Chapter One from my current work in progress, (working title is The Tragedy of Tristan and Isolde) unedited

(The Faux-Forward that proceeds this Chapter is below.  I recommend reading that first to put this Chapter into perspective)
Chapter 1


Interview with Gary Hunter, September 20, 2009.

JF: First of all, I want to say thank you for agreeing to be a part of this book.


GH: (laughs), Yeah, I have to say that I definitely have some reservations about it. I can't believe you found someone willing to publish it.


JF: I had some friends that owed me some favors. (pause) Considering your reluctance to address your time in Tristan and Isolde in prior interviews, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by your willingness to be a part of this.


GH: Yeah well, honestly, my inclination was to tell you to go to hell but I realized that if I didn't, you were only going to get her side of the story.


JF: You're referring to Emmie Ware.


GH: (pause) Yes. (long pause). So what do you want me to do? Should I just start talking about her?


JF: Actually not today. My thought was that you could take me back to how you got into music in the first place.


GH: Jeez, hasn't everyone heard that story a million times?


JF: I'm sure your fans could recite the story as well as you could but there is the possibility of people reading this book who aren't familiar with you.


GH: (laughs) Who the hell would read a book about me that doesn't know anything about me? (pause) Oh well, it's your dime.


JF: So you got started in Orlando?


GH: Yeah, (sarcastic laugh) the music mecca of the known world. I guess it was back in '82 . . .

I was living in a shithole apartment in one of the rare, poor sections of Winter Park, Florida. It wasn't exactly the 'hood by any means but it was definitely lower income. Apartment living was something I was used to. My parents got divorced when I was five and after that, it seemed every year was spent moving from one apartment to another. By sixth grade I had managed to attend five different schools and I never left the Orange County school district. This tended to make me a little more outgoing around people. I was the perennial new kid wherever I went so it was always up to me to make friends.

In 1982, my mother managed to get us into Jackson Square apartments. Again, it was a shithole but its one redeeming quality is that it was in the Winter Park Junior school district. Though my mother was happy, I was like a fish out of water. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by kids who were from well to do, affluent families. I was suddenly the poor, trailer trash kid. Fortunately, I wasn't alone. There were about ten of us that lived in Jackson Square or the neighboring complex Park Green and we kind of banded together. We were, in short, the bad kids. During this time, I read The Outsiders and needless to say, it became my favorite book. I think I read it three times that winter alone.

After school, we would take the old, yellow 383 bus home. To be honest, I'm not sure how it happened. All I remember was that Ricky, my new best friend at the time, told Jimmy and I to come over to his place after school one day because he had something he wanted to show us. Honestly, I don't think Jimmy and I were too curious about it. We probably just figured it was a new 2600 game. Fucking Atari. That stuff was like crack back then.

JF: This is Ricky Sedgfield and Jimmy Kaine?


GH: Yeah. . .

Anyway, we get over there and he pulls out this old LP. It's Genesis' Foxtrot. I'm pretty sure Jimmy and I were initially disappointed but man o man talk about a moment that changes your life. Ricky told us that he had found the album while looking through a box of his father's stuff. Ricky's father died of a drug overdose when Ricky was seven. I remember Ricky telling us that he pulled it out and thought that the cover looked cool. I don't know if you are familiar with the album but on the cover is a drawing of what appears to be a slender woman in a red dress except that where the head would be is the head of a fox. It's definitely something that immediately grabs your attention.

Ricky puts on the album but he doesn't fuck around. He goes straight to Horizons which then is immediately followed by Supper's Ready. I would still say today that I think Supper's Ready is my favorite song of all time and of course, I now know that Supper's Ready is full of all this hidden meaning and is basically a song version of Revelations from the bible. I didn't know any of that shit then but then again, I didn't have to. You could hear Supper's Ready and feel like you were entering another realm. I think it also blew our minds because it's not like we didn't know Genesis. Those guys were regulars on the radio stations back then but the stuff that you heard on the radio hardly sounded like anything off of Foxtrot. It was like it was two different bands. Of course, as we later found it, it really was like two different bands. The threesome that was left after Gabriel and Hackett left the group were more interested in Top 40 hits and didn't seem too concerned about staying loyal to their core audience. Beyond the musical influences that we got from Genesis, we definitely learned other, unintended lessons about keeping our core of fans. I think we've done a pretty good job.

Well after we listened to Supper's Ready we listened to the whole album all the way through. I was shocked when I recognized the song, I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe). I think Jimmy and especially Ricky were surprised when I could sing along to some of it. On Sundays, there was a radio station that would play a lot of classic, oddball, rock songs and that song along with another old Genesis song, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway were somewhat main staples. I think over the next few weeks we wore that LP out. I'm sure it was getting more scratchy and poppy. To be honest, I don't remember who suggested it though I know Ricky always claims credit for it but someone suggested that we form a band. There were a few problems with this suggestion, namely we were three thirteen year olds that couldn't play an instrument between us and didn't have any instruments even if we could play. Still, I guess that was the beginning of Dean's Acid Project.

