A Summary Of Chapter Two
What You Are Going To Experience
This segment gives you, the reader, a glimpse of the chapters that are not completed on this page. You already have read Chapter One, which basically centres around Burton Peck and his disdain for the music video, So I really don't need to do a summary of that one. Chapters One, Four, Six, Seven, Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen are online as well. Therefore, I will not only give you summaries of Chapters Two, Three, Five, Nine, Ten, Twelve and Fourteen. After I finish here with the encapsulated chapters, I will provide the first parts of each one, leaving off at a place that, hopefully, will want you to read this novel in hard copy.
Well, here we go, guys. I am counting on you finding this interesting, since I cannot judge my own work:
This installment finds Oxymoron on one of their earlier tours. The plot goes here and there but I don't think it will be hard to read. This chapter deals with Michael Hope running into his long-lost biological father on the night of Oxymoron's opening show of the tour, which could not have been a worse time for Michael and the band. The man is a drifter, who left Michael's mother when the boy was two years old. It is not long before Michael wises up to the reason that "Daddy Dearest" has appeared at this time. Oxymoron were looking forward to this tour, as the album they were promoting had garnered excellent critical reviews and was loved by Oxymoron's fans.
That's Michael's father with his uncle. He is the man on the right They are also in the music business.
Chapter Two deals with not only Michael's animosity to the man who had run out, causing his mother to mary a less-than-wonderful man she met in Dallas. He had been sinfully rich when the oil fields were spouting out large quanitities of oil, but then he and his new bride, a girl twenty-five years his junior fell on hard times. Their oil wells dried up and they had foolishly spent all of their savings. So it did not take Michael very long to figure out what the significance of this impromptu visit was all about. He stood in front of his father, who, unfortunately for his son, looked very much like him and said slowly and deliberately that he would not give Leo Stipe any money because that was all he wanted to get from him. There was no father/son reunion, no talking of what might have been or any terms of endearment. Instead, Michael got a vituperative response from the aging man.
The rest of the chapter deals with Michael starting on the anorexic train. The seed is planted and he cannot not help feeling that his father would have stuck around if he had been a more disciplined boy. Michael had been chubby as a youngster and now, in 1985, he was feeling obese. True, he was a bit on the pudgy side, but nothing even remotely resembling obese. He says nothing to the other guys but wonders if he should lose some weight as the tour got going. He makes the decision to gradually cut down on food and drink lots of black coffee, but the true and severe eatiing disorders don't start until Chapter Four.
Meanwhile, Burton is still battling his problem with alcoholism, so they all made a concious effort not to bring the subject up until the tour was over. This tour could put them on the map, provided they all stuck together and helped one another. They were more like brothers than band mates and stuck closely together. Still, there were some things they could not divulge to each other, to spare them from worrying.
Also included in this chapter is the tour itself. I won't tell you how it went but you will find out if you buy the book. (Geez, I sound like a huckster extolling my product to the masses, but it's just to remind you that this is merely the introduction of these chapters and a great deal happens to Oxymoron during their long stint as rock stars). It is difficult for Michael to admit that he had a father and wouldn't give him any money, but he still vividly recalled that night when he was two, listening to his mother to beg her husband not to go and leave her with everything. In fact, Michael grows so despondant that he begins to cut up his arms with razior blades. He had never done this before and it scares him. If he wanted to turn Oxymoron into a good band, he would have to stop harming himself. He thinks about the lyrics in one of R.E.M.'s songs, "Country Feedback" and wonders if Michael Stipe ever had problems like that.
The chapter ends with the tour well underway and Michael acting unusually strange. Fans didn't care though and crowed with glee at seeing their favourite band in the same room as they were. Michael is kind to his fans and talks to them, along with Gill Giles. Burton and Paul keep a low profile and return to their hotel, one that looks like every other one when Oxymoron tour. This chapter has a bit of a shocker at the end of it so be prepared.
This is an extremely troubled band in a very disturbed world. They are merely a reflection of what we have become in the last days of the twentieth century. Something has got to change before we all self-destruct together. Rock and roll used to be fun; young life contained a great deal more joy and spontaneity than it does in the 1990's. Even the turbulant, rebellious '60's with that devastating Vietnam war couldn't compete with the mass destruction taking place within the minds and hearts of kids all over the world as I write this. I'll get off my soapbox now.
