Story time. This is a bit of a longer one, if you’re down for that. What follows is the continuation of my novel-in-progress, Byron, which started in this post, and which had its last appearance in this post. I’m not writing the thing on the blog, but I’ve shared some of it before. You get it. After this excerpt, I’ll talk a little bit about the process, and why it’s taken so long for me to write the damn thing (not as long as GRRM though lol), and why I also believe for the first time, that I will finally finish a huge project like this. And of course, maybe a little commentary on my day. If this doesn’t interest you like my wild romps around the globe or the wedding posts, then there’s the door, bud, don’t let it hit your low-IQ cheeks on the way out. For everyone else, my lovelies, I’ll see you on the other side.
Byron cont’d
“Holy shit,” I said, softly. I knew that I should be terrified, but something about the way she moved kept me from total fear.
“Scary?” she asked.
I paused for a good amount of time. Then, finally, “you could say that.”
“Good.” She lowered the gun and rested back on the windowsill. “Fuck, I’m a psycho.” She laughed. “I am so sorry, I thought that would be funny for some reason.”
Nervously, I responded, “Am I not laughing?”
“Oh my god!” She came into the bed again and kissed my neck.
The truth is, my heart never jumped. I must have looked terrified but really I was sitting in a strange contented limbo when the gun was pointed at me, waiting for whatever was next.
She continued, “that was fucked up, I’m sorry.”
I must have been good and drunk, because the only thing I could think to say was, “Byron forgives, Byron forgets.”
“Does he? I hope so.” She gently rotated the gun in her hands. “Baby Jonas isn’t meant for people like you, anyway. He’s for fuckers like… well, he’s not for people like you.”
“Can I see… him?” I grinned at her to let her know everything was really fine. “You said unloaded, right?”
“No,” she chuckled. “But don’t worry, it’s not. Be gentle with him, he’s brand new. Today, actually. Hold that, here, and the cartridge comes out.”
“Must’ve been a recent ‘fucker’, then,” I said as the magazine dropped onto the comforter. I could see her hesitate, so I added, “hey, you don’t need to tell me. It feels good in the hand. I know guys are supposed to like big guns, but you know what? I think I already proved big things can happen in moderately small packages. I like it.”
“Honey. I’ve seen-“
“Honey?”
“Dear, you don’t know what small looks like. Hand him over.”
I handed her the gun and she mounted me.
I said, “I’m afraid I’ve reached my credit limit. Hope that’s okay.” I won’t lie, I probably looked a little sad about it.
The cold steel of the barrel pressed against my forehead.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
Oh, yeah. I know this isn’t for you, and I’m no writer of smut, but, well, that one got me.
As things revved up again, just before I traded Jekyll for Hyde, something blurted from my mouth.
“Have you shot it yet?”
“What?” she said, panting mildly.
“The gun. Have you shot it? Any gun?”
She paused and looked me in the eyes. “No. I mean, not yet. Why?”
“Let’s see what Baby Jonas can do.”
#
The whole thing was utter stupidity. Something only someone drunk (me) or scared (Karly, as I would find out at a later date) would actually do.
The waves roared loudly over our talking like we were characters in a Christopher Nolan film. From behind us we could still see the dimmed orange lights down the street from the tiki-themed outside bar of the Surf City Hotel. Echoes of ‘Sweet Emotion’ lifted into the night air.
Beyond all reason, I was in my hotel robe while Karly stood in her night dress, her heels left on the wooden ramp beyond the dunes. I stood with the gun in my hand as Karly loaded bullets into the magazine. After some Googling back in the room, we determined the gun to be a Springfield XDS 9mm. That is correct, she did not buy it legally and did not even know what it was. Are you surprised? We learned with some shock that there was no manual safety, either. Only a passive safety that gave the gun life as you gripped it, but neutered it otherwise. Let’s just say I was grateful she had shown up with the damn thing unloaded.
“Are you looking out for people?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry.”
I had been distracted by the fact that I looked like Daniel Radcliffe in ‘Guns Akimbo’. I sipped the screwdriver in my left hand.
“Okay, they’re in.”
“Load him up,” I said, handing her Baby Jonas.
“Me?” She had a childlike excitement and worry in her eyes, still lit by the moon’s soft glow. I suddenly felt a sadness at the circumstances of our meeting. For a brief moment I wished we had met on the town, had gravitated to this moment organically. But I would not become one of the many clients who got creepy and attached. Remember: the perfect customer.
“Well, yeah,” I yelled over the waves crashing. “You need to know what it feels like. This is about you.”
“Okay,” she said.
She took Baby Jonas once more, but this time carefully, as if her delicate hands could set him off by tickling him. She loaded the magazine into the gun. The snap and clack of its entry overpowered even the roar of the ocean. I’ll tell you this, I think my BAC dropped .4 purely from animal instinct at hearing that sound.
