tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69294930622576199852024-03-05T23:31:51.724-08:00The Memory of WaterPulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-22287413898663924872013-06-05T02:20:00.001-07:002013-06-05T02:20:44.518-07:00'The Memory of Water' is featured on 'The Big Thrill' - interview by Michael Sears<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I asked Janita about THE MEMORY OF WATER, her bookstore, and her plans for the future.</strong></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Janita Lawrence is a South African author and online bookdealerbased in Johannesburg. She describes herself as “a long-legged redhead with a penchant for words and pretty things, who believes happiness can be measured in passport stamps, laughter decibels and the bulge of one’s bookshelf.” An awarded art director with an advertising background, she writes novels, plays and short stories in between running her online bookstore, raising her toddler, going on long walks, planting things, practicing yoga and drinking craft beer.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Janita’s debut novel – THE MEMORY OF WATER – is available worldwide as an ebook and a POD paperback and is published by Rebel ePublishers. It’s a witty but dark look at the lengths to which a successful writer will go to keep the words flowing. Her protagonist, Slade Harris, will jump out of planes, run cars off bridges, hire an underage prostitute in Thailand to hear her story: but usually these things don’t work out quite the way he’s planned.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a disastrous party, Slade comes up with a plan to kill his only real friend and the only woman he really loves – Eve. He plunges into the plot with all the enthusiasm of a writer’s research, complete with reference books, internet map and props. As he’d hoped, the plan generates a great concept for his elusive new novel and the words start to flow.When Eve is found murdered exactly the way Slade plotted it, it sets off a very intriguing train of events.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You run an online bookstore –Pulp Books – that seems to be to Amazon rather the way the independent bookstores are to Barnes and Noble. What makes it successful and how did you come up with the name?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pulp Books is successful because of Einstein’s ‘1% inspiration / 99% perspiration’ rule. It is my dream job and I work very hard at it – mostly because I love it. Pulp is different to other online bookstores because we will find any book for you, be it a bestseller or out of print. What our customers appreciate is that you’re not ordering from some behemoth robot in the ether, but from a real flesh-and-blood human who is there for you pretty much 24/7. Some customers call me their personal bookdealer, others, their bibliotherapist.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The ‘Pulp’ part is borrowed from the 30s, when Allen Lane (who founded Penguin Books) brought high quality literature to the general public by publishing great books – previously only available as hardcover – as ‘pulps’ or paperbacks. Pulp fiction had a bit of a trashy reputation back then, so it was a controversial and daring move, and it paid off in spades. The name ‘Pulp’ hit all the right notes for me: warm, brave, rebellious, anti-snob, accessible, and successful.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Your protagonist in THE MEMORY OF WATER is a successful writer. In every other way his life is a disaster –serial girlfriends, only one real friend, a vanished mother and ambivalent father, too much alcohol, even his maid deserts him mysteriously. And he is haunted by the memory of water. Then his muse deserts him too and he’s desperate. How did you come up with Slade? Is he based on someone you know in the book business? I hope not!</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is and it isn’t. I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘write what you know’ train of thought –that, twinned with Hemingway’s idea that you should only ever write the ‘truth’ – could make for quite a boring narrative if you don’t lead a perpetually thrilling life. The flip side of that is, of course, if you want to write well you’d better lead an adventurous life, which I quite like.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I spotted the seed of the idea in a very dear writer friend of mine who had a series of ‘crazy’ girlfriends (one who threw his non-backed-up laptop out of a very high window) and equally crazy life experiences (heroin addiction, war, jail-time, currently on the lam). The type-A part of me stands back and is relieved that I don’t have such a messy life, but the writer in me is envious of the experiences he has had. Humans are a little messy, after all. And what came first, the messiness or the writing? Even if the experience doesn’t feature directly in your story, it has become part of you, it has informed your character, and this allows for deeper and more truthful writing. Slade knows this, and lives it.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You chose to write in the first person present. I’ve tried that and it’s really hard to pull off. (You do it brilliantly.) Why did you choose that style?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was important to me to be able to take the reader on the bright, spiraling slide that is Slade’s psychological demise. I fancy unreliable narrators and enjoyed playing with the reader’s (via Slade’s) grasp of reality. When Slade says something has happened, has it really happened? Perhaps he only thinks it happened. Perhaps he wanted you to think that it happened. No one is truthful all of the time – why would a narrator be?</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Part of the story is set in Nigel – a gold mining town not far from Johannesburg. You’ve captured the seediness of these almost-ghost mining towns. How important to you is setting your books in South Africa?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I did a ‘Slade’ and visited Nigel for a weekend writing marathon to get the book finished, but instead of hanging around at dodgy bars and meeting troublesome locals I ate two-minute noodles and drank a lot of sub-standard coffee to get the words down.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">South Africa is the ultimate story destination, rife with aggression, optimism, colorful people, crime, riches, disease, death, opulence, a terrible history, a horrible/wonderful future, dazzling sunshine, electric thunderstorms … it is almost a character in its own right.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I love the new generation of SA writers, finally untethered from our brutal past, able to write stories set in South Africa about things other than the Bad Old Days. We now feel free of that particular responsibility – we can write for writing’s sake – and it shows in the work; it makes it no less inherently South African.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Slade has a lot of sex – the only thing other than writing (and his over-the-top shower) that makes him feel alive. It’s essential to his character development. Have you had any comments about that aspect of the book?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thank you for getting it. My editor suggested I excise a few hard-core moments, which I did. The readers’ reactions were very positive; I suppose the ones who didn’t like it didn’t speak up. A few people described Slade as ‘kinky’, which surprised me. A friend of mine suggested I get some erotica published, another wondered out loud why my husband ever “lets me out of the house”. Of course it was difficult to look any of my relatives and in-laws in the eyes for a while.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sex is such a vital part of life – I believe it shouldn’t exclusively be the domain of erotica/porn, but feature in good literature, too. Maybe if it did we wouldn’t have had the travesty/bonanza that is 50 SHADES OF GREY.