(raw material to be
developed for other scenes.  a few days ago I posted some material for Victor that was very rough, and then cleaned it up the next day.  I liked how that process worked out and so I’m going to continue.  here’s a bunch of stuff mostly centering around Jennifer.)

A tear came to Jenny’s eye. 
“I was twenty-three years old.  I
woke up in the driver’s seat of the van one morning and I realized that I had
no one to call, nowhere to go to call home, nothing to go back to.  Since that day my life has just been
wandering from place to place, looking for something real.”

“I wanted to be a Diamond Dog.  They were making us all of us girls into dogs
and I wanted to be a special dog, a dog that sparkled like a diamond, a dog who
never gave them anything she didn’t want to, but got what she wanted out of
them instead.”

Becky frowned, “We were different.  We saw ourselves as the heirs of death and
decay.  We had all this history around
us, but it had never amounted to anything but failure.  There wasn’t any joke to make, it was just
the end.”

“I do that too,” said Jennifer.  “It wound up there, but the original impulse
was to do something.  It was like Goth
was the burnt out wreckage of Glam.”

“Victor and I didn’t come to it through glam.  We came to it through literature, through the
failure of everything we’d been taught. 
It wasn’t fun.  We needed you.”

“You needed me?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, I know I probably would have killed myself if it
weren’t for you.” 

My soul drifted. 
There was a part of my life that was drifting, and a part that had to
work, had to take everything I was doing and go make money with it, and now
that part is gone and I’m just left with the drifting.“

“Writing had something to do with consciousness, or
self-awareness.  I just believed
everybody needed to be more self-aware and then they would be better people and
society would prosper.”

“Obviously, that’s not what happens.”

“It was silly, I know. 
I didn’t understand how self-awareness mostly just helps apathetic
people to be more apathetic and evil people to be more evil.”

“in a lot of ways it’s not even about self-awareness anymore.”

“Something similar happened with music.  I find music depressing now.  Just the thought of all those electronic
beats going on out there, never making a connection between anyone.  And the future is going to be worse.  Something is totally drifting inside of me,
and it can never come back.  Music was
about happiness.  I can’t get over the
loss of it.  I know I’m sick, but Goth
used to make me happy.”

“It’s the knowledge that even if anyone was paying serious
attention, no one could do anything. 
There was a backdrop to individuality which isn’t there now.”

SNIPPETS OF DEAAAAATH!!!!

(raw material to be
developed for other scenes)

A tear came to Jenny’s eye. 
“I was twenty-three years old.  I
woke up in the driver’s seat of the van one morning and I realized that I had
no one to call, nowhere to go to call home, nothing to go back to.  Since that day my life has just been
wandering from place to place, looking for something real.”

“I wanted to be a Diamond Dog.  They were making us all of us girls into dogs
and I wanted to be a special dog, a dog that sparkled like a diamond, a dog who
never gave them anything she didn’t want to, but got what she wanted out of
them instead.”

Becky frowned, “We were different.  We saw ourselves as the heirs of death and
decay.  We had all this history around
us, but it had never amounted to anything but failure.  There wasn’t any joke to make, it was just
the end.”

“I do that too,” said Jennifer.  “It wound up there, but the original impulse
was to do something.  It was like Goth
was the burnt out wreckage of Glam.”

“Victor and I didn’t come to it through glam.  We came to it through literature, through the
failure of everything we’d been taught. 
It wasn’t fun.  We needed you.”

“You needed me?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, I know I probably would have killed myself if it
weren’t for you.” 

Here’s a much better
version of what I posted yesterday.  I
have other things to post in a little bit, as well.

“You’re still trying to live it, Becky.  That’s all. 
You want something from it you can never get.” 

“Well, shouldn’t I be able to live it?  Shouldn’t I be able to put writing and living
together, after all I’ve read?”

“Never.  You feel it
too much.  But I’m glad you do.  I need you to feel something because it’s so
bloody obvious no one else ever will.  And
your intricately beautiful and elegant inner life should never ever be exposed
to this brutal, petty world.  The public
doesn’t deserve you, and even if they did they would kill you.” 

“But I’m getting so old, Victor, and I’ve spent so much of
my life around books, I feel like I have to have some response to it all, even
if no one’s going to care.” 

“If you want to write, write something for me.”

“I can’t do that,” she sighed.  “That wouldn’t be a response to my life.  And anyway, you’re part of what I need to
write about.  You can’t know, Victor,
what it’s like to be in your shadow.” 

Victor shook his head. 
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone in the world.”

She looked askance at him, “I thought I already knew
everything about you.”