She pointed the pistol at the great blue deep. With our luck, I thought, a whale would wash up tomorrow morning, beached, riddled with 9mm bullets as if it were the recipient of an aquatic gangland drive-by. I was relieved to see we still had the beach to ourselves.
I waited for the bang. Waited for an eternity. Then, finally:
“I don’t know if I can.” She dropped her arms and exhaled. I followed suit. I had been holding my breath almost to the point of blacking out.
“Okay, I’m coming over,” I said. I finished the screwdriver and filled the clear plastic cup with sand to keep it from blowing away.
She said, “Okay. Good. You shoot first.”
“What?” I wrapped my arms around hers from behind, which made her jolt softly. “These are your ‘fuckers’,” I said. “You’re gonna pull the trigger. I’m going to help.”
Her eyes were fixed on the unclear horizon, where deep black ocean met cosmic black infinity. Although I could not see both of her eyes, the story they told was clear. She was picturing somebody on that horizon. Someone who wouldn’t fuck with her anymore. Someone who would die, if necessary.
“Ready?” I asked softly into her ear.
“Yes.”
We raised our arms up together, my right index finger placed over hers.
“Whatever you do,” I started, “do not drop the gun when it fires.” I felt her begin to smile against my cheek.
“From three?” she asked.
“From three.” I waited a moment, then:
“3,
“2,
“1,”
I began to squeeze my index finger down, but half way through, hers pulled faster than mine pushed. The gun bucked in our hands and the shot rang out, and Karly dropped it immediately and screamed. As did I. With a ring in my ears I yelled like a little boy on his first roller coaster and dove into the sand. Baby Jonas landed with a soft thud and nothing else.
I looked up and saw Karly standing, breathing heavily. She looked over to me. Suddenly it was clear she was holding back a tremendous laugh.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “I said whatever you do!” I sighed.
Then she broke, laughing and walking toward me, then helping me up and brushing sand off my robe, laughing some more.
“And my hair,” I said.
“Okay, okay,” she responded and rustled her hands through my hair.
The next thing I knew, I was saying “okay, quick, lets empty the mag into the sharks and get the hell out of here.”
“Seriously?”
“My adrenaline is pumping right now, lets shoot and run.”
“Okay!” she said elatedly.
Remember what I said about utter stupidity?
We assumed the same position as before and I asked her, “you ever see Garden State? With Zach Braff and Natalie Portman?”
“Of course I’ve fucking seen Garden State.”
“Remember the scene where they needlessly scream from that tractor and it’s supposed to be really deep?”
“Sure.”
“This is our Sundance moment, baby. It’s our time now.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, laughing.
Shooting the gun had been like a drug. We were like kids getting high for the first time and succumbing helplessly to the giggles.
I laughed in a way that would have been scary in any other context, and said, “from three, then we scream our hearts out and shoot Baby Jonas until he’s empty. You should be good at that.”
She elbowed my abdomen softly, then said “okay, let’s go.”
I counted down from three again, then I saw her eyebrows furrow and her mouth open wide, all in slow-motion. My mouth and eyes widened to match hers, and our index fingers pulsed down on the trigger.
She screamed like, “Ah!”
I screamed like, “Oh!”
And we kept screaming and kept shooting, watching thin pillars of water gush into the starry sky like jettisons from tiny whales with tiny blow holes. Even after the gun stopped bucking and the pillars stopped jetting, we screamed. Baby Jonas clicked and clicked until we ran out of breath and I pulled Karly down into the sand on top of me and kissed her.
I didn’t say anything, and I will never regret that. But when I kissed her and she kissed me back, I knew that saying goodbye would hurt.
“Okay, let’s fucking go,” I said.
I think she made me curse more, too.
I gently pushed her off of me into the sand and got up.
“Hey!”
I helped her up and we sprinted back to the ramp. She grabbed her heels and ran down the street toward the hotel. I ran back to the beach to grab my plastic cup, which I had forgotten. Had any of this been attempted even two weeks, no, two days, later in the season, I would be writing this down in jail. I retrieved the cup and ran in my robe in the same direction.
One block away from the hotel, I slowed to a calm walk. No sirens, no commotion, just the soft chatter from middle aged couples at the tiki-bar a few meters away.
When I got to the tiki-bar outdoor entrance, I peered into its little courtyard. No Karly. Trekking onward, I went around to the front entrance of the Surf City Hotel, but she wasn’t there either. It is painful sometimes to remember this, but it is true: I looked both ways, up and down the street, multiple times, for probably a half hour. Like a dog that felt assured its owner would soon return. Eventually, although I doubted it, I went inside to the small, rustic lobby, thinking maybe she would be waiting there. But my first intuition was correct. Karly had disappeared. Or, almost certainly more plausible, had gone home. I had the only card to the room and everything she needed was already in her bag.