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Eve is found murdered exactly the way Slade plotted it, his smug life rapidly unravels and the little stability he has is destroyed. What was your initial plan for the novel? Was it the copy-cat murder premise, or was it Slade’s paranoia and the murder was a device?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wasn’t sure when I was planning it: I was led by Slade and things got out of hand. I’m still not exactly sure what happened. Are you?</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’ll take the fifth on that! At the end of the book, we are faced with the endings Slade writes. The most obvious one is not there. Was that deliberate ambiguity or do you want us to take the end at face value?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The ambiguity is deliberate. It may look like I took the easy way out by not providing a definitive ending – perhaps I did – but at the end of the book there is no certainty in Slade’s world, and we can only know what the narrator knows, or chooses to let us know.The rest is up to us.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You’ve mentioned elsewhere that you enjoy writing thrillers. Can you tell us anything about your next book?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I do like thrillers but I’m a marketer’s nightmare as I write across all genres. The new novel is quite different to THE MEMORY OF WATER. It’s more YA, with a female protagonist who is synaesthetic, which allows for unusual and pretty prose. It’s set in the near future: 2027 – so not sci-fi, but not quite current, either. It’s a kind of parallel-universe version of Johannesburg, where cars are too expensive to drive, there is very little water, and the country is plagued with a fertility crisis. It begins with our main character discovering that the people she thought were her parents were actually her abductors. As she tries to figure out who she is and where she comes from, her life unravels with dangerous consequences.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 22px;"><a href="http://www.thebigthrill.org/2013/05/news-from-south-africa-by-michael-sears-11/" style="background-color: #eeeeee;">http://www.thebigthrill.org/2013/05/news-from-south-africa-by-michael-sears-11/</a></span></div>
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Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-36336542130691830692013-06-01T00:17:00.003-07:002013-06-01T00:17:44.026-07:00Bless You Jesus<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">On May 16th, 'The Memory of Water' was ranked 101,709 out of over 8 million books on Amazon, its best rating yet.</span>Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-13765636500176201002012-01-13T06:13:00.000-08:002012-01-13T06:13:12.000-08:00Very generous reviewAnother very kind person gave The Memory of Water a great review. Read it <a href="http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/entertainment/books/x1980207188/The-Readers-Writers-Award-winning-art-director-and-author-JT-Lawrence">here. </a>Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-75879811704555597272011-12-05T06:18:00.001-08:002011-12-05T06:22:03.251-08:00First review is a goodieA Very Nice Person reviewed 'The Memory of Water' and gave it 5 stars.<br />
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Read the review <a href="http://tc-bookedup.blogspot.com/2011/11/coming-soon-book-review-memory-of-water_30.html">here.</a><br />
<br />Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-40692040021155633542011-12-05T06:04:00.001-08:002011-12-05T06:15:24.226-08:00Book cover revealed!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmZGjqaCYOSHHLaKP2-bEvaGaGv6VpUR0j8vPPYAlWm8wVt6yaa-PEbmMHUB4495wn0O4GU57wsFBKbs99AsmwhKLBQC-zBY4dWeSR5qIyoo0havRu0GYvnyos53pfqHSjfUQ0yTacA/s1600/TMOW+cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmZGjqaCYOSHHLaKP2-bEvaGaGv6VpUR0j8vPPYAlWm8wVt6yaa-PEbmMHUB4495wn0O4GU57wsFBKbs99AsmwhKLBQC-zBY4dWeSR5qIyoo0havRu0GYvnyos53pfqHSjfUQ0yTacA/s400/TMOW+cover.png" width="250" /></a></div>
<br />Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-81769376679656756892011-09-23T09:11:00.000-07:002011-09-23T09:13:34.088-07:00Chapter 3: She Bought Me Grapes<div style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>She
Brought Me Grapes</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Just as I turn on the shower I hear my
phone ring. I shirk it. If it’s Eve, I’ll call her back. If it’s someone
wanting money, I’m sure they’ll be calling again. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I have the best showerhead
in the world. It’s the size of a prize-winning Camperdown cabbage and has
fourteen different settings, all judiciously trademarked to halt copyright
infringers in their soggy steps. I can choose anything from ‘Waikiki
Waterfall™’ – a deep tissue massage which hurts like hell – to ‘Rain Forest™’.
It has lights that blink and change according to which setting you choose. The
rain forest lights are the best for a hangover; dim with soothing flickers of
green and yellow, although the misty water is a bit annoying if you want to
have a good scrub. ‘Monsoon™’ is much better for that. Plus it reminds me of
our Highveld thunderstorms, with its hot noisy jets and bright flashes. If I
ever emigrate I’m taking this shower with me. Even the floor is perfect: it’s
tiled in some kind of natural stone that feels like suede underfoot. I’m trying
the ‘Desert Drizzle™’ today. I like it. Despite the name, it reminds me of the
eternally-saturated taupe skies of Berlin and leaves me suitably depressed. I
love my shower. I tell everyone I know about it. I’ll tell strangers, if
they’re interested and I find they usually are. I just think ShowerLux™ could
have been a little more imaginative with their setting names. I would have more
fun with ‘Prison Hosedown™’ and ‘Tropical Tsunami™’. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I find myself rubbing my
temples again. My brain is swollen on Jose Cuervo. I couldn’t get my breakfast
bagel down. I must stop drinking so much. A pickled brain is worthless to me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I shower for a good twenty
minutes, swapping from setting to setting, watching the lights change. The bathroom
is steaming twilight. The dark fog swirls around me. I feel dizzy and then the
lights go out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I am woken by an hysterical
black woman slapping me on the chest. I gasp and open my eyes. I seem to be
splayed out on the bathroom floor. I touch my head and come away with bright
red fingertips. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Mister Harris! Mister
Harris!” she screeches, as if someone is murdering her. She is on her knees
beside me. There is a flurry of ebony arms in the air and high-pitched
hysteria.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“What the …”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Mister Harris!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Stop screaming, woman!” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Francina has always been a
drama queen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Oh my God, I’m naked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Mid-screech, Francina
recoils. I think she’s just noticed the same thing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Mister Harris. You slip and
fall! I find you here with water pouring and disco lights. I think you’re
dead.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Okay, okay. Hand me a
towel, won’t you?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“I think you’re dead of
heart problems like Ridge Forrester.” She passes the towel and makes an
exaggerated effort to look in the opposite direction as I fumble to stand. My
limbs are marble. I shiver in wide tics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Bless you Jesus that I come
in today!” she proclaims, arms akimbo. “You be dead without me, Mister Harris.
