~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 gaming.
Chapter V/Excerpt #3 of 3: Love Kills (Because I Trusted You Like My Shadow…)
Unlike in his first marriage, where he had someone waiting in the wings, Peege now found himself, at the age of thirty-six, very much alone. Even though he regretted all the arguments and battles, the simple fact of the matter was that, too many words had been spoken in anger. Words that couldn’t be taken back and too many things had happened in the heat of the moment that, no matter what, these memories would never be erased. It was painfully clear that reconciliation would never be an option.
For the first time in his life, P.J. knew what it felt like to have his heart broken. He had loved and lost what he only learned too late was the one true love of his life. Sure, there’d be other s*cks, f*cks, girlfriends and even one more wife. But if he were sitting under a full moon, with an almost empty bottle of wine, he’d have looked up at that moon with a tear in his eye. He’d raised the bottle in tribute, before taking the last sip and toasting “to the one who got away.” Peege would then let out the longest, loneliest howl that anyone would’ve ever heard. Why, my minions? Because Palin, was beginning to go, now without any doubt, absolutely and utterly insane.
It has already been presented for your assessment that Paul Jones Palin was weak when it came to courage. He was weaker than Superman shackled in Kryptonite chains or Spiderman with a common cold. If he lacked the strength to be the one to snuff out his first marriage, then he certainly lacked the resolve at that time, in finding the strength to snuff out his own life. Jonesy would just not man-up to the occasion. Even though there was nothing he wanted more than to just not wake up without Marie by his side, for yet another day.
He was cracking-up like a hard boiled egg. The mental anguish was so unbearable P.J. began to heavily self-medicate using illegal drugs, alcohol and music. All day and into the night the steady routine was to drink, get high and sing to his guitar. The drugs and alcohol kept the relapsed rocker comfortably numb, but it was the music, that in more ways than one, got him back on track again.
Once Palin realized he could never bring the woman he truly loved back into his life again, he decided to bring the only other thing he loved back into the fold once more – his music. Over the past years, he had recorded and produced a few records, and now it was the time to get back in the studio, get lost in the music and get his mind off his misery.
A friend that he knew with a band was about to go on a four month tour of Japan beginning in June of 1990. Said friend, also had a small home-recording studio that he wanted to sublet while on tour. So Paul sublet his own memory plagued apartment to someone else and moved into the Greenwich Village recording studio. It was just what the doctor ordered.
Every waking moment he poured his heart and soul into cathartically writing, singing, playing and recording the soundtrack of his present state of mind. It was one song after the other and one track after another. The process was sucking the venom (suck what?) out of the snake bite of his wounded soul until it became but a less painful memory. But at least, it was no longer driving him as crazy, nor would it immediately kill him. That was something the recovering wretch would of course do for himself many years later.
The creative juices were flowing so freely that P.J. had decided he needed to push the artistic envelope further. To replace the lost income once generated by DragClick™, the damages his second divorce had done to his assets, as well as to test his re-discovered studio talent he devised a plan. The renewed musician would not only rent out the studio to other artists, but also offered his own skills as a musician, producer and recording engineer to those who would hire him.
Talk about being happier than a pig in shit! At last he could eat, sleep and shit music twenty-four-seven/three-sixty-five. If Peege wasn’t in the studio recording he was out prowling the clubs discovering new talent to work with. The studio was eventually making enough money that if someone didn’t have the bread to rent it, they’d work out something. Even if working just for the joy of working meant working for free sometimes. It was all good.
Another perk of running a recording studio and producing tracks was he was getting more pussy than a veterinarian. Many of those long nights that were spent locked in the studio with some hot female rock-star-wannabe. There was always some drugs and alcohol available in order to get these dirty divas to loosen up and help them track their best possible performance on tape. A good many of these good looking girls ended up in his bed.
Plus, it didn’t hurt that the recording studio was located in the heart of the East Village on Third Street, and that it was right across the street from the NYC Hell’s Angels motorcycle club headquarters. P.J. and the Angels got along quite well as neighbors and he always had an open invitation to the seemingly endless parties at said HQ. So whether it was in his studio, bed or at an Angels’ orgy, he was getting s*cked (what?) and f*cked whenever he wanted. For this brief period of time, life was good and the sex was even better.
One band he stumbled upon on the night of September 19th, 1990, with only a few weeks left on his home recording studio sublease, was a West Village act called “Fromage”. The band may have not been that hot, but the female lead singer certainly was. Only problem Peege could foresee, and as it turns out it was only a slight problem, was she was married to one of the guitar players in the band.
