Untitled WIP

Here's something I wrote a couple weeks ago, and shelved in lieu of other projects/homework. Maybe I'll post more in a few weeks when I finish, maybe not. I would love to hear your thoughts on the beginnings of it, though. Cheers.

This is Nick.

He is single, 53-years-old, and he lives in the newest prefab home in Riverton. It's seven blocks south of Maple Street, which is two blocks west of downtown, but it is a better street because it's where all the bars are. All of them is only a phrase used to make Riverton sound bigger than it actually is because there are only two bars in Riverton. Nick's home cost $40,000. It's 927 square feet and has a detached carport. Nick doesn't use the carport; his truck is too big.

His neighbors are probably jealous. They don't talk to him, and Nick assumes it's because they're jealous.

Nick doesn't know what happens when you assume. But that doesn't really matter because Nick doesn't like any of his neighbors -- or he wouldn't if he talked to them. If Nick talked to his neighbors he would know that the family next door had three children, but the baby died last december from SIDS and the middle child became the youngest child -- a familial role that she is still trying to grasp. Today is her birthday and Dad took the family to Chilis. They would have described their evening as bourgeois if they knew what the word meant.

Nick would also know that the young, redneck couple that lived in the double-wide trailer across the street were actually named Dale and Brandine. He would have remarked how he thought those things only happened in the movies. He would also know that Dale was laid off today from his job at the auto-body shop, and he hadn't told Brandine. It was a Friday, so Dale figured he could put off the news all weekend and call in sick on Monday if he didn't find a good time to tell his wife. But Nick doesn't talk to his neighbors, so he doesn't know any of this. Nick only knows about the things he does each day and he knows the things he likes.

He likes: Grocery shopping, the sound car tires make on gravel, and punching men in the face. But only men, and only men that deserve it. And only after three or four shots of whiskey at Dockside Bar which isn't located at the docks -- there are no docks in Riverton. There is, however, a river, but it's Nick River. A man with a wife and six kids.

This story is not about Nick River the man. Nor is it specifically about Riverton, where there are no rivers, but there are Rivers. There is not any water, actually, in Riverton. There are only very large pipes buried underground that pump water into the city for its 87 residents. Rather, it's 86 now. Old George Mantooth died last night. (George liked: Peanut butter M&Ms, pin-up girls, and telling war stories about battles he never fought in.) George Mantooth was Nick's father. He hated Dockside Bar.

Nick was in the parking lot of Dockside Bar, which is precisely where his ass landed after he somersaulted out the door. The bouncer had shoved him in the back because he punched a man in the face. But the man called Nick's sister a soft-bottomed floozie, so even though a sweaty asperity dripped off Nick's forehead, everything was right in the world.

But Nick doesn't think like this. Instead, Nick felt good and buzzed. If he was sitting on a stoop with an old buddy from highschool throwing back Budweisers, Nick would sigh contentedly and say, "Yeah, man." Nick, however, was in the gravel parking lot of a dive bar in a down town. He rubbed a dirty palm on his forehead and looked at it. It was sweaty and speckled with blood. "Whoops. Never did get a hang of that tuckin' and rollin'."

There was no one around to hear Nick talk about his shortcomings.

A pea-grean Buick rolled slowly into the parking lot and stopped next to Nick. It belonged to his sister, Brenda. Nick lifted himself into the passenger's seat. "They don't much like you in there," he said.

Brenda replied, "Did Dad say sumthin' about bein' cremated?" Brenda has never been a good listener.

"Well here I thought he died of a heart attack."

"He did. But what are we doin' with his body?"

"I don't know. We never much talked about those things."

Nick hadn't talked to his dad much at all since 2003. Momma Mantooth died the summer of that year. She hated summer. It was too hot and sticky and Momma didn't like those bugs that you can never see but sound like weed-whackers. What Momma did like was: Lemonade, hot tubs, and gin-and-tonics. All of which are more closely related to summertime than anything else, but Momma only enjoyed these things in the fall and winter. She didn't want to look like she was enjoying herself in June.

Old George Mantooth built Momma's casket in the garage after she died. When he was done he hauled it to the cemetery in his truck with a shovel and a tape measure where he dug Momma's grave himself. She was at the end of a long line of decaying Mantooths. There were three more plots in line with reservations for the living.

No one in the Mantooth family had ever been called intuitive. When Nick asked, "Wouldn't he want to be buried with the rest of the family?" Brenda had to think about it for awhile.

"That'd be an OK spot to put him," she said.

