How Best to Catch a Moth

by Mr Michael S Ellis

‘How Best to Catch a Moth’ is that old old tale of love, drugs, and clichéd mid-twenty somethings driving across America. Like everyone else in London, Sean Whitford hates his job and wants to dump his girlfriend. Before he can do anything about either of these irritations, he gets dumped himself and then made redundant the very next day.With the accompanying pay-off, Sean’s happy to have lost his job, but a lot more distressed about being finished with than he ever thought he would be. Rather than face up to the reasons why this might be, he does what any sensible man would do in such a situation and buries his head in the sand by moving to Amsterdam.There Sean works as a cocktail bar tender in an establishment run by the uncle of an Italian guy that used to make Sean’s sandwiches every lunch time. As a result of an unfortunate incident involving Catherine, an attractive prostitute, Sophia, the boss’s daughter, some hash and a trip to the Van Gogh museum, Sean is forced to leave Amsterdam for New York with his tail between his legs.In Manhattan he stays with Jay, a friend from university whose fantastically wealthy parents support his literary and hallucinatory lifestyle. Jay sets Sean up with another job as a cocktail waiter, which lasts for all of one heavily intoxicated week before Jay decides that they need to go an adventure. Fixated with Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, he drags Sean off across America to try and recreate that sense of rebellious hedonism. They’re joined by Paul, a school friend of Sean’s who’s also recently lost his job and who has spent most of his life watching Sean fall in love over and over again without ever falling in love himself.Their first major stop is Chicago where they get mixed up with a bunch of former frat boys who take them round the local clubs and on to a two day party at a farm in the middle of the Illinois countryside. Feeling a tad paranoid from lack of sleep and an over indulgence in illicit substances, they head West, but get split up along the way after a run-in with an overly hirsute golf course security guard in Council Bluffs, an archetypal smalltownAmerica on the Iowa/Nebraska border.Sean is forced to make his own way to Denver and ends up hitching an 8 hour ride with mullet man, during which he’s exposed to the very scariest aspects of American culture. When he arrives in Denver, he finds that his companions are still waiting for him in Omaha and spends the evening with Jay’s friends in the city, a swinging couple who make it clear early on that they’d like to involve him in their games. When Paul and Jay turn up the following afternoon, the three of them head up to Jay’s friends’ holiday home in Breckenridge, where they relax until it’s the weekend and another round of debauchery is upon them.They move on to San Francisco, stopping for a night in Salt Lake City and stopping for 5 minutes in Reno, a decision that is only made once they’ve seen it. Catherine, the attractive prostitute, turns up in San Francisco. She and Paul fall in love at first sight. Despite Sean’s initial cynicism of their relationship, the way they are with each other makes him realise what he’s lost and he returns to the UK to try and find it again.‘How Best to Catch a Moth’ is a story about Generation X with an undercurrent of boy meets girl.

301 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2020