The Other Me
‘Normal as Hell’ ii. I finished the first book of my series shortly after returning from holiday – not a bad accomplishment for a seventeen-year-old dropout. It was written by hand, and took up two-and-a-half A5-sized exercise books. Immediately, I redrafted, beginning in a new exercise book, one that was A4-sized (I was moving up in the world, after all) but it felt redundant. I’d done the handwritten book. My productivity tapered until I wasn’t doing much of anything for the next month or so. Then I felt like I was losing myself. One night, I went out with my cousins. We were coming home from a bar when we…
The Other Me
‘Weird’ vi. A couple of years before I broke my arm, my brother Nick turned a third of the garage into a bungalow. He and his friend put up a wall, installed carpeting, a cork ceiling, chairs and everything. Nick played piano, so he wanted somewhere to practice, but that back room accumulated a lot of the amenities of life: besides my brother’s upright piano, a Commodore 64 home computer, a television, a radio, a couch, and several other chairs. The back room became my escape. It was also a way to get out of the house without getting out. Better yet, it insulated me from all the shouting. Sometimes,…