Schakney's Burger Joint

The Setting: Chili's. Friday night. Table for 2 at a booth. Early fall day.

The Characters: Myself and the ex.

Two patrons unknowingly share their last meal together in a chain restaurant in the middle of Illinois.

Topics of conversation: Anything that one doesn't want to talk about but the other one addresses it.

Awkward silences that hang in the air for no reason. Anger over selecting the location taking more time than it should. Water and diet soda for the gentleman. A margarita for the lady that hits the lady harder than it should.

Preface: I had been working on a book for a solid hour a night for a while. It was coming along great with plotting and story structure.

With those particulars out of the way, let's focus on the main thrust of the conversation that I still vividly recall at the dinner table. Mainly, the topic of what I was writing.

It was easy to put in to words what it could be, and what it was becoming. Any other project that I worked on would return to the land of could  have been stories the moment I mention them to someone. I don't know why the project would collapse, it just did. This applies to anything, drawings, games, writings. So when she kept stabbing at me for the details, I couldn't really put it out there. I wasn't ready for any kind of feedback because it was still becoming something.

There was a weird interest about the subject coming from here. She cared enough to ask, to at least acknowledge that I had been creating something, but that is where it should have stayed. She pressed on, probably because we were having dinner at a place that wasn't her first choice (neither was it mine, but those details are as important now as they were to her that night).

Flash forward to today. I haven't touched the story in months. After that night, the wind got knocked out of me pretty hard. I tried to pick up the keyboard, to open the files and fall in to the world I created to make something of it. Even the times since then bring about this weird feeling inside.

When I was building the story, I wasn't drinking I was someone completely different than what I am today. Occasionally I will look at the files to try and focus on it again. Not so much the thought of scratching an itch, but a reminder of how I got the scar.

But here I am today, at least talking about it. If I'm going to dip my toes in, might as well cannonball.

The story followed a kid I was going to call Marcus. He worked at a diner called Schakney's. There were a couple of the restaurants in a small town. A lot of what happened to him and his time there was going to be a patch work of my own restaurant experience, as well as some additional fiction.

There was going to be an incident, either a robbery gone wrong, or something where Marcus was attacked by someone he trusted. My goal was to make the situation something that showed the town's racial side, where Marcus saw that it wasn't that. The idea was that at the end of the book would have Marcus making a decision whether to leave town or not. It was a classic coming of age story for a teenager. Marcus' problem was going to be that he trusted people at face value and didn't think things were as bad in the town until he was forced to look at the cracks.

There were going to be smaller, funnier moments. I have a lot of restaurant stories to tell from the time at Steak n Shake that would have worked oh so well. Part memoir/part false reality/part false hope from my mind to the page.

Every time I think of that story, I end up thinking about that night, that dinner, and the end of the relationship. I haven't been able to write at my old desk since then. When I was still in Illinois, I would turn on the music, sit at my desk, and just freeze up. I would get in to that world and then I was transported back in to the room that I wrote it in, surrounded by my books, video games, and just being immersed. Going back to that setting just reminds me of the time with her, of the home we shared, and of the interruptions from my cat and dog. Even now it hits a bit. But this is the first time I'm writing it down, trying to move past it.

A part of me gets angry because this was my story and my memories and I get the feeling like they are being held hostage behind bars of nostalgia with each memory that we shared buried deep in the cement blocking my way out.

I'm going to pick that story up again someday. Where I was going, what I was creating, it is all begging to get out. Time will be my armor to confront this tangled mess. Let these be the first steps.