Brenda dropped Nick off at his home and they parted ways without talking about Nick's night at the bar. If they had, Nick would have found out that the man he punched was from the city up north. He also would have found out that the man he should have punched was the bartender who broke up with Brenda after a one night stand last Thursday. He may have even learned that Brenda was only at Dockside to drink and flirt heavily with the men at the bar to make the bartender jealous.

There are many things Nick never learned from the people around him.

Nick's home has a new-car smell, but this shouldn't be unexpected. If anyone ever visited Nick, they would notice the smell right away, even before they noticed that the TV was tuned to static. Nick had only the furniture he needed. The kitchen table was small and only had one chair with it. The living room had an upholstered recliner and a footstool. There was a rolltop desk in the corner that Nick used only once a year on the last weekend in March to do his taxes. Nick's bedroom and bathroom were equally sparse and functional. He had a bed and a closet, no dresser, a toilet, a shower, and no bathtub. There was another bedroom, but it was empty and Nick kept the door closed. The walls of the home were white and the trim was Maple. Nick didn't pay attention to these details and if you asked him what color his house was he would say, "I can't recall."

September Topic

Language has been around for awhile now. I can't be bothered to check, but I know it's at least since the 1920s because that's when the last book I read was written. Anyway, such is the case and as can be expected, words come and go like the standards of the written word.

The job this month is to do your part in saving the words that are on their way out. Head to Save the Words and pick one out that calls to you in one way or another. Take this word, extract inspiration from it, and write something around it - narrative, memoir, haiku, sordid tale, whatever. You might use the word for a title, theme, adjective, it doesn't matter, so long as you use it in some capacity. Just be sure to let us know what word you chose and what it means.

April Assignment - Untitled

The Old Mill is where we forged our history.

The mill existed in a dilapidated nether-world where decay was ever present but never progressed. The crumbling walls looked sufficiently sturdy, but no one ever went upstairs to test their fortitude. Inside it was dark and gray, even under harsh afternoon sunlight. The mill was abandoned long before any of us were born. We investigated county records one damp spring day, but we could not find a deed for that tract of land. So it was simply The Old Mill.

We found the mill so long ago. We were just children romping through the woods in the springtime. There were four of us in the beginning: Greg, Erich, Mary and myself but in The Old Mill we shed these facades. Others joined us through the years but enlistment was selective.

In the basement we gathered in the wine cellar, but it could just as easily have been a dungeon. Rusted fixtures adorned the walls and we hung a couple gas lanterns on the medieval decor. From the woods we dragged the biggest stumps and logs our little arms could grasp, and we pushed an overbuilt table from the kitchen to the cellar.

As kids, we found The Old Mill could become everything our imaginations wished. We traveled the world, walked on the moon, ran through time fighting dinosaurs and sabre tooth tigers and Roman gladiators and knights and Indians and the Germans. We would turn down the lanterns and try to scare ourselves with stories of ghosts and haunted houses.

As teenagers, The Old Mill satiated our lust to sample nefarious vices. We became smugglers of another time. We scavenged dumpsters and alley-ways for thrown out furniture. We hauled an absurd congregate of threadbare vintage effects from miles away to pile in the wine cellar. It was a way of moving up in the world. We carved out a style we called our own to decorate our apartment in the woods. We smoked cigarettes and marijuana, poured cheep beer and vodka, and developed a taste for scotch and whiskey that never left me. We tried to figure out what it all meant and why life goes on. Why do our parents and teachers want us to do what everyone else does and be normal and go with the flow? Where does the identity of the individual go? It gets lost and crushed amidst a gray life of algebra, PE, and puberty, we decided. Well that's not gonna be me, we declared.

And then we all packed up the van and left for college to find ourselves. Again.

We returned to The Old Mill as college students whenever people were home on breaks. Now we reminisced about our childhood and reckless high school adventures. We debated everything we thought really knew about the real world and just how everything works.

And it works like this: We all grow up and find something within ourselves that drives us to do something in life – big, small; virtuous, immoral; it doesn't matter what – but we never really change who we were when we lay with all the other newborns in the hospital. And there is something that connects certain people to one another in unexplainable ways and no matter where those individuals are in this world, they are never really apart. And that is the breath of life. Till death do us part, indeed.

The Old Mill still stands. In fact, nothing has really changed. The bricks are just as gray and dilapidated as they once were. Maybe the grass has grown a bit taller. My old bones don't move as fast as they once did, but they got me through the woods and I'm sure I can make it inside and down the worn stone steps to the cellar.

