Ww

By Shane Mole

WW is a dream. WW is out of his league. WW is just a woman.
John, a hard-drinking serial loser meets Mercedes, a classic beauty with uniquely endearing eccentricities. Boy meets girl in a melange of whisky, rich dreamscapes, Douglas Adams and The Beatles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane Mole
• Release date: Jun 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311518576

Shane Mole

Shane Mole's writing was compared to Charles Bukowski when he was sixteen years old. "Who the fuck is that?" The boy asked. He was then given 'Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit' to read. He felt like an idiot for not knowing who Charles Bukowski was. Now, along with writing, Shane tells people who do not know who Charles Bukowski is that they are fucking idiots. If you don't like certain words, or certain ideas, then I have some very simple advice for you: DON'T READ MY SHIT! However, if you do, and you like it, let me know. [e-mail]

Book preview

Chapter 1

The couch had been my bed for more than a year. However, it was more than that: It was my island; my refuge from the raging torrent others know as existence. I was never able to simply do what was required to have that normal life that seems so attractive to most men. The car. The house. The job. These concepts were as alien to me as something out of science fiction. And not positive, Star Trekkish science fiction, where we discover that no matter how different species may appear, we're all just people. No. This is 1950s commie-panic inspired alien invasion stuff. Fight or flight. Driving fills me with anxiety and nausea. The idea of owning a home is essentially resignation to staying put in the same place forever. Fortunately, that would never be an issue anyway; since having a job is perhaps the worst thing I could possibly envisage. That's right, I'm what is called an artist. Which, unless you have great talent, or an abundance of dumb luck, or some palatable mix of the two, is just a kind way of saying capital L, Loser.

The view from my island was a TV to the north and a laptop to the west. A somewhat distorted view of the world, to be sure. But when one is in isolation, any view at all is nothing to be sneezed at. It may as well be a view of monkeys, alternately dancing, fighting and fucking. Although, this is not all that different from what I had previously observed of the real world. At least the fictional version is stylised and attractively edited and scored. Monkey fucking takes on a kind of poetry with the right music and lighting.

On occasion, I would get drunk enough to brave the tide and sea monsters and swim to the mainland. Not so much to find a monkey of my very own, but to sing. I love to sing. I'm no Pavarotti; not even an Astley. However, I can can carry the right tune without too much strain on my back. And since I have no musical talent or work ethic to speak of, playing an instrument is out of the question. So karaoke is my only outlet.

Alcohol is essential to these outings. Not because of anything so banal as stage fright On the contrary, my time on stage is the only comfortable time I have out in the world. For those 3 to 5 minute bubbles, my mind is still and what passes for my soul is somewhat sated. It is the other 5 hours which require my Dutch, confederate and Canadian buddies. Simple human interaction, which most people just do out of a natural desire to belong and enjoy themselves, is anathema to me. What must it be like to just be able to go out and have fun? I imagine it is something so pure and simple; something innate to most of the species. A basic biological function which, by decree of genetic aberration, or social maldevelopment, I lack. However, a few well-timed beers, or bourbons, or Canadian Clubs, or some mix of these, can give me the illusion that I have that ability. At least for a little while.

Before each night out, usually a Wednesday, not so crowded as a weekend, I would sit at home, blare whatever songs I was loving at that particular time, and drink myself to the precipice of sloppy drunkenness. Just enough to allow me to forget what I am long enough to get to the bar, but not so much as to make it impossible to walk to the bus and endure the ride without throwing up. It is a delicate formula. Too little and I sober up before I get there. Too much and I cannot make the journey. After twenty years of tweaking and refining, I had mastered the procedure. So now, most of those who knew me, considered me a charming, fun, albeit eccentric cohort.

Except for those who knew me outside of the bubble. When someone got to know me well enough, their affection for me waned quickly. They would, of course be kind, even sympathetic, feigning an understanding of my situation. They too felt these things. Everybody does. The difference is, it didn't truly affect their day to day lives as it did mine. So, when it came to spending any time with me, they would somehow always find themselves too busy. Happy people loathe the thought of wasting their time with a depressive; no matter how interesting, intelligent or amusing the depressive may be. And it is true, I am all of those things. I have a strong mind, a sharp wit, and a unique perspective; but such things do not amount to likeability. Confidence and verve seem to be the foundations of that quality. I can fake that for a time, but my true nature will not abide being masked for long; uppity bitch that it is.

I am a civil misanthrope. In that I dislike most people, but I nonetheless treat them with respect and consideration. This may be a result of my selfish desire to avoid any kind of conflict, as opposed to an altruistic belief in the inherent goodness of the human animal. Most of the time, it is relatively simple to be decent towards others. Yet, there are times in my life, my lowest points, where civility becomes a task of monumental proportions. At these times, my only recourse is to retreat to my island entirely. The preceding year or so had so far been the longest hibernation of my life.

