this dude

This dude, who is he, nobody knows, just some dude. Grew up here, there, wherever, it really doesn’t matter. Just one of those non-descript dudes. Except he liked to write. Started writing when he was like eight or nine. Silly s**t. Silly stories. Parents had an old Royal manual typewriter they kept in the attic. I don’t know, I think his mother or father used it in college to write their term papers. Anyway, this kid starts writing. And he writes on a pretty regular basis. He writes too much. Neglects his schoolwork. Parents are called all the time. Parent-teacher conferences. Bullshit. Anyway he barely squeaks out of high school by the f*****g skin of his teeth, see. And now he’s at loose ends. He’s not going to college. He has very few skills. Very little ambition. Starts hanging out at the local pool hall. Meets a few gents. One in particular who introduces him to dope. Pot mostly. But the occasional hashish, coke, lude. But he’s got no cash. No walking around cash. His parents give him an ultimatum. Either get a job or move out. He gets a job washing dishes at a fish restaurant. Hates it, but what the f**k else is he going to do, right? One night he meets an army recruiter. Or maybe the Marines. Probably the Marines because Travis Bickle was in the Marines, you know, that guy in Taxi Driver and that movie is like one of his favorite f*****g movies of all time. Anyway, he becomes a Marine. Goes to Iraq and s**t. Gets an honorable discharge. But he’s still got this itch to write. So he writes about his experience in the Marines. Sends the manuscript around to a million publishers. They all reject it. The dude becomes so despondent he starts drinking heavily. Wanders around. Goes back to the pool hall. No one is really around from the old days. He sees an ad for one of those vanity presses on the internet one day. They’ll publish your book for almost next to nothing! What does he got to lose? He sends a payment and then mails the manuscript to the publisher. The book doesn’t sell. He sinks further into depression. Desperate for advice, he looks up his literary idol, a writer who wrote one book and it became and international best seller. He made so much money from the book, he didn’t have to work for the rest of his life. So he moved to Idaho and he lives there alone. A hermit. The dude gets an idea. He’s going to travel to Idaho, find his literary idol, and ask him for advice. But when he finally tracks the idol down, the idol confronts the dude with a shotgun and threatens to blow his brains out. Well, that just pissed the dude off even more. His literary idol! Turning on him. M**********r! So the dude gets so pissed off at the idol that he hatches a plan to murder the idol. Only his various attempts backfire. This part of the story should be reminiscent of the Road Runner cartoons where the Coyote constantly comes up with ways of trying to do harm to the Road Runner but always fails. In this story the dude finally kills the idol. He hides out for a bit but the police finally track his a*s down and throw him in jail. While in jail, the dude pens this story and starts selling it on Amazon. Except the joke is on him now because it becomes a runaway success and the dude does not see any of the profits from the book because he is prohibited from making money from the book.