A first stab at my (legendary unwritten) book.

What follows is a first draft copy (meaning subject/likely to change a million and one times) of the introduction to the book I'm writing. It is not my intention to publish the whole thing in a blog, but I've nothing else to post here as all my writing time is taken up with it. Since the summer is coming up I thought those familiar with this time of year in GA may appreciate it, or anyone victim to heat and humidity. And to those who live in Sioux Falls and want to tell me how it can get so humid in this midwestern town, that's cute now go fuck yourself.

Also, I had someone read this and thought I was gay bashing. The account that follows is very true; the only part of my book that actually happened, but have tried in my way, however faultering, to make it clear it was the heat that fueled my irrationality, not sexual preference, without having to do some kind of P.C. re-write for television where I gotta spell the fucking thing out, hug one of those absurdly outrageous fags from "Queer Eye" to violin music while both of us are hugged and kissed on the forehead by Danny Tanner from "Full House". That would be gay.

Enjoy.

Introduction to Sky-blue Sky



Jesus Christ, that autumnal breeze. Or is it autumnal scent? Whichever it has been the sole bane in my endeavor to write, to capture anything on the page. Faint as a dead saint’s whisper it comes in the dog days of August when I am at the end of my rope, when its time to punch the queer in the back of his head at some burrito joint for taking too long, talking to his boyfriend about every god damned thing on the menu, and the only reason I’m here is because, I swear to God, I thought there was air conditioning. The heat and humidity get into your skin. A few steps outside and there is no difference between yourself and the swelter. There are two standing fans oscillating at each entrance. They both turn to me as I make a step towards the fag and ball up my fist, they whisper to me. I turn around and walk out. It’s too hot for eating burritos.

That’s what summer is like in Atlanta. It’s not so much the heat as it is so much fucking heat; and enough humidity to swim to work. This is when people lose it in rush hour traffic. This is when fights break out for seemingly no reason. The homeless and elderly start to turn up dead. Even the most stalwart of citizens curse the South and grumble in their minds, two more years, I swear, and I’m gone. The jokes and comradeship over the weather that bring passing strangers together were worn out and forgotten by the end of July.

It is not the endurance test that romantics fantasize about when dreaming of conquering the elements. It is simply what must pass, and no patience or other virtue will avail you cooler disposition; lighter mood. You burn. We all burn. Summer in the South is its own plane of existence; harsh and omnipresent. Benign to opinion and attitude the only way to get through it is to find cover, wait it out, or flee.

Then, Jesus Christ, that autumnal breeze. Or maybe it is scent, as any wind can offer relief, albeit a relative relief. I call it a wind, but… I felt, or I smelled it, outside the burrito stand among all that congestion on Monroe Drive. It calms me; I’m sorry for calling that guy a queer, or thinking it anyway. Was I really going to hit him? It’s just a moment of clarity before I go back under, but in that moment the feeling is both within and without and its conveyance is at the tip of my tongue. Its right fucking there and then is simply, without trace, fucking gone. And I can not name it. It is unnamable.

It came, again, later while I was alone on a midnight walk in my Midtown neighborhood. All by myself with my walkman trying to figure out how I’m to tell my tales, terrified that when I get home, yet again, there will be no voice, and that unnamable wind, or is it ungraspable feeling, comes. I do know what it is not. It is not the breaking point, where the heat begins to ease out of our lives, and the humidity drops us from its clutch. It’s the smell of dead leaves, I think, though around me they still thrive. A sense of dead leaves?

On this wind is the knowing that the leaves will change and die and give the sweet odor of their decay to air, and the sleepless nights in sweat soaked beds, and the days of searching for shelter will be over. It is not the ending or beginning, but the mention of ending and beginning. A breeze from the future? It’s fleeting, and I’m only aware of it in those dog days when it takes me by surprise. It is dead leaves, I know it. Jesus, but there is nothing physical to it. I can not give it an accurate account. By the time I get back home to my computer it is gone and all I have left of it, especially now that I am three years gone from Atlanta, is what feels like the shabby mis-memory of nostalgia, or the remnants of a vivid dream destroyed in contemplation by lunch time. It’s all around in autumn, of course, and I can describe autumn, but what happens in August is not autumn, obviously. Autumn impending?

Forget it. To hell with it. Perhaps there is no actual wind of portent. It does not blow nor has ever blown except for in my own mind in its last scrape to survive the mental imposition of a Georgia summer, and it is only my biological clock winding down for the fall it knows is inevitable. Whatever it is it’s of no use to me if I can not describe it, and I hereby, finally, give up. I release now what I was never able to capture. And I will now consider myself in a state gladness to spite it.