What we lacked in talent and equipment, we definitely made up in heart. Ricky and I had a couple of old tennis rackets lying around. I don't remember what Ricky's was but mine was one of those old, Wilson T2000 metal tennis rackets. I was lead guitar, Ricky was bass and vocals, and Jimmy was drums. I do remember that Jimmy's drums consisted of a couple of old paint cans, some school books and two of those fat pencils that little kids use when they are learning to write.

For a couple of weeks it was fun and just like a real band, we had our first, real controversy. It turned out that Ricky wasn't much of a singer. After some talk it was agreed that I had the better voice. Ricky then wanted me to give up lead guitar and take the bass but I was pigheaded, I mentally saw myself as a lead guitarist at that point and I wasn't going to give it away. I don't know who finally figured it out but somehow we discovered that bands usually had more than one guitarist and that one guy would play lead while the other played rhythm. This helped us to avoid early disaster. We continued on in our new formation for about another week but you know, honestly, we were thirteen and a little too old to play pretend. For a while we drifted back into the video game scene and then someone, Ricky of course takes credit again, and he's probably right, suggested that we actually try and get our parents to get us real instruments. At first this was met with skepticism. As I stated before, none of us were rich. Musical instruments were the domain of rich kids, not poor kids living in Jackson Square. Ricky did keep talking it up though. He kept saying that they didn't have to be good instruments and that if we agreed to tell our parents that that was all we wanted for Christmas we could maybe swing it. Look, this went over like the proverbial lead balloon. It meant no video games, no new bikes, no cool toys. Jimmy and I were definitely hesitant but Ricky kept hammering, "look you guys, if we make it as a band, we'll be rich. We can buy ourselves all the bikes, games, toys that we can dream of." Eventually Ricky won out and operation, "get instruments for Christmas" was well on its way.

I really give us a lot of credit. We could have easily sold our dream for some crap video game but the three of us stuck to our guns, we leaned heavily on our parents and I think we were shocked when it actually worked. I wound up with one of those crappy, Japanese, Harmony guitars from the 1960s. I loved it though. Ricky got a Global guitar which was basically a 1970s, Sears version of a Stratocaster. His guitar was way cooler than mine. Jimmy got screwed. His parents refused to get him a drum set because of the apartment situation. He wound up with some shitty keyboard and he got signed up for piano lessons. I've never seen an unhappier kid at Christmas time. I think a lot of it was that Jimmy thought we would move on without him. Instead Ricky and I immediately started telling him how the keyboards were cooler and that instead of being Phil Collins, he was going to be Tony Banks. I don't think he liked the idea at first but we were like, "hey man, Phil sucks, Tony's the awesome one." Of course Ricky and I didn't believe that, piano lessons just seemed like the stuff of sissies but really looking back on it, we were dead on. Out of all the members of Genesis, the real heart of that band is Tony Banks. His work on the keys is incredible.

We were definitely on our way then but we did have one more issue to tackle. My mother couldn't afford guitar lessons for me. Fortunately this was rectified because Ricky's mother signed Ricky up for guitar lessons. Ricky went to a half an hour guitar lesson after school every Wednesday. Immediately upon him coming home, Ricky would sit down with me and we would practice together with Ricky literally parroting the stuff he learned that afternoon to me while it was still fresh in his head. After we practiced, I would sit down with a pencil and paper and transcribe all of his tab that his teacher had written for him and make a copy for myself. Looking back on it, this was probably ten times better for Ricky and me than if we both had had guitar lessons. This basically forced us both to practice. It also really forced us both to understand the lesson because I may have a question and Ricky would really have to understand it to explain it to me. When I transcribed, I really had to understand what I was writing. If we both came across something that neither of us understood then Ricky would ask his guitar teacher on the following Wednesday and we would have our answer. I do remember that Ricky and I got into a fight about something stupid at one point. Neither one of us remembers what it was about but the effect was that I was cut off from the guitar lesson that week. Man o man you can bet that I kissed his ass after that to make it up to him. Ricky was the kind of guy who wouldn't take advantage of that. He's still that kind of guy. Anyway, that's it, version number 1063 of how Dean's Acid Project got started.

Faux Forward from my current work in progress, (unedited).

