all moments, no arc, just moments, no shortage of moments, but what the totality of the pastiche?
Pastiche
And they sat in her apartment and he sat at the table and he was stoned and he had his eyes on his phone, distracted, and she was talking and he listened but he was distracted and then she started laughing and then she started crying then she was laughing and then she was crying then she was laughing and on and on like that and he stood up and he moved towards her because he just wanted to, I don’t know, be close to her, let her know he was there and he tried to talk and he tried to ask what was wrong and she told him and he hugged her and they hugged for a long time and through some wyrd magic and through the hug and through the years she passed to him some of her pain and it lightened her just ever so slightly (21 grams? no.) and bore him down just that little bit more (a straw? no.) and that extra weight killed him not for the price of the weight borne by his bones but now for the suggestion of the totality of the weight psychologic borne by her. And then they talked for a long time, and she spoke of not wanting to burden him and he said no. And she spoke of fearing her pain all made up, and she spoke of scaring him, and his eyes were sad and heavy. And they spoke and he just wished she’d told him sooner, all this pain, sensed it but not heard it and tried to reach out and she’d said it was fine, and his pain blinded him to the lie of that, a lie we all tell a little bit every day but her telling it a lot, but he saw now and all he wanted to do was tell her it would all be okay but he never wanted to lie to her so he didn’t and it wasn’t okay. Except that maybe it was, the sun still revolveth ‘bout the earth, stars still rise and fall over dusktide horizon, and forever it all goes on towards... something. Some point, some conclusion, yes? Must be. Must be an end to it all rather than just again time turning over itself again time turning over itself.
And they stand in a kitchen and he cries and she stands and moves towards him to, I don’t know, be close to him, let him know he was there. And then she cries then and then he cries and then they talk and then they laugh and joke and then they both cry and still the sun rises and he sees the sunrise over the ocean and she sees the sun rise over a river and then the sun also sets and the sun always also sets and also the sun will eventually forever set (supernovic), but eventually the sun will not rise forever, this possible only with complete suspension of time, and this impossible. But if nothing ever dies, and all is revolution...?
Footlights
She smiled and she laughed and she smiled and she laughed and she smiled and she laughed and she smiled and she laughed and she joked and she seemed to shine and this was all that was seen and seen as all fine and thus in harsh spotlight gaze she was rendered in no more than silhouette, too hard to see through all that shine, her soul now divisible, dissolving, according to each viewer’s preselected preconception, individualized though entirely collectivist notions of what she should be, what we all should be, but particularly her, and all those like her, amongst all that glitz, left just about luminescent, emanating out from soul as sword of light, plundering allegedly towards self-made destiny, but it in reality a shield, a transient, ever dissolving aegis, entirely destructible under scrutiny or committed attack, and in such observation of bulwark but not soldier the totality of her personage was shrunk down until all that remained was a movie star’s smile and a pop-star’s gait and a tv politico’s carefully rehearsed ghost written Neruda impersonation. And she was placed on a pedestal and she was gazed at by all the world and all she wanted to do was to be taken off that pedestal and to get out of the light’s gaze, and yet she smiled and laughed and smiled and laughed and smiled and laughed and then she met him and only revolutions now, back again, smiled and laughed but then there was more, more seen, to be seen, not invisible, indivisible, seen through the lights, somehow (but then he our hero, he saw her ghost light — ironically the light least theatrical, but of course that the purpose of the ghost light, no? a sole soul guardian to protect our mirages, our masks, even as the curtains fall and the audience is ushered out, and all other lights are dimmed to black).
Annabelle Lee
Once she loved a woman truly, and ah, to be loved and be loved by she, kingdom by the sea, annabelle lee, but of course that would be Poe, so the ending can be easily divined. But she loved and was loved and to be loved truly! But she cursed herself because she asked herself the name of that love and love best remains nameless, and a name was given to their love, but the name was a false one, for the true name of their love was as the true name of the Hebrew G_d (unpronounceable but in numbers, in days together and miles walked, hands held and gentle kisses), and she knew the name she had given was false, so she set about searching for the true name, but she couldn’t, as direct by-product of all her constant inwards gazing soul searching, speak in a language just of numbers, for, she reasoned, numbers lacked meaning, beasts of pure cold logic, and, she reasoned further, this was not love. She was wrong, of course, about numbers. But the mysteries of numbers are the mysteries of the universe, and that door, once opened, cannot be shut.
