The beginning of my novel

First few pages of my very-slowly-coming along novel…opinions always welcome…

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“How is sitting at a desk, watching the Daily Show, and shopping at Target going out and living life?”

“In and of itself, not much,” Ben replied. “But you’re focusing on the minute-to-minute daily actions of suburban life and not looking at the big picture.”

This was an argument that Ben and Greg seemed to have about every other day.
And it wasn’t one that appeared to be on the verge of being agreed upon anytime soon.

Although they grew up in similar, sleepy New Jersey towns separated by only about 20 minutes by the Garden State Parkway (14 if Greg was driving), they didn’t meet until they were Ithaca College sophomores, in a creative writing class taught by a professor who seemed more interested in talking about his fantasy football team than about dangling modifiers and character development. The two quickly hit it off, although they were taking the class for far different reasons. Ben was a creative writing major, finally getting around to his first dedicated class in his craft after a year of gen ed headaches.

For Greg, it was a gen ed headache. He needed two English classes to meet his requirements, and for him, creative writing seemed like it would be the most painless. He didn’t particularly like to read, which made history a pretty odd choice, but he had to pick something and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be an accountant like his dad, so he tried to go in the furthest direction away from that as humanly possible. History seemed like it would do the trick, but he had to take these classes, or as he would put it, ’shit I’ll never have to think about once I’m out of school.’

While Dr. Jorgensen audibly debated during the first class whether he should sit or start Andre Johnson that week, possibly in favor of one of the Colts wideouts, Ben scribbled plot ideas in his notebook while Greg casually glanced in the direction of Molly Weber, thinking of a casual way to accidentally bump into her in the hallway following class and subtedly find a way into her Holmes Hall dorm room later on, thinking he had the entire semester to figure a way into her bed (which he never even came close to, barely getting the words “Hey, nice story about the blind zookeeper..” out of his mouth without sounding like a complete jackass).

But Greg and Ben were teamed together early in the semester in writing groups, and quickly realizing their common interest in punk rock, diners and Mystery Science Theatre 3000. They ended up getting an off-campus apartment for the following two years and moving into a place in Red Bank following graduation, as both got jobs (Ben at a weekly newspaper, Greg at Borders) to pay the $1275 rent on a small two-bedroom.

This particular weekend, they went for hike two hours away in the Northeast Pennsylvania mountains, getting away from Super Smash Brothers long enough to go for a walk and do some grilling in the crisp fall air. And get a nice argument in.

“Face it, you’ve never really done anything too exciting. You’ve never been west of the Mississippi, you’ve never been to Europe, you’ve never gone skydiving, you’ve never done much of anything that would make someone go ‘oooh, that’s awesome that you were able to do that.’

“Yeah, but those things that you’re saying represent about .001 percent of somebody’s life. You go to California for a week, what is your life like the other 51 weeks of the year? Plus, how can somebody quantify another person’s excitement level? For all you know, the next person we meet out here is stimulated only by backgammon. She gets no excitement from parties, sex, a huge steak, ONLY backgammon. And how can that be wrong? What you seem to be implying is that every person gets excited by the same thing, and that’s not taking into consideration the differences in people.”

“Damn man, if she only gets excited by backgammon, that girl needs to get fucking laid!”

That made Ben chuckle. With the intensity that it may seem like the two combatants would be outwardly emoting, a casual observer may think that they were about to come to blows. But that is what made their friendship work—they were incredibly passionate about issues they would push to the back of their minds about four seconds later, and even if they vociferously disagreed on some life point for six hours. This was especially common in the summer, during baseball season—Ben was a Yankees fan while Greg rooted for the Mets, and while their teams weren’t even in the same league, they never ceased to argue whether Carlos Delgado, Jorge Posada, or whatever player happened to be up to bat at that moment was on steroids.

Yet for the past few weeks, despite the fact that the playoffs were mere days away, the two couldn’t stop speaking about what specifically constituted an ‘exciting’ life.

~ by lettersfromsuburbia on February 24, 2009.