September 2nd, 2010 - Positano Draft Chapter One, Two, and Three

This are three sample draft chapters from my book "Positano"
You can access sample more chapters at http://www.paulsharits.com/positano.htm

Positano
by Christopher Sharits
(updated 9/06/2010)

Part One – Colorado

Chapter One

Suicide. I’m not even allowed to say it out loud. God knows I’m not supposed to be thinking about it, but I can’t help it. I’m not sure if it’s because I still consider it an option or if I’m doing some kind of warped self-analysis. I think I think about it just to see if I can handle thinking about it without having a panic attack. Or maybe I’m just thinking about it because even the word scares me. Mind you, I don’t have a plan, but “suicide” is irrevocably burned into my brain. You would think after what I’ve been through, I would be last one debating the validity of death by suicide. I’ve had enough therapy to know better.

The only one I ever talked about it out loud is with Dr. Alderman, my therapist, however, I speak carefully because I know that if he decides I am a real danger to myself or others that he is obligated to commit me to a seventy-two hour watch in a mental health facility. I learned that the hard way. I stopped using the word because my family and friends freak out. We don’t even talk about my “vacation” to the “Holiday Inn.” That’s my code word or euphemism for the mental health facility. My other word for it is “the clink.” I think it’s funny, but my mom doesn’t. If you haven’t guessed by now, I tried to commit suicide about a year and a half ago. Did you know that someone in the world successfully commits suicide every forty seconds? Did you know that more U.S. soldiers died by suicide in 2009 than in the war in Afghanistan in 2009. I remember stupid little facts like that now.

My name is Niccolo Ernesto Gambella. My name is so Italian that I should have been a character on The Sopranos, but I’m actually only half Italian. My mom, Maria, is from Argentina. Yes, I can cook up a storm and then yell about it flipping my hands in the air. What a funny picture. I’m going to pose like that for my Facebook profile picture. I’ll look like a pissed off orangutan. Funny. Maybe I’ll wear a fake mustache like the Mario brothers from the classic Nintendo video game.

My friends call me Nic. There are a few girls that call me Nicky, but only a few. I’m sixteen now, but the story I’m about to tell you begins two years ago. My therapist said it would be good for me to write a daily journal so I made a blog. That wasn’t a good idea. Remember how I said I learned about talking about harming myself or others the hard way? My blog was the hard way. It was stupid of me to think no one would find it. I even changed the spelling of my name. I might have mentioned it to my best friend and I’m sure he told my parents. I owe him one. After that fiasco I started typing it out on my computer and then encrypting it “leet.” Only a few of my friends can read leet. See if you can figure this out… “M¥ $73p-Ð4Ð 1$ 4 j3r|{.” It says my step-dad is a jerk. I’ve never read any of my old posts, be I do save them buried deep into the dark corners of my hard drive. I could have just deleted the docs, but the Doc says it may be helpful in the future. Whatever; I enjoy the encryption.

Chapter Two

I live in Boulder, Colorado. People jokingly call Boulder the “Republic of Boulder” because it’s completely wacky. The University of Colorado is here so we have college students coming out of the ears. I’m not sure why this happens, but kids come into town basically looking normal and before long they have new tattoos and body piercing. It usually takes a year for their dreadlocks to come in. I kid you not; this place gets freaky. I friend of a friend told me that Boulder was a big pot town. Of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that and I’m sticking to it, however, the Park Rangers just found five hundred pot plants up in Boulder Mountain Park. This is definitely a party town. CU was rated as the seventh best party school in the country. Even up in our neighborhood on the west side we can hear loud parties every weekend and sometimes weeknights regardless of the season.

Boulder is a relatively small, but breathtakingly located about thirty miles northwest of Denver. It’s nestled in the shadow of the towering Flat Irons and the majestic Rocky Mountains. We can go hiking straight out of my backyard and the ski resorts are only a few minutes away. Our home is pretty new compared to the rest of the neighborhood. My step-dad bought a huge beat up house on about an acre of land and then he had the house torn down. His brother is this big whoopee architect and my parents basically designed the whole place. I think it’s one of the nicest houses in Boulder. Most of the houses on the west side are old Victorian style two story homes on smaller lots. Our lot is one of the biggest and as a result we are one of the few houses with a swimming pool and hot tub. I can be pretty popular in the summer. Even the neighborhood girls like to hang out. God made bikinis for me.  

