Another day off, another day reading on the beach. Up a tree and beneath it. A peculiar feeling, to be nearly fifty, sitting on a stack of books. Not literally, but near as damn. PAINLESS, AZURE PANTRY, DENIZEN, THE KILL HOUSE, and PROMISELAND. Five of the fuckers. Who'da thunk.
I keep saying, "I'm not a writer," and there's nobody to argue. But the OCDemon in my head has different ideas. Quite a few, if page count is any indication. Not sure where the OCDemon gets them all. I don't quite remember writing the possessed monologue toward the end of the PROMISELAND script. Not entirely.
I do remember having Christian's Smith-Corona at the Hip Pharmacy, back in my late teens, early twenties. He loaned it to me to fuck around with and clean up. I used it for sure, but for what, who the fuck knows. At some point he swung past, curious what I'd been up to, said no-one had seen me for two weeks. Said Chris Neal told him "Dee is writing the great american novel," to which I replied "The great american novel is a rosy bucket of balls." Which elicited a laugh, and he asked to swap the Smith-Corona (was it his dad's? i think it had been his dad's) for his old IBM tower, which I guess was my first computer, after leaving home. I'd had an Apple IIc in high school, and vague recollections of 'writing' / free-associating a freewheeling script-- about 60 pages, single-sided --with conceits largely swiped from Phantasm (1979) and teevee Peaks. So I repeated that process of typing whatever the fuck seemed compelling, on the new machine, and the results weren't half-terrible. There was a lot of Wild Palms (1993) and Destiny Turns On the Radio (1995), and not much else that wasn't swiped from Fire Walk With Me (1992). Can't even remember the title. Prob'ly best.
Christian was the one with the lit degree, and over the course of our time in Auburn-- 1994-99 --we were engaged in a friendly competition to see who could read the western canon of 90s hipness quickest, so his constant encouragement meant a hell of a lot. I always expected him, or one of his friends (Christian was, is, a great collector of people with talent) to produce that Great American Ballbucket. But, y'know, life didn't happen that way. He went off to work for fuckin' Google, to drink and smoke his way across Europe, leaving me in Atlanta, having literally broken up his last home, 'The House of Slack'. Twentysomething years in Atlanta was tailormade revenge for that wrong, I figure.
See, I kind of ruined his room-mate situation, after he'd ruined the previous one, by not fucking the right room-mate. We both fucked incorrect room-mates, which sent us caroming off into weird, wrongly-angled lives, billiards-style. [Let us avoid the subject of Charlie and Kate, except to note how thoroughly frustrating it is to be a witness & interlocutor to friends fucking other friends over. Which I'm sure Christian grokked, given what happened with me...] I still haven't forgiven myself, exactly, for failing to fuck Saneesh. I should have. Instead I stole his girlfriend. Typical ol' me. To be fair she was only with Saneesh because she'd made a pass at me the year previous & I redirected her at Saneesh. Then he left town, for several months; though she & I only waited a few hours after his car left the driveway. Hyptertypical old me. Zero impulse control.
Dennis Whorehopper: that shoulda been my name. If I couldn't smoke it or drink it, for sure I'd eventually fuckit up, up and away.
I know the whole idiotic scene tore Christian up. But he was tired of watching me be crazy. I cannot disagree. Crazy Dee wasn't great entertainment. Witnessing me losing my shit over & over, destroying everything and starting anew. It was endless. If there was a sin committed on C's side it was simply that he didn't try to arrange psychiatric help. He did every other damn thing he could think of: including encouraging me to be a writer, whether I was one or not.
So hey. Christian. The g.a.n.? Still a ballbucket. But PROMISELAND is my ballbucket.
Figure I know who the dedication will be to.
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