Nanette

One evening last summer, I found myself sitting in a booth in Lone Wolf on my own. And the
bar was sporadically crowded and some indie rock music was playing over its sound system.
And as it was such a warm night out, I was only in a t-shirt, my white, Smiths Meat is Murder
one, and I also had on my tight black pair of jeans.
And as I sat there I looked at my recently bandaged wrists and at the condensation beaded pint
of beer on the table before me. And I continued to slowly drink my beer and after awhile a
young man came up to me and looked at the empty bench opposite mine in the booth and said,
‘Mind if I sit here?’
‘It’s a free country’ I replied.
The man then sat down and looked at me with a smile.
‘Sam’ he then said, raising his drink at me.
‘Nanette’ I replied, raising mine back.
We were both silent for a shortwhile, then Sam said to me, ‘So, what’s up? What’s your story?’
‘What’s my story?’
‘Sure’
‘Um, ok, so my parents abandoned me when I was a small child and I grew up in a forest and
was raised by wild animals and yourself?’
‘No. You’re shitting me’
I shrugged.
‘So you’re sort of like Mowgli?’
‘Something like that then, I guess’
We were both silent for a shortwhile then I took another sip from my pint and said to the
fellow, ‘You want to hear something?’
‘Ok’
I took another sip from my beer, then said to him, ‘But, I remember, when I was in like, seventh
or eight grade, around about the time that my mother was really ill in hospital, I always used to
get these, weird dreams, that our school was being taken over by aliens, or zombies, or
something, like that, y’know?’
‘Yeah’
‘…And I’d, I’d always be the only one who wasn’t like, infected or converted into an alien, like
something out of the Faculty or something—did you ever see that one?’
‘With Elijah Wood, and that cute little Spanish girl?’
‘Can you not talk about women that way? I’m a feminist’
‘Really? Sorry’
‘No.
But anyway, yeah, that’s the one. Well, yeah, and I was the only one who wasn’t part of it and
they all wanted to turn me, then I saw this, one girl who was also not one of them either and…
I don’t know’
‘…So, this girl from your dreams, she became a lover of yours?’
‘Mm… I guess’

‘And, you dreamt of her more than once, then?’
‘Mm, yeah, rather often I would have this dream, or variations on it, and she’d…’
‘…Your school being taken over and this one girl being there who wasn’t a part of it all?’
‘Yeah, that’s right’
‘And, she’d always be the same girl?’
‘Yeah, that’s right’
‘Someone you knew?’
‘I don’t know, that was ages ago now tho so…
Anyway, I only bought it up because, well, I’ve been thinking about writing a story about it all;
my life, I mean, starting around there tho, thereafter… Not a hell of a lot else to write about’
‘I’m sure that can’t be true…’
I took another sip from my beer, ‘I don’t know man. I feel like, a story needs to have a great
opening tho, and that seems like… I don’t know, maybe a good place to start it or… Just an idea
I was toying around with’
‘Yeah?’
‘Mm…
I was also toying around with this idea of being like, and now the dreams have all smashed free
from their glass containers… There’s a great factory on a not so distant foreign moon, where
dreams are forged and a great fire swept thru it and the containers of all the dreams are
popping for the heat, left, right and center, and rising up to mingle with the thick grey, orange
smoke…
…Maybe have like astronauts in a big ship going by all going mad as all the dreams waft into
their ship’
‘That’s interesting. Kinda, Rick and Morty’
I laughed slightly at this.
‘You’ve got quite the imagination’
‘Thanks. Or, how about this for another possible opening…?’
‘Ok?’
‘I’ve been making love with my fifteen year old cousin for the last month or so now, and she
and I have just killed my parents and hit the road in my dad’s Pontiac Firebird. We’re both high
on speed as I write this, scribbling away in my pad, and my father’s old 12 gauge is in the back
with four shells left in it. I couldn’t find where he kept the rest and we had to leave in a hurry’
‘…Intense… Would you, be a girl also in this one, or writing as a boy?’
‘Girl, I think, you know, could play the whole steamy taboo, sapphic romance, abuse, murder,
death, mayham, sort of angle…’
‘A real Natural Born Killers sort of deal?’
‘Yeah, maybe…’ I took another sip from my beer.
‘You hurt your wrists?’
‘Mm…
…The trouble with writing a story like that though, I mean with them in the car, is that if you
start in the present tense, then everything else would have to be written in the present tense,
as if it was all being jotting down in a journal, at the end of a day, say, as it was all happening
around them. And that’d be hard…’
‘Mm’

