Part IV: The Dreamer

No one has fully grasped what the dreaming mind is doing.

It doesn’t turn off during sleep: brain cells fire, the mind spins; current or past circumstances play out like a movie. Gerri never dreamed, usually knocked out by drugs and vodka; however, since the funeral, images, motifs, and drama haunted his sleeping hours.

Surely these apparitions inform Gerri in some way about his grief. He hoped to understand this condition, then healing could begin and balance restored to his waking life. But his latest dream, unlike any other, drove him deeper into depression.

In the dream Shelby walked up to Gerri in a crowded place, as if they happened upon each other by chance, along the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Stunning, alluring, and radiant in her youth; she seemed just as he remembered her twenty years ago when they fell in love.

As she stood there, the morning light beaming from behind, Gerri could almost see through her; but the colors weren’t faded, on the contrary, everything about this dream popped.

Gerri believed God allowed him to interact with Shelby to lighten the immense guilt burdening his daily life since her death. The relationship between the significant and the fortuitous existed in God’s realm; he did not question the dreams, they were in a reality over which he had no control, indeed he was grateful for the Shelby’s appearance.

“Baby, do you realize how much I miss you?” Gerri asked her. “If I could go back to 1992 and marry you again, I’d do it, but I’d act differently this time!” Unlike Gerri who was plaintive and serious in these conversations, Shelby acted ethereal and joyous.

“Stop, that G.” Shelby said with a wry smile. “We can’t be going back there anyway.” “Let’s talk about right now,” she insisted. Shelby looked around, with her head on a swivel, making sure no one bumped into her on the busy boulevard.

“My love, I can’t stay long!” Shelby urged Gerri when he got distracted. Shelby held a Bible in her hand which looked like the old one from her childhood that sat on their home bookshelf, untouched. No white robes or halos over Shelby Austin, just comfortable jeans and flats with a colorful top, her hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail. Desultory, he was self-conscious for being heavier and much older than Shelby in this dream.

“What do you see of us down here?” Gerri questioned. She grinned, knowing his curiosity, adding seriously, “I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you very much at all.”

As the conversation wound down, a strong breeze blew across the boardwalk and on the horizon a storm gathered with dark, foreboding clouds. The crowd thinned out, flags swirled and snapped in the breeze, and big fat raindrops smacked the pavement, reminding Gerri of tears he shed during the day. [Never did a drop hit Shelby, which appeared very strange to the dreamer].

“My expectations were wrong when we got married, sugar.”

“Marriage was on my checklist. I did not take it seriously; I should have tried to understand what you were going through, instead of helping you with your self-image issues, we medicated our pain away,” Gerri continued, “once we got on that stuff, you never really came back to reality.” So filled with regret, the tears literally oozed from his eyes as he spoke, spilling down his cheeks in streams.

Shelby reached out to him, just beyond their touch. She searched his eyes and lovingly assured him through her tone and pitch, once again using her angelic voice, “Gerri, listen to me baby; none of us do what’s right, most of the time we only think of ourselves, even in marriage.”

“God showed me mercy, taking me from this world,” she looked around the scene, “I was a bad influence on Bobbi Kristina!” Now Shelby seemed remorseful, “Can you believe that I exposed my only daughter to the things that took me down?” “What role model is that?”

“I behaved badly; there were natural consequences for that down here, although it was all forgiven when I got home,” Shelby looked off toward the roiling surf. “It was like the prodigal’s feast.”

“And I can sing clearly again where I am Gerri,” she beamed, looking him directly in the eyes, unashamed; “Heaven is a good place. Your job is to take care of her now, your second chance is with your daughter; I will know how grown-up you are by what you do with her, Gerri.” That was all for now, then she turned and walked north back up the avenue.

 Stunned, Gerri just stood there fixed to the concrete. In just a moment looking down, Shelby blended in with the crowds and disappeared. He jogged toward where she had walked but she vanished as if a ghost.

Would Gerri say this correctly describes the dream: A ghost story? Or a love story?

©Mark H. Pillsbury

[fiction composed Feb. 19, 2012]

Part III: The Funeral of Shelby Austin

(Photo: AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

“What the f*<k you mean I ain’t invited?!” Gerri shouted at the large man outfitted entirely in black, holding a walkie-talkie. “She was my wife, for Chr^st sake!”

Just inside the narthex of the huge New Hope Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia, the scene played out with crowds surging inside the sanctuary.

The dark clouds over a noontime Atlanta sky heightened the somber mood of the congregants, even though Gerri Green’s passion was crackling like lightening inside the foyer of the church.

He leaned into the security guard but pointed toward the front of the building, where displayed upon a raised bier was a platinum casket with silver handles, adorned with hundreds of red roses, and covered by black velvet; appropriate for the saddest pop icon the world knew, Shelby Austin, otherwise known as the “Voice.”