Forward

As a journalist who covers rock bands for various magazines, I'm not used to writing forwards. Please forgive me if it seems a little amateurish. When you write a book, you have a tendency to be excited about it and you are consumed with an overwhelming desire to tell your friends, family, and colleagues about it. To be honest, the initial responses were underwhelming. Most of the reactions I received were along the lines of "why the hell do you want to write a book about Gary Hunter, Emmie Ware and their time together in Tristan and Isolde? There are a thousand other things you could write about that would be far more interesting." Five years ago, I would have readily agreed with them. My interest in Gary Hunter and Emmie Ware came about quite by accident and was built up through a few interviews that I had done through the years.

Like most people my knowledge of Gary Hunter, Emmie Ware, and Tristan and Isolde was limited to the basic facts. Hunter and Ware were members of an early 1990s alternative band with pop overtones named Tristan and Isolde. The band had some commercial success but like a lot of those early 1990s bands, they quickly faded way as the decade came to an end. I knew that Hunter and Ware were an item while they were together. I knew that they frequently sang duets which seemed to be their band's hook and I knew that they had a bad breakup that resulted in Gary Hunter leaving the band.

On the surface, focusing on Hunter and Ware's relationship during their time together in Tristan and Isolde definitely would seem anti-climatic. Of course Hunter is far better known as being the front man and lead guitarist for the modern progressive foursome Dean's Acid Project which has had far greater success than his time in Tristan and Isolde. Most people will rightly assume that Hunter seems to be embarrassed by his time in the pop driven duet though to give the devil his due, T&I's hit, Bad Boy Bad Girl is the highest charting song of Hunter's career and is still a main staple today on many radio stations. Ware, of course, disappeared for quite a while after the eventual break up of Tristan and Isolde but recently found major critical success in her melancholy solo work with the release of last year's Dance of the Blue Girl.

As so many people pointed out to me, a much more interesting book could be written on either Hunter or Ware based on their work outside of Tristan and Isolde. Again, there was a point in which I would have agreed but as I discovered and I think you will too, so much of who Hunter and Ware are is based in that Tristan and Isolde time period. I will tell you, the title is misleading, this book does address Hunter and Ware from their beginnings to where they were at the time the last sentence of this book was written but don't be mistaken, the center of it all emanates from the days of Tristan and Isolde.

Okay, enough about the content. I think once you read the book, you will feel the same way I do about the importance of the T&I time period. I do want to comment on the style of writing. When I first decided to write this book, I debated back and forth about how I was going to write it. Should I write it in a narrative form, basing the various scenes on the many interviews I conducted or should I write it in the style of an article that I would write for a music magazine? I realized that if I went with one direction that the story would lose something and if I went the other direction something else would be lost. It may seem obvious now but what I eventually decided on was to incorporate both styles where it is appropriate. At times, the story will be in interview form and at other times, the story will be a narrative. It should be noted however that almost all the dialogue is backed up by at least two sources and sometimes more than two.

Primarily this book is told from the perspective of Hunter and Ware even though I interviewed several people while writing this book. Though both were interviewed extensively for this book, they were never together in any of the interviews. Since their break up and Hunter's leaving Tristan and Isolde, they have spoken very little to each other through the years and those conversations have been nothing more than superficial.

I also realized early on that to keep the content of the book pure, that I couldn’t tell what I had learned from Hunter to Ware and vice versa. To do so would have literally destroyed the book before it was written. It is only with the publishing of this book that Gary Hunter and Emmie Ware are seeing their different perspectives on events that happened so long ago and had so much of an effect on each other's lives. My silly little hope is that somehow this book will cause a reconciliation between Hunter and Ware. Truthfully, I realize how vain a thought that is. I am not a therapist. My guess is that Hunter will read Ware's account and chalk it up to self-promoting b.s. and that Ware will read Hunter's account and be greatly saddened by it all. If Hunter and Ware find nothing of value in this book's content, maybe you the reader can find some sort of greater message in it regarding forgiveness. (Wow, that's some grandiose bullshit. Skip that, hopefully you just find it to be a good read).



Jake Farris

12/10/2010

Excerpt from opening chapter of "The Quitter."

Life sucks and then you die. It was a joke on car bumper stickers when I was in high school. I never thought at forty that it would turn out to be my fucking mantra. There was a time when I was a young man in my twenties and I considered myself to be the lead character in my very own novel. Later, I mentally changed that role to a comic relief character in someone else's novel. Whose novel? Who knows? Not mine. Now, here I am, forty years old and I don't know if my life even equates to being an extra in a movie. Who am I? Fat guy #3 in copy shop. Yes, somehow I have grown fat. I'm not obese. It's not like I could be a contestant on The Biggest Loser but man oh man, I'm a good fifty pounds heavier than I was when I graduated high school. They say it happens to all of us. It doesn't. It just happens to some of us and for that matter, who the hell are they?



More specifically, I am Robert Daggle, assistant manager at Con-Kor Copies and More! The exclamation was added by some corporate weasel in marketing who apparently thought that somehow adding the exclamation after the word more was a fucking stroke of genius. In reality, it is the kind of unimaginative, marketing technique created by douche-bags with little imagination and then copied by even bigger douche-bags with even less imagination.


