the indie lumberjack.

going out on a limb.

so i’m incredibly nervous about what i am about to post. it is from the novel i’ve been writing for the past two years. now, i haven’t written anything new or substantial in over six months, but i figured i might get a gauge of how people feel about it. this is something i need feedback on, so please do so.

a warning: some of this is nsfw [not safe for work] but it is just some language. just figured i would give some heads up.

Prologue

Saturday, December 31

It’s 4:37pm and the December sun is finally setting for the last time this year. My apartment is empty and I am alone. I open a bottle of scotch, pour it in to a glass and watch the snow fall from my apartment balcony. The air is freezing, but it’s a dry cold. The kind of cold that chills you to your very core and leaves you immobilized for a few seconds before you can catch your breath again. Luckily, I have scotch so I stay comfortably toasty.

As I watch the plethora of happy couples strolling down the sidewalk to their parties and dinners and fun, I realize that I am now 25 and I am still single, with no potential relationships in my immediate future. Another unproductive year has ended. The sun has set. The ball has dropped. I will spend the night alone; drinking.

Happy Birthday to me…

Part One: The Awkward Buildup to An Elegant Catastrophe

Sunday, January 1

Everything is too loud, too bright, and too fast this morning. The disorder of the day is a hangover. This is not the way to start off the New Year. I shouldn’t have gone to that party with Hank last night. I’m not entirely sure who is lying in bed next to me but I’m praying that it’s a female.

Resolution number one: Quit drinking.

My blinking alarm clock says that the time is now 3:47, and I assume this is in the afternoon. It only feels like its 7am…I’m just going to sleep this one off. I’ve got a big meeting tonight at the office. The worst part about the journalism profession is that weekends don’t have any meaning anymore. It’s almost like when you’re in high school and all you can do is countdown the days until summer begins and you can go to the beach and drive around and party for two and a half months without a care in the world. Then, suddenly, you get to college and summers mean working to save money for textbooks or payments on an apartment. I really need to get a promotion because being a staff writer is killing me slowly.

Resolution number two: Get promoted to editor.

I set my alarm for 6pm, roll over and go back to dreaming about what my life would be like if it weren’t the one I was living.

Resolution number three: Fix my life.

Monday, January 9

“I remember the last time I was truly happy being years ago…and not just one or two years ago, like three or four, possibly five…” I begin to drift off in to space. Today’s disorder is depression, and a lifetime supply of it. My thoughts were beginning to detach from one another and float about in my head. I could feel myself rapidly losing interest in the conversation that I myself was commanding. I look to the clock for a timely rescue but it boldly and defiantly replies with “3:12”.

I still have 48 minutes to go…fuck.

“Well Chuck, how does that make you feel?” my therapist asks. She was fresh out of medical school, but obviously had a knack for what she did since she already had a job. She’s fairly attractive, a brunette with chestnut highlights that complimented her fading tan skin, and an average build with a low cut sweater that hugged her body in just the right places. Her khakis appeared to be about a size too big for her legs, but they still fit her hips just right. She was captivating, to say the least.

She’s staring at me, attempting to figure out what makes me tick, what makes my mind act the way that it does, but most of all, she is trying to figure out what I really think of her.

“Well Stacey, can I call you Stacey? I would call you Doc but that reminds me of Bugs Bunny and I sort of hate Bugs Bunny.” I chuckled at my own sad attempt at a joke…no wonder women never stay with me long enough to get attached.

She giggles nervously. “Stacey is just fine. I kind of hate Bugs Bunny too; he tries way too hard for approval. I’m an Elmer Fudd kind of girl.” She replies, with the same nervous giggle.

Are we high-schoolers?

I like how she is opening up to me, even if it is stuff that is this nonessential. It’s weird though…which one of us is in therapy again? I look to the clock again for some solace, an end to this awkward procession…”3:14”.

God…time is such an asshole.

“See, no one ever admits they like Elmer Fudd because they’re afraid if people find out they sympathize with a mentally retarded hunter who is often attracted to cross-dressers, people will automatically assume they’re a Republican. Wait, you’re not a Republican are you?” I joke with her. I think this one was a better attempt. Maybe I just need to get warmed up. She gives a real laugh this time. Is she legally allowed to date me? Is she even allowed to morally flirt with me? I mean…she could call it…research? A case study?

Another hypothetical uncertainty.

“No! I am not a Republican! I voted Democrat in 2004, for better or worse, I’m liberal all the way. I can’t believe that after all that he lost in Ohio. OHIO! The only state he needed to win the pres…ahem. No, Chuck, wait, can I call you Chuck? Would you prefer me call you something more formal? Some of my patients don’t like me using their first name, so if you prefer something else…” she says with a nervous smile.

It’s cute how nervous I make her.