As is usually the case, my most recent retreat had been instigated by a woman. Or more accurately, my feelings toward and failure to win said woman. For although I may generally despair of social interaction, there is one facet of that befuddling labyrinth which is, and has ever been, the driving force of my life. The most elusive, beautiful, destructive, inspirational force in the universe. Beyond physics, or religion, or mind. It frees me and cages me. Capital L, Love.

Chapter 2

It began in my first year of primary school, with Christine Zorn. Two years of W.B. Yeats calibre pining with a five year-old's sensibility. I still recall her blazing hair and shocking blue eyes. When I thought of her as an adult, though I had not seen her since we were seven years old, I pictured her as she would be all grown up. A sophisticated, beautiful, worldly woman, still retaining that innocence and playfulness I remembered from my youth. She was never to be mine. Not even in the way that a little girl can love a little boy. There would never be any hand holding or sweet, overly-puckered kisses for us. In fact, because of my obsession for Christine, I would not experience that with anyone. For if it could not be with her, I would not entertain the possibility of holding the hand of another.

Such was the way of my primary and secondary school life. From Christine Zorn: Two years unrequited. To Sandra Peters: three years unrequited. Courtney Webber: just the one year that time, nothing really. On to Clara Kreuk: another year, but we went to different high schools, so there was little chance for that to persist. The first three years of high school were the domain of Tricia Henderson. I managed a kiss on the cheek from her. The rest of high school was pretty much a blank. Minor preoccupations, nothing more.

By the time I was eighteen I had managed to actually win the affections of the objects of my desire for short periods of time. Sasha Solomon, who I invariably name as my first love, stayed with me for a few months. Not my first sexual relationship, but my first loving, sexual relationship. She was a couple of years younger than I, so she eventually succumbed to the pressure from her parents to break up with me. To her credit, she tried to stick it out, hiding the relationship from her parents; but as is usually the case, reason won the day.

Sasha Solomon made me a writer. She was the first person to inspire me to create. And the loss of her made me doubt the accuracy of that saying about it being better to have loved and lost. It felt to me that having and subsequently losing love was far worse than never attaining that which you desired. Because missing out on all the Christines, Sandras and Tricias of the world could never match what it felt like to lose one Sasha.

It took about two years to heal the hole she left. Two years and another Clara. Clara North: Fifteen with the soul of an immortal. Her youth made a physical relationship out of the question; but the purity of my love for her made it all the more devastating when she grew out of her feelings for me. The three months we were together had been the most wonderful time in my life. Her ethereal magnificence was only matched by her extraordinary mind. Clara North was to be the woman in question in numerous poems, plays and stories over a span of 8 years. During that time, I was not alone. I had many relationships, from a couple of months to a couple of years in duration. However, I would never give my whole heart to any of them. The ghost of Clara was always hovering before me.

Eventually, Clara began to leave my thoughts. I loved others and gave myself completely to them; although the scar remained. In a way, I had given up on my dream. Most would say I had grown up; that such an idea of love is childish and irrational. I made myself believe that I had not abandoned my guiding principle. I loved, worked hard on my relationships and was deeply hurt when things went wrong, sometimes to the point of breaking. However, there was always an element of performance in what I was experiencing. I knew what it was like to be enraptured and hurt by love, so I knew how to react as I was supposed to in any given situation.

For fifteen years after Clara North, I tried to settle down, knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that what I was doing was caving in to the submarine like pressure and cabin fever that was being alone. I would find fine, decent, attractive women and try my best to stick with them as long as I could. I would be apologetic when I did the leaving and heartbroken when I was left. Until, at the unlikely age of 36, during my eventual first year of university, I discovered my true first love.

Chapter 3

Mercedes. The woman was a wonder. Twenty-one years old, with a magnificent bouquet of anxiety, flirtatiousness, inconsistency, wit, brilliance and unmatched, unquantifiable beauty. I despised her the moment we met. She was pushy in a way that rattled my cage of simplicity.

In my youth I had performed in a few amateur productions and even written a few plays. So in order to cruise through at least one class in an otherwise text-heavy course load, I took an acting unit. But from the moment she arrived, late, to our first class, she began to show signs of annoying exuberance and dedication; turning my cruise into a merchant vessel. A real gung-ho, take charge kind of gal. Not that I have ever had anything against strong women. On the contrary, I could never respect a pushover. I wanted a woman who would stand up for herself, fight like a lioness for what she believed; but this was something else. I was not even sure why she bothered me so much. Yet she did, to a breath-taking degree: And I could tell that the feeling was mutual.

