Hello, everybody! Short note today.
It’s sort of the same-old, same-old lately. I’m trying to use my phone a bit less, which has meant that I’ve been focusing on art instead.
I’ve done a couple videos lately, and been working on music, like usual. I may release a little Christmas song soon if things go right. It’s actually the fifth anniversary of my first “real” album, The Voice of the Me Generation, speaking of, but I don’t know if that’s of any interest. Mostly, I’ve been writing.
Progress on my book is going pretty well. National Novel Writing Month just wrapped up, and I ended up with around 15,000 words. At this point in time I have written around ninety pages.
I feel really good about this story, and I plan to continue to work on it. To end this letter, I have included a (short, mostly unedited) chapter that works out-of-context. I hope you enjoy.
Thank you for reading,
Jerek
Chapter 14
When Butch was a kid, he really liked bugs. His favorite books were The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Spider And The Fly. He’d dart outside excitedly on rainy mornings, searching the yard for snails and worms. There was one time at school, during recess, when he found a praying mantis and carried it around. He examined its disproportionate eyes and spiky arms, and, with wonder and fascination, allowed it to crawl up his arm and around his shoulder.
Nowadays, Butch can’t stand bugs of any type. He can’t even look into the tarantula cage at the zoo. He makes exceptions for the pretty ones, though: ladybugs, butterflies, and even for crickets and grasshoppers. But that’s it.
When Butch was a kid, he was quite partial to beat-em-ups. In any video game, and in beat-em-ups in particular, he always picked a girl player. He liked the really over-the-top feminine ones. He played as Peach in any Mario game that let him. Even in games where you customize your own character, he’d pick a girl, because their outfits were cuter.
Then when he hit puberty, he became self-conscious. All of a sudden, it felt weird to him. So he started picking boy characters. He noticed, after not-too-long, that he was gravitating towards the male wrestler characters in the fighting games. You know, the ones with the big muscles and the little briefs.
Nowadays, in most video games, Butch plays characters that look more like him. Except for beat-em-ups, where he plays girl characters, because their fighting style is always better (more focused on kicking moves, duh). And, like, their outfits are way cuter.
When Butch was a boy, he became utterly entranced by cowboys. He had a little cap gun that he would fire at pretend bad guys, a little cowboy hat his dad bought him, replete with a silver sheriff badge, and even a Woody from Toy Story themed birthday party.
This culminated in his mother taking him to the rodeo. The real cowboys were there! Butch can only remember two things from that night: One, his mom bought him a bag of cotton candy, and it was so, so good. Two, he very badly wanted to do the mutton busting. Half way through the show, one by one, children would come out of the chute, clinging to the back of a sheep. The kid who stayed on the longest won an award (probably a belt buckle or something, but Butch didn’t care, a prize is a prize). He was miffed at his mother for not allowing him to do it.
“Hey ma,” Butch says, whilst they watch the television.
“Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you let me do the mutton bustin’?”
Her face twists up. “What?”
He sits up. “When we went to the rodeo. I wanted to ride the sheep.”
“What, when you were like eight?”
“Yeah.” He feels dumb now.
“Honey, when your dad tried to teach you how to ride a bike, you fell off and cried for ten minutes.”
“So what?”
“You still don’t know how to ride a bike!”
“Whatever. Who needs to know that?” He slumps down. “Dad was being a jerk, anyway.”
“If you want to ride the sheep, I guess I can sign you up.”
“You think they’ll let me?”
“Sure, you’re skinny enough. Just tell them you're a kid at heart.”
“I’ll tell them I’m a child of God.”
She frowns. “Hell, no! Don’t say that!”