Pedantic Persiflage

gravitywhale replied to your post: Excerpt from my novel (untitled as of yet)

so, title notwithstanding, this is awesome… when’s the book coming out?

oh man, considering I’ve got about 20 pages of notes and ten or fifteen of actual written words, it’ll be a while, but I’m going to try and get as much done as I can during the summer break from school.

 goodmorning-spider replied to your post: Excerpt from my novel (untitled as of yet)

i’m terrible at con. crit., but i like how fast-paced and gritty this SEEMS like it’s going to be. i think it also helped that i read it in a salesman voice.

i appreciate it, and yeah, the voice is supposed to be a slimy salesman.

ordinarywonder replied to your post: Excerpt from my novel (untitled as of yet)

This is cool… it’s also VERY hard to read as one huge block of text.

Yeah, it’s one of the things I thought about in formatting it.  I kind of wanted it to be a little confusing because sales pitches are sort of structured that way on purpose, but I don’t know.  It’s not necessarily my typical style but I’ve been trying to branch out some with this project.  Do you think I should reconsider and break it up some?  Just curious.

amusealex replied to your post: Excerpt from my novel (untitled as of yet)

I love it, it makes me want to turn the page. it is precise, measured well laid out, and titivates the curiosity. Please write more.

Thanks, and I plan on it.

So this is an excerpt from the novel I’m working on.  I’m not sure what I’m doing with it yet.  Possibly the prologue but also for possible use later in the novel, but I’d like some real constructive criticism from anyone who would be willing to give it.   I’d appreciate it.

It’s the void gentlemen.  The void.  It’s why we do what we do.  It’s everywhere.  You know it.  Perhaps, it hasn’t been referred to in this way before, but it’s what we do.  We create a need, or we recognize a need and grasp hold.  The pitch.  It’s an answer to the void.  Come on.  We’re all salesmen here.  And I’m not going to try and bullshit a bullshitter.  No sir.  But why do you think we’re here?  You are feeling the feeling that comes from experiencing the void.  Pain.  True pain.  The longing kind.  The kind that has you up at night questioning every life decision you’ve made up until this point.  The kind that makes you once a month want to run away to Mexico or Central America somewhere and live on the beach.  The kind that makes you wonder where all this business stuff leads anyways.  And I get it.  Business has been slow, the economy’s struggling.  Sales are down.  I aim to fix this problem in numbers for you, and you’d like to know how I propose to do that.  And we’ll get to that, but first, let me make one thing clear.  It’s not going to take the pain away.  Maybe it will relieve it for a while, but it isn’t going anywhere.  And why’s that, you might ask yourself.  Well, I’ll tell you why.  Because the void, the reason we’re doing what we’re doing is ever present.  It is as much a part of this universe as all the tangible shit we fill our day to day lives with.  The stuff we try to use to make the void go away, but it’s here.  Gentlemen, do you know that if you blew up an atom to the size of a basketball, it’s nearest electron would be roughly twenty-five miles away and would be the size of roughly a baseball?  Have you ever considered how much empty space exists that we can’t see?  It’s the void.  We are quite literally mostly empty, and I propose that is just why we feel so empty all the time.  Now, my competitors, they’re going to try and tell you that their service versus mine will fill that empty feeling you feel now.  Business will be great, and it will stay that way forever, and you’ll have no more worries because their service can quite literally work miracles.  I’m not going to do that.  I have no desire to try and pull the wool over your eyes.  And besides, you know, whether you temporarily give into this delusion or not, that it’s all bullshit.  You know it in your heart of hearts.  You’ve always known it.  That’s why all these deals always feel so tense up until that moment the ink is dry.  It’s the sinking feeling that with the rejoice of each money making venture, you’re going to go home to your house, to your wife, to your kids, to your television, and computer, and surround sound system, and it will still be there.  That feeling that there’s something more out there.  And gentlemen, if I may tell you, that feeling will always be there.  Satisfaction isn’t attainable in the void.  