And then I don’t have no job. Bless you Jesus!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Francina has the habit of
blessing Jesus at every opportunity, as if he were a great sneezer. Sneezin’
Jesus. She has also watched way too many reruns of <i>Gone With The</i> <i>Wind</i> and likes to model herself on Mammy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“I don’t think the situation
was quite that dire, Francina,” I say, not wanting to be reminded I owe her my
life every Tuesday and Thursday, for the rest of my life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I’ve stopped bleeding but I
have a handsome red slash on the side of my head. Using my shaving mirror I see
that it’s superficial and doesn’t need stitches. In the hazy background the
phone rings. Francina stands on the bath rug and looks at me, transfixed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“I think I’ll be alright
now,” I say, as a way of dismissal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Bless you Jesus,” she
whispers, and I am left alone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Finally, dried and dressed,
I put down some words. I can describe how it feels to be found, wet and naked,
by a berserk domestic worker. I gingerly pat my wound. The pain is sharp and
fleeting, like being cut by just the edge of a blade. My head is a little numb,
my thoughts cloudy. Wrinkledskinbluelips. I can describe this. I can bring it
to life in a way I would never have been able to do if it were yesterday. I’ve
written a hundred words before I wonder what the hell I’m doing. I don’t even
have an idea for the new book but I have a scene of a sad man fainting in his
overpriced shower. If my MacBook were a typewriter, I would yank out the page,
crumple it up and slam it into the bin. Instead I drag the virtual document
into my computer-world trashcan and feel empty inside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Perhaps I’m being too harsh.
Maybe it will lead to something. A knock on the head has led to all kinds of
things in the past, most notably temporary amnesia in the soap operas Francina
watches, where I’m guessing Ridge Forrester (R.I.P.) comes from. That could be
the beginning of something. I open my Moleskine, crack the spine and pick up a
pen. Man passes out in shower and when he wakes up, he doesn’t know who or
where he is. It could be interesting. Innumerable plots jostle in my head, the
various confused, amnesiac protagonists elbowing each other and shouting to be
heard. And then as soon as hope flickers, it is snuffed out. Amnesia is the
lamest idea ever, by far the least original, hence its popularity in American
soap operas where they can’t have the CEO of the major fashion corporation die <i>again</i> … unless you write it in a brilliantly
innovative way, which has itself been done. Damn that genius Aranofsky. It’s
not often that I question my talent but today I feel I should be doing the
coffee run for the writers of <i>Days of our Lives</i>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I sigh and twirl my pen. Francina
brings in a bottle of Italian mineral water and a sandwich on a side plate,
then goes back for a paper serviette.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She must be feeling sorry
for me – she is never usually this kind. It’s ham and tomato on rye, with
enough Dijon mustard to singe your sinuses. She must have done the grocery
shopping. The cool heat travels up my nose and spikes my eyeballs. It feels
good. Perhaps she thought I really was going to die. I suppose that’s enough to
make anyone feel generous for a day. Death definitely has a way of kicking you
in the arse, forcing you to live. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">If you survive it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I spend the rest of the
afternoon smashing my already-wounded head against the wall. I try
free-association, reading the paper, reciting poetry, brainstorming,
masturbating, listening to Lady Gaga, flipping a coin. It doesn’t help. Poet
Friedrich von Schiller had a habit of keeping nasty apples in his writing desk
and sniffing them before starting his work. Auden preferred tea; Coleridge,
opium. Kipling fantasized about having his own Indian ‘ink-boy’ to grind him
fresh ink every day. I, on the other hand, would be happy with a burnt stick
and a cave wall, as long as the words came. Writing has never been this hard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I skydived once. I’ve been
scared of heights ever since. It started well with a lovely lady-instructor,
who went on to give me ‘extra lessons’ in my chalet the night before the jump.
I was pretty blasé about it (the jump, I mean, not the sex. I was rather
enthusiastic about the sex) and it sounds dull-witted, but it didn’t actually
occur to me that I would end up so very high in the sky. When the realisation struck
and I decided that I couldn’t possibly go through with it, I turned around to
my lady-friend and told her. Either she didn’t hear what I said, or she thought
I was joking. She threw her head back, laughed, and pushed me out of the plane.
In an instant I forgot everything she’d taught me, extramurally or otherwise,
as I was caught up in sheer bowel-dissolving panic. I was so shocked by what
was happening I didn’t even have time to indulge in the whole
life-flashing-before-my-eyes phenomenon, which I think I would have rather
enjoyed. Luckily for me I was on a static line, so the cord I forgot to pull
didn’t kill me. My parachute lines were tangled, so I screamed and rocked from
side to side which somehow loosened them. It seemed that Jesus (Bless You) was
on my side and I remember a few moments of utter exhilaration as I took in
everything around me: the topographical map beneath, the overwhelming amount of
sky and, most of all, the silence. I have never since heard that startlingly
clear complete absence of sound. I remember saying my name out loud as a way to
assert my – meagre – existence. I was definitely having a moment. It was
thrilling to the toes. I wondered why I had never done this before and swore it
would be my new hobby. Which was when I saw the power lines. By then it was too
late to do anything about it, even if I had remembered how to adjust my toggles
to land. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I know it sounds like I
knock myself out a lot but I don’t, not really. I mean it’s not a thing I’m
known for. At a cocktail party you wouldn’t introduce me as the accident-prone
guy, or the bandaged/broken/concussion guy. I’m not the guy in slapsticks who
falls into manholes and skis into trees. I don’t even have a lot of scars. One
fine line on my cheek from a scratch when I was a child. A small button on my
back from the tomato-crate-stake. A silver gash on one of my fingers, hardly
noticeable. Oh, and I don’t have all of my teeth, not the original ones anyway.
