The Anomalies - Hardcover

Joey Goebel

3.66

1,256 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 193156129X ISBN 13: 9781931561297

Publisher: MacAdam/Cage, 2003

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The Anomalies is the story of five quirky nonconformists who come together to make sweet rock music in their small Midwestern town primarily inhabited by tiny-minded, walking stereotypes.

Luster wants the ultimate form of the American dream—rock stardom—despite being a twenty-four-year-old man living in the ghetto with his crack-dealing brothers. Opal is a sex-crazed party machine despite being an eighty-year-old woman. Ember hates the world and wants to destroy it despite being an eight-year-old girl. Ray loves America and all of its inhabitants despite being a middle-aged, effeminate Iraqi soldier. Aurora is frigid and deplores young people despite being a sexy, Satan-worshiping teenager.

And now these misfits have formed a band—a band so different, so utterly unpredictable that they might just be able to slip between a crack, rise above their small-town existence, tour the world, and in the process make us all reconsider our stale old conventions.

Author bio(s) (up to 500 words or 4,000 characters):

Joey Goebel was born and raised in Henderson, Kentucky. He has a BA in English from Brescia University and his short stories have appeared in two anthologies. He is the former lead singer of the punk band The Mullets (Higher Step Records) that toured for five years in the Midwest. The Anomalies is his first novel.

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About the Author:

You were born a mistake into a middle-class family that thought they were a high-class family. Your life was fine until your asshole parents divorced. Before that it was bike rides, baseball, swimming, and Nintendo. But after the divorce, your Nike Airs walked astray. You blamed yourself at first for your parents’ split, but then you learned to blame them instead, whom you would blame everything on forevermore. As a teenager, you felt your problems at home licensed you to rebel. You partied hard and lived for the weekends. You felt obligated to lose your virginity and you did as soon as someone would help you to do so. You did just well enough in school to get by, saying that you were smart but just didn’t apply yourself. You left home as soon as possible to go to college. You joined a frat. You let females control your destiny. You accidentally got a girl pregnant and felt obligated to marry her. You wanted a boy. You got a job that you hate but it pays the bills as you like to say. Your wife appears not as pretty as she was when you impregnated her, and your eyes are starting to wander. You and your wife consider yourselves better than your neighbors. You are depressed. You smoke weed to help you not be. You work out. You go to a tanning bed. You worry about your hair.

After a lengthy pause, alpha-male says, "Shut up. You don’t know me...I’m not depressed."

You will be. It is bound to happen sometime between your divorce from your cheating wife and when your kids put you in a nursing home.

"That’s it, man. Are you done, or am I gonna have to kick your ass?"

I throw one more card on the table, the one that says "EMPTY THREAT OF VIOLENCE—A FINAL RESORT." My cards never fail. I’ve got everything from "TOO MUCH INFORMATION" to "I NEED CLOSURE" to "I ALREADY HAVE A BOYFRIEND" to "BAD HAIR DAY?"

I am done. I am sorry for confronting you like I have in front of your peers, some of whom are secretly gay.

At this, the asshole’s friends look at each other nervously.

I know how much respect means to you, and I respectfully ask that you refrain from mistreating my friends and me.

"Whatever, dude."

I return to my table. I don’t like doing things like I just did, but the humanoids make it so easy for me, and the fact that they make it so easy for me is why I do it in the first place. I can predict the prettyboy just like I can predict that the guy wearing a bow-tie will be a smart-ass, that the traveling children’s storyteller will be annoyingly eccentric, that the English teacher will love Garrison Keillor, that the bartender will be exceedingly confident.

"Why do you always have to make a scene like that?" asks Aurora.

You were the one complaining about them staring at us. Are they staring at us now?

The man’s friends are comforting him, patting him on the shoulder.

Then a contagiously funky reggae song comes on. My dining companions and I spontaneously arise and dance in the middle of the restaurant, except for Aurora who just rolls back and forth. We dance like protozoa, squirming unattached, our bodies moving like they don’t even know it. Music, music. Muse, sick muse. The sick muse we will follow to a timeshare on the moon.

I approach my victim, the professional humanoid.

Come on, dude! No hard feelings, right!? Would you like to dance?

"Oh, shut the fuck up."

I smile, laugh, and proceed with the dancing. I dance as hard as I can since I know that any moment now, someone will tell us to stop and sit down, or more specifically, someone will tell us, "I’m going to have to ask you to stop and sit down."

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