The Con represents Continental Copies, which was a small copy company started in East Lansing, Michigan somewhere in the mid-70s. Somehow they survived the onslaught of Kinko's long enough to merge with Korina Distribution Systems Inc. of West Memphis, Arkansas. Apparently, KDSI constitutes the More! part of Con-Kor. I am the assistant manager of store #572 known as the East Orlando location.


If you think the copy business is glamorous then you obviously suffer from a serious crack/meth addiction. If you think the copy business is relaxing then you are simply, severely uninformed. Our clients are mostly comprised of a bunch of procrastinators who waited until the last minute to complete whatever project they were assigned and then when their final product predictably comes out looking like shit, it is we who get the blame. More specifically it is usually me.


The manager of store #572 is the king of all douche-bags. Randy James is twelve years my junior. He is the laziest sack of shit to ever manage anything, anywhere, at anytime. Okay, I am sure there have been worse managers out there but he is definitely in the bottom hundredth percentile. So far, his greatest accomplishment is using his position to bang Misty Shallo. Misty is a nineteen year old copy clerk. As a copy clerk, she sucks. As a physical specimen of a woman, she is a freaking knockout. She's five foot six inches, probably about 110 lbs, dark tan skin, and really fake, platinum blonde hair. Nice tits too. I'm sure they are nothing more than skin covering plastic bags filled with saline solution but they sure as hell look great. Randy is so fucking good at being a douche-bag that I don't even think he and Misty are a couple. To Randy she is basically nothing more than a glorified fuck buddy until something better comes along.


Before you feel sorry for Misty, hold off. Misty is a number one, with a shiny, silver bullet, bitch. Most of my dealings with Misty are Misty ignoring me whenever I tell her to do something. I am of course powerless to do anything about her insubordination because of her "status" with Randy. Beyond the simple insubordination, I also have to deal with Misty constantly laughing at me behind my back. Frequently, whenever I leave an area, I am accompanied with little evil giggles coming from Misty and whomever Misty is talking to. Misty's derisive laugh has become my damn theme song. I tried being nice with Misty but Misty wasn't having it. I tried reprimanding Misty but then Randy called me into his office to have a "little chat." Apparently, Misty reported to Randy that I was deliberately giving her a hard time. I tried to explain to Randy what was going on. It's not that Randy didn't believe me, I'm sure he knew I was telling the truth, in the end though he just didn't give a fuck. I think he would have fired me long ago but if I go, who the hell is he going to get to do all the work? In the end, I have resulted to simply ignoring Misty but of course, like the proverbial bully, her actions towards me just get worse and worse. I'm not someone who would come in to work and open up on everyone around with an Uzi but I have to say, working with Randy and Misty gives me an inkling as to why someone else would.


"Bob, do you have the reports ready for my meeting. It starts in fifteen you know."


Fuck you Randy! "Sure thing Randy. They are on my desk. I'll go get them for you."


"Great, thanks. . . can you also get me a cup of coffee? Three sugars, heavy on the powdered cream."


"Sure thing Randy." I can hear Misty's giggles in the back. I see Randy give her a quick smile. I'm so glad I can be Randy's punching bag as part of some sort of sick foreplay for those two.


I go and get the coffee. I am tempted to spit in it but at the end of the day, as much as I would like to be the guy who does things regardless of the consequences, I have realized that it just isn't me. This job sucks but I desperately need it and with this shit economy, jobs are really hard to find especially for a fat, forty year old with a four year degree from Rollins College in Theatre History. A degree I might add that I am still paying on and somehow still owe more on that what I loaned out originally twenty years prior. Don't ask. Yes, it's possible.


I bring the coffee and reports to Randy. Randy is the quintessential ex-high school football player. His best days are behind him. He knows it. I know it. Misty doesn't have a fucking clue. He's overweight but not fat. I'm sure he once had the golden, thick hair of an athlete or a politician but as a fellow balding man, I can spot the thinning hair. I know he secretly uses Rogaine and other modern day snake oils in an attempt to fight a losing battle. In a way we are brothers, kindred spirits in a way. In all other ways, he is a fucking douche-bag that I have the misery of working for.


Misty is walking out when I get to Randy's office, she gives me a look of pure hatred as she passes me. Really, what the fuck did I ever do to you other than breathe?


"Thanks Champ." He says. I turn to go and I am stopped by Randy.


"Whoa! Wait a second compadre. Where are the highlighted parts?"


I turn around with dread, pick up the report and show him the highlighted areas.


"No, no, no. I wanted the color copier ticks highlighted in green and the B&W's in yellow not all in yellow. Really Bob, I thought I was pretty clear with you about this last time."


