Prologue: an Autobiography as Wretched as its Author

This prologue was written in an effort to make other elements of the work make sense for certain readers who weren't necessarily as "experienced in the ways of the world" as others, whatever that means. The objective of the prologue is to try a

The first cigarette I ever smoked was handed to me by a pudgy eighth-grader before the bell rang to let us know of the beginning of another day of mental masturbation.  I accepted it and walked across the street with him to the Church of Jesus Christ Scientist where we smoked on the steps, looking at all of the students waiting to go inside.

            The first cigarette I ever smoked made me age drastically.  I was twelve years old, but after the first puff I was twenty.

            A lot of people change after they start smoking, not because of the mere shift from non-smoker to smoker, but consciousness itself changes.  What you once were becomes a distant memory of naïve innocence and “childish behavior”.  In later years though, the attempt to rekindle the youth before nicotine becomes the ultimate trip to find the innocence once known.

            It becomes a quest to find out how much of the world you have not yet experienced.  I already knew what it was like to be a non-smoker, and any time I’m at the doctor’s office or the dentist, when they start asking the usual insurance questions, I’m still a non-smoker.  I could walk in smelling like a trucker straight out of a cloudy 24-hour waffle house and not even flinch when they ask me if I smoke.

            This kind of confidence is first viewed as a white lie after you take that first puff.  Throughout the rest of the day at school, I’d have time to wear off the smell.  I could go home and not have to worry for a second about what my overbearing parents would say or ask, because they wouldn’t.  I knew it, and I exploited it.

            The first time I smoked pot was the first time I knew what it meant to be in another area of consciousness, or so I thought.  The real change came in spoken dialogue.  The inherent meanings of words change when you start to get caught up in a drug culture.  At the time I didn’t consider myself the typical druggie, stoner, or pothead.  I mean, I was in eighth grade, and “stoner” is sort of a harsh word no matter what the age.

            I considered myself, like most idiot teenagers sharing the trait of “bad choices”, a punk.  I listened to bad bands (mostly a bunch of clowns on the radio who pretended to be “punk rawk” and all), had a skateboard, watched the X-Games, and took pride in conforming to a nonconformist lifestyle.  What a joke.

            I can look through school photos and see the progression from awkward kid, to nerd, to total pretentious dork over a course of three years.  By the end of eighth grade, I needed high school more than the toothless hobo at the bus station.  Honestly, looking back on how sitting at the lunch table was just a whole lot of pubescent testosterone was being thrown around makes me wonder how big everyone’s ego is now.  I needed a change of pace.

            The first alcohol I ever consumed was in the comfort of my own home.  At age fourteen, I didn’t really have a concept of the word “shot”.  I just drank a few sips straight from the bottle, usually brandy or vodka given that’s what was in the pantry in my kitchen.

            Second semester of freshman year rolled around and I had a system worked out.  A bottle of cheap vodka made its home in my locker, and each day as school started, I would find a vending machine, buy a bottle of orange juice, drink half of it, and fill it again with vodka.  A dirty, cheap, disgusting screwdriver.

            I didn’t have friends, I had connections.  TJ could take me on a quick burn cruise and drop me off at home, spraying me down with body spray to hide the smell.  Gina could have her older sister buy me booze on an as-needed basis.  Jordan gave me opium from Afghanistan.  In his case, there are some benefits to being in the military in a post-9/11 world.

            All of these people were upperclassmen.  People sometimes ask me how many friends I had in high school, and I ask “when?”  When these jokers graduated, I was a lost soul.

            I still had knowledge that I wanted to forget.  A bag is literally a bag of pot.  A handle becomes a full bottle of alcohol.  Nugs, or nuggets, are really good pot, and schwag is really cheap pot.  Shake is flakes of pot.  A pipe is a bowl.  A joint is a jay.  Then of course there are slang terms of the slang terms.  Sack, dank, juice, piece… you get the idea.

