the hangover wasn’t intended to be personalised. i refer to the sense of guilt in the previous line, really – that this is a hangover from lapsed catholicism. your version has much to recommend it, though: an implicit jibe in the alignment of the characteristics of the average hangover with those of the average catholic. if you consider the other meaning of catholic, you come up with a hangover from everything, which is what the narrator feels like he’s in the grip of. this is mighty stuff, but accidental. you flatter me, in that you think i am much funnier than i am.
i can’t write dialogue. i am willing to learn, but right now it’s fucking useless. sorry. i take your point abou those snippets, but i didn’t want to make that section any longer than it already is. it’s already pretty hard going unless it’s your sort of thing.
thank you for your opinions: they are perceptive and engaging.
Humor/Satire / Wake
Wednesday morning was, by turns, peculiar and painful. The first event, clearly, was that Allie woke up and got up, although this didn’t become apparent until much later. I lay still and kept hidden, swathed in many windings of duvet and down, thinking: I’m fucked if I’m going out there. It got worse, though: she opened the curtains and I fought back with a sideswipe of horror and nearly got hot tea all over myself. The mug went round a full two revolutions on its base, while I watched, stricken, before it settled back down, telling me not to try anything like that again. Where the fuck had it come from?
‘Where the fuck did that come from?’ I wondered, turning internal monologue into reasonably direct speech. Allie smiled indulgently, as you would at a kitten trying to operate a tin opener.
‘You look lost. And terrified.’
‘I feel lost and terrified.’
‘Don’t you remember? About half an hour ago I asked you if you wanted tea. You said yes, so I made it, and gave it to you, and you said thank you and carried right on sleeping.’ I squinted at her. God, a lot of things felt like they were wrong with me. My head felt very bad, for a kick-off, as though it were in a vice or a tightening belt. Then my eyes: they were all wrong, too. They felt like they’d been driven about six feet back into my head, apparently with the blunt end of a pool cue.
My head got on with its business of banging and clanging, whilst my body informed me that I had, in fact, died in my skin. Were those my feet? Apparently. My hair felt like a cheap wig; the rest of my sullen carcass just felt used, thrown around, very dirty, reeking of fagsmoke and booze-sweat and sexed-up sheets. Maybe I should have a wash? I tested out movement, found out what that was like: a lot of alarms and lights started doing their thing, warning me not to get any big ideas. I sank back, under the burden of my sins.
‘Did we have this conversation?’ I asked, finally. ‘Are you sure? Did I speak?’
‘Yes, you did. You didn’t just make a noise: you spoke.’
‘Did I sit up?’ No, I couldn’t have done. Could I? ‘Did I look at you?’
‘You looked at me. You didn’t sit up, though. But there was definitely eye contact.’
‘Oh.’ That settled it, then. ‘I’ll have been asleep. I do that quite a lot. My dad used to do it as well, apparently. He’d answer the phone in his sleep, arrange meetings, all sorts. My mother used to sit there with a pen and take everything down, because she knew he’d never remember. Oh well. Thanks.’ I tried drinking the tea. It went okay, though I got the impression most of it was just soaking into my mouth, rather than going down my throat, as is traditionally the case. Jesus. Allie looked fine, though: bright-eyed, glossy-haired, generally well-adjusted. How had she gotten away with it? Then, of course, the realisation: she hadn’t, had she? She’d turned up at the bad end, when most of the damage had already been done. After David had left, there had been that half-bottle of wine to deal with, but that wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. Oh dear. I felt personally, incontestably responsible. Some sort of Catholic hangover.
‘Are you okay?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Hmmm. You don’t look okay.’
‘No. I don’t really feel it, either.’ Despite half of the looming day being given over to rowing, football and other foolish endeavours, I still had a lecture at midday, in the last slot before the University gave up. It was on the Gospel according to Saint John, and it was to be given by Padraig Murphy, so it sounded like the sort of thing I really ought to go along to.
‘I’ll see you later, okay? Go to your lecture. Don’t not go.’ Then she kissed me on the head, and she was gone too.
Soon – too soon – I got out of bed and drank about twenty pints of water, moaning softly. When I shook my head, things seemed to move around inside it. The effect was very disconcerting, so I kept still. Then I grabbed the Bible and got back into bed: if I fell asleep now I’d be gone until the evening, and I couldn’t have that, not if I was to remain on the right side of degeneracy. I flipped through it to John’s Gospel. It was printed on municipal-issue toilet paper, which made reading it a fairly irritating process. Still, I smoked and skimmed, smoked and skimmed.
