Post by LIAM NOLAN KEALEY on Feb 26, 2013 11:49:19 GMT -8
| [atrb=style,width: 420px; background-color: efefef; background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/6jh1H.png); padding: 5px, bTable] LIAM N. KEALEY 25 | HETEROSEXUAL | BOOKSTORE CLERK | COLLEGE STUDENT | RYAN GOSLING THE INTERVIEW HELLO. THANKS FOR COMING IN TODAY. SHALL WE START WITH YOUR NAME? Hey, how’s it going? I’m Liam. Liam Nolan Kealey, if you want to get down to specifics. Uh, nicknames… my kid sister, my baby Molls, she calls me Lee, but she’s about the only one that gets away with that. Pretty much everyone calls me Liam. THAT'S A NICE NAME. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING? Thanks, doll. For a living, huh? Not much. I’m a college student. I know I’m a little old, but I started late. I was a freshman at twenty one. That was fucking weird, I tell ya. But yeah, I’m a senior nowadays. English Major. I know it’s not the most practical thing to be majoring in – I mean, what the fuck am I gonna do with an English degree? I enjoy it, though. I like books. I’d love to be a writer, but I don’t have the talent or the patience for that. It’s a nice pipe dream, though. For actual money, I’ve been working in this little bookstore in town since I was a sophomore. Easy enough work. Passes the time. Pays the bills. I got me a nice little routine between working and studying and dreaming about things I’ll never do. INTERESTING. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? Well, like I said, I’d love to be a writer. So I write a lot. I’m always fucking scribbling. None of it’s any good. I’ve not produced anything fit for human consumption. But I enjoy it. No, more than that – I’m kind of compelled to do it. I dunno, when you’ve seen all the weird shit that I have, there’s a part of you that just wants to get it all down on paper so there’s a record of it. Like, you can look back at it when you’re eighty and be like, “I fucking did that? What the hell was I thinking?” Y’know. Or maybe that’s just me. I’m also a major fucking bookworm. I usually have about five or six books on the go at once. Uh, what else do I do, what else, what else…? I’m kind of a sports fan. I love baseball. I grew up in Boston – you can probably tell, I guess. The accent. Anyway, my uncle Nolan, he was always taking us to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox. Baseball is like… the background to my childhood. I can’t play it. I can’t play any sport for shit. I got no hand-eye coordination, and I smoke so much I can’t run more than a few yards before I’m hacking up my lungs, but I’m a big fan of watching other people play. So there’s that. I dunno. I don’t actually do much of anything besides what I just told you. I just like hanging out with people in my spare time. I probably spend the majority of my life sitting on my ass in front of the t.v. with some buddies and some beers. It’s the simple things that make me happiest. WOULD YOU SAY THOSE ACTIVITIES REFLECT WHO YOU ARE? Yeah, definitely. I’m just an average guy, a little on the laidback side, who likes the simple pleasures. You say to someone ‘I’m a writer’ or ‘I’m an English Major’, and they immediately think, like, ‘pretentious jerk-off’ or worse: ‘hipster bastard’. But that’s not me, y’know. I’m pretty mellow. I like to take things easy. There’s no sense in getting all worked up about things – I used to be like that. I used be angry and bitter and tense all the time, but I’m done with that now. It’s exhausting. Always keeping yourself on edge. But things happen, people change, etcetera, etcetera. I’m a lot more relaxed now. Some might say ‘too relaxed’. Some might even say a little lazy – I definitely need a fairly hard kick to get myself doing something I don’t want to do a lot of the time. But hey, if that’s the price of casual happiness, I’ll pay it. So I guess you could say that I lack motivation, or worse still: that I prefer to sit back and let life happen to me. There’s a degree of truth there. I’m not exactly a go-getter. Maybe I’ll never amount to anything in my life – so what? If I never make something of myself, it won’t be because I couldn’t. It sounds like bragging, I know, but all my life people have been telling me I’m clever. I mean, when I was a kid, my dad used to call me a smart-ass right before he smacked me round the head or threw a bottle at me, but that counts, right? Uncle Nolan, he was always saying I got more wits about me than any other kid he knew. Then right through school, my teachers were always saying how much potential I had. They were always telling me I had enough about me to get the hell outta Charleston. Ha ha. So I guess maybe I’m smart. Things come easy to me. I’m one of those people a lot of other people hate ‘cos of that. I don’t always put in the work, but things just come easy to me. I’m an asshole that way. Another thing people say about me is that I’m a ‘good guy’. My baby Molls, she always said I was the sweetest brother in the whole damn world. That was back then. Back