Contemporaneous: Chapters 16 – 17
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…
Contemporaneous: Chapters’ 8 – 12.
8. I wake too early like I ‘ve done every day since I was on antidepressants for five years over twenty years ago, and they fucked with my sleep, and even now, even with them clean from my system, the side-effects they introduce remain. Grabbing my phone from the bedside drawer where my clock radio sits, I check it, tensing as I expect some Lana diatribe. Sometimes she does that, sending me an essay detailing why I’ve behaved so poorly, a guided tour into my inadequacies that immerses me in guilt that overwhelms any equilibrium I have, until all that remains is the doubt that maybe, just maybe, I…