A few comments about feedback on the previous uploaded work from Becca and Stephanie.

Yes, I recall the first synopsis I attempted last year included the word “aimless” before I realised how bad that made it sound. I was aware it is episodic and directionless, but that was how I saw the life of the narrator. However, I’m not sure if his increasing purposefulness comes through sufficiently strongly later in the work or, as you both say, whether the earlier aimlessness can sustain the reader’s interest or not. It is an interesting conundrum and shows how important it is to get views about your work from people who don’t know you – and I’ve been very lucky to have fair and constructive comment from two exceptionally good sources.

In terms of the last chapter, the shared message is that doesn’t work. Something else needs to be going on within the plot and the narrator is becoming repellent and his tone inconsistent with the earlier chapters. With the latter two problems I suppose I was trying to be more realistic - nice men aren’t nice all the time – and they are easier to rectify, but putting more plot in is trickier. I have an idea how to do this, but it will take time to work through as it will then affect the rest of the story. However, having now considered the delay in moving the plot on, I can see that the next three chapters are fairly superfluous too. This may seem odd, butI have skipped these and loaded up chapter 10. It doesn't quite address the story of the female character, JJane, but I can rework what I've omitted to develop this bmore fully.

10. Tremor
I must admit that there was nothing really for me to complain about in terms of my social standing. I was hitting the clubs and partying, pitching up at home in the morning sunshine after sleeping over at a woman’s house, basking in the envy of my cab driver that last night’s crumpled clothes signified sexual conquest. Too bad I knew the truth, but I could project how he might have seen it. I was out there, I was…Actually what was I doing? I’d been to a series of crappy discos and a party full of dreary academics. This was “partying” in the very loosest sense of the word and at the duller end of the scale. Oh, and there were the hours spent tossing about on Ophelia Spearwright’s couch, after discovering my veneer of sophistication was thinner than an uptight, upper-class English gal. No wonder a permanent low cloud of gloom, perhaps drifting down from the San Gabriels’, settled over me. The bank statement in that morning’s mail didn’t help my mood. Where was the $190 in my checking account going to get me? The bills were piling up and the rent was going to be impossible to find even after payday.
Raiding the fridge, I recoiled from the edible because I felt full, but from a sick, tumourous feeling. I tried reading but couldn’t even extend to finding the funnies in the Times let alone reading them. I put the recyclables out for collection but changed my mind and dumped them in the trash. Fuck that, I thought, as I pictured Jane encouraging me to think of the future generations, and fuck the future. Thereafter, I mostly lazed around staring at TV, scratching myself beneath the jogging pants and t-shirt that I never removed, even for bed. Arnold’s mewing and coughing, his jumping off the top of the sofa onto my stomach or his scratching the legs of the dining table (things that previously drove me to an exhilarating rage) barely registered, so stuck was I in my lethargy. I tried sitting on the front porch, but even catching some rays made me feel sad, then I felt guilty for feeling sad. You really have to work at being depressed when the weather’s so good. I kept plugging away and may even have never emerged into the real world again but for a call from someone in the department, pleading with me to come into the office we shared and “sort out the fucking crap!” spilling over into his side of the room. It was only then that I found out about the fall from grace.
It wasn't too far to fall. I was slouching out of the library at about three in the afternoon with a couple of textbooks and a photocopied article on Hanif Kureishi from a back copy of Vanity Fair tucked under my arm when another Brit in the faculty, David Southgate, bowled up. He tugged at my free arm with a limp urgency.
"Have you heard?" he questioned breathlessly, a spray of sweat breaking off his flopping fringe.
"Heard what?" I answered brusquely. I’d barely spoken to Southgate for most of the four years he’d been a “colleague” and resented having to now. The fact that Leary had singled him out once at a party having caught Southgate alone in the kitchen cramming his face with vol-au-vents hadn’t helped with our relationship. Calling him a pie-guzzler was one thing, but Leary’s nickname for him had stuck: the Ginster. What made it all the more delicious was that Southgate had no idea what we were talking about (his privileged background had obviously never led him to buy that make of pie in a gas, sorry, petrol station before). It took several months of calling him it direct to his face before a friend finally informed him what it meant. I swallowed a smile as his oval face bore down on me and listened. What he had to say turned out to be more than adequate compensation for looking at his rosy-tanned chops.
