Floating Along in This Hydroplane

by Scott Christopher Beebe

Life holds a different meaning from one person to the next. As we all float along in the waterway known as this life, others bob up to us with varying results. Some stay just for a moment, a night, a month, a year or two. And others stick around for a lifetime to ride out the hydroplane. In his fifth pulication, Scott Christopher Beebe examines the relationship that he had with his father, the late, great Chester Winfield ("Peter", "Repeat") Beebe, Jr. as Peter drifted in and out of his life. Until his death at the age of 60 from cancer, Peter proved himself to be a complex character as a hard-living, hard-loving, six-time-married, chain-smoking, drug- and drink-loving ladies' man who was maniacally sexual, hilarious, tragic, charming, devasting as well as devastatingly debonair, handsome, insecure, thoughtful, thoughtless, oftentimes absentee, and fiercely loyal and protective in the ways that he knew best. Scott is an alcoholic, drug-addicted, sexually compulsive, thoughtful, thoughtless, insecure, (thought to be) funny, cigarette-loving homosexual whose insecurities are his own worst enemy, and therefore has kept himself primarily going through his life free of love relationships. Together, they rode through waters that barely rippled and others that threatened oceanic-sized tidal waves. They had run-ins at perodic times in their lives that were heartbreaking and poignant with highwired waves of understanding that kept them harmonious and petrified of each other. This is their story, of how they were together, and how they were to the others around them and how everyone related in turn. Told by using his trademark "evocative descriptions" (Jack Fennimore of THE SHEPHERD EXPRESS), Mr. Beebe tells this tale from the heart that will make the reader know why Florence Osmund crowned him as "The King of Descriptive Writing" in her glowing Amazon.com review for his first book, WHAT'S BECOME OF ME. Go ahead, dive in. Don't wade. You'll be okay...

306 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 3, 2017

Reviews

[Florence Osmund · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you not read any further given this opening sentence? “My eighteenth summer was spent in the same way that any other ungrateful, disrespectful, bitter-beyond-their-years, socially awkward, athletically inept, clumsy, oversexed, underworked, underutilized, oversleeping, overeating, malfunctioning, out-of-control, rebellious, clueless, reckless, fearful, trusting, giving, forgiving, nurturing, listening, observant, trust-fund shithead does with theirs.” How the author managed to use so many distinctive adjectives in one sentence, I don’t know, but I get it. Throughout the rest of the book, he beautifully and poignantly tells the story in his own unique writing style--with no regard for convention, completely unfiltered, and blatantly unapologetically. Perhaps that is why I admire Beebe’s work.

It is the story of the author’s relationship with his father, a man who was in and out of his life at the most critical of times, a man whose influence shaped the author into the person he is today on so many levels. Perhaps this quote from the book sums it up best. “The way in which we were most similar was found at the base of our being with our humanistic, compassionate, misunderstood understanding of the world at large and its players around us, for which neither of us would have exchanged a single moment in spite of the detriment that it caused us.” Quite insightful.

This is not a meticulously-written book that has gone through multiple levels of editing. It’s raw, recklessly descriptive, and straight from the author’s heart. Very interesting family dynamics. Worth the read.