Number Three...Number Three...Number Three...
Here is the third part of my lil' writing escapade:
Very soon after my self-imposed removal from all human interaction Liz started up the Intrepid and headed back to her house. Pressing my forehead against the window and watching the rain stream down, my mind began filing through all the events that had transpired that afternoon. As I went through what had happened that day, all I could remember were the numerous instances that I’d been mocked. Suddenly every instance of humiliation, ridicule, and embarrassment that I’d ever experienced came flooding through my brain. I looked at Liz and Lily and my reason became a slave to my emotion. I saw in them only the most wretched and sadistic elements of their character. Any kind gesture they’d ever made towards me was hastily shoved back into the far recesses of my brain where it couldn’t turn my thoughts into grey-scale. Right now every thing was wonderfully black and white; good and evil. I had been nothing but benevolent on my end of the friendship and they had responded with petty insults and ingratitude. I felt like a hapless cuckold in some Elizabethan drama. These people were my friends, yet they treated me like shit. Potsy from Happy Days got more respect than I did. As far as I was concerned, right then, I had no friends worth caring about; a statement which was a ridiculous falsehood, but seemed indisputable in my present state of mind.
It was in the silence of this car ride back that I made up my mind. I knew that I had to get out of here. I didn’t quite know where “here” extended and I hadn’t a fucking clue as to where I would go, but I needed to leave and prove to everyone else that wasn’t some little shit who could be kicked around. How and where to prove this would just have to come to me by way of the good ole combination of hard work and divine intervention that made Protestantism such a smashing success. So, I started going through the tiny Randall McNally Atlas in my head trying to think of a place to run to and the first city that came to mind was Chicago. It was only about a six hour drive up there from Cincinnati, and most importantly, it was big. Big cities are places where people make a name for themselves, which is precisely what I planned to do with my writing. That would be how I showed everyone back home that I wasn’t a loser.
You might be wondering how the element of my writing suddenly crept into this story with no warning whatsoever and I’m here to assure you this is a legitimate concern. I probably should have been wondering that myself at the time, but by then I was so enamored with the idea of a road trip to Chicago that “rational thought” had no bearing on my actions. Before I decided to flee to Chicago I hadn’t thought about my writing either, but it added a much needed aspect to my journey: a purpose. Like I stated before, I didn’t want to run away from home per se, I just wanted to make my friends eat crow for making fun of me. Simply driving up to Chicago for a weekend wouldn’t achieve this goal. It would just provide me with a temporary escape from problems that would be waiting for me as soon as I got back home. However, if I went to Chicago with the purpose of peddling my writing to various publishers, then I could gain some clout. A thus my plan was hatched.
When Liz finally pulled into her driveway (yes, I came up with this crazed scheme over the course of a fifteen minute drive) I said goodbye to everyone without giving a hint as to my impending departure. After I got into my car I began to work out some of the details of my trip. Two main problems presented themselves to me. First off, I didn’t have anywhere to sleep when I got to Chicago. I solved this simply enough by deciding to sleep in the back seat of my car. I figured that I could just grab some blankets and a pillow before I hit the road and just put my car in a parking garage overnight, turning my Volvo S40 sedan into a mobile Motel 6. I wouldn’t be getting into Chicago until at least one in the morning, and since I planned on getting up at sunrise, the prospect of uncomfortable sleeping quarters didn’t concern me too much. My second and most pressing problem was how I could best go about leaving the state for almost two days without my family and friends finding out about it. In order to keep the rest of my life intact, I needed to retain the illusion that I had never left town. This meant that I had to have a valid pretense for slipping out of my house for the evening and be back in Cincinnati by Seven o’ clock Sunday evening for, fittingly enough, a meeting with my psychiatrist. I could deceive my parents easily enough by saying I was spending the night at my friend Matt’s house and make up some other lie the next morning as to why I couldn’t get home until after my meeting with good doctor; something nice and believable like, “We’re going to see a movie” or “We’re going down to the nursing home to play Canasta with World War II vets.” It didn’t really matter right then. I had almost an entire day to come up with a better rouse. However, in my haste to think of the best way to con my parents, I completely neglected the prospect of fooling my friends. This would come back to bite me in the ass later that night.