"It seems like your friend, Mister Leary is leaving".
"Leaving what?"
"Leaving here." He was beaming.
"I don’t understand. He’s getting a job at last? The bastard never told me he was going anywhere, so maybe it’s still in LA."
"No, he’s leaving here. The whole thing. This place, the city, the country."
“What - permanently?”
“Yes. Permanently.” He was now beaming, his rosy cheeks aflame with joy.
I was pretty taken aback by this news and stared silently back at Southgate. Kevin was not the man to keep a secret like this to himself if it was planned and he certainly wouldn’t go back to England willingly. Handcuffed to a detective or in a box: yes. For a new job: never. Eventually after a longish pause, a question formed.
“So, he's got another job, back home I assume? He kept that fucking quiet."
"No, I doubt it. He's just going back to England. PDQ it seems."
“I’m sorry Gin…er, David, I don’t follow you. Can you simply tell me what’s going on?”
Southgate took a deep breath and launched into the story. A Kiwi friend of his in the faculty, Bill McMillan, was also friendly with another Antipodean in the sports sciences department, Bruce Graves. Bruce, who I only knew moderately well because he was a good friend of Kevin’s, told Bill that Kevin had been caught with his pants down in the Maitland Lecture Theatre, in flagrante with a young undergraduate. If that hadn’t been bad enough - although scarcely surprising given Kevin’s record - she turned out to be a really young one, a seventeen year old who’d been fast-tracked into college. As she gnawed enthusiastically on Kevin’s wayward wang , a group of dignitaries including the Vice Chancellor, the senior Vice-President of marketing and a large group of potential investors into a Chair of Mormon Studies in the Religious Faculty walked in for a sight-seeing experience that hadn’t been on the itinerary.
Kevin is so apparently lost in ecstasy that the first thing he realises is someone is tapping him on the shoulder. Affronted by this rude interruption he blindly strikes back with his elbow straight into the Vice Chancellor’s solar plexus. Pandemonium ensues. The girl runs for cover, flesh all over the place, while Kevin is jumped by the V-C and some of his cronies. They wrestle him, half-naked to the ground so that all remains visible is his reddened and erect member. This was described as looking like a lone stick of rhubarb in an otherwise barren patch of garden.
Southgate took an inordinate amount of time recounting this sorry tale, snorting and giggling as he came upon each new fact. I listened stony-faced. He then related how Kevin has spent the next three hours locked in the Chancellor’s office with other members of the University’s senior management, including security, and representatives of the Police Department. This was extremely heavy stuff and only Southgate speaking again made me snap out of it.
“I’m sorry to be the harbinger of bad news. I know you’re quite friendly with Mr Leary. Are you alright?”
"No, I'm fine. It just feels a bit odd. I guess I should thank you for telling me".
“No trouble at all. I enjoyed it. Sorry, must dash off and find someone else to tell.” With that, he waddled off, a happy mound of prime British blubber.
I cursed him under my breath and decided to get over to Kevin’s immediately. I called a cab from my office and ten minutes later was riding over to his place.
From the personal debris stacked up in the hallway and the line of hangered shirts perched on the doorframe, it looked like he was packing.
"So it's true?"
"Yep. It sure looks that way. Vice Chancellor Fleischer wants me out for it. Fair dues though, he caught us bang to rights".
"Who was she?"
"The lass? Liza someone. I think her last name may have begun with a “C”. I was just browsing the magazine rack in the campus bookshop, we got talking and next thing we were looking for somewhere quiet and easily accessible. It looked a safe bet, an empty lecture hall, nothing scheduled for a couple of hours. She was gumming away and in they walked just as I was shooting my load. She looks at them with her cum chops, end of story. Sheer bad luck really.”
“You can say that again! I just found out from the Ginster what happened. Fucking hell Leary, you’re taking this rather coolly. You could go to jail.”
“Nah, Ad. I’m not going to jail. Could of done, she’s a minor and all that, but I’m not.”
“How?”
“For one reason Ad, my one tiny bit of luck.”
