I want to write a novel pt.2
This is what happens when I am sat in front of a computer with time on my hands. I write, it often doesn’t make sense but since when did that stop anyone. Since I wrote this, I have changed the plot, the style, first person perspective and everything else. I am never going to actually write a novel, but its fun to try.
They say that you can’t go home. This is a lie. You can go home, it just won’t be the same as the time before. Allow me to explain.
The last time I was back home, I was twenty years old. My girlfriend had dumped me and I was taking it rather badly. I physically got sick whenever I found myself in a situation where I might see her. I was drinking too much, although drinking too much for me is usually just a couple of beers. I mentally didn’t know what I was going half of the time. Compounding the situation was that I had lost my parents the year before and was still struggling with that.
Faced with mounting issues that, as a young twenty year old, I didn’t know how to handle, I did the only thing I could do. I ran away.
I didn’t run far but I ran. I left friends. I left relatives. I left everything that I knew. I didn’t look back for a long time.
Its been a long time.
I like to think of myself as a good looking, well aged thirty five year old. Winning the battle of the bulge, proud of the odd grey hair, wearing the wrinkles of laughter well on my face. I am much happier now than I was as a twenty year old with a broken heart. Thats not to see that I am a laughing jackass now, it wouldn’t look good with the grey hair, but I am mentally a lot stronger than I had been fifteen years previous.
I have changed a lot since I left my home town. I have grown out to fit my body. I no longer look like a skinny rake. My hair is several inches shorter than it was. I should wear glasses to read although I rarely do. I have discovered that your body does strange things to you as you age, like putting hair on the back of your hands. I certainly didn’t have when I was younger although I was told plenty of times that I risked getting hairy palms.
With only a few exceptions, I don’t seem to be able to listen to the popular music of the day. Indeed, my favourite bands seem to be the ones who were around twenty or even thirty years ago. At least I don’t still like ABBA.
When I left home I didn’t have a job, only a small sum of money my parents left me. I had no plans, no direction in which to go. If the truth be told, I left so suddenly that I only told my uncle before catching the late bus into the city.
In a surprisingly intelligent moment in my woeful life, I asked my uncle to arrange for a property management company to look after the house that had been my parents before their fateful boating trip. My uncle, a fireman and the local Don Juan to the middle aged single ladies, had the furniture put into storage, setup an bank account in my name, and arranged the company to rent the house. I have no knowledge of what monies might be in the bank account. I hadn’t been back in fifteen years and I didn’t expect to be back in the future either.
Like the Spanish Inquisition, I didn`t expect to go back but then, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
I use the internet alot. You could say it has been my way to fortune and fame, if you don`t include fame, or fortune. I rely on the online world for my daily news. I haven`t bought a newspaper in several years. The internet allows you to read information from the farthest corners of the world. You can live in Australia and read about the news in the south of France. You can follow your childs sporting escapdes while you are across the oceans. If you so desire you can listen to your local radio station while in the Arctic.
In fifteen years I had not looked for any information on my home town. I wasn`t avoiding it, I just didn`t have any interest. I didn`t want to see how my ex-girlfriend was doing, or who she had married, or how many kids she had had. I rarely received e-mail from my uncle, and he never told me anything other than the house was still standing and he was being kept busy with one thing or another. It was even rarer that I would reply. I just didn`t like to talk about myself. Not that I think I am boring but for certain reasons, there are some things best left unsaid, unwritten and unknown.
Like in the song, it was last September when I rose from my bed, dragged on a pair of shorts and shuffled and scratched my way over to a laptop sitting ontop of a rather worn dresser. A few key clicks later my mail began to download.
Having set the first task of the day in motion, I stumbled into the bathroom to go through my regular routine of standing in the shower and making sure my belly hadn`t expanded to the point where I could no longer see myself. I generally stand under the water long enough for the hot water the fade to cold as the water heater is emptied. This eventually gives me the incentive to turn off the water and look for a dry towel. After a quick shave where I attempt to keep my sideburns at similar lengths, I return to the bedroom to look for the rarest of creatures, the clean socks. Finally dressed I unplug the laptop from the power cable and carry it to the kitchen where I set it up on a kitchen counter away from the griddle. Experience has told me that hot food and laptops don`t mix well and the continued smell of bacon on a keyboard makes you hungry all day.
Once breakfast has been cooked or at least put together, I sit at the breakfast bar, eating with one hand and scrolling, clicking, and deleting with the other. Some people read the morning paper while eating breakfast, I read my e-mail. I even had an e-mail with forty comics and cartoons that I can puruse as I crunch my toast.
(The toast is poisoned and I die…….) no not really but thats as far as I got
A man wants to go on vacation but not spend the time, so he goes on a virtual vacation and ends up not knowing what is real and what isn’t. He also becomes involved in a rebellion on Mars, or does he?
