A Diary of the Socially Diseased; Chapter 2

Apr 01, 2008

Chapter Two
My good friend Jackson Paul Montgomery came from a shitload of money. Didn’t his name just say it all? He was an exact embodiment of the typical rich kid from the upper whichever side in Manhattan. He had the personal drivers, the seemingly endless bank account, and of course that attitude that came with the package. Trust me, I speak from great experience that just by shaking his hand it had always been accompanied with floating, colorful dollar signs and the dig of an old cash register tallying up the purchase. Looking back on it, I still am surprised that he didn’t piss in a toilet of gold just to keep up with his daily hygiene of wealth. Sure, that golden spoon in his mouth had made him difficult to relate to. I remember whenever I said I was broke in college and tell him so, he once replied “Oh yeah, I know. I blew six grand on the Vega Strip this weekend. Dude it definitely sucks,” and I would never understand how I would never get annoyed with it. It should have. There was a little worse than a friend so full of himself that he didn’t know how to console other people, but the stacks of his hundred dollar bills said it all.
I ran into him in the means of it being his annual decade twenty prohibition reenactment party. It was a welcome blood ground for all speak-easies and flappers to unite. Of course Jackson had been throwing the party for six years now, and of course I had originally been dragged into it because, mostly, it was where the easiest girls were. He reined king, notorious like Al Capone, and just as vicious to those who crashed it. I always feared the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre, but luckily there never was one. Despite my irrational fear, no one was dumb enough to start any sort of shit with Jackson while his parties owned the night, I knew that notorious was always going to be just such. Jackson’s parties were notorious for having the largest selection of booze, imports like absinthe and the harsher stuff that only Russians and Germans could deal with, which all in all did seem like a bad idea on the outside worked out rather nicely. Anything a normal party would have would still be over the top just because he was, in all actuality, a Montgomery and didn’t know any better, or other, way to do it.
By running into him I was also running into her. Take the two people completely unable to stand each other, have literally nothing in common, hate what one another stands for and that would be the relationship of Jackson and his unicorn; the off limits, unobtainable princess –Miss Scarlett Johnson. She was always a firecracker with a miniature fuse, one bad look away from decapitating any one with the sickle from the Grim Reaper, and always looking oh so incredibly seductive that tongues waged in her wake. Unfortunately for all of my kind, she swung the complete opposite direction, no matter how hard we tried. Of course, she has been out of reach for six year, which didn’t mean Jackson didn’t put his whole power into winning her very affection, and at a time it seemed he would prove us all wrong, but the unicorn ran away forever. So I asked him, no bull shit, no skipping over it, what the hell happened? So I let the tape recorder spin around the air waves of recordable silence.

“Is this for the Pulitzer?” I asked as I lean forward, placing my elbows on my knees. There was a glass of scotch on the dark oak coffee table in front of me, the blue suede tailored hat beside it and the recorder in the middle. I questioned how I got here, instead of necking in the bedrooms with some very drunk flapper, but instead I was here; sitting across from the aspiring writer Simon Gable. I’m sure this isn’t where he wanted to be either.
Staring back at me are the cold, blue grey eyes ringed around with red that belonged to Simon. They remained passive; waiting. I draw in a long sigh into my lungs, and reach out for the scotch just to hold the light glass in the palms of my hands. “Our freshman year in college, I put up a flier on those bulletins, and it said ‘Writer wanted.’ Obviously my contact information was on it as well. I took up in my dorm room, just waiting to see who would come, if anyone at all.” I took a break, allowing my thoughts to formulate in the true chronological order, and in the state of my mind I was in, the details floated slowly back to me.
“So who showed up?” Simon asks me, just as professional as ever. I could only question just how long he had been itching to know this particular story, as I could vaguely remember how many times I’ve dodged it completely. So I shrugged and looked over to the window illuminated by the headlights of a departing car. Through the shadows of people walking drunkenly by the size of giants floating by, even the thin, pathetic branches of a tree seemed to shimmy in the night. “About six people showed up. The first couple were the types of morons who put capitals in the middle of their words, the kind who don’t understand grammatical necessities were also in that sort of group. So I passed on them all. Just when I figured that no one else was going to show, this girl walks in wearing two belts, the lowest pants I have seen respectively, so low that it was showing off the elastic band of her underwear which was surprisingly not a thong and a black button up shirt that might have been respectable if she hadn’t had a total of three buttons done up. She sat down on my bed without presenting her motives for being their or her name and simply asked on question once she was situated. No names. None of that crap. No gimmicks.” The words flow through me as I remember the way I had first encountered her and it brought a faint chuckle to the inside of my throat.