“Which is?”
“Apparently, she's the niece of someone important, the Governor of some State or other back East. There was lots of frantic phone calls when I was locked in with Fleischer and his goon squad and there was a definite wish to put a cross in the “no publicity” box. And that's how it is mate, otherwise I’d really be in the shit."
“It looks like the shit to me,” I said incredulously.
“Yeah, well. Whatever,” he replied calmly. “It could be worse, that’s all.”
Kevin’s face was giving nothing away. If this was a stoical mask and inside all was in turmoil, then I might have understood. But for someone whose career - rather too literally – had been blown, he was remarkably chipper.
"I still can't quite believe this,” I said.
"Me neither. After all I’ve been through. All those dangerous fucks in risky places, all the struggling and lying to keep my arse in this country, to lose it for one lousy blow job. If only we hadn’t done on the stage!”
“You had her blow you on stage?”
“Yeah, ‘fraid so. If we’d been in the stalls we would have definitely got away with it.”
“I can’t believe it. You were really asking for this Kev. It’s Kismet.”
“Yeah, too right. Fuck it, it wasn't that good either. Too young really to have a good grasp of the mechanics of it all. If you want a good blowjob, experience counts. Like a professional. Or Shera I suppose."
"Er yeah, speaking of your girlfriend, how has she taking it?"
"Well, I think she's completely pissed off with me. I should really try to explain, but I've decided not to start pestering her immediately, keep a little dignity while I work out an excuse... I mean the truth that I need to tell her".
"You haven’t told her yet?”
“No. I’m sort of building up to it. Any ideas what I tell her?”
“How about the truth?"
"Yeah, I could try something like that. I was minding my own business, when this girl forced herself on me, somehow got her mouth attached to the end of my knob and I was so flummoxed that I hit the Vice Chancellor. That could be okay, with a bit of work. Probably have to soften the knob bit.”
Kevin went back into his bedroom to retrieve some more of his clothes as I kept talking to him.”
“So what you going to do when you get back?” I shouted from the hallway.
"Fuck knows,” he replied. “I don't know what I'll do when I get back", Kevin sighed, "go straight to Leeds and pick up a job to teaching little bastards somewhere in some city shithole school I expect."
"Well at least you've some experience to fall back on", I replied, trying to generate some hope. "I haven't ever done what you might call a proper job. Bit of office work, stacking shelves, invigilating exams, marking a few papers, lecturing, what does that add up to except mainly what I'm doing here."
"Don't knock it. That's a skilled job that, stacking shelves."
"Well. You know what I mean, there's more to things that academia."
"Yeah, well if you call sports “academic” I suppose there is. I'll just have to look on the bright side. But fucking hell: going back - Jesus! Greyness, blandness, old things, old moany, miserable people – my parents! Oh shit!"
"You'll get use to it. It's what you were born into."
"Yeah, but I wasn’t planning to die in it,” he said glumly. “I hope I never get use to the place. Frost and bus queues and anal prats having the pleasure of telling you what to do and the incessant fucking whining and only four TV channels and Radio Four and Tories...."
"And less crime and safer streets and decent newspapers and no smog and zero on the Richter Scale. Then there’s Leeds United, Yorkshire Pudding, lovely foaming pints of bitter – all there waiting to welcome you home. You’ve got to look on the bright side."
"Okay, okay. Maybe it's not all bad".
"Yeah,” I continued with the blue sky stuff, “they’ve got five channels now and you could always get cable. Even the Tories aren’t what they were."
"You been watching CNN again? Anyway, thanks for putting the bright side to deportation. I don't know though, maybe there's a place for me somewhere else in America if I can plead a little. I can't imagine they'll put this little indiscretion on a bulletin board or on the Net".
"Maybe they will. The Kevin Leary "defiler of the innocent" website. Not to be employed in occupations concerned with minors."
"Look pal, no one is innocent here, including that girl. Jesus, she had her gums round me manhood before you could say “come and get it”."
"Well, whatever the detail, she's certainly not innocent now thanks to you."
"No, but if she was an innocent before, she didn't lack for belief in her own prowess. She's well-versed without being a poetic talent."
"She's quite prolific then?"
