Fuck it, I’m rewriting it so here’s what I have so far for Numb
She stared at the blank piece of paper in her typewriter and took a drag from her cigarette. The hardest part of writing was always getting that first word down; the pressure of defining a chapter or an entire book on the first sentence made getting it right so important. She sipped her coffee and leaned on her fist, elbow against the table. Her eyes drooped shut and she began to relax, somewhat giving up on the night, when she heard the door open behind her.
“Coffee, cigarettes and a typewriter, once you get some words on paper you’ll be my little Tennessee Williams”
Dolores took the paper out of the typewriter and spun around in her chair. “You’re just assuming I have nothing? I’ve written… something.”
Lizzy cocked her head sideways and gave her a smirk. “Really? Then read it to me.” She crossed her arms in sarcastic defiance.
Dolores cleared her throat and looked down at the fresh piece of paper, “Well… when I was a young girl,” she darted her eyes up to Lizzy and got a head tilted forward and eyes raised in response, “my father took me to the city to see a marching band…”
Lizzy laughed and put her forehead against her palm, “You fucker, are those the opening lyrics to Black Parade?”
Dolores laughed a little a threw the paper on the table, leaning back in the chair. “Yeah I have nothing, I just didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of knowing I have writer’s block”
Lizzy put her arms around her, “Aww, I’m not satisfied with it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t pick on you about it,” she giggled, “I’m actually impressed you kept a straight face.”
Dolores frowned slightly, “Wasn’t hard with the idea of me not writing a single thing hanging over my head.”
Lizzy hugged her tight and gave her a kiss, “Don’t worry Lo, I can’t remember who said it, but there’s no such thing as writer’s block. Just keep trying and if all else fails just put something on paper and see where it takes you.”
Dolores hugged her back, “Thank you Liz, you always know how to keep my head on straight. I love you.”
Lizzy stood up, “I love you too. Now come on, let’s go to bed.” She began walking to the bedroom.
“I’m not really tired, I’ll try not to wake you when I finally go to bed.”
Lizzy turned around but continued to walk backwards. “I said go to bed, not go to sleep,” she replied with a sly smirk.
Dolores returned the smile, silently stood up and followed her.
She woke up, instantly scrunching her eyes back shut. Her head was pounding and she instinctively threw her arm over to the other side of the bed. Cold mattress. She grimaced and drew her limbs in defensively to a fetal position. She lied as still as she could, trying to fall back asleep or at very least clear her mind. She was aware of the world around her, the slight weight of the sheets, the pressure of gravity pulling her into the mattress, but didn’t truly feel it against her skin. It was almost as if her brain refused to acknowledge the rest of existence. She slowly stretched out her limbs, eventually slinging her legs over the side of the bed and using momentum to get to a standing position. She trudged into the kitchen and pours herself a cup of coffee.
“Black, like my soul,” she thought with a grin.
“Well if you’re going to drink your breakfast, this is the better option.”
Dolores looked around for the source of that familiar voice, but found herself alone. She shrugged it off and went to her typewriter.
Working Title: The Vice of Virtue and the Virtue of Vice: A Savage Journey to the Heart of American Adulthood
“Jesus,” she said, “It’s like if Hunter S. Thompson wrote a coming of age story.” She looked around, hoping to hear another response, biting the inside of her bottom lip. Silence around her, she kept working.
People say life is strange, but that’s only true for small towns in books or the movies. It only stops being boring when things start going badly, like during the dust bowl or if your preacher starts serving Kool-Aid. I know this because I grew up in Mayberry’s Mayberry. It was just God, farms and football, and I wasn’t interested in any of them.
I was born on June first in 1992; not in a hospital but my parent’s bedroom with the town doctor presiding. I was baptized and christened Dolores Jean Duke, in honor of my grandmother. I never met my grandmother as she, like her daughter, died during childbirth. I never could refer to the woman who gave birth to me as my mother; I never met her, she didn’t raise me, she was just a void in my life and my father’s life.