            What once was a white lie to others became a big lie to everyone.  I found myself wondering whom I was trying to convince.  Me?  My parents?  You?

            I had gained a vast network of connections to various aspects of life that most people generally don’t experience until they are knee-deep in the typical college lifestyle.  I felt twenty entering high school, leaving meant feeling thirty.

            At the beginning of junior year I finally found people my own age that had a similar personality to my own… whatever that actually was, by the way, no one was really able to pinpoint.  By the time the middle of junior year rolled around however, everything I had once known came crashing down in a hail of tall, blonde gunfire.

            To this day, if you were to ask me what I ever saw in Michelle, I’d probably give you the same answer I had then: she’s everything I am not.  I don’t mean on an academic level (I was a 4.0 student when I tried committing suicide by overdosing on vicodin).  Her personality was pure, untainted.  She represented the innocence that I had ditched four years earlier.

            Dating her was a rebirth on one level, the birth of duality on another.  We were different people.  Last time I checked, we still are.  Around her, I was the typical nice boyfriend with goofy friends and a somewhat “different” taste in music.  Around her friends, I was an outsider.  I didn’t understand them, and they didn’t even want to understand me.  They knew what I was, who I was.  Kurt Vonnegut would probably have called them “granfallooners”, but I’ll cut to the chase: they were boring.

            In the early 2000’s, a television network called MTV—Music Television—decided it was a good idea to make a soap opera look like a reality show.  I say soap opera because it was completely scripted, along with the ever-predictable reviews and numbers of devoted fans.  To think that some of those people voted… My God!  Anyway, on both sides of the Fourth Wall the people and characters were the same, the only difference being the scenery.

            Anyway I found myself surrounded by those people, when I probably belonged on local access television.

            I tried to change.  I really did.  That’s not a lie.

            Most of our relationship, however, was a lie.

            Smoke?  No way.  Lie.  Don’t drink?  Oh, not anymore.  Yep, that was a lie.  You don’t smoke pot, do you?  Hell no!  Lie.  Do you like this band?  Yeah, I really dig it.  Big lie.

            The boat floated both ways.

            Take your faith in God seriously?  Oh yes.  Lie.  Are you interested in other men?  Well, maybe a little, but you’re definitely number one on the list.  Lie and a half.  What’d you do last night?  Oh, I was hanging out with Lindsey and Amber.  Lie, I saw your car outside of Trevor’s house at two in the morning on my way back from work.

            All the while I would drown my sorrows with a cup of comfort trying to think and hope that everything would work out in the end.  It never did, there wasn’t a hope from the beginning.  The whole experience was a test of skills, really.

            I learned the fine art of burning incense in a car to cover up the smell of cigarettes and cigars and weed, calling it “spreading good vibes”.  I was privileged with friends who smoked more than me, so anytime I ever smelled like smoke over lunch, I would say I was in a car with the usual suspects.  Anytime my parents asked, I would tell them I was at the diner.

            Some people could consider me a compulsive liar.  They would be right.  It was all done for survival, my own personal and selfish survival.  Only my friends understood the position in which I had placed myself, but they saw the conflict.  I couldn’t deny it anymore, and looking back the conflict reached a plateau sometime in my freshman year of college when I had reached the mental age of thirty-four.

            The question of “Who am I?” became “Huh?” shortly after I moved in with my roommate.  The kid smoked everything under the sun, a plus for an aspiring music major like myself.

            I had died and gone to hell and I didn’t even know it.  Hell finally came clear as day when Michelle confronted me with the fact that she had cheated on me the previous summer, and I spat back a few flames telling her I knew.  She gave me a phone call from the tenth circle, I was waiting at the gates.

            Bring on the booze.  Pass me the joint.

            A waitress with the word “fate” written on her nametag walked up to me and took my order.  I’ll take a hearty plate of substance abuse, please.  Oh, and a side of good music.