I pulled into my driveway at about six-thirty and immediately set about collecting everything I would need for the trip. I grabbed a couple of blankets and a pillow from the couch in my basement and threw them into the backseat. Knowing that I’d get hungry on the drive up and back, I raided the kitchen for my typically odd collection of snacks which consisted of a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, a large package of beef jerky, four cans of Diet Coke, two cans of fruit cocktail, a sleeve of saltine crackers, and a half-eaten six-pack (would that make it a three pack?) of Mott’s Cinnamon Applesauce. This was all shoved into a back pack and thrown into the backseat along with the blankets and such. Then came the key provision for this odyssey, which was concrete proof of my literary genius.This proof consisted of five page-long opinion pieces I had written for my school paper, two poorly-written movie reviews, an abandoned screenplay, and some skits I had penned for one of my acting classes. Right off the bat I should have recognized this as representing a serious hindrance in my plan to gain fame and fortune in the windy city. The idea was that I would show my writing to some corporate exec at some publishing company and that he, in return, would shower me with praise and money and a contract agreeing to print my work. The key word there is IDEA. I really didn’t have any work to show and who the hell would I show it to. At that point, I didn’t know where any of the major publishing companies in Chicago were. My plan was to call 411 and get their addresses when I got there. And when I had found the building I was looking for, I would simply go up to the front desk and demand to see a publisher. After waiting a short time, I would show my “portfolio” to whoever the company sent to see me and would blow them away with the brilliance of my prose.
I would call myself naïve, but that would be far too kind a description. I was a fucking moron. What type of delusional ignoramus actually believes that a 17-year old kid without a high school degree, no experience, and a smattering of sub-par writing could sign a deal with a major publishing company? I guess that would have to be me, but in my defense, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. I don’t even think that I even believed that I was going to meet with anybody. It was just that without the concept of the young aspiring writer triumphing over the crusty publishing establishment, my journey lost all of its Homeric charm. So, I kept my imagination running and printed out all of my writing into a nice, organized little stack complete with color-coated paper clips and (subconsciously heeding the advice given to me by Calvin & Hobbes), a clear plastic binder. My Dad was the only one home at the time. He was laying back in his chair in the TV room, drinking some red wine and watching CSI. I told him that I was going to be spending the night at Matt’s Dad’s house, to which he gave the almost Pavlovian response of “Ok, have a good time”, remembering to shout out “Drive safely!” before I was out of earshot. With that, I dashed out of the house and climbed into my car. I pulled a Diet Coke out of my backpack, started the car up, and slowly backed out of my driveway. As I drove away from my house, the gravity of what I was about to do surfaced in my mind and all of the possible ramifications of this trip flashed in front of me. But before I could have any second thoughts I turned on my CD player and dissociated myself from reality.
I hope you found it to be most satisfactory.
Very soon after my self-imposed removal from all human interaction Liz started up the Intrepid and headed back to her house. Pressing my forehead against the window and watching the rain stream down, my mind began filing through all the events that had transpired that afternoon. As I went through what had happened that day, all I could remember were the numerous instances that I’d been mocked. Suddenly every instance of humiliation, ridicule, and embarrassment that I’d ever experienced came flooding through my brain. I looked at Liz and Lily and my reason became a slave to my emotion. I saw in them only the most wretched and sadistic elements of their character. Any kind gesture they’d ever made towards me was hastily shoved back into the far recesses of my brain where it couldn’t turn my thoughts into grey-scale. Right now every thing was wonderfully black and white; good and evil. I had been nothing but benevolent on my end of the friendship and they had responded with petty insults and ingratitude. I felt like a hapless cuckold in some Elizabethan drama. These people were my friends, yet they treated me like shit. Potsy from Happy Days got more respect than I did. As far as I was concerned, right then, I had no friends worth caring about; a statement which was a ridiculous falsehood, but seemed indisputable in my present state of mind.
It was in the silence of this car ride back that I made up my mind. I knew that I had to get out of here. I didn’t quite know where “here” extended and I hadn’t a fucking clue as to where I would go, but I needed to leave and prove to everyone else that wasn’t some little shit who could be kicked around. How and where to prove this would just have to come to me by way of the good ole combination of hard work and divine intervention that made Protestantism such a smashing success. So, I started going through the tiny Randall McNally Atlas in my head trying to think of a place to run to and the first city that came to mind was Chicago. It was only about a six hour drive up there from Cincinnati, and most importantly, it was big. Big cities are places where people make a name for themselves, which is precisely what I planned to do with my writing. That would be how I showed everyone back home that I wasn’t a loser.
You might be wondering how the element of my writing suddenly crept into this story with no warning whatsoever and I’m here to assure you this is a legitimate concern. I probably should have been wondering that myself at the time, but by then I was so enamored with the idea of a road trip to Chicago that “rational thought” had no bearing on my actions. Before I decided to flee to Chicago I hadn’t thought about my writing either, but it added a much needed aspect to my journey: a purpose. Like I stated before, I didn’t want to run away from home per se, I just wanted to make my friends eat crow for making fun of me. Simply driving up to Chicago for a weekend wouldn’t achieve this goal. It would just provide me with a temporary escape from problems that would be waiting for me as soon as I got back home. However, if I went to Chicago with the purpose of peddling my writing to various publishers, then I could gain some clout. A thus my plan was hatched.