when I was still in Boston, and she was the only person calling me sweet. I wasn’t sweet back then. Not a ‘good guy’. But she always said I was. I love my sister. She always saw the best in me, and I was always real protective of her. And y’know, being that way, being protective, it just kinda spread to the rest of my life. I make friends, guys or girls; whatever, and I just become that big brother guy to them. Like, I’m a fucking papa bear, y’know. You poke one of my cubs and I’ll rip off your fucking head. But yeah, back to me being a ‘good guy’. I guess I am. I don’t go round kicking puppies or stealing candy from babies or any of that shit. I’ve done a lot of things wrong in the past, so these days I try to live right. Do as I would be done by. I try and be good to people. The better you are your fellow man, the more likely it is to come back to you in a good way. That’s karmic justice. So I’m a nice, casual, easy-going kinda guy… unless, like I said, you mess with one of my cubs. COOL BEANS. THEY SAY YOUR FAMILY SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURS? What a fucking question. Y’know, I really don’t know what I think of my family. It changes from day to day. Sometimes I love ‘em, and the rest of the time I’m so glad I got the fuck outta Charleston before I could turn out exactly like ‘em. You gotta understand, things were tough where I grew up. My family was tough. My mom, she died when I was a kid. I was four, so I don’t remember that. Don’t remember what my dad was like before then either, but afterwards… he drank a lot. A lot. And he was a real mean drunk. See where this is going? Yeah, we didn’t have the best relationship, him and me, and that hasn’t changed. I haven’t spoken to him since I left home, but… y’know, he’s my dad. Whenever I speak to my sister, I make sure to ask after him. Check he’s still alive. But my sister. Aw, my sister. She’s the light of my life. Molly, my baby Molls, she’s three years younger than me. I’ll always have time for Molls. If she called me up right now and asked me to drop everything and go home, I would do that. You don’t even know how much I love my life here, or how much I hated my life back there, but… I would do that for her. I’d do anything for her. And uh, the third big part of my family, I guess, is my uncle Nolan. He’s my dad’s brother. They used to be close, him and my dad, so I guess he kinda felt bad when dad went off the rails. He didn’t have a family of his own, so he raised me and Molls. Like, he’d come pick us up from school sometimes, and make sure there was food in the kitchen, and most weekends he’d try and get us out of the apartment. Take us to see a movie or go play in the park or something. Uncle Nolan, he’s the only reason I had a childhood at all. He was a real stand up guy. Well, that’s how I remember him at least. I guess, being a kid, I didn’t get the whole picture, but he always was involved in some dodgy dealings. He’s in prison now. Killed some guy in a bar fight. I haven’t heard from him since I left Boston four years ago, and y’know, maybe that’s for the best. There are some things better left in the past, and uncle Nolan might just be one of them. AND YOUR LIFE? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PAST. I'M EAGER TO HEAR. I think I just did, honey. What more do you wanna know? Like I said, I was born in Boston. In Charleston. Ireland away from Ireland, ha ha. My mom was a bank teller, and my dad just drove round the neighbourhood doing odd jobs for people. Painting fences and shit, like a fucking Irish Tom Sawyer. We weren’t well off. Lived in this shitty apartment building full of other poor, low-rent families. Then, my mom died when I was four. She was shot in a robbery, actually, which I guess is a pretty exciting way to go. I don’t really know shit about my mom, ‘cos dad never talked about her and after she died, he took down all the pictures of her from around the apartment. Talking about her was like a taboo. Molls and I, we grew up knowing never to ask questions about her. We grew up being quiet, being used to sneaking around, so we didn’t disturb dad and send him into one of his drunk rages. It could get nasty if we disturbed him. But y’know, it was all right. We had uncle Nolan looking after us, and when he wasn’t around, I looked after Molls – and myself, too, I guess. I always knew how to look after myself. When I went to middle school, my teachers discovered I was actually pretty smart. I took to academia like a duck to water. But, uh, that isn’t okay when you’re a kid, and I knew that. I used to dumb myself down a lot. Blend in with the other kids. Knowing things, being smart, that’s good for you when you’re an adult, but when you’re like, eleven, all it gets you is social pariah status. So yeah, I’d dumb myself down. My teachers would tell uncle Nolan at every parent-teacher conference and progress report that I had all this untapped potential, and he’d basically just tell them ‘shove it, the kid’s trying as hard as he can’. Even he didn’t