            I kept telling her I was fine.  Lie.  I forgave her.  Lie.

            I told my friend.  These were the kinds of friends you meet along the way but you both end up going the same direction.  I was in a downward spiral.  Truth.  I didn’t want to end the relationship.  Truth.  I was scared.  Truth.

            My parents didn’t listen to me.  Truth.

            I still used body sprays everyday to hide the smells of pot on cigarettes whenever I was in a voice lesson because of course my teacher would have a fit if he found out I was a smoker.  I brushed my teeth after I drank to hide the smell of booze when I’d show up to class drunk.

            I had thought high school was my bottom.  College dug the hole deeper.  My goal was to get it to exactly six feet.

            I felt too old for all of it.  I still do.  Even now, I’m writing this in a dorm room.  For what end and purpose?  Why?  Why the booze?  Why the tobacco?  Why the drugs?  Why?

            Why not?  They’re there.  Why climb a mountain?  Why circumnavigate the world?

            I know what you’re probably thinking.  Climbing a mountain and circumnavigating the world are doing things that don’t harm anyone.  Maybe self-destruction is all we have left.  What good is life if it’s boring?

            I’ve missed the point, though.  Life is supposed to be boring.  That is why it is life.  If life were anything but boring, it wouldn’t be life.  Read any book, watch any movie, listen to any song.  Each is boring.  Surface-level interpretation and perception is boring.

            Why subject yourself to a life of extreme boredom when you could instead destroy your life bit-by-bit and piece-by-piece until you know the clock is really ticking so you can hope to find some kind of meaning and sense in all of it?

            Remember the myth that each cigarette takes fifteen minutes off of your life?  Not only do I believe in it, I count on it.  That’s the time crunch.  Those fifteen minutes are minutes spent that can’t be used.  The clock is ticking.  Quick!  Why are we here?

            Motivation through prolonged torture.  Every time I go to the dentist or doctor, I am a non-smoker.  Each time they ask me, I process thoughts a lot quicker than usual and I really try to narrow in on a real answer to the meaning of life.  My motivation is to get to the answer before I actually die, knowing that I will ultimately be the cause of my own demise.

            But why?  Why pursue an answer?

            Because it’s there.  It has to be, otherwise we’re all doomed from conception.  Is that it?  Doom?  Death?

            My roommate is at the door, I can hear the key jingling in the lock.  He opens the door, ready for the long drive ahead.  He’s more human than freshman year’s monstrosity.  “Ready?”

A lot of people go to therapists and psychologists and counselors to try and sort out their problems, most of the time getting explanations saying their problems root somewhere early in their childhood.  They probably didn’t start smoking at age twelve for the same reason I did.

            Time to leave the page and go back to the world.  Goodbye Past, hello Present.  Oh, Reality, nice of you to drop by.  How has Past been, lately?  Good, good.

            “Yeah, let’s go.”

            I shut the door behind me, locking it with all of my dirty secrets hidden inside.

            You’re probably wondering what is only natural: where the hell is this going?  Why is he writing this?

            Those are very good questions.  At this very moment, it’s going down the hallway and toward the parking lot, ultimately to go to a gas station for the purpose of obtaining hard alcohol. 

Everything that is about to happen has, in fact, already happened.  I’m a firm believer in determinism, and as a result, a firm believer in déjà vu.  In short, I know firsthand that we’re all screwed.  Don’t believe me?  Check this out: you’re going to die.  Deal with it.

Brian starts laughing as I verbalize this truth.  Brian’s my roommate, in case you haven’t figured that out, though through process of elimination you probably should have at least made an educated guess that he’s the only other character that’s actually active in the story so far.  If you didn’t figure that out on your own and instead needed this paragraph, then I should probably stop writing now, and you can address any and all hatemail to: Sean Bryan, 731 E. Center Street, Milwaukee, WI. 53212.  He’ll know what to do.

But seriously: perfect example of one of those “along the way”-type of friends.

