30 Days In Novemeber is a novel. Below is the first extract. To read the whole thing write to me.

 

Extract One - added 22/06/07

Five Million People...

'Five million people
Propelled by beliefs,
That can't all be right.'

November 6th:The snow came again, insistent this time. First with sleet, then two nights of freezing. Like the layering of a meticulously prepared cake. I was waking later every day, suffering vast heavy nights with no dreams. Hours unmoving like a brick, waking imprinted with sheets. Was it an illusion, some mysterious paranoia brought on by the change in the weather? The current predicament with the foot or mysterious forces at play? I felt in danger to myself, from myself! I phased to and said 'Stop! Is this really the way I want to be carry on with my time?' Here I was dreaming the days away on painkillers whilst there was a city out there. A city as good as any city. 'Well what's up with this I thought? Nobody asked to be born. But the least you can do is live!' I should have been out there throwing my money all around. I owed it to myself, I guessed. I thanked God for winter, my favorite season, and asked him if he wished me to believe in him today. The kitchen stayed silent. I fastened my coat tightly, put three socks on the bad foot and headed out for the first time in eight days.

A morning of haze had crystallized into a brilliant winter afternoon. A few people hurried in silence, drunks sat in doorways pale as ghosts. I felt like astronaut who missed the parade.
When I first came to the city I scrutinized every passerby, what story they carried deep inside. What kept them able to hold it in? I wasn't too fussed by that now. Conclusions and question marks were everywhere, not just on peoples faces but newspapers stands, bill boards, windows. An avalanche of information all buried in syntax and coding.
I stood watching a television in the furniture shop window, blowing into my hands thinking how some people feared television as you might fear a medieval disease. It's effects yet unknown. Other people didn't seemed to care. It certainly was a big noise. I carried on careful on the slipping pavement, my foot shuddering in fear of every landing step. I could see her in my minds eye, sitting down on the beds end, the rising of the pleated skirt. The giddiness. I knew how nights like that begin, the tangle everything gets in, the heart and the desire, the mind to drowned to think. I felt a chill as I skated over the weird earth. The worlds weight is unrequited love over desire. Dragged like a ball and chain. No rest without it, no contented sleep. And still it goes ignored. Men joke about women to keep from their loneliness, women pass by men without a blink.

I arrived at Valerie's coffee shop. A favorite afternoon haunt before work came for my freedom like a hooded assailant in the night. I met Christopher on his lunch break, he was sat blowing into his hands at a table in the window, “Your late.”
“I can't hurry with this foot, I'm liable to kill myself!”
“Alright.”
We sat in the window drinking small strong cups of black coffee, mulling over the passing women like reconnoitering bank robbers. It was all too tough, I just couldn't see how it could be done. “Can't be done!” I said to Christopher,
“Nonsense.” He said, “Claudette has many beautiful friends.”
“I have no doubt. It's me I worry about.”
“You shall meet them and they'll love your weakness.”
“I like your fresh approach. But I'm not strong enough for the chase.”
“Listen to you! Marianne has rotted your brain. You can't let a woman kill you.”
I didn't know the answer to that. After awhile he got up and said he was leaving.
“Where are you going?”
“Work.”
“Oh yes.” I'd almost forgot that was something people did.

Christopher had tried setting me up with a women before. Just after the episode with Edith I'd agreed to go on a date to the theater with him and Claudette and one of Claudette's, friends Maria. It never happened though. I'd grown so anxious with the thought of it during the day I left work early and went drinking. Some hours later I went home to ready myself and fell asleep on the bed. I woke late and had to sprint all the way there. I arrived late, sweating like some vagrant. The three of them had already gone in and in all the rush I'd forgotten my ticket too. I walked back alone in the rain, got home, threw up and then began drinking again. Then I got into bed and thought about Marianne. It was as though she was the default canvas in my head, the test screen, whenever I relaxed there she was. I turned out the lights and cursed whatever hex she had on me.
Christopher never let me forget about that, “Do you remember Maria?” He'd say.
“Yes.” I'd say. And then he'd laugh his head off.

