I’m getting too old to keep up with myself, and sometimes my mouse is broken. Part of this was posted but I don’t remember what happened to the rest of it. I’ve written many words and sometimes I get moved around. Sometimes I have to use a pals computer and then I’m gone. A year and a half later I had to borrow their computer again, because my mouse is broken. It’s hard to use a desktop without a mouse. I wrote this back then when my pal was making a craps table in an old basement. It might have a ton of errors. I haven’t read it yet. But I’m leaving again, so I thought I would copy and paste before the rain stops. Be cool. Enjoy the day. Start writing your own book. It won’t be fun, but after just go walk and skip stones. I do have some new pages for sale soon. My new book From Far Out There should be done by Monday. Maybe. But it is close. The hustle of life never gets easier, but it does get funnier as you get older. Seeing through dark matter is obvious when you know how to see it. I don’t know what that means, because I really need some sleep.
So I worked on my writing for five hours this work day, and also updated my professional writing and editing resume for almost two days. It’s real solid.
Location. Not telling. But I’m no longer in a town on a lake. I don’t know this place anymore and I like it that way. I’m back in the city where I read the stranger for the first time and fell in love the first time. Both are gone and that’s all I’ll say.
I don’t know, but I do think this blog is nearing the end of its run and it’s about time to leave Michigan again. I’ll come back when they throw me a party just for the hell of it. But until then, it looks like I’m moving to Texas the end of June. It’s harder to write on this blog the more people read it. I don’t know though, because I really need some sleep. So that’s what I’ll do…
But here. This was supposed to be in the second part of The Fear and The Going. I thought I lost it so it never made it in the first final draft. I don’t know if it will make it in for the final version. I became a different writer and the story changed. But it doesn’t matter. That book wont even happen for two more years. So, let’s just say goodbye for now. peace.
Going Underwater with Steven Normalton
“You ever use spray adhesive before?”
“Nope.”
“Neither have I.”
These were the types of questions I constantly said “nope” to back then. It was nighttime again and the hammers were tapping, the heater or air turned on and when we got here (of course) we were poor. Somehow with the use of human communication our temporary home became this basement that had dead mice in the corners under sheets of dry wall and a washer that was always spinning…learning and with unknown artificial intelligence slowly walking only so far before some student from The State of New York came running down those steps yelling “STOP IT BEOFRE…”
After the power was restored and the breaker was flipped well then The Lord of the Manor came down those steps carrying papers yelling with his deep baby voice that “Yeah. It’s official. I’m going underwater guys. I just want to be left alone and to… what the hell does the government want now?
Mr. Normalton. Class Act citizen and at night over some mixed drinks and a reading of Scientology Monthly He watched the right winged Mongoose News but said he only “liked Gretta”.
This man, holy shit, He was absurd, as absurd as I was. This was some upper-middle class plight and some of that keeping up with the Jonzes that I was reading about in class, and I don’t know how to really explain it but it was refreshingly nice to be around, especially after the constant savagery and street kid lingo and squatting nights in old run down factories while briefly stayin’ in downtown Detroit; those hunger filled weeks and wandering slow-Mo days that Apsotolo had us hanging around prior to this (as Steven said) “golden opportunity” was given us.
Anyway…so this was more like it. This was more of the story I was looking for. This is where things got more my style and a tad bit more interesting. Alright yeah, this was the great damn recession put together and layered with all kinds of American tragic.
Steven Normalton was the captain of the intermural flag football team at the University. He was forty seven years old. He lived in this lovely three story house and was in charge of keeping the grounds, and facts were hard to come by back then, but I’m guessing his parents were the folks who he kept saying that were “still backing me”.
And I never did meet the Mom and the Pop Normalton. I never met the folks who were also lawyers and I’m only connecting the dots here but I’m thinking that these same lawyers were also the same couple who held one of the (multiple) mortgages on the house.
His dress code was mostly that of the sweat-suit variety. He had a huge aquarium next to an even huger television screen. He drove around in an old Woody Station Wagon that was in “mint condition”. It had a ladder on the roof and stickers in the windows that said “I only Bleed BLUE & GOLD”. Steven Normalton also hated cats. He believed them to pass on a parasite that when it connects to the host makes them suicidal….
“NEED HOME NEAR CAMPUS? ABSOLUTELY NO CATS! NO QUESTIONS! GO BLUE! LIVE HERE! PARTY LEARN! HIT THE BOOKS AND SLEEP! CALL STEVEN NOW”
This information was written on the FOR RENT flyers that he placed on the web as well as all over campus.
Steven was a nice guy. He always said,
“I like you Henry but you don’t have it.
What’s it I said.
“What Apsotolo has. People skills. You need to learn some people skills from people like me and him…Listen up and learn”
It was funny, because He told me this on more than a couple occasions, and I couldn’t understand it because Steven trusted Apsotolo and I don’t know why, but for some reason this made me grin.
We were supposed to be building a room for Steven. Drills and tables holding tiles and a skeleton of wood making the room. Pencils and screwdrivers and cases of beer on cold ground.
This looks like a perfect place for a writer I said
A writer Steven said.
Don’t listen to him Apsotolo said. Henry’s retarded.
We found the guy on the internet and somehow the deal was worked out. Somehow Dusty talked the guy into allowing us to sign on as independent contractors. Our job was to transform this old speak easy into a flat where rich college kids would pay almost a thousand dollars a month to live and study and party, and that’s all he wanted. Steve said he wanted to party just like the old days, just like the days before he went underwater.
And for Three weeks we did nothing. Sometimes we hit nails into the wall so he didnt think we were who we really were. I didnt know how to make a room. I wasnt a handy man. I was a dork, and usually all we were doing was plotting and walking back and forth strumming a traveling guitar, and then at night I was joking around typing on my typewriter and rotating back upside down on this strange exercise thing that Steven said was the future of staying in shape.
Three weeks and it was a strange house and Steven was an even stranger guy. Seven or eight years later and He’s still my pal. Apostolo, well who knows about that guy.
Adventures In American Writing 