Learning opportunity: Unfinished novel
First chapter from a first -- and only -- draft of a novel I abandoned in 2016. Let's take another look.
This series is called, Unfinished Novel. My intention is to revisit and (hopefully) revise a story I started writing in 2016. It was (and still is) tentatively titled, I AM JANE. It’s a fictional story inspired by Jane Bainter, the lyrical muse and namesake of rock band Jane’s Addiction.
Any similarities shared by Ms. Bainter or members of the band are purely coincidental; this is a work of fiction. For more information about this piece, you can read my essay, On Writing About Jane.
Jane Says
My name is Jane. I hide my secrets in the attic. I am a Doe. A Plain Jane. A wilting arsenic flower with long pale hair and red-rimmed eyes. Except I work a Real Job, a good job (a job that pays).
Everything you’ve read about me is true in the way that everything is true. Once you cut it, print it, tie it, ship it. Permanence is stacked and wrapped in brown paper; when a copy thuds on the lawn before sun-up,
Everything you read here is true, too, even when it contradicts what’s been printed by other people, to much acclaim, long ago. For example, I read somewhere that I shared a house with seven guys and slept with them all. I think it was more like six. And I didn’t fuck any of them. Probably because they saw me as a little sister type (even though I was older), and tried to stick me in the tiny pink bedroom, without windows, next to the stinking yellow kitchen.
Listen. You don’t put fuckable girls in tiny pink nursery rooms. Unless you’re a sicko. But trust me (if you can) that none of these dudes were that complex.
All I wanted was a roof, but even I wouldn’t take what I assume had once been the maid’s room. Or the housekeeper/beekeeper. So I got the attic.
Maybe I’m not so Plain. And I’m no Charlie r withering lily moon-child — never was, never will be. More like a liberal arts major with a minor in CHARM. And so I dodged the drooling denim darlings, each armed with a Les Paul fantasy meets assembly line reality. BIG JUG LUV.
Somehow, with my tiny ones (tits), I slipped upstairs with a man named Rozz. Aka the house BOSS. Aka Mr. Showboat - Mr. Personality - Mr. Clipper - Mr. ZING. He is a hundred feet tall on stilts. By now, living a few weeks adjacent to his room (we share a sweeping, demented balcony), a platonic Queen to his King (and wishing I did after all have the long Rapunzel braid), I have seen them: the stilts! Tucked under his widdle captains bed at night. In the morning, he pulls long checkered trousers up over them, shoves them into Rubbermaid shoes. Deliberately, he ties the whole outfit together with razor strap suspenders and a pomegranate pout. His mouth is a crepe paper rose. But don’t worry - his face is very much anchored by rectangle Groucho eyebrows, knit together or arched.
Our washroom is a splash-off sink, a rubber plunger, a vanilla candle, a cracked China soap dish. It separates our bedrooms, and it’s where I get my wig on (not pale but slate), my face done (pancake white), my thighs zipped up (in Velcro tights). I’m getting better at elbowing in past Rozz, last name Ransom (Mr. Integrity - Mr. RIGHT). He gives in without much punch, prancing off across lime floor tiles, with his pucker fastened ON. Before he leaves, he raises rail-thin arms arms in a cross above his head. He says, “This is for my critics.” And then, with hands in prayer and a clerical look on his face, “This is for my missus.” He blows me a kiss straight from his bowels; it bubbles up from his gut and singes the mirror just inches from my face. A benevolent little spitfire flapping shrugging Emoji arms. “Piss takes,” he sighs, sashaying away.
Later, after my face and tights and wig and dinner, I am in bed, as I usually am when I’m not on dates with duds or dancing in cages in clubs. I leave my door cracked, for the imaginary cat (long gone, love song). And also to make it clear to Mr. Ransom that I’m still there. “There are no closed doors,” he once told me, his face angular and proud. I don’t really want his bones, not tonight, but he throws them at me anyway -- a torrent of sheets torn from one of those composition notebooks. They swirl in the air above my bed, settling around me contemptuously. I gather them up like tissue.
Rozz crosses his arms at me. “That one’s called ‘Death and Dishonesty.’” I feel a smart pain somewhere, but it’s far enough away. I look at his words and they bleed black ink.
Please, if you have feedback, leave me a comment. Because that is the point — to ask and learn, review and revise, share and inspire.