'The Truth' and other truths

Things I realised today:
1. I really like bowler hats
2. There is something unutterably romantic about gramophones
3. People can be surprisingly polite in the service industry (seriously, count how many times you/your friend/the waiter/waitress says 'thank you' next time you eat out)
4. There's nothing like a good jacket spud and beans after a long day
5. This blogging thing may be even tougher than I first thought.

I also finished a wee story I've been at for a while. 
I watched this video for a bit of inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClKWwWvOT5w 
But I also had a prompt: A drunk man sits next to you in a bar, thinks he's your buddy and starts talking about 'The Truth'. Write about 'The Truth'.

Bryce walked from the abnormal heat of the July sun into a dusty and somewhat gloomy bar. He plonked himself dejectedly on one of the faded leather barstools and slumped forward onto his elbows, his youthful chin jutting out to rest on his balled fists. He was that confusing combination of frustrated and saddened. His girlfriend of four years, Sarah, had told him that they were finished. He hadn’t put up much of a fight because he knew they didn’t and couldn’t love each other anymore, but he was pained that they hadn’t been able to make it work. They had been sweethearts in school and after he’d come back from college they’d picked right up from where they’d left off. If he’d felt her feelings had changed for him, that her eyes weren’t full of that same hopeful future they once had been, he didn’t pay attention. And if she noticed he wasn’t as content as he once was with the small town, or as comforted by her caresses, she hadn’t said a word. Well, not until this morning.

He sat upright, smoothing his skinny tie against his short-sleeved, somewhat grubby, white shirt. It was a habitual gesture, and it bolstered him somewhat. He signalled with his hand to try and get the barman’s attention, but the guy sat behind the other end of the bar had a large, dull-looking newspaper hiding everything above his pointy, polyester -covered knees which protruded outwards from his own seated position. Evidently midday wasn’t the time for unfamiliar customers or good service.

Bryce turned at the low, raspy chortle that escaped from the older man sat a ways along from him. The man caught his eye and shuffled slowly forward, then sat down next to him, uninvited. He leant over conspiratorially and said quite jovially,

“Samson don’t pay strangers no heed son. The regulars get what they want themselves then pay up after.” Bryce flicked another glance towards the hidden figure of the barman then asked in a lowered voice,

“Shall I do the same?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you, he keeps Betty at the ready always.” The old man took a large gulp, emptying his tumbler of the amber liquid it contained.

“Who’s Betty?” Bryce asked. The guy wheezed another laugh out from between his crooked, yellowing teeth.

“Who? Ha, ha, ha, oh boy, you city folk crack me up. It’s a what, son. Betty’s his shotgun. Can’t be too careful with bandits and ruffians roaming about these parts.”

‘These parts’ was only a four hour drive from Bryce’s home in sleepy, wholesome suburgatory. It was sunny, and the last fifty miles or so had been looking increasingly lonelier, but it was hardly wild country. He didn’t bother to argue with the drunkard, he wouldn’t win, and it would serve no purpose.

“Yah. Sure. Say, would you mind?” He scratched his chin and motioned meekly towards a dusty bottle behind the bar.

“Oh. Sure kid, what’ll it be?” The old guy eased himself off the stool with another worrisome wheeze, then ducked and shuffled under the bar, crab-style. If it weren’t for the sound effects, you might think this guy was quite nimble for his age, but it was clear than most movements were fairly laboured.

“Just the Jim Beam, if you’d be so kind”

“No problem, think I might join you.” The guy filled the greasy tumblers generously, then leant across the bar, offering Bryce the drink. He reached for the glass, but the old man didn’t let go.

“Son, I’m gonna offer you some advice.” He rasped a rattling breath. “You look like a guy ‘could use some advice.”

 Bryce considered his options. He didn’t want to hear yet another person’s two cents. But he desperately wanted this drink. It was hotter than hell on a Sunday outside and this was the only stop for a goodly while. He didn’t think the old guy would let him get away without saying something. Best just to let him speak.

“Er, sure.”  Bryce took a sip as the guy waddled back under the bar and resumed his seat.

“Well son, you look like a guy that’s looking for something.” Not very eloquent, but he had a point. Bryce took another sip.

“You look like a guy that just cut and run, wanted to be somewhere new, wanted to see the big ol’ world. Ammirite?” Bryce nodded hesitantly.

The guy took a long look at him. From his slim fit black trousers to his skinny tie and square specs, Bryce looked like your average college graduate. Eager for something, but not knowing what. The old guy’s sigh was knowing.