Pleading and arguing at the same time, Gerri said, “This is not right, my man; Shelby was my life. I have to sit up front, I was her husband?!” The guard, unmoved, retorted dryly, “You were her husband, Gerri,” “You’re not family anymore, and only family are sitting upfront. Period.”

The big security guard was doing the pointing now, “no one gets up there without me escorting them.” 

But Gerri was gone...

He moved like a cat, avoiding the nine-lives bestowed upon a feline, swiftly pushing open the two swinging oak doors and walking right up to the center aisle of the church under the watchful eyes of mourners. Just like Gerri to demand the attention of the moment, he stopped right in front of the pewter colored box and dropped to one knee, doffing his black fedora. You could have heard a pin drop to the old slate floor.

All week Shelby struggled with her addictions and the impending 4^th trip to a very private rehab clinic near Sedona, Arizona. Jittery at rehearsals for the Grammys® and avoiding accountability from her handlers, Shelby was going to have one last “good” weekend in L.A. before trying to kick pills and booze once again, helped by professionals. Her mentor Clive Davis’ party at the Beverly Hills Hilton was the warm-up for Sunday’s awards ceremony at which she was scheduled to sing. The practice sessions were dreadful, but she kept assuring Clive that she was quitting cigarettes, getting healthy.

Gerri Green did not force the Voice to lace her marijuana cigarettes with base cocaine, but by the end of their tumultuous 15-year marriage they were buying kilos of the drug to blow together. The weight of his guilt and the reality of her passing drew him here today, even though he was not welcomed.

“I am so sorry for what I have done, God.” Gerri prayed at her coffin. “Keep her and protect her,” he was tearful yet defiant, he could feel the daggers in his back as thousands stared, seeing him as to blame somehow for her death. “She was your angel, Lord, take her back now; thank you for my time, for her love.” Gerri got up slowly, kissed the index and middle fingers of his right hand, and touched the sealed coffin, dropping his head and turning just as the security team reached him. “Good-bye, sugar,” he said, looking back toward Shelby.

He could barely walk down the aisle, the retinue almost carried him by the elbows. All agility and power were gone, seemingly left at the foot of the coffin with his prayers. Gerri Green was a broken, forlorn man retreating toward the rear of the chapel. The squawking walkie-talkies chirped over the silent stares of each row as he was escorted out ignominiously, like a criminal on a perp-walk, destination: an Atlanta police car.

She could not beat this devil, nor the others that haunted her; Gerri Green was the personification of the wrong turns her life took in the 1990s, from which Shelby Austin never recovered. Now she was free. Even though her body was tightly enclosed in front of the throngs of friends and admirers assembled here today, later to be laid to rest; her soul was in heaven. Shelby was singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among the angels, and making music to the Lord with a joyful heart.

Life is lived either moving toward God or away from Him. Shelby’s commitment to her Lord wavered over the journey through fame, which turned out to be a cortege. All our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless, and so it was as Gerri made his way out of the church and into a waiting cab; he heard the song playing on the Atlanta FM station, surely commemorating the somber ceremony about to start behind him. It was the song that always reminded him of her love, and he hated to share the damn thing with millions of fans. The warmth he felt of the “good old days” of which the song reminded him, was surely the illusion of timelessness, and yet he was sure Shelby would have wanted to say good-bye before he left.

As the song played on the car radio, he spoke to her again, ripping apart inside, but with a proud exterior, “dear Shelby, I will miss you so much, you were the best thing that ever happened to me and I screwed it all up!” “Please forgive me and watch over Bobbi Kristina. I will always love you.”

“Now drive!” he screamed to the cab-driver, and it was over; he could look toward the church no longer.

©Mark H. Pillsbury
[this is a fictional account partly based on real life characters, not meant to be factual; it is a dramatization of Whitney Houston's funeral, any other similarities are coincidental]

Part II: Heartbreak Hotel: Snake-eyes (The Shelby Austin series)

Heartbreak Hotel:  Snake-Eyes

Shelby Austin series Part II

“Make sure the elevator is locked dude, this one has serious shock-value,” the Detective reminded his assistant, “there are 800 people down at Clive’s party that would fall out if they heard about this!”

“And check everyone’s smart phones as they leave, by the way; I don’t want anyone in here selling us out to TMZ.” LA paparazzi would give their first-born children for salacious pictures of the great Shelby Austin sprawled out naked in her bathroom, dead.

“There’s not much to photograph here Mike, no note, or blood, far as I can tell,” said the Detective.

