THE RED HOT PAWN PROSE COMPETITION 4 (Life Story)
The topic for this competition, if you've been living under a brick for the past month, is Life Story.
You'll notice that this topic has been interpreted in quite a number of different ways. If you believe that a writer has strayed too far from the topic then let your voting reflect that.
Serving suggestion: Print all of this out on some nice white paper, grab a cup of coffee and a pretty girl, and recline in your favourite chair on a wintery night in front of the fire.
Voting rules:
Rank your favourite top three pieces by title. I.e:
1) Will Smith
2) Mike Tyson
3) Beyonce Knowles
1=5points, 2=3points, 3=2points.
Voting officially ends on 1 June 2005 at 11 am GMT.
Cigarette Whore – a somewhat fictional autobiography
I was three and I was drawing on the coffee table watching Bugs Bunny. My mother would sit with me, Virginia Slims in one hand, Diet Pepsi in the other. She was very cautious as to not leave her soda unattended. If I was thirsty, she would offer to bring me a cold one from the refrigerator as oppose to giving me a sip of hers. Hers tasted different and she would scream at me if I did ever manage to try hers without her noticing. One time I did drink about half of her “special” soda she must have forgotten about. Daffy Duck’s smile stretched across the TV and half way across the room.
My dad came home and must have thought I was just being a silly three year old. He grunted a “hello” and went straight to the bar for a drink. He was a powerfully built man at one time in his youth, before my existence. You could see it in his stature. He had the face of a man who had dreams and promise but the spectre of mediocrity engulfed him and he did not do much to disguise his bitterness. At this point, I would usually turn up Bugs a little louder over the screaming between mother & father in the kitchen.
It wasn’t always like this. When both parents filled their tanks to a suitable level they could be quite pleasant and magnanimous. One time, my father said to my older sister who was six years old at the time, “You….des-deserve muurrr, honeybuns. A whollle lot murrr then what you got. Here”. He handed her a $100 bill.
Peggy never gave back the money. She rarely ever spent it either. She kept it in her Partridge’s family lunchbox. I’m guessing she had close to $500 in there. My dad never wondering where the money went and assumed my mom lifted it from her purse. More fuel for the later afternoon fights at the bar. Peggy and I were not very close I have to say. It was as if we would both look at each other and have this expression of “how the **** did we get into this situation?” We were pleasant but it would not be weird if we were only to run into each other at the dining table for the common family meals.
I used to think all adults smoked so, at age seven, I grabbed a pack of my mom’s Tareytons and stuffed in my backpack on my way to school. This was the way I could hang out with the twelve year olds because nobody in my age or class group would hang out with me. They thought I was too weird and I probably was. The older kids didn’t really care either way and I think they let me hang so they could bum smokes when they ran out. Half the time, most of us would either light the filter end or the smoke would stab like a dagger directly into our eyes but we were cool…..
Recursive History
“Excuse me, young man, might I have a quiet word in your ear?”
His eyebrows arched briefly at the unexpected question, and then he remembered his friends and it turned into a sneer, accompanied by a contemptuous remark.
He turned his back to me and, with a sigh, I wondered how I could ever have been a surly teenager like this.
I left him and his friends and walked away, hoping I would be able to get through to him when he’d had a few years to mature.
“Can I buy you a beer son?”
Again, those raised eyebrows, followed this time by a shrug and a grin.
“I've never turned down a free beer in my life, nor can I see myself ever doing such a foolish thing. Thanks.”
“Never turned down a beer eh? You wait until you're propositioned by a sixteen stone gay man in Benidorm.”
“You think that’s the sort of thing that’s likely to happen to me then?”
“Oh yes.” I said, and turned from his bewildered look to order our drinks.
Without really thinking, I ordered two pints of my favourite ale and passed one to him, forgetting where I was and who I was with.
“I don't normally drink this sort of thing, but what the hell. Cheers” he said and took a long draught.
“Bloody hell, that’s gorgeous.” he said, and threw back another mouthful.
It was then that it hit me – I remembered this meeting. I took another sip of my beer – the beer, it occurred to me, that the old man had introduced me to in the meeting as I remembered it. It had been that meeting that had changed my life.
My hands shook slightly as I began to explain my purpose. I told him of the choices I knew he would have to make. I told him of the choices I had made and why he should make different ones. I did my best to impress upon him the importance of not getting caught by the trap of being the same as everyone else, of living life to the full and doing whatever makes you happy.
“So, you made mistakes in your life, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to change them?”
“Yes, I can’t live like this anymore.”
“Well, I can help you with that, step this way please.”
It was a desperate measure, for sure, but I had to do something. I had to stop that meeting with the old man in the pub. The choices he convinced me to make, they landed me in this situation.