It’s not long, actually, John: just twenty chapters, and it’s not unreadable. So I read it. Then I dragged my miserable self out of bed and covered it with clothes, in order not to startle the horses. I went outside. It was okay, all things considered. It was coming up to eleven, so the sun was just about up, for all the difference that made. I had an hour to kill before my lecture – well, a little more, given that it didn’t actually start until quarter past – and decided that that time could profitably be spent in The Shakespeare, making myself feel better. I strolled carefully along the river, got myself up those sagging stone steps, and there was The Shakespeare. Thank Christ for that, I thought, and fell gratefully into its warm bosom.
There was no-one else in there, which wasn’t surprising: the lunch-hour crowd hadn’t had time to descend, and most of the student population frequented the proliferation of hip little coffee houses that had sprung up to relieve them of their unearned money. I went over to the bar and used it to prop myself up whilst I asked for a whisky. The barmaid looked worried, but gave it to me anyway, possibly reasoning that I was carrying a Bible and asking for hard liquor just after opening time, so I was either training to be a priest, or I was in the throes of an existential crisis. Either way: I probably needed it. I thanked her and found myself a wooden bench by the window. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare eyed me up: about six volumes, seemingly arranged by genre, or some such arbitrary concern.
Feeling terrifically literary, I lit a cigarette, had a sip of whisky and got to grips with the Bard. Cracking the old tome open, my eye fell on the line, “I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.” Well, so do I, old son, I thought, flipping over a thumbful of pages. So do I. The book was old, and smelt old too: in places, the pages had started to crack where you thumbed them over. As I started again, on, “He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n, /
Let him not know’t, and he’s not robb’d at all,” the door opened, and in walked Padraig Murphy. For half a second I was mildly surprised, but then I thought about it, and stopped being surprised completely.
I watched as he went to the bar, re-arranged his fine hair, and paid for a gin and tonic. He turned and saw me, and his face went through the motions of recognition; he came over, the ice cubes clinking in his glass. Sitting in the chair opposite, he placed his glass on the table, took a miniature of vodka from his pocket and poured it in, found his cigarettes and lit one and looked at me and said,
‘So.’ I gave him my hand to shake and he shook it. He had about as much grip as you might expect. ‘Drinking and reading Shakespeare. That looks like a pleasant way to spend your days.’ I stared back at him with sunken eyes.
‘Well, you know. It’s not so bad. I got through John’s Gospel this morning, as well. It didn’t do anything for my hangover, though. I had a day off yesterday, you see. Well, I didn’t really, but I decided to make it a day off. I ended up drinking a lot of various drinks with David, and I feel very bad as a result.’ I thought, instinctively, that although Murphy was technically the enemy, he wasn’t going to think any less of me for being a drunk. ‘You haven’t got any amazing remedies for that up your sleeve, have you? Raw eggs and sugar, that sort of thing?’
‘No,’ said Murphy. ‘The only thing that works is getting pissed again. You could always grin and bear it. “The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief.” How are things generally?’
‘Well, besides feeling like I might drop dead any minute, they’re okay. You know, I read books a bit: sometimes they’re alright, sometimes they’re not. I sit up all night talking to a fat Hungarian about what it’s like being alive, and what we’re going to do about it.’
‘A fat Hungarian? That sounds like – a superhero. No, a nemesis. An arch-nemesis.’ Murphy took a long time about saying that, as he did about saying anything, really. I explained that David wasn’t really a fat Hungarian; he just had the appearance of one. So I talked about him for a while, detailing his ups, his downs, the frights and horrors of his degree, and his preferred methods of dealing with them. Then I talked about Allie. Murphy wore a look of amused lenity throughout. I felt odd in his presence, but not as though I had to be on my best behaviour or anything like that.
Rather, I felt a tremulous sense of incongruity, of intellectual inadequacy, because this madman seemed to know all Shakespeare, and could quote it whenever he liked without it seeming gratuitous: he just got on with it, the business of knowing the great many things he knew. He knew them demonstrably, too: he’d been published a fair bit, and yet he was sat there, eyes over-washed blue, working steadily through the first of his required five packets of cigarettes, apparently listening. I put my money where my mouth was, and told him,
‘I started writing a novel.’ There was a pause, in which he took his cigarette out of his mouth and put some of his violently alcoholic drink into it. Then he said,
‘Did you?’ I nodded, feeling guilty and pretentious.
