Thursday, July 22, 2010

THE RESERVOIR by Billy Herman

If you fell down the embankment the current of the water is so fast it would carry you over the dam. Then the reservoir cop gave me a little green ticket for less than a crime and instructed me to leave.

Years later I would try to construct a drama that would make this little incident very important. But the drama was made of the stuff of dreams and every time I tried to hammer it together it would turn to nothing.

My friend Brian said one evening that we realize at a certain point that we are not living narratives. Life is much more random than we think and we are not following a dramatic arc.

My mom wanted to paint. She had just retired from being a registered nurse and was really into the painting class she was taking. She is in fact a first-rate painter.

I got it into my mind that I was going to clean the entire inside of our house. It was in fact way too messy, and I decided to be Hercules.

We were at cross-purposes and one day in my frustration I exploded in a fit of rage, after which I felt very hurt.

I drove up to the Ashokan Reservoir, parked my car and started to walk. When I saw the sign that said go no further I was too sad to obey it. I wanted to see what the dam looked like from close up. When I saw the white police jeep out on the road I knew I had been spotted and I thought, he’ll be here any minute.

This drama I had in mind is oh so vague. There was this bully I knew in grade school named Chad. To this very day he remains a stupid bully. I see him every once in a while, usually in restaurants. He became the villain.

After that my mind free-associated bits and pieces from everywhere. The sex appeal of the actress Fran Drescher for example. But that’s all I had. Bits and pieces and vague feelings, longing, love. Danger. Walter Mitty heroics. Friendship. If only I could put it all in order and have it make sense.

I composed a few outlines for it. It looked good that way. One of the outlines was a good piece of comedy on its own. Then one day when I was weak and sick I wrote the novella. It was undeniably bad.

I have a dream of returning to this story and telling it right, but like I said before it is made up of dreams that trail off into nothing. Getting the woman instead of having her reject me. Overcoming the fear and the glory of police. Seeing Chad as the failure he is. Turning the authority figures in my little world into human beings.

It is all right to never write this story. It is all right to wake up from it and let it go.

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