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| The novel in autumn 2004 (note floppy and zip drives)...one phuckava sprawling-ass manuscript.... |
I don’t remember it like it was the proverbial
yesterday but I remember it vividly nonetheless. I was blanketed in a sheath of
autumnal light rereading a copy of Irvine Welsch’s TRAINSPOTTING next to a
window on the sixth floor of Milner library at Illinois State University. It
was after Vanessa and the van o’ Hale and smoking cigars while desultorily
driving around feelin’ too good to go into work today. It was after Zachary was
born. After drinking beer while basking in the incendiary glare of a bonfire at
Jackie’s out on Airport road. After Laurianne had returned to France (and
Patrick had traversed overseas to find her once again). It was after the
dissolution of B. Dalton and Maid-Rite and a movie. After a voluptuous Amber (calling Hale, myself answering
mistaking him for another less fortunate David) thanked me gratuitously over
the phone for the flowers I had purportedly sent her for her boob job (note:
did she say ‘boob’?). It was after the
Drac mobile, after imbibing infinite amounts of unlimited carafes of coffee
while performing botched Tarentino impersonations coddled between the vinyl
nests of clattering banter that was Lums.
It was after Freudian Press had dissolved.
It was after Freudian Press had dissolved.
It was after our sojourns to Wyld Side cabaret.
After Hale planted his grandparents into the scalp
of the planet.
It was well after Patrick’s all-night-birthday party
extravaganza where we would each woof down an entire Little Caesar’s Pizza
while clacking dice before disappearing into the woods for pre-dawn water gun
warship. It was after Downs Circle, after Warren espied Patrick perusing a
Playboy which he deemed was merely a tattered copy of ‘Nintendo Power.’
It was after Marvel and DC. After the Yellow Monkey
bars at CLS had been uprooted to pave way for an additional basketball
gymnasium.
It was after, yet before, Metallica started to
royally suck goats.
Ironically, it
was around the same time Lums on Western shushed the welcoming tint of its
doors for all eternity.
It was autumn; thirteen expired eliptical loops
around the sun ago when sitting in the milner Library I decided to chronicle
the foibles of those friends’ whom I love most of all in this world,
toimmortalize our misadventures via words aiming for a fifty page manuscript by Christmas.
On Halloween
I came back to Peoria with twelve double spaced comic-sans goth fonted pages
(none of which still exist). By the holidays it was 120. By Easter that year
three hundred (sing-spaced). I worked as
a Teacher’s Aid, moved in with Dave Thompson on High Street. When my father
died suddenly in Feb ’02 the manuscript was 600 pages (maybe 100 of which have
sieved into the final draft).
It sat like a fecund hen waiting to lay a Faberge
egg. I went back to Bradley. I worked 80 hours a week. I lived with Hale. I
lived with a Psychic who will perennially be Gandalf to my Frodo. I lugged the
manuscript with me everywhere I went like a sac of irish potatoes the day after
the feminine ended. I referred to it as my illegitimate daughter.
"Want to see a picture of my illegitimate daughter?" I would ay before plopping down the 500 page dossier of hurt.
"Want to see a picture of my illegitimate daughter?" I would ay before plopping down the 500 page dossier of hurt.
I revised incessantly. In august 2003, three years
after I had started the ‘script, I had a break through and started pissing out
ten pages a day. The bulk of the manuscript was castrated. I began again. When I graduated Bradley 2005 the
draft resembled very little of the product I had intended it to be (note: you
should see the outakes in the WWII chest in my mom’s basement). I handed Dr.
Palakeel a 700 page draft for my senior
project. I got hired on at the library full time. I fell in love with a classy girl who has lived
in Europe for the past six years and wrote her a love letter a day for over a
year. That autumn day when (with the help of Hale) still ranks as the best of
my life, even though we never fucked and I ended up in the hospital with what
could best be delineated as a metaphysical breakdown.
The manuscript went on the backburner. I started giving a shit ton of local poetry readings. I read my work on a local avant-garde artsy radio station. I got fired from Bradley. I moved back in with Uncle Mike, the house on Heading avenue, placing a writing desk in the woods, the same woods that I had immortalized in novel years earlier never having a clue that I would be crashing in (Nate Lockwood's granpas) house one day.
Such is the life of a writer. Such is the pleading, curdled
vagaries of time.
* * * * *
In the stately Stephen King throne christening my
every literary ambition, Yellow Monkey Bars and Unbidden Erection is my Dark
Tower. My Infinite Jest. My Ulysses. My War and Peace, intrinsically, my life
work. I have lived with it for almost a third of my life, a joy surpassed only
by dual friendships Patrick (25 years) and Hale (27). The manuscript has served
as my rod and my staff, it has held me up in hard times, like my two friends
holding me up, refusing to allow my emotional mettle to succumb as I witnessed
the final stanza od breath echo from my own father’s body.
The novel will be released on line close to it’s
current (somewhat addled, somewhat brilliant) incarnation. Some of the names will be changed cause I
don’t want to get sued, but rudiments, capturing the breath of our youth and
the vowels of our dreams (and West Peoria and failing and loving and giving)
remain the same.
I will publish a different fractal daily for (shit)
about the next 200 days. Sometime in DEC I’ll create a Facebook page but for
now, everyday, click on the link b’low and you’ll find your Christmas gift from
13 years ago unraveling itself like a Dungeons & Dragons avatar map. The
first 150 pages are almost completely autobiographical. Later on (as you know)
the majority is Fictitious as fuck.
I’ll release a chronological ‘chapter’ every day
with a reference to pg #’s to the original. Sometime in June when the final
chapter is posted we will drink like there is no t’morrow.
So happy holidays and thank you for years of
friendship and (in the immortal patois of Patrick ‘smarter than you)
McReynolds, “Life is short. Times are hard. Here’s your fucking Christmas
card.”
I hope you enjoy.
In eternal brotherhood.
DVB
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