‘How much of your self are you putting into it?’
‘Well, quite a lot. I haven’t really got much else. That’s how I put it to David, anyway. I couldn’t tell him much more, because he’s in it, you see, and I get the fear when I start thinking of all that entails.’
‘Hmmm. What are you drinking? Scotch?’ I thought for a brief moment he was asking what I drank to write, what my alcoholic muse was. I soon realised he wasn’t, though, because he stood and began patting himself down for his wallet. I made cancellatory gestures.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’ I subsided and off he went to the bar, returning with a fresh tumbler of whisky and a glass of something clear and, I presumed, damagingly potent. We kept talking, and I began increasingly to form the impression that this was his thing: not just the relationship between life and art, or, more accurately, the difference, which I was getting all hot and bothered about, but specifically the relationship between the writer’s life and the writer’s art. You couldn’t keep it out, he seemed to be saying, so why bother? Then, abruptly, he stopped the conversation dead by saying that writing was something you did, not something you said you did. I liked him for saying that. Feeling slightly uneasy, I looked at my watch. Startlingly, it was midday. I shelved the Bard and commenced fussing importantly, pocketing fags and coins. Murphy gazed up askance.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked. I made a big show of looking at my watch again, and explained,
‘Well, I thought I’d better, ah – well, the thing is—’ This was no good, so I started again: ‘Doctor Murphy: aren’t you supposed to be giving this lecture on John’s Gospel that I’m just about to go to?’ Murphy looked at me long and slowly and took off the top half-inch of his drink.
‘Well, now. You can’t be late for your own party, can you?’
About half an hour later, we fought our way through a stubborn set of double doors and into a lecture theatre. It was a bona fide lecture theatre, not of the two-bit, clapped-out exam desks variety I’d become acquainted with, but of the flashy, modern kind: tiers upon tiers of desks slightly too shallow to write on, complemented by flip-top seating. The whole thing worked in such a fashion that you had no chance at all of writing anything down, in the unlikely event that anyone said anything worthwhile, but you were at least afforded a vantage point whence to make complex and informed judgements on the follicular health of the unfortunate soul in front of you, whose head was all but in your lap. I looked up and two hundred faces looked back; this was very bad indeed. We must have looked like Christians in the Coliseum.
I scuttled up a few tiers and sat down, pulling my overcoat collar up and doing my damnedest to disappear: this made me feel like a lot of a Judas, but had the distinct advantage that it made me spectator and not spectacle. At the lectern was a long, tall streak of piss called Doctor Geoffrey F. Cartwright. He wore bicycle clips a good deal, which infuriated me for reasons I could not begin to identify. His face seemed to be composed entirely of plane surfaces: the endless flat sweep of his forehead, those matching rhomboids from cheekbone to jawline, the jutting squareness of his chin; even his nose, which ostensibly fit the Classic profile, seemed to have been done with a ruler. As we came in, he was saying,
‘…from the Greek logos meaning wahd.’ This immediately reminded me of how bad he was, and of a selection of other reasons to hate him intently. As far as he was concerned, if you couldn’t speak Greek and Latin, you might as well still be on all fours, or up a tree somewhere. The small but vital fact that no-one speaks Latin or Greek anymore seemed thus far to have eluded him. The room stopped completely, and perhaps ten seconds passed. Then Murphy swerved over to the lectern, slurring,
‘Sore right Geoff Riyadh eel-width hiss.’ Cartwright understood, or seemed to: he backed off and sat down, I imagined, to begin composing a letter to his seniors detailing how soon Murphy should be summarily fired – no, executed. There were ripples of laughter. Murphy pulled a bit of paper from his pocket and had a fight with it for a while, until he managed finally to unfold it and get it down onto the lectern. Then, to a kind of unprecedented, electric attention, his lecture commenced. He stared the room down, squared up to the lectern, and intoned,
‘Inner begin wasp… third. Anna Wordsworth God. An our wood wasp God.’ Slowly, something began to filter through from the noises he was making, and I realised I’d written them down all wrong, and, anyway, that I didn’t have to write them down at all. How long, I wondered, could he keep this up? He stopped, eventually, when he got to the Word being made flesh and dwelling among us, ‘—fall off grey sand, Ruth.’ Perhaps he was just sending up Cartwright, in which case – Christ – the man was made out of steel. Unhappily, though he did just seem to be pissed.
