What’s up? I’m the writer. The actual one. I mean I’m really the guy who is, in reality, in actual reality, in truly real actuality, typing this good stuff on a macbook right now. I’m just bringing myself in because this right here’s some seriously meta stuff. I mean, it’s about a struggling writer, and I’m a writer, and the writer it’s about is a college student, and I’m a college student. Write what you know, right? Write what’s on your mind, right? They say that’s what you’ve got to do.
So I’ve got this main character, and he’s a writer. His name is, God, I don’t know, how about Jack Ingleson? That’s a name right there. My name’s not Jack Ingleson though, in case you’re wondering. I’m not going to get that meta, I mean, I’m getting pretty meta with this story about a guy who’s kind of like me stuff, but I’m not getting so meta that I named him after myself. This isn’t an autobiography, that’s for sure. That’d be kind of boring.
So there’s this writer, named Jack Ingleson, which isn’t my name, and he’s working on a paper for his history of architecture class. No, wait, for his 20th century philosophy class. Yeah, I like that, he’s definitely a philosophy major. He’s kind of full of himself, a little bit, because he’s all obsessed with, obsessed with is too strong a word, he’s all excited about being a writer, but he’s not majoring in writing or English. He definitely thinks he has his craft down already, so he’s majoring in classes that, I don’t know how to put this without being clichéd, expand his mind. He thinks he’s already really good at writing but he doesn’t know what he wants to say, so he’s going through college to get better at thinking, so he’ll be able to write stuff that reflects the crazy deep and meaningful thoughts he’s going to be having after he graduates. There it is, Jeff Ingleson the philosophy major, that’s the main character.
Ok, he’s up real late, and he’s struggling, and he’s got a shitload of prescription medication on his desk wait. No. He doesn’t have that, he’s not committing suicide at the end. Let me repeat that part. He’s not going to commit suicide at the end. No self-killing will be involved at the ending point of this work of fiction. No. That’s completely predictable and clichéd and, honestly, what is suicide anyway? I mean, I don’t mean what is it, I know what it is, I mean why does it even matter? I’ve always thought about that, I mean, I don’t take a lax attitude toward death, I get damn sad when other people die, but me? If I ever kill myself why does that even do anything? That’s hardly even sad, because, think about it, it’s not like I’m going to be around to regret it right? I’ll be dead! When it’s over, it’s over. I’ve got a word to describe how I feel about when I check out of life:
Meh.
That’s the word. So he’s not committing suicide at the end of the story, because he would only do that if he was really sad, and it just wouldn’t speak to me at all. I can’t write something that doesn’t even mean shit to me, that’s not right at all.
So what’s happening is he’s up real late and he’s struggling, because he has to write a paper for his 20th century philosophy class, and he’s got these two things coming at him from both sides. Yeah, that’s good, the first thing is that he doesn’t want to write the paper, and he doesn’t really even know what he’s going to say in the stupid paper, and the other thing is it’s pissing him off that he hasn’t written anything new really in such a long time, so he wants to just hang out and maybe smoke weed like a philosophy major and write stuff, but he can’t. He has a paper to write, and he doesn’t even know what he’s going to write for that paper. That’s some meta stuff too, I mean, I’m not a philosophy major, but I feel like I haven’t come up with a new story to write in somewhere around 87 centuries. By that I mean a couple of months, but after a while you start to worry you’re losing the talent. That wouldn’t be real good, I like writing. Writing’s what I do, how I’m going to leave my mark before I go. Got to leave a mark, yes sir. If you’re not alive to enjoy anything after you die then the whole reason you do anything is leaving a mark, that’s why I never liked Ayn Rand or any of those carpe diem types. There are plenty of people who saw the Fjords of Norway and stood on the cliffs of Ronda that are rotting in the ground right now, forgotten. Emily Dickinson lived in an attic and you can’t avoid knowing who she is. Just try. I dare you.
Ok, I like where this is going, we have a philosophy major struggling with a paper, and then there’s the underlying problem that he hasn’t written in a while, so what happens next? Got it. There’s a knock on his door, it’s not a raven though, rapping at his chamber door, although a rapping raven would be awesome to a hip-hop fan such as myself. Jeff’s a hip-hop fan, I like that quirk, I’ll throw that in right….now. Ok, there’s a knock at his door and he answers it.
Who’s at his door?
Alright, am I going to make this magical realist? No, I’m not thinking so, I’m thinking I’ll ground this one in reality. Ok, real visitor. Mysterious visitor? There it is. No, wait, let’s go with a friend, it’s his friend at the door, and this is what the friend says:
“You gotta see this. Come with me.”
But Jeff tells him that he has a paper to work on. The friend says “trust me,” and away our buddy goes.
Jeff’s friend knows that Jeff is a….wait, his name was Jack, dammit, sorry. Ok, Jack’s friend knows that Jeff…Jack, he knows that Jack is a philosophy major, which is why he’s taking him here. They practically run all the way across campus until they come over a hill and there it is: The philosophy building is on fire. It’s a beautiful site, really, all that destruction, leaping into the night, so bright against the black sky, but what Jack sees is all of his work thus far burning to the ground. It’s becoming so useless, the world is telling him it doesn’t need philosophy majors, so he just starts walking, and he comes to a bridge, and he drops off the ---dammit there I go again, making him commit suicide. He’s not committing suicide at the end. That’s not happening in this story. I’m going to a write a story that doesn’t end like that, I’ve already flat deleted like six that do. They keep turning out that way.