It took a long time to get down to the wine cellar, but when you're as old as I am that doesn't really matter. My friends are long gone. Either mentally or physically, I've long since forgotten what fate befell whom. The furniture we brought here those many years ago is still here and more or less intact. One of our lanterns still hangs on the wall. The chairs probably aren't as comfortable as they once were, but after a long hike through the woods, it feels good to sit.

I wish that I could have my ashes spread in this room. I feel more at home here than I have anywhere else. But I couldn't give any sort of directions that someone might even find this place. I can only find my way on instinct, and I can't do that very well if I'm dead.

I'm going to let my mind drift back to my youth when The Old Mill was filled with stories and laughter and hope and camaraderie. I have nowhere to go, and I'm quite at peace. My soul is weary, so I think I'll rest awhile.

All the Books in the World

I, unfortunately, haven't been able to get anything done here for DitPress these last two months because school has me bogged down like you wouldn't believe. 18 credits is a lot of work. Anyway, here is something that I wanted to post last month, but didn't get around to it. The story/artwork is (of course) not my own, but it fits the theme and I want to share a wonderful story with all of you.

p.s. I am working on a short story for my english class, and I will hopefully have that uploaded sometime this month.

Bike Courier - Entry 3

I know it's march technically (but really, who's counting?), but I want to finish this. I did the pre-writing for all seven entries and I might as well wrap everything up. I'll try to do just that by Sunday (March 8).

DISCLAIMER: I don't know how accepting everyone here is of explicit language, and there is a bit of that in this entry. If you're not into that so much, maybe skip this post. Otherwise, read away!

Anyways...

A Glimpse of a Tuesday Afternoon

April 24 2007

at the corner of 47^th and 9^th. It's two blocks west of Times Square and in the heart of the theatre district. I'm sweating, in spite of the cold wind that nips bare skin and stings the nostrils. I'm making my way to some stage, carrying a first draft of the next Broadway hit. But that's just what the pretentious playwright screamed, shrill and metallic, as I left his smugly cluttered office on the 25^th floor of 357 Madison. A guy in a suit and overcoat is pushing through the throng and pinches me against the backside of magazine vendor. Jesus, man. You're not that important. You'd have a limo and driver if someone thought you were. Weaving between taxis, sneaking through pedestrians. Why the hell is it so busy? A parked car opens its door maybe five feet ahead, I push it close. My legs are whirling around and around and around but I don't think I'm getting anywhere. I swear to God I've seen that seedy deli three times now. How many of those shitholes are in this town? A clock. It's 2:13. Where is the goddamn theatre? A bus is next to me, revving its diesel. I'm pushing 30mph, adrenaline is coursing through my muscles and heightening my senses so why is he trying to push past? Bus squeezes in front of me like a fat man eying the dwindling buffet. You dumb fuck. Just run me over next time and make it easier for both of us. “Get out...of...my...way,” I yell at no one and no thing in particular. There. That's the theatre I want. Shit. I missed it. Quick left into the alley. Slip onto the sidewalk. I'm a foot taller than anyone atop the bike. Dismount. Lock the bike. Inside. I have to use the fucking freight elevator. A script is freight. It's a goddamn envelope. Script on the desk. Sign the manifest. First floor. Outside. Free the bike. Remount. I call in the drop to dispatch and hop the curb, merging smoothly with traffic. Then this shithead in a Silverado makes

*Literary device courtesy Bret Easton Ellis (well, that's who inspired it, anyway).

Bike Courier - Entry 2

March 24, 2007

Ever since the human race abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and formed sustainable communities, every action the race takes is nothing more than an emphatic statement that we are not animals. We look to the Heavens for mercy, promising a slaughtered sheep in return. We dress extravagantly and live in preposterous shelters. Trails are paved to be comfortable underfoot. We scar and abuse the earth, turning her into our bitch rather than a mother of providence. The human race is arrogant.

This is a cynical perspective, I know, but spend any significant time in the city and one would be hard pressed to find evidence to the contrary. The Concrete Jungle is so called not because of its assiduity, but the heterogeneity therein.

A bicycle immured in traffic should look like a suckerfish picking clean a shark. Instead, it is a potent example of aposymbiosis where car and bicycle spar like ancient Roman gladiators. Here the aristocracy has released venomous steel behemoths in lieu of ferocious tigers or vengeful silverbacks.