I want to shout at Randy. I want to tell him to stop calling me Bob, Bobby, Compadre, Champ, and whatever other name he can think of in his seemingly endless efforts to demean me. I want to tell him that he never mentioned he wanted the color copy ticks in green. I want to go find the email in which he just stated he wanted the ticks highlighted for him but I know that nothing good will come from insubordination. All I am left with is a simple . . .


"Sorry Randy. I will make sure that I get it right for next time."


"Be sure that you do sport. You know you can't just keep working like you have your head up your ass all the time. It's time to pull that puppy out, wipe the shit from your eyes and say good fucking morning to the world."


Fucking idiot! "Sure thing Randy. Again, I'm sorry." Randy gives me a dismissive wave and picks up the phone to start his teleconference with corporate. I turn out the door just in time to see the supremely, smug look of Misty.


I spend the rest of my day simply trying to avoid the two of them. I think there are employees who have some sympathy for me and what I go through but clearly none of them give me an ounce of respect. For the most part, no one wants to get too close to me for fear of aligning themselves on the side of the powerless.

Excerpt from Chapter 28 of Reflections of Colette Street (lightly edited) with Intro

First a little note, beyond being a writer of Generation X angst and depression, I am also a normal person.  As part of my "normal life" I am a member of a college fantasy football league.  The name of the league is a very cheesy "Dirty Bollocks."  It gives us Americans the appearance a flair of the creative that we use a Brit slang term for testicles.  The truth is the cbs fantasy website has language blockers for dirty words.  Bollocks slips right past it.  Even though the season is almost over, I was bored yesterday and decided to look for a symbol for our league.  I used Google Image.  You can imagine the fun images that flash on your screen when you put 'bollocks' into an image search engine.  Among those images was a woman who seemed to be at a meeting protesting something.  Something about the photo was intriguing.  She was pretty but that wasn't it.  There were plenty of other images with barely dressed females in seductive poses that I didn't bother to click on.  I clicked on her image.  What I got in return was the site of a fellow blogger named Philip Sinclair.  The image was of his deceased wife.  She had died of breast cancer and Sinclair created a blog to celebrate her life and work through her death.  At some point Sinclair used the term bollocks in one of his posts which Google then decided that a link to one of his wife's pictures was in order.  Regardless of the reason, I am glad I found the blog.  I saved it as a favorite and told myself I would read it later.  Later usually never comes but today was slow and later came much sooner than normal.  I started from the bottom and worked my way up.  Sinclair's blog, aptly titled "Afterburn" starts around late October 2007, less than two months after her death.  The last entry appears on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 and is in no way a "goodbye" post.  As to what happened to Philip Sinclair, I doubt I will ever know.  Hopefully he found peace, solace, maybe even some happiness somewhere.  Reading his blog reminded me of one of the later chapters of Reflections of Colette Street.  So I decided to post it.  It's down below.  If you want to skip my excerpt and read "Afterburn" I wouldn't blame you a bit.  Afterall, my writing is fiction and even the best fiction which mine is not, can't compare to reality.  Here is the link for "Afterburn." Afterburn

Excerpt of Chapter 28 "Reflections of Colette Street."

It's been a couple of weeks since Felicity died. Felicity's parents wrote me a very sweet letter telling me that they were not planning on returning. They gave their alma instructions to let me in and to take whatever I wanted of Felicity's before it would all be packed up. The only thing I want is Felicity and she's not there. I will not be going to get anything. I have debated to write back to Felicity's parents and tell them about the engagement and the ring that I almost bought. I realize that all I would accomplish is to cause them more heartache for nothing more than a flimsy attempt to assuage my guilt.



I have started back at work and it has been rough going. I am simply taking a couple of shifts to get back into the swing of things. I have told Red that I am pretty much through right now with playing for a while. Red told me he understands.


I have to go to work tonight and I am dreading it. Everyone but Sinjin seems to steer clear of me or look at me with looks of pity. Sinjin, for the most part, has avoided that with me. I have made small talk with him and though he is reluctant, I have found out that Sinjin and Jane are actually dating exclusively. At no point since I have known Sinjin has he ever dated anyone exclusively. Sinjin is tight lipped about Jane but I suspect that is more out of a courtesy to me for what I am going through. The last thing I want to hear about is "new love." The romantics can pedal that shit somewhere else.


I have decided that it is too hard to stay in my flat the entire time. I can't sit there too long without seeing some constant reminder of Felicity. One time it was opening the cabinet to see the coffee mug she always uses . . . used, and another time it was something as inane as seeing a scuff mark on the floor that her shoe made. Lately, to keep myself occupied, I have been doing some touristy sight seeing. Today, I am heading out to the New Territories to see the Mui Fat Buddhist Monastery. The Monastery is really two buildings. One is a pagoda styled building that dates back to 1950 and the other is a modern glass and steel structure that accompanies it. It is a place that I have wanted to see but never got the chance. It's odd that as my time in Hong Kong is coming to a close that I am now becoming the consummate tourist. In a way, I guess it makes sense. I know that this may be my last chance to see these wonders.