An old man myself now, I had had to endure a life of abject misery – all thanks to that old man telling me to ‘live life to the full’, to do ‘whatever makes you happy’. That’s fine when you are young, but what happens when you suddenly find you’ve frittered away all your money and are left with no career, no house, nothing?
Sunday
Lurking in the adjacent room, I bowed my head when I heard her finally begin to cry. My face red where she her hand had been, just a little slap, a slap here for me to feel something. A slap to wake me up, or to snap me out of it, back into it, I don’t know, I feel like right now I don’t know anything at all. All these years of hazy memories are so distant to me right now, I feel like canceling this day. I want to go home and white out everything for years. I long for some sort of solace, I convince myself that if I only had a little bit of time I might be able to remember everything I knew and I’d be whole again, home again.
I put on some sad music for no apparent reason.
I look at the mirror across from me, a stupid look, like ‘why do I have to put up with this?’, nonchalant, subtly accepting my lot. She smashes into the room like a pillow hitting me in the face and she looks for a bottle of something and, in the corner of my eye, I see that she walks out again clutching her own solace in her hand. I give her thirty minutes.
Back outside I’m beneath the overcast sky again and I listen to my self-righteous footsteps, considering the moment. This is just how it is, people meet people and they fall apart into each other, and if it doesn’t work out you walk out no-questions-asked like it happens every day. In and out, constantly seeking and breaking fake-smiles with rotten honesty and then you move on when it becomes too much. There’s nothing more normal than picking ourselves up and putting the pieces back together, finding our friends again, finding they have changed, reaching for rockbottom at 4am on a Monday morning you begin to realize the sickening circle if you’re lucky.
I have lunch an hour later. I have a sandwich and some coffee with milk and sugar and the waitress looks likes she’s seen it all. I wonder how I look to her. I secretly bet myself that her mouth tastes like cigarettes and that she’s been divorced with a caesarian scar. I think back to Julia. I pay my bill and tip and leave, and walk home. I stop in the street, and I feel self-conscious about it, it’s not ok to just stop in the street but I’m having problems so people must just understand. My legs hurt from sitting on the proverbial fence. I wish that it were raining for dramatic effect.
I turn and walk back to her flat and make Julia a cup of coffee and we talk and open our slow punctured scars for each other, we become honest again like we used to be, then we go to bed holding each other and she smells like whisky and I stink with hypocrisy.
Ironic Realizations
I have been invited to enter a writing competition, a story about my life.
Starting out on what I thought was a grand adventure, I sat with a notebook
in my lap; pen poised in anticipation of a flood of creative juices flowing
through me, uninhibited. Automatic. I expected to accomplish this task
like it was nothing- I expected it to just happen. Now it’s been a couple
of weeks, the deadline is drawing near, and the pages are empty. I am in a
state of panic. Depression wants to envelope me when I start to realize I
bit off more than I could chew. I made the expectations of what I was
capable of too high. I am letting myself down once again.
Okay, slow down. How do I decide the way in which I write this piece?
I’ve pondered writing about specific events, a sum of the whole, imagery of
comparison, a fiction to represent the truth. Every time an idea crops up
it inevitably becomes a piece of the mountainous heap of paper trash growing
tall on my living room floor. There are too many possibilities; the ideas
cloud my head to drown out clear thought and the ability to make a decision.
The choice is too hard to make, and all I want to do now is scrap the
whole thing and go to sleep.
But I’ve become obsessed with this insurmountable challenge before me.
I’ve given up on everything else to spend hour upon agonizing hour trying to
accomplish the impossible. When I do try to take a break and think about
something else, it results in failure. My chess games suffer because
suddenly I can’t make a decision about anything. I end up making moves
without thinking and my rating plummets.
I’m not sleeping because every time I lay down this hateful story continues
to pervade all thought and I can’t quiet myself long enough to slip into
peaceful oblivion.
My relationships suffer. I don’t have the patience for company or
conversation, when all I really want to do IS express myself.
Words have now completely stopped forming in my mind and the crippling
emotions are all I have left. I sit in my blue armchair in the cramped
space of the dark apartment that I call my hermit cave, paralyzed. Feeling
each emotion sinking deeper and deeper into my being. A sense of failure.
Disappointment. Self-loathing. They start tumbling faster and
faster...depression, anger, loneliness, defeat...until I have to do
something or go crazy. I pour myself a vodka and coke. After a few drinks
I start to relax and I come to the conclusion, it’s just a stupid story.
It’s not the same as all the other things I have quit in my life. Not
following through on such a small undertaking isn’t the end of the world.
Just give up already, I tell myself. And I do.
Then I realize something ironically funny. This is the story of my life.
Split second
The dark and wet highway spread out toward the distant horizon. I drove home after a long gruesome boring day at the office. Rush hour had long passed and mine was the only car on the road. I wanted to be home to soak in a hot bath, sipping a nice whiskey.