The streets are narrow and homes are close together. The trees are so old and large that they arch over the streets creating dark green tunnels. It’s kind of funny because you have to drive through homes that are kind of beat up and rented out to students and sororities or they just look like they are in order to get to our street. The homes on my street have beautifully and meticulously manicured landscaping with patches of grass so fine you could putt golf balls off of them. My friends think I’m rich, but I only get $20 allowance a week so I’m out there shoveling driveways and mowing lawns in the summer with the rest of them. Okay, I’ll admit that I do use a snow blower and a ride-on lawn mower.

I do have a kick ass mountain bike, but my “real” dad bought it for me. It only takes me a few minutes to ride up old Sunshine Canyon and then I’m on one of the best trials on the mountain. Our house backs up to “open space” which is really a fairly thick forest. My bedroom is at the back of the house so it only takes me a minute to slide out the window and disappear into the trees. Whenever I’m away from home and I smell a fireplace or pine scented rain I get homesick. I love the hot tub in the winter. I like to sit out there all alone at night with the deafening snow falling and crystals of ice forming on my hair. True peace.

I do have a special hide out in the forest. I go there when I’m freaking out or full of anxiety. Only a few of my friends knows where it is, but I did make the mistake of taking a girl up there and she bragged on Facebook that we made out and she even told everyone where my “not-so-secret-anymore” hiding place was. So I posted pictures of her showing off in the forest. She wasn’t naked, but she was definitely acting slutty. We don’t talk anymore.

Boulder is the home of The University of Colorado Buffaloes football team. My mom and I moved here after she divorced my dad. I was six. Two years later my mom married Bill. He’s a geologist for an oil company. I call him “Two;” as in the second. I used to get grounded for calling him Two, but I think they gave up. Now they make jokes about it with their friends. Maybe I’ll start calling him Bill. My favorite thing about Two is that his company has a luxury box at Folsom Stadium so I get to see all the Buff’s home games. I’m allowed to bring one friend to the games so my friends compete to see who gets to go. I only have four friends I like to take so I make them take turns anyway.

If my friends and I aren’t in the forest or the pool, we are usually hanging out down on the “P.” The “P” is Boulder’s pedestrian mall called the Pearl Street Mall. If someone wants to meet down at the mall, they just text everyone that they want to take a “pee” at the bookstore or Joe’s Espresso, for instance. 

I have twin sisters, but they are six years younger so we don’t really relate well. They take up all of my mom’s energy, but that’s fine with me. Keep the old girl jumping; that’s one less set of eyes on me. My real dad, Giovanni Gambella, is a famous documentary filmmaker and a media studies professor at Columbia University in New York. He made a film about the cold war and was actually in West Berlin in November 1989 filming the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was mayhem and he caught it all on film. He won the Jury Special Award for that film at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. He was only twenty-seven. Since then he has made a series of documentaries about the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars. I think his last film called “Lost Soldiers” was the saddest. He interviewed the parents and spouses of dead soldiers he had interviewed a few years earlier in Iraq. Many of them had small children and debts up the yang. He was pretty upset for a longtime. Maybe he thought it was a good heavy subject, but I don’t think he should have made it. Too many tears.

He’s working on one right now about girls trying to go to school in Afghanistan. Right after he shot film in the little village of Jaalabad, the Taliban came and threw gas bombs at the girls who were just sitting in their classrooms and then they burnt the school down to the ground. I just talked to him and he was upset, but dead set on exposing the real Taliban. I really don’t understand how he does it. Nonetheless, he is almost a household name and is often on television news shows. As a result, his classes at Columbia are always packed and his books easily make the best sellers list.   

I go to “Amsterdam High.” It’s really Boulder High School, but there are so many drugs passed around you’d think we were in Amsterdam. I’ve played football since the sixth grade, but I don’t walk around like a jock. I wear torn jeans and ancient rock band t-shirts like the Rolling Stones or Black Sabbath just like all the other non-conformists. My favorite musician is Ozzie Osborn. I love the old Black Sabbath and now Ozzie has released a new album on iTunes. I’ll get a burnt CD from my buddy down the street. I also like the Gorillaz and Cage the Elephant, but I will listen to anything but western or pop. I even like classical music. My favorite composer is Claude Debussy. He once said, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas." His music is so weird I love it.