And so, I propose rather than trying to sell you on this idea that I will help kill your anxieties, I’m going to tell you something different.  I’m going to tell you that together we’re going to harness the void and make it work for us.  But first, you must accept that the emptiness will never go away.  You must free yourself from this delusion.  It’s all pointless gentlemen.  If I may, I’d like to tell you a little story about myself.  Why do you think I invited you out for coffee this morning, and not say, cocktails this afternoon?  Well, I used to be a real bad alcoholic and drug addict, that’s why, and believe me, I’m long past it.  I could sit in a bar with you while you drink, but how’s that going to build any trust if you’re sipping on a martini, and I’m having a soda water with a twist of lime?  Not very well.  So I invite my prospects out for coffee instead.  Been doing this ten years.  Been clean for twelve, but I was awful. In the end, it was like a gallon of vodka daily and however much cocaine I could get my hands on.  Real ugly.  I was thirty years old, living in a garage apartment behind my parents house, and just righteously fucked up out of my mind all the time.  And do you know what my problem was?  The void.  I couldn’t accept that this was all there was.  I thought that life was supposed to have some great purpose or meaning, and that I was supposed to just figure out what that was and then everything would be ok.  Quite the opposite, I’ve come to find out.   It wasn’t until I accepted that nothing mattered that I was able to quit the booze and the dope and the art as well, a big problem too, but well, that’s another story.  Anyways, when I figured out that I was always going to be unsatisfied, it finally made sense that it didn’t matter what I did.  Now, when I figured out that everyone feels like this, that’s when I was able to become a success.  And that’s what I’m talking about.  So, back to the idea of more.  We’re programmed to always want more.  I’m pretty sure it’s the biological condition.  The fight for resources.  It happens in nature all the time.  Why do you think predatory animals fight each other when the prey runs scarce?  Supply and demand.  Humans are just able to exercise this condition on a grander scale.  And we’ve also developed a symbolic representation of the answer to our void.  Money.  Think about it.  How do people try and fill the void, drugs, food, sex, women, cars, clothes, sports.  All these things can be bought and sold.  Hell, you’re salesmen, people can be bought and sold too.  We do it all the time.  And let me let you in on another sales tactic that I use frequently and desire to use on you today.  I said earlier, I would propose to tell you how I plan to offer my services to help restore your business to its rightful place in the pantheon.  Look, you know what I do.  You’ve done the research, and you contacted me.  I’m not going to be able to tell you anything now that will give you a better idea of how my service works until you see it for yourself in action within your own business.  But I can tell you plenty today as to why you’d rather be in business with me, as a man, than my competitors.   How do you think a drug addict thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt takes himself from the absolute bottom to owning a multi-million dollar consulting agency?  By hard work, and playing the game cutthroat.  I’m not here to promise you greener grass or a better quality of life or happiness or any of that other bullshit that people relate to business.  I’m here to play the game as hard as I can because I like to win.  I was a loser for so long, and that will never happen again.  Sign your contract with me, and we’ll make a fuckload of money.  We’ll harness the void, and for what?  Power.  That’s what.  The true antidote to the void.  Watching people crumble at your feet.  It doesn’t make that empty feeling go away, but goddamn is it the best rush available out there, and believe me when I say I’ve experienced some crazy rushes in my life with all the drugs and what not.  Look, getting your business won’t make me and it certainly won’t break me.  I drive a fucking Ferrari.  I live in a goddamn twelve-thousand square foot house in the richest neighborhood in town.  I’ve got gizmos galore.  But together, we can turn some fucking heads.  We can climb that mountain up farther.  I don’t know about you, but I want everyone looking at my heels from below, and I think our practices would work quite nicely together in that aspect.  So gentlemen, I guess all there is left to ask is, when would you like me to start?

