A Man Who Went to the Moon Without a Jacket

By Prince Baleke

An intriguing adult fiction love story about a man who was forced by his father throughout his entire childhood, to become like his grandfather for the professional his was. And he became nudged by a dream overnight, which dragged him towards true love for the first time. He faced many outnumbered life threatening issues that dragged him closer to the edge of death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490735344

Prince Baleke

As a child at the age of 13, I always wanted to become an author and I admired the work authors put into stories and how they took me places I've never been before. But the inspiration for my writing came from the sit-backs and the pain I felt after losing my beloved mother in 2006. By that time I was jobless and homeless, so I thought of something that might help me turn the negativity that was undertaking my life. I was desperate to find a job, but wherever I sent an application, all I received were silly excuses and the  word I hate to hear recruiters say:    'Sorry you have no experience, and at this point, we will not be proceeding with your application any further. However, we can keep your CV in our system just in case something suitable comes along.' Really?   So I sat down thought about losing a mum, and the rejections of my CV. I then asked myself this one question, how the hell do these recruiters expect me to gain experience if they don't take the risk and give me a chance to try my luck? And I remember asking one of them the same question on the phone. In 2012 I began writing a short brief of the entire experience I went through after losing a mother and I ended up writing a book instead. And ever since then, I have never given up on writing or even put the pen down, not even a single day.  But apart from my writing. I'm also a single father who has failed to find a woman to replace the mother of my children. Once I mention I have children, not one but four. Women run as fast as they can. I wonder why they would choose to run away from someone who shows such honesty in the first place. I love all my children the same way as my first born, and they all have been such a blessing to my life, that they have helped me to grown up into the person I'm today.

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Copyright 2014 Prince Baleke.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-3532-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-3534-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014908091

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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W e n

ormally have dreams according to the type of activities we involve ourselves in during our daily schedules and according to different people’s ideas; 20 per cent of what we humans dream about in general is usually based on thoughts from our day-to-day performances. Whereby, if we compare our situation with our main character in this novel, without a doubt our circumstances would fail to surpass the extent of his hallucination because it was one of its own kind, and the outcomes flabbergasted his life circle beyond unspeakable measures. And below is a full story about a man who became twisted with a dream he had overnight, and he found many rough and tough challenges after having his dream, until he started walking the path towards his dream. However, no matter what happened during his struggles, at least he found true love that pushed him closer to his journey.

He was, for eternity, mummy’s little chap from the day he was born, and on the other hand he was the same chap whom his father haunted to pursue his late granddad’s career as a rugby player. As a result he thought that rugby was the only fascination a man could become successful at. The little boy lost interest of other adventures he didn’t even know existed in the first place, based on the fact that his memory was hoodwinked with repellent philosophy. Whereby, his father convinced him when he was a child that nothing was better for a man to do than to become a rugby player and it was the only thing men could do in the entire world. His father’s theories came right on time when rugby was the only game that men understood and had an interest in more than in any other thing. Not many of his father’s age went to school, to be honest, because they believed what school can teach you, can also be taught at home by your own parents as long as you had common sense. Therefore, he kept on stocking his head with too much misleading information, not because he didn’t love his son but it was the way he was also brought up. Since he didn’t get that chance of becoming a famous rugby player, he thought he could teach his son to become a rugby player. He wasted most of his life trying to become a famous rugby player, and it was one of the reasons why he didn’t give birth to other kids, He also wanted to prevent his son from acquiring any knowledge about other things that might switch him off from becoming what he wanted him to become. Therefore, he had to make sure he captured all of his son’s attention without giving him any breathing space for anything else, and he went ahead and involved him in watching every seasonal rugby game to the point of taking the young man with him to every game he attended in order to engage much of his attention. So that he didn’t have any time of having to put his attention in something else apart from what he wanted his son to become when he grows up into a big man who understands and, the problem arose from the fact that his father was someone who never understood the value of education or how it felt attending a class to acquire knowledge. Thus, he was a father who never knew how sweet education is. What his father didn’t know was that in his childhood and even during his adulthood, the young man fantasized something more historical than what his father wanted him to become. A confined rugby player without edification. One evening, he was home alone; he was extremely bored with nothing to do, and there was no supervision of his parents. That’s when he turned on the television; there wasn’t anything of interest to watch. But he kept on searching through all the channels on television; that’s when he landed on a documentary channel which had something of interest. Although the channel was premiering the history of astronauts who had ever visited the moon, he wasn’t so disappointed because the fact was that the other channels were by far more tedious than the documentary channel he chose to watch. Without doubt, he sat down comfortably, and he started watching the documentary about astronauts. But the more he continued watching it, the more he started enjoying what he was watching, and before the documentary came to an end, he was already falling in love with astronauts’ stories. The stories involved things that would inspire people to become what they became and he enjoyed watching their experiences on the moon, one of the main reasons to why he fell in love with documentaries about astronauts. The documentary was an eye-opener for this young man because he had grown up with only one thinking that nothing was better for a man to do than become a rugby player. Even after the documentary came to an end, it kept him thinking like crazy. When his parents came back, he wasn’t eager to ask how the game went because he had found something more interesting than what his father was always telling him. He didn’t stop at watching the documentary, but he went ahead and continued to search more about astronauts on his laptop quietly inside his room until when he found out more about their experiences on the moon. As a result, as days went by, he continued digging deeply into astronauts’ lives in general. Therefore, the more he found out about astronauts, the more he became distracted and interested about his discovery. It was 6 p.m., and it was almost time for him to go with his father and watch their first summer game. At the same time, the eighth documentary about the experiences and challenges faced by astronauts while on the moon was to be telecast. He didn’t want to miss such an opportunity, for which he had been waiting all day.

Hence, he decided to lie about his situation and say that he wasn’t feeling too well to go outside the house for the game that night. When his father saw him looking so miserable, he called him, ‘Son, come over here.’

The young man came without looking backwards, and he started walking towards the position where his father was standing. He finally came close to where his father was standing, coughing as if he was about to pass out any time soon. As soon as he reached the spot, his father asked him, ‘Son, aren’t you coming to watch the game tonight, Son? This is our first session of the game, remember? We don’t have to miss the opening of the game.’

‘I’m not feeling so well as you can see, and on this occasion, I’m sorry but you have to go and watch the game by yourself, because I feel weak as if I might become sick soon. Secondly, I have a cold to be out there in all that wind because of the game today,’ his son replied and coughed more than six times. He also sneezed as if he was going to die that night, until when his father got off his back without forcing him to watch the game with him when he wasn’t feeling well.

For that reason, his father went to the games with his mother instead, and he then went to his room without any words added on to what he said and he continued watching his documentary until when it came to an end at exactly midnight, which was his usual bedtime. That’s when he went straight to bed and covered himself up. He was someone who could fall asleep quickly; therefore, as soon as he lay on his bed, within thirty minutes of resting his head down, he straight away fell deeply asleep, snoring like an old 1980s diesel car trying to mount a hill without a four-wheel drive boost, and within forty minutes while he was still sleeping, he was attacked by a dream that was beyond unspeakable measures—a dream that twisted his entire life around and the way he felt about a certain stuff that he never thought might even cross a single vein in his body or his life. Not only that, he also developed a twisted way of thinking and viewing other things in the other way round which was more positive than his father’s negative philosophical thinking. From then he became driven by the diversity of his dream continuously, and as a result, the only choice he had to go on pathways he had never believed in according to what his father had preached to him since childhood. Thus, he had to believe in his dream without doubting its pathways in order for it to become authentic, and most of all, He had to be patient enough for the fact that he had to seek knowledge from the adventures he never imagined happening in his life, according to negative beliefs from the philosophy of his father he grew up listening too. As he had grown up listening to his father’s negative beliefs, the dream turned him into someone he wasn’t aware he could become soon. It was an eye-opener, although his dream’s approach was beyond unexplainable measures as compared to our usual delusions because the dream was an eye opener, although it’s approach was beyond unspeakable measures not even compared to our usual delusions, after when it captured his whole responsiveness to custody. He reached a stage where he thought he was in someone else’s body; he became confused and was mystified with loads of blank unanswered questions as he couldn’t explain the dream to himself. And since he had to keep it as a secret without letting any of his parents know, he had to suffer the consequences of his dream on his own.