P.J. seemed to recall that the guitar playing husband was from Portugal or someplace like that. He was a nice enough fellow named Pedro but was as dumb as they come when his hot vocalist wife, Brittney, began to cuckold him. The nights Palin worked alone with her in the sound booth, allegedly to record vocal tracks, were usually spent f*cking and s*cking their brains out on different pieces of furniture and equipment around the studio.
When the friend in the touring band returned from Japan, and Paul moved back into his old apartment back uptown. He used what money he had left and his available credit to buy recording equipment so he could open his own studio. Fromage, Pedro, Brittney and most of his other Greenwich Village clients followed him to his new place. This, of course, allowed Brittney and him to continue “recording”. To say the least, the hills were not only alive with the sound of music but very, very loud almighty love noises throughout the night.
Now, in all honesty, the last thing Peege wanted then was a live-in girlfriend or another wife. Unfortunately for the poor boy, Brittney had other plans. He didn’t stand a chance.
He had noticed over the weeks he’d been having great sex with Brittney that she was becoming quite careless about keeping the secret of their affair from the other band members in Fromage. Especially from her poor Portuguese husband the cuckolded guitar player. He was also shocked to see a bit of his own, older modus operandi in her actions. A part of him felt sick over this. But another sick part recognized a kindred spirit, and he had to evilly, inwardly smile.
Indeed, what Brittney was doing to her Pedro was exactly what he had done to his Lizzie. She was staying later and later in the night at the home-studio. More than once she told P.J. how her husband had been questioning her more and more about where she was and what she was doing. But Brittney didn’t appear to be worried by this a bit. She even tried to make out with him one night at one of Fromage’s shows when the hubby went outside to grab a smoke.
He knew exactly what she was doing. Not having the courage to end her marriage on her own, she’d push her husband so far and over the edge that he’d do it for her. He knew this was absolutely true the night Brittney called him from the West Village apartment she shared with Pedro. It was late at night and she was drunk. As she began to tell him how much she wanted to sneak out of the house and come uptown to screw his brains out he heard a man’s voice on the phone in the background.
Suddenly Pedro was now on the phone and began shouting in his heavy Portuguese accent, “What the f*ck are you doing with my wife? What the f*ck are you doing? What the f*ck, man?”
Pedro lost it completely and began cursing him out in his native tongue. “Fihlo da puta! Que esta merda? Ta tudo fodido!”. Have you ever been told you’re a c*ck s*cking motherf*cker in Portuguese? “Chupa-rola, vai por os colhoes de molho!!!!” Next he heard the two of them screaming at each other. Then the phone went dead.
Twenty minutes later the phone rang again. It was Brittney. She was crying and calling from a phone booth. Pedro had kicked her out on the street. She had no where to go. Could she come and stay with P.J. tonight? What could he say?
Forty minutes later, she was downstairs ringing the bell from his lobby in his building. What could he do? Except shout into the intercom, “Come on up!”
The night of Tuesday, October 23rd, 1990 turned into day, then day into week, week into month and so on and so forth. The terrible truth was, Paul Jones Palin, once again, had a live-in girlfriend. Oh, the deadly, breath stealing, ball busting, heartbreaking, hungry, déjà vu like irony!
Brittney became the third Mrs. Paul Jones Palin on Monday, February 14th, 1994. By Wednesday, November 26th, 1997 they were divorced. The divorce papers said it was irreconcilable differences. The truth was, because when in love, you can’t even trust your own shadow. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Jones Palin’s marriage was dissolved by a New York City judge’s signature on a piece of paper. Control, Alt, Delete – Pooffffffff – BAM!!!! Never saw that one a’comin’…
Some say failure’s a much better teacher than success. So what had Jonesy really learned? He learned that for either party to survive a relationship at least one of the parties must be a hero some of the time. A hero willing to throw themselves on the grenade of disagreement to protect the one you love. A hero that realizes that winning an argument or a battle with your mate is really losing a misguided war. Even when knowing you’re not the one who’s wrong. Someone who not only realizes that a hero doesn’t always win, but more importantly, that they’re not always right. Paul was far from being a hero.
Unlike in his first and second divorces, he was now fat, forty (actually forty-three), forlorn, frustrated, almost broke, and worst of all, no longer young. So is the owner of a lonely heart really that much better off than the owner of a broken heart? I don’t think so, minions, because it sounds like they both suck ferret butt at the end of the day (suck what?). But you can’t plan for everything. After this third epic failure at marriage, all P.J. Palin was left with, it appeared, was nothing more than his solitary shadow.
By Stevie B © 2011