Ok, so Jeff, I mean Jack, I mean, actually I like the name Jeff better. Jeff Ingleson. So Jeff and his friend are standing in front of the fire and what he’s realizing, what anyone would realize, is that that paper definitely isn’t due tomorrow. He has a kind of eccentric professor, and that professor neither owns a computer nor would use one. People never see the guy outside of the philosophy building, and if there’s no philosophy building, there’s nowhere to hand it in until the university figures out what it’s going to do. Jeff’s friend knows this too, he knows what the professor is like, and so he turns to Jeff and says “looks like you’re going to that party with me after all.”
There’s a party on 15th street that’s at the house of Jeff and his friend’s mutual friend, so they start heading down to 15th street. On the way there he’s talking to his friend, and he’s not really thinking about much of anything, and he hasn’t quite realized how awesome that is, that he’s not thinking. He probably won’t realize that for the rest of the night, because he’s going to a party. The next morning might be rough.
So he shows up, and on the way he was thinking he wasn’t going to drink much, but there’s the keg, so Jeff starts pouring. Jeff’s a shitty name too actually, let’s make it Phil. So Phil starts pouring, because these days Phil’s starting to become a little bit of an alcoholic. What keeps ending up happening is he goes to parties and, once he’s downing one, he can’t stop. It’s not even so much that he needs another one, it’s just that he keeps compulsively sipping, and he has to keep sipping and sipping and sipping, so he’s drinking so much. Then the next morning he keeps standing in an elevator or riding on a bus and thinking about the world around him. About how people are all their own entities, and he thinks of them unconsciously as part of the world around him but they’re not, they’re not part of his world, they’re all their own world. He keeps feeling like relationships are all fake, no, not fake, but not real either, he keeps thinking relationships between people can’t be real because they can’t be the same world. And then he looks around him and it’s like he can see the set falling apart, or that he’s in a dream. He can’t deal with being alone, every time he’s alone he starts wondering what’s real. Alcohol has done this to him in a way, because alcohol made him let go of the craziness he’d learned to cope with. Hair of the dog.
But he’s not thinking about that when he’s pouring his first beer. He’s thinking about how nice it is that he’s going to be warm, because it’s a cold night, being December 2nd, and he’s thinking about how nice it is to have such accessible drinks. He’s been to one too many frat parties, where the douchebag behind the bar is giving drinks to the slutty bitch who’s not that attractive really, because Phil can tell she’s a slutty bitch, but she’s getting drinks and he’s waiting and waiting until he finally finds some girl to grab two and give one to him. He was at one a week ago where he was with a girl who was getting a beer, and then some other girl straight grabbed it out of her hand, and the guy behind the bar just shrugged at her. He shrugged at her, then he turned around. He poured six more, without even looking in her direction, hoping she’d go away. Phil hates frats. He’s still thinking about that after he’s downed his first beer, and he’s feeling happy as he fills up his second.
So Phil Ingleson, what kind of a last name is that anyway? So Phil Redstein is pouring his second beer when a few more of his friends show up. One of them he’s really happy to see, because he’s already had alcohol. He can’t talk to the guy when he hasn’t, because they had a little competition a while back, which Phil sort of lost at, and which the other guy sort of lost at, over the same girl. They never talked about that girl though, but it always worries Phil a little bit, makes him uneasy. One beer takes care of that, though, and so Phil throws up his hands.
“Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
And he’s not concerned with what’ll happen tomorrow.
Then what happens next is there’s a guy with a gun. Oh no, is this going to be one of those stories? No, I don’t think so. There’s a guy with a gun, and he stands up on top of a table and he fires it straight up into the air and everybody screams and ducks. All the guy is is wasted though, and he’s just yelling “partyyyy!” when a huge group of people is dragging him down, yelling about how that’s going to bring the police in. And the gun’s just sitting on the ground by now, so Phil picks it up, turns it toward his face and DAMMIT HE’S NOT COMMITTING SUICIDE AT THE END OF THE FREAKING STORY. Sorry. He’s laughing because he’s looking at it there, on the ground, and it’s such a nice gun, and he’s had five by now. Then the bullet the guy shot up plops down, right into his cup, and he starts laughing hysterically. It’s the fact that he’s had enough beer, and that everybody else has had enough beer, that’s making them laugh, but they’re all laughing so hard. The bullet falling in his cup is legitimately the funniest thing ever to happen to any of them, at least in that moment it is.
So him and his friends are all laughing so hysterically at the bullet thing when they’re leaving the party, because they want to be out of there before the cops show up, and then they’re not wasted but they’re pretty crazy as they walk around the campus. So one of them has the idea to do this thing or that and then they end up doing it and freak out, because they think they’re going to get in trouble. They’re not going to get in trouble, though, I’m going to go with that, it’s just going to be something that’s fun that they do and it’s pretty crazy. Just a crazy night.
But then Phil wakes up the next morning, and he’s not hung over. He’s not hung over, but he has what happened last night in his head, and everyone else is at class. He’s alone again, and he can’t take being alone again, so he starts trying to write his paper. He starts reading it again and realizes it’s so shallow, the whole thing needs to be redone, but he has something now. No wait, no he doesn’t, no wait. Dammit, it’s happening again. This isn’t turning out right at all, not at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment