Winter Lyric

By Michael Whone

"an infectious little gem" —Whispering Stories

Winter Lyric is the emotional and poetic story of Elliot Stephenson and his relationship with Sarah Benton, two drinking buddies that suddenly become romantic partners.  With a new found lust for life so profound he’s not quite sure what to do with it, Elliot delivers a quirky love-manifesto for Sarah, documenting his recklessly entertaining fruition of sexual self-discovery. Elliot brilliantly weaves together a breathtakingly honest, and cleverly entwined story that fortuitously connects each hedonistic moment of his past and present to a bittersweet realization that life isn’t about pleasure seeking, but that life’s synchronicity and divine transcendence is the ultimate pleasure, that finds us.  

[A] meditation on all that is gained, and all that is lost, in every small moment, every seemingly meaningless interaction that passes us by, and it is told in a voice that is both profound and inimitable. [...] and contains more beauty and pain than should rightly exist in its brief pages. —From the Foreword by Neal O’Reilly   

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bolero Bird
• Release date: Oct 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781775330028

Book preview

Contents

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

For Neal and Stevie.

Thanks to:

Neal, Colleen, Christine, Ruby, Catherine, Robert, Bruce, and Stevie.

"Winter knows the good are poor,

that talent goes begging warmth

from ice and snow."

­—From the poem

Winter Lyric

by Irving Layton

(1967)

WINTER

LYRIC

A novella

Michael Whone

Originally Published 2017

©2018

Foreword

The following pages contain words that I have come to know very personally in the past year. It is a narrative of love, loss, loneliness and pain unlike any other I have come across, but those words on their own cheapen it and make me sound like the back cover of a DVD. It is a meditation on all that is gained, and all that is lost, in every small moment, every seemingly meaningless interaction that passes us by, and it is told in a voice that is both profound and inimitable. It was written by my friend and brother-in-arms, Michael Whone, and contains more beauty and pain than should rightly exist in its brief pages.

Elliot’s story begins in what seems like a confused static of thoughts and moments, shifting easily between painful past moments and mundane present ones, old shames and missed opportunities, and present painful solitude. When a day breaks for him, though, he finds a clarity, joy and beautiful order to his world that I could not help but be in envy of. Elliot stitches himself together again and again with the pieces of humanity that are presented to him, and revels in the fragile beauty of it all.

I won’t be so trite as to label my friend’s story a simple tale of unrequited love. Elliot nakedly faces the injustices we all do just by being born into this world, and the painful path a person must take to make a place for themselves in this world, when none is made for them.

—Neal O’Reilly

Thursday December 1, 2016

Chapter One

Wednesday October 1, 2014

April looked in December, the month following Monday. September ended minutes ago, and the next time December starts on a Tuesday is next year. The last time that happened was five years ago and eleven years before that December started on a Tuesday as well. I was twenty-six and fifteen, respectively. When I was twenty-six, I started my little blue diary because December started on a Tuesday. When I was fifteen, I had just broken up with my first girlfriend, and now I’m thirty-one. It was different this time with Sarah, but it reminded me of that first time with April.

Nina responded demurely to every advance I ever made toward her. So, I moved on and I had a cigarette. I stole Nina’s only cigarette before I left her to move on. She said every time she had a cigarette she thought of everything she ever did wrong. Well, I think she needed to lose that cigarette because I don’t think it was immediately apparent to her that what she did wrong was let me move on.

Moving on—

Some people are today, some people are tonight, and some people are tomorrow. Some people do their work well and get to bed and make the world turn around and either complain that they don’t get what they deserve or they just appreciate how swimmingly life is turning out. Those people are today. Some people barely make it through the day, making errors every which way, losing every job they’ve been given, hoping to have an even crazier party tonight, and they end up passing out, or wishing there were more cigarettes in their packs at one o’clock in the morning or they end having blood gushing down their noses and stealing tomorrow’s tequila. Those people are tonight. And some people are natural at everything they do in every way and in every effortless attempt they make they are unknowingly rewarded with love and affection and anything tangible that they didn’t even know they wanted from life. Those people are tomorrow. You’ll know you’re looking at tomorrow when you see his red eyes when you’re craving that cigarette at a minute past one in the morning.

You should know I found a cigarette. You should know I stole a shot of Shawn’s unopened tequila bottle he was saving for his dad’s birthday. You should know I waited until Shawn was asleep with red eyes so he didn’t pop me one. You should know I thought about everything I did wrong. I crashed a car, that’s the real problem. Well, I lost my job, that’s the real problem. Well, I haven’t loved anyone in a long time, that’s the real problem. So that’s the past and I’ve moved on, I swear.

I think if I had a cigarette with me that night I killed a man, colliding with his car, it would have been easier to move on. I probably wouldn’t have fallen asleep in the first place but because of the arguments I was having with my parents about the accident, I moved out and met a cute, young black woman. The summer after that, I met April. I met April eight years ago. That was the last time I was romantic with a woman.

I’m perplexed. How do I put the satisfaction of being with Sarah Benton last night in context with the heartbreak-notoriety my life has seemed like? Since being with Sarah romantically last night, I wish I could see Shawn, my one true friend, climb in through his window after midnight like I always used to and talk through the feelings I have had about Sarah and all the other women that are rushing to mind.

I saw Shawn for the last time nine years ago, two days after I was alone with the cute, black woman. I met her after I moved out because of my car accident when I was twenty-two. She came to my room one night and she asked me to play music for her. She requested Billy Holiday so I sang her God Bless the Child. I thought she wanted me to kiss her and I would have liked to but really, I wanted her to come to Ottawa with me the next day to meet Shawn.