Adding a bit more pressure on the gas pedal the car’s speed increased above the maximum speed limit. I didn’t care … I was alone on the road, every minute was a minute to many, and I was tired already. With a tired sigh I turned on the radio, hoping listening to some music would keep me concentrated. “Riders on the storm” by The Doors filled the interior of my car.
The song stirred up some memories, memories of my youth; a time of parties, alcohol and sex … and sometimes studying. I smiled while my mind drifted away to long forgotten times, triggered by that old song.
I never realized my eyes had closed. I never realized that my car swerved to the left side of the highway. I never realized the car hit the crash barrier, spinning round and round off the highway crashing against the large lone tree on the right side of the road.
I did realize I would die … the impact crumbled the car, and me, into a hideous sculpture of bent metal and broken limbs.
During the split second of the impact my whole life flashed before my dying eyes … my happy childhood, my parents … the first kiss at age twelve. High school diploma’s … college … dropping out … marriage … divorce … work … driving home after a long gruesome boring day at the office … a rider in the storm … a tree and a crash.
During that split second my whole life flashed before my eyes … again … and again … and again … for eternity.
Rapture
Rain pounded down upon the wooden boards of the deck, each drop adding its own individual beat to the cacophony.
Light shot the sky and the ship rocked with the thud of thunder.
I lifted my head and tasted the rain, giddy with the vastness of the sound and the pure raw glory of the storm.
Whenever the tempest came some would cower, and some would dance; but all would be caught in reverence for its majesty.
How long would it last though? Usually they were over by the morning, but what if it wasn’t? Could we cope with the brutal, staggering rush of the music? The antithesis of thoughts and emotions associated with the storm could be hard to bear, and I could see in the faces of my companions that it was taking its toll. All I could hear was the hammering of the rain, and I didn’t know if it would ever stop. I covered my ears and waited.
The dark clouds began to break up and were carried away by a tender wind, the rain becoming a fine mist.
All around us was a deep, azure sky, with the sun, crude but comforting, set in the centre.
Stepping from the boat onto a cloud, we beheld the view for a moment; taking in the calming serenity.
We had been here for a while, and it seemed like home; we had almost forgotten that there was anywhere else.
We were far from other people, and this place was inhabited only by those who found it.
Sitting down, the cloud turned out to be slightly prickly, like sharkskin.
It was covered in an intricate pattern of ice that glistened in the sunlight, and seemed to go very deep into the vapour.
High above us we could see broad blankets of delicate, fluffy clouds spread out across the sky.
As we made our way towards them, thin rays of sunlight broke through, lancing their way past us and widening out until it was as if we were swimming through sunshine.
We approached the canopy of cloud, and bathed in the rich, swirling mixture of jaune light and white, flowing misty fabric.
Reclining on the bed of cloud, we simply floated, free for thoughts and dream.
It was then that someone spoke;
“I just wish we could get away from here”
“People do leave sometimes, I think. Never completely though”
“I’m going tomorrow. Definitely.”
“It looks like there’s another storm coming soon”
"Maybe I’ll wait then”
MY LIFE STORY
"He's not from this world dear." The ward sister said to my mother as I lay gurgling out some interplanetary communication to alert the correct people of my birth. The stars were in alignment and my coming had been foretold across millions of galaxies, the various alien nations of the universe were brimming with anticipation.
Strange it was then, that I was born into a typical, middle-class English family with no desire for extra-terrestrial celebrity. My childhood was devoid of suitable teaching, I learnt neither the language of Zargodin, nor Tarka-mathematics, nor even the mating rituals of the Krekre. By 18 I was very confused. Lacking in the knowledge which my very cellular memory demanded of me, I suffered a constant cold turkey which was effected through a gawky shyness and inability to talk to girls. I knew there was something more out there, more for me to do, to learn, to command. And yet thus far it had only served to make me a geek.
I began to hatch plans on making contact with my homeworld, with alien prophets; anyone that could set me off on my destined path to universal glory. Sadly my plans fell on deaf ears and stunted minds and my fellow humans began to label me weird. As my intellect grew, my personability faltered and I grew bitter.
Then suddenly on 17th March 1997, at the age of 22, I lost my virginity to a Spanish human of suspect personality and dubious intellect, and my universe changed. I began to realise that my fears of isolation were unfounded and that my position in the universe alone was evidence enough that dismissing ideas of god, or instead worshipping me, were the only two suitable trains of thought. I realised that matter and energy were two halves of the same coin and that religion was the largest psychosis in history. I began to set up centres where people could be rehabilitated and they grew like wildfire, although at first, some frowned on my shanghai methods.
