A number of years back, an influential agent took interest in novel, My Bad Side. He had his reader review the opening 50 pages and gave me advice on changes to make, which I did. I received a follow-up on moving the back story to a later stage. I questioned this idea, explaining the benefit of where it was. That was it. I was out.
A year or so later, I pitched him my new book, Anori. “Not for me.” The one time an agent had taken an interest in my work, a one-night stand as it was, I hadn’t done as I was told and was cancelled. I’ve thought back to this moment often and wondered what might have happened if I had complied. What success would I have reaped? If only, if only…
Today, hundreds of indifferent rejection emails later, I feel something coming, some long-awaited breakthrough, not with them as much as me. I’ve made it somewhere, not a revelation as much as a state of mind, I suppose. Probably the booze but more of a clean sure hike up, getting to where I can see where I am. Which is here. Nowhere else but that.
My latest opus, The Vanishing Pill, will be ready in the spring.
As much as I love this scene, it doesn’t work for my novel, The Vanishing Pill.
Punter’s film had finally uploaded and was ready to view. It opened with Punter handing over a kilo of cocaine to the Head of School, Lilly Castor – played by the Head of the Fine Arts Department – as a bribe to not expel him. The meeting concluded with Lisa accepting the cocaine and then doing a gang handshake with Punter. The class exploded in laughter. Davis, dumbfounded, watched the following where the boys, assumedly all high on cocaine, ran around an apartment like maniacs; he abruptly stopped the film. “What the hell is this?”
“New York New Wave,” Punter proudly declared. The class laughed at that.
“This film is garbage, Punter.”
“It’s a question of taste, isn’t it?”
Davis went to Lilly’s office immediately after the class. “I just watched Punter’s film.”
She had disconcertingly wide eyes and a tight fat mouth. “Our meeting isn’t until tomorrow.”
“Lilly, I just saw his film where you play the head of school.”
She turned her rolling chair half toward him. “He certainly put a lot of time into that. He’s such a dedicated to film-making.”
“Lilly…” Davis made a series of gestures, unable to say what he wanted to say. “The opening scene is of you accepting a kilo of cocaine and then doing a gang handshake.”
“He told me that it was going to be a morality tale,” Lilly explained.
“It only gets worse from there,” Davis replied. “They pile the cocaine on a table and run insanely around the apartment. They students were stunned.”
“You didn’t preview the film before showing it to the class?”
“The opening shot was of you taking a kilo of cocaine from one of our students.”
She stood up quickly. “I don’t like how you’re speaking to me, Davis.”
“How I’m speaking to you?” Davis made a half back step into the hallway and then back into the office. “Lilly, do you understand that right now every one of those kids is telling the story of that film to everyone else in the school?”
Her cheeks and chest flushed a heavy red. “Davis, you need to leave my office. Our meeting is tomorrow.”
“Have you seen Chris anywhere?” Blaire asked Davis, her heavy breasts pushing into arm. “Did he come?”
Davis looked around the half-crowded bar, the view of Granville Island and Burrard Inlet behind it obscured by the overpass stanchions. He didn’t recognize half of the people even though he had apparently been in college with all of them 25 years ago. “I thought he was dead.”
“Oh, hey, what?”
“Bad joke. I don’t know where he is.”
“Same old Davis.” She stepped back and crossed her arms over her beer. “Always saying crazy things.”
“That’s what my wife says too. She might be finally done with me.”
“Oh, hey, I’ve been there and it worked out okay for me.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Yeah.”
“Hey, there!” Minnie, Blaire’s sister, arrived and kissed them both. “How are you, Davis? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“You know, living the dream.”
Minnie was prettier than Blaire but she had more a boyish figure and no breasts, not that Davis hadn’t tried back in the day. “You’re still writing?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking. I personally hate it when people say that. ‘Living the dream’. It’s really stupid. Sorry about that.”
“Okay.” Minnie and Blaire laughed.
“I’m teaching. That’s what I’m doing, teaching. Although the way it’s going now, I don’t know.”
Minnie leaned in. “Nothing bad, I hope.”
“Bad? No. I think I’m going to get fired and my wife is kicking me out.” He threw his arms out. “But I feel good. I do. Could be the gummy bear, I don’t know.”
“Oh, hey, Davis, I’m sorry.”
“I’ve actually got a bone to pick with you?”
“Yeah?” She leaned in, smiling, and it seemed like no time had passed, like they were in a bar at college, and the weekend had just begun.
“You owe me money!”
“I don’t owe you money! That’s not true.”
“You’re right. You don’t. But what I wanted to say is that, as much I loved the good old days, there wasn’t enough sex.”
“You and Lynnie had lots of sex.”
“No, I mean me and you, me and Blaire, me and you and Blaire!”
They looked at each other, barely offering a smile.
“Not to be crass, but it would have been good.”
Minnie glowered. “Okay, Davis.”
“Hey, Davis, old buddy!” Jackson crashed into their tiny circle. “I haven’t seen you forever, man! Forever!”
“Jackson, hey.” David looked back, curious as to why he wanted to talk. They had never talked in college and, if anything, had been acrimonious. “What are you up to?”
“Who the fuck knows?” He looked back and forth between Minnie and Blaire hello. “Who the fuck knows?”
“Hey, uh…” Davis leaned into Minnie. “Sorry about that. I’m just…”
“It’s okay.” She looked over at Blaire. “It’s okay.”
“It’s okay, Davis,” Blaire agreed.
“Yeah, Davis, man, it’s okay!” Jackson slapped him on the back.
“I gotta go.” Davis was going to kiss Minnie goodbye but turned and fled down the steps and was in a cab. “Number Five Orange. You know it?”
There is nothing like shutting up about the writing process – whatever that is – and writing instead, clattering away on who’s knows what but what seems to work right now.
There are pauses between the bursts, leaving me staring dumbly, hands dangling apelike, not thinking about writing but trying to remember the next bit and chase after that before it goes. Yeah, back to that.
After weeks of vacillating, I have finally decided on my course. I will start The Vanishing Pill. As my most generous writer friend Jennie suggested, I should just “dive into the new one”. As simple as that.
I wrote the opening on my phone: They were all beautiful people, blond and young. More than that, there was the spectacular view of the icebergs across the ocean, the cool blue late evening sky of a night that would never come. It was some idyll of a place, except that the voices were too loud, and they were speaking Danish.
The question now is which of the threads to follow, not thinking of hooks and plot points, but getting into the bog and finding the runes. It’s a messy inexact thing, to be sure. Excuses abound. But I’ll stay at it. For now.