"Absolutely. It's so much harsher when you get caught out with someone who isn't lily-white. I guess it's just karma for all those others".
"All? You haven't even started paying back yet for those legions. Think of merciful release in a few more lifetimes."
“Sorry, but according to the Catholic Church I’m in the clear. Transgress, confess, transgress. All part of my Irish heritage thank you very much. Mind you, I’m a bit behind with my confessing. I expect dad is gonna march me down there straight away once I turn up on his doorstep. Oh God.”
“It can’t be that bad can it?”
“I dunno Ad. His a bloody nutter, a stickler for discipline. I wouldn’t put it past him getting his belt out.”
“Even now? Was he always like that?”
“Aye. I bet your father never played National Service with you, did he? Me and my three brothers standing by our beds waiting for kit inspection. A hair out of place and it was out with the belt.”
“That does sound a bit harsh. Fortunately, my dad’s a southern softie, missed out on the army by years. He was in the Boy Scouts though. Not quite the same thing. Isn’t there anywhere else you can stay?”
“I’ve got a sister in Batley, she might put me up. Nah. I’m just gonna have to face it. Now, would you like a drink? Coffee?”
I said yes and Kevin retreated to the kitchen to grind some beans. I sat down on the folded up futon in the living room, which doubled after dark as Kevin's shagpit, absently wondering what stories the compacted bedding might yield if it could talk; Kevin came back in with a doorstop of a book in his hand.
"Coffee won't be a minute. Are you alright with Colombian?" He plonked the book on the coffee table and went back to the kitchen for our drinks.
"What’s this for?" I asked although it was clearly a travel guide to the States.
"Ay? Oh yeah, a bit of light reading. It’s one of Shera’s. I was thinking, y’know, maybe this might be a final chance for an American vacation. That's why I'm packing now.”
I turned in the direction of his arm’s waving and saw a large holdall lying against the door of his bedroom. A couple of Hawaiian shirts – one pink with yellow and green blobs, the other electric blue with large parrots as motifs – lay on top.
“Oh, I guess the shirts are the give-away Kev. Other than those, I’d have said you were packing for good.”
“Yeah, well, it may just as well be. I must of looked sufficiently pathetic with me pants down that they gave me a week to tie up my affairs and get out. My affairs? Ha bloody ha. Well it’s Wednesday now so I’ve got to be out of the country by midnight next Tuesday night. That gives us, what, five days from tomorrow?”
“You can’t seriously be considering going on vacation?”
“Why not?”
"What about Shera?"
"What about her? She's not really speaking to me just now which is probably why I strayed and once I tell she finds out she’ll be off like a fucking shot. Anyway, I'll be off soon too so there's no point in trying to keep her sweet.” His flippant comment about shrugging off his girlfriend of the last two years stopped when he saw my eyebrows go up in a “here we go again” motion.
“But you haven’t even told her what’s happened yet?”
“Even better reason to leave if you ask me Adam. Hopefully, if she doesn’t come over tonight and I don’t answer the phone, I won’t have to.” I can just leave her a note.”
“You bastard. That’s terrible. You’re just going to disappear until Tuesday then fly off forever?”
Kevin looked slightly chagrined and apologetic. “Okay, I’ll leave her a note.”
That seemed the best I could hope for on behalf of his long-suffering girlfriend. Even though I didn’t know her that well, I knew she was hot tempered. Perhaps Kevin’s callousness was better for his health in the long run.
“What about you, Adam?”
“Me? How do I fit into this sorry tale?”
“I just thought you might need to get away too, knowing what's been going on with Jane".
"Yeah" I replied, aware of an overwhelming suspicion based on Kevin's mention of my departed girlfriend. Why hadn't I thought of it before? Guys like Kevin could not maintain platonic relationships even if they tried. The suspicion caused my taciturnity but, after a brief silence, Kevin continued.
"Without Jane, you can go away on a boys' holiday without having to justify it" he cajoled. "What about Yellowstone? Or San Francisco? Or the Rockies? Just hire a car and away we go. What d'yer say?"
"I don't know," I said wagging my head sadly and looking at the floor, "it doesn't seem possible really."
"How?"
