Chapter 25 preview (updated x3)

Chapter 25 will be massive.  I was expecting a range of 15,000-20,000 words, but the section I intended as the set-up for the main story arc already clocks at 6,000 words -- about three times longer than I planned.  That would be enough for a stand-alone chapter, and I thought about posting it that way, but the whole thing ties together thematically, so I'm sticking to my original concept.

In the meantime, here's a small preview.  It won't spoil you on the main arc of the chapter, if you're worried about that kind of thing.  I picked it mainly because it's fairly self-contained, so don't infer too much about which characters show up and how the rest unfolds.  If this goes over well, I might do similar posts in the future, depending on timing and what I'm writing.

Update, 8/18: This chapter is huge. The length of a short novel. Some of the things you've probably been wanting for a long time kind of, sort of happen.  I think every character either appears or is name-checked, but it takes place in its own kind of bubble and is close to being a stand-alone story, the way Chapter 16 was. Is it bloated? Too shaggy? Kind of epic? I'll let you guys decide soon, almost definitely by the end of the month.  Very excited to finish it.

Update, 8/29:  Well, I spoke too soon. Had a night to myself last night for the first time in 10 days, so the new chapter won't post in August. Soon, though. Sorry for the false optimism.

Update, 9/4:  Chapter 25 is done.  I've mailed it in for posting.  32,543 words.  Insane.  Read it slowly, because I might need some recovery time.  I'll write a new post when it's online.

That first fucking month back in New York.

I’d been friends with Rick since elementary school.  The biggest thing that weighed in favor of going to Penn was that Rick would be there, too.  We played on the same teams, took the same classes, spent summers together, pre-partied before prom and then threw up in the gravel shoulders between the after-parties.

Our apartment was a tiny two-bedroom sublet on East Sixth Street and First Avenue.  He’d found it through his older brother.  I’ll spare the boring details, but both of us persuaded our parents that they should underwrite our summer living in the city, because of course, if we were going to go there after college, we’d have to know what it was like to actually live in the city and not commute from their houses in Westchester.  It wasn’t a difficult negotiation.

And I was so fucking psyched to get back.  Sanjay was less than a mile away in the East 20s, in a sublet with two of his Harvard friends.  

They all wore black wool pants, unless it was $200 designer jeans.  They wore shirts that buttoned down.  They went to bad, overcrowded bars, where DJs played remixes of Top 40 songs.  They ordered vodka tonics that cost $14; my bottles of beer cost $10.  They hit on skinny girls who wore tiny dresses, and half the nights ended up fucking one of them.  They talked about their summer internships in finance (spots that they got through their fathers) with the pretense that they had actual responsibility and knew what they were saying.

I would look for any excuse to step outside for a cigarette.  I deflected the come-ons of girls with hot bodies, whose faces hadn’t caught up.  I rolled my eyes when entire bars whooped enthusiasm at a shittily danceable pop song.  

“I think I’m more of a T-shirt bar kind of guy,” I said to Rick, who seemed mystified and concerned by my lack of enthusiasm.

“I’m a T-shirt bar kind of guy, too,” Rick said, “but I’m going to where the people are at.”

“What people?” I said.

“Nothing interesting’s going to happen at a T-shirt bar in Alphabet City,” he said.

A couple of weeks later, Rick and I were going home in a cab at about 3 a.m.

“Dude, you need to loosen up, because you’re kind of being a bitch,” he said.

“Wait, at noon, we were just going to hang out on Second and watch the playoffs.  By the time I got home, you decided we’d go to some club called, like, Argon.”

“Argon?  What the fuck is Argon?  Like, the element?  It wasn’t called Argon.”

“Whatever it was, it sucked, and I just wanted to have a chill night hanging, and I got dragged into this bullshit again, so fuck this being a bitch shit.”  The cab was speeding down Broadway.  The image of one of Rick’s frat brothers, some douchebag named Brandon, flashed to mind.  “I wake up every day thanking Allah that I didn’t go to Penn.”

“Penn doesn’t miss you.  Trust me.”

It wasn’t a major blow-up -- the kind of sharp exchange that you have with friends.  Neither of us was actually pissed.  A couple of minutes later we were brushing our teeth and talking about South Park.

But I mostly stopped going out with them.  On nights when I did -- when my boredom drove me to follow, when I resolved to have a better attitude and try to fall in with the crowd -- I was an obvious handicap.  One night, “The Thong Song” came on at about 2:30 a.m., driving the crowd wild with a song that was big around our junior year in high school.  Boobs and asses bounced to a white-girl rhythm.  Rick performed a white-guy sex-dance against a girl who looked like Rutgers.  I went outside to have a cigarette, then walked two miles home.  I texted them a half-hour later.

* * *

I stalked gay bars that I never had the balls to enter.

There was the place on 6th & A, and the one on 13th & A, and the place on 4th & 2nd, and its seedy, dark uncles to the south.

I didn’t walk in, but I passed them on my way.  I went out of my way to pass them, walking by with a cigarette in my mouth, glancing up at their doors and then darting my gaze elsewhere.  One night at two in the morning, I drunkenly walked laps between A & B, wondering what it would be like to step inside.

The crowd didn’t seem right.  Their shirts looked too tight.  They clustered outside, smoking cigarettes.  Their chatter sounded quick, energetic.  The music was garish.  I discerned spinning lights.  

I couldn’t penetrate it.  Still, I wanted to go inside.  

I recalled Andy’s compulsion when he was in Italy, how he dreaded and anticipated stepping into a gay bar.  I internalized his fantasy of what he’d find.

So I lurked some nights, for lost minutes between 2 a.m. and last call, walking alone past those East Village doors, compelled but repelled and afraid.

I never ventured in.

I was not Andy Trafford.