Hello There.

It's been a long time since I posted anything, so I won't waste a lot of your time by yakking- consequently, for your enjoyment, here is the first chapter of "Jack and I", final draft.

Enjoy!

Mr. H

In the beginning, back when it all started, there was him, and there was her, and there was me. Well, really, there was only him, and me. Or maybe just me- it's hard to tell. You see, when I refer to him, I mean Jack Sharkey. And when all is said and done, I am Jack Sharkey, and he is me. Sort of. Her? Well, I'll get back to her.

Jack had his birth, as so many things do, in coincidence and a whiskey-haze. His name was a combination of two nick names from long ago, and in the beginning, it was merely a pen name I used when I wrote about things that were too close to the truth about me- the things I didn't want anyone to know belonged to me. I was a writer at the time, ostensibly of science fiction, but I had been suffering off and on writer's block for years, and had managed to turn out almost nothing of which I could proudly say, "I wrote this". It had been a turbulent time in my life, really.

I had just moved to a major metropolitan area in the heart of California, and I was as alone as it's possible to be in the heart of a city of three million people. It was a city on a river, and that is all I will say about the city, except that I came to love it, and I have always called it Dharma City. But much as I would later come to love Dharma City for all its weird and wild ways, at that time, I didn't know anyone, and no one knew me. When you add to that the fact that I was recovering from a painful divorce, and still in the midst of raking over as much of my past as I could recall in an attempt to build a new, stronger sense of identity, it's easy to see why I felt lost. But nothing bad ever comes without some form of compensation, and this was no exception. One day, while deep in a funk about my inability to write anything remotely resembling a good science fiction story, I decided that instead of trying to plan a story and then write it out, I would sit down and write whatever came out of my head. After all, I figured, it couldn't be any worse that the things I had attempted, and at least if I could finish it, it would give me a sense of accomplishment.

So I sat down and began typing, and what came out was a true story, from my own life, slightly smoothed and changed by the lens of time and perspective. It was the story of a friend and I when we were young and wild, and more than slightly dangerous. It flowed from my mind and straight to my keyboard like I'd been waiting to write it forever. It was sharp, and biting, and funny. And it was good. No, more, it was great. And I suddenly felt like a god. I was working at that time for a large corporation, and since some of the scenes in the story were both graphic and of questionable morality, I decided not to publish it in any form under my own name- so instead I groped around for a pen name. When I was young (around the time the story took place, actually) I had been known by two separate nicknames, for similar reasons- Some of my friends had called me Sharkey, saying I had all the charm and warmth of a great white. Some others had called me "Jack", for my habit of answering any question I didn't like or feel like answering with an immediate "Fuck off, Jack." and a supposed resemblance to Jack Nicholson (I don't and never did look like him, but some of my harsher mannerisms may at times suggest a resemblance.) And so it was. Jack Sharkey was born.

From that point on, I wrote as Jack, and what I wrote was some of the best I ever put on paper. Not long after that first story, I churned out a number of others, all drawn from my life or the lives of the people I had known, and all conspicuously lacking the fictional and science fiction elements that had been my previous hallmark. After that first story, "Shadow", I turned out several others in quick succession ("Amphetamine", "Going West", "Night Life" and "Fragment" among them), and published many of them in tiny independent magazines, on friends web sites, and on one or two independent web sites. There's even a place where I will be forever known as "Mr. Horrible"- I published a string of Jack Sharkey stories there under that moniker. I made no money from them, but for a while, I was prolific as hell. The big surprise was: people were actually reading this stuff. Then, in the spring of that year, just after I had published "Amphetamine" on an independent web site, I got the shock of a lifetime.

An acquaintance I had met a few months before asked around and found out that it was in fact me writing the Sharkey stories. He approached me, a few days after finding out, to ask me for permission to gather all of the material I had written to date and publish it in a one issue 'zine. The shock of lifetime came after I asked him why in the world he would want to do that, and he told me: for my fans. Specifically, for the fan club he had started there in the metro. Up until that point, I hadn't even been aware I had fans, let alone that there were enough of them to get together and form a club. I was flattered. I was stunned. I was worried about the sanity of these people. But I said yes, anyway. And that touched the whole thing off.

A few weeks later he brought the finished product to me. One hundred and some-odd pages of rough bound small print, with the title printed in black across the top half: Jack Sharkey- Collected Works. I loved it. To celebrate, we decided to head out to a local club, where Mark (the acquaintance) told me there were some of the people who read my work. It sounded like fun, so we set off, recruiting a non-drinking friend of mine to be the driver. On the way I filled the time by idly wondering just how many people had actually read what I'd written, and more, why? I wasn't exactly filled with respect for my own work.

