SuperNova Afterglow: End Of Days

Novel Revisited: 30 years of Ignorance

I finally did it. The thing I should be doing and should have been doing all along is right in front of me. I've started to mingle with that novel, the one that has been so closely associated with my life as a journalist. I think 30 years is long enough.

When rereading what I wrote, I realized that I thought my story was too dull to come across to a reader's audience. I was wrong. In recounting the events to my physical therapist the other day, I realized I had more than one nemesis, struggled in the university atmosphere and at a public radio station because of this PC culture I had never been exposed to before, the fact that (lead buried?) I had been the victim of not one but two sexual predators (and maybe more) who used their position to manipulate me, and a love interest that would not be.

It's been so personal and real that the biggest part of the story that I discount is that I had glaucoma. The pressure of being at college and my abuse of alcohol created an even worse scenario. I had to buckle down and keep my personal and public life under control while I went through discouraging encounters with doctors and two surgeries. I also managed to be a full-time student holding down two part time jobs while attempting a social life that included pursuit of a girl introduced to me by my backstabbing roommate who threatened me because he and her were 'mentally ill' (he ironically a victim of sexual abuse by his father: claimed) that I think he was using to get closer to her. However, he was jealous of me and her apparent attraction to me. But, through some guise I couldn't see, he managed to lower me in her eyes, though I suspect that didn't matter. She would have an incident with police that landed her in jail and set her off on a journey that seemed to force us into a platonic association. Maybe, it's because after one night out at the bar I wrote on a slip of paper for her to see my actual desire for her. It was never discussed. But, it was pointed out at one point why we could only be friends, because she didn't want to lose what we had. It could have been out of respect for her friend, my roommate. It could have been that I was truly the mentally ill one, though I thought I hid it pretty well. Ironically, I was the sanest when I was with her.

Which gets me to the next thought I had when revisiting this. Does one try to make fiction out of a real story, or just make it an autobiographical piece. Do I use fiction (definitely for dialogue) to glue together a story that I cannot imagine without embellishing to flesh it out. Maybe, as it develops, be able to recall events. Perhaps, the whole novel could be about a search to understand what happened in the early 90s. Why I walked away from that life and never looked back, because it burned me out, failed me, and I failed it...by my own ignorance of how to handle it.

I have regrets. That is essentially the motivation for going back.


Here's what I wrote as a new introduction (very rough):

The song Slow Burn might best describe my life at the end of 1989 on varied levels. It's a story that could begin in so many places (and still does when brought up in reflection/flashbacks) and could end just as quickly.

It’s taken me nearly thirty years to weave together journals and fictional attempts to account for the years that brought about a mental awakening. This new sobriety in '89 was aided by what was coined as negative capability, which I had been learning to apply and eventually deplete. My use of telephones would become one casualty, oddly (a phobia?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_phobia#:~:text=Telephone%20phobia%20

Like any story with a prequel, it really all began in 1984 when I was recruited by a community college after I responded to an ad for a seminar in town on writing careers and more. I was sold on getting paid while working for credit at a local newspaper. Though the Daily News shot me down, a local shopper grabbed me up. The fuel was provided to show my rejecters what they were missing, as I started a misguided journey to prove my talent as a writer.

After five and a half years and a fine arts degree, with two and a half years spent chasing news stories as a broadcast journalist for a local radio station, I was staring at a huge change for my life: an attempt at a four-year degree while a student news associate at the university Public Radio affiliate in Marquette.

Many will remember and fictionalize my journey differently than I account, because I was not stronger than the narrative that would be applied to me for the two years it took me to get in the door and then rush out like it was some turnstile at the end of 1992.

I was naïve and didn’t realize people I encountered didn’t play fair. I had many failed relationships before washing the slate clean in December of 1989, and it included demolishing my car on New Year's eve, right after getting affairs squared away in Marquette.

Though, this story is not a religious journey, it was after a plea to god to help me that I rolled my car after a night in my hometown to celebrate. I didn’t give Him as much credit as deserved for that auspicious start  to the next two years, even after climbing out of an overturned Oldsmobile at the bottom of a ravine. It rolled several times on the way down. I was not wearing a seatbelt. I used my arms and legs to brace myself inside the cabin all the way down in that machine.

I walked away with a gimpy ankle that clicked in cold weather for, ironically, the next two years. I had been sleepy, I guess, the moment the car gained speed climbing that hill from the club a quarter mile away with only two miles to drive. It made no sense as the car climbed that it would cross over the centerline, which I could vividly remember for years. After cutting the wheel, the Cutlass Calais with the Quad-Four engine seemed to slide across the 'cut off road' toward a guard rail at the top that would inevitably be sheared off.

Steering out of the car’s new direction on that fateful night (do I believe in fate and destiny?), it seemed to steer and propel itself, as if it had stepped on a bar of soap in a wet shower. To this day, I believe I may have been drowsy but not drunk in my weakened state after a few drinks following an exhausting evening of basketball. I could not imagine it was enough to cause me to send the wrecked car awry.

What I was ticketed for, I don’t recall, but it wasn’t drunk driving. I wondered if my days communicating with the local sheriff in my capacity as a news reporter helped change the outcome. I don’t recall anything more than a sobriety test, which was simply counting backwards from 100. And when it was time to meet with a claims adjuster, my prayer was answered. I had money for college. I was able to pay off my auto loan and put an extra $2500 toward my living expenses and education, until I earned enough to get me through the next two years. It wouldn’t stop there.

I took a second radio job part-time while earning 16-20 credits per semester. I didn’t have to take that many classes, but I was about to become an overachiever who would pull down three state broadcasting awards.

I was Mr. Serious to other student interns at the PBS bunker where we gathered. They tried to get me to integrate and loosen up. I could have become the next director of that radio station by the summer of '92, but I did not want to be part of that atmosphere anymore. When I denied the station manager’s request to oblige his request to seek the position, he turned on me. It got colder and even more divisive. Little did I know that he would become (and had been) a sexual predator who used his position to get close to guys like me. Young, attractive men he could keep under his thumb.



That's as far as I want to go with the current synopsis.