NextBigNovelist
Tom May
|
|
 |
NextBigNovelist
Male
39 years old
United Kingdom
Last Login: 9/14/2009
|
|
|
|
View My:
Pics
|
|
|
NextBigNovelist's Interests
|
| General | Blinking | | Music | Extreme Noise Terror. Porno Graffiti. Leftfield. The Selector. Dead Kennedys. Aqua. | | Movies | Labyrinth | | Television | Test card | | Books | The Ladybird Book of Spiders | | Heroes | Arnold Mostowicz |
|
|
NextBigNovelist's Details
|
| Status: | In a Relationship | | Hometown: | chew magna | | Zodiac Sign: | Taurus | | Smoke / Drink: | No / Yes | | Children: | Someday | | Education: | Grad / professional school |
|
|
NextBigNovelist's Schools
|
University of Exeter
Exeter, United Kingdom
Graduated: 1991
Student status: Alumni
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major: Politics
Clubs: Green students, Guild
|
1988 to 1991 |
Chew Valley School
Bristol, SW
Graduated: N/A
Student status: Alumni
|
1981 to 1988 |
|
|
![]() |
NextBigNovelist is in your extended network
view more
|
|
|
NextBigNovelist's Blurbs |
About me:
Prison blues on Betamax
Chapter 1
Nick woke on the floor, face in a pizza box, bare foot in an upturned ashtray. The air, thick with stale smoke, stang his dry eyes and scratched at his throat. The room was silent. He was alone. Alone and 40.
An obstacle course of post-party detritus stood between him and the bathroom. At the finish line he assumed the position and vomited a torrent of hot, insistent liquid. Then lay open-mouthed, kneeling before the sink, as if in genuflection before the stomach-emptying god that had plundered his soul via his aesophagus.
40 years and one morning old. His life felt as hollow as an anorexic model’s gut; choked by unanswered ambition, slowly fading into a muted, agonised nothing. Nick prayed he would vomit some more, blind the dull misery with the adrenaline of self-preservation, if only for a moment. But God wasn’t there for him.
Not at his age. No God, no Santa Claus, no Mum, no Dad. No friends, either, not in any real sense. Only shadows remained of his old accomplices, reflections of past lives, their essences consumed by the daily grind of family responsibility. All that remained were the hangers-on, the drifters, the rootless. Party guests down from the Smoke performing a dance of pretend connectedness to the all-enveloping music of Messrs Carlsberg and Theakston. Guests whom, he discovered as he staggered into the kitchen seeking a nutritional miracle cure, had steam-removed every label from every can, bottle and jar in his poorly stocked cupboard. The male bonding humour of forced friendship. Nick’s battered heart felt torn between outrage and the perverse warmth of familiarity. Some people, he realised, never grow up.
Lucky bastards.
The thought of ‘growing up’, of maturing, conforming, becoming worldly-wise, hardened, had always terrified Nick as a child. And life had proved him wise to be afraid. The events that had led him here – to this seaside ghost town, a welcome oasis of quiet apathy – still struggled vainly for expression in his mind, as repressed as a peasant in a Stalinist gulag. Now, once more, they were hammering at his ravaged psyche, formenting a rebellion of remembrance. Once more, he choked off their yearning, carpet-bombed his own pain with a thunderous assault of self-denial.
Leaning against the fridge door, Nick fought off dizzyiness. He needed carbs. Pushing past the leftover soft drinks, he found a half-eaten chocolate mousse. He forced it down, tasting little but the spices and lager still on his breath. Peanut butter. Peanut butter would help. On toast, with marmite and blackberry jam. The digestible jump leads of fibre, salt and sugar needed to kick-start his battered body.
“oy-OY!” Nick was shocked out of his reverie as a salivia-soaked finger slid effortlessly into his ear. He turned, disoriented and bewildered.