thesealivesinme replied to your post: Lens

Very insightful!

Thanks!

He’d always heard that a good set
of contacts
could help take you to a lot of interesting places
in this world,

but he always ended up with the disposable variety
and maybe that was why
he always felt stuck.

pedanticpersiflage:

The GPS system speaks
in a monotone
computer voice,
left turn here,

and in the subtext,
it holds your hand,
and says,

don’t worry baby,
you’ll never have to be lost
again.

What it doesn’t tell you
is how being lost
is the best way
to help you find

where you’ve been
and where you’re going.

Donald woke up to his alarm clock at ten and groaned as he got out of bed.  He had an appointment with Dr. Wallace at noon that he was not looking forward to.  Dr. Wallace would want to know if he’d bothered to start looking for a job yet.  Donald hadn’t done much of anything since the last visit a month ago.  Other than sleep and watch pornography.  Dr. Wallace would want to know if he’d limited his pornography intake yet.  Donald thought about skipping, but he was down to the last Lexapro in his current prescription.  He knew Dr. Wallace had timed it like that on purpose so Donald would stop missing appointments.  Last time Donald went off medication, he’d tried to kill himself.  He couldn’t miss out so he took the last Lexapro that sat in the pill bottle on his bedside table and washed it down with a leftover glass of water from before bed the previous night.  Dr. Wallace would want to know how the new medication was working.  They’d recently switched Donald from Ativan.  Donald then switched on the laptop also sitting on the bedside table from sleep mode.  The screen was paused halfway through Big Bottom Asian Freaks Who Love Cum Part 4.  Donald hit play and rubbed one out to a pretty gnarly double-penetration scene.  Two seconds after he came, the guilt hit him as he wiped himself off with a couple of Kleenex and then used his bare hand to wipe away the remaining leftover balls of paper that rubbed off the tissue and clung to his skin.  Dr. Wallace would want to hear about the guilt.  He then got up and took a shower.  He always put the water on skin-scalding hot.  He liked the burn, but he liked those few seconds after he got out of the shower and the cool air blew over his tender pink skin even better.  It was the only time he felt clean.  Dr. Wallace might want to know that too.  He put on his beige polo shirt, khaki pants, black socks, and loafers before grabbing the golden pocket watch off the dresser and stuffing it into his pocket.  The hands were broken, and it didn’t tell time, but it belonged to his father.  It was what he gave to Donald shortly before passing away.  It still worked then, but it was broken now.  Everything he touched seemed to break.  Dr. Wallace would want to talk about the watch.  He always wanted to talk about it, but it was just a favor as far as Donald could tell.  He missed his father, but he wasn’t overly sentimental about those things.  He just carried the watch because it seemed like the right thing to do.  Then he grabbed his sunglasses and hat before venturing into the kitchen to toast a bagel while he phoned a taxi.  He hoped the door guy wouldn’t want to talk to him on his way out the door.  He hated small talk.  Dr. Wallace always wanted to talk about that too.

The taxi picked him up and drove him towards downtown to Dr. Wallace’s office.  Donald looked out the window on the way and saw that they were building a Carl’s Jr. around the corner from his apartment.  He heard they had good burgers, but he mostly just ordered take out and groceries delivery.  He didn’t like dealing with the crowds, but seeing the burger joint was just further proof that he was out of touch.  It seemed like they were always building something new and the neighborhood was always changing although he mostly only saw it the once a month on the way to his appointment.

He walked into the office and was greeted by Dr. Wallace, “Donald, how are you today?”

“I’m fine doc.”

“Fine?  Donald, how many times have we been through this?  Use an emotion, one from the chart,” Dr. Wallace said as he pointed to a poster with hundreds of different colored faces with expressions.  Under each expression was a descriptive word for different emotions.  Patients weren’t supposed to use vague words like fine or good.

Donald looked at the chart and let out a long sigh before saying, “I don’t know doc.  It’s stupid.  I never know.”

“So maybe you’re confused?  That’s up there.”

“Sure.  I guess.  Well, yeah, but it’s like that all the time.”

“What’s like that all the time?”

“Like I never know how I feel or how to explain it anyways.  It’s just like I don’t belong.”

“Well, we’ve talked about that before Donald.  It’s just the depression and the anxiety.  How’s the new medication working out?  Any side effects?”

“No, no side effects, but see, I don’t know that either.  I mean, I haven’t tried to kill myself again so there’s that.”

“Donald, that’s not funny.  Look, have you looked for a job yet?”

“No.”

“Donald, we agreed on this.  Look, your therapy has got to be both medication and cognition.  Nothing’s going to get better if you don’t try and do things a little differently.  You’re disability allows you to get a part-time job of up to 20 hours a week, and I really think you should.  It would get you into the habit of having a routine, it would put you around other people, and you’d have a little sense of purpose.  All of these things are good for people with mental health issues.”

“Doc, look, I get it.  I don’t know.  I just get, well, I don’t want everyone thinking I’m all insane.”

“Donald, do you know what Einstein said about insanity?  He said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.  And that’s exactly what you’re doing.  Getting a job, now that would be sane.”

“I know. I know.”

“You said that last time.  You really should do this.  Look, you’ve got to stay vigilante.  Someone with your problems who doesn’t treat themselves, well, they’re really in a dark place.  Sanity is just an attitude Donald.  A state of mind.  Are you still watching all the pornography?  Have you considered going to that SLA group I suggested for you?”

“Doc, I really don’t want to talk about this today.”

“It doesn’t seem like you want to talk about much of anything today.”

“No, not really.”

“Well, you need to.”

“I know.”

“But you’re not going to.”

“Probably not.”

“Very well then.  I suppose you’ll need this.  Come back next month ready to talk Donald,” Dr. Wallace said as he passed Donald the script for another month’s refill of Lexapro.  Donald caught another taxi and headed to the Walgreen’s to get his prescription filled.  He thought about what Dr. Wallace had said that sanity was just an attitude and how he needed to get a job.  Sanity already felt like a full-time job.

It wasn’t that he hated the movie
in its entirety,
it was just certain scenes,
and a couple of the actors,
and at times the plot
seemed a bit forced,

but he certainly didn’t think
it was completely lacking
in artistic merit,

which somehow
made it worse.