“I’m gonna let you in on a little something I call ‘The Truth’.” He took another gulp of whiskey and Bryce watched as his hand spun the glass around, spilling drops on the faded beer mat.

“Y’know that something you’re looking for? Well…you ain’t never gonna find it.” Bryce grimaced. Here we go.

“Don’t screw your face up son, it’ll stick.” He gulped some more whiskey.

“What is it that you’re running from?”

From his slumped position he squinted into Bryce’s face. Bryce grimaced again.

“Ah, girl trouble I bet. You young boy’s have gotta buck up. It wasn’t so easy in my day y’know. You hadda court a girl for months before anything serious happened, then be on good terms with her pa so you didn’t get a hidin’ went you brought her home late.” He chuckled again and his whiskey-soaked breath almost misted on Bryce’s glasses before the heat hijacked the moisture.

“But seriously boy, go home and sort things out because you ain’t never gonna get over this girl. Folk never do.” For a minute the old guy looked almost sentimental. The crags of his face softened momentarily and there was something almost sweet about his expression. Then he belched.

“Yessiree, them broken hearts just follow you ‘round like shadows. I mean you’ve probably got ambitions, sure. And they’re commendable in young’uns like you but it just isn’t the same if you don’t have y’girl’s support.” He got up to shift behind the bar for a refill.

“College kid are ya?” Bryce took a sip, then found his voice.

“Yessir. Engineering and Business.”

“Well, whaddya doin’ out this way then?” The guy seemed genuinely anxious to know. After all, it was ‘these parts’ according to his reckoning.

“I’m on my way to New York. My pa wanted me to work at the oil refinery like him, but I’m not a chemist, y’know?”

“Sure now, that’ll be the one up in Tulsa?”

“Yessir.” Bryce was waiting for the rebuff. This guy was gonna tell him his pa was right. He shot a glance his way. He looked thoughtful, one hand on his creaking hip, one hand stroking his scruffy beard.

“Well son, you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Bryce sagged with relief. He hadn’t realised how much he’d wanted someone to say that. How much he’d needed someone not to immediately contradict him. He’d hated the inevitable outcomes his parents had sorted for him. They had his whole life neatly mapped out. He’d get a job at the refinery, move into another house on the block with another white picket fence, marry Sarah once the time came and raise a family of his own. It was so neat and ordered, so depressingly predictable it made his head throb with panic. He wanted excitement, adventure, intrigue maybe even a little danger. He wanted to see things, and do things, that would shock his frighteningly virtuous neighbours.

The old man rearranged his craggy face into something vaguely beneficent, and gestured towards the door.

“Well, I shouldn’t keep you from that big ol’ world son. Go on, git, before I decide to send y’back to pa. I bet he doesn’t even know where y’are, oh lawdy he’d probably skin me for lettin’ you get away.” Bryce didn’t need telling twice. He downed the dregs and slapped a few bills on the bar. Then smiled lopsidedly at the guy.

“Thanks. For the drink. And for the…well…‘The Truth’.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled out into the sunshine and the heat.

A piece of the Huxley pie

Today, despite having been a member of the library for over a year and a half, I actually, genuinely, honest-to-goodness got some books out for the first time. Not that your average passer-by would guess this about me, but I'm quite a nervy person, a worrier by blood and petrified of the socially incorrect. So, I was playing an internal game of chicken with myself. But my decisive self won out and I took my choices over to the desk, ready for the judgey-looking clerks behind the desk to judge me with their judgey eyes. But they completely failed to notice my paltry fair and the whole event passed totally uneventfully.

Ten minutes later, as I sat in the park - back against my increasingly favourite tree, chomping my apple, trying to ignore the slight, but persistent, smell of dog's mess - I commenced my first book. In a bid to broaden my literary horizons I'm trying not to default to chick-lit with inevitable happy endings, so I went in the opposite direction with Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception". For a first-time reader of his work, this is perhaps a bit of a bizarre choice because rather than one of his, no-doubt brilliant, novels, it's a short piece recounting his experience of taking mescalin.

I began with the foreward by J.G. Ballard, and I stumbled when I came across this passage: "Huxley believed that our brains have been trained during the evolutionary millenia to screen out all those perceptions that do not directly aid us in our day to day struggle for existence. We have gained security and survival, but in the process have sacrificed our sense of wonder."