Chapter Three

The story of my lost childhood starts around the start of the ninth grade. My life seems to be possessed by vivid nightmares so I think I’ll start with a nightmare. I don’t remember if this is the exact nightmare, but it was a familiar theme back then.

My nightmares always start with anxiety and confusion. Regardless of the setting, I was always running late. Perhaps that is why I hate tardiness. Let’s get this party started… One moment I was laughing with my friends and then the bell rang. The school transformed into a dark and musty morgue of sorts. I tried to find my class, but as I ran through corridor after corridor I became more hopelessly lost. In my panic he came to help me. I began to feel a false sense of security as he led me down the hall, but suddenly we were outside in the early hours just past midnight. The school seemed to give away to a much larger darker parking lot. He insisted that we continue to a large bland cement building, but I vehemently protested only to be challenged with such fierce anger that I instantly relented and followed him into the building. Inside was a dark cement walled hallway that seemed to take one turn after another as if writhed in a maze. At this point we were running without direction or purpose, but then we came to a complete halt and he threw me up against the corner of a blackened hall and instructed me to wait in utter silence as he continued towards the light. As he hurried down the hall I noticed that he carried a hand gun. I heard voices of confusion and panic as the horrifying sound of repeated gun fire possessed every edge of the cold hard walls.

I found myself slowly slinking down the hall in constant contact with the cool wall at my back. I heard muffled cries and I entered a pitch black room with the distinct smell of smoking sulfur and fresh blood. Something moved towards me and I raised my hand and repeatedly pulled the trigger. Trigger? The weight in my hands was hot and very heavy. As I stumbled back into the light of the hall, I saw that my hands were dripping with warm blood. Everyone in the room was dead except for me. I was very confused, but I did know I had to run. I ran back towards the light. Soon I was engulfed by a white fog and I felt like I was floating. Soon the fog seemed to fly up from the missing floor and I realized I was falling. I fell for a long time; so long, in fact, that my terror had turned into the calm realization that I was falling to my death.

Suddenly I heard my step dad hammering my locked bedroom door telling me it was my turn in the shower. My heart was still relentlessly beating a hole through my chest. As I came around I realized my sheets were cold with sweat. With reluctance I opened my eyes and scanned my room for the only source of illumination. On my computer screen a wildly warping color shifting “6:03AM” bounced aimlessly against the confines of the screen. A weird mixed recording of the Family Guy character, Stewie Griffin, kept repeating “get up, get up, get up, get up.” It was time to rise and shine.

When I hit the shower I was still hung up on the dream. Man, I hate the falling dreams. I had to think of something positive. A few weeks ago I was practicing my dives in the pool when April let herself in through the gate between our houses. She didn’t like to come over when my friends were there. Today April is 18, but last year she was just starting her senior year and taking great pleasure in teasing me to death. Her folks divorced and she lives with her freaky dad. I think he’s on coke or something. He never makes sense and he rubs his nose all the time. Anyway, he’s hardly home so April is home alone a lot. I remember this particular day like it was yesterday.

I was just climbing out of the pool when I saw her standing there. Wholly cow. She was barely wearing her white bikini which made her look even more tan than she actually was. She was a goddess. She asked with a coy smile, “You all alone today?”

“Yup. Just me and the sun. Sup?” Like I cared.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“God no. Climb in!”

She swam a bit and I just watched. After two laps she got out of the pool and lay down on her belly on the lounge chair. I went about swimming and trying to keep my cool; if you know what I mean. After a short while I heard her say something, but I was trying my best to swim the most masterful laps I could muster. I stopped and asked her what she said and, I kid you not, she rose up fully exposing her boobs. She must have untied her top. I couldn’t move.

Without even thinking to cover up she asked, “Can you rub some oil on my back?”

Sweet Jesus. I got out of the pool hoping my boner wasn’t showing yet, however, as soon as I touched her back I was at full and complete salute. She giggled and said, “You doing okay back there?”

My voice cracked as I said, “Yeah. Do you need some on your legs?” My eyes were double their normal size and my mouth was stretched open almost in a grimace as I couldn’t believe what I had just said, but she laughed and said she could get them herself. I quickly dove into the pool and stayed there until she got bored and went home. She is trying to kill me.

 So, back to my shower. I closed my eyes and imagined that April was just next door softly washing her hair. I could see her as clear as a bell working her way over her breasts and slowly lowering her strokes. That was all I needed. Nightmare all gone.