In Honor of National Novel Writing Month

Last year, I did a project for a semester which was loosely entitled "write a fucking novel you idiot." And I wrote a 50,000 word novella for my non-violence class which has now been sitting on my shelf half-edited and half-scorned. In any case, I've been dragged into the phenomena of National Novel Writing Month yet again (this time with more emphasis on the month portion, as I only have around 12,000 words starting the month) with the hope that now that I've done it once, this time will be a lot easier. That is far from the truth. In any case, I wanted to encourage other people to attempt to do this with me, even if you don't get to the 50,000 words by the end of the month. And I wanted to share the first couple pages of this years novel, which I've entitled Ferguson's Convenience Grocery. I hope you enjoy!

Drip, drip, drip. The pipes in the bathroom were faulty, and with every splash of water against the inside of an already mildewing cabinet, I could hear dollars passing from my wallet, sales that were never made. The Chinese water torture of capitalism was inflicting itself on my modest apartment, with a thin layer of plywood protecting the uncovered linoleum from the ugly rusted water that wove like the Euphrates through my bathroom fixtures. Ride the Tiger, or the Tiber, or however the saying went. Leaking or plugged, I was still sitting on my bed with a gun in my hand hoping that enough dollars and cents would amass for me to finally overcome the urge to pull the trigger. A plumber wasn’t an option; I didn’t make enough money to pay somebody else to fix my pipes, and given my godawful mechanical knowledge, I was a long shot to figure it out myself. Somehow, the price of a pack of bullets and a split second of courage seemed far less than what it would take to fix the leak. Fortune favors the bold whispered the steel between my lips. I wasn’t born to be bold.

For the last five years I’ve worked as the full-time owner of a small grocery store somewhere in between the outskirts and civilization in my loathsome Zion. My parents used to run the shop, but they felt driving my grandfather’s Mercedes into a power generator to be a more cogent use of their God given talents. The story made the news for a day or two. The paper even ran an exposé a month later on why a happily married, modestly kept couple would commit suicide in such an unruly fashion. They even put on the clothes that they had worn to my christening. Wool and cotton sparked into an electrical inferno that caused a power outage at the local shopping mall for 38 minutes. 38 minutes of lost receipts and marketing ploys. What nerve they had.

In any case, the daily operations of Ferguson’s Convenience Grocery fell to me, a twenty-three year old high school drop-out who had spent most of his high school years snorting cocaine off of toilet seats and listening to Pearl Jam in an effort to fit in. We all dropped out together in solidarity and, well, the movement seems to have passed us by. It was a shame for the rest of them, and I doubt that any of them ever found a calling in life. As for me, my quiet life of cleaning a 500 square foot prison cell of brand name snack foods and birth control was about as close to a calling in life as I thought I’d ever find. The fact of the matter is, as soon as my parents decided to break the mold, so to speak, I knew that I had fallen into a fortuitous position in the Ferguson family. Whereas previously my goals in life had ranged between fucking my high school prom queen out of spite and buying a car so that I could drive to Mexico and never look back, I now had an actual purpose for being in Boston. I had inherited a family legacy of selling alcohol to minors, poking holes in the condoms of especially snooty teenage yuppies, and doctoring price tags so that we could actually charge upwards of forty cents more than the manufacturer had determined appropriate. Or, perhaps these were all modifications that I invented once I become the sole owner and operator of my 500 foot purgatory. I didn’t get a chance to interview the corpses on their managerial techniques.

In all aspects of its existence, Boston proved itself to be the perfect location for my operation. The general uproarious behavior of the population allowed my apathy towards anything other than my store to fill a niche that the city so badly needed covering. You see, when a group of people historically shifts to one end of the political, social, and economical spectra, it starts to wonder why people with different views aren’t forcing a different result. Thankfully for Boston, I’m here to fill the void. Just try to give me a 100 dollar bill in payment for your Snickers bar. Watch me tell you to fuck off with my finger on the trigger of a loaded pistol in case you decide to cause trouble. Still think your city is full of working class candor and collegiate pride? I’ve got another story for you to tell your psychiatrist on Monday morning.

Everyone hated winter on the East Coast. The entire city braved the snow by resting their lives on the win-loss record of the New England Patriots. I wasn’t a sports fan, but my store was. My parents had long ago placed Budweiser advertisements with quasi-lifesize Patriots helmets on them, a green football field in the background and the team’s schedule fighting for room between the grandiosity of the helmet and the grittiness of the chalky frozen gridiron behind it. Each year the beer manufacturer sent me a new poster; the images never changed, and the names and dates on the schedule were the sole reminder that a year had even passed. Blue and red streamers adorned the front of the store, weaving around capriciously inside of the decrepit structure and its barred windows. I had even added a touch recently which I feel would have made my parents particularly proud. Over the glass window of the malt liquor refrigerator, I had posted a special edition beer helmet poster, one which I had asked for specifically from the man on the phone in God Knows Where, Virginia where they take orders for all of America’s beautiful brewed poison. The sign stated “Be a team player, always use a designated driver,” and included the ever-important Patriots helmet and Budweiser logo. The irony, of course, and it was so fucking clever to me, God everyone would love it, was that the only people who ever purchase malt liquor are homeless people and college students. If that isn’t a group of rag tag team players already, then I don’t know who is.

This winter was particularly comedic, with inches more snowfall in a week’s time than most Bostonians are used to in a month. The streets were continuously filled with a collage of black pea coats, weathered leather jackets and puffy outerwear that enveloped ruddy-faced owners. All I had ever seen in twenty-three years in Boston was a change in jackets as fashions shifted in and out of commonality. Microfibers of various sorts were clouded by the gray façade of irony that even in the shittiest climate to found a heterogeneous community, Americans would find a way. There was a reason why these no-named patriots didn’t pack up their belongings and move to California. They still had something to prove. As for me…I just had a grocery store.