“She looks fine to me, no blunt force trauma or signs of foul-play.” He was talking through the scenario in his mind as much as lecturing his assistant Michael Donnelly. The Detective was a Beverly Hills Cop, but he knew the signs of nefarious acts as sure as any LAPD Detective from Sunset, or Van Nuys.

The pill bottles were ominous, he thought, and there was booze all around the expansive suite on the fourth floor of the Beverly Hilton, the host hotel of the largest pre-Grammy® party in Los Angeles.

The starlet hit her prime just as police officer Michael Donnelly was born in 1985, he had very little knowledge of the sheer wattage provided by Shelby Austin, the preeminent icon of 80s and 90s pop music.

“She dreamed of para, para, para-dise,” he hummed as he inventoried the room; Michael pondered how sad it was that another Hollywood pillar had broken and crumbled; his point of reference musically, the Coldplay song, “Paradise,” was about a similar young woman whose expectations were out of reach and so she flew away from her dreams.

“This Xanax® bottle needs to be tagged and tested by the ME,” the Detective pointed as he directed Michael his assistant, “remember the socialite who swallowed a bunch of these and chased them down with half a bottle of Skye last month?”

“That sh*t is smooth, Detective,” Donnelly replied enthusiastically,” other than the burn, it tastes like water; it’s carbon-filtered five times, I wish the LA water system was that good!”

Taking Xanax® and booze is like doubling down on the central nervous system, depressing the brain to the point where sometimes breathing stops. Combining alcohol with Alprazolam is never safe. The drinker never knows how much would prove fatal if mixed with the anti-anxiety drug. The alcohol takes away judgment, making one feel good but not thinking normally; tragically, 40 and 50 year olds are more likely to die from an accidental drug overdose than adolescents.

“Didn’t Mrs. Austin-Green sell like millions of records? Michael asked.

“Ms. Austin is divorced from that asshole, Michael, besides, she is known as “Shelby” in the business. He is probably downstairs right now chasing his next girlfriend,” referring to the bad-boy ex-husband Gerri Green who introduced Shelby to this destructive lifestyle.

“Remind me to check out her financial records and insurance, make sure no one was heavily “invested” in her passing.” The Detective added cynically, “street cred is that she is hurting big time, hadn’t had a good payday in a decade. Gerri Green nicked her good in the split.” He followed the tabloids like some cops read Sports Illustrated.

“If it ain’t suicide and murder looks improbable, do you think she died by accident? Michael asked the Detective.

“Time stands still on that junk Michael, it’s like people who believe that the most expensive thing has to be the best you can buy,” he said ruefully, “just one more pill and I will feel alright, one more drink will wash away the pain.”

As a ship off course a few degrees will ultimately go miles from its destination, Shelby Austin spent a decade drifting from her innocent roots and girlish fame. She was now a hardened Hollywood warrior, in and out of rehab, lost in a fog of forgotten fame. Probably sensing fear, regret, and nostalgia as she anticipated performing at the Grammy® awards tonight, she suffered heightened anxiety (Xanax®), and  clouded judgment (alcohol), self-medicating en route to the stage.

The Detective declared out loud, “She was way past the point of no return, been there for years.  Might be the dice came up snake-eyes this time?” Michael Donnelly was gazing upon the doorway to the suite’s massive bathroom, not hearing, but there was a light shining out of the darkness.

Fiction posted 02/15/2012

©Mark H. Pillsbury 

Didn't We Almost Have It All, by Whitney Houston

Didn't We Almost Have It All

“Every last one, Patrice!”

“I can’t have grey hair and sing on the Grammys®,” she said vainly.

The pungent scent of alcohol filled the air around the stylist chair, but Patrice worked on Shelby even though disgusted with her. Sometimes Shelby would rummage around in her over-sized drawstring hobo purse, extracting various bottles of potent medications such as Valium and Xanax, popping them like vitamins.

Watching the precipitous slide into destruction was sad, but how often does a hairdresser get to work on “The Voice?” It had been ten years now; she would call and come down with her dwindling entourage to this crumbling L.A. neighborhood which strangely reflected Shelby Austin; it too had seen better days.

“Girl, I don’t know how I am going to sing on Sunday night,” Shelby said. “I'm not the force I used to be, getting old is such a bitch!” “Do what you gotta do, Patrice; and so will I?!” Ironically, Patrice assumed what she meant was they both relied on chemicals to disguise the truth about this superstar.

Shelby followed fame’s path where it inevitably leads when you become what you worship. Worldly things she pursued were not to blame, not even her former husband Gerri Green, who turned her onto the lifestyle that had ravaged her talent and beauty. Shelby’s demise was her own fault. It was a heart issue, and Shelby had done it to herself. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something, or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. (N. T. Wright)

In her heart, the idols ultimately disappointed her, and far from being obedient to the God of her youth, she clung to youth itself, as Patrice knew firsthand.

