something

[crazy a]

This is how it begins.

There's me, Alan. That's not my real name but whenever I say my real name, that's what people think I'm saying. So. There's me and the typewriter I bought for $40 at a pawn shop and a stack of paper to my left. I stare at the machine and it stares back at me, not concerned about anything. I take a sheet of paper, admire the pure whiteness of it, put it in the machine and roll it through to where I want to start.

I'm a writer, you see.

Or trying to be one, at least, and the hardest part comes upon me. I'm sitting on a drum stool looking at the blank paper in the typer in front of me and now the hard part begins, the worst part: finding the right words to begin. And make no mistake about it, the words have to be the right words, perfect, simple perhaps, not too complicated. But they have to be just SO. And so I sit and stare at teh blank white. My lower back begins to ache from sitting on the stool. It's a distraction, something to keep me from getting started. It's one of many: going to the bathroom, answering the phone, checking the mail. There's always some kind of distraction.

I tap out a few words, look at them. They're not great, not memorable, but it's something and that's better than nothing. I can always change it later, I say to myself.

I tap out a few more words, then a few more. Now I'm going, I'm doing it. I listen to the mechanical tapping of the keys as they hit the paper, scarring it with letters, words, paragraphs. I casually scan the page as I near the bottom. I'm pleased with it although I know that it might not amount to much. At least I'm on a steady roll. My back hurts, but I ignore it and keep typing, gradually increasing my speed as my confidence grows.

I get up to see if the mail has been delivered. It has, and the two envelopes I'd attached to the mailbox with a clothespin are gone. They're poems, submissions to a couple of magazines. I flip through the mail: bills, credit card offers. There's a catalog from a publisher listing some new books to be released. I see there isn't one from my favorite writer, Henry Chinaski. I'm slightly disappointed. Chinaski's been dead for eight years now but his publisher still puts out books by him. I shrug off my disappointment. There's two of his books I haven't bought yet, so it's not a total loss.

I go back to my typer, sit down. Now I have to start again, find my groove. It's almost as hard as just plain beginning, but I find it and the room is filled with the sound of the keys once again: taptaptap, taptaptaptap, taptap. Tap.

I keep going, pleased with myself. The words come flowing out onto the paper, and then one sheet of paper is done and I roll in another. I keep writing. My stomach growls, I try to ignore it. It goes away briefly then comes back, this time a little stronger. I don't want to get up but decide to give in.

I go to the kitchen and start looking around. I could fix some soup. Or maybe a small pizza in the microwave oven. Perhaps a ham sandwich. This turns into another chore. The simple things become complicated. A 3-minute pizza may as well take 45. A simple ham sandwich with a touch of mustard suddenly seems like a gourmet preparation. I want to eat, but I don't want to fix anything. Hot dogs? No. I find a bag of corn chips, nacho cheese flavored, and I eat a few. I don't usually eat chips, but at this moment they're better than a fine restaurant. I open the refrigerator, see a half-empty bottle of soda. I pull it out, uncap it and take a drink.

Suddenly I am disgusted with my eating habits, with myself. I am a pig. Lazy. I don't even want to take half an hour to put together a little something and eat. I spy a chocolate bar in a cabinet, take it down and unwrap it. I bite off a piece, enjoying the sweetness as it chases away the saltiness of the chips. I take another bite, wrap it up and place it back in the cabinet. Chips and candy and soda. It's not healthy, not decent, but it'll shut up my stomach until suppertime. All I want to do now is get back to the typer.

I return to my room. I should say here that it isn't MY room, it's the washroom where I do laundry. I have four baskets there, tow of them filled with clothes that need to be washed. There is also an old heater in the washroom that is used mostly in winter to heat the house. It's a big blocky hunk of metal. It's older than me, older than my father. It used to blow out soot from a pipe at the top and this would cover everything in the washroom. Brush your hand along a box and it would come away black. It's been fixed now, and as near as I can tell, it doesn't blow out soot anymore. But the floor is stained black from it. A good mopping with soapy water would clean it up just fine, but I never feel like doing it. Lazy.

I sit down and begin again but the fire that was raging earlier has cooled a little. Now I type in slow steady...I can't think of the word. I'd call it "bursts", but bursts aren't slow and steady, now are they? Nonetheless, I work methodically, carefully choosing my words and in what order to place them.

The phone rings. I figure it'll be credit card people wanting a payment. Ha! I only have $200 in the bank and they want $265. I don't get up. It rings three more times before the answering machine picks up and instructs the caller to leave a message at the beep.

"Are you home?"

I get up and rush to the phone. It's Violet. She's my wife. She's big-bodied, full-bodied, lovable. She has long black hair that she usually keeps long because I like it that way and when she puts it up in a ponytail in the summer, it reminds me of Violet from the "Peanuts" comic strip. We've been married for eight years. She knows how I am and I know how she is.

"Helloooo, are you home?"

I pick up and there's a second of feedback from the answering machine. "Yeah, I'm here. What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Were you doing something?"

"Just writing."

"Anything good?"

"Maybe. Is there something you need?"

"No, I just wanted to let you know that I'm gonna stop by Mama's after work. She's fixed some spaghetti for us."

"Oh, okay." I like her mother's spaghetti, it's sweet, it tastes like the spaghetti my grandmother makes.

"Is that alright? You didn't have plans to go out tonight, did you?"

"No, no, that's fine."

"Okay then, I guess I'll see you tonight."

"Okay, bye."

"Bye."

We hang up. Violet works as a secretary or something at the same college she attended. I've never been to college, I never had the desire to go. And judging by some of the college kids I've seen around there, it's a good thing I didn't go. Just about all the guys I've seen have shaved heads and wear caps. It's funny to me. And I get the impression that all of them think of themselves as some kind of intellectuals, like they know something I don't. Shit. I know probably every single one of them needs a good ass-kicking, that's what I know. They don't fool me. They think they can save the world with a rock concert and a few protests against war. They haven't been anywhere. I've been around. I spent four years in the Marine Corps, I know how things work. But enough of that.

I sit at my typer and look over what I've written. I kind of like it, which says a lot because I'm not one for self-praise. There's very few things I've done that I'm completely pleased with. My father says I'm my own harshest critic, and he's right. Anything I do, I always say that it turned out okay or that maybe I could've done better.

My parents don't know that I'm trying to be a writer. They know I have a talent for the written word and that's it. They don't know I've tried to get things published in the magazines. I've told Violet not to say anything about it, either. She doesn't understand why I don't want to tell them.

I'll tell you: I write for me.

If my parents read what I've written, then as sure as I'm gonna die they, especially Mom, are gonna want to know what this poem means, what that poem is about, do I really feel that way, etc. I'm not in high school anymore. I didn't like having to pick apart and analyze a poem for its "true" meaning, and I'm not about to start doing it with mine. What's there is there and you either get some kind of meaning from it or you don't, and either way is fine with me.

[Branflakes]

"I listen to the mechanical tapping of the keys as they hit the paper, scarring it with letters, words, paragraphs."

I especially liked that sentence..."scarring it with...". Perfect description.

I like this piece, brings up a lot of what I feel when I write (and stare at a blank screen).

I specifically like how you end it, writing for yourself. Great way to express the theme. Simple, pulls the whole piece together.

Thanks for posting it.

[Bessie The Cow Jr]

*bump*