Novel Treatments / Karmic Debt: Excerpt 1, Edit 1
I knew it had been a mistake– rather, I desperately hoped: returning home. Previous visits had trained me to the custom of a more celebratory welcoming. My arrival was by no stretch a funeral, but my heart had secretly hoped for a parade. This narcissistic impracticality could have easily led me down a yet another winding path of despair, but I found it easier to simply appreciate my more modest and practical tokens: a place to live, a night of free drinks, and above all else– pity, for which I was most grateful. You can thank my parents for all of this, even the night of free drinks (they gave me the money. Hence, free). But it was all over now; finished, dead; the celebration had run its course; the pity party had adjourned.
My parents were enamored by my presence. “The boy is back!” My father said as he hugged me, kissed me. That night at the bar, it was like a dream: every other old lover and tattooed fiend, once my dearest friends. They didn’t know me now, but the thoughtfulness of their unwitting inquisition would seamlessly bridge the gap between my hateful desire to forget, and my loving willingness to remember; “Where the fuck have you been?” –and so on. I adored the attention and as always, reacted synergistically. Fighting a compliment for me has always been like fighting a brother– though I have never known one, I can only imagine the unending skirmishes, predicated (in obvious contradiction) upon the deepest love. And so I walked well with every question, wandering down my modest yet self-important resume of recent life accomplishments. This, I later learned was an unspoken rite of passage amongst my old comrades. They had all departed at one point in pursuance of some nicely fabricated dream, only to return in eventual surrender. And at this moment it brought them great comfort; my return would serve to justify their own, and from this acknowledgement I would become (without plea or demurer) one of them. It lifted their hearts– and it crushed my own.
. . .
It is still very clear to me. They had it all planned out. I was to return at fourteen hundred hours, which I did, with equipment properly packed, which I had, and somewhere in the next ten minutes it would be made undeniably clear to me that I had made a very, very big mistake.
I had been in Las Vegas for the weekend, working. One conversation with a local stagehand had unfolded into something of a war story exchange, though I thought nothing of it at the time; I suppose that I should have thought something of it– at least before I had said: “They do meth around here, eh? Do you know where I could get some?” It was all in context of humor– a facetious remark– and maybe if I had been serious, I would have asked again, but this alone was enough to send him to his supervisor, and from his supervisor to my supervisor, and of course then to my boss who (for a myriad of reasons) already didn’t care for me.
And so, I returned at fourteen hundred hours with my neatly packed truck, even after being stranded in Utah for twenty hours with an engine problem, bleeding oil at a standstill, waiting outside of the scrappy Mormon-owned diesel garage in the sweltering heat for the only taxi in town to dispatch me at last to the front desk of yet another anonymous hotel. Even after driving illegally through Wyoming and Nebraska on four hours of sleep to make up for the lost time– My supervisor instructed me to falsify the mileage log; he told me exactly what to say if encountered by the authorities.
So, they had it all planned out. They were waiting for me. I backed the steel behemoth into that cozy loading dock for (what I had no idea was) the very last time, and descended from the cab, head held high, proud to have (in such treacherous circumstances) arrived on time. However, my co-workers did not share my expression. Rather, they seemed uncomfortable, detached, and unable to look me in the eye. And so, I said a simple “Hey guys”, and made my way toward the little office area that they had prepared for me in lieu of recent remodeling, but before I could reach the crude partition, I was approached by the boss’s wife (she regularly worked at the company as a receptionist) who said so sweetly to me: “(Boss) wants to see you in his office.” I had anticipated a congratulatory harangue for my heroic venture across the Western United States in his crippled vehicle. Again, with my head held high I entered his expansive windowed office and perched without hesitation between the welcoming armrests of the grand, modern office chair that sat opposite his desk of extravagant pointlessness.
This is when he fired me. The joke about the meth, it turned out not to be a joke after all. Once it left my lips, it was a curse– again, a big mistake. “What in the hell would my clients think if they had heard you talking about drugs?” And the truck– well, of course the engine problem was my fault, of course the long layover in St. George, Utah was a result of my negligence, and of course I was helplessly to blame for every single detail that went wrong in Vegas– and Nashville– and Cleveland– and every other event that I had been a part of since I had started working for him less than a year ago.
It was as though my whole life had come full circle as I was allowing myself to argue with someone who wanted nothing more than to be peacefully rid of me. It was as degrading as arguing with a woman who wanted only to end it; the only difference was that at this point, I (deservingly) felt like the woman in the scenario, yet somehow, also the asshole boyfriend. I was shocked and persecuted to the point of my most somber dejection. I stopped fighting. I turned in my credit cards, keys– signed the forms. I think I even shook his hand for God’s sake. And then I exited his office only to behold the even greater humiliation that awaited me: my belongings, neatly stacked in the hallway. As it had been planned, my cohorts were carefully instructed; they knew that I had been dismissed before I had even arrived. Me being called into (Boss)’s office, this was their cue to quickly dismantle my arrangement: desk, computer, etcetera– At one point I had brought my guitar in to work, as well as some nice business shirts to wear while I was on the road. I had some candies from my mother and a picture of my girlfriend– these were all sitting neatly in my pile of shock and shame. I collected them, doing my best not to seem pathetic, and made my way to the door. (Boss)’s wife offered to help me; she tried to hold the door open, and for the first time in my life I wanted cuss at her– I wanted to mark her check with the back of my hand– right in front of him, but such delusions are as useless as the malevolent urges that predicate them. So I politely said: “No thank you. I have got it.” I shoved all of my belongings into the trunk of my car and I never spoke to any of those people ever again.
. . .
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I think the opening line is all wrong, but the first part of the story is familiar and interesting, the sense of coming home, the great fanfare, then the dying emotions as the novelty wears off. I like it and think it should be expanded significantly.
Unfortunately, the second half of the story loses me completely. I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about. It’s as if I’ve walked into the middle of a conversation at a bar. It’s really disconnected and kind of just floating there.
“One conversation with a local stagehand had unfolded into something of a war story exchange, though I thought nothing of it at the time; I suppose that I should have thought something of it– at least before I had said: “They do meth around here, eh? Do you know where I could get some?” It was all in context of humor– a facetious remark– and maybe if I had been serious, I would have asked again, but this alone was enough to send him to his supervisor, and from his supervisor to my supervisor, and of course then to my boss who (for a myriad of reasons) already didn’t care for me.”
This is a perfect example of show me, don’t tell me.
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