Past glory could not hold the weight of Shelby’s expectations. Her pursuit of the way it used to be: the look, the voice, the man, the parties, the fame, all that went with selling 200 million records; she was sure that the outcome would have, should have, been different than it turned out to be.

She was a celebrity of the highest order with all the accoutrements, and an equal amount of delusion. Shelby made lifestyle choices, formed alliances with people, and exploited connections which did not work out best for her career. At the same time her production did not keep up with her expenses, and the harsh reality was that she was so broke she would have to save up to be poor. Patrice only took cash.

The facts were clear, she was “washed-up” and wrung out; Shelby Austin was a shell of her former self, which was one of the biggest pop icons that the 80s and 90s ever produced.

Now, an addict, a burden, bitter about her divorce, her descent, and subconsciously bitter about her dereliction of the greatest singing talent that God ever gave to a woman born in the 1960s, Shelby was suffering. However, real suffering is not the same as sadness over lost expectations. Shelby was a victim of many things, but most of all she was a victim of her own attempts to cure herself of lost youth.

“Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines,” said N. T Wright, “Those who worship power become more ruthless.” Ultimately, starlets who worship their younger success become zombies walking through a drugged reenactment of yesteryear. Anna-Nicole Smith had none of the talent of Shelby Austin, Amy Winehouse was a good singer but not like Shelby was good, and Heath Ledger was a pretty-boy but not as beautiful. She had it all, and when her music came on, people got up to dance.

Patrice did the best she could.

©Mark H. Pillsbury
[part I of a fictional series]

Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply, on Fictional Identity | Word Craft - WSJ.com

Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply, on Fictional Identity | Word Craft - WSJ.com:

'via Blog this'

Fiction writers tell lies. They get inside the lives of others, whether real, nearly real, or imagined, taking the identity on a journey sometimes far different than what might have occurred in reality. People often ask writer Dan Chaon which character is the author in disguise? It depends. So much of what we write is part of our life experience, what we're comfortable with; however, the fun of fiction is that the author gets to steal the person's identity and convince the reader the new course is authentic.

As I discussed with my daughter/writer (Eliza) this morning as we observed a truck loaded down with the driver's ragged possessions: tied-down with very little twine, packed loosely, bouncing harshly with the road, and going nowhere fast, what was happening today? Did this chapter closing make it necessary to start the next chapter in another city, or was this person moving just across town? Are they upset, happy, or distracted by the traffic? We were creating fictional characters, depending on the commute, it could become a short story or a novel.

Mr. Chaon reports that researchers say this activity begins early in life. Infants imagine shapes resembling a face, nose, or mouth, and by 2-3 babies already have a complex entourage of fictional characters. By the time kids play with dolls, toys, and action characters, they often take up the voice of these personalities with incredible empathy. The question for professional fiction writers is how far outside their own experiences will they reach?

Authors like Pat Conroy, John Grisham, Stephen Hunter, Michael Lewis, Daniel Silva, and Emily Giffin, all seemed to have used significant portions of their life experiences to color their novels; however, Stephen King, Paulo Coelho, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Larry McMurtry, and Charlotte Bronte bring material to their stories from utterly foreign places, from which they have no firsthand knowledge. [These names are quickly taken from my bookshelf, there are numerous other examples]. The point is that living inside the story can be rational and contemplative, at the same time it is an out-of-body experience. Always it is an attempt at empathy.

"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for awhile? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it that no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?" Don DeLillo's White Noise (Viking Penguin 1985).

Abraham Lincoln frequently quoted a poem by William Knox called "Mortality" written by a Scottish descendant of John Knox the 16th-century Protestant reformer. The President recited the poem so much that some people assumed he had written it:

"For we are the same things that our fathers have been.

We see the same sights that our fathers have seen.

We drink the same stream, we feel the same sun.

And we run the same course that our fathers have run."

Writing is the authentic practice of empathy, making connections, sharing fears, following a story to its conclusion, even if that is one or two degrees off course. The secret to fiction writing is looking behind the disguise of the ordinary; what is obvious is boring. Fascination begins with the focus of the reader's attention, warding off distractions or over-writing, making the type connection with the reader that rings true but seems fresh and creative.

With fiction we might recycle some of the same courses of those around us, but the chance to reach up and out of our own existence, to expand one's mind to the point of going beyond anywhere we might know directly, is a powerful force rarely experienced. As Mr. Chaon writes, "Suddenly, you might get out of your own body, your own mind; it's a rare and powerful stimulant that makes it seem like writing true, utter fiction is totally worth it."

Twitter feeds:
@DanChaon
@markpills

©Mark H. Pillsbury