Almost immediately, she and I were thrown together in a group for an assignment. The two of us naturally assumed leadership roles. I, due to my previous amateur theatre experience; and she, due to her desire to be all that she could be. We would butt heads constantly on details. She would always want to do more work, to the point of overkill; while I wanted to keep it simple and just work to our strengths. Since we were both civil and reasonable people, we generally wound up somewhere in the middle.

Due to our successful working relationship, antagonism had metamorphosed into friendship. We began to find ourselves seated next to each other in class constantly, backing each other's plays and sharing in-jokes with nothing more than slight smiles and knowing glances. She would ask probing, extremely personal questions, which I was, inexplicably, only too happy to answer with complete candour. I began to look forward to acting class all week. My time with Mercedes was beyond precious to me. I had never been one to take my friendships terribly seriously. I considered them to be circumstantial. I had school friends, social friends, family friends; all of whom I kept in their appropriate places, with very little crossover. But this one was more. A true friend. A best friend.

We had our presentation assignment together, but our end of semester scene performance was a different matter: We were assigned different scenes in Chekhov's Three Sisters. However, the woman who was to play the part of Olga was often absent, as was Mercedes' scene partner. So when it became clear that our Olga was not returning, I persuaded our teacher to allow Mercedes to take over the role, which she was happy to do. So there we had it, I was now able to spend all my time in class in her company. For three hours every week, I had a counterpoint in my melody.

Things started to change at that point: She would make favourable remarks about my intelligence and even appearance; openly, publicly, and I would return the compliments as subtly as I could. However, our relationship was founded on complete openness, so subtlety was not really in our playlist in that department. She would casually call me handsome, and use the word riveting to describe my section of the presentation in her introduction. And I would make sure that, when the teacher saw something in our presentation that was particularly well done, she knew that Mercedes had come up with that idea; which she invariably had. Respect and friendliness had become blatant, unfettered affection.

Already, my feelings for Mercedes had surpassed those I experienced for Clara North. Of course, I was not allowing myself to see anything more than platonic appreciation in our interactions. I was not even sure why. Perhaps my own insecurity prevented me from entertaining the notion that such a magnificent woman could ever see me as anything other than a good friend; despite how the situation may have appeared.

The semester was steadily drawing to a close and it became necessary to schedule extra time outside of class for our group to hone our presentation; a fact which I was thrilled about. I would have the privilege of spending an extra couple of hours with Mercedes. We found a space at the university and, with some difficulty, settled on a time that was acceptable to all of us. When I arrived, I was not surprised that she had laid out a plan for how to spend the time. It was all business and she seemed uncharacteristically cold toward me. I asked if she was alright. She said she was fine in a way which I recognised as I'm not fine, but I'm also not talking about it. I knew not to press her when she was feeling like that, so I sucked it up and helped her orchestrate the limited time as efficiently as possible. However, my concern must have been evident to her. I was not myself either. Or perhaps more myself. Just not the self that Mercedes had made me.

By the time of our next class, the night of our presentation, she was back to normal again. We talked and joked and at one point, a fuzzy cube that Mercedes used as a seat in our scene rehearsals, which she called my box, needed to be moved and the teacher asked me to take care of that. I casually responded, Alright! I've been dying to get my hands on Mercedes' box! Mercedes began to turn red and cackle in a way that I had never heard. It was a laugh of pure, uncut hysteria. This set me off, and for at least a couple of minutes we were unable to regain our composure. We were eye-balled and scolded by the teacher and the remainder of our group, so we pulled ourselves together and made sure we avoided direct eye contact for a while. Eventually, we settled down enough to be able to look at each other without a fit giggles. It was then, just before a ten minute break in the class, that it happened: The moment.

Chapter 4

Time and reason

Ill-equipped as they were to capably process this moment

Stepped out for a smoke

All that remained were Mercedes

Myself

And whatever pocket dimension

Hoarded all the magic in the universe

I was sitting directly across from her

Head in my script

Innocent of all that was to come

And how my life was to be irreparably altered

I looked up at Mercedes

In profile

Her eyes had that squinty

Faraway look

Which I had come to know very well

As indicative of nothing in particular

She was fussing with her hair

Which she had put up for the rehearsal

She removed the hair-tie

Scarcely more than a rubber band

And her silky

Golden locks began to fall

Ambient sounds began to fade

Peripheral vision began to dull

The blonde waterfall cascaded over her

Improbably delicate shoulders

The frames of her glasses

Barring its intrusion into her line of sight

She turned to me

Silence

Everything in my field of vision darkened

All but her

She had the brightness turned up to just short of blinding

And was in Technicolor that put The Wizard of Oz to shame

As she looked into my eyes

It was as though two bolts of blue lightning

Simultaneously

Ever so slowly and gently

Permeated my chest

Cradling my heart

Transforming it

The energy

Warmly embraced by my blood

Worked its will throughout my entire body

La vita nuova.