After he had left and I remained drinking the very small cups of black coffee on my own looking out at the tree lined street covered in dirty snow. Thinking 'It's funny! All these men looking at women. What did they expect?' All down the street they were, as though lost in some great addiction. Eyes as big as dogs sniffing ecstatically at every passing corner. They were leaning from doorways and car windows. What were they looking for? A smile, a wink? Was it titillation? Desperation or something more sinister? The men were not discerning over the women, all women, any women. Specific areas of these women scrutinized, the breasts, the legs, the ass, then the face, deep into the face. In that security of the passing moment. It was not a real moment, not like being caught in the lift with a person. The freedom of the fleeting second, just before they're gone forever. These women aren't tainted with history. Flashing white legs, held no clue to the possible pandemonium that could occur when a man and women share their lives together. No holding up of mirrors to study the close imperfections. None of the gnawing instability. It was the world of gorgeous masks. Walking tall, beauty and machismo.

I drank another espresso. Eyeballs buzzing. The women walked past in fine winter dress. All somebody's Marianne's. Suzanne's, Claire's, Maria's. Each with they're own conflicts, left behind or up ahead. It was generally unfair, the tribulations men and women had to put each other through. Thinking about it made me sad. It seemed impossible at times to live amicably. It was as if it was unnatural. Like some figment of bad television. I thought about my uncle and aunt and other couples too. What hell they put each other threw. How tied up people got looking for blame and later self regret. 'Still' I thought 'I'd go back to all those bad nights with Marianne in a shot.' It beat whatever type of life this was.

I wandered that afternoon, sticking close to the walls of the buildings to steady myself. It was treacherous, like skirting the slick boards of a ship. In an attempt to entertain myself and cultivate my brain that had been languishing dormant too long in fear of life, I visited an art gallery. I wandered for and hour in it's long luminous white halls. Enjoying the cleanliness and sanity. I studied sketches by William Blake, 'Here was a man' I thought 'Who burned as he lived,' I wondered how he conducted himself on a day to day basis. How he bought food, how he talked to women. Between the Blake pictures I was captivated by a blond European looking student. She was beautiful, deep somehow, long hair falling below the shoulder. Thin well structured features with full refined lips. Someone, I thought, I could get on board with, somebody who was open to a little madness, who had time for the burning heart. I kept pace with her room to room till eventually I was no longer looking at the Blake pictures but was focused almost entirely on her moving body in my periphery. It was the lips that sold it for me. I was usually less inclined to thin girls, I liked form, shape, not great weight but good hips, thighs and breasts. The shape can often be localized into one discernible area such a good hip or in this case a full lip. I often worried that Marianne, along with all other aspects of my life, had irrevocably shaped my physical taste in women too. It was a barbarous thought. In an attempt to over come this fear I forced myself to look at other types of women. This one was a blond.

I hung back, fearing I was becoming too obvious in the chase and returned to the Blake sketches, 'The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun' I looked close, the beast and the beauty. How it always is. Women live in the light. I felt my foot twinge, like a disobliging child, begging me to return home, 'go rest, forget your loneliness'. It said.
The girl disappeared. I hurried to the next room, she wasn't there. I began to hobble with urgency through the long white rooms, ignoring my foots complaints. I zoomed through his later periods stopping only to see myself reflected in the 'The Vision of the Last Judgment'. I was pained, yearning. The strong black coffees I'd drunk earlier rolled in my empty stomach. Hurrying into the gift shop, I saw her slipping out the revolving glass door. I slowed and felt silly. What was I hoping for? I sat upon a bench and felt my foot pang incessantly as if repeatedly saying 'I told you so, I told you so'. I whacked it against the leg of the bench to shut it up and felt the delirious pain run through me. I felt feeble, briefly lost of all reason, humbled by some inviable force. Like Blake's Nebuchadnezzar, a stranger to himself. A stranger in a strange land. But my fate was not so grand. People walked past, I was unnoticed. I stood up and and moved outside. I could see the girl disappearing with her friends, laughing and joking in bright coloured clothes. The girls were thin, well structured small hipped. The boys were tanned, tall, young faced. Like some special breed of happy adventurous people. They turned toward the city, afternoon darkening behind, their laughter disappearing on the wind. I walked the other way.