The walk from the dorm to the parking lot at Carthage College in the dead of winter can be something of an adventure if you put your mind to it.  Otherwise it is nothing more than a gross inconvenience.  You find yourself wondering if the ends justify the means.

            In warmer weather, the walk isn’t too bad.  On nights like this though, we start to wonder whether walking down the unsalted concrete stairs and snow-laden sidewalks to a car that we’ll inevitably have to excavate will ultimately be worth our efforts, or our hard-earned money.  How much gratification you can get from one moment becomes the focus for the entire evening, and in order to make it work you have to draw out that gratification and satisfaction for an extended period of time.

            As we walk out the door, my gut reaction causes me to reach into my jacket breast pocket to withdraw a cigarette, but it’s useless in this weather and my hands stay in their respective pockets.  Mother Nature and Jack Frost are making sweet love right now, and unfortunately I feel like I’m peeping in on it.  Smoking would get me caught, plus they’d get more out of it than me.  One step at a time, quicker than usual.  That is the only way to get further in almost any aspect of life.  It’s all an agile trip to reach completion before fate plans it, futile though it may be.

            This is the one thing that they fail to tell you when you go to a school on the shores of Lake Michigan, after having grown up near a mere river 130 miles to the north..  Down on the lakeshore, they tell you about the beach, about the nice atmosphere.  They never tell you about the winds powerful enough to knock you on your rear.  I always love hearing people talk about how it takes your breath away.  Cold air is like cold water: it doesn’t take your breath away, but too much of it can cause you to not be able to handle it any longer.  It’s clean air, but there’s too much all at once.  Hearing is also affected.  The wind blocks most sound from entering your ears, all you think about is the cold because that’s all your senses are telling you.

            Brian’s moving through the snow like a yeti on a hot date.  “Jesus it’s cold out here.”  Like him, I have made the stupid mistake of wearing canvas shoes in five inches of snow.  Instant gratification has its price, I should know better.

            It’s hard to notice at first, but the accumulation of snow on your shoes eventually has to melt at some point.  Nine times out of ten, it’s right into the shoe itself, ultimately into your sock, finally settling in your foot.  If this goes unchecked, the medical term is immersion foot, or “trench foot” for those with military service in any unnecessary war.  Someone in canvas shoes can be susceptible if they’re not careful.  We’re careful.  The real problem for us was that in a few hours’ time, our feet would smell worse than a landfill in a heat wave.

            The car is covered in snow.  Our Beetle has become a Volkswagen Igloo, obviously a seasonal model.  I brush off a window with my hand, feeling a thick layer of ice over the whole surface.  Instant gratification of brushing snow is really only instant.  Brian reaches for an ice scraper, I pull mine out.

            Contrary to popular belief, there are practical purposes for a driver’s license besides being able to drive and prove your own legal identity.  I finish scraping ice off of two windows while he labors with one.  Each scrape awakens nerve endings in my fingers that just a few minutes earlier had been warm in the confines of pockets, but now they’re numb.  Awakened only to be knocked out, born to die.  I imagine a nice bowl of soup as I kick the front passenger side tire to get snow off of my shoe.  I’m not sure why, but food always warm me up, or at least the thought of food.  The ends will justify the means, I hope.

            The direct route to warmth can be the result of imbibing alcohol, of course.

            “What are you b******s doing?”  I hear a voice in the distance.  Ryan’s smoking a cigarette and heading in our direction.  A chance encounter, but a welcome one nonetheless.

            “Hey b***h,” Brian snarls as he scrapes the window.  We’ve resorted to sarcastic insults to address each other and address the s****y climate.  “Wanna go on a booze hunt?”

            “Ah.”  The fool’s just standing there, pondering the thought with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth like some drunken trucker in the Deep South.  “What does that even mean?”  Great.  Introspection in sub-zero weather, typical of a philosophy major.  I think of a nice cup of coffee brought to me by some waitress with a high school education.  Thanks, Joan.  Tip at least a dollar.  This better be worth it.