I can’t tell the porcelain veneers from the real ones anymore. I’ve been bashed
up a bit, that’s true, but I’m just not that guy, despite all previous evidence
presented to the contrary. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">But I did have a concussion
when I woke up in hospital the next day. Fractured ribs, smashed scapula and a
collarbone broken in three places. A sprained ankle that took the longest time
to heal. That’s how I met Eve. She came to me like an angel in the night: a
beddable Florence Nightingale. Sifiso had sent her with the latest artwork for
a book cover that needed ‘urgent’ approval. How urgent can something possibly
be? I had just looked Death in the eyes for God’s sake.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Despite being exceptionally
cheerful on all the morphine they were pumping into me, I disliked the artwork
and told her so. As I was trying to check her out through the dark clouds of
pain, the conversation went a little like this:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">(SFX: convincing hospital
equipment bleeping in the background, squeaking rubber soles of nurses on
linoleum, et cetera.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve (looking hot): “So this
is where we are at the moment. Obviously it’s still quite rough, a work in
progress which needs crafting, but Sifiso wanted to make sure you bought into
the concept before we refine it any further.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">(Shuffling of papers and
then: awkward pause.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me: “What? Is that it?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">(Everyone in the room pauses
to look over at us.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve: “Yes.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">(Everyone in the hospital
stops what they are doing to hear what comes next.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Two months of work and
I get this?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve: silence. (Still looking
hot. Red cheeks. Blushing. She must like me. I must show off.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me: “It’s dogshit. I hate
it.” (Actually it wasn’t that bad.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve: “Oh … Okay. Maybe if
you could you be more precise with …”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Precise? Sure. I
wouldn’t use it to wipe my arse. I think the artist should be stripped.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Yep, I’m that powerful.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Did I just say stripped?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Whipped, I mean.
Whipped.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I make vague cuckoo gestures
at my head to communicate the large amount of drugs circulating in my battered
brain.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve crosses her arms. I am
hooked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve: “What I meant was,
could you be more precise about what you don’t like about it?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The black clouds are getting
thicker. I am riding on pink-purple pain-laced delirium.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me: “The writing is
post-modern, for God’s sake. Avant-garde! It needs more chaos! More shaking up!
Tell Sifiso I never want to use this piss-ant artist again. He has the talent
of an … an … <i>aardvark</i>;
and he clearly hasn’t read my book.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I hammed it up a bit because
Eve was particularly attractive and I thought she might end up thinking I was
more important than I really was. Also, I was very high.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Despite being happily
married – if there is such a thing, but that is a conversation for another day
– Sifiso only hires gorgeous Girl Fridays. They are his own Playboy Bunnies in
the little mansion that is his mind. Eve seemed to be the most delicious so
far. I wanted to grandstand a little, fluff my tail feathers, show this pretty
lady who The Big Guy was.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve (smiling): “That’s a
shame.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me (caught off guard by her
blazing smile): “Why’s that?” I see rainbows. Lots of little rainbows emanating
from her skin. Mmm, pretty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve: “Because I was really
looking forward to working with you.” (Exit Eve.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Me (under my breath):
“Crap.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Then, on second thoughts:
“Can I get some more morphine?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Sifiso called me later that
day to let me know how annoyed he was. He had spent weeks trying to persuade
Eve to agree to do a cover for us. She was then an up-and-coming artist who was
receiving great press for her latest exhibition and not keen to do anything too
commercial.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Sifiso has a short temper
and shouts a lot. He’s short and shouty. Or perhaps shouty because he’s short.
He likes putting a lot of emphasis on the keywords in his admonitions; he
especially loves shouting over the phone. Usually editors are quite nice to their
writers, but not mine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“She’s an ARTIST!” he
screamed down the phone. “A REAL artist! Not like the two-bit Corel Draw
designers we usually get! I finally pull someone fantastic to do it as a FAVOUR
and you tell her you’d like to WHIP her? What was THAT about?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I didn’t quite say …”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“You didn’t know it would
OFFEND her? Telling her she looked like an wild pig and that she should be
BURNED at the STAKE?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Now, I don’t think I quite
said that …” I mumbled, hoping to God that I hadn’t. “But you need to shoulder
a bit of the blame here, man. I mean what were you thinking?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“What was <i>I</i> thinking?” he shouted.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Despite my shattered
collarbone I was doing lots of forehead-holding and frowning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Nasty silence from Sifiso.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I was out of my head with
the drugs! I was seeing in goddamn Technicolor! No wonder I was saying bizarre
things. What did you expect? Besides, what on earth were you doing sending the
artist on a run? Are things that bad?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“<i>Eish</i>,” he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Don’t speak Zulu to me.
What the hell does that mean?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Slade,” he sighs, “I am
Xhosa.” All I can hear is clicking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“And?” I shout.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“And I had the courier all
set up but Eve’s such a great fan of your work, she asked if she could take it
in person, so she could meet you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Oh,” I said. Crap.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">So Sifiso sent Eve flowers
and I called to apologise. I outright lied to her and said that I didn’t really
remember much but, apparently, I had been rude to her and I was very sorry,
would she please reconsider the contract she had shredded, burned and posted
back to Sifiso. She laughed a lot and I knew from that moment that I liked her.
She told me the contract was in fact still in fine form and sitting on her
desk, and she would be happy to work on a new cover with us. It seemed Eve,
unlike Sifiso and me, was a Grown-Up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I’m sure she knows I’m in
love with her but she’s never been that into me. She is my Unattainable. Daisy
Buchanan to my Gatsby. Rosebud to my Kane. Even though I live in hope, I know I
will never have her. When I have sex with other women I am mostly fantasizing
about Eve. Her petite frame; her generous tits; her cheekbones; her distracted
glance; her creative mind; her short-nailed fingers. I am rougher when I think
of her, and usually don’t last long enough. I forget myself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She cares about me, I know
that. Even after I was such a prick to her in the hospital that day, she
continued to visit to see how I was doing. That’s probably when it happened.