Just by giving a glance away from the window of shadows and people walking as clumsy as puppets I could see the vague interest in Simon. For how long had he been infatuated with her? I question to myself. That question was best saved for another time. It was high time to continue on with the story, as it was a good one and yet I had waited all this time to share it. “So she says, ‘What is the job?’ and pops her gum in her mouth. You know, when she makes those clicking noises? Oh yeah, she was easily the girl for me. But she obviously wasn’t interested in paying much attention to me. Actually, I think she was looking out the window at whatever was going on out there. I figure I had a very good chance for boring her to death while she watches birds or whatever’s out of that window and figure no time like the present. I tell her, ‘Erotic fiction,’ thinking that I was sounding pretty classy and professional –yeah I was pretty proud of myself. I thought it’d tickle her fancy of keeping it short and sweet,” I say while sucking the spit out of my cheek. My head is light and at the same time weighted; that was the consequence of the alcohol it was subduing my inner nature to stay awake. It labored and slowed my breathing, forcing oxygen to the areas of necessity and not wasting a tiny portion of it.
The room we were in belonged to my father, and had all the objects my father liked showing off to his business associates in plain view. The glass ash tray on the corner of his large oak desk was just the premier addition to whatever belongings he had placed in order of strategic importance. It wasn’t good enough to just have the cigarette ashes placed in any old plastic piece of shit; it had to be glass and not only that it had to be right next to the classiest –meaning most expensive- cigar case on the planet. Anything his associates had was just a Ford sitting next to a BMW in a parking lot. To make matters worse, the two walls of bookshelves all contained leather bound text books and encyclopedias that had nothing to do with anything at all. Basically my father had a growing collection of first edition nonsense, and he paid a good fair share of money that he could have been using to get meaningful items on. The chair that I sat in, I had chosen because if one wasn’t a Montgomery their ass wasn’t precious enough to sit on it. During the party this room had been locked and a hidden gem in the growing enormity of the house, just out of respect for the rules as if you weren’t a Montgomery like me, you couldn’t be in this room left alone. Oh how the kiddies would have ruined the place, I thought.
I jump back into the story, looking slowly around all the little super expensive knick knacks my father had spent his money on, all the fine little details he had put and effort in having the decorators see to being placed in the room for intimidating. It was all very intimidating actually. How he thought of having gold flakes embedded into the ceiling tiles so that when the light hit it a certain way it glistened with wonder. I couldn’t even say I could think of such a thing, and I had a knack for flamboyant gaudy behavior towards our family money. “So she turns to me and with her attention off the window says, and it’s like I asked her to deal with my recites and organize them alphabetically mind you, “So is that female on female, female and male or male on male?’ At this point I had to give her all the information necessary with sort of thing, you know, because obviously she was unfazed with what I had asked her to do, so why not? I didn’t think anyone would want to write porn for a complete stranger. I honestly had intended to see if someone would type up my essays for me if I were to tell them what I wanted to say verbally, but this was perfect too.” I tell Simon’s stupid gray, Sony tape recorder; the red light stays constant, a signal that it’s on and recording. Though even just by looking at the red light on the recorder, I can see his excitement in the story. All he knew prior to this was that one day I just showed up at the café with Scarlett sitting next to me drinking her tea and reading the paper while I played around with my iPod and drank my iced coffee. Now the mystery was being uncovered.
Now while Simon felt I was going to spill out every last detail, I just didn’t feel comfortable going through the whole conversation. He was a writer and therefore wasn’t going to be trusted with every little and, or and syllable. For all I knew he was going to throw it up with different names, if that, and hope he got some sort of reward for it. I honestly didn’t think it was so exciting, but if he had interest in it then it was for a different reason far greater in the scheme of things than I would ever know. So with my digression and right to privacy, I left a chunk out, but thought about it all the same. Sure, she had been dressed as I had revealed, which I later found out that it was her idea of professional-casual; some sort of mix breed of dressing the part but being comfortable with it. It worked for her, and was all I would know for the next years. And after I had been asked about my choice of story, she had just wanted to know what sort of names to work with actually and it changed very little of how she was going to go about it, I then laid out how this whole situation was going to work out.