Then, incredibly, he got into his stride, became marginally more comprehensible, and started talking at length about the Johannine revelation, its style and mode, its polyvalent allusions. People started scribbling feverishly to keep up. When he opened up the throttle and got onto the fourfold, progressive use of the word ‘follow’ in the first chapter, each use ‘higher’, if we liked, than the last, I thought the girl I’d crashed next to might burst a blood vessel. She was one of those identical pink-and-blonde girls called Sarah (Sary, irritatingly, to irritating friends), who turn up to everything in order to scrawl down every word, regardless of content or value, and then start learning it by rote in February. She didn’t like me: I could tell. Probably wise, I thought. I hadn’t really sold myself much, had I?
And still Murphy went on, distinguishing narratees from implied readers, local from extended irony, and, seemingly, believers from unbelievers. Cartwright had his mouth open. Murphy went on to talk for ten minutes, apparently without pausing for breath, about symbolism. He did this without sounding like a fool, too, which was quite something. And the lecture was spliced, laced, interweaved with swathes of good old bearded John the honey-munching madman himself, plucked apparently out of thin air. Then there was a lot of noise about a concentric structure, whereupon I duly, dutifully took down what he was saying, chapter and verse. Within just under three-quarters of an hour, Murphy was spent: he could no more give any more than he could take any more. I thought perhaps he might fall over. He didn’t, though: he looked up, flapped his hair off his forehead, and, knuckles white on the lectern, said with perfect clarity,
‘Hearken to my words: for these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.’ Then he balled up his piece of paper, switched the microphone off with a boom and a painful squawking sound, stepped back, eyeballed the theatre for a cursory second, taking in the bewilderment in the cheap seats, and then spun precariously on his heel and weaved off toward the door, which engaged him in what I thought was quite a clichéd, over-familiar push-pull confusion routine. After he had gone, there was nearly a full minute where nothing happened; then, the applause started: hesitantly at first, crackling like kindling, but then rising, becoming variable as people began to collate their notes and leave, mainly fair, mainly good.
Irrelevantly, Cartwright was telling us in an absurdly tiny unamplified voice that it was quite alright; we could leave early. I got out very fast – I still had a hangover to be getting on with – and caromed into the nearest building that looked like it would sell me something to make my life more bearable, where I got through five double espressos, twenty cigarettes and a slab of some kind of chocolate heart-attack, until I could bear it no longer, and went home, apparently to die.
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When I read this I had a clear picture in my head. The way you described things was wonderful, and to be honest, the way your character felt like in the morning is like how I feel. You write really well, you get straight to the point and the dialogue is amazing. There’s nothing wrong with this piece, I have nothing negative to say.
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On the whole, I enjoyed this read. You landed most of the jokes; “municipal issued toilet paper” was a lark in and of itself. Personalizing a hangover and calling it Catholic will surely make anyone who reads this chuckle(if not, they don’t know any Catholics). You have a very visual, descriptive style. In the expository passages the humor is most evident- such as referring to the beverage as damagingly potent, or “making complex and informed judgments on the follicular health of the unfortunate soul in front of you”. It’s in the dialog that I found it to be either halted or forced, but that just may be the way Brits speak to each other. And if you’re going to tell the reader that Dr. Murphy spoke well for ten minutes on symbolism, how’s about a snippet or two?
On the whole, a very nice treatment. I look forward to seeing more. Either of the piece I just read, or in general.
I did find this entertaining, and midly amusing--- not holding my sides laughing. I may have missed the primary thrust of the jokes if they are aimed at a British sense of humor. Sometimes it is very species specific, humor that is. All in all it was a pleasant read with the general awareness of good spelling, punctuation etc to keep it flowing nicely. I did not follow very closely the squiffed lecture of Padraig Murphy, even with rereading it several times. “Murphy went on to talk for ten minutes, apparently without pausing for breath, about symbolism”-—-I think I might have been in the audience for this part. I have a vague memory of college participants behaving in just such a manner. You have described this particular student quite well, including his physical reactions to drink and the aftermath thereof. I understand this is just a part of a larger piece of work, it does feel undone or not quite finished and does not quite stand alone.
sbd
I’ll open with the things I immediately liked:
...John’s Gospel. It was printed on municipal-issue toilet paper…
I sit up all night talking to a fat Hungarian about what it’s like being alive, and what we’re going to do about it.’
‘Inner begin wasp… third… Unhappily, though he did just seem to be pissed. (entire paragraph)
...a long, tall streak of piss called Doctor Geoffrey F. Cartwright.
Things that confused me:
I sank back, under the burden of my sins. ? If this is to be humorous, it’s a bit too oblique to act as a coda for the scene.