When I fell in love with her. Psychobabblers will tell you I’m obsessed with
Eve because of my unresolved Oedipus complex, exacerbated by my mother leaving
me at such a vulnerable age. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She brought me grapes, for
God’s sake. What did she expect?</span></div>
Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-10407382750168732532011-09-09T09:11:00.000-07:002011-09-09T09:13:47.719-07:00Chapter 2: Likefatherlikeson<div style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Chapter 2: Likefatherlikeson</b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A few days later I wake up with a grim
sense of purpose. It’s Emily’s birthday. Born two years after me, she would
have been thirty-six today. I can’t really imagine it. She is frozen in my mind
as she was on That Day – tangled hair, summer freckles and a milk-tooth smile –
all but bursting with sunshine and promise. And here I am: limping towards
forty with the bleakness that comes with age. Knowing the dull pain of the
thought that I am past my prime. Some people peak at sixty, I know. It would be
nice to look forward to something like that. Instead of what I have.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She probably would have done
more with her life than I have with mine; had more meaning. Chances are she
would have had a family with a faithful (read: tedious) husband and two little
scurrilous sprogs. Dogs, too. She would definitely have had dogs. She would be
like those yuppies I used to jog past in the morning with their golden labs and
4x4 strollers, who run right past people like me, who are more like the
red-cheeked, defeated-looking fat man being pulled along by his huskies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I arrive at my father’s
house in Belgravia with a bottle of Johnny Walker and some food supplies from
Fournos. Every now and then I do a bit of grocery shopping for him. Like me, he
is always more grateful for the whisky. Grumpy, but grateful.
Likefatherlikeson. I do it out of guilt more than feelings of benevolence. I’ve
never been particularly kind. I just feel the guilt weighing heavier and
heavier the longer I put off seeing the old man; eventually I have to go just
to salvage what sanity I have left. Shopping postpones the moment I actually
have to start spending time with him, so it’s usually a pretty drawn-out
affair. There is always a new bottle of pickles to inspect, or a fresh
artichoke to stroke. In <i>The Godfather</i> Don Corleone says that a man who doesn’t spend time with his
family can never be a real man. I guess I’ve never really been one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I press the buzzer on the
gate. It will take him a while to reach the front door so I wait, watching the
paint peel. God, I wish he’d listen to sense and get the hell out of this
place. It’s so grotty. Probably not the safest neighbourhood, either. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I feel I am being watched so
I look around a bit, feigning nonchalance, trying to not look like a paranoid
white man. No one needs to know that I am a paranoid white man. Who isn’t
suspicious, in this country, where a healthy sense of paranoia keeps you alive?
Stupid people, I guess, and people who have given up. I wind my watch.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The house takes up the
entire block and is fenced off with dark, rotting planks. The gaps in it, like
decaying teeth, serve as an invitation to opportunistic thieves. The front door
is opposite a municipal park, full of drunken sun-sleepers and litter and lazy
lovers with arses too big to sit comfortably on the knee-high gum poles of the
wooden perimeter. In The Bad Old Days the grass was green and the playground
full of bright new colours. Loiterers would be chased away (if you were black
you were a loiterer, white – a visitor). I remember the taste of the painted
metal of the jungle gym, I’m not sure why; I suppose kids try to taste
everything. Metallic, cool and hard, with a softer, thick paint-skin. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I ring the bell again, just
in case he didn’t hear it the first time. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We used to be able to play
there under the casual eye of my mother, who, more often than not, seemed far
more interested in the depths of whichever paperback she happened to be
reading, than in anything we were doing. She would shake out an old Transvaal
Scottish tartan blanket, as if in preparation for a family picnic, then
instruct us to have fun while she eyeballed her own version of make-believe.
She’d flick her gaze up at us now and then for a headcount, not really seeing,
but making sure we were still there. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I fell once, around the back
of the house. There’s a giant oak tree in the backyard. Staunch and towering,
it will probably outlast all of my family’s line. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I was climbing, probably
showing off to Emily. The boasting made me feel cocky; overconfident. I don’t
remember why I fell, perhaps my foot slipped as I was scrambling, or my arm
grabbed for a branch that wasn’t there. But I do remember falling and what a
strange feeling it was, actually being airborne. And then the <i>crunch </i>of backbone-on-land. Emily’s scream.
Little bubblegummer footsteps taking off to summon help. Not knowing what the
warmstickyspreading feeling was on my back. I thought I should stand up, so
that I wouldn’t get into trouble. But I couldn’t, so I stayed splayed in the
shadow of the tree. Granny was first to run out, wiping her hands
absent-mindedly on her ragged apron, her eyes trained on me. She never saw the
need for hysterics. Decades of volunteering at the Red Cross, two dead husbands
and a near-fatal car accident made her immune to dramatics in general. A Dutch
immigrant with more common sense than you could shake a stick at. But she was
running. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Slade,” she had said
without alarm, “are you alright?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Yes,” I said, or perhaps I
nodded. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Yes, just fine. Except that
I couldn’t get up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She used her cool, dry palms
and swollen-knuckled fingers to feel for broken bones. Emily wailed in the
background and was roughly hoisted, one-armed, onto Dad’s hip.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Can you stand?” Gran asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">All eyes on me, I tried
again, and it worked. I must have been numbed by the shock, earlier. I remember
looking down on a smashed stack of tomato crates. You don’t see them nowadays
but they were made of rough-edged plywood strips held together with little
nails. I had a blade of the wood wedged in my back, as if I were the victim of
a half-hearted game of junior vampire slaying. A shallow wound, eager to bleed,
but at least the sickening crunch hadn’t been my spinal cord.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The lock of the door
jiggles. Through the textured glass panels I see the large stooped figure that
is my father. Stuck behind the black bars of the pedestrian gate, I watch his
mottled silhouette fuss with the door until finally it opens, and he shuffles
out on to the verandah, giving me an indignant look.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Have you just arrived?” he
demands, giving me no time to reply. “Why didn’t you ring the bell?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Does he think I’m an idiot?
That I would just skulk here arbitrarily until he decides, on a whim, to open
the door?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I did, Dad,” through
clenched teeth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Well, are you sure? I
didn’t hear anything.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Don’t lose your patience,
Slade. You’ve got a good few hours to get through.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Maybe it’s broken. Here,
let me ring it again.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I jab, with more violence
than strictly necessary, at the button with my index finger.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Can you hear it?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Of course I can’t bloody hear it now. I’m
standing outside!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He is dressed in old
tracksuit pants and a faded blue cardigan. There is a toothpaste stain on his
shirtfront. His voice shakes with indignation. I would also be indignant, if I
were him. If I’d had his life, his past.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Come on, Dad,” I say,
“let’s go inside. We’ll sort this out later.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The interior of the house is
a museum. Scratched wooden floors, faded Persian carpets, Vermeers staring down
at you, their dusty eyes following your movement through the house. Cheap
prints of <i>Girl with a Pearl Earring</i>, <i>The Milkmaid</i>, <i>The Astronomer</i>. Chandeliers with their original light switches. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In the children’s rooms,
huge oak built-in bunk beds as big as boats. Enough space for eight adults per
room, never mind the children. In the bathroom, black and white floor tiles and
a large, sloping bath on claws with enough of an angle to slide down if Gran’s
feeling mellow enough to let you splash around a bit. Emily being scolded for
licking the pink soap which smelled so good. God, I wish he would just sell
this place. Hanging onto it like a sentimental old fool. I sniff deeply and rub
my temples. The memories are suffocating. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I dump the plastic packets
of food on the maroon linoleum floor and hear something break. Typical. I don’t
want to get a rag and clean it up but I do. I carry the whole packet to the
sink. He has laid out a box of water crackers and a tin of sardines for lunch.
