Saturday, August 20, 2016

HELLO, UGLY---ANOTHER EXCERPT






Once again I'm working the screenplay for a film version of my first novel, HELLO, UGLY. This first pass at a new draft has been fruitful---I've gotten the damn thing's length down to somewhere in the “Star Wars” ballpark. As the drafting continues, I'm sure it'll get tighter, me being the chronic revisionist that I am.
One bit that won't make the cut is this nugget of dialogue between Jack and his Mom. And I love this scene, but for the screenplay, it's going 'bye-bye.


Serving me a tuna melt, my Mother says, “you look awful, Jack.” It's just the two of us for supper tonight. The old man's taking care of his own business. Dad's running away from his dead son. Daddy's little dead boy.
I mumble thanks to my Mother for the sandwich, Mrs. Congeniality who yelled at me from the window of a strange house and I start hating myself. Jesus Christ, I think, it was a dream, a dream, just a dream, but I'm scared and I don't feel too guilty for thinking that because deep down I know it really went down.
“What happened to you?” She asks. It's the tenth time she's asked me. She's asking again because I didn't say anything the other nine times. “How did your clothes get so dirty?”
“Fell,” I mutter. It's a lie, but hopefully it'll shut her up.
“Where did you fall?”
“School.”
“When?”
“On my way out. I was going to the, uh, the student parking lot.” I can't think. What do I want to say? Words are all jammed up in my throat.
“And...?”
“Uh....I don't know. I slipped on the wet grass and I fell down a slope. I landed in the mud.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess lots of people saw me.”
“Well, did they help you?” She asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Shrugging my shoulders and reaching for the Pepsi bottle, “why should they? None of their business.”
“Well, Jack, I find it hard to believe that all those people saw you fall and none of them helped you.”
“Why?”
“I know if I saw anyone fall down the way you did, I'd help them,” she offers and I smile but I think she's lying. I mean, she's told me before that she was a member of the Varsity Club when she was in school and I know none of those people would ever pick me up if I fell. And then there's the whole dream thing where she shouted at me. Anyone who would do that wouldn't help me if I fell in a mud puddle. But I know it was just a dream. No, it wasn't. Yes, it was.
“Not everyone's like you, Mom,” I reassure her.
“Oh, well, Jack, come on! I don't think that everyone's that bad, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Jack.”
“You can ignore it if you want,” I tell her, “but people prove it to me every day.”
“Oh, Jack.”
Oh, Jack, oh, Jack. “Oh, Mom.”
“Pass the chips,” and I fork her over the bag of Ruffles.
“You know what Anne Frank said,” she informs me as she digs into the bag, “in the middle of the Holocaust, hiding from the Nazis, she said that she still believed people were basically good inside.”
“Anne Frank is a lampshade.”
“My God, Jack!”
“S'true!”
She pauses for a minute to rethink her strategy. “Zoe would have helped you,” she finally says.
“Yeah, well,” I deadpan and don't look at her. She's quiet for a minute and I think she's gotten the hint not to go there.
We sit in hair-trigger silence. Eating our sandwiches. Crunching our chips. Drinking our drinks. Thinking our fear.
She breaks the ice with a new subject. “Jack,” she says, “do you know a boy at your school named Billy Arsenault?”
I stop, mid-munch. “Who?”
“Billy Arsenault.”
Punch in the face, notebook over the head, oh, Jackie, Jackie, suck my left nut just once, “yeah, I know him.”
“Do you know his mother's in the hospital?”
Raising my eyebrows, “that right?”
“Yes,” she says with some kind of childlike concern eclipsing her face.
“What happened?”
“I guess she suffered a stroke. She was tending to the flowers in her garden and it started to rain. She was gathering up her gardening tools and then she clutched her head and fell down. She's in the hospital, now, and I hear she's in serious condition. They say she might not live through the night.”
“How did you find this out?"
“I was talking on the phone earlier with Shirley Eagen. You remember Shirley. She lives next door to the Arsenaults.”
“Huh.”
“Isn't that awful? Imagine how Billy must feel.”
I munch on my sandwich and I mull it over for a minute. The first thing I think of is my childhood. Going to the beach with Mom. Collecting seashells and getting a sunburn. Her rubbing ointment on my sore, red arms and back. Mom telling me stories, reading me books. Mom and Grandma taking me to movies. I wonder if Arsenault has a lot of memories like these. I bet he does. I bet this situation's rough on him. I try to imagine what it must be like, going through this kind of shit with his mother. I think and I think and I stare at the neglected bread crust on my plate.
“Good,” I say.


