Temptation

PART ONE: TEMPTATION IN HEAVEN

In my head, there is only heaven

The angels here are stuff of legends

Manic Pixie Dream Girls don’t exist

Except in a euphoric state of bliss

 

Lovely teachers in dresses and sandals

More than my chemicals could ever handle

They catch me staring and only smile back

Give them some wine and help them relax

 

Whoever said You Tube isn’t eHarmony

Never met the angels that are charming me

Closing distance with hugs and kisses

A future with all of them as my missus

 

When wrestling women get done in the ring

They turn up the sweetness and make my heart sing

They’re more than the skimpy gear that they wear

They’re reasons to stroke their soft silky hair

 

It doesn’t matter if I’m weird or lack money

They call me cupcake and call me honey

I get to be a star and then kiss the sky

Kiss magical women and make them cry

 

TELEVISION DIALOGUE

“Heaven? Hmph! Whatever made you think you were in heaven, Mr. Valentine? This IS the other place!”

 

PART TWO: THE AWAKENING

I spent too long in my own fantasies

The real world has so much they’re asking me

Family and friends haven’t seen me in weeks

My clothes are piling up, my body reeks

 

I got work to do and a legacy to build

I’m still creative and I’ll die on that hill

These novel characters are stuck in limbo

While I spent my days with imagined sex symbols

 

Read a book and your ignorance will die

But I can’t find the energy, can’t find the time

Drifting in and out of consciousness

Another reason to be lacking confidence

 

Build Legos like I did when I was a kid

I’m still a kid, but just a little bit mid

My hall of fame is showing its shame

When my broken promises are all the same

 

Do chores around the house, make it clean

Your domestic mistakes should be heard and not seen

Scrub the dishes and take out the garbage

For god’s sake, it should smell like a botanical garden

 

Talk to your people, talk to your pets

One chance in this life is all you get

Tell them you love them no matter what

Save them from your pain that deeply cuts

 

PART THREE: BACK TO HELL

I’m exiled from heaven, but I can’t go back to hell

The demons were the reason I was so unwell

Fighting and fucking, two sides of a coin

Stroking the tip before a kick in the groin

 

I fought so many battles with the forces of hell

That they’re often too traumatic, I shouldn’t tell

Screams, rage, death, blood

Spending so many nights face down in the mud

 

I’m just too tired to keep swinging my axe

I wish there was some sort of therapy tax

I wish there was somebody that I could ask

To kill the demons for me, but don’t let it last

 

I was born in the fire and I’ll never retire

It was never a reason for me to be a crier

Suck it up, suck it in, get back in the cage

Until I hit senior citizen age

 

If I live that long, my brain will turn to shit

And my hospital gown will be a perfect fit

Go under the knife for the rest of my life

As the memories fade of an imaginary wife

Final Fantasy

VERSE 1

Magical woman says, “I did a line of cocaine

It numbs all the pain in my outer space brain”

Magical woman says, “They hate my penis

They either shout shit at me or pay me to see it”

Magical woman says, “I haven’t showered in weeks

Every shirt I’ve worn is covered in blood streaks”

Magical woman says, “You have very pretty eyes

Is it okay if I look into them for the rest of the night?”

 

PRE-CHORUS 1

“Hold my hand, touch my face

Please take me away from this dark place

Hold me tight, touch my hair

Please help me, I’m scared”

 

CHORUS 1

Who am I kidding? It’s a final fantasy

In the real world, magic women run away from me

It’s a place in my head, got no choice but to stay

Waste my time on limerence, throwing my life away

 

VERSE 2

Lonely bohemian says, “I stole things that aren’t mine

Everyone online made me pay for my crime”

Lonely bohemian says, “I don’t want to be alone

But I’m the only one who was asked to atone”

Lonely bohemian says, “Let me live another day

In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not okay”

Lonely bohemian says, “Can I stay with you tonight?

You’re the only one right now who’s keeping me alive”

 

PRE-CHORUS 2

“Kiss my lips, rub my back

Please protect me from all these attacks

Hold my hand, lay with me

Please don’t let me bleed”

 

CHORUS 2

Snap out of it, son, it’s a final fantasy

Brain ghosts shouldn’t even be asking me

To do emotional labor, save you from the haters

Of all the candies you chose, I’m not your first flavor

 

BRIDGE

I got so much to do, so much to live for

But magical thinking keeps me wanting more

It’s a cycle of addiction no different from crack

Lock myself in my room, don’t know when I’ll be back

 

