Libertine Dissolves: Chapter One

Novel Extract

Art courtesy of NEW WORLD UNDERGROUND

Before I start posting new flash fiction pieces and short stories here (I have a tremendous amount lined up), I’m posting Chapter One of my debut novella Libertine Dissolves, as part of my ongoing efforts to promote it.

My energy for promoting this thing however, is already running out. Soon it’ll just be a pinned link on my X page, and no longer the focus of this blog. That moment is fast approaching, I'm tired of discussing it and eager to move on to newer work.

If you haven’t bought the novella yet, I’d very much like you to:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5YL43FD

And if you’re someone who already has a copy, whether you bought it, or I sent you a paperback or PDF, I’d like you to read it. So we can all move on with our lives. Myself included.

Thank you,
Toxic Brodude

P.S. I also made a playlist of the tracks I was listening to most during the period I wrote the novella, which I don’t think warrants a post/email of its own, so I am including it here.

LIBERTINE DISSOLVES: CHAPTER ONE

I suppose a few words about why I decided to write this novel are in order, as a matter of politeness from me, the author, to you, the reader.

I turned forty, and as much as I might have professed that it had ‘no effect’ on me, or that it was ‘just a number’, or that ‘we’re all aging at the same pace’ or any such number of cliched turns of phrase, it did indeed have an effect on me, a profoundly negative one.

This is probably due to my circumstances, and the fact that I haven’t built much of a life for myself, especially compared to my friends and peers, is certainly true.

I am unmarried, have Fathered no children, do not own a house, or a car, I don’t even have my driving license, I also work a dead-end job. I have always worked dead-end jobs, since I finished secondary school.

I don’t care about any of these things in regards to what other people think of them, I’ve never given any consideration to the opinions of others. Most people are fairly abysmal, and are welcome to their idle gossiping and nonsensical lives.

I suppose the opinion I care about most is that of myself, and of God if he is indeed up there, and even paying attention. On my good days I believe he is, and on my bad days… Well, I needn’t go into my bad days, as you’re about to read about a hell of a lot of them.

Anyway, back to the introduction to this book, what was I saying? Oh yes, why did I write this thing?

I suppose, looking back on a life where most of the things that I’ve touched have turned to shit, has required a steady resolve. It’s unlikely that all the things I have been involved in that have fallen apart have done so of their own accord, and that I, as the only constant, am the reason for their destruction.

It was conversations with a friend, over fancy coffee, in a Bohemian cafE that I realised I needed to start writing if I was to understand the mess of my life, and the mess of me, as a person.

I have often been told, for whatever reason, that I should write a book. I always put it down to idle flattery, but it has been said enough times over the years that I can use it here, right now, as some sort of justification. Whether it is people who find me funny, or find the story of my life interesting, it has been said.

And now, at forty, I decided to start this long suggested book.

I have flirted with writing over the years, mainly in my twenties when I wrote absurd and surreal short stories and emailed them to my friends for cheap laughs. I was told I could write then, if only I had carried it on instead of all the other terrible and idiotic things I did, I could have had a peaceful life of reading and writing.

Which is what I want now by the way, please God, if you are also reading this, grant me this peace I desire.

Anyway, on my days off of work I started writing about key events in my life, the first of which being the band that almost made it, of which you’ll be reading about in a few pages time, should you decide you find me tolerable and continue to want to read this book.

I would call those ‘formative years’, and I would call the end of that part a ‘pivotal life event’, so it seemed like a good place to start.

After sending those bits out to a few close friends I was shocked by the positive feedback, and felt considerably more empowered to continue writing.

It was then that I started to really not feel very well at all, mentally. One of my bi-annual nervous meltdowns, right on time, like clockwork. I quit my job overnight, citing exhaustion to my employers, although expressing a deeper spiritual malaise to my close friends.

Those initial weeks I spent not working I spent levelling my head out somewhat, and then once I had attained a certain peace of mind, I decided to start editing the pieces of writing I had done, as well as writing more of the story, the bits that came before, and the bits that came after.

And here, a word about the nature of the writing presented. This is my first novella, it may never even be published, in fact there’s a huge chance it won’t ever be published.

However, the only way I can write this story, is if I write it how I want to write it. And that way is how I am writing now. I will not censor, or edit my voice in any way whatsoever, nor will I remove any of the sex, whether it is viewed as gratuitous or not. All that sex is sex that I had, and I’m well within my rights to describe it as crudely as I see fit. I am only interested in telling this story the way that I want to tell it, as if we are sitting in a pub and I am boring you, or enthralling you with it.

The idea of combing over the manuscript, endlessly replacing words and phrases to make it more poetic, or God forbid, trying to make it appeal to any sort of commercial interests, absolutely sickens me. I refuse to polish this into some sort of product for sale, it’s just my story, the only ‘my story’ that exists, in the only way it will ever be told, that is, my way of telling it.

If it’s a fucking mess, then good. I’m a mess, and so is my life. If it wasn’t a mess, it’d actually not be doing the job that I want it to do.

The story presented is also autobiographical fiction, everything that happens in this book happened to me in my life, for the most part exactly as I have documented it. The rare cases where something needed to be changed, for whatever reason, mostly reasons of chronology, is kept to a minimum. Therefore it is not a memoir, as it is not exactly as events happened, but also not entirely fiction, as everything did happen. Autobiographical fiction henceforth, is the exact moniker required for a book that sits where this one does.

What you read here is the full extent of my capabilities to document my life, and as much of it as I am willing and prepared to share. If you expect a nice tidy story, with lessons, and character growth, and a definitive beginning, middle and end, you’re not going to find it.

This is a more fragmented work, from a more fragmented mind. There are a plethora of books that will serve you everything you desire, tick all your boxes, and leave you feeling that certain way you like to feel after reading.

This is not one of those books, and it was never at any point intended to be. Not from the initial idea of conception, and never once throughout the writing process, was it designed to do anything that you may or may not want it to do.

It is simply my story, nothing more, and nothing less.

Maybe one day I’ll write more, or maybe I’ll never write again. It’s no easy thing you know. I’ve wept over these words alone, wishing I could reach into the screen and grab the protagonist by the scruff of his neck and shake some sense into him.

The wicked life I’ve secretly known that I have led, has had to be dredged up and put into words, in that I might pull myself out of the mire I have found myself in.

I’ve nothing left to put into this book, this is all I have for the time being.

I’ve also written this book alone, painfully alone.

Part of me has longed for a lover during this process, who would walk past and kiss my neck, stroke my hair, and bring me coffee. Tell me they are proud of me for writing a book. Hold my head in their lap whilst I weep after being sat at my desk all day, stroking my hair in silence as I ‘get it all out.’

Or maybe a kid or two to distract me, ‘Daddy!’, wanting me to come and see some silly pile of toys they had stacked on top of one another, or perhaps hearing one start to cry after falling and banging their little knee, and having to hold them and rock back and forth as they cry, until they eventually stop, tiring of fixating on the tiny red graze.

That would have been nice, if that was instead the world and life I had built for myself.

But, it isn’t the world and life I have built for myself, I make my own coffee, and the house is as silent as a morgue.

No human beings full of warmth and love surround me, and year on year it feels ever more likely that there never will be any.

When I weep, I weep alone.

And the world becomes a desert around me.