Ugh, Tuesday morning of the first normal week since Carnival. It always takes a while to re-acclimate to normal life again; the time before the parades started already seems a distant memory. For that matter, so do the parades. It’s hard to believe Fat Tuesday was one week ago. Maybe after this weekend I’ll get back to normal.
As if.
So, I spent the last couple of evenings proofing the pages of Wicked Frat Boy Ways, and as I said the other day when I was going over the copy edits, the book is actually much better than I thought it was when I turned it in. I mean, I am my own worst critic (although there are some amazon and Goodreads reviewers giving me a run for my money), and this book was very tricky for me; something I’d never tried before, and a real challenge. I think I was a bit worried that because it was so foreign to me, and so different from anything I’d ever tried to do before, that I had no confidence in my ability to make it work; but it actually did.
PHIL I stopped listening to him a couple of minutes ago. It doesn’t matter. He just wants someone to listen to him drivel on and on.
He won’t notice, either, that all I do is smile and nod, my eyes as wide open as I can make them without worrying about them popping out, and all I am saying is “oh” or “really” with the right, interested inflection when I can tell by his tone that some noise from me is required for him to keep talking. He’s probably the most conceited and self-absorbed alumnus I’ve met, and that is saying something, since I’ve never met any alumnus who isn’t a boring drone who stays involved with the house because they think it was the best time of their life, and being active in the alumni association somehow makes them still a part of the brotherhood. I prefer the ones who just write a check when they get a fundraising letter and never come around.
I mean, I get it. When you’re putting in sixty hours a week at some high-stress job and then come home to a bunch of spoiled kids and a trophy wife who spends all your money faster than you can make it and your own mortality is staring you in the eye, you miss your days in college living at the Beta Kappa house when you didn’t have an asshole boss and your phone wasn’t blowing up all the time with needy asshole clients who act like you’re their own personal slave and all you had to do was show up for class and study every once in a while and spent most of the rest of your time drinking and smoking pot and snorting coke and fucking every girl you could get so wasted she couldn’t say no or stop you from taking their clothes off and doing what you wanted. How many times have I had to listen to some alumnus whose body has gone to seed, who’s gone bald and whose best days were long behind him relive the debaucheries of his youth, getting that sad faraway look in his eyes as he thinks back fondly to that time before he had to be at the office all day only to come home to some bitch of a wife and deal with assholes all the fucking time, remembering when they didn’t have to deal with all the horseshit they have to put up with to get the damned paycheck to keep up the front that they’re living the American fucking dream?
It’s pathetic, really.
It’s just another reason I am glad I am gay.
It’s told in alternating first person point of view present tense; which means everything is happening as you read it. And if you think that isn’t hard to do, well, it sure as hell was for me. It was a risk, a stretch, and a challenge–and I was absolutely certain I was messing it up the entire time I was working on it.
So, it’s kind of a relief to not only have my editor love it, but to reread it and see that I was, as always, expecting the worst of myself. Maybe someday (HA!) I’ll stop doing that.
I also come to a realization about Crescent City Charade over the last few days, and as such, I was able to get started on it yesterday. It was only 517 words, but I will take it!
And now, back to the spice mines.
Here’s a hunk for today:
Queer and Loathing in America 