Coming Back to Life
Feb. 23rd, 2002 05:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonne{The following is a rough draft. Very rough.}
It's not polite to joke about Martin Road. Of course everyone does.
It's hard for me to bite my tongue. I walk out of the subway station on Martin and Fichune and the smell hits me -- peanut oil is burning. Strung-out kids are selling bootleg movies and speaking in tongues.
I'm closer to Grandentine Boulevard than I am to the suburbs. I start walking briskly up Martin toward the only brand-name store in the neighborhood. These three blocks always drive me nuts. I shouldn't be lost. I used to live in a lousier place. Still, I'm ready to piss myself.
I pass two bodegas along the way. The first has Jesus candles blocking both windows. The candles spell "He cries for you", blue candles forming the letters and white ones forming the background. This store sells the best sweet potato pie in thirty miles, but it's never open after 5.
The second bodega is never closed. This is Hai Dahronn, "Fresh Delights". Whatever delights may have once been fresh in that store have long since been replaced with malt liquor and skeer. I feel the twinge, but I resist buying any skeer tonight. Skeer (schkrokkai dezhalbar) tastes a lot like carrots. You can swallow it, but you won't sleep right. If you chew it like gum and spit it out once you feel itchy, you'll be tweaking for a good few hours. Chew a little more before work and you'll be a great drone for the day. When you come down, you'll feel like you watched a short movie of your workday and now you're ready for bed. You will dream about monsters, but you'll be fine.
Yeah, us ghosties aren't supposed to know about skeer. I wear a tie. Other folks on skeer ask me how I don't fuck up my work on skeer -- type meaningless lines, say exactly what I'm thinking instead of lying deftly, twitch uncontrollably and get hauled into a conference room to explain myself. Skeer is for janitors and folks doing drone work. It's cheap, even though it's popular, because it's legal and anyone can grow it on a windowsill. It's best if you need to do some boring work for a month and don't want to think about it.
After a month, you move from itchy and productive to petit seizures and zombified. One time I had a hard time discerning night from day, even if though the sun was out. I felt nauseous but I hadn't eaten 36 hours. I knew this was wrong, so I stopped. Then I fell asleep on the subway. I woke up a couple hours later, figured out enough to get off, and walked to my bed. I couldn't remember walking. All I remembered was wondering if I should call ahead about not coming in on Monday. I woke up about 20 hours later. I ate a whole pizza.
I can't recall when skeer first showed up. I know it blew my mind that most of my friends, even the really hip ones, had never heard of it. I remember going on a road trip and telling some woman at a bar about it. She thought I was making it up. So I gave her some. You can't really fuck on skeer -- all the parts work, but you don't feel anything. You could be having a magnificent orgasm; you feel like you're in the kitchen making a sandwich.
Zombies. Martin Road has lots of zombies. I notice the zombie count is slightly lower than it used to be. A year ago, I saw two guys trying to mop the sidewalk. They were counting in rhythm -- "huul, sgaa, dinnett, poaway, nazh. Huul, sgaa..." Skeer will give away which planet you're from really fast. I learned a lot of Razu'i while on skeer:
De peddi shkaddaduhn vparez zhdaien? "How much for a bag of your wares?";
Gazaelihn nyarl foiess shkaddr. "Here's a tidy quantity";
Polti iv meenles. "Feelings are landings", or "you've come down because now you're cranky.". This is an expression describing the moment skeer has exited your system enough that you have a normal range of emotional responses.
When I gave it up, I had to quit both of my jobs. I'd earned enough money to fly home and never work again for ten years. However, it took eight months out of my life and added a couple years in gray hairs and fatigue. I found I'd been living in a small, dingy apartment one block from Martin Road. It wasn't until the third day off skeer that noticed the apartment building I lived had been condemned for a month. I went into my morning job and realized I'd been testing cement for stress factors; I didn't even know what the job was until then. I had lost half my body weight, a dream come true. I found notes all over my apartment reminding myself to eat, what types of foods should be involved.
The notes... those are another story.
You have a fuck buddy. Her name is Caldra. She lives three houses down. If she calls, don't mention you're from Earth.
When the power goes out, which it does once a month, you have two days to eat what's in the fridge. When the power comes back, throw out everything. The microbes are weird here.
This isn't Earth. Water can be expensive here. Don't drink the booze or you'll dehydrate.
There are more. Lots more. I notice now that most of them aren't in my handwriting.
It's not polite to joke about Martin Road. Of course everyone does.
It's hard for me to bite my tongue. I walk out of the subway station on Martin and Fichune and the smell hits me -- peanut oil is burning. Strung-out kids are selling bootleg movies and speaking in tongues.
I'm closer to Grandentine Boulevard than I am to the suburbs. I start walking briskly up Martin toward the only brand-name store in the neighborhood. These three blocks always drive me nuts. I shouldn't be lost. I used to live in a lousier place. Still, I'm ready to piss myself.
