IN-PROCESS EXCERPT FROM: "THE LAST GREAT american NOVEL"

THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT IS A FORMAL IN-PROCESS "EXCERPT" OF "THE LAST GREAT american NOVEL," BY JOSEPH R. REEVES.
ALL MATERIAL, CONTENT, AND RIGHTS ARE RESERVED SOLELY BY JOSEPH R. REEVES. ANY UNAUTHORIZED USE OF SUCH CONTENT OR MATERIAL IS GROUNDS FOR LEGAL PROSECUTION, AND IF I CAN FIND YOU, AN ASS WHOOPING AS WELL. DON'T FUCK WITH MY WORK.

EXCERPT FROM:
CHAPTER 1 OF "THE LAST GREAT american NOVEL,"
(MID-PAGE,NO CONTEXT PROVIDED)
IN PROCESS

ALL EXCERPTS ARE PUBLISHED IN NON-CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER A.K.A: I post whatever I want whenever I want!

* * *
Since I had gotten to Chassy’s flat 3 days earlier, I had not changed out of her pocketless sweatpants, and as a result, I missed the 4 calls Dylan had made to me around 8 that evening. My cellphone uselessly vibrated its disgraceful rendition of Beethovens masterpiece, while in the heap of jeans on the floor that gesturally signified the urgent undressing of a seven year old. They were in a pile such as that, if I suddenly needed- I could simply step into the two open leg holes and pull the over stretched, unwashed, leather-belt lined waist up past my crotch, and into proper order. The belt wasn’t even undone, and I have this strange hipswinging move that works to pull my pants over my ass-less rear, and into a snug fit around my waist without damaging the male apparatus.
If I hadn’t been neglecting my whole pocket system in the first place, I would have gotten his call 4 hours ago. I have it all down to a science really, and in fact im quite proud of its efficiency. You can really learn a lot about a person by their pockets. I don’t know what that suggests on my behalf, but that’s for you to decide anyhow. My left pocket contains my cell phone, a very small swiss army knife, and usually a condom.
My right ass pocket, is generally my free pocket and is reserved for paper documents I come across, or lighters if I have any grass. I keep almost every flier, letter, note, recipe, or miscellaneous document that comes into my possession, and have since grade school. I keep it all, usually folded in fourths, and it gets filed into my right ass pocket under the presumption that I will use it for art someday, but who really knows. My senior year of High school, I made a giant collage of the hundreds of detention slips I had kept since middle school for some reason, and that single project is my only proof that there may be some hidden use for all this random garbage. These archives of lotto tickets, phone numbers, recipes, late fees, police tickets, movie stubs, receipts, and notes may very well turn out to be the accumulation of my life. Hell maybe I will have a casket filled with these random slips in the long run- however it happens, I am positive my funeral will somehow be an installation of some sort.
Since my younger days of bootlegging grass, I don’t regularly have much weed to myself, so the lighter is not as common a tenant in the apartment that is my pants, as it once was in High School. You’ll note that I say “bootlegging,” because this whole war on drugs, or at least grass anyhow- will be a foolish footnote in the embarrassing chapter of american history that we find ourselves in currently. I do believe we are on the eve of americas true birth, however I fear for what the child will grow up to be like. Either way though, america’s capitalistic ideals will surely change all this grass business, it’s merely a matter of time. I will laughingly tell my grandchildren of the good old days, back when grandpa Joe used to be a weed bootlegger in the great american pot prohibition. We will all have a laugh.
My right pocket contains no wallet, because I have this wallet theory that basically revolves around the fundamental recognition that a wallet is a house for several levels of needs- money, identification, business cards, pictures, etc- and when left in the possession of an absent minded person such as myself, it only takes one simple mishap to lose ALL of those very important things; thus forth making it too substantial of a liability for me. I am however, in favor of money clips, because it treats the cash as a single entity in itself, and dosen’t offer the “convenience” or in my opinion “burden,” of affiliating all your legal identification, and other such good government bullshit type sub-contents, with your much needed dough. If you happen to lose any of that stuff, you risk not only the fee of replacing it, but a whole day of waiting at some cluttered overpopulated DMV stink-hole type place, and thats not to mention the third problem, being that you may not even be able to get a few whiskey sours in your system before you have to go to the godforsaken place. Bartenders are pretty fuckin’ serious about serving minors nowadays too- I know because I had considerable financial success in the fake I.D. business from the age of 16 till 20. One of the many hustling schemes I would develop as a product of being a young trouble maker from a lower middle class Irish family, in a wealthy white suburb. Obviously one of the lesser known folk heroes now, here on the eve of america, but I’m telling you, just wait and see- I’ve got big plans to change all that. Probably beginning with the re-structurization of contemporary american pocket theory.
In my left ass pocket, is a mini sketch book, and although I forgot to mention this item in my inventory of the front right pocket, there is always a trusty pen, if not two. It is almost always a blue bic, and it is always acquired through theft. I don’t know that it’s even possible to really steal a blue bic- even if you told someone your not going to give it back, I doubt they’d bat an eye. They come and go so often as value-less items, it’s almost like borrowing a penny. No one really gives a shit if you give it back or not. I’m not that way though. Im majorly obsessive about my blue bic, and the longer I go with the same one, the more disappointed I am if I lose it. This, along with the occasional lighter, are the only items in my pocket system that are subject to go missing. My mini sketch book on the other hand, is more important than my identification and whatever amount of crumpled sweaty singles I may have in my right pocket any day. I am on my fifth mini sketch book, and if I am ever motivated without purpose, I can go through any one of those books to review a plethora of ideas and concepts and sketches of movies, scripts, poems, sculptures, JUICE lists, or girls phone numbers- its like an idea book, or a really disorganized organizer.
This discombobulated mess of ideas, that I call a sketchbook, is crucial to documenting my many schemes and concepts in my latest business, in being a producer of dreams. I was after all, named Joseph after the great dreamer in the holy bible. I come up with ideas at approximately twenty times the rate in which I can bring these ideas to life. Put another way- for every twenty times I jot an idea down, I actually end up completing a project of relative significance. I have approximated this by analyzing the ratio of concepts to projects, and although it is a somewhat rough estimate, I confidently stand by my projection. Scientific reasoning has determined that this soaring rate of conceptual inspiration can be linked to the mania involved in Bipolar disorder, but I myself am not quite sure of this, or many other things involving myself. I am pleased however, with the comforting notion, that by age 30, I can retire from thinking- and spend the rest of my days following through with all these unused concepts. If I don’t do that, I can just pass all the concepts down to my kids. Almost like drawing 20 paintings, and leaving them for my son to finish painting- a never ending collaboration. With my luck though, the damn kid will probably have the same problem as me, maybe even producing concepts at a much greater ratio then me. Maybe I can start some kind of art bank, to deposit concepts, paintings, poems, or other items america cant find a dollar within?