The foot improved considerably during the first few weeks of November. I continued my sojourns in the early afternoon, pushing out a little further everyday. Trying to work some tiredness into it. Past the school yards and offices, shops and factories, silent as ant hills. I never thought about the furniture shop. It was a million light years away, like a dream where you wake up and can't remember any ones face.
The nights were freezing and the boiler burst leaving a pooling lake of ice on the kitchen floor. I could see my breath. I'd quickly make coffee and then hurry out, shutting the door behind. It took a week for somebody to come and have the problem fixed. I ate pistachio nuts in bed and read Dostoevsky and other wintry writers. Those who found love and life in the bleakest of conditions. I pushed my bed into the corner and tried to conjure heat under the thin sheets, rubbing my dry bones together for warmth whilst the wind whinnied at the thin metal window frames.
I woke daily to the overbearing sound of construction. They were knocking down a church across the road. It floored my spirits. The churches destruction stuck me as extraordinarily callous. I read Notes From The Underground under the bed sheet, 'the most intense pleasures occur in despair…' Not yet they didn't, perhaps I hadn't yet reached the bottom.

The following day Christopher came round with beers, “I've got some beers.” He said.
“Sit down then.” I said and he took them out of his bag and sat them on the table.
“It's too cold to do anything.”
“Anything new then?”
“Ah, nothing. No.”
“Yeah.”
“Well open the beers.”
“Uh huh.” he said. We drank until noon speaking very little.
“This cold is making me crazy.” He said, “Claudette wont sleep with me when it's this cold.”
“It seems a good way to get warm,”
“That's what I said!” We sat awhile more then he said, “Let's go to the airport. We'll watch the planes take off.”
“Alright.”
We often used to ride the train out to the airport in the old days. The Flight Lounge was an conducive atmosphere for reflective conversation. As good a place as the city had for rumination without a seafront to look upon.
We sat drinking beer and whiskey shots with our back to the bar watching the planes hop up and land liked insects behind the glass. Below the gantry the airport was an ocean of people. Pandemonium. The sort of scenes you'd expected at the exodus. Policemen cradled guns, men cursed and blew, children slept across benches, old people wept. Unionised by their desire to get out of the city, dreams beyond the glass, they were bottlenecked into hell.
The bar was empty except for Christopher and myself and a table of heavily tanned air hostesses drinking white wine. “Look at them” Christopher said, “That's real beauty.” I couldn't really see it. It was a classic sort of beauty, a leggy beauty, a magazine beauty, but not real beauty. Nothing I was going to lose my mind over. Besides women like that didn't look at men like me.

