16.

 

I leave Melody’s manuscript sitting there in my email, festering like … and I can’t come up with metaphor or simile that will illustrate what a festering, diseased, terminal clusterfuck it is, so I’ll just say that it sat there in my email, festering like only her manuscript could.

Despite my disdain, I still want to get the best out of it and out of Melody, so I need to work out a strategy. But I’m frazzled now. And feel an edge, like Melody’s dismissal isn’t the indifferent vainglory of some cocky young writer, but divine condemnation that exemplifies my own failures.

There are other manuscript on my slate I could work on instead. One, a cyber-thriller about a plot to reprogram the populace through subliminal neurolinguistic brainwashing, is interesting, and the author, Phillip, is delightful to work with. Unfortunately, when I open Zoom to set up the call with him (as he’s interstate), Zoom decides that’s when it’s going to update.

So I open another manuscript, Cameron Holder’s high fantasy, A Wake of Sorcerers, and then check my emails. Sure enough, Cameron’s answered my last query explaining a plot point I asked to be fleshed out. Sure thing, Cameron writes. I’ll get to work on it right away. Good idea. Thanks!😊  I really like Cameron, he’s extremely talented, but emoticons are the emphasis of the idiot.

Little things irk me greatly, which makes me wonder if I sit on some spectrum (possible), or if I’m just unimaginably intolerant (more likely), or if intolerance should be on the spectrum (not a bad idea), but sometimes it does feel like I’m moving in the wrong direction. My mum used to tell me that – that I always did the opposite of what was expected. Maybe I’m continuing that course.

Once Zoom’s done and the meeting with Phillip’s over, I move through the other manuscripts that our Shia has asked me to read for appraisal, withdrawing from officechatter as the others talk about their weekends, their problems, and all that shit as they work. I struggle to ingratiate myself. Officechatter isn’t something I do well.

I work through lunch while the others retreat to the kitchen, but straight after, Autumn grabs me and suggests we take our walk. This is something we do periodically. She likes to get out of the office, but there’s likely an element that she wants to yank me away from my building frustrations because she’s identified long, long, long ago that I need the release. It’s true. I do. But I just never see it until it’s too late.

Just down the road from our studio, the area’s undeveloped bush, a single concreted path winding its way along a creek, crossing at a bridge, then coming back around to this big park with swings, a basketball court, and a bench where we sit to take a time out from the world.

“You turn fifty in two weeks,” Autumn says.

“Don’t remind me,” I say.

“Why?”

There’s a lot of shit I could dump here about age and goals, but I won’t bother, because I already have with Autumn, and I’m sure it’ll come up (and it has already a couple of times, until I’ve gone back and cut it, like I can deny its existence).

“It’s just a number.”

“It’s a significant number. You should be happy. I want you to be happy.”

I shrug, because I struggle with people wishing good things upon me.

“How was your weekend then?” Autumn asks.

Whereas that question’s filler for most people, it’s not for Autumn – she’s genuinely interested because we’ve had a deep, longstanding friendship. Shit. I really should set that up better. Take my word for it. We’re close, although we used to be closer until Lana demonstrated her jealousy, and everybody unspokenly stepped back to because Lana became like an earthquake fault that drilling might trigger.

“Usual shit,” I say. “Wrote some. Caught up with my idiot friend Dom. Visited my mum.”

“What’d you and Lana get up to?”

There’s a not of jealously here – something I’m sure I don’t imagine. And I used to detail my arguments with Lana. Autumn would just about be impartial, either telling me Lana needed to relax, or that I’d been unfair, although sometimes I think it pained her to advise me in ways it would help my relationship with Lana strengthen. But I’ve pared these diatribes right back – not because I think Autumn’s sick of hearing it (she’s always a patient listener) but because I’m sick of talking about it.

“Same shit,” I say. “What about you and Dennis?”

“Not a lot,” Autumn says.

“That’s unlike you.”

Autum and Dennis have been married thirty years, and lead an active life. They go out, do things, have fun with friends – all that stuff that couples do (or should do, I guess), although she’s told me that sometimes, these things bore her, and she’d rather be at home working on her own novel.

