Dear Mr. Alfred Knopf:

Subject: A Certain Personal Diary

I’ve written this crazy book—a three-day journal, really—and I’m not entirely sure what to do with the goddamn thing. I’m not kidding, Mr. Knopf. Should I toss the manuscript out my bedroom window and watch the printed pages dance happily down Pleasant Avenue? Or perhaps I should mail it to a respected New York publisher like yourself, who seems to know all the ins and outs of the high-falutin’ publishing world.
        I do wonder, Mr. Knoph, exactly who reads all of the manuscripts that pour into your office? I mean, are you the one who turns the pages, or is it one of your staff?

        No offence to you at all, Mr. Knopf, but my submission is really quite explicit about a number of things (I swear a whole lot), and I really don’t want to offend you or anything. So if you’re offended by a billion and a half swear words, then you might—and it’s just a suggestion I’m offering here—turn my manuscript over to one of your younger staff members. Please don’t take offence, Mr. Knopf, but perhaps a younger person might be more familiar and accepting of the foul language I sometimes use.
        I should also point out that the title of my manuscript is A Certain Personal Diary. As I’ve been accepted at the American University of Paris (AUP) in France, I decided to keep a kind of diary of what happened to me during my last three days in Toronto, recording all my thoughts, observations, and human behavior occurring around me.
        I have to say, Mr. Knopf, my life is so absurd—and comically frightening—that you (or your chosen staff member) might fall to your knees in laughter, although what kind of laughter, I surely do not know.
        A hundred thousand years ago, I recall reading in the New Yorker Magazine that most publishers get hyper-pissed when they get a query letter that goes on for fifty-three centuries of reading time, so I'm going to close now. I sincerely hope you can do something positive with my manuscript. Please don’t have an acute heart attack should you be offended by my swearing. I’m just being honest.

Respectfully,
Matthew Brownfield

____________________

“Hey, you, Knopf’s dead. For years now. Send your novel to Lish, who will also die, even as you will, Brownfield.”

                                                                     Gordon Lish, Alfred A. Knopf

____________________

Dear Mr. Frobisher,

Subject: Book Concept/A Certain Personal Diary/My Last Three Days in Toronto

For the last year I’ve been living in Paris while studying at the American University of Paris (AUP) in France. I’ll be transferring to the University of Toronto the end of this month, where I will continue to major in philosophy.
       Professor Laura Jemison, one of my teachers at AUP, read my diary entitled A Certain Personal Diary and strongly suggested I find a literary agent to see it published in book form. She highly recommended that I contact you, whom she met as an undergraduate at UCLA. Perhaps that sounds somewhat egocentric, but today you’ve got to be a little self-centered when trying to break into the publishing world.
       Included in my manuscript is a comedic letter I wrote to Mr. Alfred Knopf, who sadly died many years ago. As so happened, Gordon Lish got a hold of my manuscript and offered to give it a solid read. I expressed my deep gratitude for his offer, but Mr. Lish never replied. I don’t know why. Knowing a bit of Mr. Lish’s personality, I could make quite the funny joke here. But I won’t. At least, not yet.
       That said, and if you are in agreement, please read over my manuscript and let me know whether you would enjoy representing it.
       I thank you for your time.

Yours,
Matthew Brownfield

____________________

A Certain Personal Diary

by

Matthew Brownfield,

JUNE

Friday - 3 days to go

13:14

TODAY'S WEIRDEST SAYING: “Street shoes are absolutely, positively forbidden! Totally verboten!”
CAVEAT: Use a Teflon-coated pan for eggs or they burn.
WHERE AM I NOW: Me seated at a library cubicle while a nearby kid continually coughs and loudly blows his nose.
DOING WHAT: Penning out my thoughts.
MUSIC PLUGGED INTO MY EARS: “If You Want Me to Stay” by Sly and the Family Stone & other songs by same.

It’s Friday at lunchtime, and Taggart and I are in the school gym playing a little one-on-one basketball. After scoring a point, Taggart shoots the ball to me. I dribble towards the hoop. Suddenly someone screams at us.
       “Hey! You two! Didn’t you hear me?!”
       I turned around to find weird Coach Fergie, wearing his fighting Notre Dame (he wanted to graduate from a Catholic college south of the border) sweatshirt, storming his way toward us.
       Naturally, I point to Taggart, then myself. “You mean us?”
       "Of course I mean you two! Who the hell do ya think I'm talkin' to—my gawddamn balls?"
       Referring to his balls is one of Coach Fergie’s favorite expressions whenever he’s angry. He's always balling this or balling that or swearing in general. In fact, I've never known someone to swear as much as Coach Fergie. But never around parents. He really cleans up his act a hundred and ten percent whenever parents or staff are around. Then when they're gone and there's only us guys around, he's back to balling this and balling that again.
       No, I don’t think Coach Fergie is a sexual creep, but he definitely is two faced. Maybe even three faced. With Coach Fergie, you never know.
       “So what’s going on here, Brownfield?”
       I frown deeply. “Sorry?”
       “I asked you a question.”
       “And the question being?”
       Coach Fergie’s face turns slightly red.
       “What the”—and here he lowers his voice to say “shit” before returning it to normal—“are you doing here?”
       It seems like a bizarre question because it’s quite obvious what Taggart and I are doing.
       “Well, I guess we’re playing a little one-on-one.” I hold up the basketball. “Basketball.”
       Coach Fergie loathes qualifications such as little and sorta and kinda with an absolute passion.
       See, Coach Fergie is what you might call a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy. He divides everything into black and white, good and evil. There is no room in his ball-less qualifications for sorta this or sorta that.
       Coach Fergie narrows his black eyes with growing anger. “Either you are practising—“
        For the purposes of demonstration, Coach Fergie opens his right hand so Taggart and I can see the palm of his hand. I’m sure Taggart sees what I do: hardened calluses at the base of each finger, obviously developed from lifting weights. They say that Coach Fergie likes to lift weights whenever he is pissed off with life. Judging by the enormity of his hardened callouses, he must be angry all of the time. Then again, if I was his advanced age, I’d probably be pumping iron every ten fucking seconds.
       “—or you aren't practising. You can't be doing both."
       I shrug. "I guess we were."
       "There you go again, Brownfield!” Coach Fergie shouts. He stomps his foot on the gym floor. Oddly, he is practising the same sort of habit Elinor had. When she was genuinely pissed off with me—or anyone or thing—she stomps her right foot, causing our house to shake. For a brief second, I visualize Elinor and Coach Fergie together, both stomping up a storm. "GUESS! GUESS! GUESS! Can’t you ever say anything without qualifying it like some ball-less dink?”
       Dink is another one of Coach Fergie's favorite words. I think he must've picked that word up at Notre Dame because you don't hear it a lot around here. He’s also big on calling male students a little prick or the greatest little prick. Another one of his favorites is shit, you’re the greatest little asshole since Herr Hitler.
       He’s a little restrained when he uses the words fuck or fucker and is showing even more restraint—down to a mutter, I’d say—with words like twat or cunt. Once I overheard him talking to his wife on his phone. After he hung up, I distinctly heard the serious creep say cunt. I have a very strong feeling their marriage isn’t too solid.
       In the past, had I ever heard O’Sob say that about Elinor, I think I would have exterminated O’Sob fifty times. I just don’t like deceitful people like that. I just don’t.
       Anyway, I’m a little cynical when I say, “All we were doing is playing some basketball. That’s it.”
       Thankfully, Coach Fergie doesn’t catch my cynical edge.
       "Thank God for that, Brownfield. Just thank God ya've got that straight.” Then he adds, “Now—“
       “Now what?”
       "The rules, Brownfield! Don't you know about the rules?"
       "Sure I know about the rules.”
       But the reality is I’m not exactly sure which rules he is referring to. I mean, there are so many dumb rules on this planet that it makes your head literally spin.
       He points up to a large wooden sign bolted above the door leading to the boy’s locker room. “Then obviously you must know those rules up there?”
       I look up. Taggart looks up. For the first time I—and I bet a billion dollars Taggart shares this with me—become aware of this particular rule:

STREET SHOES ABSOLUTELY,
POSITIVELY FORBIDDEN! VERBOTEN!