‘But, nonetheless, I still feel a story should have a good, strong, opening, y’know?’
‘Of course’ Sam took another sip from his beer then added, ‘So you’re, going to school for like,
creative writing or something then?’
I shook my head at him then said, ‘No, nah. I work at a Best Western in the city, making beds,
cleaning, that sort of thing’
‘Oh, ok’
‘Yeah. School, is for jerks. You don’t go to school do you?’
‘I go to a school but not to study’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah I work in an AV room at Columbia’
‘Oh’
‘Renting equipment out to the kids there and stuff’
‘Ah, ok’
‘To working life!’ Sam said raising his drink to me and I dinged my glass against his.
We were both silent for a shortwhile then Sam said to me, ‘You live around Bushwick?’
‘On the corner of Halsey and Broadway. You?’
‘Just like a block or two away actually, on Kosciuzko’
‘Cool’
I drank some more of my beer and a shortwhile later I said to Sam, ‘Can I be honest with you?’
‘Sure’
‘…You ever read any Shakespeare?’
‘They made us do Twelfth Night in high school’
‘Gorgeous play’
‘I, I didn’t have the best teacher, so I kind of just, yeah…’
‘Mm…’ I took another sip from my beer, ‘Virtue tho we relish of it, cannot so innocuate our old
stock. We are arrant knaves all. Believe none of us’
‘Mm’
I took another sip from my beer, then added, ‘The people are so ugly. So blank and ugly. And I
just, don’t know, if I can just keep on doing it, anymore, y’know?’
‘Well what would be the B-option?’
‘The undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.
…I don’t know man. I know what I am, and I know what they are…’
‘But you are a man, or at least a human right? A part of humanity, a human being’
‘…Well the human animal has a great propensity for cruelty, negligence, self-interest. You see
the fellows, the joggers, the tourists, walk by a man who’s mounted the far railings of the
Golden Gate. What’s that John Lennon one, nobody loves you when you’re down and out,
everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground?
And there’s another one too, laugh and the world laughs with you, suffer and you suffer alone’
‘I’m sure that’s no true. I mean, you’re gorgeous, you could have plenty of friends and lovers’
‘…No comment’
‘Oh, ok, I won’t ask’
‘Thanks’
…But just, the tv, the sheets, the hospital corners, the ensuite bathrooms to scrub, the

vacuming, the… Then my laptop, my hipster roommates, I’ve been watching You at the moment
with the psycho stalker guy. It’s pretty good, did you ever see that one?’
‘Nu-uh. I don’t really watch TV’
‘Ok. Sometimes I’ll draw, doodle, while I watch shit on my laptop. Not an artist, but just, dumb
shit’
‘Yeah’
‘…I mean, you’re kind of just killing time until you can fall asleep right?’
Sam didn’t respond anything to this.
‘…I mean, the world just seems kinder in sleep, somehow. The other people, the machine, the
ghosts, whatever you want to call it aren’t there in sleep… There’s different people or… I don’t
know’
‘Do you ever see that girl again in your dreams?’
‘Billie?’
‘She was an actual person?’
‘Mm, no, I don’t’
‘You two ever have a thing in real life?’
‘That’s a rather personal question’
‘You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want’
‘Ok, I won’t’
Sam shrugged at this.
We were silent for a shortwhile then Sam said to me, ‘How old are you by the way?’
‘21’
‘Uh huh’
I shrugged at this.
‘Alright, if you say so’ Sam then said.
We were silent for a shortwhile then Sam held up his near empty beer and said, ‘I’m almost
finished. …You want to come back to mine? If that’s not too forward to ask. I got a six pack of
Angry Orchard in the fridge. And a quater ounce of weed. You smoke weed?’
I shrugged slightly.
‘It’s just around the corner, save us spending money on drinks here. I mean, I’m a chill guy, I’m
not, trying to do anything’
‘No, I don’t smoke weed, but, I mean, fuck it, why not? Is it far?’
‘Nah, it’s just like two blocks away on Kosciuzko’
‘Alright, fuck it, let’s go, lead the way, young man’