“How’s your night, man,” I said to the bald, thin, middle aged man with glasses behind the wooden counter.
“Good. And yours?”
“Women, women, women,” I said, and he smiled. “Alright,” I continued, “I’m gonna head up. Don’t let anyone give you any BS down here. You’re the king of this lobby.”
It would seem my drunkenness had returned.
“You have a good night, sir,” he responded, innocently amused.
“You too.”
I went back to the room and immediately looked out the window. I don’t know what I thought I would see. Maybe I would be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a young woman in a night dress gripping a Springfield XDS 9mm handgun named Baby Jonas, carrying her high heels in her hand and smiling because for one night she was revived. That customer she was with? Yeah, he was cool (some might even say ‘perfect’, as far as customers go), but it was what she had realized about herself. That there would always be danger, but she would no longer be afraid of allowing herself to fight. She had pulled the trigger now. And she would not be afraid to do it again, with Baby Jonas, with going to school part time, maybe, with moving to the Big City along with her best friends. With being who she is. She was always this person. Tonight, after a long spell, she remembered. Of course, I only pictured all this because it made me feel good to imagine that I was the cause, that I made it happen. If I had seen this same woman walking toward me, for the first time, I would only wonder how much she costs.
And so?
Am I not allowed to objectify her and also wish to make a difference in her life? I knew her cost now, but all memory of our panting thrusts dissipated into the hazy vision and feeling of her smile against my cheek, and her hand in my hair.
“What the fuck is going on,” I said to myself, as well as to the mattress with the whirlwind sheets.
I opened up my laptop on the bed, visited the escort website that shall not be named, and left “Karly” an anonymous 5 star rating. Then I grabbed my wallet, fumbled downstairs back to the “Clam Bar”, and ordered a Heineken and a basket of fried calamari.
Notes on a new novel
Right off the bat, there are already dozens of changes that have been made to the parts of the novel previously sampled on this site, and I expect the whole thing will continue to reverberate and morph until the very end. The way the main character thinks is becoming more refined, and the meaning of other characters is becoming clearer as well. So far at least, this has showed me something which I never experienced before: how it’s possible to grow alongside something that you yourself are creating. The thing truly wants to be something, before you even know what that being is. And it also clarifies Stephen King’s annoyingly simple advice: just write. You push against and onto the story with certain ideas in mind, and then, terrifyingly, the story pushes back, and you sort of get the angry-sad feeling of being rejected by someone. Then you get another glimpse of a scene, and you start writing it, and the story says “see? you’re not so dumb after all” and you know that it fits, or that it will fit.
All of this to say, although I haven’t met my own deadline of my birthday, every time I sit down and start writing a bit of it, I’m having a great time figuring out just what this damn thing wants to be, negotiating with it, seeing who the characters really are. It’s taken me this long, because, well, I’m still recovering from some pretty devastating years, and still decompressing after a terribly stressful (but ultimately fulfilling) MA experience, all while trying to prove myself at my new job. Excuses excuses, we all know. All I can say is that the book now feels like something I’m simply doing, rather than using it as a mode of distraction in times of terrible stress, which is how it began.
And I can’t be mad at this new and better situation, because it gives me a feeling that everything else I’m doing is worth it. This is just one unpublished and unknown man’s cheesy rant about writing, but take it for what it is. Even if this thing goes nowhere, the experience and growth, and hopefully the feeling of achievement when it’s complete, will have more than enough inherent value. And I am confident it will be complete. Finishing that damn 70 page MA thesis about affect theory gave me the experience of what it’s like to simply chug along, even when not fully inspired, and what it’s like to finish something huge, even when it feels like you’re red-lining.
And in the meantime, being in that world, living in that god forsaken Chevy Tahoe and snorting blow and drinking Heineken and meeting strange people on that ostensibly wholesome island is a damn good time. A novel, or at least this one, and at least to me, is like an intricate daydream reaching beyond itself toward reality. It can never get there, but in its act of reaching, it becomes something more than a daydream all the same, and something beyond (but still containing) that reality.
My boring day (the daily blog returned)
It’s a Thursday, and as I write this, I haven’t yet left the house. Woke up at 8:30, clocked in on MS teams at 9 (you know the drill) and got to work on a couple small projects in After Effects, which you may remember as the absolute bane of my creative existence. Today I was making little planets that orbit each other, so at least that’s cute.
Otherwise, I cleaned the apartment, lit some pumpkin candles…
…drank like a liter of decaf, and worked on this post. It feels weird to share something that isn’t finished, especially when the scene you read above will probably change in the future, but still fun to share something.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will go for a little stroll, desperately try not to give into sweet autumn cigarette temptation (funny that it’s a vibe in every season), and maybe even write a little more.
See you tomorrow,
Nick
Nick Denardi 