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COOL: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF JON SPECK by Alex Glass submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Chair: /(b ------------- Richard McCann Kermit Moyer Dean o f the College Date 2001 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRA* ^ 96 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1403242 ___ ® UMI UMI Microform 1403242 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COOL: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF JON SPECK BY Alex Glass ABSTRACT Cool: The Social History o f Jon Speck is an original novel exploring sexuality, perceptions of masculinity, and the search for identity in a celebrity-obsessed culture. Twenty-four, Jon lives a solitary life in New York working a job he can’t respect, missing a hip college girlfriend whom he’s convinced once made him whole, and falling into new love affairs with pornography, popular culture, drugs, and alcohol. The bleak situation changes when two characters re-enter his life: Greg, a drug-dealing ladies man on the run from the police; and Mac, a coke-snorting investment banker living with his rich and dysfunctional parents. When Jon loses his job and best Mend in a blur of substance abuse, the three of them leave on a road trip. Across America he rediscovers old lovers, loses Greg and Mac to their own tragedies, and finally questions his values and determines what it really means to be cool. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................................ii Chapter 0 ........................................................................................................................................ 1 SECTION 1. HOW I GOT HERE Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................................2 1-5 ...................................................................................................................................15 2 ...................................................................................................................................... 17 3 ......................................................................................................................................29 4 ......................................................................................................................................41 5 ......................................................................................................................................80 5.5 84 6 ......................................................................................................................................85 7 ......................................................................................................................................89 8 .................................................................................................................................... 103 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SECTION 2. HOW I GOT OUT Chapter 9 ................................................................................................................................... 109 10 118 10.5 ..............................................................................................................................124 11 ................................................................................................................................. 125 12 ................................................................................................................................. 157 13 .................................................................................................................................175 14 .................................................................................................................................198 14.5 ............................................................................................................................. 213 15 ................................................................................................................................ 214 16 222 17 ................................................................................................................................ 240 18 ................................................................................................................................ 249 18.5 ............................................................................................................................. 267 19 ................................................................................................................................ 269 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 0 Here’s how it is now: I fall in love ten times a day. I dress immaculately. Police cars make me twitch. I still carry a flask, but only on weekends. But a shitload’s gone on. I’m much better than a year ago; I think I can say that and believe it. (A quick note: this little history is split into three sections: HOW I GOT HERE, HOW I GOT OUT, and, finally, WHERE I WENT. The “here ” in section one refers to a pretty unhappy period of time about a year ago, not the present here and now. WHERE I WENT has more to do with the here and now. OK, now, there’s some stuff about “how I got here” in HOW I GOT OUT and WHERE I WENT. Similarly, there might be something about “how I got out” in HOW I GOT HERE. It seemed to sort of generally fit under those three headings, though, so that’s how I left it. The good news is that there’s definitely nothing about “where I went” in HOW I GOT OUT or HOW I GOT HERE.) 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SECTION 1 HOW I GOT HERE CHAPTER 1 Here’s how it was a year ago, January, mid-nineties: I was living alone on Houston Street in lower Manhattan in a second floor walk-up studio directly above a live thrash club called the Spiral. At nightI drank scotch from a paper cup filled with ice and listened to The Smiths and 106.7 Lite-FM radio as loud as possible to drown out the pulsing and thumping and screaming coming from under my floor, assured both that none of my neighbors could hear what I was playing and that I had my own kind of insulation against the outside. I was surrounding myself with the misfit musics of the past; on one side (in my apartment), seventies faux-folk lovesongs by guys like Gerry Rafferty, their folksiness betrayed by soaring six-note guitar or sax solos probably tapped out on an electric keyboard and designed to choke up housewives and swell the hearts of drunks. And we can’t forget Morrissey’s bitter pompadoured morbidity and self-hatred—damn sophisticated tunes, though. Great tunes. Defied classification. On the other side (downstairs in the thrash club), eighties post-punk hatred of the world by the likes of The Nihilistics and The Cro-Mags whose mid-nineties audience was the forty-seven neo-goth squatters who regularly jogged over from Avenue C. A very close-knit community, there. And then me, the accidental thrasher, pushing my way through the lobby to get to the stairs,