I arrive at the monastery in time for lunch. The only food that you can obtain is vegetarian which is fine by me. Lately, I don't have much of an appetite and I literally have to remind myself to eat.


After lunch, I head into the older monastery. It is an amazing site. I enter the door to the pagoda by walking in between two large columns that are at least fifty to sixty feet tall. On each column are two golden, Chinese dragons that are constricted around the columns. On the outside of the columns, the monastery is protected by two, large, stone Chinese Lions. Once inside, I am simply in awe. There are thousands of depictions of Buddha everywhere. It seems that every way Buddha can be represented, he is represented here. The popular Western image of Buddha is as a fat Chinese man with a jolly smile but many of the depictions show Buddha as skinny, young and serene. I can also tell that the depictions are not just Chinese. Many of the Buddhas feature the customary headdress of Thailand. Others look more like paintings from India. On the second floor, I am again in awe of three Golden Buddha statues that are each about fifteen feet tall. For the next hour I take in everything the monastery has to offer. I cannot help but think how much better it would be if Felicity were here with me. I wonder if she had ever visited the Monastery. It bugs me that I don't know the answer and that I will never know the answer.

Excerpt from opening chapter of "Subdivisions" (Unedited)

       The yellow bus slowly pulls to a stop in front Lacie Conners's house. The house is a beautiful modern, cedar house painted in blue-gray. The front of the house has several panoramic, tinted windows facing Lake Baldwin. I have been the house on a few occasions. I've known Lacie since I was five and been in love with her since fourth grade.

      The bus pulls to a stop and Lacie enters. She, of course, looks stunning. She is in white shorts, backless sandals and has a United Colors of Benetton t-shirt on. A single barrette holds her brown hair behind her left ear. She looks at me briefly. I give her a smile and an unsure wave. My hope is that she will sit by me. Instead, I receive a half smile as she quickly scans the bus for her options. I know what she will do without even thinking. She spots Lee Rowe and Trent Matthews who are sitting across from each other near the back. Lacie's face lights up in a big smile as she eagerly makes her way to sit by Lee. It's obvious to me that Lacie feels the same way about Lee that I do about her and it's just as obvious to me that Lee is just as oblivious as to her feelings as Lacie is to mine. Such is the life being at the bottom of a love pyramid.
     Slightly dejected I return to staring out the window. After a few minutes, the bus leaves Palm Drive and heads toward the main roads that connect Scarlet Hills to its sister cities. While I stare out of the window, I find myself reflecting back on my last years in junior high. It was fun and enjoyable but when all is said and done, I wasn't the person I wanted to be. I had friends but I wasn't cool or popular. My only extracurricular activities were being on the swim team and being a member in Latin Club. Latin Club?? I might as well have been on the Quiz Bowl team or joined the A.V. club. Is it really so surprising that Lacie Connors isn't interested? Lacie the cheerleader and Parker the Latin Club geek. Not in this lifetime.

Excerpt from Chapter 5 of "Reflections of Colette Street."

      As a little note, "Reflections" was written first and is a Generation X tale about tortured '90s character, Lee Rowe.  "The Quitter" is in progress, takes place in the 2000's, and revolves around hapless loser, Robert Daggle.  The third novel at this point lacks a real title.  It takes place in the mid-1980s and right now, I simply refer to it as "80s."  All the characters know each other, at least a little bit, from their high school days at Scarlet Hills High School.  "80s" takes place at S.H.H.S.  Though the books will all be related, they are in no way a triology and can be read in any order.  In the below excerpt, Lee is in town for his ten year reunion and has recently flown in from Hong Kong.  Prior to his reunion, Lee is exploring the city that he left eight years earlier.  His exploration is a melancholy journey through memory lane.  Lee is reflecting on the loss of his virginity.  Lee is not exactly kind in his description to the girl that he lost his virginity to.  The girl, Valerie Krtzkick, will show up in "80s" and the reader will see her from a very different perspective than Lee's. 