"Well, I've got to prepare for a class next week."
"Blag it." I resisted the temptation to recount my woeful attempts at blagging my last class.
“I've also got a full class of essays to mark from the other week, have to be returned by next weekend."
"Work on it next week then."
"What about my doctor's appointment on Monday?"
"Cancel it."
"Yeah, that’s fine, but I’m still not sure I can go ", I whined, "I’m really not sure. Jane may call. She may even come back. I just have to be around..."
"Adam, man. Listen to me. Fuck it. Fuck it all. And more to the point fuck Jane. She left you remember? You owe yourself a break and this is it. What is you want on your tombstone mate - "he always marked his essays on time?" Listen, go for it. Enjoy. Make sure you get a tombstone that says "he lived a little and then he died." Live a little".
"Well, I don't know. I’m really skint Kev. I’ve got money at all.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Our rent’s due next week and I’ve nowhere near enough to pay. How the hell am I going to go on vacation when I can’t afford the basics?”
“What’s the big problem? You’re still getting paid. Surf the plastic, me old pal.”
“Yeah, great idea. I’m being pulled under here. I’m drowning in bad credit choices. Surfing is not an option.”
“What about a garage sale?” chipped in Bruce.
“Selling what exactly?” I asked.
“There’s all Jane’s old crap for one thing,” offered Kevin helpfully.
“What if she comes back for it!” I cried indignantly. “What is she comes back, full-stop.”
“What if, what if,” said Kevin. “Anyway, there’s all that kitsch-y shit that you collect.”
Ah yes. The kitschy-shit. Something else Jane didn’t like, using up our storage space for. This included in the last catalogue of unwanted (by her) stuff: “three separate and all incomplete chess sets; a dented American Football helmet; a mini-tower of hockey pucks; a set of “Banana Splits” annuals 1969-1973; an ornamental ice bucket in exact replica of Jayne Mansfield’s head; plastic figurines of the Partridge Family, the Osmonds and the Jackson Five; and an Iron Butterfly poster signed by several of my friends. One thing I did really like about the States was garage sales.
“No. It’s out of the question. I am a collector.” Or an obsessive-compulsive.
“What about selling a kidney?”
“To pay for a vacation?”
“Sounds a bit drastic to me,” said Bruce supportively.
“Or what making up a little roadside sign with “lecture for food” on it? That’ll get your income up.”
“Really? Why not go the distance, get myself a shopping trolley and collect cans?”
“Okay, okay. Let’s keep it realistic then. Why not move?”
“Eh?”
“Move. Come back from our little jaunt, give up your pad and rent something out in the Valley. Cut your overheads. Simple.”
“And how do I get to work from the Valley? I might as well go straight to living on the buses.”
“What about Watts then? That’s convenient.”
“Are you mad? Suicide would be more convenient.”
“Why not? It’s got that rail/tram contraption. You’ll be in work in no time.”
“I’ll be in a body bag quicker!” I shouted, drawing a line under Kevin’s lunatic schemes.
“Exactly,” replied Kevin, completely unfazed by my vehemence. “In the long run we are all dead as some dead guy once said. Now is the time to live, eat and be merry for tomorrow we move to Watts. Seriously man, this is do-able. We can share motel rooms. And, as a special treat, I’ll even pay for car-hire. It’ll have to be compact though.”
“I don’t know”, I wavered, “there’s still food and drink to consider isn’t there?”
Kevin didn’t reply verbally. He looked at me, sort of reproachful, like I’d stopped him from fulfilling his ultimate dream, the holiday of a lifetime spoiled by the hundred and twenty-two dollars in my checking account and the sixty-four still to go on my Visa. I tried to be strong, but it was too overpowering; I could not deny the desire to get away from the smothering familiarity of day to day life, once last stupid, fun fling. Followed by penury, misery and exile.
“Come on Adam, mate. It’ll be a laff. Fuck knows you could do with one you miserable bastard.”
“Well…”
“Go on. Do it for me Ad.”
“Oh okay,” I replied grudgingly. “I’m in. But only for a couple of days. I really do have commitments, you know, my therapy, work.”
"Sure," he smiled having yet again won an argument with me. "So we go - tomorrow!"