Sardines and vomit occupy the same little space in my brain, along with the
smell of boiling tripe. My father is a millionaire but he eats oily fish out of
a can as a treat. My grandparents took the whole post-war economic to heart,
and my father seemed to inherit it. I would go as far as to say I think he
actually <i>enjoyed</i> the
recession. Just another justification for his white-knuckle-tight fists. I
spend money like water. I think sardines are cat food. It’s 2011 for God’s
sake. The war has been over for more than sixty years. It’s the age of
globalisation and consumerism. Spending money like water – where does that come
from? It’s not mine – it doesn’t taste right in my mouth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It was the stuffed olive jar
that broke. Not too much damage done, everything else in the packet just needs
a bit of a wipe. I pick an olive out of the broken glass and pop it into my
mouth. I can’t resist. I have the vague feeling that Francina is going to jump
out from behind somewhere and scold me, which is what happens when I drink milk
out of the bottle in my own kitchen. The olive is salty and I move it around in
my mouth to feel its smooth, oily skin. I let my tongue trap it on the roof of
my mouth, bruising it to release a little juice. Perhaps it’ll be worth the shard
of glass I may unknowingly swallow. It would be a pretty undignified way to
leave this earth. I can see the newspaper headline: ‘Famous Local Author Dies
After Eating Stray Glass Shard’; or, worse: ‘R.I.P. Slade Harris (Previously
Famous Author).’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I know a guy who died
choking on a piece of toast; I swear I’m not making this up. He was an
alcoholic and crack addict most of his life and he lost everything he ever
owned, including his wife and bewildered kids. He finally puts his life on
track and chokes on a bloody piece of toast at the breakfast table. Maybe
that’s worse. Maybe, maybe not.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Dad shuffles in wearing his <i>stokies</i>. I can’t believe how shabby he’s looking.
He is starting to smell like an old person. The sour scent of decay. What is it
exactly? I try to work it out. Damp wool; un-flossed teeth; cat food; cheap
aftershave. I give him an uncharacteristically generous smile. We have the same
green eyes. His eyebrows are long and bushy, he has untrimmed nose and ear
hair; I wonder how it feels for him to look at me and see this younger version
of himself. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have kids. They would remind me
of my decline and I’d resent the buggers. I’d probably have a lot more grey
hair if I were a father. I went the safe route: I had books instead of kids.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He clears his throat noisily
as if no one else is in the room. Living on your own makes you do things like
that. You’re used to being alone and lose the need to be polite with your
bodily functions. I’ve lived alone for twenty-plus years now and, despite years
of resisting it, feel my own slide into this hermit-like comfort. Open-mouthed
throat-clearing at high volume is the least of it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Dad opens the vintage fridge
and takes two clinking bottles of beer out of the icebox. For however long
either of us live I will always associate that sound with him. It’s a friendly,
comforting sound, like a wine-cork popping, or a gas ring being lit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“There’s a match on,” he
announces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I knew. Of course I knew.
Arsenal versus Chelsea. It’s the perfect excuse to spend time together without
talking. Especially without talking about Emily. Arsenal doesn’t stand a
chance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Really?” I ask, wide-eyed,
“Who’s playing?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">*</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">That night I go to a Mexican bar in
Melville and get drunk. Family seems to have that effect on me. A lot of things
seem to have that effect on me. The music is loud and upbeat and there is a
huge portrait of Frieda Kahlo on the wall. I eat quesadillas that make my mouth
burn with their fresh green chillies and I sip gold tequila: fighting fire with
fire. ‘One fire burns out another’s burning’ – I think that’s Shakespeare:
Romeo and Juliet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I went to Mexico once on a
journo assignment. Wouldn’t mind going back. Maybe a Cuba-to-Cancun cruise is
what I need: a slow yacht, with warm sea air and crushed-ice cocktails; maybe
lick a little coke off dark-skinned girls in metallic bikinis. God, I
definitely need something. Sometimes I feel like I’ve done everything and that
there’s nothing new out there. Maybe I’m just a bit burnt out. I signal the bartender
to top up my glass. He looks wary but does it anyway. What I need is a fresh,
exciting experience, one which will bring the words back to my fingers. I need
to think about it; perhaps when I am sober. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Feeling sentimental, I think
back to Mr. Robinson, an English teacher I had in primary school. The only
teacher with whom I ever really connected; an eccentric man who wore hats and
had perennially ink-stained fingers. He never took any notice of me until I
wrote an essay about our family dog, Maxwell, going missing. He was a vicious <i>brak</i> stray my parents had adopted when they
were still young and idealistic. He tore up couches, swallowed shoes whole, and
attacked trembling old ladies. By the time Emily and I started school he was
corpsestiff with arthritis but he tried to bite us anyway with his black gummy
jaws. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Mr. Robinson used to spout
writing tips at us as if we were all aspiring Kafkas. It was about writing The
Truth, he said. He quoted Hemingway: ‘All you have to do is write one true
sentence’. Then Merton: ‘We make our selves real by telling the truth.’ I was
entranced. Money? For words? Words that had come so easily when I recounted
Maxwell’s short, crabby life, and the mystery of his disappearance. It turned
out that my first muse was a dog.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Phuza-</i>face glowing, eyes popping, Mr. Robinson
taught me the oldest and most controversial writing lesson of all: to be able
to write well – that is, convincingly enough to make your reader feel,<i>
really</i> feel, your story –
is entirely based on your experience of what you are writing about. Many
experts have since rubbished this notion or seconded it, but I know that it is
my truth. I have tried again and again to write purely from imagination but I
am either stuck halfway through or end up so shamed by the prose I burn it (a
delete button is sometimes not enough to purge yourself of truly horrible
work). And so between Mr. Robinson and Vicious Maxwell (R.I.P.) I was able to
learn my secret to great writing. And experience, as Oscar Wilde famously said,
is one thing you can’t get for nothing. As the tequila warms my throat under
Frieda’s monobrowed glare I wonder what my life would have been like if I had
not been in class that day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I wanted to write about the
tree-climbing accident; I wanted to describe that feeling of weightlessness I
had during the fall. But my mother was so angry with me I didn’t dare ever
bring it up again. She didn’t speak to me for a week after the accident and
when I offered her the shirt for washing, hard and stained with my old brown blood,
she grabbed the skin on my cheek with her thumb and index finger and pinched
it: a parrot-bite.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I never saw the shirt again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I get up off my barstool
without stumbling, pull some notes out of my wallet and slide them onto the
well-worn, greasy counter, next to my dinner plate. Note to self: wallet feels
a bit light.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Disgrace</i>: ‘spending money like water’. That’s
where I first read it; I wonder where he happened on it. ‘No matter,’ he says.
