The following rather provocative short is an excerpt from my book Jigs & Tales of Bawdry, the ebook version of which will be FREE on Amazon from Wednesday, May 3, through Sunday, May 7. Download your copy today and please remember to rate and review the book on Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub.
During the mid-nineties of the previous century, Alex Edwards was a student of Medieval Culture and Literature at a small liberal arts college in New Hampshire. After he had graduated from high school near the bottom of his class, his parents had warned him that it was time to get serious. “What are you going to do with yourself?” they asked. When Alex replied that he did not intend to do anything at all, his father gave him an allowance of $500 per month and sent him to the school where his mother and his elder sister had studied.
He proved to be an above average university student, but he often had difficulty applying himself to his coursework. When his professor assigned Layamon’s Brut, he went to the library and checked out Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. When he was supposed to be researching cathedral architecture, he immersed himself in the poetry of Pushkin.
Girls were a distraction too, from time to time. Co-eds came and went. It was a recurring pattern: she would be attracted by his good looks and his gentle sarcasm, he would allow himself to be seduced, they would spend the night together, and the next day he would wake up to find himself “in a relationship” with her. At this particular stage in his development, he was quite incapable of any sort of emotional intimacy with another human being, but he was equally incapable of explaining this to the girl. So he would just drift along, waiting for the moment when she would say to him: “I think we need to talk.” Then he would start living his life again where he had left off—until the next one came along.
He also had a problem with depression. Most days were good days, but the bad days could be very bad. One Friday after class he drove up to his parents’ in Maine for the weekend. On Sunday, when it was time for him to return to school, his father found him sobbing in the corner of his bedroom, curled up into a fetal position. He skipped a week of classes and visited a psychiatrist, who prescribed him some lithium which he took thereafter on an irregular basis.
On occasion he would fantasize about suicide, but he knew he had neither the courage nor the resolve to act upon his thoughts. The periods of darkness would always pass, and he realized that he was too much fascinated by this world to leave it entirely. There was always something new to explore, some new adventure to help one forget the pain and the sense of futility and despair.
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