"Making Sense", chapter 1
this is the first chapter of a novel I've been taking a break on for ages :)
It's got four (mostly shortish) chapters plus a final chapter so far... but i haven't worked on it in ages and will probably never finish it although I've got it all planned out and all I need to to is to write it down...
the title of the novel is "Making Sense" and that of the chapter is "Not quite the end of the affair".
I've posted excerpts from my novel before, but this is the definite first chapter... (there was another first one.... well this here is the actual first chapter because it provides the frame for the other stuff)...
hehe, i know there's a lot of shift of perspectives, so there's no need to point that out, it's intended that way... :D but let me know if it's too confusing or makes you want to kick the novel in the trash can. feel free to speculate about who the narrator is, though. would be interesting to see what readers think...
I'd also be grateful for feedback on the following points:
a) does this chapter make you want to read more?
b) why/why not?
c) how do you like Anna? how would you characterize her? what about Grumbles?
d) what do you think is gonna happen next?
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP - SleepyWitch :nod:
Not quite the end of the affair
Do you believe in turning points in people's lives?
You know, these fleeting moments when you can make a change.. or you leave it and everything spirals out of control?
I’m not sure I do... Then how can I try and make the two main characters of this story come alive for you? Maybe I can’t.....I've known one of them for almost 7 years, but I still can't figure him out 100%. So, I suppose I'll just have to make them up....
Imagine Grumbles, a man in his 50s, at a school summer festival.
The weather is almost unbearably hot and he has already downed five beers, that is seven too many. He’s the kind of man who has visions of naked Japanese women at least three times a day even when he’s sober. Next to him, his 19- year-old girl friend is shifting restlessly on the bench. She doesn’t want to sit next to him like that with all the other teachers around. It’s not that she’s worried about what people might think about her. It’s him she’s worried for. She wants to go home, but he makes her stay. Right in front of all those people.
Anna, in her 30s, arrives with her daughter. They’ve just taken part in a swimming contest. Grumbles asks his daughter whether she has won. She came in second. Grumbles expresses his disappointment. Next, he tries to extort a report of better success from his wife. But she hasn’t won, either. Grumbles wants to see some achievement. “Well, looks like you didn’t try hard enough. See to it that you do better next time.” Anna wants to go home but Grumbles introduces her to his “most important” student and makes her sit down. Anna looks hurt and lost, but he caresses her arm, makes her sit down and gets her a glass of water. Isn’t he a sweet and caring hubby?
Grumbles is cunning. He’s terrific at gaze-locking. He can stare you out within one second and he can stare at you in class for a year. He touches you up on the corridor, he pokes you in the back right in the middle of the assembly hall. Everybody could notice, but, of course, nobody does. People fail to perceive all kinds of things happening right in front of them because they just can't imagine them happening.
Once a year, come Christmas time, he makes you pity him. He tells the class the tragical story of how he thought he wouldn’t get any presents for Christmas and bought himself a little computer thingy. He looks like a sweet little boy now, and that’s something of an achievement for a bloke in his 50s, isn’t it?
He does his staring and groping for two years running and never says a word about it and then he tells his Christmas story.
He forces you to take the first step. He makes you give him something for Christmas... e.g. a cactus. He loves it. Nobody in their right mind would want a cactus for a Christmas present, but he loves it. He touches it and asks whether it likes classical music. Then he asks if it’s meant to be an “allusion” to anything. There’s this glint in his eyes and he’s fooling around with his tongue. He’s trying to be sexy and I’m forced to think “Of course it’s an allusion. Its spikes look like the stubbles on your cheeks and I’d really love to kiss you.” Obviously, I don’t, not with Mrs Old-Spinster-the-Latin-Teacher lurking around and what would all the children think anyway? I still don’t know what’s ‘sexy’ about a cactus, by the way...
Grumbles plays a game of cat and mouse for two years running and then he forces you to take the fist step and all of a sudden the world is full of femmes fatales and he’s such an innocent little boy.
This is Grumbles the Seduced.
After the school festival Grumbles, Anna and the children go home in their car. Grumbles is in a quirky mood, against the odds.
Anna isn't speaking, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
At home, the children torture the rabbit outside in the garden and Grumbles pours himself some vegetable juice in the kitchen. Anna starts to make the dinner. She still looks like a puppy that’s been kicked around. “What’s the matter with you?” Grumbles barks. Her expression hardens and her eyes look.... broken. She’s an innocent little puppy with a very strained look on her face. “I’m alright. Could you pass me the salt, please?” she asks. “Listen, I don’t feel like arguing with you right now.” Grumbles blurts out. ‘Right now’ as in: always. Do you think she knows what’s going on? I think she does. So why doesn’t she ****ing lash out? Why doesn’t she yell at him or slap him or scrape his bowels out with a spoon or at least kick his balls? Or cry and scream and give him a good “you don’t love me and you never have” and tell him he’s the biggest ****ing ****hole-bastard there ever was? Why doesn’t she bite like a big dog?
She’ll visit her sister next door later on.
“Could you pass me the salt, please.” Anna repeats. Grumbles passes her the salt and traipses off to snarl at the children to leave the rabbit alone and have they gone bonkers! Anna makes the dinner.
This is Anna, the Lost Puppy.
Now imagie these two people married to each other. Do you think they make a good match, or a ‘happy couple’ or some crap? Do you feel I’ve mentioned at least some of the turning points in their lives?
This is the story of Anna the Puppy and Grumbles the Seduced.
It’s one of those stories that don’t make any sense, that seem bizare and that could have been avoided, in retrospect. Or couldn’t it have?
It's a story that happens every day and perhaps it's one of those stories that don't even matter very much one way or the other, or at least from the outside they don't. But then again....
