My agent, the ever patient Adrian Courtenay, sipped on his Macchiato. We were sitting in a coffee shop in West Perth at 2.30PM on a Wednesday afternoon – don’t ask me which week or month because they were all a bit of a blur. I was acutely aware of how I looked:
Run down.
Unkempt.
Alcoholic.
Bohemian.
Womanizer.
I was all of these at once – a romantic notion of the artist at full speed. It was like I was determined to fulfill every idiosyncrasy of the desperate novelist – misunderstood, misinterpreted, misanthropic. I was a walking stereotype.
I was not completely oblivious to how I looked and I carried off chic-tramp quite well. I welcomed the self-imposed prison of spiraling health, aware of the irony that this jail was indeed some form of escape. What I knew, deep down, was that this outward expression was simply a manifestation of my inherent desire to fuck things up in life – a self-destructive masochistic tendency that I had always had.
Occupation was irrelevant – I was always going to end up in this place. Life determined the path I took to get there.
And I was certainly out of kilter with my surroundings on this day – an environment that only a few years before I inhabited with corporate arrogance. In the years I worked as a design engineer for an architectural firm, I lurked these trendy streets, devouring expensive coffee at impromptu street-side meetings, necking cider and Semillon after 5PM at hipster wine bars, mixing with the beautiful men (all side-parts and beards) and the nubile young women with their barely there clothing and unattainable sensuality.
But I looked out of sync with the world in the cafe this morning. My three-day growth was closer to a three-week growth – decidedly non-hipster. I guessed I was two unshaven days away from completing the look of a bum.
“I know what you are saying Adrian,” I said and took a sip of the Cappuccino, milky froth sticking to my moustache. “I am starting to get my shit together – I really am. I have started on something, but I’m just not ready to show you yet.”
“You know it doesn’t need to be finished. Just show me what you have and we can go from there.”
Adrian actually did care about me – not only because I was his meal ticket, but we had a genuine friendship as well. At least, I was pretty sure we did. I suppose most people might think the same of their agents – those who have them – and that might just be the sign of a good agent, rather than an actual friendship.
However, he looked uncomfortable here with me today though. His plaid waistcoat made him look bloated, like he was stuffed inside his skin. The business shirt (buttoned all the way to the collar) and his tie rode up his chest as he sat down, pushing on his neck and accentuating his double chin. It was a warm day, too hot for the pretension of a waistcoat – hence Adrian looked flushed, his face ruddy and the beads of sweat that formed under his eyes made him look nervous/shifty.
Although not totally lucid or in tune with anyone else other than myself, I could still notice his discomfort. He had been there through the dark times and he knew some of my debauchery that had followed. The decline of my recent behaviour was not fully known to all, but Adrian knew more than most. He did deserve something from me. And I could see that he cared.
“It’s about a guy who has a car accident,” I started to tell him. “He goes to therapy and meets others who have had accidents. The therapist also has some extra-curricular activities with a group he’s involved in where they have sex whilst crashing cars. That’s about as far as I have gone so far…actually, I haven’t even gotten that far really. I’m two chapters in, but I think they’re okay so far.”
“Sounds a bit like ‘Crash’ by JG Ballard,” Adrian offered. It never ceased to amaze me the depth of his pop culture knowledge.
“It’s meant to,” I offered, not knowing where this sentence was going to take me.
The truth is, I had written two chapters (I think so anyway – the Colby Chapter, free-formed as it was through a half-drunk, half-sick haze of inspiration, perspiration and intoxication, may well become Chapter 2) and I had no idea where it was going. This was ‘winging-it-101’ right here. I was free-styling on the spot, opening up my head to see what would come out.
“Well, whatever it’s about,” Adrian continued, “we will need to see something in the next month or so otherwise the publisher is likely to cancel the deal. They want to follow up pretty quickly but the longer it takes, the less likely they will do so.”
He was right and I knew it. Despite my demons, my addictions, my weaknesses, I knew that I had a commitment to come good on the deal. At this point in the process I was certain that I had nothing to give them, the daunting task of providing the first few chapters was only slightly less intimidating than sobriety.
But there was a story in there somewhere I could feel it.
I had no idea how long I sat there silent as I let Adrian’s words sink into me, like water slowly permeating a membrane. They seeped in, nourishing me, inspiring me. He didn’t want to break the silence, but I had entered “The Zone” – a virtual reality that he knew, only too well, not to pull me from.
Eventually I grunted something – a mixture of begrudging acknowledgment and acquiescence.
“Anyway Michael, I’ll leave you to it,” Adrian replied brightly, in victory. “You know what they want. Personally though, take a fucking shower will you? You look like a bum.” He threw down $20 on the table, always the excessive tipper, and left.
That was the last detail I recalled. My mind wandered into the darkness despite the omniscient glare of the West Australian sunshine. I smelled coffee, I sensed humanity around me, but I became an island.
Closure
Phrases popped into my skull.
Was it good luck to have survived an horrific accident? Or bad luck to end up a shell of your former self?
Was this a question for my Colby character, or for myself?
There is no closure.
That was certainly true for me – time, chemicals, debauchery…nothing ever closed the wounds.
I saw an elderly gent at a small “table-for-one”, reading the paper and drinking tea. I wondered why he was alone. Could he be my next character? I got out my pen and paper and began to write: