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Posted on September 27, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

I wake up. (He wakes up).

I stare at the ceiling and try and remind myself of where I am. It is home, it’s always home and most days (every day) I (he) am (is) alone (alone!). Sometimes I turn around, if my neck or my back or my head aren’t killing me and I am not alone. I wonder what her name is. Then I try and remember where I met her, what we talked about and how we ended up in my bed. Naked, spent and asleep. I wonder if I told her my joke about the neighbour’s dog. It’s not so much a joke as it is an anecdote and it’s not so much the story itself as how I tell it that is funny. I can always manage a laugh at that story and my mirth seems to set off a sympathetic reaction in the beautiful woman across the table from me. So sympathetic that she falls right off the table and into my bed. Ah yes, the life of a writer! (What the hell would he know about any kind of life? All he does is sit around all day imagining worlds without actually having seen one himself.)

On the days when the woman is pretty or has impressive body parts, even though I am a breast man myself, I feel like a winner (loser!). After all I am just a humble (poor, broke, penniless even!) writer, a weaver of tales, a knitter of literary yarn. The hot chicks normally go for the actors or the models or the rich men with fat wallets they sit on so their dicks look larger by virtue of being higher. What did I ever do to rate sex with a real live woman?

I am not a morning person but I am definitely a breakfast person. Eggs boiling, bacon frying, salad tossing, juice squeezing, newspaper perusing…these are all my specialties. I also do an excellent yet subtle floral arrangement for the sleepily stirring beauty who is about to find herself in all kinds of undress and try and remember what she did last night. I am used to the faint disappointment that greets their realization that they haven’t earned the right to mark off a movie star or rock god as ‘been there, shagged that’ but I help ease any post coital remorse by putting on the charm and the kettle. Nothing says ‘less unhappy one-night stand’ like a well-fed lovely with an unplanned day ahead of her. I always give them my real name and number and I always remind myself to feel no sorrow because a few, okay most, of them never call. Still, whether I’ve broken my fast with someone or alone (always alone, the poor deluded man) I celebrate another meal consumed by reading the newspapers thoroughly in the hope that something will spark the fickle flame of inspiration.

Whether I am inspired or not, I end ‘newspaper reading’ with a leisurely shower. More often than not, we’re at around half past eleven by the time I am merely damp with the aftertaste of the shower on my skin and ready to put fingers to computer keyboard. On the inspired days (six in just under fifteen hundred) I will turn out ten pages by lunch. On the uninspired days I will turn out two (complete dreck, utterly unusable) and reward myself with chicken salad and a nice bowl of soup.

I realized very early on in my writing career (right after he had gone six straight months without earning a penny) that austerity was a virtue for the practicing writer. The shedding of emotional baggage and worldly possessions (not because he had joined a cult but because he just couldn’t afford any of that shit anymore) helps free up mindspace and leave room for fresh ideas to visit, perhaps even take roost.

Lunch over, it’s time for a nap (because of course, staring at a blank computer screen is so much hard work!).

Wake up around five, wash up and settled down to write until eight (really six-thirty because the next hour-and-a-half will be spent obsessing over what to wear). Eight-thirty is a good time to set out. Get to know the people that will someday inhabit my work, give fresh pages life because of all the words printed on them (in truth he’ll just write a snarky blog entry about them and wonder why his site isn’t getting as many hits as those stupid websites that post naked pictures of semi-celebrities ). Arrive at the first bar by nine-thirty (which is when he’ll remember that the only people there are the ones who don’t want to go home to their dreary spouses and their drearier lives) and watch the regulars do their thing in pairs, groups or all alone. Maybe if one of the loners is hot enough I’ll swoop in, let her know I’m a writer and let the magic of my profession work her up enough to consider letting me in her panties. If there are no hotties around, I’ll move on.

If I put my mind to it, there are always hotties (and that’s exactly where they are - in his mind!)

Back to my place for a little wine, a lot of condom use and then…exhausted, blissful sleep. Tomorrow is another day (that he will continue to be a nobody!).

Good night.

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