or { My Own Private Orlando }
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To quote Jack Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited (2007):
“The characters are all fictional.”
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This is a story about departure—about reconciling the truth and brokenness of one’s reality with the haunting shadows of what might have been. Though it’s too early for me to dissect with any exactness my motivations in writing this piece—apart from a recent departure of my own and inspiration from a small number of arthouse films—some of the questions and fragments of imagery contained here stretch back to dreams I had or journaled over a year ago, and it was a strangely fulfilling process getting to explore them within this unexpected fiction.
Due to the overall length of the piece, I’ve attached the full story in a pdf. file, with an excerpt included below. I realize thirty-five pages is a lot to ask of the modern subscriber—but this is, to me, the most meaningful and vulnerable short story I’ve written to date, and it would mean just as much to have it find some kind of readership, however small.
Yours,
Andrew
↑ Full Story in Pdf. ↑
Excerpt:
It was a long walk back to my apartment—Johnnie drove us from the bar—one that would almost guarantee I’d be sober and ready for bed when I got in. His kitchen stove clock seared a green 3:35 into my brain before I left—but still, heroically and unsurprisingly, a small number of students swaggered to greet the approaching dawn—turning the night before into one long-ending day. Ribbons of litter adorned the streets like the aftermath of a wedding or someone’s underrated graduation party. I tipped my head while I walked—but no stars. A fine way to bid the city one last goodnight, I thought. Walking one end of downtown to the other.
My own private Orlando.
Just as it always was, and now, in my memory, as it always would be. Blue night city sparkling; statues outside the library, fixed in the forms of watchful alligators and slumbering hobos. A great violet globe revolved on a pedestal, and murals of mighty, half-naked deities glared down from the kingdoms of their concrete heavens. A rippling crest of a wave curled beneath one—must be Neptune, I thought. He stared with a cold severity that both comforted and unnerved me in the same odd emotion. Trudging away down the sloping street, head down, arms swinging, I wondered if they had any candles burning in the cathedral on the corner, its cross lit a gentle gold.
Time passed as on a carousel—unaware of its presence until the spinning and bobbing and twinkling begins to slow. So too did my uneven, wandering steps cross without a knowledge of time or distance. The night was asleep to some, alive to me—and I was whole in my brokenness for just a carousel creature-riding moment.
Water glimmered along the stretch of curving road, the bridge a neon rainbow in the distance. Shops winked their all-night store-front signs like sleepy sporadic owl eyes. Palm fronds feathered each other like restless birds’ wings. Another glass-clinked, foam-tossed night, dreams transposing into memory.
I died in the street—toe to toe with the road, turning over relentless phrases, words across my tongue—to keep me sober and because I loved them, because they’d carry me home. I’d be born again in the morning—when all was but a cloud and I knew what I had done but not entirely why—relenting to my unknowing at last, to the circle that so rarely could be broken.
Trucks roared across the overpass.
If this were a film, I’d throw my head back and scream at the stars. From rage or from joy, I don’t know.
— But there are no stars tonight.
I had a sudden vision then, crossing the last stretch of the road. A dainty, sharp-shouldered conductor stood in the street—visible only in silhouette—who, with a sharp flick of his baton, raised such a symphony of memory the sky flooded with broad spotlights of color—rich, violent, heavenly. A host of an orchestra responded in kind, playing from the awnings of restaurants, the parks, the bars. Flashes of radiant meaning, twisting and scoping—now scarlet, now yellow fire, now rueful, twilight blue—illuminated the skyline in a fatal, valedictory display.
Every night I’d ever spent in the city repeated itself back to me. Every twilight spectacle to which I’d bore witness, in rapturous or morbid intent, replayed in layers of ungrasped reality. Above the water, fireworks blossomed—every opportunity unaccepted, every joyous impulse not taken—imploding, gone. They crackled, filled my eyes with purple. The lake became a looking glass, and the fountains leapt, intermingling with the stars I created for myself. Raining down in jewel drops of rose, gold, diamond—a glittering flash—they paid tribute to the past that was and the past that might have been.
a literary labyrinth 