ever push me. Nobody ever pushed me to do better, be better. Nobody ever expected anything from me. So I guess I stopped expecting things from myself. You play dumb long enough, pretty soon you kinda are dumb. I flunked all the time. Never bothered with assignments or extra reading. Just made myself average, ‘cos of how much easier it was. I regret that now. I wasted a lot of time I can’t get back. I left school at seventeen, and just messed around for a while. I got this job in a supermarket – that was fucking bleak – and I spent all my free time being a thug. Shocker, right? Kid from troubled home acts out? Alert the fucking media. But I was the stereotype for a while. No future, angry as fuck, taking it out on other kids and public property and whatever was in my way. I got into some bad stuff, basically. And y’know, life went on. Years went by. Whole fucking years of being a scumbag. God, I regret that. I wasn’t living for me at that point. I didn’t have a life. I didn’t have anything to dream of or work toward or hope for. Just drifting along, I guess. Well, I still had Molly. Always. She was in high school, and I used to come over to the old apartment and help her do her homework. My baby Molls, bless her, she stayed a kid for much longer than I did. Even at like, fifteen years old, she still used to want to go riding her bike round the block. Still got excited at the prospect of her big brother taking her to see a movie. God bless her, she kept me sane. Kept me grounded, even if just a little bit. That changed eventually. She started dating. One of my friends, actually. He wasn’t a good guy. Used to knock her around a bit, not that she ever told me at the time. If she had, I would have fucking killed him. She was a little different after that. She lost her innocence and never looked back. Fell in with a bad crowd, just like me. She ended up dropping outta high school at sixteen. I still love my sister, don’t ever get me wrong on that count, but I miss the way she used to be sometimes. You wouldn’t even recognise her if you saw her now. She’s still drifting around Charleston, sleeping her way through the greater Boston area and trying to fuck her way into a decent life. Stupid girl, my baby Molls. But like I told you, it’s tough where I come from. Happens all the time to kids like us. Then, I was just about to turn twenty, right? That’s when uncle Nolan kills that guy in the bar fight. He ends up in prison. It’s weird the things that wake you up. This, it was my slap in the face. Y’know, I just looked around me and I… for the first time, just realised what a stupid, dangerous path I was on. I realised I was gonna end up like him, or like my dad, and be no fucking good to anybody. I decided I was gonna sort my life out, so I stopped taking calls from all of my lowlife friends, and I took night classes to earn my high school diploma, and after that I ended up enrolling in college. It happened pretty fast. I look back and I’m still not quite sure how I got here, going to fucking college in Maine, but here I am. It was weird at first. Being that creepy old freshman. All my classmates are fresh out of high school, not knowing shit about real life, and then there’s me. I’m a wreck. I mean, there’s no magic fix. You spend four years fucking around and you forget how to live like a normal, well-adjusted human being. I still had a couple of nasty habits left over from my old life, and it was hard. But turns out that all those years of playing dumb didn’t actually make me dumb. Once I got into the swing of things, like classes and that, it all came back. And y’know, I met Daniella. Oh man, I couldn’t even tell you where I’d be without her. She became my best friend. By the end of our freshman year, I was in love with her. I’d never, ever been in love before. I mean, I’d had girlfriends and stuff, and sometimes I’d told them I’d loved them… but I’d never actually… I’d never felt about anyone else how I felt about Daniella. But, holy shit, she was out of my league. She was way too good for me. Just so good, and so pure, and so fucking perfect… I could never have told her how I felt. If I said anything, and she felt the same way, and we ever had a thing, I would just… I was sure I’d corrupt her. Ruin her. I couldn’t have done that. She was just too good for the likes of me. Then she started dating this guy. He was a real jerk-off, but she seemed into him. It broke my heart, of course it fucking did, but it didn’t change anything. Y’know, until she told me he was hurting her. I flipped my shit. You can imagine. There I am, thinking she’s too good for me, when he turns out to be… Fuck, I can’t even… You know, I’ve done some messed up shit in my life, but I have never, ever, ever raised my hand to a woman. No real man does that. No excuses. That is not something a redeemable human being ever fucking does. I wanted to kill him. Fuck being a changed man, I would have killed him if I had half the chance. But instead of hunting him down like the dog he is, I ended up