BUYING TIMEI am somewhere between the two base camps of literature, the first being the idea of fiction as art, as personal expression, and to the reader, as a means of seeing another perspective, hopefully one deeper than your own, from someone who spends more time thinking. The idea is of the story as a means to say, to share. The other is of fiction as a product (by "product" I mean an item with a specific function). This latter involves manipulation, it involves a willingness of the reader to entrust their imaginations to you in return for an intellectual amusment park ride designed by you.
Fiction - The Art, The Beautiful Swing that Misses
One man's art is another man's boring schoolwork. Writing for the purpose of beautiful expression is as pointless and masturbatory an endeavor as you can have. The elegance that is there for the people who have the time to go looking for it. So you have something to say...what now? How profound is it? Somebody else has seen it, somebody else has said it, so what's your twist? How will knowing what you have to say change my life? In other words, are you worth
the time? Fiction in this sense is a form of higher communication, a reaching out of the soul. This involves my own personal ideas about life and people. This art is limited to my own personal opinions. This is me speaking to you, earnestly, honestly. Here the characters represent real people.
Fiction - The Product, Heroin of the Soul
The idea is of fiction as a simple product. An item to be purchased or sold. A diversion, not unlike a greeting card or a boardgame. Something with which to pass the time by firing the imagination or by doping it into submission. There is nothing moral about artificial human beings, they are words on a page, not concepts, not truth. They bare a similarity to real-life only insofar as is necessary to serve the purpose of the product. They die because people die and death inspires a reaction, they fuck and fear and yearn because it gets your attention. In other words, death, violence, sex are tools of diversion with no bearing on real life. Here the characters are props. BUYING TIME
It feels like a scene from bad TV show, me waiting here in the kitchen like this. I can't think of a specific TV show, but think of something old, and American, and in black-and-white. You know the kind - Dad finds out that Timmy stole a bicycle so Dad tells him what a good boy he is, and how he knows that he would never steal a bicycle, even though he knows that little Timmy is a fucking thief the whole time. It guilts Timmy into a confession, because his dad believes in him, see? That's what it feels like, like they are trying to guilt me into saying something.
This is where I start to have that feeling, the pressure creeping up my chest till it's right level with my collarbone. I get this look on my face like I'm about to cry. It's completely involuntary. I go inward looking so hard at what's inside that forget to hide what I feel. I take the look off my face as soon as I realize it's there.
But what if I was wrong, what if they didn't know? What if they are telling the truth? You never know. People get desperate, they get greedy. All kinds of good reasons for bad judgment.
It was always a hopeless case, this laptop-for-rent shit. You don't rent in Jamaica, unless it's something so big that no one can run away with it easily. You rent marquis to people having fairs and concerts, you rent giant fridge-sized speakers for shows, you might even rent a truck or shipping containers, but you don't rent the small and expensive. They should have known better.
My aunt she's flitting about the kitchen making lunch. Happy in the belief that she is making money, that there are people right now using our laptops and paying money into our account. She's buying time till she won't look anxious, or over-eager when she asks. She's probably waiting till after dinner.
It's only a matter of time.
They cannot possibly have invested their life savings, their house in me. Me of all people. They have got to be bullshitting. You would have to be delusional, mentally ill, or so desperate that you can't blame anybody else. It can't be my fault, it has to be your fear, or your greed that drove you into it. I mean I was just what came along, it wasn't me you put your money in with, me the guy who has fucked up everything he ever touched. You bet your savings on the only available horse. It would have been the next guy if it hadn't been me. I mean seriously, how hard did I work to get them to do it. I just said what the idea was, they made their minds up.
My aunt she seems so happy. So secure. It's as if a burden has been taken off her shoulders. I want to tell her that all along I new it wouldn't work, I just needed to buy time. If I had that money then I wouldn't be broke, wouldn't go homeless. That all her money did was buy time.
The food-smell makes me sick.
"Back in a minute." I say to her.
Out in the backyard I put a cigarette in my mouth and the world feels like it's the end of days, where the hours are a second long and you are rushing to the edge of eternity like a jetliner into the side of a Latin American mountain. There is nothing but my impending destitution and the possibility that I fucked the only people I ever mattered to. If I'm going to be living on the street, why should it matter to me what they think of me or where they are?
I start thinking about suicide again. No way doI have the balls to face the other side of any kind of reality without being kicked into it, but sometimes it helps just to think about it. You feel better knowing that you are that far down. I put the lighter back into my pocket and feel the knife there. Now if I could just buy myself some more time...
They would know later, when the bank called, that I did it because I was full of remorse. They might not be so angry then, so disappointed in me.
"Jeff! Dinner's ready!" Yells Aunt Myra.
The cigarette falls from my lips in the hurry to grab and open the knife. I still think, seeing that I have no choice, that it won't be fatal. Will have to be a hell of a cut though. Get an ambulance and everything.
There is no thought here, just rapid spasms, jerky motions: the struggle to get the knife open, looking at my shirt and hesititating about destroying it.
I stick the knife into my left forearm. Just one quick plunge, once it's in and I feel the first sting and the feeling of violation, it's still not so hard to pull it down to my elbow. I can see the layer of fat under my skin before it wells up with blood. The blade moves through the rubbery gumminess that is my physical presence easier than I would have thought. I move quickly before my brain gets the message and starts screaming. Then I have to drop the knife. I start to run back to the house so they can see. but the blood it just pouring down off my arm, onto the leg of my jeans like warm thick piss. It would be so hard now, would it? I mean to just sit down and wait it out. Wait to see if this would end it. All the bullshit struggling, all the banging my head against the stonewall of this fucking country, this fucking life. The hard part's already done.
So I stop running, instead of going inside, I sit down on the grass in their backyard and I wait to see what will happen now.
THE END
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