Some nights, though, dining with ones wall isn't all it's cracked up to be. Take the dead actress on my wall. Tonight I couldn't get to the sharing for the earful I was getting--Sarah still upset with me for killing my muse. No, a working man knows his ear is full up when, having wolfed down his theme, he has to burp to recall what animal was behind his theme.
Which reminded me; I was running low on Maalox.
"My dear dead Sarah," I said, washing my pan, "I know you won't rest in peace until my muse is dead. But she's not, so get over it." I left some rinse water in my pan, set it on the burner.
A good way to get a dead actress to shut up is to hit the shower.
Out of the shower, I threw a tea bag in my pan, shuffled my way towards my writing station. My mission: Prove to Bernhardt--and myself--just how alive my muse really was.
Approaching my laptop, I slowed. Yes, all I had to do was work out a bug or two in that first sentence and then, watch out, the flood gates would open, and my Great Work would pour forth.
Oh, no, I knew the importance of a first sentence, all right. What else did I know? I looked up. Well, I knew I'd been writing fiction now for twenty-six years. Knew I'd found my voice--finally. So, I was a late bloomer. Nothing wrong with that.
"How pathetic," I had Bernhardt call out from my kitchen nook, "mid-forties and the writer wannabe suspects he's finally found his voice. Need I remind you you had similar suspicions in your mid-thirties, your mid-twenties."
I didn't say anything.
"So, you're a non-bloomer. Nothing wrong with that."
"Hey, Bernhardt, you who are dead should think twice about judging we the living. Things are different now. Things change much faster now. Maybe my writer's voice is changing to keep abreast of the changing times. Something writers back in your stagnant era didn't have to concern themselves with."
"OK," I had Bernhardt say, "show me your stuff; get that first sentence down already."
Damned if I was going to dance to some dead actress shooting at my feet like Annie Oakley. To spite dead Bernhardt, I clicked open my ex-wife short story, set about purging myself of that dark chapter of my life.
A good way to purge, is to have the gods above ask the hard questions.
"Why, Anton? Why did you up and marry when, in principle, you didn't even believe in marriage?"
I knew form my exhaustive mullings, there was no snowing the gods, so I came clean. "As you know, gods, I had certain fears of functioning in the real world, so when outgoing Tiandra offered to serve as my front person, I didn't think twice about taking a dive under her barrel skirt."
"But, Anton, you deem yourself an old soul. Old souls confront their fears not hide in a barrel."
"I see that now, but at the time--in my twenties--I was too scared to even see what I was about."
"What were you about?"
"I was about was hunkering down in a world of my own creation, a world of dreams, fiction."
"But that's what you're about now."
"Not entirely. No, gods, after leaving Tiandra, I worked real hard confronting my fears, and eventually, resolved all those silly fears. Well, all the fears that needed resolving. I still have a fear of traveling abroad, but, see, I have no desire to travel abroad, so why confront that fear, right?"
"Here you go again, Anton, off on tangents. You stepped up to your laptop to purge, so purge."
See, that's why we writers need the gods; to keep our noses on one grindstone at a time. Before diving in, writing, I thought I'd review what I'd written early this morning:
"Ya, Helen," I said, picking up my fork, "I am seeing someone else."
"That's OK," Helen countered, slamming her spoon down, "I'm seeing someone else myself."
"Oh, well, hey, that's cool."
"He's really quite something." Helen paused, slashed at me with her knife eyes. "Something of a success, I might add."
"Perfect, Helen; you've found someone who can buy you all that crap I couldn't."
"Enough, Glen. So, tell me, who are you seeing?"
"An angel. An earthbound angel named Cora. Oh, she's sweet. And the laughs--my, how that girl likes to keep things light. But, no, Cora's not a success. Not in your terms anyway."
"I hope she's at least employed. With your present income you can't--"
"She's a student."
"A student? Oh, no, Glen, how old is she?"
"She's young in years, but, see, she's way mature, so--"
"How old, Glen?"
"Twenty-two. Well, twenty-one at the very least."
I deleted the dialogue. Deleted it because a man of my caliber knows better than to use a young thing to get back at his menopausal ex. But mostly I deleted it because a fiction writer of any caliber knows better than to put angels in his fiction.
A writer has to be careful in this modern times. Punching newfangled buttons with Delete on them can be as fulfilling as punching keys with letters on them. Take the last short story I took to sprucing up. I spruced it to the point where I ended up with a first person, and that was it.
I slid my eye off the hard edges of my Delete key, onto the warm curves of my phone.
Deirdre didn't call.
When I was a kid growing up in the '50's, phones came in black, and that was it. By the time I moved out on my wife there was a choice in phones--I got the white. Oh, sure, it has yellowed some over the years, but the white sure cured me of my phonaphobia. No, even now, just to look at my phone gives me the secure feeling I got watching TV in the '50's. Sure, the black hats scared me, but then, in the nick of time, a white hat would ride up and save the day.
Tonight my white was my movie buddy, Deirdre. It was times like these I'd call her up, talk Big Screen. Oh, what a time we'd have, negotiating our next great escape. But now, of course, my movie buddy had moved out of state, and I had no new number for her.
Isn't that how it goes though, a guy gets cured of his phonaphobia, finally, and he's got no one to call.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. I was still friends with five of my six ex-girlfriends, but I couldn't call any of them at this hour. Why? Because they were all married to possessive asses.
I went over to the corner of my futon, picked up my journal, wrote, "All men are asses. Why all women haven't gone lesbian on us is beyond me."
There, I felt better. But, boy, what a hard fought battle that. No, a reader has no idea what a writer goes through to get a word or two down of an evening.
****
No comments:
Post a Comment