“Just did some decluttering,” Autumn says. “I need a big cleanout.”

“Why?”

“Because I wonder,” she says.

“What?”

“If I made the right decisions marrying him,” Autumn says. “If we’re still in love the way we’re meant to be. If he still loves me.”

She’s close to me – closer than a friend, until it’s almost intimate. But maybe I’m misreading this. That wouldn’t be a surprise. I’m terrible at reading situations, but what I read is her being too close. Not just physically, either. Like this is a moment that could open up to something else, something it shouldn’t, and that makes me uncomfortable, but not because of the situation, but because I’m unsure how to handle it.

“Why do you feel that?” I ask.

But we’ve talked about this before. Lots. It’s not one big thing (although I do wonder if that exists there somewhere in her past with Dennis) but lots of little things that have accumulated, and so gradually eased them apart they didn’t even realise it was happening.

“It’s just the same stuff,” she says. “Just me being restless.”

“We’re all restless.”

Autumn smirks. “I guess. So, what’s happening with your book?”

I should bring the conversation back to her, but she wants to change the topic. This is stuff we used to talk about at greater length, and much more deeply. And, again, the climate’s changed so much its conditioned us to have shallower exchanges, because anything deeper has become dangerous.

“I got a rejection yesterday night,” I say.

“From who?”

“Some international publisher. And I’m talking to my actual publisher Wednesday afternoon about my writing.”

Prior to being published, I would talk about these things with a mixture of resignation, frustration, and some more resignation, feeling I wasn’t good enough to be picked up. Two books later, and I guess I’m good enough, but just not good enough, or relevant enough, to forge an identity in the market.

None of this really matters (and especially compared to Autumn’s stuff) – the conversation likely appears so mundane, and possibly not even worth noting. It’s more to establish what the rapport is. And, to tell the truth, to show the puttering friendship we have, although that’s likely not healthy for either of us, and not fair on Autumn.

“I miss hanging out,” she tells me.

She leans into me, and I feel her cheek almost rest on my shoulder. And I can smell her, her earthiness, instead of the ozone of hairspray and perfume and underlying disdain that Lana generates. They’re just about the same age, but Autumn’s embraced aging, while Lana’s embraced vanity. I shouldn’t do this – I shouldn’t compare.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It happens.”

“Want to do lunch Saturday?” I say.

“What about Lana?” Autumn asks.

I could relay that we’ve broken up, but Lana and I break up so often it has no meaning. The best thing I could do is finalise one of these breaks, but I don’t – partly because I’m weak when it comes to confrontation, but also because I think about growing old alone, and it’s not that it scares me, but it does sadden me.

People should die with their loved ones around them – it’s a cliché, but it’s a sweet cliché. I imagine having a heart attack and dying in my little flat, undiscovered for days. The neighbours will be first to learn of it when the smell of my decaying corpse infiltrates their flats. They’ll call cops. Cops will come around and probably find me dead on the bed, mummified in the position of masturbating.

“I’ll tell her it’s a birthday lunch,” I say.

I can feel that Autumn wants to sigh because I’m going to apply some bullshit rationale to try navigate Lana, but she (Autumn, not Lana) will take it because she does miss hanging out, and sitting here with her, I do, too.

“Sure,” she says, rising. “We should be getting back.”

I’m sorry. This section isn’t very good, although maybe it’s not that it isn’t very good, but mine and Autumn’s exchange isn’t very good, and it’s reflective of how our relationship has become stilted and awkward, and circumstances are circumstances that can no longer be navigated, but tolerated. It could be a cop out. Things never used to be difficult.

I rise, and she impulsively gives me a hug, like she’s trying to comfort me.

“Be happy, okay?” she says.

“Am I ever anything but?”

She smirks, and we start the trek back to the studio.

 

17.

I don’t know if this is going anywhere – not now at least, but that’s likelier just life. Monday’s the start of the week, but it’s the start of the cycle. I’m sure there are people who either love their life, or they appreciate it, but most of us get stuck in a rut that becomes our normal.

