Poor Jack

His girlfriend has her stomach pumped

Stomach Pumped by ToonyDrummer, creative commons license

Dear reader

This time we go straight into the serialisation and follow it up with the news.

This is the opening of chapter six, about the poor Jack.

Poor Jack's Leila has taken an overdose... Jack has rushed her to the hospital.

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Chapter 6 [Earth 249]

Leila had her stomach pumped. The doc told Jack she had eaten a quarter of an ounce of hash as well as a bottle of paracetamols. This is what they had fished out. "To go out on a high," she told him later, hi as a kite, windsurfing above the clouds, over the rainbow, into the blue Beyond. The doc said she hadn't taken enough pills to kill herself and she would have known this so it was really a "cry for help", for which Jack read emotional blackmail, tightening of the guilt screw. Desperate, he didn't know what to do, how to get out of this loop because if he took her back home she would surely try it again, then he suddenly remembered their mutual friend Matt, the one person whose opinion Leila respected. He must be able to help. The one thing Jack wanted was to be free of her but he didn't want her death on his conscience.

So he drove out with her, it was a long way, a big gamble that Matt will be in. Matt, who worked for the Forestry Commission, lived in a caravan opposite a pub at a crossroads with a garage and four houses plus a pub, just one car passing every hour. He was a macho type. Windy existence at the end of the world. Number five Desolation Row. Matt did a lot of drugs, wake up heavy stuff. They knocked on the door of his caravan. Luckily he was in. He opened the door and Leila fell in. She seemed genuinely glad to see him.

"She wants to kill herself, but she asked to see you before she tried to take her life again," Jack told Matt. He left them together and crossed the road. While Jack sat in the pub Matt talked Leila down. Jack was happy to nurse a pint or two as well as his hopes as he waited. When Jack went back to the caravan after a couple of hours he found Leila completely transformed into a laughing, bubbly young woman seemingly without a care in the world, and Matt too with a big smile on his face and Jack ended up leaving her with Matt while he drove off alone for the first time in his allegedly adult life. He had asked Leila what Matt had done to stop her wanting to kill herself, and she had shown him a cartoon he had drawn of her gravestone reading 'RIP Leila Saville', and beneath that her motto: "I told you so" which could well apply to Jack at the end of his life in a number of alternative Earths.

Leila and Matt were fucking each other of course, which became a habit for Matt, fucking the ex-girlfriends of many of Jack's friends over the years. Jack has been the first man Leila had slept with and he once overheard her telling a female friend how larger, more muscular men were better in bed. Matt was definitely bigger than Jack. And he was healthy, meaning able-bodied. Strangely Jack found he was jealous of Matt. Know why would that be?

Now Jack was free. What would he do with his freedom? He moved in to a friend's house on the aptly named Hope Street, terraced house with a front door on which was painted a front door that was open, and inside the walls were black and decorated with shrunken heads from Africa; the house was owned by a witch, he was told, although he never met her. He shared that house with two friends, Jill and Jonathan, who were a couple but because of the socialist principles of the crowd which they shared, were embarrassed to admit it (it was not considered ideologically sound to be in a couple) so Jack had to help them keep this secret.

He began a relationship with an 18-year-old French au pair working at another friend's house. Her name was Anne-Marie, and like him she walked with a limp, this was due to spina bifida, unlike his which was due to the cerebral palsy, but at least it gave them something to talk about. Jack dragged his right foot around, she dragged her left foot. It seemed they were made for each other. Between them they had one pair of fully functioning legs.

"Annoying," is how they agreed it felt.

"I pretend it belongs to somebody else, not me," she said and Jack found that helpful. Much of his body belonged to somebody else, it wasn't how he felt he ought to be, nor was it how he thought he was.

He took her to a bar and the question was who was to carry the drinks to their table? Jack found that the more he tried not to spill a drink the more likely he was to spill it. His hand was subject to sudden jerks and trembles for no apparent reason.

"I will spill more than you," she said, but he disagreed and in the end they swallowed their pride and asked the bartender to carry the drinks for them. The bartender didn't mind at all, and they were surprised how easy it was to ask.

"I feel so ashamed of myself," he felt able to confide in her. "That's what comes of being bullied at school. Were you bullied?"

"So much. But my dad was so good. He showed me how to fight back. He taught me some basic self defence."

"You were lucky. My own father taught me nothing. My mother disappeared. I've always had the feeling that if I had been normal – I mean able-bodied –" he quickly corrected himself, "she would have stuck around. She wouldn't have left my dad. Know what I mean?"

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Next week, find out the shocking truth about Anne-Marie.

I was lucky enough to be accepted on a writing course called ‘Reinventing the protagonist’ from Literature Wales and Disability Arts Wales led by the tutor Kaite O'Reilly.

I sent her chapter 2 of this work and yesterday had a one to one with her to discuss it. Fortunately she really liked it but she did say that I should help the reader be able to identify who is the narrator and which Jack is which, perhaps by use of different fonts.

Shouldn’t be a problem when I come to write the next draft. At least this way of working stimulates me to keep writing every week. It is motivating to know that I have to produce more for you to read each week. We are slowly catching up with what I have written and I have started teaching this week which means I have even less time for writing. It has been a very stressful week. But I do enjoy writing more than anything else.

I ought to mention that the good folk at Down the Tubes have been digging up my past and found some stuff I had forgotten about, in the context of my book about working for Marvel Comics in the 1980s. I am talking about the infamous episode when I naïvely tried to write about Northern Ireland in Captain Britain. You can read about it here and you can buy the book on Amazon here. If you’ve read it, please leave a review. It all helps. Thank you.

Yesterday we went to Cardiff to see my son which was wonderful but we had an adventure on the way back. I can only travel in a wheelchair accessible van and the one we borrow is electric, which is great except when you can’t find somewhere to charge it which is what happened. We ended up driving in circles around Merthyr Tydfil landing in Tesco’s where we had to wait for an hour while we got enough Power in our batteries to get home. At that time of night at the car park boy racers make a great deal of noise with their car horns and engines. It’s another world, entirely.

Until next week, stay well and enjoy your Time on Earth.