telling Daniella I loved her that night. I know, I don’t know how that happened either. But there you are. One thing lead to another, and well… a gentleman never tells, but… I guess I won her over. We’ve been seeing each other since then. In secret. I hate sneaking around, I hate being the other guy, but I love Daniella. One day, when she’s feeling brave enough, she’s gonna leave him. And when she does, it’s gonna be her and me, and fuck everything else because when that happens, nothing’s ever gonna be bad anymore. I’ll make sure of that. I guess, even after all this, I’m just a romantic at heart. What about a secret? Everyone has a secret. You sure you wanna know mine? Well, I mentioned that even after I’d moved to Brunswick, a few of my old habits followed me. That, specifically, would be a, uh, little problem I had with heroin. I’m in recovery now. I am. I went cold turkey in the summer of my freshman year, and since then I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times, but I’ve been clean now for eighteen months. Nobody in my life knows that part of my past. I’m so ashamed I couldn’t tell a soul – not even Daniella. And she doesn’t ever need to know. I’m a different guy now – a good guy. I’m the guy she deserves now. ALRIGHT. TIME'S ALMOST UP. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAMS. QUICK! We already talked about my dreams. I wanna be a writer (but we both know that’ll never happen). I want Daniella to leave that knuckle dragging Neanderthal she calls a boyfriend and be mine. I wanna be clean and sober and happy and healthy for the rest of my live long days. Too much to ask? AND THAT'S A WRAP. IT WAS NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU. Thanks, doll. I’d like to say it was nice getting to know you, too, but I did all the fucking talking here. Maybe next time you can tell me about all your skeletons. BEHIND THE MASK PUN | TWENTY | GMT | AD ON ANOTHER SITE | NADA “Jason…? H-How’ve you been?” It took some time for the words to permeate his brain, for him to remember his name was Jason and that a question prefixed with that might well be addressed to him. He looked up too fast and the world span. His hand was shaking a little when he lifted it to his face to prop up his glasses so he could look in that direction, unimpeded. It was Dillion. With hindsight, he realised he should have recognised the voice. He’d heard it often enough, knew her well enough that he should be able pick it out. But hell, right now he couldn’t even see straight. He had a vague impression of her sitting on a towel a few feet away, the sun on her red hair making it look like she was on fire. He couldn’t get a fix on her face or expression – she was just pale skin, juddering slightly, swirling indistinctly. Like an impressionist painting. He let his glasses fall back over his eyes. “Oh hey, Jailbait.” He replied hoarsely. Each word was like sandpaper in his throat, grating, stinging. He tasted bile again, felt the acrid sting of stomach acid trying to make an exit. It gave his voice a crackling unreal quality, like radio static – or maybe that was just him? His perception of reality was a little off right now, so he supposed he couldn’t be trusted to make observations about things. ”How’s it hanging?” He remembered belatedly that she’d asked him how he was, first. Oh well. He didn’t think there was any good way to answer that question, considering his current circumstances. He didn’t think, somehow, it’d be a good idea to admit to having no idea what day it was or how he’d got here or that he might be about to vomit. On some instinctive urge, he turned his arm inwards, inching it just a little out of her line of view, hiding the track marks. About the only thing he was certain of at this moment was that he’d recently been doing things she wouldn’t approve of. Jason was pretty convinced that his main appeal to women lay in the fact that he was a broken down mess. Women like to think they can change a guy, reshape him into whatever they want. He was sure that’s what Dillion had seen in him – this potential better man who didn’t exist, who never would. But she was young – so young, so fresh that sometimes he’d even felt guilty, as if he were taking advantage of her – and he found the younger a girl was, the more likely she was to believe she’d redeem him through the sheer magnitude of her compassion and that they’d live happily ever after. It was usually the realisation that this wasn’t going to happen which ended things. He thought maybe this was why things had ended with Dillion, that he hadn’t seen her in months – although, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t really remember. He also had a vague impression of waking up with a woman, and someone else yelling at him about it. Or something. That seemed more foggy though, so it’d probably been before Dillion. He wasn’t sure. It was hard to keep track of the people who meandered in and out of his life, especially when trying to examine them through a haze of opiates and booze. |