      Winter Park holds a special significance for me. Beyond the hundreds of times that I was here with my friends getting high, it is also the place where I lost my virginity. I wish I could say it was an awesome experience. It was anything but awesome. It was in the latter part of my sophomore year and probably like a few guys before me it was with a girl named Valerie Krtzkick. Valerie was a first generation American born of older Yugoslavian parents who fled to the U.S. years before as the Iron Curtain began closing around parts of Europe. Valerie was a pretty girl who wore way too much makeup and had a love for faux metal bands whose audiences were mostly female. Valerie and I shared a couple of classes, one being world history. During our world history class, Valerie and I would make eye contact and let our stares linger a little longer than normal. I, unwittingly and clumsily, was entering the sexual world of a high school teenager. One day, Valerie suggested that we do some studying in the library after school for an upcoming world history exam. I readily agreed but not because I thought Valerie could help me pass the exam. If I was looking for help on school work, Valerie is the last person I would have asked. I figured that Valerie was simply flirting with me to get her to help her on the exam and like a dope I was hoping that it would lead to sex. Unlike a dope, it actually did. I had agreed to all sorts of stupid things that girls asked me to do since entering junior high school in the hopes of getting laid. They always ended with the predictable outcome of coming up empty. This time, however it worked. Initially after having sex with Valerie, I was serious about wanting to make her my girlfriend. A couple of days later, I heard rumors that Valerie was a total nymphomaniac and had been with countless numbers of guys since banging some twenty two year old when she was in junior high. Upon hearing the news, all thoughts of getting serious about Valerie went out of my head. In fact, I was only mildly disappointed. I kept reminding myself that I had accomplished the more important goal of losing my virginity.

      As for how it went down, the very first day we studied at the library was the only day we met to study. Looking back, I am not sure who was pursuing whom. I made my usual flirtations and comments filled with sexual innuendo. Instead of them being met with groans and rolled eyes, Valerie countered my remarks with her own batch of sexually charged comments and flirtations. The one I particularly remember that resulted in my pants becoming immediately tight in the crotch area was her putting a highlighter pen in her mouth and performing on it orally. Before twenty minutes had expired we agreed to ditch the library and the pretense of studying to find a more suitable spot to continue our conversation. Valerie recommended the back of her Civic hatchback but I, in a moment of rare genius, suggested Winter Park.

      Once at the park it was a mad scramble to find the perfect spot before her mood was lost and my always predictable outcome of failing to get laid reared its ugly head. Just when I was starting to get worried, Valerie pointed out a copse of greenery that she had used to smoke pot in when she was in eighth grade. Eighth grade? Looking back it was predictably bad. We were covered in pine needles and tree bark poked us in every sensitive spot imaginable. I offered to wear a condom but Valerie refused telling me, "Condoms make it feel like I am being fucked with a dildo. Besides, I'm on the pill." Did she know factually what it felt like to be fucked with a dildo? Her unwillingness to have me use a condom gave me a brief pause but my inner angel was bludgeoned by my inner devil. There was no way I was going to walk away at this point. I remember having a thought along the lines of if I don't follow through in this situation, I'm probably gay. My biggest fear of ejaculating early didn't come to pass in some part due to the surroundings and because Valerie's nether region grabbed me far less tightly than my oft-used hand.

    After my eventual, clumsy finish, we brushed ourselves off. Valerie was overly affectionate with kisses. I reciprocated physically but in my mind with the inner devil sated, the inner angel was screaming. You probably got her pregnant. Are you ready to be a father? She's probably got AIDS or herpes. You're only sixteen and you will be dead before you're old enough to order a beer or worse yet, you will be a fucking, sexual leper with sores all over your dick! You're such a stupid, stupid fuck! You're the dumbest fuck that ever lived!!!!! And then came the pleading from me. God, I know I haven't gone to church since I was twelve and I tell everyone that I'm an agnostic but I promise you that if she's not pregnant and I don't have some horrible sexual scourge that I will be in church and I will wear a condom for the rest of my life. Please! Please!

     Valerie didn't get pregnant and herpes never showed up but it would be a full five years before I convinced myself that I didn't have AIDS. I could have simply gotten an AIDS test but I believed that as long as I didn't know that I didn't have it. As for my promise to go to church, I offered God a rain check once I got settled down. I still wasn't all that great about wearing condoms either. Come to think of it, I still owe God a church visit. Chances are I will never get around to it unless it's a funeral or a wedding.

Excerpt from Chapter 6 of "The Quitter"

     I used to love to look at myself in the mirror.  If you stare long enough, you start to look like a stranger to yourself.  You start to see the person that others see and not the person you think you are.  In my youth, I liked the result.  No, I wasn't ever some good looking actor but I was a person who was filled with purpose.

     I look in the mirror now.  I see the start of a double chin. I see the puffy, fat pockets that surround my eyes.  I see the gray strands of hair that twist in odd directions notifying anyone they see that the cells that live inside are breaking down.  The little cell walls are deteriorating.  I have grown old before my time.  I see a deep sadness in me.  I am a beaten man.  I walk away from the mirror and go lay back on the bed.