            Windows clear, suitable for driving.  “Coming or going?”

            He tosses his cigarette on the ground.  “Well, I think I must accompany you on your journey.”  God, sometimes that formal language gets annoying.  I call shotgun, knowing full and well of the heating underneath the glove compartment.

            “Mr. Sean, you most certainly can have it,” Ryan snarls.

            I just laugh a little, trying to imagine this same strapping young lad sitting in his room listening to Bob Dylan or Neil Young while getting lost in Plato, Locke, Hobbs, and Oscar Wilde.

            Brian starts fumbling with his iPod trying to find suitable driving music.  “Give me that damn thing and get this vehicle on the road,” I command.  I’m in no mood for dicking around in this hellhole of a parking lot.  Fundamentalist Christians always preach about the “fiery” bowels of Hell like it’s some kind of oven or grill.  I’m willing to bet they’ve never been to Carthage College, at least not in the dead of winter.

            Getting alcohol is never a problem.  Passing out is also never a problem.  Dreaming is a problem.  If I had my way, I’d kill myself now so I would never have to dream again.  Remember what I said about déjà vu?  Yeah.  It happened.  Again… and again… and again…

            When I wake up after a late night, it’s usually grizzly at best, plagued by visions and sounds of things to come.  I know how my new day will start and end.  I’ll get wasted and go to a basketball game and watch big birds try to fly in a blizzard.

            Check it out:

We open up a bottle of bourbon sometime mid-morning in the hopes of facilitating the true athletic experience we’ll have to endure later that afternoon.  We pace ourselves, pouring one glass at a time listening to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” on repeat, thinking about the weather, the game, and of course our dear friend on the bookshelf, Oscar Wilde.  We have perfected the fine art of binging on frivolity.  Perhaps we’ll be comfortable if we stoop to new lows.

            This day has something special: a basketball game.  Not just any basketball game, either.  No, this one will feature stellar athletic performances from some of the best athletes in the nation… well, as far as Division III goes anyway… in our conference.

            Okay, so these kids really suck.  That’s life.

            “What time do you have to be there?” Brian asks.  I put the uniform shirt on, which is a somewhat difficult and drawn-out process if you’re three sheets to the wind, and glance at a clock.  “One, two… the f**k if I care.”  But honestly I do care.  I truly care about who is playing, and I really care about who wins.  Most important of all, though, is the fact that I really care about playing with the pep band and showing the college president how much true school spirit I really have.  I pour myself another drink to get as much spirit in me as possible.  “Take no prisoners,” I declare.  “This is a big game.”

            Lie.  It’s not a big game.  It never is.  But that too is a lie, they are all big.  Huge.  Not in size, but in degree.  Great importance is placed upon these games: the coaches, the players, and the cheerleaders blowing them from dawn to f*****g dusk, which was constantly discussed in the bathroom on my floor during freshman year (one of the many “perks” of living with a bunch of drunken athletes). 

The game isn’t actually a game, but rather a battle of two Greco-Roman armies, enjoying the spoils of war after one side has been defeated.  The generals arrive on the battlefield, ready to conquer the opposing army and defend their homeland.  Sometimes they are victorious, other times it is a bloody defeat.  Whatever their fate may be, these battle-hardened warriors are ready for war.  But even in defeat there is cause for celebration.

            “Ignore these truths,” I think, or say, I can’t tell.  My roommate had the courtesy to roll a joint to calm me down a little bit before I go on a drunken tirade.  We head outside and light it up, a minute later handing it to one of the food service employees to give them a break from their hard day’s work.  The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

            “Jesus, what did you put in here?” I ask, tasting something unnatural.

            “It’s a joint laced with methylphenidate, so you’re alert during the game,” he replies, proudly displaying a Cheshire grin on his cocky, drunk face.  “Get it?  Alert.  Get it?  Get it?”  He’s closing in, I’m cornered.

