I think at this point I may have been either on my way back to Chicago after dropping out of college or already there. I was largely writing down story ideas at this point.
Plot line: a young man is dating a girl who cheats on him because he doesn’t have sex with her. The reasons for this latter are that he is too much a “nice guy” to push the issues and she is holding back somewhat to hide the fact that she isn’t a virgin. (Perhaps a few incidents where she tries to get him drunk for their first encounter might be included for comic relief. I suppose either she ends up drunk and unconscious or drunk and in bed with someone else). The young man isn’t stupid: he has suspicions of what’s going on with his girlriend, but he choose to think the best of her and if she has done wrong, he’ll forgive her (aah! the forgiveness thing is back!) The story is a first person narrative from the P.O.V. of the young man’s best friend. He also sleeps with the girlfriend and breaks off his friendship because he is forgiven. The girl leaves the young man as well for the same reason.
Story idea: A sort of Perry Mason in the hills story. Some college students in the 20’s are arrested in a small rural town in Missouri for possession of illegal booze by an over-zealous sheriff. The town is set o lock them up for five or ten years until the town’s mayor manages to talk them out of it, partly through verbal talent and partly through exposing the hypocrisy in the town’s attitude. Sort of Mark Twain–like thing.
The second story idea kind of falls flat to me, but on reviewing this journal back in the ’00s when I was trying to rekindle my writing practice and looking to see if there was anything worth reviving, I wrote this one, telling it as if it were the narrator in the confessional. One of my failed stories that will remain forever trunked.
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