Copyright 1990 C.F. Roberts/2016 Molotov Editions

*****

I was contemplating the irony of this scene today---the story is about at its tipping point and the cheese is really sliding off Jack's cracker. He doesn't trust his mother, mostly due to delusional notions, but he enters into this debate with her about the ethics of helping people who've fallen into mud puddles and the fact is, this did not happen. He's lying through his teeth about the entire story. So who, here, is untrustworthy? Sadly, Jack himself isn't even sure what the truth is.

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

THE TUBES-Now
THE TUBES-Love Bomb
THE SCORPIONS-Fly to the Rainbow

Monday, August 8, 2016

DENTISTRY IN NEW KOWLOON

Snubby Schwartz says to me, “you got that twenty you owe Slick?”
Because it's Snubby and because his teeth are two rows of stainless steel hooks and slightly curved nails, it sounds more like, “wooat vat venny yo Vick?”
After a while you get used to it and you start adapting to Snubby-speak.
I fork over the twenty without a word. There's no better convincer in the world than to have Snubby standing there staring balefully at you like some hideous deep sea creature. But it's what makes him the best bill collector in New Kowloon----that winning smile.
He eyes the bill almost absentmindedly, half-whispering to himself, “Varevarevareware.....” He does this a lot---probably reveling in the fact that he's still capable of speech. “Varewareware.....” He recedes back into the teeming Friday night crowd.
He's a New Kowloon success story, Snubby is----he came here with dreams of anarchy and endless free trim, nothing but the shirt on his back and no marketable skills. One bad run-in with the Red Dragons and cheap New Kowloon dentistry did the rest.
Anyone's welcome to come in and mind their own business, of course----but when they settled here, the clarion call went up; New Kowloon needs doctors, scientist, civil engineers. Yes, in spite of all your dirtiest, most pessimistic hopes, anarchy needs doers. Cops. Psychologists. IT guys. Dentists.
Some have the good economical sense to play it cheap and work with what they have. They don't get to cush it in the upper strata of the city, but they get lots of customers, they get a loyal base and goddammit, they never go hungry. If they don't get paid in legal tender(or whatever passes for it----bitcoin? Hell Money?) then they're awash in dope, guns, pussy, dick, macaroni art or whateverthehell else you can use.
He's a libertarian hero, you know, like a bottomfeeding George Washington. There's a hierarchy of dentistry here in New Kowloon. See, if you were a Trust Fund Baby who rolled in here, you'd have it made. Can you get guns? Drugs? Women? A private army? You can probably get a nice set of pearly whites installed in your yammering craw. Snubby, for one, was not so lucky----all he came here with was a hope in his heart and a willingness to raise some hell.
It's not a pretty thing.
Some of us Americans grew up on tales of George Washington and his wooden teeth....the truth, sadly, was way past those fabled cherry trees and a whole lot else besides. Wooden teeth? Shit. Try nails, screws, chunks of plywood, monopoly game pieces, chunks of particle board from Ikea and even wads of paper. It was a septic hellhole that would scare the living piss out of a Komodo Dragon....that was the mouth of the Father of Our Country......
Father of my FORMER Country. When you hit New Kowloon you renounce citizenship everywhere. You're given the flag of the city and you're told you can pledge allegiance to it if you wish or desecrate it if you don't. It's no big deal.
But I digress.
Snubby's network of gnarled appliances aren't about to make anyone comfortable. It's a selling point for his services as a collector. I find myself wondering whether he ever gets any. As is a big edict in New Kowloon, my big inclination is MYOB. He's no fun to be around, but where there's a will in New Kowloon there's a way. Once he got the new oral setup and went to work for the big boys, the core members of the Red Dragons started turning up dead. The shadow of the Dragons that are left pretty much operate under some big dog's thumb, which was definitely not the case back in the day. Me, I turn a blind eye. MYOB. Something tells me whoever's buttering Snubby's bread , he's doing alright for himself.


      from DISPATCHES FROM NEW KOWLOON, a work in progress
copyright 2016 C.F. Roberts/ Molotov Editions 


THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
THE BUTTHOLE SURFERS-Rembrandt Pussyhorse/Cream Corn
TYPE O NEGATIVE-Life is Killing Me
BUTTER 08-Self-Titled