Well. Speaking as a recently ex'd student, who is, quite frankly, retreating further into an self-imposed sense of denial disguised as imagination, I can safely say that my brain constantly throws things into my path that impede my daily struggles. This normally goes something like:
Brain: those library clerks glared at you when you came in, escape! Escape before they inevitably yell at you and publicly shame you for not being dressed appropriately for the library/for breathing too loudly/ for existing in their domain
Me: but I came here to get books. I want to read something improving this afternoon.
Brain: but they look scaaaaary, and you could just lie in bed!
Me: dude, we played that card yesterday.
Brain: but you liked laying in bed. It was comfy.
Me: yes, but I achieved bugger all....Nope, I'm braving it, I'm going to get these books out.
Brain: don't say I didn't warn you.

Yup, I am that neurotic. And I know I'm not alone. However, I can't help but agree with the second part of Mr Huxley's credo. I am in essence, secure and surviving but ultimately bored and unoccupied. I've lost my sense of wonder. This is what I want to rediscover.

And so from Huxley to pie. Today's attempts at recapturing wonder included making cherry pie from scratch. It's cooling in the tin as I write this. It is wonky, probably quite bland and possibly inedible, but wonderful all the same.

Do you copy...cat?

I am not a fan of copy-cats. It's a phrase that gets bandied about in playgrounds by unimaginative kids who wish to taunt others and, unfortunately, bandied around in newspapers usually in reference to unimaginative murderers. But I can't claim that this, hopefully one in a long line of future posts, makes me anything other than what I dislike*. 

A friend of mine has, over the past two years, done an absolutely wonderful job of blogging. Not the vapid, pointless blogging that lists what the author had for lunch and what kind of celebrity they want to grow up to be, but the unerringly sincere, thoughtful and colourful type of writing that genuinely inspires. I want to say thank you to that person and also make myself a promise. From today and for the month of August, in this grand old year of 2013, I will post something to this limping, wounded blog everyday. I plan to use the inspiration from my dear friend and resuscitate it RoboCop stylee. It might be a story, a photograph, a link to a stupid website or some more pathetic ramblings but, fingers, toes and other body parts crossed (minds out of the gutter people), this will hopefully give me the creative boost I need and maybe inspire some other people too. 
 
So in deference to my, somewhat militant, inner voice, I say to thee and me: Get creative. GO GO GO!


* a copycat folks, not a murderer or a child. just in case you were wondering.

The Chair

One of the prompts I read recently challenged me to write about an object in my room, but I switched it a bit and wrote about one of my favourite objects from my past. I hope it conjures up for you the same emotive image it does for me.

When I was very young, we had an old, battered, brown leather wing-backed chair in our living room. It was tired and worn, but incredibly loved. My mother claimed she’d used it for nursing me and my sisters. It was roomy, spring-bottomed, well-padded and low to the ground. It was perfect for tired mothers to breastfeed in, or more likely fall asleep in. It smelled of comfort. The stubby wooden feet were battered; the leather was smooth across the arms and back, but wrinkled on the seat. It was stretched paper thin in places and eventually the stuffing started falling out from the cushion, but it retained the deference given to a throne.  It was exactly right for curling up and dipping biscuits into milk, perfectly placed for watching cheesy Saturday night television.

As I was considerably smaller than I am today, I don’t think I recognised the scale of the thing. It must have dwarfed our humble-sized living room. Yet, despite its cumbersome size, it wasn’t actually very heavy. In fact, my memory is coloured by fondness for the times that me and my sisters would use it in our games. Tipped on its back with the cushions taken off, we’d lean back against the springs of the seat and pretend we were in a rocket, or speeding along in a motorcar. Sometimes we’d just sit there and watch cartoons, huddled together in the small den we’d make by placing a blanket over the topsy-turvy contraption. It was warm and familiar and ours; a place for secrets, sandwiches, sleeping and hugs.

Of all the things that made it special, though, it was the colour. It was that hideous shade of brown that you question whether it was ever fashionable to have.  It was only partially redeemed by the shiny brass studwork that held the leather in place. The room itself was painted a fairly neutral white, but there was not a single piece of furniture that co-ordinated with this chair. It was the stuff of an interior designer’s nightmare. Now, I can’t remember how it came about, but we took great childish delight in calling it ‘the poo chair’ because of this colour. It wound my mother up something awful but it stuck, until even friends of the family referred to it in the same way. “Oh, I’ll take the poo chair, it’s so comfy”, “Let me sit in the poo chair, and you can sit on my knee”, “you’re getting biscuit crumbs on the poo chair”. Whilst this sounds like a perversely crude way of referring to the lavatory, it entertained my young mind mightily to here adults, who I thought were beyond reproach, saying the word ‘poo’. I guess to some extent it also made it more ours. I believe I’m right in thinking it was the only furniture in the house to be given a name, and in retrospect this gave us a greater sense of ownership. It wasn’t just the poo chair, it was our poo chair.