A polaroid picture found in a little box behind the umbrellas in the hall closet, it of the two of them together in love, holding one another, on a pier by the sea and she recognizes the sea and tries to recognize the love but can only see it but can’t understand it and yet still she tries to name it, sin nombre.
The two of them walk hand in hand down the pier and above lights of the carnival twinkle (and above them, as always, the stars, in amongst inky, velveteen night) as the waves batter and bash (they too black, and too full of stars, for the reflection) and gulls cry and children cry and children laugh and a man calls to them from a booth, test the strength of your love, but they walk on towards the Ferris Wheel, want to see the stars, Jordan says, needs to see the stars, and her love does not quite understand this but still they move lackadaisical, all time left, sand suspended forever in hour glass, in the lights, their glimmering spackle, the bright din (and yet as they live forever on that pier their love is dying) towards the Ferris Wheel, and as they rise up towards they embrace and they kiss and they hold one another as close as they can (but still always a layer between, though it be atomic — but we all now know the power of atoms), and at the top of the wheel their love will reach its zenith, guaranteed to never die, it witnessed now by the stars, but as the wheel begins its decline, so will their love, as the true name of their love was left and lost amongst the impossible vastness of the stars.
And they descend as all descends (but isn’t a Ferris Wheel all revolution? so why not just stay on the wheel forever? this the fundamental question... something of freedom) and the stars grow dim as night passes into day (and like the Ferris Wheel the stars too again rise, but time), and yet this dimness just a matter of perception, so limiting, all so limiting, but not just that, not just our eyes, but for the faith and love and beauty and truth of the perfect bliss of the stars eternal, they forever, though they fade to us, falling but never rising, dying but never living. Burn out all supernova like, all of us, why die when we can live for a million years as the last life of our light speeds out to Andromeda? Let us all die like stars and love like children and live like Greek gods, free from time in their immortality.
Time the last shackle, the last link in the chain, holding us back forever from freedom, a final slavery, this inescapable, say fuck it to the gods (thus spake Zarathustra), leave the state in the hands of dead Marxists, watch the cultural hegemony burn itself out, ah but time, time forever until it is not, it but motion, but lack of motion but death, so trapped forever and never and always to time, it our lover and our killer (bullet sparking out from barrel of the gun, its twisting motion dependent only on time, so just stop time and... or you could always catch the bullet) and we all dying with it and the stars are moving around us and this is time and the clock ticks forward and this is time and maybe if I just sit really still, time will cease its passage and I’ll be free, but why this crying out for freedom? Dream of dead Frenchmen. Sell freedom a dime a dozen to be safe and happy and warm and in Love.
E
Lithe and shimmering, like water, a flash of light, a patch of reason, scorched scorned scions thinking themselves kings, gods, ubermensch, don’t even know what that word means, watched too many James Bond movies, too many westerns, listened to too much hip hop, think they can play, can’t (obvs.), twisting and turning, rhythmic, blistering their way right into the annals of the forgotten, history, a-historic, post-history, post-colonial, post-satire, but not post-modern (meta-modern maybe), this too knowing, cannot know what you do not want to know, the power of the self-lie, so big and bold and beautiful, shines down on the city, cities, so many cities all one big lie, of purpose, of meaning, of love. Always to love, in pursuit of, in hope of, in desperate clawing yearning need of, but, alas, loveless (every night when he gets sad). Not really love they’re after, of course (depends how you define love, but the time for definitions is past – this is the 21st century and nothing means anything anymore, least of all words). When is a house not a home, a king not a ruler, a good fuck not a gesture of total commitment? 21st century, already stated but must be reminded – this is the 21st century, and time is just a lie sold to us by weight loss supplement manufacturers. Death just a lie of arms dealers. And love a lie of… ah, so many suspects.
