cheater cheater pumpkin eater

So talking to my mother this morning, she noted that the characterization that I am creating of me on this blog is indeed fairly tragic and borderline depressing.  Pretty soon people are going to show up at my door with that raised eyebrow, pressed lip smile, wide eyed look saying….Are you ok Jason?  While passing me a pound cake or a square pan full of lemon squares.  Lemon squares?  I love lemon squares.  Hey look a squirrel!

So I am in a better mood due to basketball playing last night, affirming my doctor’s and the world suggestion that exercise does a body AND a mind good.  I also investigated the pharmaceutical options to help curb more the anxiety then any potential depression, although they are  supposedly linked like salt and pepper.  Or do you say pepper and salt.  Eggs and bacon or bacon and eggs?

So here is an excerpt from my new novel.  It’s not yet finished.  Only 420 pages to go.

It was a decent night for an insomniac. A 3:12am bathroom break was just a pause before Tim trudged back to his bed and quickly returned to sleep. He woke for the second time just after 7:00am, slipped into the shower and began his day. The house remained quiet other than the sports highlights he watched from the bar stool in his kitchen. Breakfast was a bagel with peanut butter and sliced banana. Popeye, an oval-eyed beagle, sat mesmerized by the smear of peanut butter tenuously clinging to the side of Tim’s cheek.  It did not fall.  It was located and licked.

At the bus stop Tim’s thoughts were with his current email flirtation but he quickly shook it off, assuming whatever chuckle of interest he had from the confines of his cubicle was now over. It was three weeks ago when they both started stringing words together to make the days more bearable. A couple of sighs were produced, a pang here, a blush there, but a lifetime and his unrequited fondness for Sarah had passed since the three dates they went on 11 years ago. Yet he still liked saying her name out loud, liked reading her effortless use of the word fuck, picturing her eyes bug out a bit as she keyed in the profanity.

An old song played on his Ipod as the bus approached. It was a longing song, a falsetto singing about low times.  It quickly turned his forced indifference about Sarah into something more romantic. All what iffy and teenage girl. Laughing at himself, he drew a heart in the steamed up bus shelter. The impatience of the bus driver thankfully stopping him just short of fingering their respective initials into a math equation.  Tim got on the bus, paid his fare and sat down.

The moment he got to work, he fired off an e-mail to Sarah to explain his recent self. There were exclamation marks he regretted, a semi colon he fell in love with, and of course the mandatory ellipsis to finish it off.

Her response came quicker than he expected. He was on the phone when he saw the e-mail preview flash on top of a release he was writing. Just her name, her breezy, alliterative name catching his eye as he tolerated the awkward charm some wire service salesman was spewing.

“Oh Tim, be careful, revel in the fact that someone loves flirting with you as much as you do with her, go home tonight feeling desired, and make your wife feel the same way.”

There was nothing to do but follow her instructions. But the response was so perfect he knew he would find a way, manufacture some tactic to prolong the surface innocence. If she backed off, he would press a bit, like a gawking, hungry face in a bakery window, until the eventual only antidote of ignoring him finally kicked in.

***

Ok – I feel better about today.  Although these peanuts are making me thirsty.