No doubt if it were still around today it would take pride of place in my parents front room (we grew out of the small house I began life in), but unfortunately it died a death as all well-loved furniture does. But then again, perhaps it’s for the best. We grew out of playing at being spacemen, and after all, it still wouldn’t fit the colour scheme. 

Discovering a lie

So the prompt I found was actually "Write about how you felt when you discovered you were lied to." but I took some artistic licence, mostly because I wanted to write about this unlikeable character in a sort of understandable way. See what you think.

Aaron Simakis played the Blondie track for the fifth time, his beautiful state of the art record player spinning the disc in a seemingly infinitely rotating circle, which from his position laying on his bed was somewhat hypnotising. As he listened to Debbie Harry’s sultry voice claiming “Once I had love, and it was a gas...” he reflected on his own shattered heart. He knew some people thought listening to vinyl was pretentious, a form of musical snobbery, but he liked to think it lent him a certain sense of artisan cachet. At least now he knew where she stood in that regard. That afternoon they had had the argument to end all arguments. Well, the argument to end them, anyway. Amy had been keeping quite a few things from him it seems. She hated his “obsession” with liking the right kind of music, she didn’t like the way he rolled each clean pair of socks into a perfect ball so he’d never have an odd pair, she thought the way he ran his tongue over his teeth as he looked in the hallway mirror was gross, he should “just go brush your teeth already!”.

But then there was the big one, the one she’d kept bottled up for some time. Apparently, at his sister’s wedding two months ago, whilst he’d (quite rightly, he felt) been passed out drunk on their hotel bed, she’d snuck off downstairs to the bar and then copped off with the best man. This might not have been quite so painful had he not known the bastard. Louis Gillespie was a slimeball. I mean his name was Louis Gillespie, could he sound much more like a mob boss? The guy was everything Aaron wasn’t. He was medium height but stocky; broad shoulders supported a thick neck which supported very little intellect inside a square-jawed face. Chestnut brown hair was slicked back for the occasion and he pushed his jacket out of the way by standing with his hands in his trouser pockets, continuously jingling his spare change and puffing out his chest in a timeless but nonetheless infuriatingly wanker-ish mode of machismo. He suited the role of best man though. He charmed and smarmed his way through all the single women in attendance and half the unavailable contingency too, including his girlfriend. He was like a bull of a slug, sliming he way through the female population, seducing them and ingratiating himself with his sycophantic words.

By contrast Aaron was a beanpole, tall and skinny with a violent mop of black curly hair and brilliantly green eyes. He was however, somewhat socially awkward and usually fell back on the awful sense of humour he inherited from his father to ease talkative occasions, but this almost never worked. He would have been more vain about his appearance if it actually got him anywhere with the ladies. It had got him there with Amy; at least he thought it had. But apparently not. Apparently she’d been lying to him for two months. While he’d been in bed wondering when the room would stop spinning, she’d been in bed with Louis Gillespie rocking his world with something other than alcohol. He thought about the way her sweet face had looked on Tuesday night after they’d made love, all relaxed and deliciously satisfied, rosy-cheeked and heavy-lidded, plump-lipped and dewy-skinned. It was a lie. His stomach wrenched and twisted at the deceit. She hadn’t loved him, she’d used him. The taste of bile rose in his mouth and he swore softly into the silent room. He could smell her perfume on the pillows and it sickened him. Such a cliché, but he simultaneously wanted to rip apart the apartment and eradicate any reminder of her being there and also preserve everything as it had been, freeze time in those few blissful, ignorant moments post-lovemaking two days ago, before the fight.

His “Heart of Glass” had shattered upon impact with Amy’s revelation and the shards and slivers were piercing their way through his internal organs. Everything hurt. His eyes were now a not so brilliant sludge colour, red-rimmed from crying. His hair was greasy, scraped back from his forehead with a girly headband, no doubt left by Amy. Damn it, he literally couldn’t get the girl off his mind. Underneath the reminder of her perfume he could smell his own body, sweat and sadness leaking from his pores. He should really have a shower, but with the curtains undrawn, the half-light of the room, the stale air and the disco music kept him suspended in a state of wakeful unbeing. He could feel the pain inside him, but until he outwardly acknowledged the jumble of hurt and anger, frustration, fear, loneliness and the lingering remnants of love, the pain remained inside, quiet and insidious but not yet fully real.