“The barmaid looked worried, but gave it to me anyway, possibly reasoning that I was carrying a Bible and asking for hard liquor just after opening time, so I was either training to be a priest, or I was in the throes of an existential crisis.” Seminarians often are in the throes of existential crisis, no either/or about it.
“As I started again, on, “He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n, / Let him not know’t, and he’s not robb’d at all,” the door opened, and in walked Padraig Murphy. For half a second I was mildly surprised, but then I thought about it, and stopped being surprised completely.” Sorry…if this is supposed to be a humorous passage, it’s light as lead; if it is to serve as introduction for Murphy, it contains extraneous detail. That quote (He that is robb’d…) is worthless in the piece, unless you’re using it to reference Murphy’s quote, “The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief.” And that’s not reason enough for having it.
You give a lengthy, richly detailed description of the lecture hall, but almost nothing about Murphy. I can’t see the fellow at all, just a few locks of thinning hair, and I’m not sure of the color, not that I could see through all the pub smoke. It’s as if you’re telling us, “You know what I mean.” No, we don’t.
You seem like an intelligent young person. If you have your heart set on writing in this style (why not? It’s a pleasure to read when done properly), study other prose humor writers. Don’t worry about copying them or being unable to find your own style. You can’t be anyone but you when it comes down to it. But you can learn timing, structure, what to leave in and what to leave out, what is funny and when it’s appropriately funny (not PC, just the perfect mot at the perfect time, as opposed to lobbing out a random idea that struck you as amusing).
Good luck, and thanks for the read.
Well for being only an “excerpt” I am quite impressed. The language you used, the metaphors, and uncommonly chosen words; wove together with just the right amount of sarcasm and realist insight. WELL DONE.
The first bit had me laughing with similar experiences under my belt.
Suggestions: Rhomboids: as far as I can tell are the short flat muscles on the back that connect the scapula with the vertebrae of the spinal column.
Which has nothing to do with the face at all! If you are talking about the OTHER type of Rhomboids…they have even LESS to do with the face as they are: a nearly ubiquitous family of intramembrane serine proteases that evolved by multiple ancient horizontal gene transfers. So um, where you got Rhomboids from is beyond me. Maybe something I missed??
“woke up and got up,” Sounds better AWOKE and got up.
” noise: you” no colon.
“have done.” drop “done,” its just “have”
“though: bright” wow u like colons huh? LOL I think this should be semi colon, or comma.
“Don’t not go.” Redundant, you just said this. LOL suddenly sounds like a 12 year old writer.
“bed: if” QUIT with the COLONS! lol lordy, PERIOD!
” was sat there,” SITTING
” lectern, slurring,” Should be period after slurring.
Again I am quite intruiged as to the excessive use of semi colons, but figured that maybe you knew how to use them and I am mistaken. Although to me, many of them seem grossly out of place.
Other than that, again WELL DONE, super work. It flows easily and well, while keeping the reader quite entertained. Hope to see the whole version on here soon! GOOD JOB.
Eve
This was an entertaining story. Your character is unique, likeable, and believable, and I’m interested to know more about why he suffers from alcoholism and self-loathing.
There were a few moments in here where I got confused with the supporting characters, almost like there were too many of them mentioned that had no real part in the story. At the end, I felt you might be trying a bit too hard with the long sentences.
Honestly, I really like this story, and I think you can do a lot with it. You obviously have talent as a wordsmith.
I`m curious is the prose name,”Wake” reminisant of a person waking up or how you feel after one heck of a night about town… Dr. Pedraig Murphy seems like a rather good chap… Drinking with one of his students before he goes to his lecture with him or her in toe… The Shakespeare seems like a musty old pub with the volumns of the Bard`s on the wall… Most definately something I`d read again… Comic prose of the highest order… I wasn`t being sarcastic I like your work… Thank you…
your descriptions of people/places/things are clear and concise. when you say “i dragged my miserable self out of bed and covered it with clothes” its a little confusing. perhaps using i dragged my miserable body out of bed and covered it with clothes, so its more clear what you’re covering. just a nit pick. i liked the meeting with murphy and how you revealed things through dialogue. i started to get a little confused after that. i wasnt sure what people were talking about anymore. i also didnt understand why he was going to this lecture. perhaps i wasnt reading it right, but this didnt seem like a comical piece albeit a few humorous parts. youve started and ended in good places, though. the middle just needs some clarifying as to what is going on and why
