Oneonta The Novel

A gripping novel about coming of age in the most corybantic of places and times, Oneonta in the early 90s. No syrupy sentimentality here, this is a deep dark comedy about surviving the pitfalls of unrestrained bacchanalia, of staying sane while surrounded by madness, of discovering purpose in the confusion of aimless youth, and the ultimate triumph when purpose is finally realized and the first steps are taken on the road to controlled destiny...
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FROM THE BACK COVER:
Hank Gardner was an aspiring guitarist trapped in the boredom of his youth on Long Island in the late 1980s. While he had dreamed of escaping via the fame and fortune of rock & roll stardom, he realized that this was not going to actually happen and that he had better find an alternate escape route before he got stuck there for good. All seemed hopeless until he began hearing stories of a college in upstate New York that had been ranked the best party school in the country. Oneonta quickly became his beacon of salvation, and the acceptance letter to this school became what he thought would be his ticket to experience everything that life had to offer. When he got there, it was everything he imagined it would be-alcohol, drugs, sex, freedom-but he failed to consider what four years of unrestrained indulgence would do. A psychotic episode on some potent LSD during which he thinks he has died and is smoking marijuana with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley makes him realize what a mess his life had become. After recovering from this episode, Hank attempts to find direction via love: first with Maria Viola, a girl he went to high school with who had been in love with him since ninth grade; then with Virginia Duvall, the girl of his dreams who shows up out of nowhere at their dorm room but gets involved with one of his friends; and finally with Lucy Burns, a licentious alcoholic honors student whom he finds at the bottom of the barrel. Through the writings of his hero, Jack Kerouac, Hank is finally able to find the inspiration he needs to find a new road that will lead him out of town with an education he could have gotten in no other place.
EXCERPTS:
The houses in town are old timberboxes, some with fraternity letters crudely nailed to them, many with empty beer kegs littering their front porches. Down on Main Street are sooty old four and five story brick buildings with street level shops and apartments on the floors above. A block south of Main there is Water Street, which is more of a paved alley running between the three-story parking garage and the legendary strip of sixteen bars squeezed into vacant spaces on the backsides of the Main Street buildings. Bars such as the Alley, Paradise, the Sip & Sail Tavern, Sports On Tap, the Black Oak-their neon signs glowing in the windows like beacons signaling the real beginning of my life.
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I didn't know how long I was out, but when I opened my eyes I was back in my room sitting on the edge of my bed. I felt feverish and my face was covered with sweat, so I got up and opened the window. The cold air felt good and I stared at the snow glittering in the dorm lights. My entire body started tingling and everything around me ground to a halt. The tingling became a tearing at the fiber of my physical being and a solid glass sculpture shaped like my body fell out of me. I made a fumbling attempt to catch it, but I missed. When it hit the floor it shattered into a million tiny pieces except for two bleeding red chunks on top of the pile. Like a guilty child I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but no one was there. The lights were out and several candles were burning in wax-streaked beer bottles. Bob Marley's fluorescent cartoon head inside one of the posters on the wall started laughing, and next to him a miniature Jimi Hendrix was sitting Indian-style loudly chewing a wad of gum and strumming a scorched Stratocaster.
"Look at da mess you made, mon " Marley laughed.