VERSE 3

Magical woman meets lonely bohemian

Two twin flames, two lovely human beings

Do what you must in your hotel room

Get out of my head and do it fucking soon

Get married, have babies, buy a whole house

Watch a lot of Netflix on your leather couch

My work here is done, now I watch for number one

Ain’t no mystery in this land, it’s all in my hands

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

CHORUS

No drought in my eyes, it’s no surprise

She’s a favorite of all the guys

She’s a manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream

Breaking my heart when we’re apart

She’s ready for a brand new start

She’s a manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream

VERSE 1

She’s got the cure for all your blues

Skips to your house in leather shoes

Rocks out to Cobain and Chester

Cradles you until you feel all better

Every white guy’s favorite fantasy

That doesn’t involve some Vaseline

Wouldn’t ruin her with disrespect

But you’ve got some love to inject

CHORUS

No drought in my eyes, it’s no surprise

She’s a favorite of all the guys

She’s a manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream

Breaking my heart when we’re apart

She’s ready for a brand new start

She’s a manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream

VERSE 2

You can be a wallflower or a football stud

Don’t drag your own name through the mud

By moving things too fast and too furious

Even though her mystique leaves you curious

Admire her beauty from a faraway location

Being a dreamer is your only true vocation

At the same time, don’t let her get away

Take her out dancing on the rainiest days

BRIDGE

Poetry is the language of the soul

Makes your heart spin out of control

Classic literature is music to the mind

Your pixie dream girl is what you find

CHORUS

No drought in my eyes, it’s no surprise

She’s a favorite of all the guys

She’s a manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream

Breaking my heart when we’re apart

She’s ready for a brand new start

She’s a manic pixie dream girl

Manic pixie dream

Lysergic Fairytales

***LYSERGIC FAIRYTALES***

What I’m about to tell you will sound like whining at first, but I swear it has a positive purpose. Are you ready? Here it goes. My last four unpublished novels have something in common: they’re about mentally ill protagonists who find healing through Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Watch You Burn features a schizophrenic college student named Mario Bryan whose obligatory MPDG is an anime fan named Jessica Harley. Demon Axe is about a heavy metal singer with PTSD named Daniel Mercer whose special someone is an elven warrior named Raven Triscloud (my friend Heather’s former D&D character). Silent Warrior is about a high school student with night terrors named Scott George who dates the daughter of his nasty ass history teacher. And then there’s Beautiful Monster, which is about an elven mercenary named Windham Xavier who gets raped for a week straight and becomes infatuated with fellow mercenary Tarja Rikkinen.

So what do I do with four novels that have way too much in common? First order of business would be to edit the shit out of them and make the female supporting characters more than just MPDG’s. And then once that’s done, I’ll do what any sensible author would do: publish them together in one volume and call it “Lysergic Fairytales”. Besides the mental illnesses and subsequent love interests, the other thing these novels share in common is that they’re trippy as fuck. You don’t necessarily have to drop acid or smoke weed in order to enjoy these stories…but you’d probably be more likely to give them a five star rating if you did. Pleeeeeeease? Hehehehehe!

Of course, Silent Warrior is a modern day drama and not a fantasy story, but I still consider it to be part of the Lysergic Fairytale genre because it has its own set of trippy moments, whether it’s Scott having an awful nightmare about puppet teachers or Alan Young (bully) hallucinating an entire conversation with his mother in a solitary confinement cell. I once joked that Silent Warrior was basically Pink Floyd the Wall fan fiction. That might not be a joke anymore.

Now that I’ve got plans to combine these four stories into one volume, I should probably try to figure out how they’ll be interconnected, if they are at all. I think back to other examples of this such as Tales From the Hood or Pulp Fiction, where there were four acts apiece. Pulp Fiction’s acts were all tied within the canon while the Tales From the Hood stories were standalone and were only connected because an undertaker named Simms was telling them out loud. Considering Beautiful Monster takes place in the distant past and the other three stories take place in the present day, I don’t see how they could be easily connected unless I happen to pull off some kind of miracle.

Maybe they don’t have to be connected, though. Maybe they’re just in one volume because I’m insecure about the size of my books. Anytime I talk about how my only published novel Occupy Wrestling is less than a hundred pages, I feel as though I’ve stumbled upon a Viagra commercial. Well, I’m pretty sure these four Lysergic Fairytales novels are individually shorter than Occupy Wrestling. Shorter books don’t get as much recognition as longer ones. It’s sad and unfortunate, but it’s a truth I’ll have to come to terms with eventually. For all intents and purposes, the four novels are complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, so it’s not like I cut them off too soon. It’s just that I don’t have the endurance for longer stories, mainly because I wouldn’t know what else to do with them.

On the day I do decide to publish Lysergic Fairytales, it’ll be pretty damn far into the future due to how painstaking it is to edit the shit out of complete novels. I plan on starting with Beautiful Monster and working my way backwards chronologically. But the important thing I have to remember is that there’s no rush for publishing novels. I’d rather have a late blooming book that’s clean and readable than a quickly published book that’s a piece of shit. That’s one of the knocks on Occupy Wrestling: it was published before it was ready, which is probably why it’s rated at less than three stars right now. Well, that and I foolishly marketed it to non-wrestling fans. I won’t make that same mistake with Lysergic Fairytales, that’s for damn sure.

