N.L. and the $6 novel - By N.L. Belardes

Most of my artistic work is autobiographical. Readers don't know this because they've read Lords: Part One or the Blimperwhirls. Both are works filled with fictionalized characters about crazed Bakersfieldians and crazed toymakers.

Here's something new: a downloadable novel, a $6 novel to be exact. That's a lot cheaper than Lords: Part One. The format will look sweet, just like a novel in a 5 x 7.75 inch format...

The $6 novel itself? Thick White Crust is a Chicano lit work filled with magic realism and issues beyond those described in my article for Más magazine titled, "The Crisis of Ethnic Dualism in Latino California." Taking a Chicano view of 9-11, the novel describes a character based on myself as I came back to Bakersfield in 2001. The story occurs just as 9-11 is transpiring in the East and blends with the narrator's own strange connection to such a multicultural event as its resonance is felt in the West...

Here's a brief excerpt. More to come in the next few days, including the novel itself...




WHITEFLIES AND WIDOWS This morning, clouds of whiteflies surrounded me. Like little pieces of confetti they sailed as if celebrating my return to Bakersfield. In Bonifacio’s car we sat at a stoplight and watched them swirl around the hood, past the windows, around the mirrors as they migrated toward some unknown place in the city; a place I hope I will be crowned their King and fly alongside them.

Last night as I waited for Bonifacio to come and pick me up from the University I was covered with baby spiders. I sat near a bus stop on a low cement wall, my head tilted toward my chest in near slumber when I saw a little creature dangle from my black-rimmed glasses and drift downward toward my khaki pants. I squished it onto my left thigh. Its little black legs curled in death as I pressed upon it thinking it was a gnat, not believing it had really been a spider spinning from me, drifting downward as if jumping from a great tower. It fell to the ground. I had seen its many legs, but thought it must have been my imagination. As I waited a few more minutes I looked down to see my pant legs were crawling with spiders. Immediately, I jumped to brush my pants and stomp my feet in the darkness. I had already been filled with anxiety and sorrow from being alone in the dark, alone in the computer commons, writing, in isolation. Now I was filled with dread, with visions of black widows. I felt their tiny bites all over my body. In the morning I awoke with bites under my shirt. They had crept upon me like tiny devils—Latrodectus demonic arachnids. I had been told they evolved in the Southern San Joaquin. They were everywhere here and in the desert. And I saw them everywhere that night.

On the telephone when I called Bonifacio for a ride from the University he asked me if I was all right. I was not, although I told him, yes. I had watched as a widow weaved herself from the payphone to the ground. I grew frightful when I lost sight of her. Her shadow crept across the pavement as she spun web somewhere hidden that I could not see. “I will be there in twenty minutes,” Bonifacio said as I watched the spider’s shadow grow to an enormous size, her nimble legs like fingers reaching, clawing. I feared her jaws as she seemed about to crawl on me, to sink her venom like her sister had once done, causing me to cramp, to sweat, to thrash, and to have more visions of her in humanoid form: seducing, poisoning through my dreams; blowing kisses of venom, threatening death in a morphine dripping, non-sleeping hell. She had crept across the ground near the telephone. I watched her legs move and weave. She stretched out across the sidewalk as if she wanted to feel the coolness of the ground against her hourglass belly. Her sister hung from under a bench I wanted to sit upon. I could see that her bulbous body wanted to bite a thigh. Another hung against a wall, low to the ground in a mish-mash of webs that tangled into a non-uniform mess of steely strands. I was already frightened with chills. The baby spiders caused my skin to raise in goose bumps and nightmarish visions. I waited for my legs to cramp. I felt like the spiders were still under my shirt creeping and biting. I waited to feel the sweats. A bus pulled up and sped away quickly. There was one man upon it. I was told the buses were no longer running. Still, no sweats. I felt pangs and pinpricks along my arms and hands. I felt a million spiders march their way toward me through the grasses where I now stood under a tree. I felt them dropping from above and blowing in the breeze in little parachutes of silk. My skin crawled in horror and I thought about just walking away from the University to Bonifacio’s home to escape my fright.

I felt guilty that I had called Bonifacio. I didn’t have enough money for a bus anyway. I would have to walk several miles to Elm Street in the spider darkness. Bonifacio was my salvation. He pulled up and I was clearly distraught.
“Get in, Xavier,” he said. “Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m fine. I feel guilty about this car ride.” I had been sleeping on his couch. I could feel the spiders still upon me. I wanted to leave and return to Las Vegas. I wanted to go sleep in a shelter. I was tired of being a burden. Spiders crept into my soul and began weaving into the darkness there.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Tuesday, February 07, 2006. You can leave your response.