Excerpt on Main Street
~New Author Spotlight~
Pajamas on a Sun Stained Beach
(A story somewhat supposedly based upon a true tale…)
Manuscript synopsis
Paul Jones Palin is a deeply depressed, severely stressed, self-medicating dysphoric agoraphobic on the verge of suicide. He’s made and lost fortunes, married and divorced three times and is terminally ill. Alone in a post 9-11 New York City P.J. struggles through the not-so-great recession with neither health insurance nor hope. Just when things couldn’t get any worse…
But it’s not just his disease that’s killing him – it’s the irony!
“Pajamas On A Sun Stained Beach” is a work of fiction that chronicles the dying thoughts of a drowning man and not only explores biological death but also the death of our dreams. Within 112 pages the manuscript covers 50+ years of the character’s life (1954-2010) and uses the death of the American dream as a basic subtext. This book is intended to not only work in published form but is also adaptable to film as well as a blueprint for video/computer/console gaming.
Chapter V/Excerpt #2 of 3: Love Kills (Because I Trusted You Like My Shadow…)
Elizabeth became the first Mrs. Paul Jones Palin on Saturday, June 14th, 1975. But beginning around August, 1983, P.J. was doing very little to hide that he was having an affair with one of his guitar students (yeah, we’ll get to that).
By Wednesday, December 7th, 1983, his Elizabeth had served him with divorce papers based on irreconcilable differences. It was a day that shall live in infamy. Their marriage was dissolved by a New York City judge’s signature on a piece of paper shortly thereafter. Control, Alt, Delete – Pooffffffff – BAM!!!! Never saw that one a’comin’…
Sidebar: The reason Peege later regretted Maggie had not mentioned she was experiencing burning sensations every time she peed when she proposed her plot on that cold February night in 1972 was simple. A week or two after he had first slept with Lizzie, (he stopped calling her Elizabeth after the first year they were married), she had returned home from a doctor’s appointment (Canadian’s have such great healthcare coverage!), along with some uncomfortable news to share with him. Her doctor had concluded that she had the clap.
As it turns out, since Lizzie, Bob and Maggie were sleeping directly or indirectly with each other they had given one another a nasty dose of the same sexually transmitted disease. So in turn, Lizzie had shared her gift with her future husband.
Lucky, these were the good old “pre-HIV” days. That’s when most fornicators only had to worry about getting the clap or crabs from unprotected sex. Because he was so in love with her, it was easy for Jonesy to forgive his future wife. He took his antibiotics to get rid of the groin plaguing disease and remained friends with Maggs and Bob for many years to come. End of sidebar.
So over the years the rock-god thingy hadn’t really worked out for P.J. Along about 1977 he started giving guitar lessons to earn a living. One of the advantages of being more ambitious than talented is that after only a few years he took his little one-man guitar school, and eventually, turned it into a respectable cottage industry.
He began by hanging Xeroxed copied ads on any light pole, bulletin board or construction site fence around his neighborhood. The crude sign simply stated, “GUITAR LESSONS – FIRST LESSON FREE” and had little tear-off strips of his telephone number. There was a bit of blah-blah-blah between the free lesson come-on and the phone number, but really, who cares? As any New York City Bowery Buddhist would tell you, “When you get the message then hang up the phone”.
The phone would ring. A free lesson would be scheduled. More times than not, the free lesson returned as a paying client. Life was good. Business was growing. Besides his own heavily booked lesson schedule he soon had three other guitar teachers on staff working with him. Ambition can be a very good thing.
The funny thing is that by the early to mid 1980s it seemed some of the most beautiful women in the world wanted to learn how to play the guitar. P.J. and his crew were only too happy to help them not only learn their way around a fret board, but on occasions, become their new best friends (insert your own dirty G string joke here if you must).
One said occasion was the day (Friday, May 12th, 1983) that the future Mrs. P.J. Palin (the second) came to his studio for a guitar lesson. The moment she walked through the door, she had him, and she knew it. Forget about descriptive terms like beautiful, sexy, gorgeous or any other kind of rubbish. For him – she stopped time. This girl was a total dime piece! BTW, she was almost as tall as Paul and she was also 6 years younger than he was. So this was quite a switch.