It’s a long road ahead of me in terms of editing, but it’s one I’ve traveled before and it’s one I’ll happily travel again. What does this mean for novels like Incelbordination and Filter Feeder? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’ll still put in the work for Incelbordination like I always do. Filter Feeder, though not beyond repair, doesn’t fit in with the Lysergic Fairytales motif, so it’ll be left out. Anthologies should be somewhat homogenous when it comes to genres and I’m pushing that envelope by including Silent Warrior, a modern day drama.

Wish me luck on my long and tiring journey! I’m not naïve enough to deny needing it! I’m Garrison fucking Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain! My, how true those words will become during the editing process.

***BOOK REVIEW***

As many of my Good Reads followers can tell, I’m on the verge of finishing and reviewing “Truth Is Fragmentary” by Gabrielle Bell. I’m only twenty-five pages away from pulling the trigger on this creative project. I should have finished it a long time ago since it’s a graphic novel and it’s easy as fuck to read. Psychological exhaustion, like it always does, got in the way of my best intentions. But read this book and review it I will. I still haven’t decided if I want to give it a passing or mixed grade. While the themes of exhaustion, depression, and being overworked are all relatable, I’m not so sure if the overall story did anything for me personally. Like I said, I haven’t decided the final grade yet, which means Gabrielle Bell has 25 pages left to, in Steven Crowder’s memetic words, “Change my mind.” And by the way, I’m only channeling the meme he’s famous for, not the actual person. The actual person makes me cringe.

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Take one of those and two of these, then watch the walls begin to breathe. I can taste the color of the lights. Wings are growing out of me. The floor is floating underneath. I can see the future burning bright. The ceiling has us mesmerized. It feels like we can never die. Heading for the dark side of the moon. As we lift off into the sky invincible and so alive. Ten feet tall and fucking bulletproof. Insanity is setting in. Reality is getting thin. The universe just started slowing down. Then suddenly we’re traveling a million miles an hour. The shadows all start breaking free, no longer held by gravity. How did we get so far off the ground? Speaking to the galaxy, received and sending back to me. I can finally hear the speed of sound. I like this everlasting pill, ‘cause time itself is standing still. Why’s the room still spinning just the same? Turn off your phone so no one calls, ‘cause you and I are tripping balls. I can still hear ringing in my brain. Insanity is setting in. Reality is getting thin. The universe just started slowing down. Then suddenly we’re traveling a million miles an hour. Insanity is setting in. Reality is getting thin. The particles are dancing all around. I can’t deny the hardest thing for me is finding time to finally breathe. See no signs of ever coming down. Another wave is coming in a million miles an hour.”

-Nickelback singing “Million Miles an Hour”-

***POST-SCRIPT***

I came very close to giving you guys a sneak preview of Incelbordination’s fifth chapter, but I won’t do that because even the slightest details could be deemed spoilers. No spoilers for you, motherfuckers! Even if you bribed me with a Quintuple Whopper with extra bacon and cheese, I still wouldn’t give you spoilers! Hahahahahahaha!

Garrisonian Tropes

***GARRISONIAN TROPES***

Whenever Ashley Uzzell/Marie Krepps and I get together for a critiquing session, she always jokes about common tropes that end up in my writing and I laugh along with her. She recently wrote an awesome review for American Darkness where she describes my characters as being constantly pissed off about everything. I thought that was funny as hell. Plus, I’m grateful for all three of my stars. Would you guys like to see some of these tropes and how I analyze them? I’m sure you’d love that, so that’s what I’m going to do since I’m all about customer service.

***MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL***

Debra Winter from Occupy Wrestling (published) and Kelly McVeigh from Filter Feeder (first draft) would be the exceptions to this rule, but from Watch You Burn on, every female supporting character I had falls under the Manic Pixie Dream Girl category. Every fucking one of them. In case you don’t know what this pejorative term means, it’s a supporting female character whose sole purpose in the novel is to boost the self-esteem of the brooding male protagonist. Jessica Harley (Watch You Burn), Raven Triscloud (Demon Axe), Adrienne Simpson (Silent Warrior), and Tarja Rikkinen (Beautiful Monster) are all shining examples of the trope. There’s supposed to be some sort of psychoanalysis as to why male authors write these characters, but I don’t quite know what it is. If any of you would like to pick my brain, that’d be wonderful. I swear I’m not writing these characters to be a sexist pig. I didn’t even know this kind of character had a pejorative term until after I started writing Beautiful Monster. I’m so far down the rabbit hole with that novel that I might as well see it through to the twenty-first chapter and fix it all later.

