Synopsis:
Peter can tell
you how to run a great marketing campaign. He can tell you everything there is
to know about successful trade show programs. He can tell you stories about the
thousands of people he has met, miles he has flown, hotel rooms he has stayed
in, and ways to work the system to your advantage. Still, he can’t tell the
woman he loves how he feels.
Peter in Flight
is a novella by Paul Michael Peters designed to be the perfect read for a
cross-country flight or extended layover. Life moves fast in this quick read
about a “trade show guy” and a love he thinks he can never have.
Buy Links –
Excerpt –
I’m in Vegas staying at the Hilton next
to the convention center. There’s a place in the hotel called Star Trek: The Experience, based on the
television series and movies. There are games and a Star Trek-themed bar along
with artifacts from the show and a “virtual experience.”
Two years ago during COMDEX, the largest
conference I attend, I made friends with a bartender at the Star Trek Experience. Dressed as an
alien character called a Ferengi, with a large prosthetic forehead and enormous
ears, he stands behind the bar on a riser. Once he is off the riser to grab a
drink or walk the floor you realize he is five feet tall at best. I only know
him as Phil the Ferengi, but he may be the best bartender I have ever met. He also owns a string of car washes.
“Hu-mon,” he greets me in character,
“what can I get you? Drink? Holodeck? Games?”
“Hello Phil, good to see you again.”
“Ah, yes hu-mon, I thought I recognized
you. What are you drinking tonight?”
“I’ll have a gin and tonic please.”
He steps up on his platform with the
drink when he returns. I know I can talk to him because it’s a slow night and I
know his name.
“How are your travels, hu-mon?”
“They’re good, thank you. How is your car
wash?”
“They are very profitable. All of this
desert dust can eat away at a car’s finish. But there’s also a new city ordinance; I have to “go green.”
“What will that mean for you?”
“I have to add these tanks that collect
used water, then filter it, and use it again. They call it gray water.”
“I can imagine why.”
“Are you sad, hu-mon? Or tired? You don’t
look well.”
“I’m losing sleep. I’ve never had this
problem before. I can usually sleep anywhere, but in the last week I can’t get
a full night.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“It is usually women or money. What’s her
name?”
“Tatiana. She is both unavailable and my
obsession.”
Phil grabs the bottle of gin and puts in
on the bar in front of me. “Do you know Plato?”
“The philosopher? A little.”
“Through Aristophanes, who was a peer of
Plato’s, we know this one interesting story about early hu-mons. Hu-mons were
not separate from one another, but were made in pairs. They had two heads, four
arms, and four legs. And they wouldn’t walk around so much as they would roll
around tucked up in a ball.”
“This is not Star Trek?”
“No, ancient Greek philosophers
describing the earliest version of humankind.”
“Go on.”
“So here they were—women and women, men
and men, men and women—all sorts of these paired creatures rolling at great
speed across the countryside of ancient Greece. The speed at which they move,
the power they have, starts building confidence in humanity. The confidence
turns to pride. And it’s with this pride, what the Greeks call hubris, that they decide they are better
than the gods and try to overthrow them.”
A couple comes to the bar interrupting
Phil and he takes their order. Once they are settled, he returns.
“So the hu-mons think they can conquer
the gods. But when the hu-mons attack the gods, Zeus strikes them with such
great power that he splits them all in two. Now the hu-mons are sad, desperate,
and alone, and they start to kill themselves because they’re having a hard time
without the warmth and comfort of one another. Some remove themselves from the
community. Others get lost in the wilderness and are never seen again.”
“So what happens?”
“Zeus is wise. He and the other gods need
the hu-mons to worship them. While they are asleep, he changes their bodies to
what we know today, so that we walk upright and find it easy to reproduce.”
“Interesting.”
“Well, here’s the part that applies to
you, sleepy hu-mon. After all of those changes, the gods left a memory, a
longing inside each of them for their other half. That craving for the other
half is instilled so deep inside, that we end up traveling the world searching
to fill that absence. And when we are fortunate enough to find that other half,
we know instantly—getting lost in the entwinement of friendship and love and
intimacy—that we have finally found home. People like this will spend their
whole lives together. If you ask them what they find attractive or appealing
about one another, they can’t explain it—they just know it’s right.”