When we arrived, the club was packed wall to wall, and the noise level was verging on excruciating. It looked like exactly my kind of scene, really, so we went inside, and Mark wandered off to find the friends that had promised to meet him, while I went in search of the bar. Having found it, and gotten my bourbon, I was just turning away from the bar to survey the crowd when Mark re-appeared. He had somehow acquired a large entourage- at least twenty people- and he was grinning ear to ear. I soon found out why. With a certain amount of dramatic flourish, he waved a hand towards me, and said: "This is him; Jack Sharkey." He went on to explain that it wasn't my real name, but the noise drowned him out. And I was suddenly surrounded by what seemed like a million smiling faces, and swamped by a tide of introductions, handshakes, and questions.

I was, to put it mildly, taken aback. I made my best attempt to answer the questions I could, remember the names being thrown my way, and at least say hello to everyone there. All the while, I was wondering what the hell had just happened. I couldn't put together how a few simple stories had somehow reached all these people, and affected them to the extent that they would all come here in the hopes of meeting me. I also was trying to puzzle out a way to inform them that not only wasn't I any kind of great writer, but my name wasn't even Jack Sharkey. But by the third time someone had called me "Mr. Sharkey" and offered to buy me a drink, I had given up. After all, free drinks and a number of attractive young girls hanging on your words is nothing to pass up, and it's been my experience that things like that don't come along very often. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and enjoy it. Which I did. Thoroughly.

And so it went for a while- I would go out to a bar, or a club, or a coffee shop- and there would be someone there who knew me, or Mark would come along and point me out to someone, and the next thing I knew, I would be introduced to some smiling person who had read and admired my work. And most, if not all of them, had a certain expectation of who I would be. I suppose it's not entirely surprising; After all, most of my stories revolved around drinking, or drugs, or some form or another of lunacy. It was more fun to write about those parts of my life, and there were an embarrassing number of them. So when people met me, they expected a legend, of sorts. And being who I was, I gave them what they wanted. I gave them Jack. At first, it was mostly an act- me indulging my theatrical side, and getting a little hedonism in, as well. But little by little, I became Jack, more and more. And that's where the real fun started.

For a time, It was easy to be Jack- I was recently divorced, and where before I had been a fairly chunky, unattractive guy, the depression I had fought ever since had precipitated a huge change. I lost a lot of weight, and began exercising to kill time. Over time, then, I had become a thin and somewhat attractive man. In addition to this, I had begun to care less and less about what people thought of what I said or did, and this new confidence had an amazing effect on my personality. I had become immensely charming to the opposite sex; It was an effect I was only too willing to exploit As time passed, it became harder and harder to remember just what I had been like before; Harder, in fact, to not be Jack. And being Jack had another side effect I came to love: Jack didn't care. Not about an ex-wife who had broken his heart. Not about his bills going through the roof. Not about drinking too much, or never succeeding at being a writer. Not about unrealized goals, or a wasted life. Jack didn't care much about anything, really, except having a good time. Jack was all right. Jack was never lonely. Jack was my friend.

I loved Jack.

And I loved being Jack.

And then…

There was her.

See- I told you we'd get back to her.

Back before this had all started, but after my divorce, I had met a girl. It happened like this: I went to a party. This in itself, was not such a big thing; Even when I wasn't Jack, I was the kind of guy who went to a lot of parties. A friend of mine, who invited me to help me shake off depression in the wake of my disastrous divorce, had thrown this particular one. The problem was, he also invited my soon-to-be ex-wife. And she, in turn, had invited her new boyfriend.

Ouch.

I didn't find this out until I was already at the party, and since I had nothing better to do than to torture myself, I decided to stay, and tough it out. Sometimes, my capacity for self-abuse astonishes me. So there I was, and there she was. And a more uncomfortable situation would have been hard to find. At least until Liv showed up.

Liv was the kind of girl you saw on the street and never noticed, unless she smiled. She had no fashion sense, wore no makeup, and wore thick glasses. She wasn't anyone's candidate for a beauty pageant contestant. She was the kind of girl people said should have been named Jane, so you could call her plain Jane (no lie- people actually said that.) And yet, when she walked in the door, it was like every nerve in my body stood up at once and shouted. And being the slave to my intuition that I am, I had to find out why. When she had walked in the door, she had a frown so deeply etched on her face that I thought for a moment that it might have been permanent. By asking people at the party who knew her, I soon ascertained why: her boyfriend of four years, who she had confidently expected to marry, had dumped her the night before. On their four year anniversary.

Big ouch.

This determined, I had my approach. Now, before you all throw up your hands in disgust and label me a pig, and a weasel, and a rat besides, bear this in mind- I had no designs on the poor girl's body. I just figured that being both recently dumped, we would have a common subject to talk about, and could perhaps become friends. Being lonely, after all, really sucks. So I went outside, and I asked her why she looked so sad. And after she told me, I said: "It could have been worse."