An exhilaratingly desolate scene by Coetzee at his best, describing Lurie after
the farm attack, when the dogs are shot and his daughter gang-raped. Alienated
beyond the point of no return, Lurie sits in a sinking plastic chair surrounded
by the smell of rotting apples and chicken feathers, feeling his will to live draining
out of him like blood. Coetzee describes him as an empty fly-casing in a
spider’s web. The beauty. The bleakness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I down what’s left in my glass and leave.</span></div>
<div style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="ALL" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
</div>
Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-18905252795703292612011-09-02T09:20:00.000-07:002011-09-23T09:14:52.474-07:00Chapter 1: At Least Someone Is Having An Interesting Morning<div class="mbl notesBlogText clearfix" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>At Least Someone Is Having An Interesting Morning</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">In darkness: headpounding, stomachswimming, eyesitching.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I reach for the bottle of San Pellegrino I keep next to my bed. Someone has taken it. Bastard.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">No, that’s not right.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The neighbour’s junker is grumbling. Jack Russell barking.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I
left the bottle in the den last night, was using it to top up my
whiskies. Amateur mistake. I raise my eyelids just enough to get a
bright slice of white ceiling.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">After a few shallow breaths I stand
up and fall down. Starsinhead. Dizzy. Make it to the coffee machine and
flick the red switch. It growls.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Scratch my stubble. Brainonfire.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The
morning glare through the kitchen window is ruthless. I close my eyes
for a while to give them a bit of a rest. I need to piss and shower and
eat something greasy. Breakfast at Salvation Café. A double Bloody Mary
blitzed with raw egg and Tabasco.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Now warm, the coffee
machine grinds, blasts and spits. The fridge is vacant apart from some
old oil-blemished pizza boxes, crystallized balsamic syrup and a
never-opened jar of mysteries picked up at the last organic market with
Eve. I should never go to organic markets. And I should never have
bought such a leviathan fridge. Peering into its airy innards makes me
feel lonely. It never used to be this way.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">This appliance has seen
its fair share of riches: countless bottles of Veuve Cliquot and
glittering round tins of Russian Caviar, like gold coins for giants. Now
it sits, sulking, vacant, desolate. My heart is an empty refrigerator.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The
milk is beyond rescue and it swirls down the sink trap. I stir the
coffee too hard, slopping it down the side of the mug, leaving an
eclipse on the pale marble slab of the counter top. I’ll clean it up
later.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Like the walking dead, dripping hot mug in hand, I stagger
to my writing desk in the den to survey the damage, taking care to not
trip over the piles of books lying in the way. It doesn’t look too bad
at first glance. Doesn’t look too bad at all till I see my murdered
Moleskine lying like a dead animal on the edge of the bureau, creamy
belly exposed, inky guts ripped out.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">*</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“You look like shit.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Thanks. I look way better than I feel.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">It’s
been a wreck of a morning so far and smiling hurts. I kiss her on the
cheek and grab the chair in the shade, not too close, in the empty hope
that she doesn’t smell the stale whisky leaking from my pores. I put my
phone on the table beside her bunch of keys: her silver apple keyring
glints in the sun.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">She is dressed up. I wonder if she is meeting
someone after breakfast. Another man maybe, or a sponsor. Or maybe it’s a
shoot: apart from being an artist, she is a partner in a small film
company. I am immediately jealous.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">She lowers her very large sunglasses slightly and takes a look at my sorry state.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Did you party too hard last night with what’s-her-name?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Kind of,” I grin. Ouch. “You could say that.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Eve sits back with her arms crossed. She always has her arms crossed. She’s always disapproving in a hot librarian kind of way.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“So? How are things with her? What’s her name again?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The
waitress arrives with menus too big to be practical. I struggle with
mine and almost knock over my pre-ordered double-hot Bloody Mary.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“It’s over. So it doesn’t matter.” I mumble, but she gets the gist.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Why am I not surprised?” She sighs, closing her menu and setting it down on the table.”What happened?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“I broke it off last night.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Another non-surprise then.” She makes a show of yawning. Taps the table leg with her ballet flat. “Very boring, Slade.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">This
jabs me in the stomach. There are not many things I fear more than
predictability. Being a bore: I find that terrifying. She knows this and
indulges me with a half-smile, to show that she was half-kidding.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">God,
Eve is sexy in her tailored ivory suit and bare pink lips. Jackie O
shades. Although she looks just as desirable in the paint-stained
oversized men’s collared shirts she works in. And her ponytail. I love
her hair in a ponytail. What I wouldn’t do to grab … I realise I am
daydreaming and try to remember what it was we were speaking about. I
hide behind my Oakley’s: this babbelas is making me feel a thousand
years old.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Ponytails, lips, yawning: Ah, whatshername.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Well, it wasn’t working. I had to end it. She was no good.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">A man from the adjacent table glances over, curious, then turns away before I can tell him to mind his own damn business.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“No good for your writing, you mean.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Yes. Well, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? It’s not like I can be okay without my writing.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">It’s all I have.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I
don’t tell Eve I broke the news to the woman early in the evening so I
could get home in time to work on a few notes. It didn’t work: nothing
came to me. In the end I – apparently - finished a bottle of whisky and
tore up my notebook. Which is becoming a habit.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I ignore the flash of annoyance in Eve’s eyes. She nibbles a nail.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“How did she take it?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Fine.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Fine?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Not
as heartbroken as the accountant, not as happy as the talk-show host.
