Off in the corner, phosphorescent blue blinks.
3:18. Ah, yes. Numbers. Part of our modern mythology; our paradigm for life. They infer that it’s dead of night and I really should be sleeping. I get up, go to the window and look out. Freaks down below, sheer concrete shooting skyward, arteries of red and white lights pumping out of this maze. Here inside my apartment it’s a tornado’s aftermath of notes, of half-ass prose. Those wild sparks of inspiration are nothing more than mind debris, but I got something out of it. I think I got my first real short story. I pick up a dime-thin stack of paper and read the title: "A Fine Romance". The ideas are transposed from former girlfriends and overheard anecdotes. I wrote it in the third person to mask the fact that I’m really writing about me. That way I won’t be embarrassing anybody. Especially myself. It starts like this:
Some people don’t know a good thing when they see it. Others realize too late, after it’s all gone. This is Mike’s story: a pseudo-beatnik, freeloader, who burned all his bridges and was left to fend for himself in the real world.
It has tragi-comedy like Cervantes; wry irony in the tradition of the ancient fables; philosophical flights into the ether in the spirit of Miller; subconscious dreamscapes inspired by Buñuel and the surrealists. It’s about how Mike, my protagonist, meets Joanna. She’s a sexy redhead, daddy’s girl. They hook up in the cafe where Mike works. She’s on the rebound from an abusive relationship and is attracted to Mike’s odd yet amusing personality. They fall in love. Mike soon feels like the lesser in the relationship. He feels used for sex and companionship. Their relationship deteriorates. I have a running metaphor of trash falling on Joanna to indicate that this relationship is doomed. My favorite is a dream sequence in which Mike is attacked by kittens. Kittens being a metaphor for women.
He looked around and he was surrounded by hundreds of identical kittens all meowing and rubbing on him. Every time he picked one up, another would drop out of his hands. He panicked...
But that opening paragraph... it’s too academic. The entire story arc is there. There’s no mystery, no gamble for the reader. And the voice! It sounds like a film noir narration. Come to think of it, similar faults run throughout this story. It totally sucks. Crumple and shoot. Out the window like the rest. The hookers down below can use it for rolling paper.
I blew it. My unemployment checks are about to run out and my bohemian spell is up. Guess I’m just a romantic whose most valiant efforts are in the mindscape, in the abstract, in passing conversation, maybe in a brief written sketch. But I had it in me! I was gonna use this free time to write about the great ineffable; about my neighborhood, this relentless life. I sent it all to the gutters because it was stale and contrived. Now it’s back to the nine to five rat race. Back to work.
I’m not all that different anyway.