“It’s a beautiful idea, that something is
missing from each of us, and we have to trust others to fill that. I guess the
heart wants what the heart wants; there’s no getting around it.”
“Easier to say, but I like my story
better.”
“Thanks for your time and the drinks,” I
say, getting up.
“Any time, hu-mon. We’re always open.”
Guest Post
“Absence makes
the heart grow fungus”
Travel can be so
romantic. Around the next corner of a hotel corridor you may bump into someone
famous or from the past to alter a day or life. A romantic place captured in
our shared imagination like Hawaii or Paris could be the start
of the next amazing adventure. When I think about travel, these possibilities
are what make it so captivating.
There are also
the realities. For many years I would be on the road for my job three weeks
each month. There would be times that I was more familiar with TSA agents and
hotel desk clerks in certain hotels than anyone back home. Bad food, stale air,
germs on everything – that is real.
Steven Page, Ed
Robertson lyrics “absence makes the heart grow fungus” from the song “Blame it
on me” are an insightful twist. Distance from a situation, a time, or a person
can make us long and burn for them. Enough time and distance can alter your
perceptions. Fantasy mixes with memory and it’s no longer a reality. For
example, when I returned to my elementary school, the doors, toilets, desks,
all seem to have gotten smaller than what I remember. Someone I had a major
crush on years ago seems less inspiring today. A realization my parents had
gotten so much older during one semester at university.
Parts of “Peter
in Flight” explore this idea. Peter, the protagonist, carries a flame for his
married boss, Tatiana (no spoiler here, it’s in the first chapter.) Readers
have asked me if there is a real Tatiana. I suspect we all have a Tatiana in
our lives. It’s why the story is so relatable. Sometime there is just no good
reason why we are attracted to a person. It could be physical, dangerous,
forbidden, or chemical. For some reason, you are attracted to the wrong person
at the wrong time. And that lyric pops in my head, distance away from that
person makes me want them more. It’s not the reality of bad smells, being irresponsible,
making bad choices or saying awful things. It’s the fantasy of a great body,
nice underwear, the amazing smells, and witty banter, understanding me
completely and totally. In this fantasy I can give into the moment and the
person so easily.
For Peter, this
time away, the memory of this woman he has an inexplicable crush on only gets
deeper. It grows like a fungus on his heart as he gets to enjoy only good times
talking with her frequently and seeing the photos of fun times on best days. He
rarely has to see bad hair days, a poor choice of outfit, the fights, or the
arguments. Peter lives in the trade show world where food is delivered,
everyone is pleasant, the beds are made and outfits cleaned for him.
Travel, like
literature, can do this. A week in Europe ,
Disney World, or camping in the mountains draws our attention to the moment.
The reality of daily life melts away. It’s a world of possibilities where you
can go to Rick’s Café and restart a revolution, follow a path of gold to an
almighty wizard, or find a notch in a tree with figures placed there by Boo
Radley. Travel makes us better and well-rounded people, citizens, and lovers of
the world.
Author Info –
Paul Michael
Peters is an American fiction writer based out of Ann Arbor Michigan. After
studying at the Second City in Chicago he spent extended periods of time living
in Philadelphia and Toronto before returning home to his beloved big mitten
shaped state. "Peter in Flight" is his debut work.
Author Quote
"I wrote this story while I traveled extensively for work between 1998 and 2008 taking notes on the things that happened on each trip. I could not include all the good stories. Looking back on my time on the road, I always liked to think of myself as George Clooney from Up in the Air, but in reality, I was John Candy from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."
"I wrote this story while I traveled extensively for work between 1998 and 2008 taking notes on the things that happened on each trip. I could not include all the good stories. Looking back on my time on the road, I always liked to think of myself as George Clooney from Up in the Air, but in reality, I was John Candy from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."
Link to blog
tour - http://wp.me/p3SVfE-dd
Giveaway –
One autographed copy of Peter in Flight for each tour stop
Sounds intriguing--a very human blend.
ReplyDeleteYes it does Sheila, thanks for stopping by.
Delete