       I laugh. I hear Taggart laugh. In the back of the room I distinctly hear a large number of other boys laughing as well. I figure it’s the first time any of us have ever read that rule.
       I nod as I look back at Coach Fergie. “Okay. So I’ve read the sign now.”
       He points down at my sneakers. “So what about those?”
       “Pardon?”
       His voice rises. “What about those shoes?”
       I lift up one of my sneakers so that everyone can have a good look at it. “You mean these sneakers?” I ask.
       All the boys who were laughing before gather around Coach Fergie and me, a sort of bicycle rim. Taggart is smart enough to quietly merge into the rim. Sadly, I can’t.
       Coach Fergie nods and dramatically points at my sneakers. “Of course I mean those shoes. What else am I pointing at?”
       “Sneakers,” I say, correcting him.
       I curiously watch—I’m sure all the boys are doing the same—as Coach Fergie’s face turns even redder. “Listen you—“ 

       “I am.“
       “Hey! Don’t you be smart with me!”
       “I would never do that.”
       “What we’re trying to establish here, Brownfield, is whether your sneakers are clean sneakers or more like street shoes. That’s the sixty-thousand-dollar question: What kind of sneakers do you have?”
       I decide Coach Fergie wants to know the brand name. “They’re Reeboks."
       “Listen to me, Brownfield, I don’t give a—”
Coach Fergie’s eyes perform a supersonic fast check to see if there are any females in the gym. Sadly, there aren’t.“—shit whether you're wearing Reeboks or Shitboks. I mean, who really genuinely gives a shit! What I do want to know”—he opens his right hand—“is whether they are acceptable gym sneakers or”—he opens his left hand—“contraband dinkless street sneakers you shouldn't be wearing in here because they seriously shit up my goddamn gym floor.”
       Dead silence enshrouds the gym.
       Finally I say, “I kinda guess my sneakers are street sneakers. Kinda.”
       That’s when he totally explodes.
       “THERE YOU”—his eyes perform another superfast check for females—“fucking GO AGAIN, BROWNFIELD!”
       Personally, I’m getting a little pissed off myself. On one hand he’s probably right. We shouldn’t be scuffing up the gym floor—that is, if we were. I really doubt this is true. On the other hand I think it’s obnoxious to be screaming at students and calling his wife vulgar words. This guy is so obnoxious I’d fire him if I could.
       “There I go again what?” I angrily demand.
       “You’ve gone back to qualifying things.”
       I’m surprised by his sudden softer and more controlled voice. But I know he’s still seething underneath.
       “Brownfield, you seem to have this incredible need to qualify things.” Oddly, Coach Fergie’s voice is even softer. A serious deception, I think. “The reality is you find it emotionally difficult to admit to the truth: You’re wearing sneakers that are destroying my gym floor.”
       We stare eye to eye. A few seconds pass. Finally, reluctantly, I give in to this certifiable nut. I bow my head. Slightly.
       “I sincerely apologize.”
       “For what?” he demands.
       I glance at my poor sneakers. “Given the circumstances, my sneakers are street-type sneakers.”
       I honestly don’t know why I do this. Perhaps it is a little bit show business. I confess stupidly, really. But I hold up my foot even higher and roll it around so all of humanity can see my supremely guilty gym-floor-killing sneaker.
       “See—”
       Coach Fergie’s hand shoots out to grab my foot. I immediately pull my foot back and drop it to the ground. This teacher was going to grab me by my foot heel and toss me over.
       The dead silence has returned.
       I scowl. “You don’t do that. Not even close. You keep your hands to your“—I stop myself from saying fucking—“self.”
       Again there is intense silence.
       A second later I pull myself away and break through the bicycle rim to walk toward the locker room door. I have to clean out my locker for the year.
       I don’t like to be touched by older males. None of them. The whole lot of them make me cringe. It always brings back those horrible memories when I stupidly hitchhiked. Wouldn’t you know it? The driver turned out to be a paedophile (such a disgusting word!). At first I thought everything would be okay because a six-year-old kid was sitting in the front seat. When that sick piece of shit demanded that I unzip my pants, the little boy’s eyes popped open with sheer excitement.
       Six years old and already a destroyed soul.
       Sometimes I just want to cry.
       I don’t, though.
       I’ve never told anyone about that. No one. Not even the Toronto police. Just the memory makes my muscles tense up, and I feel a desperate need to punch something. Anything. I suppose that explains why I toss the ball to Taggar before punching open the locker room door and walking my way to … shit!

