This is Not A Beginning

Chapter One
Introducing the End

Couldn’t they somehow make the background a little darker? Jack Party had always preferred the foggy corners of his neighbourhood. These days there’s little enough margin to manoeuver without having a spotlight on you. But the place was lit up like a hospital waiting room. He remembered everything much darker.

The problem with fitting paradigms to your finances is that sooner or later your balance is going to demand you consider a contrary position. At 34, he wasn’t at all prepared for the dive but here he was, the wind screaming through his hair on the way down.

Jack Party used to be a hit. But everyone had left him behind. How is he ever going to get back up again? Will he even bother? What would be the point? He was a rigorous self-hater. He had been born a critic. Born contrary. But he found out that his perch wasn’t high enough for him to say the things he’d been saying. So he turned his daggers on himself and there was plenty to stab. He’d torn apart almost everything he’d ever loved or known how to do and now he was just a collection of ragged holes and shame.

It made him nervous to come back to the old places. The angles were always off. Everyone either looked stretched or swollen. At least here they were all just as drunk as they'd ever been.

"I think listening to rock lyrics ruined your ability to write." Tits was full of himself again and was getting to his drunk unbearable stage. He kept tilting the table and was burning through credits.

"Whatever man. You can’t even write a cheque." Jack signalled for two more whiskeys. He hated writers. Especially staff writers. Who ever heard of an employed writer anyway? He remembered again why they called it cold hard cash.

"Don’t be so bitter Jack. Just because you can’t do it anymore." Tits slapped him on the back like a buddy.

He would have swung at him right the; flash anger. But Tits’ fists were like coffee tables. He couldn't afford new glasses either.

Later on, Tits had fallen out of the bar and Jack was slurring his way through the waitresses. That’s when she appeared beside him. He thought he was dreaming. But there she was and she was talking to him. He loved her but he couldn’t stop what was going to happen. What was happening.

Oh Jack, stupid poor Jack. The way she said it, he knew he’d asked her to come back again. What did you expect was going to happen to you Jack? Did you think that things were just magically going to work out someday? Someone’s gonna’ swoop down and pluck you out of this crowd of losers? Because you’re so talented? She made a sarcastic pluck at him. You think you deserve something for being you?

He reached for her like he used to. But she floated out of his grasp like all his best ideas.

I just came by to give you this. Don’t call me anymore Jack.
The orange light shimmered and blurred the puddles of drink under his elbows and he spun the gold ring around and around. Women can turn on you, he thought and then the bar hit him in the face.

Chapter Two
Dead Man’s Mirror

Maybe it didn’t happen. He stared in the mirror at the plum lump on his forehead. Maybe she hadn’t really been there. Grim yellow teeth grinned within the white lime foam. Dead man’s teeth, he thought. Some dead man staring at me in my own goddamned mirror.

Hand shaking he scraped the dulled razor along his neck. Maybe today will be different. Maybe something will happen. God I hope not, he thought and cut himself again.

Chapter Three
How Much For The Blonde

He was finally sitting at the typewriter and then the door bell rang. It had taken him almost 17 days to barely sit in front of the thing and now the doorbell.

Jack looked up the stairs and thought about trying to crawl up under the window’s view to hide in the bathroom, but then a rap on the front pane snapped his head up. Always pull the blind, the too-late mantra, and he tried to make his bathrobe look cleaner. He opened the door and she was so smutty and gorgeous he couldn’t remember inviting her in.

Tanner waved her hand in front of her pretty nose and said "You really ought to kill those cats Jack." But she said it sweet.

He lit the stump of a scented candle and motioned her to the [style of chair]. She thumbed the last toke he was holding at her and they watched thick smoke pile around in the slanted sun.

"Cats’d be fine if their shelf-life was five years."

She took in the half-filled tumblers, the typewriter, the ashtray. "You’re working I see. That’s a good sign".

"I’m typing. Don’t know if you could call it writing."

"Let me take a look." She stretched her long fingers across his empty mind and pulled the page from the carriage."

Chapter Four
Sticks

Smoking. The way that it used to be. When we smoked fifteens and puked. When you didn’t have to ask. Just as smoking was going bad. Everything started going bad when we were coming up. Anyone that tells you that money doesn’t matter has too much money. They should give it to you then.

You could smoke in school. We smoked in the senior’s cafeteria but then the next year we could only smoke in the back of the school. By our last year, no smoking on school property period. Once the typing teacher caught us smoking on the ramp and she said to put it out, but he wouldn’t and then she got stern and said, Put. It. Out. So he put it out on his palm, looking at her, and she said Thank You, and smiled at him. She was hot, that typing teacher. FFF. You bet.

No one used to ask if they could smoke. People used to give you cigarettes and an ashtray when you came over. It was common courtesy.I quit smoking because I was going broke and I’d already given up food. Stretch the money. But as soon as I quit them, I needed to fuck. All the time. Like there was real pressure. Like a can of soup in a fire.

Chapter Five
Ativan and Me

When I first met her she was crawling around on the ground at a party and she was screaming "can someone please help me find my acid?"

I asked my friend "Who is she?"

J figures she's gonna die of hepatitis. She’s partied since she was 12. She’s the ultimate worst case scenario. But she’s very well read, very intelligent.

The mother worked in public broadcasting for 25 years. The father lives in BC and has a ridiculously huge record collection. It takes up the whole house. They broke up when she was three. He said, Let’s get the daughter and go climb the mountains! And her mother said, Are you crazy? No way. So he went anyway and never came back. Now she doesn’t know how to fit in with regular people.

Me either, I say.

Just be your usual drunk, oblivious and charming self.

...

I made a conscious decision to smoke pot at 26. I just thought, I have to get off the pills.

What pills were you on?

Ativan. Sister drug to Valium. It mellows you out but it also makes you lose all of your inhibitions. My pharmapsychologist, he was a major drug pusher. He got me on anti-depessants, but I got off those. Because I was clinically depressed.

My parents had no idea. I remember my mother confronting me once. I was crying in my room. She grabbed my hand and said what’s wrong with you. And then she started to see my pill bottles around. My doctor was affiliated with the Clark Institute so he got me the drugs for less than cost. My elevator job coincided with the depression.

I remember that job.

I was in great distress. Could barely hang on to it. Completely trashed my last year of university. Had to have it expunged from my record. F’s across the board. So the doctor said, here I’ll get you Ativan. In the end I took myself off of them. He didn’t give a shit.

What's it like? Ativan.

It’s like a weird dome of calm descends over you. Nothing bothers you. Everything is great. But the drug only works for about 4 or 5 hours. Then it leaves your system and you’re just really tired. But the really weird thing is the next day when you woke up, you couldn’t remember anything from the day before during your Ativan period.

Then I found out about sub-linguals. My friend used to pilfer her father’s scripts and one time when I was running out she offered me a few. They were sub-linguals. You put them under your tongue and they hit you a hundred times as fast as regular pills. It's like a crack high almost, it's so immediate. After that, I never went back to regular.

When my friends father died, she gave me the rest of his pills. When you’ve got a dead man’s prescription in your bag, that’s how you know you’ve got a problem.

Well, you're fine now.

Yeah.