The dream became a new adventure in his life, the more his days extended, and at the same time, he couldn’t spend a day without giving it his thoughts every second that passed by. The more he gave his attention to it, the more his dream continued to twist him around and the more his curiosity and eagerness emerged. That’s when he started finding out answers to his own questions to help him understand his dream more in order to make it come true. And the more he continued searching for what he thought could help him turn his dream into a reality, the more it created numerous unexpected straps which lead him to tasks he didn’t expect. He continued to move along with his dream and continued to discover more alternatives to sort his dream out and clear the stress it caused off his chest. At the same time, the more he pushed it further, the more it surprised him. And one day, it was one of these cold evening when he had nothing to do at home, apart from chilling down on his bed to read books that were related to his dream, and historical magazines that were recommended by the presenter who presented a documentary about astronauts he usually watched on a certain discovery channel. Then again, one evening he was resting on his bed, reading a novel about an astronaut who didn’t make it on his first day of visiting the moon; he fell asleep while reading his book, and the book slipped out his hands and fell on the ground. Sleep knocked him out fully, and he continued to dream from where he had stopped during the first dream he had the previous night. Although the continuation of the message in his dream wasn’t clear for him to understand, compared to the message that was in his first dream, at least he managed to see what he may possibly become in the future. That’s when he jumped off his bed as if someone was trying to chop his head off, but he also looked a bit scared and shocked. The dream frightened him a lot, but still he refused to share his nightmares with any of his family members. However much his dream twisted him, he just kept on figuring out what the dream really meant without asking for anyone’s help or advice.

The dream was something he couldn’t avoid thinking of every day he lived because it was unstoppable; he used to have visions in his head during daytime—he was on the moon without a jacket. The confusing part was that it was something that had never happened before in the history of mankind. The dream became a part of his life, and he became addicted to the dream as if he was sipping on something, until he seriously started looking for ways to help him to understand what his dream was. He was a young man who despised going to school because he considered studying as a waste of time, according to what his father had planted in his head since when he was a child. Because his father never attended school in his entire life, he wasn’t aware of the opportunities that could have been created if his son went to school. On the other hand, because of the young man’s eagerness to discover his dream, he there and then started having thoughts of creating history of his own rather than depending on what his father wanted him to become. Whereby, he reached a stage where he was no longer interested in his father’s negative fairytales, and each time when the rugby game came up, the young man would disappear for good until his father left the house. Sometimes, he used to punish him because he missed watching the games with him, but the young man was now in love with something more historical than what his father thought he should become. And one early morning was another day to be grateful for after when he woke up and acknowledged the biggest number of people were all heading to the park to enjoy the beautiful sunny day. He went back inside the house and he came out with a bottle of water for hydration, and he also followed the crew to the park, where he reached and he laid down on his back and he started to enjoy sleeping under the sun like other people who understood what summer really meant. The park was full of people who were sunbathing on that beautiful day. He looked at other people’s children while they were beside their parents, and their situation seemed to be different from his. Some kids were playing football while others were enjoying other activities with their parents; he felt sad because his own parents never did such kind of things with him. On the other hand, he was lucky that he started discovering something new that was far from what his father wanted him to become. This was also a lesson for the young man to learn from. His mother had no means of fighting against the madness of her husband and all the negative thinking he used to impose on his own son, forcing him into something which wasn’t his own idea; she had to accept what her husband kept on piling into their son, and therefore, as a mother who loved her son, the entire situation always kept her in deep thoughts. She could not find any solution to the main stem of the problem. And on the other hand as a mother she had no source she could base on as another alternative that would have helped her son to jump all the barriers his own father built.

It was one of his lazy evenings; he was lying straight under the sun on his back, thinking of what to do next, and within a few minutes, he slept off while thinking as if he were in his bed at home. While he was dead to the world, the same hallucination came back with a continuation of the other parts regarding what he will be doing in future. And not only that, in the continuation of the dream, he looked different from what he usually looked, which he didn’t take note of. Still, everything in this dream seemed too much for him to handle at once. And when he woke up after his second part of the dream that scared the crap out of him, there were numerous questions which he kept on asking himself over and over again. But the fact was that he couldn’t figure out why in the continuation he looked different from his normal self. He stood up and went back home, but the more he thought about the entire dream, the more he came up with ideas to help him accomplish his dream. And when he reached home, after thinking of what could transform his dream to reality, he took a risk and decided to choose from one of the things he grew up, knowing it was nonsense to do so, which was to go and join college. Quickly, he sat down and started searching for a college with a good reputation to register with them. And while he was still scrolling through the best colleges within his home town on Google search, he then came across one of the most influential college with a stunning reputation and a very good historical background. Immediately he stopped scrolling and he clicked on the college’s website. He therefore, went ahead and started reading through what the website was saying, line by line on a snail’s pace and he was surprised after when he read about testimonials of big successful business people who also discovered their dreams using an advantage of studying at the same college. Therefore, according to the college’s phase and good reputation, the young man was totally impressed, and there and then he chose a course to not only help him achieve his dream but also amend his father’s bad manipulation about his statement ‘studying is a waste time’.