***FAT VILLAINS***

Ashley loves to joke about this one a lot and I can definitely see the humor in it. Most of my fat villains come from American Darkness and Poison Tongue Tales, but Rinehart from Beautiful Monster could fit this trope too. I swear I’m not writing the characters out of self-hatred (because I’m fat too) or because I’m secretly into fat-shaming (I’m not). You won’t even have to pick my brain in order to find out what I’m talking about. If you follow politics, you’ll notice that there are a lot of politicians and pundits out there who are universally hated and also happen to be on the pudgy side. Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Alex Jones, Chris Christie, and Rush Limbaugh are all shining examples of this. Villains by their very nature are to be hated, so what better way to hate someone than to compare them to a despicable political figure? I’m sure there are a lot of cartoonists out there who do the exact same thing.

***ANGRY CHARACTERS***

It seems as though every other piece of dialogue in my writing has an exclamation point, a swear word, or an insult attached to it. Plus, it doesn’t help matters that my characters are constantly beating the living shit out of each other. It would be easy to attribute this to my love for WWE since professional wrestlers are constantly cutting angry monologues against each other. Or maybe it’s because I too have a hair trigger temper at the little things in life. I scream like a barbarian whenever the phone rings. I go into swearing fits whenever Maggie shits on the floor or Smokey barfs on my bed. I once spit on my computer screen because my computer was slowing the fuck down and freezing all the time. Maybe there’s something about having schizophrenia that makes me irritable all the time. Maybe I just need a chair massage and a day at the spa.

***SAGGY JOWLED DOGS***

American Darkness and Poison Tongue Tales are where the saggy-jowled dogs live. My step-dad’s dog Maggie has a set of saggy jowls on her, so that’s where I get it from. She’s a mix between a Springer Spaniel and a Bassett Hound. She’s also sixteen years old as of today. She’s older than Herbert’s dog on Family Guy and gets around just as well. Maggie eventually became her own character in a Poison Tongue Tales story called Maggie’s Wisdom, where she played the role of a pilgrim trying to calm down a pissed off monk named Brock Dempsey. Well, what do you know? Another angry character! Wow! Spoiler alert: Brock finds his inner peace by scratching Maggie’s fuzzy belly.

***SENSITIVE CRY BABIES***

It doesn’t matter if the character is a muscle head barbarian or a gentle poet: chances are good they’ve shed a few tears in my stories. Crying actually became part of Windham Xavier’s character development in Beautiful Monster. He’s so afraid of appearing weak in front of his peers that he holds his tears in, forever conforming to male stereotypes that his girlfriend Tarja tries to shatter. But even before that, I’d have macho men crying all the time, most specifically Daniel Mercer from Demon Axe. Then again, Daniel was a heavy metal singer with years of pain behind him and PTSD from watching his band mates die, so he’s excused…I think? Maybe? I don’t know? In case you think this is a self-insert trope, I haven’t had a full-on crying spell since 2007, when I thought my only option for college was going to Evergreen in Olympia, where I would basically be a 24/7 student with no free time to myself. Haven’t cried since then. I did have sore eyes and a little bit of water trickling out whenever I watched old Never Ending Story videos on You Tube, but nothing that resulted in real crying.

***ASSHOLE PROTAGONISTS***

This one can be blamed on shades of gray logic where characters are supposed to have flaws, so I made one of their flaws asshole behavior. Big mistake. I had to edit Occupy Wrestling multiple times because the main character Mitch McLeod appeared too dickish for the heroic role. And now that I look back on Watch You Burn, the main character from there, Mario Bryan, is also a huge douche canoe, which probably makes readers wonder what Jessica Harley (Manic Pixie Dream Girl) sees in him anyways. There’ve been many debates among authors over what constitutes a good protagonist whether it’s flaws, snappy dialogue, average characterization, or whatnot. Some protagonists out there can be assholes without turning the reader off too much. I haven’t mastered that art yet, so maybe I’ll just stick to having friendly characters…who are pissed off all the time…and have saggy jowled dogs as pets…and are dating Manic Pixie Dream Girls….okay, that’s enough. Hehe!

***CONCLUSION***

It could be that I’ve left a few tropes out, but I’m sure they’ll pop up right after I post this blog entry online. They always do. I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain!

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Some people live their dreams. Some people close their eyes. Some people’s destiny passes by. There are no guarantees. There are no alibis. That’s how our love must be. Don’t ask why. It takes some time. God knows how long. I know that I can forget you as soon as my heart stops breaking, anticipating. As soon as forever is through, I’ll be over you. Remembering times gone by, promises we once made. What are the reasons why nothing stays the same? There were the nights holding you close. Someday I’ll try to forget them as soon as my heart stops breaking, anticipating. As soon as forever is through, I’ll be over you.”

-Toto singing “I’ll Be Over You”-