Painful Look Back

“Rip Van Winkle Interlude” is the note at the top of the journal page in which I found it, a note designed to separate it from a haphazard collection of related stories that I will not dignify with the title of “unfinished novel.”

Because there’s something special about the first novel you abandon, a warm feeling of enthusiasm you can re-experience years later, long after you realize how unjustified that enthusiasm was.

This story didn’t reach that level. It was a fumbling, meandering series of character sketches drifting toward a plot, but it froze in place before it ever got there.

The original idea was to follow several characters through a single summer in a small town, and this is “the gathering” stage. Already it has something in common with the sequential quality of the Highlander movies, so you can guess that the next stages in the collection must have been ‘the quickening,’ ‘the sucking,’ and ‘the not-squeezing any more value out of this franchise.’

The note in the margin indicates that this was “transferred in full” out of the notebook, and “edited and generally sorted out”. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate any later drafts in print or electronic, so we may never know if I was a better editor in 1999 than I was a writer in 1998.

Sleep. Bed.
“The two always go together,” Andrew said. “Shall we take you back there?
Benedict considered this. “Hells yeah.”

Some of the other wordbrew editors remember hearing that phrase back then. If I could change only one line in this story, this would be it.

Past the fountain, down the steps, up the hill, through the door, the hall and the familiar split grain door of his apartment.
“Here we are…” said Andrew.
“Here we aren’t…” said Benedict.
He was reliving the contradictions of his paper.
“It’s like a sparrow molting inside the nest.”

Utter BS. Why not come up with some quality gibberish, Kevin?

Now it was the analogy reproach. Andrew figured he had to get him to bed before the closing argument came into play.

I don’t know what this meant back then, and it was clear that I had no idea what preliminary exams actually were like. It sounds as if I must have overheard pieces of what my grad school friends and family were doing, and tried to fill in the gaps with more gibberish.

He said so: “I’m going to put you to sleep, son, before you spout your closing argument, ‘cause I think that would kill you. And if it didn’t, I would. Now, don’t wake up until you’re ready.”

“son” — Faux Southern Accent? Sometimes it doesn’t pay to write the way people actually talk.

Benedict tried to toss his head in derision, tried to bristle, but only succeeded in lolling his head. Than he forgot to bristle and stood there looking confused and irritated. He knew he wanted to protest, but he couldn’t remember what he had planned to say. There are few things sadder than a deferred retort. Once deferred, there was nothing for him do but acquiesce.

“Keys?” Andrew asked. It was the last hurdle.
Once inside it was a simple matter of steering a willing sleeper toward the bed. The second, third, and fourth wind had been exhausted, and the body, if not the wind, was receptive to the idea of sleep.

Another editor wondered if these guys were going to get into bed together. No, they’re just buddies who, had they been called out for their gentleness here, would have coughed uncomfortably and started grumbling about football. Or maybe just start punching each other, in a hetero life partner kind of way.

“Gonna sleep for a week, at least.”
“More than that, if you know what’s good for you.” Andrew responded good naturedly.
“A week,” Benedict repeated, turning on his side and looking out the window. “More.”

He awoke to the sound of laughter.
Sitting up in bed, he remembered what he had seen.
Sleeping in fits, he had wakened intermittently to view the window, courtyard and flagpole beyond. A panty-raid resulted in some no-nonsense white female undergarments to be hoisted. Waking intermittently in the flip book style had created a sense of animation: the brassiere and panty combo became more and more sheer. The fabric changed color multiple times.

He peered out at the underwear now. It was transparent.

This is a reference to “The Time Machine,” the early part where the protagonist is moving forward through time very slowly, watching the styles change on the ladies’ mannequin across the street. Naturally, as he moves forward in time, the skirts get shorter to mark the loosening of society’s mores.

This clumsy reference doesn’t make a lick of sense for many reasons, first and foremost because people stopped doing panty-raids a long time ago.

Well rested, and restless, Benedict arose and dressed, anxious to visit the outside world. Preliminary exams were a distant memory, but a persistent one - he was anxious to know how well he had performed.

He started his computer, clicked on the web browser, and brewed some coffee in his kitchenette. Brewed, and half consumed, he happened to glance back at the screen. It was still struggling to load.

A dialogue box popped up, stating that error 124 had occurred. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“What system are you using?” Asked the caller, making no pretense at introductory civility.
“I’m sorry?”
“System. What computer system? For the internet?”
Benedict didn’t say anything. He hung up and left the room. The phone rang behind him.

Out on the quad, a large number of students had begun a game of ultimate Frisbee. They tossed the disc with little regard to the statues, a small forest of which covered the courtyard. Upon reaching the English building, Benedict stopped when he realized that the door now sported an ID card reader. He swiped his student ID card and walked through, marveling at the growing paranoia that had seized campus.

The great hall was empty. The offices on either side stretched before him, and more by habit than by cognitive thought, he stopped at the fifth door, that of his thesis advisor, to find: “Erin Pappas.”

That was what the door plaque read, but his adviser was an overweight bulimic chain smoker known as Bill Varris.

Please excuse the nonsense adjectives. I was sick the day they taught characterization in W-school.

Perhaps the offices had been switched around. He scanned the rest of the names, not one of which was familiar. Perhaps the departments had been switched.
This was enough to cause alarm. Servers could crash, and strangers could call and ask what operating system he was using, and Benedict would take it in stride. But remove his people, his department, his life, from the nurturing confines of the Great Hall, and he would go to pieces.

