For this story, I didn’t really
want to tinker with something entirely based in the tangible. I wanted more so
to write a story about a moment, and all the things that that moment can
contain. So in that sense, I think this story adheres–if not at least resembles–to
Aristotle’s Dramatic Theory. The narrator gives us an introduction to an
established world, or setting: this character’s bedroom and simultaneously his
mind. He’s with a girl. They’re cuddling. Then he remembers something, which is
that this relationship will likely end sometime. This is the inciting incident
and it gives way to a flurry of thoughts that act as the rising action and the
conflict: the narrator considers his past and future and the significance of
these things. Therefore, his thoughts become the action of the story. This is
the plot. The story reaches its climax when the male character asks the girl
where she wants to be in five years. With this, the character brings all the
action that’s gone on so far out of the imaginary and into the physical realm,
that is to say his thoughts have gone from interior to exterior. I think it’s a
dramatic transition. From there, the two talk and the girl ultimately leaves
the boy feeling a little better and he’s able to go off to sleep. Falling
action and dénouement. I know the story isn’t conventional in terms of
plotting, but I think mediums allow all sorts of experimentation, and it’s
interesting and fun to identify plot mechanics in a story that may not
initially appear to adhere to conventional plotting. Anyway, enjoy.
Jack
Right Now
He
watched shadows move across the ceiling, their trajectories swift and fleeting.
They were less than immaterial, existing, to his mind, in absent crevices and pockets
where things only were and the ability to distinguish left from right, up from
down and good from evil was wholly unnecessary. He didn’t exactly yearn for
this state of being, but there was a simplicity to it he found, at times,
preferable. Her head rose and fell atop his chest. She breathed through her
nose mostly, the sensation of which he found calming, encompassing, almost so
much so at times he felt capable of disintegrating. More realistically, he
thought he was experiencing sustained happiness, unperturbed contentedness, and
the closer he came to that feeling, the harder it was for him to speak.
Indelibly, this would conclude. He wouldn’t see her for a day, a week, months.
Their connection would be diluted, lessened by the magnitude of life and its
endless production of seemingly new stimuli. He wondered if his perspective was
the result of an involuntary emotional hypochondriasis, or if he had
prematurely discovered the ephemeral essence of mostly all human connection. He
prayed for the former.
“I
don’t wanna move,” she whispered. He continued to stare at the ceiling,
attempting through sheer force of will to preserve this moment, to excavate it
from the linear progression of time and have it, unadulterated, to himself. He wanted
the edges pointed and the image sharp, so he could return to right now,
retrieve it from his pocket and know that he was happy once, that he would be
again. He thought of his mother faltering in front of him, weeping on the
staircase, he and his brother both tongue-tied. He remembered his father
correcting him, saying the affair had lasted five years, not seven, and that it
was what it was. The unwinding of such densely layered emotional quilting
astounded him. To see the volatility of the human temperament so exposed, with
unmitigated sincerity, sent him receding far beyond forged mental fences,
barriers created to neutralize what he was beginning to see as life: a sprawling, disjointed narrative,
simultaneously senseless and completely true. A collection of experiences and things, all these fucking things, an
agglomeration of happenings and words and people and thoughts and memories and
feelings funneled through a lens with no duplicate.
He
remembered jumping from the top of a slide in the park, screaming and running
to his mother, red lights disregarded, his favorite T-shirt cut apart by
scissors. He remembered his first kiss tasting like blueberry ice cream, and
the erection he had to walk with all the way back to the parking lot. He
thought of fishing in his backyard, sobbing outside of a Walmart, talking on
the phone for hours. He thought of leaving his prom date stranded, he on the
highway speeding home, her student ID placed beneath the steak they’d been
served for dinner. He wondered if she remembered him leaving her like that, if
she’d remember it in a year, in a decade. Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter. The
narrative would remain the same either way. The totality of the past renders
speculation useless because the story will always conclude in the same manner.
He thought of catching grasshoppers in kindergarten.
“Are
you sleeping?” she asked.
“No.”
“What
are you thinking about?”
“You,
mostly.”
“What
about me?”
“Everything.
I think you’re gorgeous. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
She
smiled into his shoulder. “I could lie here forever.”
In
an effort to preserve, he tried to accumulate every knowable detail he deemed
pertinent. It was a Tuesday night, November 19th, and the heater
wasn’t working. They compensated for this by cradling each other like makeshift
jigsaw pieces. The smell of her hair reminded him of morning in spring and he
weaved his fingers through it. Light continued to dance and reverberate all
over the ceiling as songs by Kurt Vile perforated the space they shared, an
ambience akin to meditation washing over them. He wanted to document this
mentally, with footnotes and points of reference that would grant him access to
further details and shadings. Suddenly, he realized that this too likely didn’t
matter. Time corrodes. Forever changes.
He
saw himself in the future, ten years removed from right now. He pictured his image, the expressions he’d make, his
posture, and wondered what would lead him to that, if he was picturing someone
in the midst of ascension or someone flooded with despair, indifference,
experience. He thought about the children he’d have, or wouldn’t have: his daughter
Lisa, sons Thomas and Phil, or maybe a barren wife who painted hands and feet
and saw the same eventual, maddening cyclicality he did when she walked through
large crowds. He thought of directing actors and members of his crew, speaking
to journalists about the execution of his vision, budget constraints and what
it was like to work with Natalie Portman and Paul Dano. He thought of holding
his father’s hand, tubes protruding from his wrist, saying there was nothing to
forgive, that it is what it is. He
thought about himself in the driver’s seat, red lights disregarded, his son wailing in agony. He thought
about his own death, where he’d be, who he’d be with, what he would have to
say. It hurt to know the girl by his side, whose embrace elicited a reverence
within him beyond tangible expression, would eventually recede to the outer
banks of his memory, likely sooner than he imagined. He thought about his
children’s children. They’re already here, he told himself.
“Where
do you want to be in five years?” he asked her. She tilted her head upwards and
looked him in the eye. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to know.”
“What
do you mean?” he asked.
She
paused for a moment. “I’ll be speaking entirely out of ignorance if I try to
place myself within a certain confinement, or image. I can only hope for . . . happiness,
excitement . . . meaning. What form those things will take I don’t know. I
don’t want to know. I don’t care about five years from now.”
He
turned his gaze back to the ceiling. He could feel his eyes welling up and was
thankful the only tear that fell down his face was on the other side of her. He
wished he could exist like the moment he occupied did, within a single frame,
all questions answered. He felt her exhaling against his chest and watched the
ceiling’s definitions blur. I get it, he thought. This is it. The rhythmic
consistency of her breathing soothed his racing mind and soon his eyes grew
heavy. In his sleep he dreamed of coolers filled with cicadas and ledges just
out of reach.
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