And yet something still eluded me, some missing quality, a key to the otherwise clear and rational universe, some random factor I could not quite put me finger on. But what was it? I realised that what was missing was not worship, nor money (I had done very well from post-rehabilitation donations). Nor was it a lack of technological advances as the FTL drive had just been finished, based on a design I had scribbled down whilst under the effects of opium. No, it was the one thing which had given birth to my genius, my eye-opener. It was sex.
Yes the one thing I missed was the love of good women, fine, accessible women with loose morals and tight bodies. And so I set off in my ship, into the universe with one dream only; to find the finest women existence has to offer and to genetically graft angel wings onto them for my own amusement. My search has just begun…
Attention Deficiency Hyperactive Disorder
So, you want to know what it’s like, do you?
You’ve read a little about ADHD, ADD and AD&D and you think you’ve come to a conclusion, have you? It’s a serious affliction maybe? Or do you think it’s all in my head? A distinct possibility, I’ll grant you that.
Let’s make an appointment shall we? Say the 24th of February 2008 at 10:00 am. How’s that for a date? Oh…it’s too far ahead is it? You can’t plan that far ahead because you don’t know where you will be or what you’ll be doing? Well that’s my next week. Nothing more than an abstract concept in someone else’s agenda, for obviously I don’t have one.
You better check your mail, whilst you’re sitting here conversing with me. And your telephone, you never know who may have phoned. Best check it again, maybe you over-looked a little txt-message envelope. You haven’t? Well, best check your mail, because you really never know who could have sent a mail in these last couple of seconds. What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow? Best check the TV, you never know where you’ll be and you really need to know what sort of clothes to wear. Didn’t your phone just ring? Maybe you should check it, just to be sure.
What do you mean I can’t swear? Why can’t I swear? It’s just a word! Why do they have these rules? I didn’t ask for these rules? Bugger the rules, I’ll do what I bloody well want. Did your phone just go?
AD&D isn’t an affliction, it’s a game. You play it, sitting around a table, rolling dice and acting like you’re an elf. I don’t know what it’s doing in the row. Funny old thing rows. You have rows of houses going nowhere and you have rows of people moving slowly and you have rows and rows and rows that are probably moving very speedily somewhere else. I don’t know where. Don’t you have mail?
Shouldn’t you be getting ready? Well I don’t know where you’re going, but you sure as hell ain’t stayin’ around here. You can’t stay around here, there’s better things happening in better places. I don’t know where, I just know there are. There always is. Best get going, because there’s nothing happening here. Now. Get going. And once you’re there, best get going again, because there will be something better happening someplace else. Really. Believe me, I’ve been there, it’s not there, it’s just somewhere else. Get going. Check your mail. Roll a dice. Phone a friend. Don’t you want to play dungeons and dragons with me? Best not, there is something else happening somewhere else. Believe me. Check your phone. You know I’m right.
There are truths, phone calls and semi-truths. Don’t worry about these things, because the mail is going AD&D and the rows and rows somewhere else are have and will not, because you have to finish what y
Mad Cows and Englishmen
It was a cold stormy autumn in England back in September of '86. Well allegedly it was. I wouldn't know having not been born for a good portion of that month. It then turned into a bitterly frosty winter, again something I have been told for during that time I spent my days indoors.
To be honest from what I've been told it was continually miserable for the first years of my life. Maybe weather was harsher then. Probably something to do with the altitude altering phenomenon that during my father's day meant walking to and from school uphill both ways was indeed more likely than not.
It was also during the years of the Mad Cow. Bear in mind this is nothing like the Year of the Leaping Jar Beetle that those crazy people have. This actually involved Mad Cows. In fact there were often public service announcements warning us of mad marauding cow gangs in our neighborhood. So during those years we ate mostly lentils. And if the cow gangs hung around too long perhaps the mold from the shower tiles.
Shortly after my 5th birthday, partly to escape the now prevalent Cow gangs and their allies in the Trouser Mafia and partly because we had expiring air miles, we hid in a cargo ship traveling to New Zealand. I'm not too sure how this helped our air mile situation but I sure knew the inside of that container blindfolded.
Now free of the weather, Mad Cows and bottle caps bent on wreaking havoc my family and I (myself being the important one you see), could get on with out lives. To be honest the next 12 years were pretty boring. I guess that's what happens when there isn't the chance of a neighbor, foaming at the mouth, appearing round a corner and attempting to bite you. That was the kind of thing that made it worth getting out of bed in the morning.
Now I have graduated from petty theft (through which I funded my cut glass bowl addiction) to 'borrowing' large amounts of money from the Government to fund my 'further education'. But I can stop anytime I want to honest. In fact the present is probably a good place to finish my story. I wouldn't want to cause causality issues by writing what I'm having for lunch tomorrow (pasta with red sauce) now would I? Oh cra....