My heart was already keeping time with a new rhythm

A far catchier tune than before

But it was only the beginning

A smile

But no ordinary upward curl of the lips

In my tenure as a friend of Mercedes

I had counted at least six different kinds of smiles

The sarcastic one

The laughing one

The thank you

The fake one

The cheeky grin

The friendly half smile

And various others

Which I was still yet to categorise

This one was not only new

A voice within either her

Or me

Or both

That was not so much heard as experienced

In what can only be described as an extra-sensory capacity

Told me

Without a doubt that it was mine

Only

It was almost imperceptible

Her mouth barely changed

Was it her eyes?

Partly, yes

But it was beyond all that

It existed almost completely inside her

As if this smile was the manifestation of something hidden

Deep within her soul

Which she feared to express in any form

A force which she denied

That was nonetheless powerful enough

To reach out for a fleeting moment

And lightly caress her face

With tender illumination

The voice emerged again

More forcefully this time

A psychic volume

Which a Theist would imagine was the voice of God

And I still have not completely ruled that out

Wherever it came from

It did not trouble my

Heretofore reliable

Bullshit detector in the slightest

This was truest thing I had ever known

It manifested as sensations and fluid cognition

Which could only be translated as one word

An exclamation

The knowledge which dwarfed all the

Not inconsiderable wisdom

I had gathered in my thirty-six years on this planet

This single word

All that it signified to me

Was now implicit in my every thought and action

Her!

Through all my fear and birth pangs

The clarity of what this meant gored me with its sharpness

The one

My purpose

I was to love this woman beyond the bounds of mortality

Even more astonishing was what I experienced next

I saw

Felt

A mirror-image of all that was happening inside me

In her own eyes

This moment belonged to both of us

Our connection

Previously a couple of clumsily half-joined Lego blocks

Had become a bond

Akin to welded steel

As reality began to re-assert its dominance

Sound bleeding back into the universe

Colours dulling

Light disseminating throughout the room

We were ejected from our bubble

Forcibly hurled into the realm of the regular

Although the world and its people seemed toned down

Mercedes and I retained a vivid

Extra-real effulgence

The silence between us became constrictive

I felt a stuttering urge to speak

I-I like your hair like that

Uh-huh!

Thank you

She softly appreciated

Now what?

*

For the remainder of the class we were silent toward each other; eye contact was scarce and fleeting, yet we stayed at one another's side. We were in a kind of limbo between blowing apart and merging into one being. Something had to give.

At the end of the class, Mercedes suddenly gave.

With an abruptness which almost knocked me off my chair, she sprang up, hastily exclaimed that she had to go immediately and ran for the door.

My mind turned itself inside out to decide the right course of action. Instead it came up with the idea of checking my watch, as calmly as possible stating, Is that the time? Wow! I have to go too, and pursuing her outside.

I caught up with her, we made our excuses and said the most casual of goodbyes. She would not look at me directly, simply bustling to her car and leaving me alone to ponder the last two hours in joyous despondency.

Chapter 5

Later at home, while attempting in vain to sleep; and after haphazardly transcribing the happening in a mishmash of poetry, prose and stream-of-consciousness nonsense, I felt a tangible interlocking of emptiness and completeness. I could not hear or see her, but Mercedes was in every pore of my body and I was inhaling her, exhaling doubt, expelling the darkness, which heartbreak, loneliness and fraudulence had used as their habitat for fifteen years.

Eventually, as I calmed, sleep blanketed me like the wings of an angel, with Mercedes' being in my heart and her name on my lips.

*

She painted my dreamscape that night. Dancing through it, adding blue sky to my inner space and bringing all the usually juxtaposed randomness into glorious abstract harmony. Gone were the failed, messy liaisons with famous women; replaced by pure, genuine fantasies of she and I engaged in simple activities which, due to her presence, took on a momentous quality. We would walk through the park, hand in hand, answering the greatest questions of life with little more than a glance and a smile. We would lay together on a couch in the middle of an empty shopping centre, watching a movie on TV. A movie in which I was Zorro, and she was the feisty, Spanish noblewoman fighting by my side. We would escape the Titanic, feed the starving in Africa and be the benevolent rulers of a distant planet of cybernetic life forms.

However, the dream that was the most vivid involved nothing more grandiose than the two of us living a life and raising a family. So vivid, that it was as though my mind were a Dictaphone, on which every sound, smell and image were etched in perfect clarity. It began at our wedding; a large but simple ceremony with everyone we had ever known, seen or imagined in attendance. I wore a black tuxedo with an electric