Time travelers are, by and large, drama queens. At least the Connecticut Yankee took control of his life in King Arthur’s court with a minimum of angst.

But not yet.

First he would use the remainder of his calm inertia to phone a peer and ask what the hell was going on. The secretary’s office was empty, and he searched for a phone fruitlessly for several minutes before giving up. The lounge phone was gone, as well, but he found a severely mangled payphone outside behind the faculty lot.

He took the receiver off the cradle and dialed Julia’s cellphone number. She answered on the second ring.
“Leave me alone, asshole.”
“Julia, it’s me, Benedict.”
“Oh, god, I’m sorry, Ben. I thought you were somebody else.”

Another one of wordbrew’s editors noted that Julia should have been able to see the number of the incoming call on her cell. I don’t recall if that was true at that time, but it is possible. Of course, it’s also possible that one call would look like another, if they were all in the same zip code and Julia was too angry not to check too closely.

“So I gathered. What’s with the department?”
“What isn’t? The place has been a mess since Varris quit as Director.”
Something lurched in Benedict’s stomach as two facts filtered into his brain. A) Varris had been Director, and B) he no longer was.

How long had he been asleep?

Benedict dismissed the crazy but logical idea that he might be a latter day Rip-Van Winkle. If that idea were true it would be incredibly inconvenient.
“Julia, what day is it?”
“I have no idea.”

Why doesn’t she know? College bubble, I suppose.

“What month?”
“It’s probably still May. Have you been drinking?”
“I have no idea.”
“So I gathered.”

Pitter-Patter dialogue. I must have thought this was a good idea, but now it sounds like an ESL audio program. Lesson one, limited vocabulary.

A distant sound, that of a leaf blower or an ambitious grasshopper, grew louder. Next question:
“Julia, do you remember when I took prelims?”
“Sure, it was a week ago.”
Benedict decided to float a crazy theory. “Julia, is your underwear transparent?”
Julia hung up.

At least there wasn’t a ‘Ride of the Valkyries‘ reference. Why? Oh, you’ll see.

Benedict held the receiver for a few moments more, considering the possibilities. Had he, in fact, made good on his promise to sleep for an entire week? What sort of changes could he expect? And, most of all, what kind of underwear did Julia wear?

He was still considering this when the helicopter crested the hill. He dropped the receiver and stared at it as it approached inexorably. Some instinct told him to run, but in fact he walked away and pitched headlong when the hovering craft fired a rocket at the phone he had just used.

Wires and smoldering plastic fell from his prone form as he rose, jaw agape, and watched the craft depart. Was someone trying to kill him? He could think of few outside of the theatre or accounting departments who would want to do that.

‘Cause… It’s Wacky? There was really no other reason to write this, other than creating an absurd situation where cellphone companies attack their landline competition.

Benedict returned to his apartment. Firefighters were putting out a blaze on his floor. He turned away and walked to Andrew’s dorm.
Andrew was there, thankfully, typing out a paper in jovial spirits. It was one of his more annoying traits.
“Hey there, Rise and Shine - what’s happening, man?” Andrew saved his document and stood up. “Feeling better?”
Benedict looked at him, the room, and out the window before returning his gaze to his friend.
“Not really, no.”

Andrew drifted up and down between nonchalance and intense concern. Didn’t change the fact that Benedict was, to put it mildly, pole axed.

I still use this sometimes, and I’m not sure why. That’s probably the most depressing part of this exercise.

One week had passed.
One.

“So,” Andrew asked, “What did you do when you woke up?”
“I logged onto the server.”
“With?”
“Pagefinder 7.5″
“Oh my god.”
“God wouldn’t help.”
“Neither will Pagefinder 7.5 What happened next?”

It was an Ethernet environment. Netscape was still competing with Internet Explorer as an equal, and both constantly released new versions and updates. Hence, this fake browser.

“I walked across the quad.”
“Okay.”
“Went into the Great Hall”
“Okay.”
“Made a phone call.”
“To who?”
“Julia.”
“She’s been out of sorts lately,” Andrew muttered and his face showed a flush of irritation.
Benedict peered at him carefully. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
The other bit his lip.
“She’s angry with you, isn’t she?”
Andrew scowled. “Never mind that! So, you called Julia… I didn’t realize you had a cell phone.”
“I don’t.”
“You mean - wait a minute, how did you make the call? Did you borrow someone else’s?”
“No.”
“How’d you call her?”
“I used the payphone behind the faculty lot.”
“Son of a bitch! There’s a phone there?”
“There was. A helicopter came along and blew it up.”
“Naturally.”
“How do you figure?”
Andrew shrugged. “”That’s what cellphone companies do.”
“They do?”
“Of course.”
“Blow up phones?”
“Corded phones, yes.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“You gonna tell the cell phone companies what to do?”

Sitcom timing? Yeesh.

This was a bit much. Benedict decided, for his own sake and ours, to recap:
“So, I slept a week, and now women wear transparent underwear, the English department has completely turned over, and the cell phone conglomerates can call in air strikes against corded phones without fear of reprisal?”

Andrew flopped into a beanbag chair that belonged to his roommate. “Yeah,” he said finally. “But what’ll really get you is the music people listen to nowadays.”
Benedict leaned forward intently. So did Andrew.
“Spoon bands,” Andrew whispered. “They’re huge.”
Benedict straightened, compressed his mouth.
“Get outta town. You’re making that up.”
“Yes, I am,” Andrew replied. “But nobody says that anymore.”

This is why I try to set my newer material on fish farms.