My Inflatable Friend: The Confessions of Rollo Hemphill (Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill) - Softcover

Gerald Everett Jones

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979486610 ISBN 13: 9780979486616

Publisher: La Puerta Productions, 2022

Synopsis

Trying to make your girlfriend jealous with a life-sized rubber doll might be a bad idea.

A reformed hacker-turned-slacker, twenty-something Rollo Hemphill fantasizes about becoming a top-forty DJ. Unfortunately, he has more talent than ambition. He's settled for a menial job as a car jockey at "The Wuthering Palms," a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills.

Proximity to all that glitz and glamour soon stirs his attraction to Felicia Ferrulo, the Sicilian hottie who works in the hotel beauty shop. When Felicia doesn't give him a nod, much less a chance, Rollo devises a desperate plan. It involves dressing up a life-sized doll to look like one of the hotel's reclusive megastar residents and conspicuously driving the fake woman around town in borrowed vehicles.

Inspiring jealousy is his goal, but it quickly gets waaaaaaay out of hand. Rollo's clever scheme backfires with stunning success, causing him to fall upward with dizzying speed - as he rockets toward the stars but away from the girl of his dreams.

Rollo's fumbling attempts to undo his tangled web is, by turns, pathetic and hysterically funny. My Inflatable Friend is a witty, cautionary tale about the perils of pretending to be someone you're not - and the hazards of stroking every male's most private and vulnerable part - his swelling ego!

About this title

About the Author

Recipient of multiple book awards in mystery and literary fiction, Gerald Everett Jones is a freelance writer living in Santa Monica, California. He recently returned from a two-year residence in Kenya. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Women's National Book Association, as well as a board member of the Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC). He is a Film Independent (FILM) Fellow. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the College of Letters, Wesleyan University, where he studied under novelists Peter Boynton (Stone Island), F.D. Reeve (The Red Machines), and Jerzy Kosinski (The Painted Bird, Being There). Learn more at geraldeverettjones.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

My name is Rollo Hemphill and I'm no pervert. This little book is the story of what I did with my inflatable friend, and the mostly embarrassing consequences accruing therefrom.

As to the details of what I did, I refuse to bottom-line them until you know me better. Please keep an open mind and grant me a few pages by way of exculpatory background before I spill it, which I assure you I did, must, and will do.

Don't read too much into it, this compulsion to confess my sorry deeds. You might surmise I had to write this as some punitive form of public service, and rather than deny that ugly accusation, I simply won't say. If I gave you that up front, it would beg a host of other awkward questions, such as how and on what charge I was apprehended, how my public defender screwed the pooch and reamed me, and how society takes a warped view of even the purest and simplest of natural human urges. In short, if I copped to all that now, I'd be giving away the ending, and every Lit 101 student knows it's hard enough figuring out how to finish a firstperson narrative without tipping off the reader on the first page.

But trust me. Let me apply some backstory by way of lubricant and I promise you'll get the whole thing in the end.

Way back when the root of all evil had not yet begun to flower, I was working as a car jockey at the Wuthering Palms Hotel. How, my old friends might ask, does an Exeter man find himself in such a menial position? I was lucky. My hacking career had been going so well that if I had not sent that self-incriminating e-mail to the Feds, today I'd be doing a long stretch in Leavenworth. Too clever for my own good. Story of my life.

It was my Apple got me in trouble, and it didn't fall far from the tree. My father is supposedly in Costa Rica somewhere, something about a hedge fund or junk bonds, maybe both. My mother has the house in Darien all to herself, grows prize roses, and drinks a lot of "tea." What passes for her philosophy of parenting holds that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all--so we never speak.

Long story shortened to not even a story, the Feds took away my encryption chip and made me swear I'd hacked my last, and, okay, I did some time. But they expunged my record because I was a month under eighteen when I let myself get caught. (By the way, I literally dropped out of Exeter. I leaped from a window after curfew, and they locked me out for good.)

At last, here I am parking cars at the Palms and thinking myself damn fortunate to have my very own legit Social Security number for once and a day job I can tell my friends about. If I ever have any.

On one of those dazzlingly bright California mornings that make rednecks back East flush with jealousy every year when they tune in the Rose Parade, I was thinking myself particularly smart to be out for a spin down Sunset in the Rolls Silver Cloud. (It's the property of a guest who was booked into one of our bungalows for an extended stay.) Now, here is one of the few cars on the planet designed to optimize the ride in the back seat, and it being such a fine day, the sunroof open and the sweet scents of eucalyptus and jasmine in the air, my imagination naturally turned to wondering how many bare behinds had been caressed by that buttery-soft calfskin as upright conduct was driven ardently home to them while the chauffeur did his own driving home trying his damnedest to keep his curious, beady eyes on the road. I mean, what's the point of owning the most luxurious car in the world if it doesn't get you laid? (Attention span: Think of the boost you'd get from the throb of the turbines in a corporate jet!)

Thinking it pointless to concentrate on sex for very long unless it's in the same room with me, I deliberately turned my attention to the incredible ride, the physical sensation of controlling the old gal, for all her hulk and heft. In this latterday era of McPherson struts, rack and pinion steering, and computer-mitigated everything, the Silver Cloud is a miracle of traditional, conservatively bred elegance in motion. In the jaunty bounce-bounce of her coil and semi-elliptic springs, the saucy pump-pump of her silky pistons, her reciprocating ball joint--she has nothing remotely new, just standup workmanship in heavy metal. She held her course like a planet-sized rock hurtling through airless space, and if any of her old joints were the slightest bit loose from all those years of bumping and grinding, she gave not a whimper of protest...

Edition details

• Publisher: La Puerta Productions
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0979486610
• ISBN 13: 9780979486616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 210