“I will pay you a hundred dollars for each piece since I don’t know the growing rate, I think a hundred dollars will be fair,” I had said, and immediately saw her growing uneasiness with the salary. She was the type, those proud fuddy-duddy types that knew writers made little money and kept it modestly so. Righteously so, before she could object from the price I continued, “Do you have anything I could read first to gather and understanding of your style?” Thanks to my father drilling it into my head, always make sure a potential associate has some sort of visual reference, because they can bullshit until the heavens fall but at the end of the day they better be as true as a blue sky.
At first I see her smile as she reaches down on the floor for her raggedy backpack. I took it as either an statement anti-Jansport and consumerism being almost utterly fashionable or just a hint of how she took care of her things, keeping them until they literally took a dive on her. I watched patiently as she pulls out this notebook, decorated with small doodles and the edges were pressed up with the clear sign of being used too much out of the black hole of a backpack which obviously had a good seven other things bouncing around in it. Her trimmed short nails, painted clear, shine in the light when she flips through the book, riffling through the pages and revealing some with red ink bloodied with the war of thoughts and words, some with black ink with the classic effortless of true vision, and other colors which I interpreted to be the random scribbling that came from a nervous or bored muse. Some of the pages she flipped past had one or no words on it yet at the same time were dog-eared as if she meant to go back to it and finish out her thoughts. In about the middle of her homemade journal she hands it over, not bothering to get up from her perch at the corner of my bed, leaving me to stand awkwardly before her and reading her erotic fiction. She smiles at me coyly, almost evilishly, “that there is some girl on girl, enjoy,” she says as if I should be shocked by it, and yet somehow, I don’t question her character for having it on hand. I shrug it away and let my eyes pour through it.
I should have had the dignity to be embarrassed by the situation, reading a stranger’s inner thoughts about sexual encounters or fantasies, but I wasn’t. instead I was more concerned with familiarizing myself with her handwriting which was a signature in itself. I noticed it had a good mix of both slashes and bubbles, the perfect pairing of perfecting her ideas and wanting to get them on paper fast enough for more to come. It was like a gun pushing out the bullet and spitting another into the chamber automatically. She must have been using a machine gun. When the good, and by good I mean intense, parts were on the way her hand writing had changed to become urgent with more slashes, almost as if she needed to fill out the pages with all the ideas and details she could muster. The piece altogether was laden with descriptions that were a gateway to her soul, as if no one else would think of any object like she would and describe it the same. To me, it was perfect. So came the time when I handed her homemade book to her, six hand written pages ahead of where she had it placed when I received it.
“Do you have a laptop?” I asked her rhetorically. It honestly didn’t matter if she had one or not, I remember half way reading it that I was going to ask her to type u her stories. Not because her handwriting was the way it was, but mostly out of convenience. It could be put on my iPod if it were typed as perverted as it sounds. “The way this will work is this: you will type it on my Mac here, and I will pay you accordingly,” I say as I gesture towards the laptop sitting limply on my desk. Then after a few seconds of thinking I shrug again, “Actually I want you to have it. I’ll just buy a new one,” and of course with every good business deal I put out my hand. “Jackson Montgomery, friends call me Jack or Asshole your pick.”
“I don’t need your computer,” she says as delicate as thorns and doesn’t even look at my outstretched hand. In fact, she looks up at me square in the eye as if I had spat on her favorite pair of shoes. To me, the laptop was just a laptop; replaceable. The main reason for it was that my parents had access for all of my emails, and they wouldn’t have approved if I had her email the documents towards me. I couldn’t have her just put it on a disk and pass it through me like that, as my parents also checked my computer for content when I went home. Basically, they didn’t understand the privacy act. Ultimately, buying the same exact computer would not even hit their radar.
“Ah, but if I explained why you will have my laptop to you right now, it’d be a long story. I’ll have to know your name so I can write your checks and just for the good old fashioned need to know basic of being business partners.”
She flashes a smile that would kill angels with sinful thoughts spreads on her lips as she stood to meet my outstretched hand. “Scarlet, Scar, Johnson,” was all her reply as she leaves a small piece of paper in the palm of my hand, having done it so quickly that I hardly registered it when she releases. She leaves the room as quickly as she had come, and I with a new venue to pour my money into. Everyone wins.

Simon takes a long gulp of his drink, wincing it down as it burns through his insides. I deliver a pitying smile and follow his lead by dropping the golden liquid down my mouth and throat. Unlike him, it doesn’t burn me. I’m far too used to it. When his voice crosses the silence of the open air of the dimly lit study room I flick my attention to him and not the bottom of the glass. Only, I give him my attention with my ears, picking up on the audible scratch in his throat of it being dry from the alcohol, as my eyes are shut trying to find the black serenity of closed eye lids. “You ask her to write you some jacking off material and are best friends forever?” I could feel the incredulity in his voice; and yet he was the writer.
