The power of books

Which books have influenced your life?

Jack Kerouac by Tom Palumbo, c. 1956

Kerouac. Silly, immature, sentimental Jack. On The Road was an early passion. Kerouac relished those who “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”.

I thought I was one of those. I read the book again recently. It has not aged well. I will stop recommending it.

The hero of the book is Dean Moriarty who is based on Neal Cassady. Nowadays he would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When Jack describes him as crazy he is in the excited phase.

We all know somebody like Dean. I had a bunch of friends who modelled themselves on characters from the beat generation: sometimes I was Jack and sometimes my friend was; sometimes someone was Allen Ginsberg; usually I was William Burroughs.

Neal became a pain in the ass, he was dangerous and I had to stop hanging out with him, and one of us died when he went exploring on his own in India. That was terribly sad. They never found the body.

I mention this because it is an example of how books can influence life. Especially if you read them at a sensitive time of your life.

I don’t think that the prose style of Jack Kerouac was nearly as good as Henry Miller who was a big influence on my early writing and life – as I describe in my new book Earth 616.

My style has come along way since those days as you will be able to tell when my new book of short stories is published in November by Android Press as I found out this week. Something to look forward to.

On to this week’s instalment. If you remember this is about the Jack who is most like me just after he has left University, still living in Lancashire……… Earth 351 ………

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Jack forgot he had cerebral palsy, he pushed it down to the bottom of his memory, he was in denial although anybody could see just by looking at him that he was not normal, yet he attributed this to something else, it's the evil that leaves at the art of him, that lives at the heart, he even forgot the words 'cerebral palsy', can you believe it?

He was living in a quandary, in a state of paranoia, in a crumbling old house, with many other tenants including the drummer in his band, red Nick, which distinguished him from green Nick, both of them driving Morris Minor vans of their respective colours, and James Hewitt, the landlord, who used to go to the local motorway service station for breakfast until he married one of his tenants, a sociology graduate named Susannah. Jack knew her and was disgusted that she set her sights so low. James was an ugly man with no sense of responsibility. Because he hadn't repaired the roof he had lost all of the beautiful oak panelling on the walls of the North Wing to damp.

He couldn't believe that the woman who married James married James. "Why do women always fall for bastards?" he moaned to Green Nick.

Green Nick replied "Women are vicious," which was a truth he hadn't considered. It did seem plausible and would explain a few things, not least how they expected men to behave. So what is the point in being nice? Then Nick kissed him and when he had overcome his surprise Jack kissed him back. Why not? It felt weird especially as Nick had a beard. Then he realised he had always been attracted to Nick. Pretty soon they ended up in bed together but it didn't go any further than mutual masturbation. Jack was too nervous. The feel of another cock in his hand was reassuring. The feel of another hand on his cock was reassuring. He needed to feel reassured. It was like the kind of thing went on at his school, all boys together, Nick was kind, and Jack needed kind, Jack needed kindness, his need was a hard and brutal, brittle stem.

When he got to trust Nick, Jack let him fuck him, he enjoyed being the woman in the relationship, he even started becoming Gladys who wore a dress around the house and did the cleaning and cooking, the full stereotype. The swish of the fabric against his legs made him feel free. When he was Gladys he was happy, he forgot his troubles, being someone else was liberating. But he could never wear the dress outside. Being happy was a strange feeling, it took him a while to recognise it. It was stranger to wear this feeling than it was to wear a dress.

It was around this time when he woke up one morning to find he could not lift his left arm above the shoulder. The doctor sent him for a scan, then reading the results told him he had non-ankylosing spondylosis in his neck, causing lordosis and dystonia. The writer in him had a lot of fun with these words. Lord Osis who lives in Dystonia, you get the idea, being one letter away from dystopia.

He was grateful to the doctor for giving him this idea, and put the diagnosis to the back of his mind, since the GP gave him some pills that made the inflammation go away and so whenever he had an attack of inflammation again he took the pills. This removed the symptom but it didn't remove the cause. But it did make it easier to forget about the cause. Even forgot the words 'cerebral palsy'. Amazing what the mind can do to protect its owner.

Besides he had something to distract him now. When he went out he was always a man but as soon as he got home he put all the stress aside and put on a dress. As the song goes. Or it should go. His favourite one was yellow and his favourite tights were purple, but he kept his beard, liked wearing a bra stuffed with sox. When James threw a fancy dress party Jack put on his favourite dress and many people of both sexes wanted to dance with him. He felt that he had never been so popular. The best costumes were a gorilla or two; one would chat up a woman then disappear and the other would appear. Or was that just one of them? Nobody knew. It was the best party Jack had ever been to. To anyone who cared to listen he would say his name was Gladys and everyone accepted this. It was a fancy dress party after all. Gladys was not nervous in public, unlike Jack.

Although pussy in a dress, putting on a dress, made him feel okay, it didn't take away his problems, it just stopped him feeling them. A bit like an antidepressant he felt. As soon as he went out in social situations as Jack he still felt paranoid and depressed like he wanted to run away and hide. He got stoned beforehand in an effort to make himself feel lighter. He broke up with Nick telling himself it only happened because it was convenient.

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So what do you think of it so far? If you like it please share and recommend.

Next week will have the conclusion of this chapter.

Let me know which book has influenced your life in the comments below.

Enjoy your week.