Nathan Tyree: An experiment in experimentation
I'm toying with the idea of a literary experiment. I'm going to post the opening paragraphs of that game here for your thoughts. Let me know if you'd be interested in reading the rest of this story.
Adventures in Alcoholism
Nathan Tyree
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Chapter One: 32 Minutes
I don’t want to tell you the story of how I started drinking. Even if I did, you wouldn’t want to hear it. It’s not one of those cute anecdotes that people pass around like joints at parties. It isn’t instructive, or educational. If I broke down and told you about it you wouldn’t learn anything and nothing would be illuminated. Anyway, my AA meeting story isn’t the reason I’m here. The reason I’m here is to share with you good people an entirely different story.
It was 3:27 pm when every living soul on the planet Earth simultaneously died due to massive hemorrhaging of the blood vessels surrounding their brains. By 3:33 there was not a single living thing on the planet. It would stay that way for almost 26 minutes. At 3:59 every man, woman and child was replaced with an exact replica of themselves. These replicas had perfect memories, except for the Nixon Tape-like gap of 3:27 to 3:59 August 15, 1999.
For some reason I ( or the replica me or whatever) remember (or remembers or whatever) that gap. I have detailed recollections of everything that happened in that time. The story I’m here to tell is the story of those 32 minutes.
Time for some background. I was out of college. Don’t misunderstand this: I’m not implying that I had graduated from University with some sort of degree. In point of fact, I was never even close to attaining a degree. The college experience had mostly been a dodge to avoid getting a job. Six years in it became clear that I was going to have to suck it up, admit that I wasn’t ever going to go to Law School and just get a fucking job. So that’s what I did.
I went to work as an assistant manager at Block Buster (or, as we called it, Black Bastard Video). By no stretch of the imagination could what I had be considered a career. It was a name tag job and that was all. I was sharing a shit hole apartment with a fellow drop out named Teddy. And I had just broken up with a chick named Liz. Anyway, that’s enough back ground for now.
August 15 is what you came for, so that’s what you’re gonna get. I was thirty-three minutes from the end of another soul numbing shift at work. This fat chick was grilling me about the plot details of the latest Bruce Willis action extravaganza.
(More to Come)
The plan for this odd story involves several strange methods of delivery. If I decide to do it it will branch it ways that I don't want to describe in too much detail at the moment.
Anyway...
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