Christopher held fourth, “Man is capable of many great things! But as yet he doesn't know how to live.” He'd got that right I thought. I was watching the ascending planes trying to imagine all the people behind the little windows eating nuts and drinking gin. Swapping one corner of the globe for another. It was too curious to be true. “He can scale a mountain, sit on the moon but the hardest thing is to walk down the street.” He slammed down his glass and got up to buy two more beers and two more whiskeys. The planes were whizzing up and down at an incredible rate. It seemed amazing just how many there where, rising and falling every second. So far none of them had crashed. How restless people were. I didn't have the energy to get up and go to the toilet. Christopher came back, talking immediately, “Action or inaction. Man's dilemma. In business there's no choice, you take steps to help yourself.” I didn't like this trait in Christopher. He had a keen definition on the world but too often his conclusions were overbearingly elitist. He was smitten with power and beauty. It reared itself with the drink. It was incompatible with my philosophy of opposites, I was egalitarian by heart. Least that was what I thought I was. I didn't really know anymore. I often found myself doubling back on my opinions, frequently within the orbit of the same conversation. No, I didn't know much but I knew this- the world was a two sided coin and prosperity had nothing to do with equality,
“Lets see” He said, “How much did you get off the company for your foot?”
“Three thousand. And paid leave.”
“And your happy with that?”
“It's better than working.”
“Didn't you think- they're panicking! Screw them to the wall.”
“Not really.”
“They were terrified!” He raised his glass to symbolise the height of their fear.
“I don't know about that.” I said, “I kind of like the people there.”
“Alright, alright.” He said, “Some people see a course of action others ignore it.” I didn't like his zeal. I didn't like what he was getting at. I stood up and wobbled out towards the bathroom, taking in a look of the leggy air hostesses. They wore red, they were Swiss or maybe Danish.
I found it hard to urinate in a urinal with the broken foot, it was too much hard work to stand, I was liable to end up on my back pissing everywhere. I went into the cubicle and leaned against the wall. I thought of what Christopher said, maybe they were scared but what was I to do? I wasn't going to milk anybody for money- 'screw them to the wall!' Who did he think I was? Who was I? The company was poor, besides it was my responsibility. I never minded lifting boxes before. I dropped the box in mental exhaustion over concern with Marianne. Maybe I wasn't a man of action. Maybe he was right, that's why I'd never be rich and have an air hostess wife, maybe that's why I'll die alone. Competition was everywhere. I was shot down.
I didn't feel like returning from the toilets butinevitably I did. Christopher was already onto something else. He was talking about dogs, “Have you ever seen a dog go into a lift and come out?”
“No.”
“They get confused, they come out in a different place. They didn't know they were going anywhere.”
“I've never seen that.”
"You've never seen a dog come out of a lift?"
"I don't think so."
"You know dogs can't see in three dimensions."
"Right."
"Animals are blind to the exact things humans are overly preoccupied with. Animals cannot contemplate signs. You point to something, some approaching danger, all they see is your arm, your pointing finger.."
"And?"
"You're concerned with nothing but signs. Your sweating over the rights and acknowledgments to everything. You've forgotten how to enjoy yourself. You constrained by caring. Do you think the animals care?"
"I don't know if I care."
"Look at those women," He pointed to the hostesses, "Wouldn't you like to have sex with one of those women. Above some foreign country 30,000 feet in the air?"
"On a plane?"
"It doesn't matter- Anywhere!"
"Women like that don't look at men like me. And I leave women like that alone. It's like a deal."
"You see, you worry about the rights to things. Your thinking about rejection,"
"Of course I am."
"You should be thinking about the sex. Do you think animals worry about rejection? Do you think they worry if there ears stick out or if they're legs are too thin.”
“I don't really know.”
“Go over there.”
“No.”
“Look at that one. Look at her breasts.”
“I know.”
“Assurance is all that women want. Assurance and pretty lies.”
I thought about the actuality of me approaching them. What business would I have talking with six foot Swiss air hostesses? I'd be lucky to not be laughed at. They were magnificent, terrifying, knocking back wine spritzers like Amazonian chieftains. It was science fiction. Animals never had to worry about this, they all looked the same, besides they never did it for recreation, only humans were plunged in that mire. Humans had to think further than their instinct, life was rife with such booby traps. Foolishness and death is everywhere. I stayed put, no amount of beer was going to see me over there.
Soon enough the Air Hostesses got up from their table and swayed out of the bar like a troop of regal birds, “Well you blew it!”, Christopher yawned.
“Leave me alone.” I said.
“Alright,” He said, “I've gotta go, I've got to meet Claudette.”
“Ok.”
“You going to be able to get home?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful,” He said.
“I will.”
“Don't let one women kill you,” He said.
Then he left. I bought another beer and sat alone in the empty bar watching darkness descend beyond the glass till the movements of the planes were reduced to a blinking of lights, rising and falling in blackness. I drank on till my vision blurred. Somehow I made it outside and found a taxi.

That night I lay alone upon my bed. Christopher's words hadn't let me alone. It was sad to think as early as my mid twenties I was taking on the sour and often dull temperament of man twice my age. I had the jaded look, the occasional brutal thoughts, the pessimism, the desperate need for young female attention. “Your an old man!” Christopher would heckle me. It was used as an insult, which I understood. I thought I just had a keen nose for the truth of things. Hope was a conjurers tricks, the headlines made bitter proof. You could read it on people faces. I could see the shadow hands working all the strings and more often than not it was the same hand working everybody.
Still why me? Many people I knew my age and older were still capable of tackling life with guile and enviable good nature. It was though there was no question to things, never were they struck dumb, paralyzed in the middle of the night. They answered it all with a broad hand- fate they called it. All of it- the murders, the duplicity, the everyday tragedy, all came under the sweeping hand of fate! Fate . A word as shadowy and misleading as hope or truth. They just smiled at the vague mysteries of things and chirped along with shining resolve that made them great successes in the world. I just clasped my hands and blew, who knew, I was still alive in a cold time, maybe anonymousness was not such bad thing.