Her name was Marie and he taught her a few songs, some chord progressions, how to pick, strum and tune a guitar and then he shared all the reasons he loved music with her. By this time his business was making so much money he could splurge a bit, so he and his wife, Elizabeth, had rented a summer house at the beach in the Hamptons that year.
After a few lessons he invited Marie to come to his summer house at the beach. Much to his surprise, she accepted his invitation in only a heart beat. So Paulie boy, of course, invited her to spend time there over a two day period when he knew his wife wouldn’t be at their house. Poor, poor Lizzie. Lizzie had trusted him like he was her shadow.
The guitar teacher met his fetching student at Penn Station early on Tuesday morning, July 26th, 1983, where they bought tickets then boarded the LIRR for a three hour ride to the east end. He used his age and experience to the same advantage his older lovers had used theirs to bed him.
They laughed and talked to during the whole ride, and when they arrived in East Hampton, he made a big to-do about stopping at a liquor store to pick up some champagne and at Dean & Deluca’s for a few tasty treats. Besides bringing some great sinsemilla to smoke P.J. had also scored, and brought along as added insurance one could say, an eight ball of some really great coke.
The duo stopped at the house to drop off the goodies, ice the champagne, smoke a joint and do a few toots of Peruvian powder. They changed into their bathing suits, then walked over to Ocean Avenue and headed to Asparagus beach. It was a beautiful day to be on the beach.
He didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew that day when he was laying on the beach next to someone like Marie. She was sunbathing topless right next to him and her baby oiled nipples were kissing the sky all afternoon. Or at least, that’s how P.J. remembered it.
When they returned from the beach they had some more champagne, a bowl of huge, and succulent super sweet strawberries and a few more lines of coke. One thing seemed to lead to another as they eventually decided to share a shower with each other before agreeing to share his, (and his absent wife’s), bed together. They s*cked (s*ck what?) and f*cked like rabbits well into the next morning. In between orgasms, they enjoyed more coke and champagne, then a lot more of one another’s bodies.
For the horny maestro his sexy student was like a drug. She stirred something within him that was so hot and exciting he thought he’d lost his mind. Overnight Mr. Paul Jones Palin had become a different man, an adulterer. Over the next few days he became a liar, a cheat and a double crossing backstabber. These were actually extremely kind assessments; compared to the labels Lizzie lacerated him with, once she found out about his illicit liaison with his provocative protégée.
The younger woman infatuated the giddy guitar guru. She was his obsession. Their lust was like an addiction. Every time he indulged in her, he only wanted more, and nothing else would sate his sexual appetite but her. P.J. had found what he wasn’t even aware of he was looking for: his little Rock & Roll (oh yeah, baby!) Just like a junkie, he was hooked. He walked about singing a variation of an old Frank Sinatra hit which he re-titled, “Lust Be a Lady Tonight”. Like a muse, she was now his inspiration.
By August, 1983, P.J. decided it was no longer possible to live with Lizzie, and without Marie. As a means to justify his sleazy, self-serving behavior, he rationalized that if a married couple’s relationship just consisted of living with the person you’re with, who is just the person you have but not the person you want, then it wasn’t really a relationship at all, was it? Nothing is more insensitive than the stone cold heart.
He was also doing very little to hide from her that he was having an affair with his new f*ck friend. He’d write and sing songs about her, leave their love letters out in the open to be found, and just acted totally uninterested in his current wife. He wanted her to find out and catch him. It would only play to his hand if she busted him and pulled the plug on their marriage, because upon reflection, he didn’t have the courage to be man enough to do it himself.
Over a very short period of time Jonesy become a cruel, heartless, marginalizing prick. It wasn’t long after that, that Lizzie confronted him about the affair. As to be anticipated, there were words and tears and anger. Following that was hate and sorrow. By Wednesday, December 7th, 1983, Lizzie served him with divorce papers on the agreed grounds of irreconcilable differences.
She moved out of their apartment on that same day, and their marriage, for all intents and purposes, was finished. Paul would never be sure if it was a coincidence or not, but he received word on Sunday, December, 7th, 2008, that Lizzie Palin had died in California from a brain aneurism. She was 62 years old. Rest in peace, Lizzie, rest in peace.