Two days I saw society's Ceaser turn its thumb down at another cyclist. I was cruising a mostly empty street and he rode a quarter mile up the road. He was a commuter; perhaps heading back to the office after lunch or heading home after a short day. His helmet was strapped tightly to his head and his right pant leg was carefully rolled to barely avoid the reach of a chainring's teeth. I laughed inwardly at the site of his street stained backpack and penny-loafers clutched by toe clips. He pedaled, undaunted, in the middle of the road, faster than I could have predicted.

A flash of light caught my eye and I saw the glint of the freshly washed grill on an Escalade. It was blinding under sunlight. I watched that same grill slip between parked cars and into the street far too quickly. The cyclist I laughed at moments before, now a perfect contour of the SUV's front side. The Escalade's tires squealed and skidded to halt. The rider was hurled onto the asphalt and slid across the far lane; stopping abruptly at the curb, a disjointed pile of wheels, bike, legs and elbows.

The runt in the SUV gripped the steering wheel tightly, with two hands. I watched him look up and down the street anxiously, then take off like the scumbag that he is. I grit my teeth and jumped on the pedals. Today I played vigilante. He might run from the police, run from the law, but he couldn't run from justice. Surely he saw me, panting in his rear-view mirror. He turned left and right at random. He sped through lights burning yellow. I trailed and parried every maneuver he could play. Together we danced a deadly promenade. Block after block I stuck to his path, until the bastard found an on-ramp.

I locked my pedals, skidding to a stop. I dismounted, cursing and punching the demons that clouded my vision. I was the lion that lost its gazelle. In a triumph of foresight, I memorized his license plate and scribbled it in my manifest. I dialed 911 and reported the accident.

I should take comfort in the fact that the man will have a warrant out for his arrest, but I don't. Often these kinds of accidents go unpunished. They likely won't look for him. They don't care that a commuter is bleeding in a storm drain. He shouldn't have been there in the first place, right?

On Monday I will roll back into the city and nothing will be different. Life will be moving at the same breakneck pace it always does. People will continue to roam unawares and new tracks will be beaten down where old memories lay. The teeming, chaotic mass of humanity will ever consume itself.

Keep your eyes open, kid. It's a jungle out there.

Bike Courier Day 1

March 19, 2007

I have made a huge mistake.

Those words encompassed my thoughts this morning; presently I disagree. I am amazed how a full day and three hours of crippled sleep can change a mind. I will try to make sense of today's tempest, but I am not sure I can.

I start the day at Washington Square Park in New York's lower east side with a dozen or more couriers, all of us waiting for the first call from dispatch (a 'tag,' I'm told). The scene is eclectic to any one of the thousands of drones scurrying amidst cubical farms but orthodox for the tribe. Some of the couriers are dragging on cigarettes, others suck down coffee. Still more are stuffing bagels plunged in cream cheese down their throats. A few are squatting on their top-tubes shooting the breeze. I can't help but feel a belonging here. I am one of the warriors of the financial district. I am that imprudent rider zipping past car doors and pedestrians (aka meat pylons). Couriers are kings on the fringes of society; scarred with tattoos and piercings, all garish and grudge, they swagger and speak in exaggerations.

My first tag comes in at 9:07. It's a pickup at 224 W 21^st. On my way, I get three more tags: 319 E 35^th; 754 W 24^th; 832 E 55^th. Oh, and I get drops for all the tags. I spend most of my time scrutinizing Google Maps on my iPhone and scribbling addresses in my manifest. At 1:30pm I'm done and told to “clean up.” Lunch time. I get 27 minutes before a tag grates from the radio. The afternoon is a rehashing of the morning's furor, but when I'm told to clean up at 5:13, I have realized only three drops. Dispatch told me seven drops is a good first day. Most greenwheels scarcely make five. I spun home and jumped in bed.

I awoke with arthritic joints and smarting muscles. I limped to the kitchen and devoured a pot of chili like a lion on a gazelle. I certainly had doubts about this new gig riding home. I traded a steady paycheck, benefits, and a parking spot with my name on it for a job and paycheck as unpredictable as the doors on a taxi. What did I expect find out here? Am I trying to prove something? To whom? I am seeing now that those thoughts are natural fallout from a crazy day from which I was still reeling.

The allure of a bicycle courier was not lost on me on my first day. I partook in the reckless abandonment the streets inspire and their stoical manifest quelled my preconceptions. I feel like I have suffered eight and a half weeks of basic training in eight and a half hours. And I get to do it all again tomorrow.