“I would be completely offended if you called me anything else, Stacey. I want us to be on a first name basis.” I say as I give the least forced smile I have given in the past four years…which was new to me. I look at the clock for the last time for the afternoon. It read “3:21”

…I want time to stop.

We sat in silence for what felt like a century before she cleared her throat and continued with the session. We touched on everything from childhood trauma: I was nearly kidnapped in the fourth grade by a neighbor before kicking him in the shin and running to my house to tell my parents, who thought I was going insane. To when I lost my virginity: tenth grade at a party to a slutty cheerleader named Shelby. We were both completely trashed [she’d had two wine coolers and I’d had four beers…I miss high school parties…] and I’d always thought she was cute. We’d started talking, which is something that had never happened before, and I went to get her another drink, when I came back, she grabbed me by the hand and led me upstairs, which pretty much meant I was getting some. We finished our drinks; her a strawberry-kiwi wine cooler and me a bottle of Bud Light, and then we started making out…and after that it was pretty stereotypical high school party-sex: drunk with a chaser of regret.

We spent a lot of time on my family and how they’re marriage was. It was pretty basic therapy stuff, from what I know about therapy from movies and TV shows I’d seen. All I know is that I would never do this for a living; I can barely take my own bullshit much less listen to someone else’s.

“Well Chuck, I’m sorry to say that our time is up for this week,” she said with a look of sincere disappointment on her face. It would only be seven days before we were scheduled to meet again. I looked deeply in to her eyes trying to find some sort of spark, some type of guidance, but sadly, all I could see in her eyes is a sign that looked like “Wait”, so I listened. I shook her hand, thanked her for the help this week, and walked out the door.

If my life had a theme it would be: Missed Opportunities.

I exit the interrogation room and get in to the driver’s seat of my birth control device of an automobile, a turquoise 1993 Hyundai Excel. Don’t get me wrong, the car has hauled my ass from Point A to Point B for years while getting 41 miles to the gallon, but I looked stupid while doing it.

The license plate should be BTHCTRL.

An ex girlfriend [if you want to call her that] thought that keying the word “prick” in to the driver’s side door would be an appropriate way to let me know she was displeased that I had broken up with her, ending our eight month relationship. She then thought that it would be acceptable to spray paint over the word in white, in case I hadn’t quite gotten the message. And then, not even a week after that happened, some idiot T-Boned me at an intersection with his truck, which might as well have been a tank, damaging the passenger side to the tune of $1500, which is more than the entire car is worth.

As I drive home to my apartment, I think about the new woman in my life and I wonder how long it will take me to scare her off. I’ll give her a month, but only because she sees me only once a week for an hour at a time. Maybe I’ll just give up on women and become celibate…

I’ve heard the clergy is nice…

I arrive at my apartment and sit in the parking lot for fifteen minutes. I don’t want to brave the frigid January temperatures quite yet so I listen to the radio until the commercial break. The radio show is just mindless political banter between the radio host and an ignorant caller. The caller thinks that the government was foolish for stepping in to assist in the genocide in Darfur. I believe that the caller is the only person outside of those committing the genocide that thinks this. It’s crazy what people will do for ten minutes of airtime.

I stare out of my windshield and consider buying a car with a working heater. It’s bad that it might be colder inside my car than the frigid -8 degree weather outside. I can see the cold outside. It’s almost like those scorching summer days when you can watch the heat sizzle off of the pavement and you just know that the road has to be at least 200 degrees hotter than Hell. It’s kind of like that, except its cold instead of hot, and it sucks worse.

I finally make up my mind to get out of my car and go grab some lunch [the radio show took a major downward spiral after the conspiracy theorist caller. It mostly just turned in to a “bash the government/defend the government” argument, which was stupid].

The 100-yard walk to my apartment door takes what feels like an Ice Age [but is actually a little more than sixty seconds]. I kick open my door, SWAT Team style, take off my coat and throw it over the top of the fading red sofa in the center of the living room. My coat lands right on my roommate Hank’s face.

“M-M-M-M-Monster Kill!”

“Dude, do you always have to kick the door open? This isn’t a movie or Resident Evil or anything; this is real fucking life, just open the goddamn door, like a normal human being.”

“Dude, Hank, whatever man. I kick the door in everyday because it’s cool. You’re just jealous because when you do it, you look like a tard. I however, look like a total badass.”

Hank has been my roommate since we were at Tennessee University. I was from a beach resort town in Virginia and he was from some place I’d never heard of in Wisconsin on a football scholarship, so naturally, we hit it off. Since we graduated last year we decided to move to the same city and start our careers there, until we could find ourselves a girl to settle down with. Usually we are in sync with each other pretty well, but today Hank is being an ass clown…I really am a total badass.

I make a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, sans crust, because I still eat like an eight-year old.

that is all for now.

that is all i’m putting up right now. that is just a bit through the first chapter or so.

-the lumberjack