This is a bunch of dribble I found on an old disk in the bottom of the big stash next to my comp. Not really sure when I wrote it, or if it's worth anything to anyone in terms of entertainment value, but what the fuck, got nothing better to put on here, so here is, utterly out of order and with as little symmetry/sense as possible
UNTITLED NOTES It wasn’t exactly the brawl of a lifetime. As far as shuffles went, this ranked somewhere at the bottom of the list that was topped by such things as the Chicago Race Riot.
And of course, like the damnfool he was, Cheever walked right into it.
He’d been coming out of the liquor store on Wingham – the brown bag clucking comfortably against his brown jacket, constantly licking and tonguing his lips where he was all sore from the long winter, watery blue eyes going all over the place as they were wont to do – and that’s when he saw it. Two fellas ganging up on a third’un; all black leather and angry, high-pitched yelling. Then a push – and a swing. Bigger one of the pair grabs the little guy, the other one moves in and starts punching.
Later, Cheever would re-evaluate the scene in his head, singling out a few details that maybe weren’t necessarily true but allowed him the pleasure of questioning exactly what the fuck he’d been thinking. Likesay, the questionable ability of those punches to actually hurt someone – big swings but a curious lack of power. And the look the little guy was giving him; even as he was being roughed up by hoodlums, he had one steady eye on every man coming outta that store.
Or maybe Cheever did notice these things, and drew all the wrong conclusions from them: fey swings – nobody wants to get hurt, ergo little risk in getting involved little guy looking at me – of course he is, he wants my bloody help, don’t he? Don’t he?
So Cheever made up his mind very quickly.
“Hey! Hey, you guys! Hey!”
He put the liquor bag down – actually quite carefully, because no way in hell was he gonna waste a fine quart of Jacks just cos this hapless schmuck was getting his ass beat – and started advancing against the tableau in what he hoped was an authorative, respectable yet vaguely menacing in the here-comes-a-SOB-ya-don’t-want-ta-mess-with-manner.
“Hey, cut it out already!” He felt like an inept teacher trying to handle a schoolyard scuffle. But the bullies seemed to listen; they stopped and turned and then he was upon them.
“Hey what the fuck you gotta get involved for-“
And this was all that was said, really. There was no discussion; no rapid exchange of insults; no threats. The conflict didn’t escalate; there was no point of rising action - when it came, it was all there. Cheever was brusquely pushed, jumped back in, waved his arms a bit – and knocked one of the lads a fine’un, right on the nose – turned around to put his elbow where it didn’t belong, and then stepped back to survey the damage, which he noticed with some astonishment was significant. The two Big Dudes – oily hair and zitty neck on the taller one, the shorter had noticeably red eyes – were stepping back. Nursing their wounds. Retiring. Fleeing, even.
It was an intoxicating thought. Cheever spat:
“Get the hell out of here!”
“Hey, fuck you, man. None of your business.”
“Shut up and get the hell out. Think I haven’t seen people getting’ their asses kicked before? I don’t like it. Unfair fights. Get the fuck away.”
“We remember you, man.” The taller one bit his lip a bit. “We don’t forget. You don’t mess with other people’s business.”
“Oh, fer Gods sake. Just get out.” He started moving toward them.
They seemed hesitant. And then it breaks; one of them jumps forward, there is a clash and a violent tangle, and then Cheever bumps out again and the two assailants flee laughing.
Cheever breathed hoarsely, unwilling t believe his own good fortune. Few of us ever get to experience the illusion of being Bad Muthas, fellas with whose shit you do not want to mess, and when it happens, it is an occasion worthy of reverence. Cheever revered it by snorting a little, cracking his knuckles, and for the first time noticing a brilliant pain in his left thigh.
He looked down on his blue jeans; sure enough there was blood there, blood and a tiny little hole.
“Bastard stabbed me.” Flabbergasted; it seemed curiously distant to him.
“Sure did, mister.” Little man looked worried. “I didn’t mean for ya to get all involved like that, mister. Awfully sorry about it. Thanks for saving my ass.”
“Don’t mention it…what the hell was that about, anyway?”
“Settling a difference.” The little guy eyed him cautiously. “Don’t look to hot, man. Might want to sit down. Want me to call an ambulance or something? I still gotta call the cops.”
