SR 1 PAGE NINETY-NINE

This page and the next are probably the two sweariest pages in the entire book, so my apologies to any grandmas and grandpas feeling scandalized right now. Although… most grandparents these days are baby boomers, right? We all know what those people got up to. Stop clutching your pearls, Moonbeam, we’ve seen the Woodstock footage!

(That said, if any Victorian time travelers have accidentally stumbled across this page, I will happily pay for any popped monocle damage.)

Like most writers my age (particularly the white ones with Y chromosomes), I was very excited about Quentin Tarantino as a teenager. The first time I saw Pulp Fiction I could feel it rewriting my DNA. It wasn’t just the colorful profanity in there, but it wasn’t not about that, either. His approach to dialogue felt very fresh and new in 1994, just like his approach to characterization, information sequencing, and even basic morality seemed fresh and new in 1994. Of course it wasn’t exactly “new.” Quentin Tarantino’s aesthetic came from decades of soaking his brain in wild grindhouse mind-melters from around the world. But I didn’t know that at the time. I just thought it was cool.

So of course I started writing my own Tarantino-esque story. Of COURSE I did this. It was a novel called Kwalatee.

It was about four goofy mobsters (OF COURSE it was). Their gang’s territory is being threatened by a rival mob that – UH-OH – turns out to be an army of aliens in disguise. One of the four mobster buddies is a strong, silent type it will shock you to learn is actually an alien himself. Another is a competent leader type who’s immediately killed in a convenience store robbery and spends most of the (OF COURSE) fractured storyline as a ghost. The third buddy, “Denny Przewski,” is a gentle, simple-minded virginal lamb who can’t stand violence. And the last buddy is an ambitious Mexican/Polish guy desperate to rise in his all-Polish-except-that-one-disguised-alien mob. 

Now, did 17-year-old Quentin Tarantino fan Aaron Alexovich write “Paco Zapatos” with great nuance and sensitivity? Odds aren’t great! But I don’t remember. The 70-80 pages I managed to finish are still sitting in a box in the closet, but I’m sorta scared to re-read it. I think he was just Mexican because the name “Paco Zapatos” lodged itself in my head for whatever reason. Pretty sure I didn’t try doing any dialect, thank God.

Can’t recall why the book was titled Kwalatee, either. Might have been the name of the alien leader? Mostly what I remember about that book was the swearing. Lots and lots of good, good swearing.

SR 1 PAGE ONE-HUNDRED

Yeah, I felt all of these things.

Some of it still hits. Not as hard as in my 20’s, though. In fact, at the time I wrote this in 2004 I had already started mellowing out of the rawness in this block of text. In a lot of ways, Serenity Rose is a portrait of who I was at age 18 or 19. Directionless, living at home, no social life, sleepwalking through art classes at UIC, and wondering where it was all leading. Everything seemed sort of pointless.

By the time I wrote this several years later, I was in a lovely new relationship, had plenty of friends, and was feeling hopeful about my new career as a comic artist. But I still felt very close to that listless, ghost-like younger version of me. Those emotions were still right near the surface and super-easy to access. 

And I’m glad I did. It’s nice to be able to go back and read this and remember who I was and what I was feeling back then. I guess that’s why people keep diaries, right? Reading this page is much more powerful to me than looking at any photograph from my life at that time. The cliche is “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but that doesn’t apply to words that are literally designed to put you inside someone’s head. A stream of consciousness is worth a thousand pictures if the point is to understand another person.

It’s hard to get back into 18-year-old Aaron’s head all these years later. But I can with this page (and this whole book, frankly), and even if some of the emotions are slightly painful, it still feels kinda nice to feel them again. Write lots of stuff down, everybody.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

One week into the release of SHOCK CITY, and I just want to thank everyone who’s grabbed a copy so far! Special thanks to all the cool folks who have left ratings, reviews, or posted their book on social media. That stuff really helps!

Gonna be tough to beat this review, though:

Stuff like that can really warm your cold, dead, Grinch-like heart-nub.

NEXT WEEK: FILLIES AND BRONCOS.