About a year and a half ago I finished my first novel, My Side of the Story, and, regrettably, it has sort of taken a backseat to other projects since its completion, mostly The Girl From Last Night and Thoughts From My Early Twenties.

The stupid thing took me about two years to write, the idea for the novel coming from a short story I wrote for a travel magazine in graduate school.

I have spent some time recently revisiting the work and I believe I may have a problem.

There are a few really nice parts to My Side of the Story, however on a whole I can certainly say the manuscript needs work.  There is a lot about the writing that upsets me. (Because at the time I thought I was doing good work, it is hard not to wonder if I will always look back on old work as inferior).

But I can see my current self in there at times, mixed in with all the other junk that I needed to get out of my system as I penned my first novel.  The story is fictional, but I spent too much time trying to force opinions upon my characters.

So, the question now is whether I revise it, scrap it, leave it, or break it up into short stories.

A part of me wants to work on it. As I said, there are scenes that are very good, and others that could be very good if I applied what I know today.  Another solution would be to tell the story over a series of short stories – chapters that connect yet stand on their own.

All those options considered, I remember writing My Side of the Story as truthfully as I could back then, and part of me thinks it would be a crime to mess with it.  So what if it’s awful, it’s my first novel.  It’s a benchmark of how far I’ve come.  And it’s a portrait of the writer and person I was, the feelings I considered important at the time, the characters I had in my life.

I don’t know, man.  Here’s an excerpt from the book.  I need to think about it more.

From My Side of the Story (2009):

Two hours and twenty-some empty glasses later we paid the bill.

“The trick is, Kevin, to close one eye and bring everything into focus,” Ken said.

“Tip twenty-percent,” Joan said, “We don’t want them throwing eggs at our car,” and then after, “I mean our cab.”

“No one fucking had a Medori Sour.  What the FUCK!”

“I had one, Ken,” Sara said, “It was my second drink.  No, my third.  We had the gin and then the vodka.”

“It was certainly no Trimbaye but at least it was cold.”

“Thank you, babe, we’ll have one on ice later.”

“Let’s just pay the fucking thing and get out of here,” Kevin said.  “The boat’s in an hour.”

“I’m checking it over, Kevin.”

“Whatever it says we probably had.”

“Will they let us on like this?” Kate asked.  “I’m feeling pretty fine about now.”

Ken said, “What are we, children?  We can get on a god-damn boat without a problem.”

Two cabs took us back to the harbor and we stumbled into the ticket line.  There were more people on the return trip.  Tourists.  Locals.  People who looked like neither.  It didn’t take long for the man sitting next to Ken to smell his breath.  He was a thick-necked, sturdy looking man with brown features.  He wore flannel.

“Son, ya look like hell.  Get some water in ya before ya begin again.”

“Get a fucking clue its eighty degrees here you don’t need flannel.”

“Don’t get sour, Ken,” I said.

“I’m not sour.”

“Apologize to the man.”

Then to the man Ken said, “I’m sorry.”

“You boys better stick to your women and stay away from my family.  If you do that we’ll make it to Maui just fine.”

Ken was wallowing like a fat-cheeked kid, his mouth relaxed into a frown.  He was holding it together, but you had the feeling if the wind blew he might fall over.  Kevin was beginning to pull back into his own world with Joan, and they sat together by the railing at the end of a bench.  Kate had her hand on Ken’s thigh and she leaned up into his neck and kissed him there.  And Sara, she was at my side and under my arm, her head in close to my chest.  She looked beautiful, there, with the golden, late-afternoon sun bathing her skin.  Just as I felt these wonderful thoughts I felt her hand rubbing my inner thigh and playing with my belt.  All along she had been grinning while her face was turned away.

I whispered, “Should we get on with it right here in front of the Hawaiian Hillbilly?”

“Do you think he’d like it?”

“The question is would you like it.”

“Most definitely not.”

“What about out near the rail or down below in the crate rooms?”

“The hot tub back at my place sounds nice.”

“Is it ready to go?”

“It’s boiling.”

“We can soak some towels in water to lay on when we get out.”

“You can put one around your neck and after it’s cooled you down you can use it to pull me close.”

We kissed briefly. I was conscience enough to know better than to make out like a drunk in public.  I wanted too, though, very badly.  I didn’t want the sun to fade.  If we could make out there right in the sun we could make the most of the time that was left.  But we couldn’t, and so all we had was time we couldn’t use.

I remember thinking, Sara, why must you do this to me? Why must you make it any harder?  Danielle had certainly made it easy.  No, Sara made it easy.  Danielle made it hard then Sara made it better.  Now Sara will make it hard again.  That was the thing with women.  They made it hard then better then hard again.  Some combination, for sure.  Something to keep you hanging on to the moments, and then something to make you wonder why you ever did in the first place.  I didn’t know much about women, but I knew this.  I knew it was good at times and hard at others.  It wasn’t any other way.

————-