In 2010, when I started the novel, All Together Now, it had no title and was begun on a dare. Maybe that was a ruse, but I needed the push. My friends and I were on a vacation in Cancun. We’d been drinking in the floaty bar pool (at least that’s what I called it). My good friend, Scott Chapin and his wife (who’s still with us, so I will respect her privacy) and I were drinking like Kennedys and per usual I was ranting about something or other.
Scott, an avid reader, said, “You know, you should write a novel.” Now, I had some poetry and short stories published in the nineties. However, I never really gave a novel much thought, maybe because I was lazy. The writing was a side hustle I attempted while playing in one of the five bands I had been in. They were each a group I was in for several years, as I was loyal and I was involved in starting each of them. I actually licensed some songs to several television shows in the nineties.
Yet here I was, long out of that game. I was working in a business that allowed me to earn a living with enough free time to do stand up comedy. While I think I was rather good, I still kept my day job. I always had a day job. I resented musicians or “artists” who lived off their girlfriends or wives. My attitude was that if I wanted to make it, it would not be someone else’s responsibility.
However, that day in the floaty bar, I had to come up with a response to Scott’s challenge. I had never been dared to write a novel. So, in a “touched by the hand of God” moment, not unlike Keith Richards writing the music for Satisfaction while stoned and passing out, I produced an inspired response. I said, “You know, man, I am just not possessed of that kind of truth.” Catchy, right? To which Scott said, “Bullshit. I have heard so many versions of that trip to the mid-east, there has to be a story in there.”
I never thought of that as more than an edgy memoir and said so. Scott said that I should make it fiction so then I could do whatever I’d like. About three months later, my father’s cousin died. I wasn’t, and still don’t, talk to my father. But it brought back some feelings I thought I had resolved. It made me think of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five and being “unstuck in time.”
When I was in the West Bank, Palestine, in February thru March 1988, it was during the first Intifada. I won’t spoil the book for you, but we can just say that I wasn’t there on a Eurail pass. I didn’t want to go, but the family pressure for this “errand” was incredible. Funny now, how I would have said fuck off without the slightest hesitation today. At 23, however, I still had a concept of family and forever. So, there’s that.
I decided I wanted this to be fantastic, a cross between Slaughterhouse Five and Fight Club. This book took three years and forty plus drafts to write. I had help with editing. My good friends Chris Bray and John Glenn really tackled some tough parts while being busy themselves. I appreciate that to this day. Sadly, as I was struggling with the wording of the ending, Scott was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, ALS. Toward the end of his life, I think I was wildly inspired by watching him. Nothing corny or “courageous.” He just had a grace of accepting the inevitable.
In August 2013, I finally declared that I was finished. Scott asked to read it again. I asked him if he didn’t have anything better to do. He said, “I’m dying. I got time.” When he finished it, I asked if he liked the ending. He said it was prefect. Maybe he sensed he had something to do with it as I didn’t say. Despite what criticisms were leveled at the ending, I had peace. I knew that he got it. He died in December of that year. This book is dedicated to him. So there’s that…
Abe Abdelhadi hosts the Bitter Truth with Abe Abdelhadi on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, etc.