There’s nothing when I get home – emptiness and silence, so I’m tempted to contact Lana to fill it, although filling it would be filling it with the wrong thing, so I don’t. But the temptation’s there. I write, I sleep uneasily, I masturbate to this amazing horror sci fi fantasy starring Dana Scully from The X-Files (not the actress, but the character in her world), I wake, and do Monday all over again, but now it’s Tuesday. Something builds in me – this frustration that feels it could become so intense I might just will a new reality into place. But at fifty, I know that’s not going to happen. The beauty of being young is believing in magic that time offers opportunities; the reality of being older is seeing more time behind you than ahead of you, all of it empty.

I find some element of purpose vicariously when I meet Ethan – one of the young writers I mentor – after work at a pizzeria for one of our periodic catch-ups.

He’s in his twenties, good looking, remarkably social and engaging, studying, while working two jobs, maintaining a relationship, and writing his own book – a fantasy novel. He’s completed the first draft, and has revised it repeatedly. I admire the way he’s patient with it, trying to get it right, rather than falling into the trap many inexperienced authors do by trying to get it out there as quickly as possible.

“How’ve you been going, mate?” he asks. “How’s Lana?”

“She’s Lana’rish,” I tell him, because I don’t want to bore him with the sands of this particular hourglass. “Usual.”

He tells me he’s graduating at the end of the year (he’s been studying psychology), he’s looking for a new job (that’ll take the place of the two he has) and that him and his partner are looking at getting a place together. He’s the most balanced, capable, purposeful person I know – precocious, although there are suicide bombers I could say that about in comparison to me at the same age.

“I’m struggling with the opening chapters,” he tells me. “I’m still trying to get the balance right between the characters.”

His novel alternates between an ensemble cast of characters, like Game of Yawns, and he’s been reworking the opening trying to find something that’s both functional but also engaging. I think his main problem is his study – his assignments and shit for school require a certain formality and clinicism that I think is antithetical to him developing his voice as a genre writer.

I provide feedback, which I won’t repeat here because you don’t have context, so there’s no need because it wouldn’t make much sense to you. But he looks at me fixedly as I speak (whereas I find I more and more struggle to maintain eye contact as I get older), rapt, and I think there’s almost an idolization that’s going on that rings untrue – and I don’t mean untrue in his portrayal, but in how I can reconcile it in my head.

Melody won’t listen to a fucking word I say, whereas Ethan listens to every word I say. But Melody’s published, and nationally lauded; although her writing’s literary, and Ethan’s genre, I think Ethan’s just as good a writer as her, but I don’t think he’ll be afforded the same opportunities as her.

But then another possibility rings through my head, one of those aberrant thoughts that schisms out of your my subconscious, rattles my brain, and leaves me unsettled and doubting not only every other single thing I’ve thought, but doubting myself.

What occurs to me is that Melody has succeeded because I had nothing to do with her first book, and her second book will succeed because she’s divorcing herself from me, like she senses on some preternatural level that I’m a bad charm, whereas Ethan invests in me as a person and as an editor, and that’ll forever doom him.

It’s stupid (or stupid’ish) because I’ve edited authors who’ve gone on to win major awards, but then that aberration spreads, and rationalizes that I just didn’t have enough to do with them to thwart their potential.

“You okay?” Ethan asks, stopping mid-spiel.

I don’t know where I’ve gone – years of anxiety has taught me to feign engagement while shit rages in my head; I can hold a perfectly level conversation even as I’m in the midst of a panic attack, or even as OCD fires some weird thought, like I should lean across and slap whoever I’m talking to in the face. That’s something the years have taught – it’s probably the best thing the years have taught me.

“Yeah,” I say, flagging the waitress to order another beer. “Go on.”

Ethan deserves move time than this, because he’s so genuine and empathetic – you often get people who come across as good people, but they’re not, but Ethan is. But for now, this little bit is just about that moment of disconnection, and how despite my years of self-training to play it straight regardless of how I feel, for a moment something flickered and somebody noticed it, which suggests to me that things aren’t as controlled as I think.