A Sneak Preview of the First Chapter of My Novel: The 12/59 Shuttle From Yesterday To Today

Join me on a tour of the 1^st chapter of my novel. For many of you this is a style of writing you have never seen from me; it is, in fact, my alter-ego and billybuc never really wrote this. We just let this jerk out from time to time so he won’t become too obnoxious. J

I have delayed writing this book long enough. If not for overwhelming guilt because I haven’t acted sooner and a strong sense of foreboding I would be perfectly happy eating Cheetos and listening to the boys of summer chase the elusive white orb for the next six months. I mean, it’s not like anyone is going to pay attention anyway. They haven’t so far and there have been some pretty damn strong clues for all to notice. But when Lady Lard declares that I write or else she will sit on my Cheeto-stained face and put me out of my misery, well, then it’s time to write. Besides, the Mariners suck again this year so what am I really missing?

The Princess of Plump (aka Pauline) has once again reminded me that the events of last year need to be recorded for posterity. She has made it clear that those events will eventually change existence as we know it. How she came to this conclusion will be the subject of this book. She is in no way psychic. It could be that enlightenment was found by her while in a self-induced stupor after consuming forty-six blueberry muffins. It could be she saw the light while listening to Country Joe and the Fish from the comforts of her lilac-scented bathtub, a ceramic monster of the approximate size of Vermont. It could be…..well, you’ll just have to read on and find out. All I know is if I don’t write this damn book I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life every single time something happens to upset the natural order of things. And I don’t handle guilt well. In fact, it gets downright ugly when I’m in the throes of guilt. But let’s not go there; what purpose would it serve to tell you about the time I wiped out a seven year old on the bunny slope, spraining his ankle, probably scarring him for life, and causing me to trip the light fantastic with a cross-dressing truck driver from Skokie after drinking ten shots of Jack Daniels? It wouldn’t have been so bad if he/she had any fashion sense at all but alas, she/he thought.....see, let’s not go there.

If a simple skiing accident could send me to the brink of depravity, imagine how I would react if, say, the birds stopped flying or the fish quit swimming or the stock market dropped a thousand points overnight or ranchers in Montana voted Democratic in the next election.. I mean, there is no way I want that shit on my conscience. So write I shall, a simple narrative explaining what it was like, what happened and what will happen. You can take it seriously or you can go back to whatever it is you do when you aren’t reading…. park another rusty car in your front yard....do the nasty dance with your third cousin from a second marriage.....pound some brewskies while hunting by searchlight at night....I don’t much care, just don’t come running to me and say you weren’t warned, okay?

So I’m placing the Cheetos in the cupboard so you can have my undivided attention. Seattle’s sorry excuse for a baseball team will have to lose without my support, which shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t want to leave out even a single detail of the events that transpired, but I will keep this as short as possible since the attention span of the average American reader is about equal to the attention span of an athlete on steroids. My new life and the way I view reality started twelve months ago in a field of lavender with Sheila straddling my loins while voyeur ants crawled along my ass looking for a cheap thrill.

I had met Sheila a couple weeks earlier at a "Save Our Northwest Tree Frog" protest gathering on the campus of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Quite frankly I doubted at the time if tree frogs needed saving and I sure as hell didn’t give a rat’s ass if they did, but I figured it was a great place to meet women so I attended. I wasn’t wrong. There were women everywhere and most of them looked like extras in a Woody Allen movie: hairy underarms, ratty hair, garlic cloves hanging around their neck, like they were guarding against a sudden vampire invasion. Maybe they were. I didn’t care. They were women and that met my one and only requirement on that blistering-hot Saturday morning. There were tall ones, short ones, fat ones, ones that looked like men, some that probably were men, all genres of women were in attendance. I hadn’t had a date for months and I wasn’t about to let a little thing like personal hygiene or a heat wave or general appearance stand in my way. We were in the fifth consecutive day with temperatures hovering near one hundred, certainly a rarity for Olympia, but warm temps only make me hornier than usual and that’s saying quite a bit. Besides, if you live in Olympia long enough you get quite accustomed to bizarre-looking men and women, and I’d been there twenty years. And hey, I always had a soft spot in my heart for Woody Allen, and Diane Keaton was kind of hot if you like your women skinnier than a pipe cleaner with breasts that resemble cats-eye marbles.

