Lee Goodstone is precisely where he always wanted to be: in the loving arms of Honey, his best friend's girlfriend. Pushing the term 'laid-back' to new heights, Lee long ago decided the correct plan of action in his life would be to have no plan at all. Reality, however, has other intentions for Lee. His friend Henry is wanted for kidnapping. His modest income as a minor drug dealer is being threatened. And after Lee is interviewed on television about Henry's whereabouts, Lee's boss is more than a little perturbed.

Mixing the insouciant charm of Nick Hornby, the hipster attitude of Douglas Coupland, and the crunchy urban dialogue of Elmore Leonard, this is a story for the slacker in us all. Gritty, warm, funny, and surprisingly literary, YOU comma Idiot is a novel unlike anything Goose Lane has ever published.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Harris is as a writer and director of television commercials, many of them clever and funny. He lives in Montreal with his wife, who has yet to leave him, and their son, a future world leader. YOU comma Idiot is his first novel.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

The song "Takes it Toll" used for this trailer was recorded by Trevor Grigg and the Infamous Few - http://www.reverbnation.com/trevorgrigg

ABOUT THE VIDEO

Video production provided by Trent Martin: mtmgraphics@gmail.com

EXCERPT

You’re the kind of guy who falls in love after one date.
You’re the kind of guy who rehearses a conversation fifty times in your head then blows it when it’s for real. You’re the kind of guy who washes your hair three times in a single day because you’re meeting a chick at a restaurant that night. And then gets caught walking in the rain to get there. You’re the kind of guy who’s kind of stupid that way.

You’re the kind of guy who’s always feeling sorry for yourself. You’re the kind of guy who takes it personally every time a girl walks by with barely a glance over. The kind of guy who likes to think of yourself as sensitive. The kind of guy who confuses sensitive with pathetic.

You’re the kind of guy who still thinks about the pretty girls you were afraid of in high school, girls who never even knew your name. The kind of guy who can’t stop wondering what it would be like to meet one now. Maybe she’s not doing so well. Maybe things are tough. You’re the kind of guy who’s attracted to women having a hard time.
You’re the kind of guy who thinks you can save them.
7
You are not, it’s fair to say, a good-looking guy. You were given a look too dreary and drawn, skull too thin, face too long. Forehead too high. Cheeks hollow, chin weak. A nose that points oddly, breaking down and away like a difficult putt.

In the mirror in the morning, you often stare at yourself for long periods of time. Sad, extended moments. You wonder what you did wrong and whom you angered. You wonder what you’re being punished for.
You find yourself contemplating a face that is angular and gaunt, yet with skin curiously loose and fleshy. Jowly. If you ever traced your family tree it wouldn’t surprise you to come across the name Flintstone. Unlike Fred, though, you are skinny and tall. Very tall. Which makes you look, well, very skinny. Jeans fit you like a twelve- year-old girl. You haven’t worn a pair of shorts in a decade. Jackets hang off you like they’re sopping wet and sweatshirts engulf your laughable shoulders. The average tie covers half your chest. Clothes hate your guts.

As soon as you set foot outside your apartment you feel as though you’re on display for all to cringe at. You’re forever glancing at your reflection in every store window you pass, checking your face, your hair, your shirt, your legs, obsessing with a vanity only the truly dismally endowed can appreciate.
Strangely, you don’t do well with women.

You are, more accurately, the kind of guy who gives other men the confidence to approach them. You’re the kind of guy plain girls practise their dismissive looks on. You’re the guy at the bar who’s always going off to sit and mope in a corner by yourself, whose friends always have to come and get you, cajole you back to the table. You are what the periphery of the group was made for. When a pretty girl tells a funny story and everyone laughs, that’s you in the everyone part. A voice that matters only in that it rounds out the chorus.

You are, of course, an entirely necessary element of your species. You are what balance must have. A low end.
Or maybe it’s not as bad as all that. Maybe you have a tendency to exaggerate. Maybe it just feels that way some days. Mornings are hardest. The waking-up-alone thing. In the evening it’s not so bad. You go to bed maybe having done something, hung around with your friends, gotten high. Watched a movie, or some TV. The night is over and now you can go to sleep.

