Noah Cicero: Best Behavior

For a week straight in January of 2009 I went with a book bag full of classic American literature to the Waffle House. I drank coffee and ate the same thing every night. I ate one waffle, two sausage patties, two over-easy eggs, and grits. I ate my grits with butter and sugar.

The books I brought with me were The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, and Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney.

I would show up at the Waffle House off I-80 in Hubbard at 12:30AM and place the books on the table.

The server would ask, “Noah, what are you doing?”

I would respond, “I'm doing important research.”

I wanted to write a book. A book that would define a generation. Why I would want to do that, I don't know. Probably boredom. Sometimes people get bored and think that it would be good to keep busy by writing a novel that defines a generation.

She would say, “My son wouldn't stop vomiting today.” I'd respond, “Did you take him to the doctor?” The server would respond, “Yeah, got a script for antibiotics. He’ll probably be better tomorrow.” Then the server would go away.

Every night I would read through the books, trying to decipher, attempting to get the secret knowledge that enabled the aforementioned authors to write a novel that defined a generation. Usually I would be in very deep thought and the server would say, “Noah, do you need some more coffee?” I would look up and say, “Yes, please.” The server would pour me more coffee. I would drink the coffee. Hours would pass. Sometimes I would knock my head on the books. Truckers eating scrambled eggs and waffles would laugh. Twice I started crying. Ernest Hemingway kept making fun of me. F. Scott Fitzgerald got drunk and threw up in my car. William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, and Phillip Roth sent me emails asking why they weren't in my book bag.

I tried to remember the first time I read each book. I was still in high school when I read The Sun Also Rises and On the Road . They made me very excited about life. The books assumed that life was really great and that happiness was awesome. I learned recently that much of the 20th Century's happiness was caused by the industrial use of oil, natural gas, and coal. Which led to a food surplus. Which meant these old great novels, where the reader is supposed to assume that the zeitgeist is creating all this new happiness, it is actually false and that many of the books of the 20th Century can be shelved under, “Massive Oil use and its Effects on Humans.”

When I was sitting at the Waffle House during those nights in January of 2009, I had a pretty cynical view of reality. I had just read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, The Medieval World by Norman Cantor, The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler and Pimp by Iceberg Slim. Those books helped me view the world as a pile of shit where there was no spiritual value to anything; everybody just did things that made them feel better, everyone. All the people of earth, and even animals, have their own private absurd version of reality. Also that human life depends upon resources, good soil, and governments with just procedures.

Writing a novel that defined a generation would not be easy. I knew that. I knew I needed things. I needed to have a generation. According to the Internet, since the characters in this novel are all born between 1980 and 1985, this novel is about Generation Y. Some people call this generation the Millennial Generation. I would personally like to name my generation. It has always been a dream of mine. Here are some ideas:

People-who-like-Gadgets Generation

(Can be shortened to Gadget Generation)

Text Message Generation

Graduate College with no Jobs Generation

Internet Porn Generation

iPod Generation

Cigarettes-got-really-Expensive-so-everyone-Stopped-Smoking Generation

Some-went-to-War, Some-went-to-College, some-just-Hung-Out Generation

Ironic Generation

These slogans will never be picked up. They aren't flashy or short. But Ironic Generation might work.

None of the books helped. They weren’t books about my generation. I personally do not know what the word 'generation' means. I assume the word 'generation' implies a collection of people that were born and raised during certain eras in specific countries by a previous generation that has their own special name. But there are constants between the generations that must be recognized, everybody from every generation shits, eats, needs shelter, has sex, and doesn't enjoy when bad things happen.

So the questions are:

How do they shit, how did they inhabit those shelters, how did they have sex, and respond to bad things. I guess those are the questions, and here is a really long answer:

This book was written to Of Montreal 's

“The Past is a Grotesque Animal”

“Then she threw everything off the shelf at my head,” said Tony.

We were sitting at Denny's at three in the morning after drinking at several bars. Tony's face seemed completely calm. The man had a Master’s degree with honors and over 50 thousand dollars’ worth of college loan debt.

Tony's face looked older. I've known him for years. Twice a year he comes back home from New Mexico and looks older. I wondered if I looked older. I'm 28; he's like 26. Time has passed. We've accomplished things. He has a masters, I have four books published. He's had like 200 girlfriends, all with a beginning, middle and end. I almost got married to a woman but that experiment failed. Now I live with another woman named Amanda, much different from the last, in both appearance and psychological makeup. But we aren't lovers. I realized on a Thursday in ‘05 while washing my hair that I needed a friend more than a lover. So we became friends and not lovers.

“Then I grabbed her neck,” said Tony.

Tony kept saying strange things to me about domestic violence and a rich girl that went to New York City to become a lawyer.

Then Tony said, “She was like a child.”

That sounded strange to me. Like a child. I've met these women all my life. I've met those men all my life. Children. Adults behaving like children. But the child he was referencing got excellent grades and was going to become a lawyer. She was what the world called A good kid . The Teacher's pet. The kid who got all the stars. The kid who grew up in the gated community with a doctor or business owner for a dad. This girl throws books at Tony's head.

“She grew a garden but let everything die.”

I thought what kind of person lets a garden die?

I said, “But you seem so nice when you're around me.”

He said, “Maybe there's a secret me you don't know about.”

“There probably is.”

“One time we fought for hours.”

“What started the fight?”

He looks up trying to remember the initiation and said, “I don't remember. I can't honestly name what started the fights. I remember the fights, but not what started them.”

“Nothing serious.”

“No, nothing serious like bills or anything that concerned life. Usually she ruminated about being fat till I couldn't take it anymore. Or she would be really mad about the dog.”