Sun, 22 May 2005

my heroes have always been nutjobs
Originally, in the initial transcript of this story which is still stuck somewhere in a dream I could not fully remember, this story was to be completely different, with a bit involving people who talk like real people (whoever they are, these ‘real people’ I keep hearing about) and not like devices for setting up punchlines. Also there was a bit about the names of certain plants, which I do not actually know, and a bit about girls I used to know but I can no longer talk about that for various reasons which may or may not include chest-beating boyfriends/husbands who never had much use for me anyway. But all that is neither here nor there (it’s nowhere, man, it’s just a big zero) because this story is not that story, not in this translation, not in this world.

Sometimes in the past few months I have tried to channel various characters that I used to write about, regulars I could always count on for entertaining if not exactly profound material, only none of those characters will speak to me anymore. I’m not sure how else to put it. I try to write an Owen and Rissa story for AvFest and there’s just this endless white hum like water down a stormdrain, and nothing I have done so far has brought them any closer. I try to dream about what those characters do now that they’re done with me. Maybe someone else is writing stories about them, which would be okay, I mean I’m jealous but it would make sense and eventually I would come to accept it and this new author would maybe invite me over for dinner with my ex-characters and the piles of stories they had birthed together and would expect me to bring a bottle of wine like some kinda Frenchman. Also I would have to make conversation, which I would do, telling myself that all these minor humiliations will be repaid in Heaven, but out of spite I would go into a long and horrible story about death after dinner which would make both this new author and my ex-characters feel uncomfortable and at a loss for words, and how do you like it, you fuckers.

“Here’s what you do,” Pamela told me. “When you get all drunk and depressed and think you should call her and tell her how much you love her and how you fucked up, call me instead. When you think maybe it’d be a good idea to park your car outside her house and make sure the boy she’s seeing is a good egg and maybe get a peek at her through the windows, drive over here and do the same thing. Just stalk me instead of her. I ain’t got shit to do, and you’re about one bad decision away from jail time.”

Perhaps my ex-characters haven’t shacked up with some Johnny-come-lately prodigy at all, but in fact are in a sort of Limbo, a kind of suspended animation while I work out whatever personal issues I’m supposed to be working out. Or maybe the stories I wrote were like views into this other universe which continues after I have stopped peeking in on it, like some pervert in the bushes with a keyboard and a trenchcoat, and they are none the wiser that I am banished from that world. That’s my favorite, as it means that even if I am not a witness to current actions, current actions continue to take place, and I do not need to feel guilty that my team isn’t seeing any action, as it were.

While I tried to trick my way back into this other world I thought about what my heroes would do, faced with such a situation, and while I cannot list my heroes by name (for fear that you would think less of them, as they are all to a fault poor role models, a sadder collection of schitzophrenics and drunks and general malcontents one would be hard pressed to find), they are my heroes all the same and worth consulting from time to time.

Sometimes, at the grocery store that I go to late at night, after work, because there are fewer people then and also because I like to pretend when I am at the grocery store that it is after the apocalypse and I am the only person left on the planet and the heady rush of this solitary state has passed, the nights of cheap vandalism and theivery faded, and now I obey all the laws of my old life and will leave my handful of useless money at the front register even though no one is there to take it, but sometimes at the grocery store I find myself buying things for no reason. These are usually cheap things, some sort of crazy-looking soda I have never tried, some kind of generic candy whose packaging makes me feel like crying, a bunch of bananas so that the bananas won’t be alone even though I know there is no way I will never eat that many bananas and I’m just setting myself up for the inevitable discovery of brown bananas above my fridge and will think to myself oh god, I’ve killed another bunch of bananas. Sometimes I’ll buy something that I’ll plan to give as a gift, to include in a package I’m going to send to some faraway friend I haven’t written to in too long, or maybe someone I don’t know, just walk up and give them a gift the way I used to walk up to people in Iowa City and give them books I no longer wanted, an attempt at reading minds and intentions in my choices, here, I think you’ll like this, I think you maybe can use this. Sometimes I’ll buy something I used to own, maybe when I was a kid and had the time and focus to actually appreciate distinct objects which would be worn smooth with attention and care as they could not be replaced, nursing minor tears and blemishes, duct tape on the shoes, marker over stains in the fabric. Sometimes I will buy things as an attempt at some other life, a set of new ideas and potentials, my will so weak that simple cheap objects exert enough pull to move me into entirely new orbits. Sometimes I won’t buy anything at all, will simply pick things up, read the label, feel the texture, put it into the other ghost universe where the characters that will not speak to me will find it one morning while I am asleep, some gift found behind the couch or tucked into the mailbox, and I will try to hold onto the memory as a beacon into this other world, but I will be asleep and not paying attention and it will slip right away to become part of a bounty of goods given to some other writer who never considers that all his or her “inspiration” comes from someone else, someone doing the object-research, the collection of sad little grocery store realizations they will never have to witness firsthand as handfuls of stolen riches spill from the page.

Like Dean Martin, I do my drinking in the evening time, which works out well as it makes me harder to see so my getaways (which have become part and parcel of these evenings) are much simpler. The one time I tried to outrun a cop during the day did not end so well, as you might remember, but in the night I am the shadow of the panther! Also helpful is how the fortification of booze leads to derring-do which is beyond the means of mortals, such as jumping off rooftops or out of moving cars. Also an empty bottle makes a good weapon.

Pamela told me she was going to give me one last chance, which I thought was ridiculous as first of all who was she to give me any sort of ultimatum, I mean, I was doing fucked-up and incredibly stupid things long before she ever met me and that this practice had not changed during the time she was legally my wife should have suprised no one, and it’s not like she had any limit of shortcomings, but one of the rules I made for myself after the relapse is that it is important to agree with people and basically do what they ask of you as a sign of your strength, and so I nodded, and smiled, and said something about how I was happy or something. Pamela attempted to scowl at me, but this quickly fell into some sort of weepy fit like she was always having, and I continued to smile, thinking that eventually this would placate her. “Things will be different now,” I said for absolutely no reason, which I told myself that the present is necessarily different from the past because if the present was indistinguishable from the past (and presumably the future) than the whole of life would be continuous, which I knew about what that was like and trust me it isn’t good when you think like that, and now wasn’t like that at all, now was a distinct now, unclouded by mirror and echo events, and saying this seemed to calm her a bit. Pamela is much smarter than I am, and I love her very much, but she has weird ideas about how things change, and so she became convinced this was the case. I just wanted to move back into her basement and eat her food while she slept and proceed to collect and assemble The Great Work and maybe if I obeyed all the rules I kept in my head I might get my cock sucked, and to these ends I was willing to say any fool thing anyone wanted to hear. After that I said some other stuff, which I am removing from the record.

If I could not hold the things I created, how could I hold the people I love.
(08:15.05.22.2005) [/scrytch] #