Evergreen State College is a throwback to the Sixties, or at least it makes every attempt to be. “Raise your awareness” meetings on every conceivable subject can be found on any given day; thus the tree frog was front and center on this day. The protest, aka “Excuse-to-get-high,” had drawn maybe one hundred people by the time I arrived. I'll tell you what pisses me off about this day and Age. Okay, just one of the many things that piss me off. The kids today have no damn idea how to protest. They pass out pamphlets, speak into a bullhorn to the small gatherings and go home feeling as though they accomplished something. Truth be known about all they accomplish at most of those gatherings is an exchange of phone numbers so they can get laid later in the evening. If you want someone at the school to really give a shit about the tree frog, collect about a thousand of the little bastards and release them in the Dean's office. That will raise the consciousness level considerably. Back in the Sixties we regularly pissed people off. Close down the school with sit-ins; walk along the freeway with signs; fire bomb the friggin’ ROTC building. That kind of shit gets attention. But today all we see is candy-assed over-privileged kids playing at protest. It makes me want to stick Abby Hoffman buttons up their asses and see if they can muster up a real protest about their sudden inability to fart.

Okay, I have anger-management issues, but I think we’ll talk about those at a later date if you don’t mind. We aren’t here to discuss my personal issues; that would require me writing another book and I’m just not up to that challenge right now. Maybe Ken Burns can make a mini-series about the American male and anger issues inherent in the species, with me as the leading subject. He could call it something like “The Eagle Flies Over Assholes” or “Red, White and Blue Pricks.” I know about 200 million women who would buy it the first day it hits the store shelves. But, as is my habit, I digress from the task at hand.

Evergreen is a college cleverly disguised as a forest, or maybe a forest cleverly disguised as a college. It really is quite beautiful and for this cynic that’s saying quite a bit. Huge evergreens (hence the college name) surround the campus, and if you aren’t a student there or you don’t have a GPS unit you have an excellent chance of becoming hopelessly lost in no time at all. Luckily I had good friends who attended there during the Love Decade and I was quite familiar with the campus layout. In fact, as I recall I got laid on the second floor of the library many years ago, but you don’t need the details of that little foray. Just let me say that all those fantasies you have had about librarians are absolutely spot-on! Surround those trollops with “how to” books and they manage to learn a lot about a variety of subjects.

As I was walking across the main campus I saw the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, kneeling on the lawn with something cupped in her hand. Her black hair flowed over her shoulders to the small of her back, her impressive breasts almost touching the ground as she studied whatever she held in her right hand. She had the kindest eyes I had ever seen, jade green in color, and there was a peace in her manner that I had never seen in a woman before. It was impossible for me to determine her age; she was one of those women who don’t seem to age, but the small lines near her eyes made me guess she was close to forty. Imagine, if you will, Julia Roberts with large, authentic breasts and jet-black hair, dressed like a Russian peasant, and you will have an adequate picture of Sheila. She also had a somewhat crooked smile, slightly off-kilter, which she was gracing me with as I approached. A cloth necklace of some sort hung around her neck, giving off the scent of lavender. I don’t know about all of you but the smell of lavender is a huge turn on for me. Come to think of it, the smell of lavender leaves me quite horny. But then so does asparagus! I had the strangest feeling I had seen her before, but then I feel that way quite often when faced with a beautiful woman. It's called living in a dream world or at the very least wishful thinking. She was definitely someone I needed to know. Somehow I found the courage to say hi and asked her name.

"My name is Sheila, Goddess of the Insignificant and Guardian of All That is Miniature."

Well, not really. You’ll have to buy it to find out what happens in the next 250 pages. Thanks for visiting. We are now locking up that "Bad Boy Bill" and will allow billybuc to return.

2013 William D. Holland (aka billybuc)