Confessions of a Young Novelist
I was a reader and a writer before I could read or write. I sat with my mother at four years-old and verbalized stories as she wrote them down. I thumbed through encyclopedias at my grandparents’ house looking at pictures. School progressed, I fortunately became literate, and kept writing short stories. As adolescence swooped in, I stopped.
Fast forward several years, and much had changed. I had almost finished college. I was 22 years-old when the pandemic spread throughout the world. As if this wasn’t annoying enough, the government’s squeamish, authoritarian response to the virus cast us all into existential crisis.
The lockdowns weren’t a problem at first. Balmy days aren’t abnormal during March in Louisiana. Pool and house parties roared. Bottles broke, laughter and music emanated from all directions. We made our own fun. However, this flurry of flagrant alcoholic madness didn’t last. Most of campus went home. I was bored. So was my roommate. So, we took a random drive to Lafayette for the hell of it. I was high the entire time. When we got there the streets were empty save for some folks living in their tents in parks all over town in the shadows of Confederate statues.
Sure, this knocked a few hours out of the day, but I needed more to quell the monotony. On a bright sunny morning I figured I’d buy some acid down the hall…