Slowly I shake my head as a response, pushing it to the right and drawing it back to the left, all the while I lean back in my expensive, leather chair. The sound of it tightening around my form by the weight of my body grunts underneath me. I am faintly aware of the soft dings and clanks of the glass stopper being pulled from the Scotch container. “Only you Jack,” he says seething with jealousy. “Only you can get away for paying people to entertain you.”
“What’s the matter with that?” I grumble with my eyes shut to the world and resting the empty glass on my knee cap. I had been paying people since before I was born. It was in my genetics and it was in my heritage. That much was obvious. I might as well have been my grandfather who started the businessman legacy, sitting in his business clothes of a blue tailored suit, unbuttoned white shirt and undone tie after a long day’s work. “People get paid and I enjoy it,” I fire back without really caring if it makes him even angrier at this point. For years he was jealous of me, of my wealth, how I flaunted it, how I just didn’t care that not everyone else in the world was a Montgomery, but at least this time he was finally getting it all out, all the anger and jealousy he had been building for years. Anything that happened at this hour was better than knowing he was turning my girlfriends against me by feeding the innocent girls lies of adultery and the inability to trust me alone with other people for more than four minutes. It was impressive but it wasn’t all that much better at the same time.
“You still haven’t told me what happened,” Simon adds sourly chasing his words and emotions down with a shot of scotch. Once more he fills up his glass, only this time the crunch of the ice against tongs used for grabbing the cubes serenaded the silence of the room as he dropped the ice into his glass and poured the scotch over it. Scotch on the rocks, and I was partial to it myself. To me, what happened was something that happened with time; there was no one thing. Put a row of events that need to happen in order to save humanity, but try and take out the one piece that will be the true catalyst, and everything would crumble on top of itself. It felt wrong to try in the first place, as if I were exploiting a good thing. If that was what he wanted, after all this time, certainly it would not be I with the information he craved. “That is simply because I haven’t the energy or the sobriety to account every moment I have spent with her for the past six years, Mr. Gable,” I say lazily, choosing to lose my interest to the matter at hand, meaning the hand at the matter. “Come on, Simon! What do you want from me? How did you think this would work?” I ask in a way that puts effort into not falling to sleep under the influence of the alcohol. At this late hour, with nostalgia in the air, it was something that was going to happen whether I liked it or not.
To say that I had always viewed Simon as an insolent child would only remind me of why I called him so. He lacked the fundamental traits to push him over the merger from childhood to adulthood, one of those traits being curiosity disclosure. That was of course more apparent the more he drank away his childish woes of not getting his ways just because the attention limelight still wasn’t picking up on his tiny frame the more he stood next to me. I found his truer self to be a little more exciting than the mask he chose to hide behind and fold himself under the umbrella of being a writer. Given the silence that followed my questions I knew I had badgered him too hard, and his feelings were hurt. With a long sigh that I had delivered at the beginning of this interview I mirror it and reach over to turn off the tape recorder then carry it over to him while setting down the empty glass. “Not everything will be easy to figure out,” I say to him as I leave the study. There are far more interesting things I could still do with my time that night.

Not everything will be easy to figure out? I question as I watch Jackson retreat from the study barely able to walk on his own two feet. The silence that fills the dying house, one built from the hands of slave work, is unsettling. Over twenty people still scattered about, possibly more, and none of them made the sounds of life in the night. That was the problem with a house so big, someone could be singing at the top of their lungs and the other side of the house would have no evidence of it.
The weight of the recorder in my hand forces reality to revisit the intentions upon this little meeting, and for the few seconds that pass where I wander around room to room just looking for a new place to exist while my head turns out ideas of how I am going to compose my work, I find I have no real understanding of what I had hoped to get answered or what answer I wanted when I asked him. Maybe he hadn’t understood my question. The air outside is frigid while I walk across the way to the guest house. The soft dew from the grass splashes off each blade and onto my fancy shoes just by standing on it and I wonder if the whole conversation was a wash. I did learn how Scarlett just appeared in everyone’s life which was no different than how Jackson got anyone to be in his life; by pure random luck. Once inside the guest house, secret key in hand, I collapse on the couch and forget the importance of having aspirin near me for when I wake up. Silence and sleep come so fast that I hardly have time to think of another thought.