There are a number of reasons why I don’t have a book yet, I told Vail. One reason could be that I’m not writing my cover letters properly. Another could be that I’ve been too lazy, that I haven’t been sending out my manuscripts out to enough publishers and agents. Another reason could be that publishers don’t know what they’re missing out on. Another reason, a very strong reason, could be that my writing is still shit.
She just laughed and adjusted my tie. I liked looking at her when she was standing directly in front of me. She put my portfolio in my hand.
“Now, you bastard,” she said, “go to as many creative directors as possible today and show them all that shit you’ve been working on.”
I didn’t want another copywriting job but she insisted that I looked for one. If you are not making money as a novelist, the only other way to make money while doing what you love is getting into journalism, public relations or advertising copywriting. Somehow I have always chosen advertising copywriting. I’ve learnt that there’s an art to copywriting, a certain writing style you have to master so that you may justify the existence of your job. You can’t just write “BUY NOW! BUY NOW!” to make people buy products, you have to make your ads clever somehow, artistic somehow. “You need to have a great idea,” they always say, “you have to compress days of information into one, catchy phrase.” Companies have large budgets dedicated to copywriters. They have schools dedicated to copywriting. They have awards given to great copywriters. They have books about copywriting, they have books about legendary copywriters.
I adjusted my collar while Vail kept saying things. I was being prep talked by a woman to go and find a job. I truly am growing up.
“Remember,” she said. “Do it for the money. You need the money. Bryce Courtney started in advertising, remember?”
"Bryce Courtney?" I gave her a kiss and left to find work.
The weekend was not a travesty. The holidays swept by with not much excitement or drama. For some reason I think I’d grown a little taller: things now looked slightly skewed, slightly smaller.
Instead of finding a new job, I decided to spend the rest of whatever I had on a holiday. I took Vail from wherever she was and I drove us both around in her car and we headed west, I think, and then changed our minds and decided to drive northish, by the coastline.
There’s something strange about being with a girl every day. Once you become accustomed to her, she’ll look completely different to how she looked when you saw her for the first time. You’ll spot the better things. You’ll spot the uglier things. We’d change in her car; in the evenings we’d sit in the back seat and fight over what music is playing and we’d take turns poking our heads out of the window on the right hand side of the car and we’d exhale the smoke from our borrowed cigarettes. We slept in a lot of parking lots and street sides. I wished I was lying when I told her that I still liked her.
We didn’t watch the fireworks. I didn’t know when the new year arrived. I was sleeping somewhere, I don’t remember. When I woke up, Vail whispered that we were two days into January. She asked me what my resolutions were and I asked her what the hell hers were.
Ethan claims that he is the type of guy who isn’t sentimental about things. He’ll go to places but won’t take photos. He’d work and then go home. He’d laugh but not remember why he laughed a week later. Ethan studied overseas for four years, and when he returned home, he was unemployed for one year. Frustrated, he returned overseas. He worked for a while in post production for a porno company. He never got to meet the girls. He is now an engineer for a German company. What kind of engineer, don’t ask me. He gets angry quite quickly; he doesn’t mind threatening people once in a while if he believes that he is right and the other person is wrong. He is often right and the other person is often wrong. He decided to become an atheist at one point in his life. It was a point when everything was supposedly terrible. As a kid, Ethan loved a few things, one of which included a toy someone gave him for Christmas. He has a wife and a child, but they don’t live in this country. He can support them much better here.
You never see what Ethan does inside his room. Normally, after you’d knock, you’d just see him as he comes out, in his singlet and trousers, and when he spots you he’ll say something along the lines of, “Are you ready?”
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