When Liz finally pulled into her driveway (yes, I came up with this crazed scheme over the course of a fifteen minute drive) I said goodbye to everyone without giving a hint as to my impending departure. After I got into my car I began to work out some of the details of my trip. Two main problems presented themselves to me. First off, I didn’t have anywhere to sleep when I got to Chicago. I solved this simply enough by deciding to sleep in the back seat of my car. I figured that I could just grab some blankets and a pillow before I hit the road and just put my car in a parking garage overnight, turning my Volvo S40 sedan into a mobile Motel 6. I wouldn’t be getting into Chicago until at least one in the morning, and since I planned on getting up at sunrise, the prospect of uncomfortable sleeping quarters didn’t concern me too much. My second and most pressing problem was how I could best go about leaving the state for almost two days without my family and friends finding out about it. In order to keep the rest of my life intact, I needed to retain the illusion that I had never left town. This meant that I had to have a valid pretense for slipping out of my house for the evening and be back in Cincinnati by Seven o’ clock Sunday evening for, fittingly enough, a meeting with my psychiatrist. I could deceive my parents easily enough by saying I was spending the night at my friend Matt’s house and make up some other lie the next morning as to why I couldn’t get home until after my meeting with good doctor; something nice and believable like, “We’re going to see a movie” or “We’re going down to the nursing home to play Canasta with World War II vets.” It didn’t really matter right then. I had almost an entire day to come up with a better rouse. However, in my haste to think of the best way to con my parents, I completely neglected the prospect of fooling my friends. This would come back to bite me in the ass later that night.
I pulled into my driveway at about six-thirty and immediately set about collecting everything I would need for the trip. I grabbed a couple of blankets and a pillow from the couch in my basement and threw them into the backseat. Knowing that I’d get hungry on the drive up and back, I raided the kitchen for my typically odd collection of snacks which consisted of a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, a large package of beef jerky, four cans of Diet Coke, two cans of fruit cocktail, a sleeve of saltine crackers, and a half-eaten six-pack (would that make it a three pack?) of Mott’s Cinnamon Applesauce. This was all shoved into a back pack and thrown into the backseat along with the blankets and such. Then came the key provision for this odyssey, which was concrete proof of my literary genius.This proof consisted of five page-long opinion pieces I had written for my school paper, two poorly-written movie reviews, an abandoned screenplay, and some skits I had penned for one of my acting classes. Right off the bat I should have recognized this as representing a serious hindrance in my plan to gain fame and fortune in the windy city. The idea was that I would show my writing to some corporate exec at some publishing company and that he, in return, would shower me with praise and money and a contract agreeing to print my work. The key word there is IDEA. I really didn’t have any work to show and who the hell would I show it to. At that point, I didn’t know where any of the major publishing companies in Chicago were. My plan was to call 411 and get their addresses when I got there. And when I had found the building I was looking for, I would simply go up to the front desk and demand to see a publisher. After waiting a short time, I would show my “portfolio” to whoever the company sent to see me and would blow them away with the brilliance of my prose.
I would call myself naïve, but that would be far too kind a description. I was a fucking moron. What type of delusional ignoramus actually believes that a 17-year old kid without a high school degree, no experience, and a smattering of sub-par writing could sign a deal with a major publishing company? I guess that would have to be me, but in my defense, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. I don’t even think that I even believed that I was going to meet with anybody. It was just that without the concept of the young aspiring writer triumphing over the crusty publishing establishment, my journey lost all of its Homeric charm. So, I kept my imagination running and printed out all of my writing into a nice, organized little stack complete with color-coated paper clips and (subconsciously heeding the advice given to me by Calvin & Hobbes), a clear plastic binder. My Dad was the only one home at the time. He was laying back in his chair in the TV room, drinking some red wine and watching CSI. I told him that I was going to be spending the night at Matt’s Dad’s house, to which he gave the almost Pavlovian response of “Ok, have a good time”, remembering to shout out “Drive safely!” before I was out of earshot. With that, I dashed out of the house and climbed into my car. I pulled a Diet Coke out of my backpack, started the car up, and slowly backed out of my driveway. As I drove away from my house, the gravity of what I was about to do surfaced in my mind and all of the possible ramifications of this trip flashed in front of me. But before I could have any second thoughts I turned on my CD player and dissociated myself from reality.
I hope you found it to be most satisfactory.