     I return to looking at the popcorn ceiling.  I really thought I was going to make something with my life.  I thought that I would have some sort of accomplishment that I would be proud of.  What do I have? No real occupation, no wife, no children.  Hell, I haven't even had a girl that I have dated for more than three months.  My only friend that I still speak to seems to still talk to me more out of obligation than anything else.  I'm lucky if I talk to Rick five times a year.  I am suddenly hit with a strange thought.  What if I died right now?  What if I had a fucking heart attack right now?  How long would it be before anyone would even notice?  This spurred on another macabre thought.  Who would even attend my funeral?  The only definite people I could come up with was Rick and my mother and I'm not sure either would even shed a tear.  Wow!!!!!

    I feel myself spiraling down into darkness.  I stare some more at the little white globs of ceiling material above my head.  After a while I can see shapes.  There's a woman's face, a little doggy with a long tail, a smiling turtle, and a dancing devil.

    I wake up sometime later.  It's nighttime and I am shocked that I have slept the day away.  I immediately notice that the bad, acidic feeling in my stomach is still permeating.  I imagine a frothy liquid flowing through me, eating at my insides.  I look up at the ceiling and look for the shapes I had been staring at before I drifted off.  I can find them but really they don't look like anything anymore.  They are just little globs of white goo, frozen in mid drop.

Excerpt from Chapter 5 of "The Quitter"

I wake up in a state of confusion. I look at the red digital numbered alarm clock but it is blank. I can see some light through the curtains so I know it's daytime. I reach over to turn on a light. Nothing. Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!!!!! They cut off the power!

Sure enough, I jump out of bed and all the power is off. I would like to say this is the first time this has happened but it's not and not by a long shot. I immediately go to the front door. I see a little pink slip from the power company. I also notice that I can see a T.V. set on in the apartment across the way. Yep, they turned the power off.

I take off the pink slip and go back into my apartment. I head to the bathroom to grab my watch. 1:48 P.M. Now I am stuck in a dilemma. I need to get to the temp agency but I need to take care of the power first. Since my phones are all cordless they are out because of the power. I go to my cell phone. My cell phone is one of those phones that you buy in a department store with a pay-as-you-go plan. I had been planning to buy a card to add minutes to the phone. My best guess is that I have about twenty minutes of talk time before I run out. After I get the power problem taken care of I will have to go and buy another phone card.

I call the power company and I sit on hold for seventeen minutes listening to the best of Celene Dion and Michael Bolton before I am connected to a live person. I know I only have a couple of minutes before the cell phone cuts me off. The phone gave me a sinister, five minute warning beep a couple of minutes ago.

"Hello this is Rika please give me your account number?"

"Hi Rika my phone is about to cut off. I need to make a payment on the account before that happens."

"Yes sir, I will be glad to help you but I need to know your account number."

"Shit, sorry, I don't have that."

"That's fine sir. Can I have your social security number?"

I give Rika my social security number.

"Okay.  I show this as being for a residence located at 22 Twain Avenue with Orlando address 32828 is that correct?"

"Yes ma'am. I just need to make a payment before my phone cuts off."

"That's fine sir. I must tell you that there will be a thirty five dollar connection fee for having the power turned back on."

"Yes, yes that's fine."  I say, agitated.  "Can I go ahead and give you my card number before the phone cuts off?"

"Yes sir. I am ready when you are."

I give Rika my debit card number, my expiration date, and my security code from the back. As soon as I finish, I get the one minute warning. I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it! Finally something today is going to go right.

"I'm sorry sir but that card was declined. Do you have another card?"

"What? No, that's not right. I made a deposit yesterday."

"I'm sorry sir but the card number you have given me has come back decl-"

I hear the click and realize that the phone has died. Fuck fuck and double fuck!!!!!!!

Excerpt from Opening Chapter of "Reflections of Colette Street"

"I stare out the window of the airplane. The city, my city, is coming into focus. It's the city that cradled me from birth and swaddled me in its loving, smothering arms. That is up until eight years ago when I, like a prisoner who finally finds the door to the jail cell suddenly wide open, bolted almost literally in the middle of the night.
The last eight years have been spent in mostly glorious, self imposed exile and not coincidentally in pretty much the furthrest reaches of the world from this place that I used to call home. This city. This city is coming closer and closer to me through my little plexi-glass airplane window. It welcomes me with its glimmering orange-yellow lights and the streaming headlights of the cars below that move like ants on the interstate. I adjust my perspective, I can see my face reflected in the little window. When did I get so old?"

It's been a while

A long while. Apparently five years. It took a little bit to remember how to even log in but surprisingly I logged in and I am back. So what has happened in five years? Well a lot of course but for the purposes of this blog I will keep it short and sweet. I started and finished the first draft of my manuscript "Reflections of Colette Street." I am now trying to figure out how to get it published. Like every amateur writer, I thought that if I wrote it, the hard work will be done but of course, in classic cliche' like fashion, and to quote The Carpenters, "It's only just begun."