Time had moved on around him and Aaron had been lying in his grubby pyjamas for 3 days now, repeating their names in various combinations with varying degrees of emotion, but he just couldn’t reconcile the two. It was the frustration of a child who finds that two pieces of a puzzle just won’t fit together, but who keeps trying anyway. He threw his head backwards and stared blankly at the mouldering ceiling. And then a marvellous thing happened. Aaron forgave Amy. He forgave her for sleeping with Louis, he forgave her for disliking his preferred music, and method of listening to it, and most of all he forgave her for lying to him. He sat upright and contemplated a plan of action. He would go to the corner shop up the road and buy the nicest bunch of flowers he could with the fiver he had left in his wallet, flowers couldn’t be more than a fiver surely. He’d walk the mile and a half along the river towards her house and knock on her door. She’d open the door and rush into his arms because she’d been so lonely without him, she’d missed him so much. She’d beg for his forgiveness and he’d graciously say she already had it. They would probably spend some time in her bedroom and after that she’d go and make them a wonderful lunch as a special thank you for his generosity and expert lovemaking. Yes. This is how today would work. But first, he needed to shower. He may have prided himself on not being vain, but he felt that at least he should be clean for the reconciliation to end all reconciliations.

Sorrow croons as love begs.

Just a quick prompt I found me on the interwebs. Enjoy.

When I was a grumpy child, my Uncle Sebastian used to tell me “Vera, happiness is a choice”. I used to reply, “Uncle, if everyone chose happiness all the time, life would be very boring”. It might have been boring, but at least it would be safe, at least it would be bearable, at least it would be. When my Aunt Mabel passed away without warning, I should have forced him to eat his words. At least then he would have eaten something. Mabel had been a sweet lady, always ready with a mug of cocoa and a storybook, but it was Uncle Seb’s death that had been a defining moment of my young life. I remember wishing he would snap out of it, his depression I mean. He didn’t die in a flash of glory like some heroes, but slowly faded a bit each day. Each time I saw him, he’d be a shade lighter. They say people get the blue’s when they’re sad, but he didn’t gain anything; he lost a little bit of himself every time he spoke her name, when he got her mail in the post, when he lay in the bed they’d shared. The man that was once my hero disappeared piece by piece, washed out like a watercolour, deflated like an old balloon, until quietly, fifteen months, two weeks, three days and seven hours after Mabel died, he died too.

Depression gets you like that you know, it’s seductive. Sorrow croons softly to you with one face while it eats your heart with the other. The funeral was ghastly. I was nine, but the pinched and blotchy faces of relatives stuck with me. Apparently “It was to be expected”, “He hadn’t been the same since...”, “At least he was at peace now”. I wanted to scream at them. What did they know? The priest, with his pallid yellow face and ghostly white hair drifted over to me as I sat on my Grandmother’s uncomfortable chintz sofa, silently sipping at something resembling flat lemonade. “Do not worry child, Sebastian is with God now.” I wanted to hurl abuse at this man’s generically pious face, sneer at his kind words. But I didn’t. I bit my tongue and remained silent. He took my bowed head for youthful acceptance or maybe resignation and drifted away again to mingle with the other relatives. Crowded around as they were in huddles of black, they reminded me of carrion birds, picking at the memory of Uncle Seb, dissecting everything he’d ever said or ever done, weighing the merit of his devotion to Mabel against his disregard for the blessing that was life. I felt sick and stumbled bleakly towards the front door, abandoning my lemonade to make a sticky puddle on the chintz sofa.  

In the cold November morning, bunched up on the front steps on my Grandmother’s semi-detached bungalow, I cried. I cried, and then I prayed the hardest I have ever prayed. I prayed for my Uncle Seb to come back to me, to be able to hug him one more time and smell the cigarettes and aftershave on his wooly jumper, to laugh at his awful jokes and steal the biscuits from his private stash while he wasn’t looking, to spend weekends locked in scrabble tournaments because he refused to lose to a nine year old. All the love I had for the best person in my life begged him to be alive again. Then, just as suddenly as I had started crying, I stopped. The tear in the fabric of my childish heart was sealed over with a cold and waxy sense of calm. The tears on my cheeks cooled, leaving frozen tracks that I scrubbed at with my frost-bitten fingers. I might not be able to choose happiness, but I sure as heck was choosing not to feel this gnawing sense of loss. The waxy calm hardened into a resolve that encased my inner being, creating an armour impervious to all the teenage angst and adult heartbreak I was due to suffer hereafter. I understood now why he chose this mantle of numbness, but I wasn’t going to give into it completely, I was just borrowing it for a while. At least that’s what I told myself. I was Vera Mason, ice maiden.