Avant que j’oublie,
I wasn’t hard on you
because I hated you,

I only made fun of you
for that gargantuan head
when  you were young

to toughen you up
for when you went to school,

I didn’t mean for it to start
this forty-year void
of emotion for us,

I’ve always loved you,
and I’ll miss you,

the father said to his son
a few minutes before
flat-lining.

Avant que j’oublie,
why did you always
start your sentences
with obscure sayings
in foreign languages
asshole,

the son muttered
under his breath
after the father had passed,

it seemed,
he had forgotten.

They made a mess
of the whole house again,
finger-painting on the walls,
tracking mud all over the carpet,
Kool-Aid stains on the couch,
toys strewn all about,

boy were they going to get it,
because well, Matt
was almost home, he was

just around the corner.

The GPS system speaks
in a monotone
computer voice,
left turn here,

and in the subtext,
it holds your hand,
and says,

don’t worry baby,
you’ll never have to be lost
again.

What it doesn’t tell you
is how being lost
is the best way
to help you find

where you’ve been
and where you’re going.

Another for the #lyricalprosechallenge tag.  Write a prose piece inspired by a song, tag it, and I’ll reblog it!

too-fly-to-recognize:

Juan is from Guatemala. He’s nineteen years old and going for a pre-med degree at the university there. Our common interest in writing crossed our paths on Tumblr a little over a year ago. We have so much in common. My heart jumps to my throat every time that little red “1” would be lit up when I log on. We know everything about each other. Past, present, and hopes.

The one thing we didn’t seem to share is our outlook on life.

Juan’s father died of cancer when he was twelve. His mother killed herself a month later, leaving Juan and his three older sisters in the hands of his grandmother. He was bullied all through middle school and high school because his sisters don’t like him. He still doesn’t know why they don’t like him, but they were popular and he wasn’t. It’s as simple as that.

And yet, through all that despair, he always writes happy endings.

I don’t know where he gets the inspiration. It seems like it’s from thin air.

“You just have to stay positive, Christine,” he always says. “You have to find the strength to keep moving forward. Hope comes from nowhere when you need it most. That’s the funny thing about hope. It’s always there, hiding in a corner somewhere.”

I always smile at those words for a minute or two, but I just deny them. They may have work for him, but they don’t work for me. I have no hope. My life’s a mess. My mother and father are alcoholics. My mother verbally abuses me. She was the first to call me fat and it stuck. My father beats me when he’s drunk.

I’m a mess. I’ve gained a small following from posting my shit-tastic poetry about death and loneliness and cutting and writers block and how fucking fat my body is. It’s all I know. (Many kind people assure me that I’m not. It’s sweet, but the good feelings from words only last so long.)

What drove me to Tumblr in the first place was the breakup with my boyfriend, Carl. I adored him. I told him my darkest secrets. I gave him my virginity. I told him about my eating disorder. How I would go for days without eating and then feel guilty when I did. He looked at me with strange eyes when I told him that. I’m ninety percent sure it scared him away because within a week he told me that it wasn’t working out. I cried for days. I didn’t go back to school for a week. In the midst of that week, I found Tumblr and wrote my first poem:

Such are these

These sagging arms

And lowly head

That one may not love

Nor want

But leave me instead.

Juan was my first follower. He was the first person to like that post. He was the only person to ask, “Hey you.” He would always start out his messages that way. “Are you okay?” And that’s what made Juan stand out from the rest. He saved my life that week. He saved it many more times after that. When I was ready to lock the bathroom door or jump off a bridge or let the blood drip slowly out of my body through red lines in my wrists, Juan always talked me down. He would always find the perfect thing to say.

Juan saved me when I went back to school and Carl was already going out with another girl. (Get this; her name’s Christine, too. And that hurt the most.) Like he was rubbing it in.

Juan saved me when I learned that Carl had been cheating on me with this girl while we were going out. And when Carl took all my friends with him.

This time it was bigger than that. Carl told everyone my dark secret. My eating disorder. A few people sent me text messages asking about it. It was sweet of them to ask, but it didn’t make up for the way everyone else looked at me in the halls. I am an alien. I am a monster. I can’t take it anymore. I just want to make it stop. I want the seventeen-year-old nightmare to stop.

It was the middle of the night when I wrote my last message to Juan. “I’m going to do it, Juan,” I typed. “I’m going to do it tomorrow when I’m at school in the bathroom. I’m going to lock the doors and end it. It’s over. My life is a fucking hell. It’s worse than that. Hell would be a relief. I’m so alone in this world and nobody fucking cares. You’ve been a good friend to me, Juan, and I’m sorry I have to leave you like this. I just can’t go on. Maybe I’ll see you in another life. Goodbye, Juan.” With that, I closed my laptop and turned off the light. It was the best night of sleep I’d had in over a year. I finally feel like I’m in control of something.

