Chapter Six. What's it all about, Lockwood?

The story so far:

You may have gathered that the unwritten novel in which I was to be featured (but alas was not to be the hero of my own story), was a university novel set in a small town in Nova Scotia, during the mid to late nineteen seventies. You probably know which town and which university, as Applevale and Blomidon as disguises are not that hard to penetrate. You do not know what this novel is about, though, do you?

Neither do I. Neither did He (as I'll now refer to "my author", because I'm getting tired of that misleading term). He had a large cast of characters, they were (as I said before) largely and lazily based on real people (although for a few, like Elaine, there was no one-to-one correspondence), and He wanted them to interact in fascinating and hopefully important ways. Let me try to sketch out what He had in mind for us, before and after the crash. This may take some time.

First of all, the genesis of this story. Proust had his muffin (or whatever a madeleine is supposed to be), which awakened for him childhood memories; Lucy Maud Montgomery had seen a want ad for an orphan boy and thought she might do a story about an orphan girl; similarly Tolstoy had read a story about a woman who'd thrown herself in front of a train, et voilà, Anna Karenina was born.

For Him, it was a pleasant autumn Sunday spent rehearsing outdoors for a play he was in, then accompanying the director to visit friends; ending up in a apartment shared by two fellow students, where they listened to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell, and He drank Earl Grey tea for the first time in His life. He found the experience significant. For some reason (I don't get it and I bet you don't either), it was like his entry into adulthood.

He wanted to organize his novel around several of these significant experiences. Another one was his first day at university, which was almost his first day away from home. It was a damp September day and there was some confusion about where he was supposed to be staying. As part of Frosh week there was a van with a loudspeaker at the centre of campus, playing that summer's hits - the two that stuck in his mind forever were "Moonlight Feels Right" and "Afternoon Delight", both of them on the theme of sexual abandon. As it happened, He never sexually abandoned Himself until long after He left "Blomidon", but it was the atmosphere that was important. Upstairs in His dorm, there was someone who played "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was fairly new in nineteen seventy-six, over and over again. Occasionally the same person would play a version of "Good Morning Starshine", which He also liked.

A third experience was one I've referred to before, as the Outing of Leonard. Leonard He'd known since high school, and had had a crush on ever since then; but had no reason for believing him to be gay. (Other than Leonard's effeminate mannerisms? Pleasantly rather than obnoxiously fey. But Leonard drove a motorcycle! How could he be...!) During His second year, he learned that Leonard now had a girlfriend. He was crushed by this "proof" of Leonard's heterosexuality (not that it couldn't have occurred to him that bisexuality was a possibility), crushed but somehow feeling Himself made a better person by being forced to give up one of His delusions. (He wrote a poem about the experience, which I must quote to you in full sometime. This noble anthem, on the general theme of putting a brave face on loss, ended with the bracing line "Knowing who you are/I touch the distant star." It could even be sung to the tune of "When A Child is Born". Remember, it was written by the same hand that would have given the world Elaine Pritchard's "My radio's a seashell". )

But during His third year, the evidence began to mount up that Leonard was, in fact, not as straight as he seemed. Arthur and Lockwood (you understand I mean my Original) had encountered him during the run of their gay play in Halifax. One evening at the campus watering hole, He witnessed a conversation between Arthur and Leonard in which Arthur made insinuations to Leonard, you know of what sort. Leonard's ultimate response was to upend Arthur's beer over Arthur's head, hand over his own beer to Him, and leave the room.

Then there were the occasional appearances of Leonard's boyfriend in his company. Then there was the cast party where Arthur and I outed Leonard.

That's as much as I know about the novel's real-life beginnings. In another post I'll let you know something about the stuff he made up - which would include Elaine's story, the trio of Simon, Jane and Luke (I haven't mentioned them), and last but not least, my slippery demise.