Honey, I’m home! Happy New Year readers and I hope you all had a marvellous Christmas. I am slowly getting around to catching up on all my favourite bloggers and just generally realigning my addled holiday season brain.
So in that spirit, as I wash away the alcohol soaked onto my skin and try and ferment something creative from this beach head full of saltwater, I am going to post an old short story that I wrote in 2009, when I was 18 years old. It was written as my entry for the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year awards, open to anyone aged 15-18 in NSW and the ACT. As a result of this story, I was chosen as one of ten finalists and invited to read my story at a staged event at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. As well as this, the finalists were thrown a rather decadent lunch, writing workshops, and given a bunch of cool prizes. The winner (sadly not me) was published in the Herald.
I remember it as one of the greatest experiences of my life – the very first time someone other than my mum or my English teacher thought something of my writing, and it encouraged me to take myself seriously.
However, looking back over this story after so many years (published here in an unrevised form; there is so much I wish to do with it!) it is fascinating to note what I perceive as changes in my writing over the years. I have moved from events to people, from explanation to ambiguity, from beginning, middle and end, to something more “photographic” – capturing a moment.
Thus, my New Year’s Writing Resolutions are as follows:
- Get back into short story writing. My obsession with poetry, whilst enjoyable, has been rather all-consuming!
- Learn more about the art in general. What are your favourite short stories? Why?
- Expand my subject matter. Stop writing about misunderstood creatives looking for meaning/love/a biscuit (joking.)
Do you have any New Year’s Writing Resolutions?
The room was tranquil that morning, when John Castle woke for a second time. An empty bottle of tequila clunked dully on the dusty wooden floor, as he lumbered out of bed. The alarm clocks’ wail was like an ice pick, puncturing the soft underbelly of his brain. No wife snuggled into him. No children scampered to say “morning, Daddy!” No roommate announced the coffee was ready, or that it was his turn to pick up the paper, or take the garbage out.
John Castle lived alone. He always had.
And so began another fastidious morning, with a shower, a shave, and a tin of halved peaches. He chose his navy tie, with milky opal stripes, and rammed his suitcase full of rumpled reams of paper.
John left his apartment. Elevator, homeless guy, school bus. The street noise was deafening; the hum of a city just waking, just heaving into motion. As John fumbled for loose change to buy a muffin, he found his business card and stared at it. John Castle, assistant payroll officer for Smith, Benson and Smith, Chartered Accountants.
He had an unimportant desk in a routine grey room which echoed the clip-clop of high heels. He had an empty filing cabinet in the corner; just another one of hundreds in a building that radiated a stale smell of air-conditioning. He had a can of processed spaghetti for lunch. He had mindless chit-chat about reality television, other people’s children and the weather, with a group of people who didn’t care who he was. 36 years old; he had many things, but few of real value. Last month, for his birthday, John’s single, male friends came over with a thick slab of store-bought mud cake. John watched the pastel wax fall drop by drop onto the velvety icing, and thought about how he had never been in love. He was the kind who watched travel shows with wistful sighs, buying bigger televisions to see more clearly.
The 8:17 train was late again. John whistled an old Ella Fitzgerald number, but the thick noise overpowered his meek, momentary outburst of joy. Aboard the train, he squeezed next to a woman with a violet streak in her dark fringe. She was of the full-lipped, cropped-hair, long-eyelashed variety. She reminded John of an old, graceful movie star in a greyscale portrait.
John Castle absentmindedly flipped through the contacts in his mobile. There were only nine. His elder brother, who he hadn’t seen in fifteen years in case one of them should bring up forgotten memories and stupid mistakes of the past. A pretty girl who worked at the coffee shop, who he never had the courage to ask out on a date. The rest were work colleagues, who only rang him to ask if he had finished processing the pay checks, and a few stubbled, lonely friends; equally unadorned, equally unattached.
John Castle thought about his so-called life, watching the junk dot the railway tracks.
When I was young, I wanted to live by the lake we visited in the summer. That lake was always warm, with reeds purring in the breeze. We rode canoes, gliding by; the water is full and heavy to push against. Yet it seemed weightless, like fairy wings.
My occupation of choice changed weekly. Fire-fighter, postman, pro-baseball player, baker, president of the universe.
My wife would be gentle and fun. Would preferably look like Faye Dunaway. I would teach my children to ride bikes along uncluttered roads. Grow old in the house by the lake. Home. No smog, no pretending, no suits, no noise. Just the shimmer.
John was all worked up now. He felt like he’d been smacked in the nose with a football. He clambered off the train and glanced at the departure times for trains to the seaside. He outstretched his arms, as if imploring atonement from the impeded underground sunshine. Feeling an incredible urge to skip work and go to the beach, John bargained with himself as he always did. If he had to wait more than ten minutes for a train, he knew it wasn’t meant to be.
Thirteen minutes.
(Goodbye, cold feet tingling in hot showers, goodbye microwave dinners, goodbye trying to make words from car numberplates, goodbye tumult and slander, goodbye timesheets and imitation paintings. Goodbye magazine clippings and the smell of fresh paint. Goodbye hummingbirds and three birthday cards. Goodbye lost lovers. Goodbye.)
John sighed, and surfaced at the top of the stairs. He smelled the salty pretzels as he walked past a street vendor. He saw a decrepit old woman screaming insanely on the corner. He saw the high-flyers; the designer ensembles, the mobile phones, the endless expressions in the sea of nameless faces. Exhaustion, self-importance, indulgence, boredom. Smiles were fleeting…Rare.
(And voices humming, “suspicious, suspicious,” began to resonate down vacant hallways. Innocence was about to die, and yet we scuttled unknowingly, keeping the peace, adhering to that which is unspoken.)
At the newsagency, John spotted a postcard with a deserted beach splaying across the horizon, where the water twinkled, even off cardboard. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw the gorgeous woman from the train. As she passed him, he felt hints of a smile on his face. He exclaimed,
“I’m quitting my job! I’m going to live by the sea!”
“Nice one!” the woman replied, as if she knew him, flashing a thumbs up, before vanishing into the multitudes of office workers.
John strolled into his building, carefully wording his resignation in his head. Emerging from the tower was Frank Findlay, one of his associates.
“Morning, Frank.”
“Hey, John.”
“Where are you going? We have a meeting in 10 minutes.”
“Just going out for a smoke.”
The elevator whirred up to the seventy-sixth floor. John began to unpack his briefcase. He sat at his computer and opened a new document. He tore yesterday’s page off his miniature calendar to reveal today’s date. September 11th.
Not just another day.
His last day.
And as John Castle sat back in his chair and noticed a plane in that looked too low and too close, he smiled at the thought, transfixed, mute, by what loomed towards him.
Tags: memory, museum of contemporary art sydney, new year, resolutions, short story, sydney morning herald, Writing, young writer
Happenings