She didn’t come but I went to Ottawa anyway. I left the following night. When I arrived in Ottawa, I went for breakfast with Shawn at the diner across the street from the other diner where we used to practice hitting on women, using the waitresses as test subjects. Needless to say, they didn’t like it and it never worked. We had to switch diners I guess because Shawn had a girlfriend that time, nine years ago.

After breakfast, we went into the little Native arts and crafts store right beside the diner and bought a pack of Natives. Literally, they were packs of cigarettes from behind the counter that were labeled Native. So we went up to his apartment beside the Salvation Army and smoked Natives. Shawn’s friend Alex came by claiming that if I was around long enough, I’d be able to buy some super cheap Natives as part of some deal he was cooking up later in the week. Luckily, I was planning to stay a week. I think that’s why the cute woman didn’t want to come with me.

Just before I left for Ottawa, and the black woman and I were in my room, my so-called friend, Christian, came to visit me with his cousin. Christian lied to the cops and told them I hadn’t slept much, that it caused the car accident. So, I ended up leaving my parents’ home over fights we were having about being charged for driving carelessly. Christian also broke up my encounter that night with the black woman. If he hadn’t shown up, she would have been the first woman, in a long time, that I became amorous with and I wouldn’t have had to wait a year to meet April. The cute woman left when Christian got there. She told me she’d come back later but she didn’t and then I took off on the greyhound for Ottawa the next night.

My parents talk about Christian like it was yesterday, even though I haven’t seen him since that summer. I haven’t seen that cute woman since that summer either but I met April the following summer and to be honest, I haven’t had much luck with women since. April took my virginity the day I met her and there’s been no women since then. Being sexual with Sarah last night reminded me of all this.

Today I quit smoking and my parents bought me some liquid for my electronic cigarette and then we went for coffee and they kept talking about how Christian ruined my life. It’s a common topic because I can’t find a job and that particular time in my life is the crux of my failures. There was some good in the bad, and April was that––but Sarah—Sarah isn’t the good in the bad.

It’s funny that the crux of my failures was named Christian though, because I go to church quite regularly. I’m on the payroll as a member of the worship band in my congregation, and I even go to bible study. It was an attempt to turn my life around. The attempt proved to be fruitful because now that I think about it, I met Sarah the first night I skipped bible study. Well, I met her before it was about to start and we talked for a couple hours and chain smoked and I walked her home and kissed her on the cheek the next time I saw her.

At first, when I saw her, Sarah was wearing the same shirt Nina wore the last time I saw her. It felt like she was starting from where I’d left off with Nina. Those first couple weeks I was reminded of Nina. Nina was the one that broke my heart, and our relationship ended when I realized her intentions weren’t the same as mine. I haven’t seen her in just over nine years, a couple years after my first two years of college in Toronto. Meeting Sarah was the first stabilizing moment with a woman in the nine years that passed between visiting Shawn in Ottawa and now.

It kind of helped that I didn’t think deeply about Nina much longer after meeting Sarah, but she started reminding me of Stephanie. Stephanie was one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever known. Stephanie was my best friend in high school, the first girl I ever slept beside.

When I was in Ottawa, the last time I saw Shawn, nine years ago, there was a girl there named Irene that looked exactly like Stephanie. One night during the week I spent there, a group of us took a long walk along the river and behind parliament hill with a couple of bottles of wine. It was Irene’s last night in Ottawa. She was moving to Montreal. I was completely broke and Irene was going to buy a greyhound ticket to Montreal in the morning.

Coincidentally, for a year, I had kept a Greyhound ticket from Ottawa to Montreal in my wallet. I had bought a ticket from Toronto to Montreal to visit Nina but when I got to Ottawa I lost my nerve and went back to Toronto instead. The ticket from Ottawa to Montreal still remained. If I had gone to Montreal that time to see Nina, the woman that later broke my heart the night I stared into Shawn’s red eyes, I don’t know what would have happened, but like I said, I’m moving on. So, I ended up selling that ticket to Irene for ten dollars. I borrowed two dollars from Shawn and bought chicken fingers at the Elgin Street Diner on the way back to Shawn’s place. I also urinated on the Lord Elgin hotel.

When we got back to Shawn’s place, Shawn and his girlfriend went to bed and I thought that I would write a song for the first time in my life. I borrowed Shawn’s roommate’s guitar, stayed up during the night and started to write my first song. I wasn’t quite sure what to write the lyrics about. The thought of not visiting Nina with that ticket came to mind. I actually did visit her in Montreal once and got drunk in her dorm on Portuguese wine that I bought from the corner store a couple blocks away.

As I was playing, I heard some noises, then all of a sudden there was a guy I’d never seen before in the living room sitting in front of me, asking who I was and what I was doing. Apparently he had climbed through the kitchen window and was expecting Shawn there to talk to him. He was Shawn’s friend. I asked him why he came and he said he came because he was melancholy that the girl he had been seeing was moving to Montreal. As he was telling me the story of their last moments together, I was writing down what he was saying and using it as lyrics in my song.

At the break of dawn I received a tax credit and I finished my first song. I went to the gas station across from Shawn’s building and bought some junk food and then I went to sleep. In the afternoon, Alex came by and he told me his deal for the cigarettes had fallen through. As a consolation, he offered me some counterfeit bus passes. I played him my song, Mixing Meta-Flowers. It was the first time I had ever played that song for anyone. It was a meta song because the last night with your true love is a relatable experience but it wasn’t meta specifically regarding me.

It’s funny how a song can just come to you in the night, like that guy in Shawn’s window, like Sarah last night. I had never written a song before, I was over three-hundred kilometers away from home, I