She knew, and I knew, that this was not the sort of thing you're supposed to say when someone informs you that they've just had their heart ripped out and trampled on. So she did the obvious thing: she asked what the hell I meant. And I told her. And all of a sudden, from being complete strangers, we became fellow sufferers. And we began to talk. And I got what I had wanted- a sympathetic soul with which to exchange bitter observations about love, and life. We talked for a while there at the party, but as my ex-wife kept wandering by, we decided to take a drive somewhere else to continue our conversation. And a funny thing happened: we found out we had a lot more in common than just broken hearts. We shared similar views on life, and love, and morality, and politics. We were both writers, and poets. We talked all night, and never got bored, and we didn't even realize the passing of time until the newspaper trucks rolled by at around five A.M.

And suddenly, this girl I had dismissed as somewhat plain and uninteresting became something else entirely. She became, in the space of a few hours, someone I wanted to know. Someone I wanted to be truly friends with. And I realized that she was smart. And she was funny. And she had more charm than any six women I had known before. And as I realized these things, it hit me. I couldn't imagine not knowing her. And I wanted to get to know her better. I was, even, just a bit smitten. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I was, as a writer I used to read has said, "in full smit". Because of the recent breakup of my marriage, I thought it best to talk myself out of it. But somehow, I just couldn't quite manage it. So, with the word "Rebound" echoing ominously through my head like a b-movie special effect, I asked her to trade numbers. And when she agreed, my heart gave a little lurch. Childish, I know. But that didn't stop me, after I dropped her off at home, from beginning to furiously plot ways to see her again. Sometimes, I'm ashamed of myself.

But regardless of any personal shame, I still plotted. I decided to invite her by to watch movies and have dinner, and it took me three tries to get her to agree. And when the date was set, and she finally arrived, I was ready. I had made some truly killer fajitas (I'm one hell of a cook, it's true), and got a couple of romantic comedies, and I did my best to clean up and be presentable. The poor girl didn't stand a chance, or so I thought. Of course that was before she showed up at my door. Gone was the mousy girl I had met before- In her place, there was a gorgeous blonde woman, with eyes so blue they shamed the sky, masses of curls, and a long flowing dress. She was graceful, beautiful, and brilliant. I don't know what I must have looked like to her, but it took me a few minutes to adjust and pick my jaw up off the floor. Then I tardily invited her in.

We talked for hours, and made snide comments about the romantic movies, while I rubbed her feet and couldn't take my eyes off of her. Every time she looked at me, I melted. And worst of all, she seemed to be completely unaware of the effect she was having on me. She made me feel about twelve years old, awkward and unwieldy, and I was drowning in her eyes. After a time, we went for a short walk around the block. The wind was brisk, and smelled of wood-smoke, and the autumn leaves were falling. And so was I.

And that's when I first began to fear the effect she had on me. While we walked, I stole glances at her, and watched the way the wind brought out the roses in her cheeks, and made her eyes sparkle. I wanted to run away. I wanted to draw her close and taste her lips, right there. I wished the day would last forever.

Eventually, we went back in and watched another movie, and then, inevitably, she had to leave. Before she left, she turned to give me a hug, and I found myself almost unable to let go. But eventually I did, and she left. And I stood there on the porch for a long time, breathing in the lingering scent of her hair. And then I went inside, feeling both scared and elated, and wondering what the hell was wrong with me. But I still called her the next day.

And for a while, things went on this way- she would come over, and we would watch movies, or talk, or go for a walk. Sometimes, we lay down together and just slept, innocently, for the most part- we just wanted the comfort of another person nearby. But nothing like that ever lasts, and this was no exception. Everything changed in this way: One night, we lay down to sleep. Side by side in the dark, I found myself preternaturally conscious of the heat of her body, and the feeling of her breath on my neck. I didn't want to move, thinking she was asleep, but at the same time, this was rapidly becoming utterly unbearable. So I lay in the dark, desperately wanting, and afraid to do anything about it. Until something changed. To this day, I have no idea who moved first, but somehow we ended up locked in a fevered kiss, with my heart hammering so loudly I was half afraid it would come bursting out of my chest. I was afraid that she might be asleep, and dreaming of her ex, and the thought stabbed me through. And then she murmured my name softly in my ear. And I was on cloud nine. Sometimes, life is better than others.

And so began a very short lived relationship. We dated and were utterly inseparable for about a month, and the longer I was with her, the more I fell. And the more I began to try to think of ways to end it. I know, that sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me- happiness can be more painful than despair, if you've had a recent reminder of how fragile happiness is, and I had just been divorced. But for the most part, Liv filled an emptiness that I hadn't even known existed before. And perfection was mine.