A fat bloke wearing a rugby shirt stood before him with blazing eyes and a grin as wide as a bridge. “BIRTHDAY BOY!” he rasped in cheese grater cockney, his voice the worse for 15 morning Marlboros. “Didn’t fink we’d see you this side of Tuesday, son. How’s yer cranial?” He slapped Nick playfully on the back of his skull. It didn’t hurt, but it bristled. How could his ex-workmate be so bright and breezy after such a vodka pileup? “
Fuck off Jordo,” he countered miserably. “I thought you lot had pissed off, left me to die in peace.”
Jordo’s grin widened. “No chance sunshine. We’re all down the pub, hair of the dog and all that. I’ve been sent to kick your sorry arse down there and chuck a pint down your neck.” He picked up a half-finished can of lager from the night before, poured out a little into the sink to check for ash and butts then began to drink from it. Nick stared at him. “You’re an animal,” he said.
Jordo ignored him. “Good that you’re up,” he continued chirpily. “Thought I was gonna have to stick an ice cube up your nose or summink.” He scooped up a pair of discarded jeans from the floor and thrust them at Nick’s near-naked form. “So come on, son. Get some clothes on, chop chop, look lively!”
“These are not my jeans,” Nick replied. “And I am not coming to the fucking pub.”
“Wodja mean you ain’t coming? It’s your bleedin’ party!”
“My party was yesterday. My birthday was yesterday. Now I have the hangover from Hezbollah and I want some quality time alone to whimper in the corner.”
Jordo shook his head at him as if to a two-year-old who’d pooed on the floor. “No no no, son. No no no. Not in a million years. This ain’t just a run of the mill birthday, this is your FORTIETH. It’s a milestone innit? You ain’t gettin’ away with a couple of shandies and a bit of a boogie. This is a WEEKENDER mate. We’re down for the duration.” He pulled out some garish looking flyers from his brown leather jacket. “Sacha’s playing up the road tonight. We’re largeing it tonight bruv. You’ve gotta get your drinking practice in.”
“First,” Nick replied. “I am not your son. You’re two years younger than me, for piss sake. Second, I have a jackhammer inside my skull tapping out the words INCREDIBLY INTENSE PAIN over and over again in morse code. Third, I am not drinking again as long as I live, which given the way that I feel, may be a matter of hours rather than years. Fourth, there is no way on God’s earth you are dragging me ‘down the road’ - ” (he paused to check the location on the flyer) “or should I say 75 miles up the motorway to stand in an aircraft hangar full of twattish students on ketamine dancing to Mickey Mouse techno and paying 30 nicker for the privilege. Alright?”
Jordo whistled. “Bleedin hell you are in a state aren’t you? Well...” He told a deep breath, sucked in his cheeks and looked thoughtful. He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds then nodded to himself. “Alright, alright,” he continued. “I was saving this for tonight but I guess a little sherbet dip wouldn’t do any harm to get the ball rolling would it?”
He opened his bag and showed it to Nick. All the fatigue, weakness, thirst, headache, muscle pain, gastrointestinal discomfort, nausea, stench of after-vomit, stomach cramp, REM-deprived paranoia and depression, sensitivity to light and sound, tremors, sweating, and increased pulse and systolic blood pressure he was feeling was momentarily forgotten as he stared at its contents.
“Jesus Jordo,” he exclaimed, his voice subdued. “I’m guessing that ain’t for sprinkling on your cornflakes.”
“You’re not wrong,” he replied, also in a whisper, so awed he was by his own haul.
“I mean…” Nick gasped, “you’d need a few packets of cornflakes…”
“Warehouse full, mate.”
They stood in silence. The moment was perfect.
Jordo reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty. “Nose flute sir?” he proferred.
Nick grabbed it and began rolling it up with relish. “Don’t mind if I do, my good man, don’t mind if I do…”
|
Who I'd like to meet:
Readers
|
|
| NextBigNovelist's Friend Space (Top 3) |
|
NextBigNovelist has 18 friends.
|
|
|
|
|
![]()
|