* * *
I do believe- against many cold post-modernist ideals- that originality is alive and well, and anyone who says that you cannot make art that is new, since it has all been done; is ignoring the fact that context is ever changing, and art cannot have meaning without context.
That being said, I will shamelessly and openly discuss my influences in effort to enrich and explore my writing further. I just read “Deadeye Dick,” by Kurt Vonnegut- that’s where I saw his most excellent style of using * * * to break up all these fragments of his stories within chapters. I guess that’s kinda like sub-chapters, but anyhow, I saw him do it, and now like a toddler, I am adapting it to my own use.
And lets not forget that after all, in essence, this is a book about a journey across america, or at least the search for america- how can you not roll your eyes in relativity to kerouak, or On the Road? Travels with Charly, by Steinbeck? Im not re-inventing the wheel here, and neither were they.
Warhol had once said that he would rather watch someone buy their underwear, than read a book they wrote. I would tend to agree with him given that the person is a halfway attractive female, however I believe Warhol meant this statement to a different effect than that of my own perversion- I believe he was suggesting that something so simple as buying underwear, might have more impact on your impression of them, then reading an entire book they wrote.
Forest gump said you can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear, which also makes sense.
My brown leather shoes from pay-less have withstood 2 years of existence with me, but are now seeing the end of their days. They look deceptively fancy, but my right shoe has a hole in its bottom that has worn identically placed holes in all my socks. When it rains, I find bread bags work efficiently to keep your socks from getting wet. Wet socks might be the worst thing in the world as far as I’m concerned.
Also, I am by the way, wearing JOE BOXER underwear, with little donkeys, and toy jacks all over them. Get it- JACK ASS. My loving parents bought them for me at Christmas time, because for some reason, the whiteness of my undershirts, along with the amount of underwear I have- seems to be my mothers main preoccupation in life currently. I don’t mind them though, and I’m thankful for anything I can get my hands on for free now a’days. I figure I look silly enough in my underwear so, why should I feel the need to devote any sense of seriousness to my imperfect figure.
Being able to laugh at yourself, is the best defense you can hope for when life seems more like an endurance contest. And it brings to mind something my grandma used to laugh hysterically about after saying. “If you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.”