13:55

WHERE AM I NOW: School library again.
WHY LEAVE: Irritating fire alarm.
SUBJECT: Happy Sayonara Hawker.
MUSIC PLUGGED INTO MY EARS: "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones & other songs by same.

We had a fire drill.
       Sometimes I think the fire alarms go off every 30 seconds or so, leaving us to stand outside in heavy rain.
       When I’m finally back in the library and sitting at the cubicle, I decide that it’s best to stop writing about the hitchhiking incident. I still regret not telling the police about that six-year-old sexually abused kid. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the child molester was the kid’s dad. The research I’ve read concerning child abuse indicates that it’s more likely a dad, child’s older brother, other family members, or close friends are more likely to seriously sexually screw up a kid than some shithead on the street. My experience was the awful exception and I doubt I'll ever trust anyone else again.
       How disgustingly corrupt our species is.
       I’m shaking my head as I write this. Honestly, sometimes I feel totally ashamed to be a human male. Human anything. I need to escape that feeling. Emotions like that make you want to end your life. Say auf Wiedersehen to it all. But closing that door and opening a new door may be even more depressing. In fact, it is depressing. Worse, I’m one of the culprits. I said before that my miserable life is comically frightening, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Absolutely nothing.
       The new scene has to do with Halitoes.
       That’s right, Halitoes.
       Now I’m going to be totally honest—which is truly something, because no one is honest today: I’m the guilty shit who first called Robert Hawker Halitoes, a corrupted version of halitosis. The reason is obvious. When I first met Hawker, his breath smelled like rotting salmon flesh. I started calling him Halitoes behind his back, and now everyone in this joint refers to him as Halitoes.
       After I toss the ball to Taggar and punch open the locker room door I immediately find myself in an entirely different environment: our school’s gym locker room.
       I quickly walk to my locker, come to an abrupt stop, take my combination lock in hand, and with efficient order dial the correct numbers. But as I pull my locker door open, I feel a blunt poke in my side.
       Naturally I jump.
       “What the fuck?” I look around to find Hawker himself. “Why did you just do that?”
       Hawker is lying (he calls it “funny fibbing”) when he asks, “Do what?” Then he changes his funny fibbing. “It was just a little joke, Brownfield.” Sadly for me, Hawker plops his precious little self on the wooden bench not far from me. “Can’t you take a little joke, Brownfield?”
       So why do Hawker and I call each other by our last names? This has to do with the Halitoes dilemma. Once he learned I was the culprit who got everyone calling him Halitoes—and since I felt a little guilty in doing so—we both came to the quiet conclusion to address one another only by our last names.
       I think I was being extremely charitable in doing that; my cousin Hunchie is entirely a different matter.
       I look Hawker in the eye. “Look, I can definitely take a joke. But not from you.”
       I turn around and continue cleaning out my locker.
       Hawker, also something of a critic, nods at the guts of my locker. “It’s kinda messy in there.”
       I glance at Hawker, my eyes tearing into him.
       “Would you please shut up? Just go and die somewhere else. Huh?” Of course I am not serious.
       I reach back into my locker and am happy to find four plastic shopping bags: three Loblaw’s and one The Bay.
       “Hey, Brownfield?”
       I stupidly respond. “What?”
       “Could you do me a favor?”
       “What’s that?” I shouldn’t have asked.
       “Stop referring to me as Halitoes. I hate it.”
       I stop searching my locker and look up to Hawker. “I haven’t called you Halitoes in forever. Maybe you should stop sneaking up on people—me—and pulling irritating practical jokes.” I shrug. “If not, I might go back to calling you Halitoes.”
       I return to cleaning my locker. I dig my right hand into a mess of well-worn t-shirts, candy wrappers (I have always had a sincere passion for Mars chocolate bars), and Coke Light containers and shove everything into one of Loblaw’s plastic bags. On the second swoop, I am lucky to find a basketball—a reward for scoring the final point against a local high school.
       I take the basketball out of my locker and toss it above my head. Hawker leans over, snatches it out of the air, and laughs as he retreats to the locker shower area.
       “You piece of shit!” I chase after him. “Give it back.”
       “It's just a basketball, Brownfield.”
       His lack of reason bothers me.
       “But it’s my basketball!” I shout at him.
       It is probably the intense anger in my eyes and my determination to take back my basketball physically that makes Hawker give it back to me. Wise choice. But instead of handing the basketball directly to me, he tosses it back in the locker area.
       “Va manger ta merde, Brownfield.”
       I smirk. “Et vous êtes une merde, Hawker. Votre mère doit avoir honte de vous avoir donné la vie.”
       Fortunately Hawker doesn’t fully understand the later part of my compliment. I retrieve my basketball and return to my locker, placing my bit of glory in The Bay plastic bag before kneeling before my locker to concentrate on cleaning it once again.
       Under the bottom of all my crap though, I find a note.

