Here’s something I know. When you are compiling a bunch of stories you’ve written over the course of ten years, there’s a seemingly endless round of revision. I’ve already decided to scrap the plays and rewrite them as narrative. That was easy. But there’s also passages of interior monologue that I just don’t know what to do with. Here’s a sample. Taken out of context of the collection, this is fine … but inside the book, it’s a sore thumb:
Strange room—nothing familiar. The smells were different than what I remember things smelling before. Back home. When I was back home. Was I back home? Strange person in bed next to me. OK, I think, you just have to get over this sick feeling you get where you don’t know where you are. So I say aloud, “Where am I?”
No answer.
OK. No answer. No light. No smell. Nothing familiar. OK. So I fumble around in the dark for a bit, feeling my way along a wall. Or what I think must be a wall. There must be a door somewhere.
Someone was in the bed next to me. Huh? How do you like that? I was used to sleeping alone. OK. Door handle. Aha! I think. A handle. As if the uniqueness of a door that opened with a handle rather than a knob was still as new as it was when I woke up. Handle. Door. Simple.
So I pull the door open and there it is. The living room I couldn’t remember just a second ago. This is it. I’m in a con—do—min—i—um. Cavalier By The Sea. A condo on the ocean with my family and my cousins. That was Hughie. Was that Hughie? I go back into the room and there he is. Deeply sleeping. OK. Condo. Ocean. Gotta pee.
It’s kind of nice, I think, getting up in the middle of the night all by yourself. Once you get your bearings. Once you know. Really know where you are. And how you got there. And what that strange person was doing in bed with you. Hughie. Cousin Hughie. OK.
So I pee. And there I am at, like four in the morning. Must be four in the morning. Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t tell time in a place where I don’t know where the clock is. And I hate wearing a watch. Watches are for girls. Well, that’s not exactly true, I guess. Watches on my wrist look like watches a girl would wear. It’s my single physical flaw, as far as I can tell. My wrists. They are so girly. I mean really, really girly. I hate them. OK. Four in the morning. Just peed. Go back to bed with Hughie?
No. I don’t think so. Let’s do something interesting. I mean, here we are by the sea. Let’s do something downright interesting. Make breakfast? No. I don’t think so. OK. I slip back into the room and get dressed. I think about waking Hugh, but I don’t. Instead, I take a long look at the room, close the door and leave the condo. It’s dark, but not really dark. I noticed how it wasn’t really dark, when we pulled into the parking lot the night before. Just before we unpacked and got into fights and had dinner and went to bed. Just before the last thing I remember hearing was the rain. I mean real rain. Biblical rain. Pounding on the roof of the condo. We never get rain storms back home. I mean not legitimate rain storms. Maybe an occasional shower or something. Lightening, thunder, sure. But this was driving rain. Driving. It sure wasn’t raining now. And it wasn’t dark. Not really. It was kinda gray and dark and light at the same time. Must be four in the morning, I think.
Away I go. Trundling down the rickety steps of Cavalier By The Sea to the beach. It occurs to me, like out of nowhere, how what I’m doing isn’t exactly dangerous. I mean, you can’t really get lost on the beach. There’s one way down the beach. There’s the ocean, and there’s the land. Go in the ocean and drown. Go up on the land and it’s pretty easy to get lost, I imagine. But once you’re on the beach, really there’s only up the beach and down the beach.
I like that.
On the beach in the dark at four in the morning. Or what must be four in the morning. Maybe four fifteen.
Anyway. Eighth grade. God. Eighth. Fucking. Grade. This is so going to not go well. I can tell. I tried all summer to not think about it, but here we are, the whole fam damnly at the beach for the last hurrah before I have to go back into that cess pool. School is so stupid. And hard. Well, the school part of school isn’t hard, but the rest of it is so not easy. If I was like Hugh, I’m sure it would be fine. He’s great. He’s great looking. At least, you know, for a boy. And he’s smart and he’s funny and I just bet he has, like, a dozen friends. That is so … not me. Well, the friends part. And the good looking part. If I wasn’t so fat, I’m sure I’d be OK looking. But I’m not … not fat. In fact, I’m willing to bet I’m the exact opposite of not fat. Let’s face it, OK? I’m fat. Fatty. I’m just fat. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with what I hate about school. I just hate the people. The people are awful. Well, the cool ones aren’t awful. They’re great. But they are pretty awful to me. In fact, if I was cool, I probably wouldn’t be awful to anyone. But I wonder: Do you have to be mean to be cool? Is that what it is? Because I could be mean, I guess. If I wanted to. I’ll have to check on that with Hughie. I’ll ask him, when I get back to the condo, what it’s like to be cool, and if you have to be mean to fat people to be cool. It’s probably different for him, though. In Boise, there’s probably plenty of fat people. In fact, I’ll bet they have their own group that they hang out with. Not me. In Anaconda, I’m like the only fat person. Well, that’s not true, but I’m the only fat person I’d hang out with.
I try not to think about it.
The beach was all full of stuff that had washed up the night before, and I headed past the soft squishy sand to the place where my feet didn’t slip, and my footprints disappear. The fog and the beach and the water and the sky. It was like it was all one color, but not. It was hard to see where the beach ended and the water began. Just like it was hard to see where the water ended and the sky picked up. In fact, I bet I could walk right out into the water and not even know I’m drowning. So, I pay attention to the stuff on the beach. As long as I can see the stuff on the beach I know I’m not in the water, and oddly enough, not in the sky.
The sun was starting to peek over the rim of sea grass that lined the high side of the sand dunes leading down to where I was walking. It was going to be a cloudy day, that’s for sure. Maybe even driving rain. Maybe not. Like I said before, I don’t really know anything about rain. Or the beach. Except it’s absolutely impossible to get lost on it. Even in the dark. At what must be four thirty in the morning.