Saturday, December 10th, 1983 was Marie’s twenty-first birthday. By Tuesday, February 7th, 1984, the soon to be second Mrs. P.J. Palin, moved in with her future husband in the apartment he had shared with the ex-wife. Quick as a bunny, life moved along.
Marie worked as a waitress, but in reality, was a painter. When she wasn’t f*cking and s*cking her future husband, or waiting on tables, she painted, sculpted and photographed some of the most beautiful art he had ever seen.
His favorites were the large watercolor paintings of the two of them having sex. He found it mesmerizing the way the transparent paint colors puddled on the paper, mixing like their own bodily fluids during sex. How the pigments, which were suspended in the water soluble vehicle, stained the support they were applied to with each of her wet in wet brushstrokes. Watching her paint was almost as sensual as watching her face during a sexual climax.
As much as P.J. loved her body, loved her very dirty mind, her kinky imagination and adventurous and insatiable sexual appetite, what he loved the most was the way she was never afraid to try anything when it came to sex.. You name it she’d f*ck it, s*ck it or give it a go. What a girl, what a girl what a dirty, dirty little girl…
A little more than a month before her twenty-fourth birthday Marie became the second Mrs. Paul Jones Palin on Friday, October 31st, 1986. They joked since they were getting married on Halloween that it was more of a costume party than a wedding. She dressed as a bride and he as a groom. Trick or treat!
In retrospect (the vision of assholes?) the twice married Mr. P.J. Palin would have to conclude, that marriage in general, seemed to bring out the worst in lovers. Oscar Wilde once said something to the effect of, “Bigamy is having one wife or husband too many. Monogamy is the same.” Sad but true.
It was spring of 1987, when the ambitious music instructor turned his energies in a new direction. Some of his younger students had turned him on to the video game craze and it didn’t take long before Paul had created, developed and found distribution for a computer game called DragClick™. Oddly enough, that venture also involved another of his former music students, Michael Wayne.
Once the sales of the game had taken off, and were providing a steady income, he closed the doors to his mini-music school. It had begun to bore him anyway, and the current Mr. and Mrs. P.J. Palin enjoyed the royalties generated by the DragClick™ game.
Marie was able to quit waitressing and dedicate all of her time to her art, and quitting his teaching gig allowed P.J. to, well pretty much, do nothing. This also permitted the couple to spend a lot more time together. In fact, way too much time together, because it now seemed that, they were fighting and arguing about every little thing.
Even free time can be detrimental if not pursued in moderation. But what was also causing friction was that by the beginning of 1989 sales of DragClick™ had plummeted so far, their cash cow seemed to be headed to slaughter. Money really does change everything, especially the lack of it.
Somewhere around June, 1989, they stopped sleeping with each other, stopped talking to one another and were both miserable. On Thursday, July 13th, 1989 after their worst knockdown, drag out fight, Marie, his 27 year old wife, moved out of their unhappy home for good. She of course left with half of their bank accounts, their property, and naturally, one-half of the royalty rights to DragClick™.
Their last conversation ended on the following note. As she headed out the door with suitcases in hand, P.J. warned, “You’re never, ever going to find anyone like me.”
Marie paused for a second then slowly turned around. Looking him straight in his sparkling blue eyes, she shrieked like a banshee at the bewildered, befuddled, bashful and be-freckled boy from Baltimore, “Jesus F*cking Christ, I certainly hope not!”
Then she slammed the door shut and that was the very last time they ever saw each other. They had trusted each other like their own shadows, but that trust had been broken. Just goes to show, that under any circumstance, love should never be trusted. It’s the killer hiding under the bed in the darkness just waiting to eviscerate all your rusty dreams.
By Monday, December 4th, 1989, she served him with divorce papers based on (can you guess?), irreconcilable differences. Early in March, 1990 their marriage was dissolved by a New York City judge’s signature on a piece of paper shortly thereafter. Control, Alt, Delete – Pooffffffff – BAM!!!! Never saw that one a’comin’ either…
By Stevie B © 2011
To be continued on February 28, 2011