Dad took care of me the best anyone expected him to, which is to say he kept me fed and made sure I didn’t drown in the bath. “It takes a village” was a very relevant saying to my childhood, as my father was the least frequent source of parenting. He almost couldn’t function after my mother died; he was heartbroken and blamed me for her death. All he did was work and drink, and I can’t blame him given the circumstances, but I can’t forgive him given the results.
Every weekday I went to school, every weekend I went to church, even Saturdays. It was an all day Sunday-school type situation run by the preacher, to help out parents who work on Saturdays and to “Start saving souls from a young age” or some bullshit like that. Don’t worry, we had a preacher, not a Father, so it didn’t get weird. Well, beyond the necessary weirdness of Christianity. “God got me pregnant” has to be my favorite excuse of all time. “No, I’m still a virgin, GOD got me pregnant.” Classic. My disdain for Christianity, ironically enough, stems from this period of my childhood. At first, I waddled into class every morning, bright eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to learn. The problem was, I was a curious child so I asked lots of questions, and religion doesn’t do well under a microscope. The best the preacher could do was circular logic and when I called him on his shit, I got punished. I was ostracized, and I hated every moment being there. So one day, I ran away. I assumed my father worked Saturdays like the parents of all my other classmates since I’d already be in bed when I heard him stumble inside. But when I got home, he was sitting in front of the T.V. in his underwear drinking beer. He was already too drunk to notice me, so I was able to leave without noticing. I want to call it lucky, because there would have been hell to pay if I was caught, but the situation is just too fucked up to be anything other than depressing.
She leaned back in her seat, feeling a heavy black sadness in her throat and chest. She stood up, snatching her cigarettes off the table, and walked out to the fire escape. She sat with her legs hanging through the bars, looking over the city. It was midday, but the only difference between 2 PM and 2 AM was the burning fireball hanging overhead. It was always hot and the people here were always moving. Nothing stopped, nothing changed: same bullshit, different faces.
When Dolores first arrived, this place was beautiful in its constantly chaotic nature, so promising and full of potential. Now the rhythms of the town are apparent, the illusion of success dashed as a mere pipedream and her life here was beginning to stagnate just like it did back home. “Still rather be here than there,” she thought, holding the cigarette in her mouth so she could pull herself up. She took one last drag, put it out and went back inside.
She fixed herself another cup of coffee and sat back at her typewriter, reading over what she had so far and making notes and edits on the paper. She had been thinking about this project for a long time, and felt it was the story which would finally make her career.
“Is that why it’s important? Because it will sell?”
Dolores didn’t look around this time; the source didn’t matter anymore, she just wanted the banter back. “No, it’s important because it’s the one story I need to tell.” She grabbed the title page and marked through what she already had, then fed it through the typewriter again to add her, hopefully, final title.
Working Title: The Vice of Virtue and the Virtue of Vice: A Savage Journey to the Heart of American Adulthood
My Savage Journey to the Heart of American Adulthood:
She held the paper up to her face and smiled, which turned into a grimace as she balled up the paper. “Probably should have used a new piece of paper,” she thought, laughing at herself. She typed up the new title then set in a fresh page.
Since I couldn’t stay at home, I slunk down to my favorite spot by the creek. There my childhood lived, and there it died. I cried for hours, feeling for the first time the full force of the burden which defined my formative years. But I felt it, a strange connection to my father, because I finally understood: I had no mother. I killed her, the woman who carried me for nine months as I gestated. Death begins at life; we all sign a contract at birth, guaranteeing one day we’ll return to the nothingness we came from. She gave me the gift of life and I reciprocated with internal hemorrhaging and a slow, painful death.
I finally realized how fucked my life was. My dad couldn’t stand to see me, he sent me away on his days off and made sure he was out drinking from before I got home until after I was in bed. I was the cause of his pain and misery; I killed the woman he loved. He never wanted a kid, so instead of being the last living piece of her I was the living embodiment of the worst day of his life. If she was here, he’d be happy and I’d have someone who cared about me. But I had no one and he had no one.