Somewhere in between. Pretty neutral, really. I think that’s what I
didn’t like about her.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“Her grace? Equanimity? Even-temperedness? I can see how that could be very unappealing.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The waitress is back with a hopeful look on her face.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I clench my fist.“She didn’t give me anything.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The
man looks over again: I can feel his eyes on me. Who is he? A fan? A
spy? An assassin? I glare at him and he immediately begins to inspect
his sunny-side-up. Nosy fucker.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">“I bet you didn’t give her anything.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I
look into the distance and adjust my scarf against the breeze. We order
the Brie omelette and Caribbean sweet French toast with maple syrup,
berries and organic cream. A giant pot of Earl Grey.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">What Eve
didn’t know was that karma had burnt me just that morning. The hangover
wasn’t the only thing nudging me to the edge. As I had lurched from my
writing den to the front door and turned the key, I heard a car door
slam shut outside and burn rubber. I remember thinking: at least someone
is having an interesting morning. I’d made a distracted effort to close
my dressing gown over my old Iron Maiden T-shirt and grey jocks, put on
my sunglasses to mitigate the evil brightness of the Johannesburg sun,
and opened the door. Nothing looked out of place but I’d had a strange
feeling in my gut, which may or may not have had something to do with
the previous night’s Glenfiddich. A few cool, barefoot steps later I had
the newspaper in one hand, coffee in the other, and felt a little
better about life in general. Until I turned around.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">It wasn’t
that bad. I mean, she could have thrown a Molotov cocktail through the
window and burnt the place down altogether. She could have pulled an
Al-Qaeda and detonated some sweet-smelling plastic explosive on the
front lawn. She could have hired a Casspir – Mellow-Yellow - and mown
the house down. That would have been worse. Instead she had graffiti’d
‘SLADE HARRIS YOU CUNTING FUCK’, all along the front wall in a
particularly fetching shade of crimson. I still haven’t decided if I
enjoyed her creative license with the shoddy punctuation and the
transmutation of the word ‘cunt’ into an adjective. Anyhow, it has a
certain ring to it, and it’s certainly not easy to forget. Full marks
for punchiness. Standing there with the cool morning air on my still
bed-warm thighs and admiring her work had a kind of justice in it, I
suppose, for I have hurt a lot of women and it seems time that one of
them has become intent on punishing me. It is unfortunate, however, that
this particular one happens to be a psychopath.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">When I
get back from breakfast with Eve I am still a little jumpy. I keep
picturing Sally standing motionless outside my house, looking straight
ahead, the epitome of calm apart from a single spray-paint-stained hand.
A street version of Lady Macbeth. The idea unsettles me a bit, so I
like it. Not because I’m fearless: the opposite is true. I spend the
rest of the day avoiding walking past windows and don’t open the door to
anyone, not even the feather-duster man. I like it because having a
beautiful, persistent, bunnyboiler ex could be very interesting.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">And I am desperate for interesting.</span></div>
</div>
Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-72908654979624067972011-08-12T08:44:00.001-07:002011-08-12T08:44:53.945-07:00Prologue: A Monument to Lost Causes<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My little sister’s body was blue when they pulled it out of the river. Such a small thing, she was. Usually the shock of it would make one disillusioned, confused, blurry. Not me. I was startled into detail. Shocked into being the most alive I had ever been. Her sleeping lungs made mine gasp for air. I was electrified by the green of the river reeds, strangled by the summer air; everything else out of that moment was washed away by the gurgle of the persuasive current.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The men were taller than trees, the men who helped. They had heard my high-pitched flailing but not in time.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Afterwards, the grey tree-man couldn’t leave Emily lying on the ground. Cradled in his arms, her wet dress stuck, resolved, to her body. He tugged at it, as if to cover her, as if to shield her, but not in time. He was planted in such a determined way it seemed that he would never again move from that bit of land: a monument to lost causes. The other man sat on the bank, gulping, head wobbling on shaking knees. He had tried to revive her with a combination of violence and care, unsure how much the porcelain body could endure, desperate to get her drifting heart pumping. He went from savage breastbone-beating to gentle kisses and back again. Gasping, shuddering, all four of us dripped.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We waited for the screams in silence and dread.</span></div>Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-6445098676165801692011-07-01T08:13:00.000-07:002011-07-01T08:13:45.105-07:00I have an unreachable star.<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">It’s tempting to go as far as to say that I’ve modelled myself on Gatsby, but<br />
I know it’s not true. I was unhinging my life years before I even picked up a<br />
battered copy. Mostly it’s about being a figment of my own imagination.<br />
Meet Slade Harris, the tragic protagonist of his own life.</span>Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-81303294741169377582011-06-15T09:44:00.000-07:002011-07-22T07:44:23.479-07:00Beware of Books<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><style id="dynCom" type="text/css">
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</style> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">‘Beware of books.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">spirit of the author within<a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6929493062257619985#_msocom_1" id="_anchor_1" name="_msoanchor_1"></a><span class="MsoCommentReference"></span><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6929493062257619985#_msocom_2" id="_anchor_2" name="_msoanchor_2"></a><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span>.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays …</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex.’</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: white; line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">- </span><a href="http://www.ericajong.com/" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Erica Jong</a><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">,</span> <i>Seducing the Demon</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929493062257619985.post-57625981495878571922011-06-15T09:36:00.000-07:002011-06-15T09:37:11.825-07:00Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;">Nobody heard him, the dead man,<br />
But still he lay moaning:<br />
I was much further out than you thought<br />
And not waving but drowning.<br />
<br />
Poor chap, he always loved larking<br />
And now he's dead<br />
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,<br />
They said.<br />
<br />
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always<br />
(Still the dead one lay moaning)<br />
I was much too far out all my life<br />
And not waving but drowning.</span> </div>Pulp Bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09488843761240629215noreply@blogger.com0