            “You prick!  I’ll be twitching like James Brown!”  That, of course, is no way to enter an athletics complex.  But it will have to suffice, this afternoon.

            Stumbling over to the band room, I arrive offering to help load equipment.  Time is shifting erratically.  I ask someone if they need help with anything, getting a response sounding like a sonic boom, and coming about as fast.  The directors call everyone’s attention, and one of them starts jabbering about the president being at the game.

            I involuntarily tune him out, my attention quickly shifting to the thermos of coffee & bourbon that has accompanied me on my trek.  I left the drumsticks in the dorm, figuring I won’t be playing today, a trend that had started when I first joined the band as a freshman.  The swine-fest in the “percussion” section excommunicated me long ago, which gave me a chance to observe things as opposed to participate.  Tainted perception makes observation more entertaining than informing, and it’s that mentality that leads me to suspect that as the reason why my stories don’t appear in the school newspaper anymore.

            The walk from the arts building to the gym is equally entertaining.  People immediately start griping about the cold weather that has finally come in full force.  I won’t try and deny the cold weather, but my mind is focusing on the birds that have taken their sweet time in migrating for the winter.

            Snow was falling horizontally, and the geese overhead are having a difficult time maintaining unit cohesion in their flight.  Commands are being squawked back and forth as they try to formulate a strategy to somehow fly together.

            I reach the door and enter a substantially warmer environment, an acoustically resonant environment.  The teams are on the court warming up, cheerleaders on the side speaking in tongues, announcers quickly looking up statistics on each individual player. 

            Number 27, with four personal fouls and three team fouls.  49 has six personal and two team fouls.

            Maybe.  Maybe not.  I imagine statistics in my head, wondering what exactly all of them mean, and then try to figure out how many in the stands actually care and are keeping track.  Maybe they all are.  Maybe.  How far do the geese fly when winter comes, anyway?

The president and his wife take their usual seats, he putting on the façade of stoicism and she being mindful of the leash he has tied to her, the poor woman.  The parents and grandparents of each team sit in their respective sections wearing their respective colors.  The gang’s all here.

            Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another day of over-funded athletics at a school that prides itself on academics.  Welcome to another day of watching people in authority live out a bigger stupor than my own.  Welcome to another Division III basketball game.  Welcome.

            You are all welcome.  Everyone is welcome.  Students, cheerleaders, pep band, administrators, coaches, players, God, Satan, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Muhammad, the Virgin Mary, sporting press… F**k it, bring your nanny and leave the kids at home in front of the television set, the babysitter of the 21^st Century.  Or bring your cracker spawn along and let them shoot hoops at half-time after the cheerleaders do the same dance routine and kick line they’ve been doing for the past three weeks.  Everyone.  Bring everyone.

            Or don’t, and gaze upon the countless empty seats accompanying the numerous parents and grandparents of the yuppie larva that is about to play ball.  And watch the cheerleaders do their mundane routine with the ubiquitous kick line that they do every week, causing most of the older men in the stands to mentally f**k someone twenty or thirty years younger than they.  And watch the three-foot kids try and throw a ball into a basket that they’ll probably learn to make before they learn to read.

            And watch.  That’s all I can do.  The band plays the same songs they do at every game, Hang on Sloopy, Bad Name, Johnny B. Goode, Tequila, the usual one-hit-wonder type songs that generally go unappreciated outside of their pep band context or the AM radio stations that play them from time to time.  Sing along if you want.

            Suddenly all sound disappears and a single female voice starts singing the national anthem.  Somewhere around “gave proof through the night”, I glance at the guest team’s family section to see this old man mining for gold in his nose.  It looks like he found a huge wad and is now proceeding to wipe it on his jeans.  He got what he was seeking.  Good work.

            “Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave?”