When it was around the time I’d be let out of Saturday school, I had calmed down enough to start walking back to my house. By then, I was tired and hungry and just glad he hadn’t seen me. I ate, I took a shower, then went to bed. I finally knew my lot in life, I gave up on the idea of forming a relationship with my father or finding some sort of internal happiness.
I’m fundamentally broken, I will always have a deep sadness within me. This is the Writer’s Affliction: creativity stemming from deep rooted personal issues, whether it be a specific trauma, chronic depression or some part of one’s self so loathsome one does all in their power to bury it. Regardless it is dealt with in two ways: writing and an endless quest of self-destructive behavior. This was the fuel and foundation of my journey toward adulthood, and it almost killed me.
“Done. Fuckin’ finally.” She stood up without taking the last page out of the typewriter and went to her bedroom. She got dressed, grabbed her wallet and keys then left. She hurriedly strode out the door without a glance back at the cluttered desk. It wasn’t that she had drug up old memories, in preparing for and outlining this project she already dealt with conjuring up detailed memories of her past, but having it on paper made it real again. The apartment was tainted by the dark cloud of her childhood and she wanted to be out until the smog lifted. As she locked the deadbolt she promised herself she’d read it when she got back.
A bittersweet smile claimed her face, “Ooh, ominous. Why wouldn’t I get back?”
“Depends what your plans are.”
She hit the down button on the elevator, “I’m just going for a walk. I need to get some air and away –” She realized she was talking out loud through the uneasy glances from her elevatormate. She tapped the ear the other couldn’t see and laughed, “Bluetooth.” This seemed to put the stranger at ease, but Dolores decided to delay the conversation until she was alone. Unfortunately, privacy was a luxury not afforded to those on the street. She was surrounded by a mass of faceless beings, each with their own tasks and lives and neither of which involving her. Cities amplify loneliness, being surrounded by so many people gives a stark contrast to the lack of companionship in one’s life.
She walked aimlessly down the street, trying to clear the emotional wreckage of the day from her mind. Her footfalls began taking a familiar path, her memories leading her more than her busied thoughts could. She ended up outside of a bar, one of her old haunts not too far from home. Recognized at the door, she breezed inside with barely a glance from the bouncer.
“This is what I was talking about, abort mission, go home.”
She ignored the advice, becoming determined to wash the past from her mind. Every action driven by instinct, she sat at the bar and ordered a double of scotch. As it was poured, she stared at the glossy oak countertop, avoiding all eye contact. For the first time that evening, her mind was blank.
Without looking up, she replied, “Yes.”
A laugh. “Mind if I join you?”
“You’re already drinking near me, does it matter what I say.”
This time the laugh was gauche instead of cocky. “I suppose that’s true. I’ll take it as a yes.”
“Buy me a drink and you’ll get a definite answer.
She never remembered an end to the drinking, the night always faded into hazy recollections then finally blackness. She leaned forward with a groan, dizzy and struggling to gather where she was and how she got there. This ritual usually occurred in an apartment, which was either strange, or the unfamiliar element was found asleep beside her. As her mind came back into place, she found herself on a grassy beach, naked on the edge of town.
“I’m too hungover for your bullshit, help me find my clothes.”
She scanned the area around her, her cynical expectations met: her clothes had not accompanied her to this leg of her journey. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, then looked around again for anything she could use to cover herself. She shook her head and began walking toward town, grousing at the situation.
“Fuck it, I’m walking home like this.”
“In this town? No one will care. If someone says something, I’ll say it’s performance art.”
“Say you’re against the war.”
“I never understood that protest. The kind of man who’d start a war for profit would continue it for tits.”
Dolores walked without hesitation through town, pushing her way through a fog of people. The lack of incidents made her feel like a ghost, even though the reality of the situation most likely was that she ignored or simply didn’t notice anyone balk at her appearance. She exhaled sharply when she finally reached her door, and let her hand fall onto the handle.
“Look at it this way: at least you remembered to lock it.”
She sank to the floor and leaned against what might as well be a wall.
“Hell is other people, or a lack thereof.”
Dolores sat down in the shower and let the warm water wash over her, trying to forget the uncomfortable interaction with her landlord.
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