This was his only option that could help him achieve his goal. The manner in which he did it, planned it, and walked through his dream all along was dictated by the clear vision of his dream. His focus was to accomplish the dream and create history of his own, and he decided to put his dream to practice. All human beings are born with their own luck, ability, and potential of doing anything regardless of what we want to become. Thus without any further delay, he then registered with the college. He was called for an interview, and on the appointed day, he went to college. He was offered a test, which he passed, and he was welcomed on board as a student of the community college of excellence. However, at first when he joined college, the new environment was another experience for him, plus meeting new people seemed be awkward because he felt the difference in the surroundings—as if he was in the middle of nowhere. His attitude and body language towards all issues were enough to describe where he came from. The students, during their break time and lunch, while at the college grounds could talk about certain things which usually guys of his age did during the weekend whereas talking about results from premier league foot ball fixtures he had no idea of those matter. Therefore, he was always offline when students of his age were discussing about certain things they did during the weekend he didn’t know about, and this always pissed off the other students because he wasn’t on the same page as they were. That’s when they started calling him all sorts of names they felt like calling him, and they refused to become friends with him. This drove him nuts sometimes, and sometimes he couldn’t care about a thing, but still as a human being, it would burn him deeply inside. He lived an awfully lonely life in and out of campus without a friend to sit with on his desk in class; even when all lessons came to an end, no one sat next to him on a daily basis. He reached a point when he felt like quitting studies and looking for another alternative to help him achieve his goal, but the fact was that, there was no other alternative he could even look at on such a short notice. Therefore, his only option was to continue with college, facing his challenges in the campus as a man with no escape route. He didn’t want to talk to his parents about his new ventures; therefore he had no one to talk to about his struggles and challenges. Although, his mother was softer than his father was, he thought that by all means she would tell her husband about their son’s new discovery, because in their house, they didn’t keep secrets from each other. But the only reason he kept a secret from his parents was because he wanted to get over his father’s unenthusiastic beliefs once and for all and create his own inheritance rather than follow the footsteps of his grandfather’s record of becoming a prominent rugby player.

His dad never understood what life was planning for his son all along because things change from time to time, especially when they come unexpectedly just like his dream did. He became more twisted and inspired by a dream to run his own marathon to the finishing line as soon as he believed in what he had dreamt. He was stubborn enough, because the more his father pushed him to do what he didn’t want to do, the more he fell in love with his discoveries, the more he empathized on his dream to disprove his father statements that there were many other alternatives a man can become successful at. And on his father’s side. And on his father’s side, things turned the other way around because each time he wanted to involve his son into his activities, the young man would disappear before his father could comprehend anything. As a result, the young man continued to fall in love with those who visited the moon and how they did it, because to him it was an inspiration which seemed amazing and courageous. Although his dream was a secret of his own, the young man’s aim was to change his father’s mindset; that’s why he didn’t let his parents know about his new breakthrough. There and then, he started imagining himself among the heroes instead, but this time with a different image which surpassed the power of his father’s negative boundaries about how his life was to be designed. The more he researched, the further his obsession developed. He watched movies related to his dream plus decorated his room with posters of different astronauts who had ever visited the moon, including his own imaginary pencil-drawn picture on the moon without a jacket. He wasn’t too much of a talkative person, but he was creative and artistic in the way that he used to draw pictures plus a map of how he wanted his journey to the moon to be one day. He didn’t know how it would be to go without a jacket. On his eighteenth birthday, all his family members and their family friends gathered at their house to celebrate with him; everyone looked happy because it was a moment of happiness, the celebration of his birth.

Right after blowing all the candles on his big cake, in his own words, he said, ‘I’m grateful for a day like this, whereby everyone is here celebrating with me on my birthday, and perhaps it will be one day like this when I’m being welcomed back.’

The young man spewed words unknowingly; some guests were astonished with his speech, whereas others were left wondering what he meant by ‘welcoming him back’. He left them in suspense and walked away from them without setting their minds free from his hook. He went upstairs to his bedroom without explaining the last sentence in his speech, and neither did his guests bother asking him what he meant. That’s why they didn’t take his words on a serious note, but some guests, who had different thoughts, considered him as an adolescent who was in his puberty stage because all of them acted in a different way during the stage he was in, and a very few thought something was wrong in his head. As some time passed, after he left their sight, they continued partying until the party came to an end, and everyone walked back to their lives. The next day, he attended college normally, although he was a loner who