            “No,” I chuckle noticing that since we were inside, the “banner” was stagnant, hanging from the ceiling.  The kid on drums glances back and makes eye contact with me.  I can’t tell if it’s agreement, or anger, or puzzlement.  Throw up the horns and let him know who’s rocking, I guess.

            Song done.  And now, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the opposing team: the Mongoloids.

            And now for your home team, ranked something fairly high in the food chain of Division III athletics: the Neanderthals.

            Moments like this make me start internally dancing to Devo, knowing that they were probably right.  That thought leads me to an even deeper abyss of cynicism.  Have I reached bottom yet?  Am I angry yet?  Jesus, I’m bored and deep in thought and it’s only first quarter.  Get involved.  Take a drink, get some caffeine in your system, loosen up.  Enjoy the game.  Root for the good guys.

            Or don’t.  Just take a drink.  Root for the lesser of two evils.  Think about who will be running for president in the next election.  Consider nominating one of these champions of competition being observed on the battlefield of collegiate athletics.  Or perhaps the president of this institution.  It’s obvious he loves his constituents.  A charismatic figure, he can be observed with enough fire and energy to spread fury to the masses.  It’s working for him right now.

            “S-T-E-P!  Step on their laces!”  The band’s cheers echo throughout the gym.

            I glance down the line of cheerleaders and spot the mascot.  A smile creeps over my face, knowing that the person behind that gigantic mask is on the same plane of existence as me.  I tell them to “raise da roof”, and they do.  No one else gets it.  The directors look at me like I am the village drunk, and they are right.  They do nothing.  I am unstoppable.

            Bored, and unstoppable.

            Why could I be stopped?  Stopped from what?  Paranoia.  Its onset is gradual, but it definitely stems from cynicism.  Paranoia is cynicism’s shadow.  The extreme distrust of anything and everything around you ultimately leads you to the suspicion that there is something out to get you.  You’ll be stabbed in the back by the person with the biggest smile.

Finish the coffee/bourbon concoction, destroy all evidence.  It tastes like a freshly baked cookie, straight out of grandma’s oven.

            Old memories from an old man drink.  Reminders.  Indicators.  Distractions from the situation at hand.  How much longer until halftime?

            I stroll casually over to the doors to look outside, seeing snow still blow in horizontally creating the display of a blank videocassette where there should be a window leading to a dumpster and a parking lot.

            You come in, sit down, play your instrument, watch the sport, and go home.  At the end of the day, you make your $25 for showing up with the band and have a smile on your face with the false sense of accomplishment.  You look at the college president, the coaches, the cheerleaders, the parents, the ball.  You hear the sneakers, the footsteps, the voices, the instruments, the buzzer.  You smell a gym, and perspiration.

            Outside, the geese still fly, squawking commands to try and maintain cohesion in their belated migratory flight.

            I remember it like it is right now.

Author's Note

If after reading this you feel like you don't want to read more, please for the love of god let me know so I'll quit while I'm still ahead. Just be frank. I wrote this last semester (Fall of 2007) for an assignment in an English class, and the feedback from students was sparse but the professor was insightful. I'm looking for insight, and if this piece blows, then I won't even bother putting the rest of it up.

This was the "revised" version that I submitted for the final grade in the class, and in the essay regarding the revisions, I noted that "I regret putting my fingers on the damn keyboard and letting this drivel pour out, but somehow I'm addicted to the idea of finishing it. Inevitably, finishing it will probably mean scrapping it and starting a new story and inventing a new protagonist that I can harass on paper."

Reviews

[Vanessa]

I absolutely loved it. I thought it was compelling and.... I don't know, really. But something about it just kept me reading. And GOD, please do finish. I will personally be sure to read it as you add on. And would you mind telling me whenever you do add more? Honestly, I really, really found this a great peice and I was reluctant to stop.... until the words were gone, that is.

Thank you for writing this.... and for sharing, furthermore.

-Vanessa Alyse