final draft

I

With an eclipse in the sky,

a bottle of Remy by his side,

and a bowler on his head,

The Follower, inert and enervated,

pulled a paperback from his knapsack entitled “Smirking at the Unfinished Novel in the Bottom Desk Drawer” and

read a passage from it:

“Peckinpaugh was an enigma. As a tragic hero, there was something Shakespearean about him. There were also grounds to classify him as a psychiatric case, bordering on insanity. Twenty years of anxiety, temperament and unhappiness had earned him his first heart attack at the age of forty-two. He’d lived an unbelievably depressing, dirty, and drunk

life; his home, to all practical purposes, was a room at the YMCA…”

The Follower closed the book

and stroked his forehead.

He was taking a new medication that

made him sleepy.

II

Returning to his sparse, dim room,

The Follower poured himself a glass of scotch,

and then began to dictate his bio mythography

into a portable MP3 recorder.

“‘The Grinning Visage,’ subtitled ‘The Pathos of the Lie.’

Chapter one. Like most people, he was complicated…” 

The Follower paused the recorder and waited for the following line. Fifteen minutes later, he spoke into the microphone again. “Like most people, he was complicated. He bled with self-pity. No one could take a joke so personally…”

That’s when it dawned on him that he was

writing about a truth

that would have killed most men.

He learned about this truth early in life.

There was always a conspicuous silence in the house,

the kind that cut gaping holes in him.

Nobody ever said good morning.

They just looked at each other and sighed.

Whenever words were exchanged,

they were usually uttered in harsh whispers.

Secrets were guarded and disclosed only

if they betrayed somebody’s trust.

Lies were elaborate and endless and never agonized over,

and truth was something that was always referred to in

the past tense.

The Follower poured another scotch and, forgetting to turn on the record button spoke softly into the microphone.

“Weary, exhausted, and fueled by my pretenses, I found rhythms and myths. I wandered and followed my faults to the ends of the needles jabbed into my veins. While on my way to waterfront motels, I distrusted women intensely. I was fascinated by them. At the same time, I felt I had no idea what was going on inside of me, and to get close to a woman was to risk entrapment, imprisonment, and claustrophobia. But now there I was. I was in America, God’s country, driving in an American Machine, taking deep breaths, then shallow ones…”

And in a breeze, The Follower’s consciousness was no more.

Reviews

[Philip Gaber]

Great points, Bill. I was being a bit cheesy and cheeky, which doesn't always come across in print. I hesitate to add a laughing, crying smiley face to any of my titles for aesthetic reasons! Tennesee Williams would rewrite many of his works after they were published or performed. This idea of a final draft is nebulous, at the very least, when art is concerned. However, you're right. The final nail in our coffins will highlight our true final draft. Ces't la vie and all that bullshit! Thanks, Rourke!

[roarke]

Man, your narrative is always so strong, like a master orchestra conductor. But today, I’d like to comment on the title: Final Draft…. And in the strictest perspective, the only “final draft” is when you are gone, passed, as at any time, any moment, any mood, changes, rewrites, evolutions can be made, because, well, you are the creator, the architect. I came to this understanding in the last decade, via many experiences. The first was in writing, and then having understood this, I applied it to my art work, and it held true, then I applied it to music… and although music, the purest from of creative abstraction, occurs “ in time” starts and stops, it too can evolve, especially in the moment improvisation. And I apply it to photography… and sure, you can say: “I declare this work to be finished”… and it is mostly, especially if you sell it and it is now in the hands of the buyer. But even that is ephemeral. How do I define, declare, a “final draft”?? Heh, I guess I haven’t completed one yet. Keep going Philip.