I pass two bodegas along the way. The first has Jesus candles blocking both windows. The candles spell "He cries for you", blue candles forming the letters and white ones forming the background. This store sells the best sweet potato pie in thirty miles, but it's never open after 5.
The second bodega is never closed. This is Hai Dahronn, "Fresh Delights". Whatever delights may have once been fresh in that store have long since been replaced with malt liquor and skeer. I feel the twinge, but I resist buying any skeer tonight. Skeer (schkrokkai dezhalbar) tastes a lot like carrots. You can swallow it, but you won't sleep right. If you chew it like gum and spit it out once you feel itchy, you'll be tweaking for a good few hours. Chew a little more before work and you'll be a great drone for the day. When you come down, you'll feel like you watched a short movie of your workday and now you're ready for bed. You will dream about monsters, but you'll be fine.
Yeah, us ghosties aren't supposed to know about skeer. I wear a tie. Other folks on skeer ask me how I don't fuck up my work on skeer -- type meaningless lines, say exactly what I'm thinking instead of lying deftly, twitch uncontrollably and get hauled into a conference room to explain myself. Skeer is for janitors and folks doing drone work. It's cheap, even though it's popular, because it's legal and anyone can grow it on a windowsill. It's best if you need to do some boring work for a month and don't want to think about it.
After a month, you move from itchy and productive to petit seizures and zombified. One time I had a hard time discerning night from day, even if though the sun was out. I felt nauseous but I hadn't eaten 36 hours. I knew this was wrong, so I stopped. Then I fell asleep on the subway. I woke up a couple hours later, figured out enough to get off, and walked to my bed. I couldn't remember walking. All I remembered was wondering if I should call ahead about not coming in on Monday. I woke up about 20 hours later. I ate a whole pizza.
I can't recall when skeer first showed up. I know it blew my mind that most of my friends, even the really hip ones, had never heard of it. I remember going on a road trip and telling some woman at a bar about it. She thought I was making it up. So I gave her some. You can't really fuck on skeer -- all the parts work, but you don't feel anything. You could be having a magnificent orgasm; you feel like you're in the kitchen making a sandwich.
Zombies. Martin Road has lots of zombies. I notice the zombie count is slightly lower than it used to be. A year ago, I saw two guys trying to mop the sidewalk. They were counting in rhythm -- "huul, sgaa, dinnett, poaway, nazh. Huul, sgaa..." Skeer will give away which planet you're from really fast. I learned a lot of Razu'i while on skeer:
De peddi shkaddaduhn vparez zhdaien? "How much for a bag of your wares?";
Gazaelihn nyarl foiess shkaddr. "Here's a tidy quantity";
Polti iv meenles. "Feelings are landings", or "you've come down because now you're cranky.". This is an expression describing the moment skeer has exited your system enough that you have a normal range of emotional responses.
When I gave it up, I had to quit both of my jobs. I'd earned enough money to fly home and never work again for ten years. However, it took eight months out of my life and added a couple years in gray hairs and fatigue. I found I'd been living in a small, dingy apartment one block from Martin Road. It wasn't until the third day off skeer that noticed the apartment building I lived had been condemned for a month. I went into my morning job and realized I'd been testing cement for stress factors; I didn't even know what the job was until then. I had lost half my body weight, a dream come true. I found notes all over my apartment reminding myself to eat, what types of foods should be involved.
The notes... those are another story.
You have a fuck buddy. Her name is Caldra. She lives three houses down. If she calls, don't mention you're from Earth.
When the power goes out, which it does once a month, you have two days to eat what's in the fridge. When the power comes back, throw out everything. The microbes are weird here.
This isn't Earth. Water can be expensive here. Don't drink the booze or you'll dehydrate.
There are more. Lots more. I notice now that most of them aren't in my handwriting.
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no subject
Date: 2002-02-24 06:42 pm (UTC)I like a lot of the details - strung out kids speaking in tongues, the first & second bodegas, etc. But could you explain more about why the narrator *did* manage to function so well on skeer? And were the notes also because of this drug? I *love* the notes. :) I'm just not quite clear on what necessitates them, and the progression could be more linear and clarified.
It's just starting to brew
Okay, the notes are a starting point. What you've seen so far is more like a spoken outline of the second chapter of something. Maybe it's the movie trailer. The thoughts are a culmination of some ideas I've had about a city and some stuff I'm trying to figure out about my attitudes toward work.
There will be more notes, oh yes. Some notes will turn into plot devices.
How did he work while strung out? We'll see that the first day he's back at one of his jobs. I'm not sure how much you want given away...
This is goign to get long. I would like to avoid the length modern novels tend to get (400 pages and halfway mark isn't in sight?), especially since a first book shouldn't be anything so broad. I've got about four characters, a few places, some inanimate objects that will become more important, and some plot. I have a climax but no ending, if that makes sense. I can't type it fast enough -- especially since I have so many other things to do.
Thank you. Another installment is on the way!
-left foot right foot, Dante