But in the morning the whole rest of the day is waiting. You get to be ugly, and with a whole mess of hours ahead of you. It’s why the first thing you usually do once you’re up is go back to sleep. Also because you have no job.

You’re lying in bed now. You can hear the TV talking from across the apartment. You keep it on almost all the time. There’s a commercial playing. It’s the one with the two detectives on a stakeout late at night. You can picture it from memory. They’re slouched in a car, both handsome guys with chiselled jaws and cool expressions, exchanging clever, clipped dialogue. One guy is black and the other is white and they make it clear that even though the white guy has been driving his partner crazy lately because he’s always sneezing and his nose is running and he should just take the cold medicine, they’re the kind of partners that deep down really like and respect each other.

It’s a good spot. They sure know how to make them, you have to admit. It seems like a wonderful product and it’s fun to sort of bond with these rugged dudes, even if just for thirty seconds. And the whole black-white thing is good too, them being good friends, reminding us how far the world has come, that we now live in a perfectly harmonious, racially integrated land only TV seems to truly endorse.
Finally, the white guy takes a pill and the black guy is happy because he won’t have to listen to his sniffling all the time. It looks like maybe they can even get some sleep. But then at the end the black guy sneezes and now it looks like he’s getting a cold. Uh-oh. His buddy gives him a knowing look and reaches for the box of medicine.

Fantastic!

Actually, it’s amazing that you can recall all this. You, with the short-term memory of a week-old puppy. You, who half the time can’t remember what you came into the room to get. You, who this very moment are wondering, What was that thing you were supposed to do today? Something important, you think. Although with you that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Not a lot happens. A guy like you, it could just mean you’re out of milk.

Honey came over this morning. To kill a few hours. She does that after a night shift sometimes when she’s not ready for bed yet. Wakes you up at eight-thirty in the morning buzzing from downstairs. It’s all right, you’ve gotten kind of used to it. She brings breakfast that she buys on her way over. Those greasy egg-cheese-bacon-on-a-croissant heart attacks they sell at doughnut places. Honey’s a nurse but she’s got the worst health habits you could pick. Smokes, drinks, eats garbage. She’s a coffee freak, too. And she never exercises. It doesn’t matter. She’ll be gorgeous until she’s ninety. She’s just one of those chicks.

Honey’s been with Johnny a long time. Johnny Karakis is your best friend. Everyone’s always known you’re crazy for Honey too. Johnny knows, Honey knows. Your friends know. People make jokes. Fuck them anyway, they all lust after her too. You have nothing to hide.
Your life’s regret has surely been rooted in the way you look. It bothers you to have been so shortchanged in this department. It angers you. What a gas it would have been to walk through life as attractive as Johnny. And other lucky pricks you can think of. And so, a certain cynicism has set in. You believe that everyone but you is dumb. Or some degree of dumb. You believe that you’re accountable to no one. You believe that people waste their lives doing whatever they think will sound good when they tell it to their friends. You believe that all friendships are fleeting. That if it means enough, anyone will betray
anyone. You believe that people will pay to be entertained by just about anything. You’re convinced that video ruined music. And then music ruined movies. You’ve downloaded the soundtracks to some of the stupidest movies ever made. You believe that all handsome men are simpletons. And that the problem with attractive women is that they’re too shallow to look beyond the obvious in order to see the real you. Myopic bitches. You believe that only you know what’s really funny. You believe that no one else brings any real perspective to the table. You believe that computers are just a fad. Relatively speaking, that is. A hundred years from now everyone will be busy being revolutionized by something else. You believe that knowing all this, that being burdened with this much vision, is paralyzing, that it would paralyze anyone, and so it’s not your fault if you’ve never really done anything in your life.

You believe that you have the right to say whatever you feel. As well as the right to say nothing. And on the whole, lying is easier than both. You’ve slept with friends’ baby sisters. You’ve been with desperate women. You’ve had relations with a cousin. It’s been rough. You’ve had to watch year after year as lesser men than yourself escorted perfectly good chicks through shopping malls while you had to shop for some shitty gift for somebody’s shitty birthday all by yourself. You believe the world’s against you. You believe that you’re entitled to whatever you can get.

You made it with your best friend’s girlfriend this morning. You’re an idiot.