Dear Principal Tremblay,

My son Matthew Brownfield was absent from school on Thursday, November 5 due to a terrible cold. He is returning to school today, Friday, November 6.

Elinor Brownfield

       Reading these words, I have a massive heart attack—maybe even three massive attacks. Perhaps my heart simply stops functioning. I simply did not expect to find Elinor’s note to Principal Tremblay.
       I shake my head several times then look up at Hawker. I don’t even know why I look up at him at all. He’ll be no emotional support.
       Then I look back at Elinor’s note, folding it up and slipping it into The Bay bag.
       He nods at the note. “Love letter?”
       Hawker can never keep his mouth shut.
       “Fuck off!”
       “Is that what you plan to do?”
       “Fuck you!”
       Hawker becomes quiet, focusing on his finger half-moon, especially the middle finger. He may be being suggestive, but I am not entirely sure. After Hawker squeezes the dramatics out of this pause, and perhaps he is getting fed up with his half-moons, he looks down at me dramatically.
       “I’m actually here for a particular reason.”
       “Your immediate death, Hawker?”
       “Principal Tremblay sent me to find you.”
       I look down at the The Bay bag, then up to Hawker. “What for?”
       Hawker examines his captivating half-moons once again. “That’s up to him.”
       “Which happens to be?”
       Hawker shrugs. “Things.”
       “Listen, exactly what did Principal Tremblay ask you to do concerning me?”
       “Well—“
       “Well what?”
       “He kinda—“
       Instead of examining his treasured half-moons, Hawker twists his left wrist so that his gold watch catches the florescent light above, shining brilliantly, suggesting it was a lot more expensive, more grand—more everything—than it really is.
       Hawker knows all the tricks.
       I’m definitely not one of them. “Kinda what?” I ask.
       “Wants to kinda have a word with you before you go home today.”
       I suddenly feel anxious. I honestly do not know why, but whenever Principal Tremblay wants to see me—beyond extremely rare—I always feel anxious.
       “What does Principal Tremblay want anyway?”
       Hawker doesn’t answer my question directly. He hardly ever answers questions directly. First he tells me he happened to be walking by the administrative office when Principal Tremblay called him over.
       “I was walking down the hall when Principal Tremblay politely called me over to him. He was quite jovial in nature when he asked me to find you and tell you his desires.”
       For sure, that is a load of shit.
       First, and most importantly, Principal Tremblay has never been all that polite. He has a more demanding personality, really. How this theatrical scene probably went was something like this: Hawker happened to walk by the administrative offices. The office door abruptly opened. Principal Tremblay quickly emerged, saw Hawker, and snapped his fingers twice. Highly nervous, Hawker reluctantly walked toward him. Principal Tremblay instructed Hawker to track me down and tell me he wants to see me—immediately.
       That’s pretty much what happened, I figure, but I continue to ask Hawker why Principal Tremblay wanted to see me.
       “To be honest, he told me directly not to tell you why he wanted to see you.” Obviously Hawker is lying.
       I almost laugh. “You’re so full of shit, Hawker.”