“No one knows this about me, Becky, not even Jennifer.  When I was ten years old I caught my father
with another woman.  I snuck into his
office after the store was closed.  It
was just innocent mischief but then while I was going through his desk I heard
him coming up the stairs.  I panicked and
hid behind a bookshelf.  He came in with
a woman I’d never seen before and started kissing her right there while I
watched.  Eventually they left and I went
back home to bed but I never forgot that woman’s face.  Over the months that followed I caught sight
of her several times, going in and out of my father’s office.

“So here’s my dirty little secret.  From the time I was ten years old I was
convinced that my father was having an affair without my mother’s knowledge,
and I hated him ferociously.  I believed
he was a total hypocrite and a traitor to our family.  It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I
realized that my mother had always known about it, that she and my father had
agreed that they were not ever going to be in love, but chose to keep up
appearances out of fear of their families.  This affair he was having was totally
unimportant to my mother, just as hers were to him.  But by the time I figured it out it was too
late.

“My first novel was fueled by sheer hatred of him.  He had forbidden me to ever reveal anything
about my life to the world, and I felt that meant that he was preventing me
from ever genuinely being alive.  And so
I wrote a novel about a vampire based on my father who victimizes a hero who
was me.  I knew I could never say what I
felt so I wanted to leave a terrible trail of clues, so the world would secretly
know what a bastard he was and hate him as much as I hated him.

He shrugged, “Of course it didn’t work out that way because
everyone just sees my father as a boring fake.”

Becky agreed.  “People
could tell you were angry but you’re right. 
If that was supposed to be your father you got him completely wrong.”

“I know, it’s funny and stupid.”

“It wasn’t that stupid, Victor.  Even if he’s not a world-class monster he was
still a total ass.  I was there with you
while he was destroying you.  I think you
forget how much you and I talked about it at the time.  He deserves everything he gets.  And you did really care about writing.  It wasn’t just revenge.  If you were that petty you would have
just beat him up.  You thought it was important to
say something about resisting evil.”

This will not be in
the finished story.  It’s a rough outline
of Victor’s feelings but it isn’t in a form that fits with the action.  I just had to post it to overcome my
nervousness about everything being perfect. 
I’m really impressed with the last installment I posted and I can’t
achieve that every time.  I have to just
go with what I have and go back and edit it later.

“You’re still trying to live it, Becky.  That’s all. 
You want something from it you can never get.” 

“Well, shouldn’t I be able to live it?  Shouldn’t I be able to put writing and living
together, after all I’ve read?”

“You feel it too much. 
I’m glad you feel it too much.  I
need you to care because it’s so bloody obvious no one else ever will.  And your inner life should never ever be
exposed to the world.  The world doesn’t
deserve you, and the public would kill you. 
If you want to write, write something for me.  I’m going to tell you something I’ve never
told anyone in the world.”

She looked askance at him, “I thought I already knew
everything about you.”

“No one knows this about me, Becky, not even Jennifer.  So now you can both learn it.  When I was ten years old I snuck into my
father’s office.  It was like tempting
the gates of hell.  He was the overlord
of the store my family had owned for generations.  It was my birthright and my ancestry and my
destiny all in one, and my father was the absolute master of it.  He ruled with mechanical brutality.  So, one night I snuck out of bed and broke
into his office.  And while I was in
there, looking through his papers, I heard him coming up the stairs
outside.  I panicked and hid behind a
bookshelf.  He came in with a woman I’d
never seen before and they were kissing right there while I watched.  Eventually they left and I went back home to
bed but I never forgot that woman’s face. 
Over the months that followed I caught sight of her several times, going
in and out of my father’s office.”

“So here’s my dirty little secret.  From the time I was ten years old I was
convinced that my father was having an affair without my mother’s
knowledge.  I believed he was a total
hypocrite and a traitor to our family.  I
utterly despised him.  It wasn’t until I
was in my twenties that I discovered that my mother had always known about it,
that they had discovered after a few years that they were not in love anymore,
and not ever going to be in love, but chose instead to keep up appearances out
of fear of their families.  This affair
he was having was totally unimportant to my mother, just as hers were to him.  But by the time I found out it was too late.”

“Because of this misunderstanding, I completely fucked up my
relationship with my father.  I wrote my
first novel as an act of sheer hatred against him.  He had forbidden me to ever reveal anything
about myself to the world, to ever in any way be genuine in public, and so I
wrote a novel about a vampire based on my father who victimizes a hero who was
me.  I knew I could never say what I felt
so I wanted to leave a terrible trail of clues for those who knew my family, so
they would secretly know what a bastard he was and hate him as much as I hated
him.”

“I’ve never told anyone before now.  It doesn’t matter that much.  Even if he wasn’t a hypocrite, he was still a
bastard.  He’s a right old prick to this
day.  But you have to understand that
whatever you think I achieved that you didn’t, I did for reasons you can never
have.  You wanted literature.  I loved literature too but the whole
emotional force of my early work, the work that made me famous, was the most
petty and primitive sort of revenge.  It
was stupid.“