What shuld one write as a highschool senior – one should write truth, because truth is what matters and it is certainly holy, if there is nothing else then let it be truth, cannot you see that ever time I try I try because of that, because of the grandezza of reaching for an illusion – fighting the devil – being able to kick all the old cynicism and baseness and crude human downtoearthness (earth! To hell with the earth and let me into the sky) kick it square out and be as silly and stupid and as pretentious as you want because it is truth you are scribbling for, valiant gallant truth, and I say to hell with every last one of you if you cant see that I am tomorrow’s greatest poet and you don’t stand a chance before me. I am better, stronger, I run faster, jump longer, I outwit and outplay you. Here is my fire, here is what I found when I opened up that chest-of-drawers, I’ve stepped into my arena, I made my choice half a life ago and don’t regret a thing. You cant criticize or edit this, nobody can but me for I am burning – I am passionate – about the only thing that matters to me. To hell with all of you, listening to this, for I am the best writer that has ever – will ever-shall ever live. I took on Shakespeare and twisted that little wimp until he pleaded with me to let go; I stepped all over Chaucer. The only one to put up a good fight was kerouac but he was too fucking stoned to bother. If you cant see all this, and the glory in it, the value of fiction, the value of expression, then you are stupid and dumb and ultimately doomed.
It’s a sneer, of course – the whole damn thing is. You want to define rock? You couldn’t get any closer than a lopsided, lazy-ass greedy grin, delivered at just the right instant to make your day a little bit worse.
At certain points in your life it is usually required that you stop and Reflect – i.e, make yourself look a whole lot less interesting than you are by claiming that you’ve “gained new insight” or “changed perspectives”, usually with the help of some international disaster/self-help program/personal tragedy. This happens a lot, generally publicly, to desperate washed-up loser ex-celebs – the ilk of which would never see the light of frontpage again had it not been for their splendid New Direction. This kind of masturbatory self-examination serves to aggrandize me on so many levels; of all the bloody things that changed on September 11, you miserable fuckwad, your life was the least consequential. (I am starting to suspect that nothing at all changed on September 11, but that’s another story.) I know I’m not cool and I know I’m not punk and I know I’m stylistically carbon-copying better writers than me but can I please issue a demand for the immediate halting of ANY Change-of-Life stories in ANY form of mass-media for the next ten years. The problem’s not as big as it used to be, but it’s still there.
And now it’s happened to me. What did you
Document 22 will be a grand description of life beyond the hedge, if I ever get around to it, which I doubt I will.
Looksee: there is simply no point in going on with this charade. I know exactly what you want, so you might as well tell me. Stop flubbering around. Can’t very well have all this nonsense going around when I’m trying to concentrate, can I? So speak yur mind. I am positively sick of all your smokescreens. Let it out already.
Carpenter Jones unrolled the paper from the typewriter, then tore it apart and threw it away. If he’d had the chance, he might have burned it, but he was worried the smoke might set off the fire alarm. And besides it would have been an unnecessarily flamboyant and mindless gesture; perfectly pointless, matter of fact.
He had a sip of mineral water instead.
Carpenter Jones was a writer, which is to say he made his living by slowly, very carefully and with much strenuous deliberation, not writing. This is not to say he was uninspired. Carpenter Jones was alternately blessed and cursed with what usually is referred to as a “rich inner life”; his imagination, constantly active. But he was notoriously slow in transcribing the rapid fluctuations of his subconscious into plain onscreen prose, and what he came out with in the end never seemed to satisfy him entirely, to the point where he almost considered it a better deal not to write at all. Still he was even more inept at every other work he could even begin to consider, and so he squeaked out a living by freelancing and the highly occasional short story.
But while Carpenter Jones had resigned himself to an existance where what he wanted to write was always at least three steps removed from what he did write, a terrifying realization that most artists are forced to reach sooner or later, he still considered himself somewhat of a workhorse (in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.) So he kept at it – and even if most of his great american novels were but a paragraph and a half in length, every so often he’d get to the end of the page and sometimes even finish an entire chapter. He was especially proud of the piece he had worked on during a feverish three-day-spell in February; it spawned an epic twenty-three pages and was almost halfway through its second chapter. He hadn’t bothered to look at it in the last six months, but the knowledge that it was there as a plausible Work In Progress made him feel quite content. He even had a title made up for it; Love Amongst The Dogs, which he thought sounded suitably grand and reaching and filled with pathos.
It was, of course, never going to get published.