I took her to movies, and dinner. We went to tiny cafes, and hole-in the wall hamburger stands, and we went for long walks in the park, or in the rain. Strangers would approach us and assume that we were married, because of how happy and relaxed we seemed together. We became, in short, exactly the kind of happy couple that had been so painful for us to see not very long before. And the closer we got, the more she terrified me. But I hid it well- in fact, most of the time, I didn't think about it. When she was around, I felt better and more loved than I had ever felt before. I felt alive. I felt like I had won the lottery. I felt like life was a much better place than I had previously thought.

We talked for hours, about anything and everything, and although we didn't always agree, we never disagreed violently, either. I had begun with a healthy respect for her mind, and over time, nothing arose to diminish it. In fact, I was starting to wonder if she might be it- the one. The be-all and end-all of love. And that, my friend, was one seriously scary thought. After all, I had just come out of a relationship that was supposed to be the one, right? And it was too soon for me to be feeling this way about someone else, right? But, still, I spent as much time with her as I could. And even when she wasn't around, I thought of her, and felt warm. I didn't feel worried, or wonder what she might be doing- I felt safe, and loved. It was only in the darkest hours of the night, when all my insecurities came out to play, that I would doubt how I felt. And then, I would doubt everything about everything. Including whether I deserved to be this happy.

It's hard to explain, but after my divorce, I felt in some ways like a discard. Cast-off by my ex-wife, I sometimes felt that in many ways I had deserved to be thrown away. It's not an uncommon feeling among the recently divorced, but at the time, I wasn't aware of that. So I agonized, first over whether I could possibly be feeling what I thought I was feeling, and second, whether Liv deserved someone better than me. Once in a while, I even questioned her sanity for even wanting me. And that was on my good days. It all came to a head one day while we were sitting in a Chinese restaurant, and I found myself smiling as I imagined what it would be like to come home to her everyday. Her, and our children.

Big smile.

Whoa, wait a minute.

What the hell was I thinking? I looked across the table at her, trying to drag myself out of this train of thought, but she chose that exact moment to smile lovingly at me, and I melted. Like a Popsicle on a hot leather seat, in fact. It was at that moment that I realized I had to end it. Quickly. But it took me a few days to begin really straining to think of a way to do it.

Over the course of the next week or so, I invented and discarded about a million different stratagems for ending the relationship before it really took root. But every time I settled on one, she would be there, smiling at me, and all my doubts and plans would go swirling away, melted by her big blue eyes. And even when she wasn't there, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I would pick up the phone to call her, and tell her we needed to talk, and would find myself inviting her out to dinner, or the movies, or to my house to spend time with me instead. As the days, and then the weeks, passed, I found myself terrified of the effect she was having on me, but absolutely incapable of doing anything about it. I was in deep, deep trouble. And the happier I became with her, the more frightened I was. And the more I tried to come up with some way- any way- of ending it. But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't break her heart. And to be perfectly honest, I knew I'd be breaking my own. We had only been together a short time, but already, she had had a huge impact on the landscape of my soul. So I alternated between struggling to be happy and believe in love again, and plotting intricate ways to end the whole thing forever.

In the end, however, I didn't need to end it- my ex-wife found a way to do it for me, by a stratagem so childish it bears discussing. You see, Liv was only eighteen, and lived at home with her parents. Her parents were somewhat fanatical fundamentalists. This made a bad combination. And my Ex-wife, who never really did make up her mind as to whether she really wanted a divorce or not, couldn't stand me being with Liv. So one night, she came up with a plan. She called Liv's folks.

"Hello?"

"Yes, is this Leonard Bishop?"

"Yes, it is…"

"And you have a daughter Named Liv?"

"Yes, I do…what's this about?"

"Are you aware that your little slut daughter is breaking up my marriage?"

And then of course, he called me. First he railed at me for being a married man, and being with his daughter at all, and then he started on her. By the end of the phone call, Liv was in tears, and we were over. After she left, I surprised my self by crying, something I had done very rarely in my life. And after all, I had been scared enough to want to plot ways to break it off, anyhow. But I really didn't want her to go, so I cried, like everything I had in the world was gone. Which in many ways it was. Over time, though, I got over it, and moved north, to the metro, where I settled into a gray life, in a gray place, and I drank, and waited for something better to happen. And eventually, it did. I became Jack. But I still thought about her, more than I would have liked. I wondered how she was doing, and where she might be. I took long walks along the river, where I thought about life and death, and I wrote in the sand "Dear Liv, Wish you were here," and watched the water wash my words away. And the months passed, and I got to be Jack, more and more, and I didn't hear from her. I lived a life in which there was no one to care where or who I was, or what I did. And I tried to forget. But it never quite worked.

And so, once more, we're back to her, and me.

And Jack.