It’s raining like a hurricane. The wind and water fall in sheets and lightning strikes light up the windows like fireworks. I pour myself a bowl of cereal. I take a bite and rinse the rest down the sink.

No need to die on an empty stomach.

I shower and dress. I keep the razor blades in a small orange case I have duct taped to the underside of my desk drawer. I do this so my mom won’t find them and take them away from me again. She yelled at me when she found them the first time. She called me a weakling and a whiner. My father followed up and beat me when he got home. (Juan saved me that night, too.) They don’t understand. They have no idea what I’m going through.

Now they never will.

I pocket the orange razor-case. On my way out the door, I pause to look at my laptop on the bedside table. I suddenly have the urge to check what Juan wrote in response to my message, but as I reach for it, I reconsider. A little piece of me wants to know what he had said, but a larger part of me knows there’s a chance he could talk me out of it and drag on my suffering. I clench my fist and leave the room.

I grab my backpack to keep up appearances and step into the freakishly cold downpour. On the drive to school, my teeth chatter. “Shut up,” my mom says. I purse my lips in angry obedience to muffle the chattering. A moment later she looks at me again. “I said shut up!” her voice cracks and the vein in her temple throbs. She raises her hand to smack me and I flinch. She puts her hand down. “Just quit it,” she grumbles.

I clench my jaw all the way to school. It’s painful. I’m glad I don’t have to endure much more of this.

I get out of the car and slam the door. Mom honks the horn in disapproval. I trudge into the school, clutching my windbreaker around my neck with one hand and pulling my hood down with the other. I head to my locker, trying to ignore the stares from my peers, but their eyes are just so piercing.

So judging.

After storing my coat and backpack, I mosey toward the nearest bathroom. I planned on waiting there until it was empty before I close the door and lock it. If I am lucky I would have a little over fifteen minutes to bleed out. Plenty of time.

Then I hear a metal-against-metal clang. It came from the direction of the school foyer. I stop in my tracks and swivel. I hear chatter and the scampering of feet. Then I hear a shout.

“Christine!” I know that voice. The accent is obviously foreign. No. I can’t believe it. My heart jumps to my throat. It has to be a trick, but the call comes again. “Christine!”

I hear pounding footfalls and a boy asks, “Christine who?”

“Christine Woodward!” My throat tightens. I can’t breathe. “Where is she? I have to see her!”

I collapse against the wall and bury my face in my hands.

“I just saw her,” a girl says, “In the first hall on the right after you take a left.”

I hear the pounding footfalls again, this time at a breakneck pace. They draw closer to me.

“I must be dreaming,” I whisper. The footfalls stop in front of me. My face is still buried in my hands. I can hear heavy breathing and dripping water. I can hear the squeak of soaked shoes and a rustle of clothes. He is kneeling in front of me.

“Hey you.” (He always starts out his messages that way.) I peek up to see Juan’s smoldering brown eyes.

I have never seen him in person, only his face. He is enormous compared to me. Tall and muscular. Drenched. Dripping. Dressed in nothing but a t-shirt and sweat pants like he’s about to go to bed. I can’t tell if his face is covered in tears or raindrops. I gag on disbelief. He’s breathtaking.

“Don’t you ever say that you’re alone. Don’t you ever say that nobody cares about you.” “I care. I care about you. And I am never going to leave you.” He puts a large, bronze, gentle hand on my cheek. I can’t breathe. “You hear me?”

I can only nod feebly. “Come here,” he says, reaching out and taking me up in his arms. He pulls me into a rain-soaked hug. He is so warm in spite of it all. He holds me close for a moment and I just break down crying. I sob into his chest. His arms hold me tenderly. “Everything’s going to be all right.” His voice is barely above a hum.

It is the first time I have ever felt safe. I squeeze him as hard as I can. He secures me, hushes me, and caresses my wet hair. I never want to let him go. I never want him to let me go.

We stay there in a puddle of raindrops and tears, happy for once in my life. And he, shining in the glory of his masterpiece. Because never, in a million years, would I have guessed I could be apart of a happy ending. In that moment I realize he was right. Hope comes from nowhere when you need it most. It jumps on a plane in the middle of the night to an unknown town, runs through the rain, calls your name, and saves your life. Again. 

avant-que-joublie:

we are just
ornery old men
sitting in the
corner discussing
the details of
an old war
and missing the
old days and
grumbling about
our current
battles and
wishing we could
still take up
arms