       Hawker returns to studying his half-moons again, particularly his middle finger’s half-moon. For the first time I notice all of his cuticles are chewed and bloodied, as if his cuticles are something of a little pre-dinner snack for him.
“That’s what Principal Tremblay told me, Brownfield.”
       I’ve had enough of Hawker. Too much is definitely too much. I swipe the balance of my goodbye crap into the three disposal Loblaw’s bags, stand up, and walk toward the garbage bins. I toss all three Loblaw’s bags into the same bin while keeping The Bay bag and basketball safely in my other hand.
       Just before I open the door to freedom, Hawker oddly says, “You know, Brownfield, you come on all the time like you're this really great guy. But you’re not so goddamn great. And you don’t think anyone knows that. Well, let me tell you something: I do. I can see through you, just right through you.”
       I don’t know why, but Hawker’s harsh words make me come to an abrupt stop. His further words hit me worse.
       "And guys like you, Brownfield, are walking time bombs ready to explode at any given time.” After a short pause, he adds, “Just like Elinor.”
       Hawker’s observant predictions catch me off board, stunning me in my thinking ability. Wanting to get away from Hawker as fast as possible, I yank open the locker room door and speed through the now empty gym.
       As for what Principal Tremblay wants from me?
       Simple.
       In his office, Principal Tremblay gives me literature on living in Paris and the academic benefits of being accepted and graduating from the American University of Paris. I did not expect it at all. In the end, his eyes fill with warm understanding.
        He shakes my hand and warmly confides in me. “I was really sorry about your mother, Matthew. I was just a little older than you when it happened to my own mother.”
        I nearly burst out crying. But I don’t. I’ve learned that when a guy reaches a certain age, he just bottles all of his emotions and expresses them only when he’s perfectly alone.

15:03

WHERE AM I NOW: Sitting against a tree in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery.
WHY: I'll be in 天堂很長一段時間.
SUBJECT: Thoughts about life & adieu from such.
MUSIC PLUGGED INTO MY EARS: “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack & other songs by same.

I exit the school building from the side door and walk towards the bike stand. ...

_______________

page , A Certain Personal Diary & Introduction of Rodney the Rat - BOOK I

_______________

TO PURCHASE

A Certain Personal Diary &

Introduction of Rodney the Rat

** BOOK I **

SEE BEST eBOOK DEALS

______________

ALL IMAGES FROM GOOGLE IMAGES, LINKS, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, UNSPLASH, FLICKR COMMONS,

ATLANTIC MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER,THE NEW YORK TIMES, PRINT PERFECT CLIP ART DELUXE (PPCAD - RF),

US NATIONAL ARCHIVE, THE MEDIUM (MEDIUM II), UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MISSISSAUGA ARCHIVE, TENOR, PUBLIC DOMAIN, GIPHY, INTERNET ARCHIVE, ECSU (ERINDALE COLLEGE STUDENT UNION), WORDPRESS, BLUEHOST, GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES, OLD BOOK ILLUSTRATION, AMERICAN MILITARY ARCHIVE, FREE STOCK PHOTOS, CANADIAN LEGION MAGAZINE, SMITHSONIAN, LEGAL AGREEMENTS,  PERSONAL OWNERSHIP, ONE.COM & TROY FAMILY FOUNDATION

______________

All Rights Reserved - See Legal Note