What they’re really after – see above, a good fuck, and what’s a good fuck without a little too much booze (or coke or ecstasy or pick your poison – pseudaconitine?), without that awkward morning after with the sun in your eyes and the sweat that stinks of regret and maybe a terse breakfast and a promise of a phone call and maybe a peck on the cheek and shame – usually. Sometimes more though, sometimes it blossoms, that first good fuck (bosoms), into something more, how shall we say, ambitious, more alleged at life long, couples fighting in the back of shitty dive bars, rap a rock n’ roll ‘round my fingers so I know that it’s real, kids at home with grandma, the sitter, resent each other already, but they have rocks on their fingers, and well, got to have faith in something, why not stone, permanent, three billion years of constant pressure (parental, societal, social, etc.) can’t be wrong, so the sex then the awkward dates, the build-up, perhaps a pregnancy scare, on and on until the vows, the stone, unbreakable so they must be unbreakable too, and everything falls down. There will be no more good fucks. Then one day their child falls truly, totally in love, and she marries the man of her dreams, and then, just a year after the wedding (to the day, she’ll tell forever anyone who will listen, though it was not), he is struck and killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street. The driver will get off with a slap on the wrist. A year after that (this time truly to the day), he will sit in a motel room loaded and sweating and naked but for a pair of dirty underwear, once white, put a shotgun in his mouth (it loaded too, though not sweating), and pull the trigger.
But back to the bodies lithe and shimmering, sweat rolling off cheeks and foreheads, oozing, sticking, clothes glued to flesh, highlighting all those natural flaws that we try so very hard to cover up, spray down with perfume and cologne and makeup and gym memberships. Lights neon splash haphazard, colours shifting, pulsing, strobe and seizure (seize – to take control – seizure to lose it – but what on these long nights and pulsing lights and bumping, grinding, crashing rhythm – to take or to lose – or both – each dance, each twisting step, one takes, and from the other something is taken). Slamming down drinks barely potable, they, the drinks, bright, shimmering colours, chemical solutions to… to whatever you need to solve, anxiety or energy, pain or happiness, love or hate, solutions to each and every one, always giving, so giving, so generous, just a small price for each gift, a bit off your heart, your soul, it’s fine, you won’t miss it, won’t notice it’s gone – don’t worry, these things don’t compound – solution, not a compound (but is a solution not just a compounding of compounds?).
Duffy steps out onto the dance floor, unsteady steps (the booze, or the anxiety – or both?), as a woman spins and twirls about him, she a blur, pure, supernovic, sensory overload trying its hardest to make itself physically manifest, the force of sound-waves rolling, punctuation through dance, through motion as emotion, modal. He looks at her and downs his drink, and from behind he is bumped into by a man who towers, whose muscles glisten, who’s every sensation is practiced purpose. He turns and flees the floor and out the door and stands briefly amongst the smokers breathing deep their acrid output, he doesn’t hate the smell, maybe even loves it, so many of those he loves smokers, an emotionally synesthetic sensory association, another place, another time in a smell and in a tingling lingering sensation in his lungs. He has never smoked, first as a matter of buying in, then as a matter of cashing out. And now purely through sheer force of habit. He watches smoke curl up, carried on a breeze, spiralling for the st… overcast… cloud banks malignant and watchful, then he looks down at all the butts at his feet, sees a few lit embers on one, and stomps it out with the heel of his boot. He wonders at whether there was meant to be something here for him, something worth wanting, but instead he finds himself wanting just to want… something. From the club then strides the most beautiful woman he has ever laid eyes on, long red hair, deep green eyes, twiggy tanned legs, a face he has seen before, on an album cover perhaps, read in a book, to go a little Freudian, perhaps on the face of his mother. Under her eyes the slightest dark sides of half-moons. She leans up against a wall, casts her gaze around, in apprehension, perhaps, knows these places, these people, always some guy about to tell her to smile, but none approach. She pulls a cigarette and lighter (zippo, stainless, printed on its side “FUCK COMMUNISM”, it taken off body of a dead friend) from her purse, sticks the first between her lips, watches the flame flick up from the second for a second then strikes it to the edge of the cigarette and watches as the tobacco begins to burn, take on the form of a rose. Duffy glances at her once more, then walks away.
