Writing us a (Part)

Danger! Danger!

Writing is a dangerous profession. No, I’m not busting heads or shaking down wheelers and dealers. I’m not denying a mortgage, giving a kid a failing grade, running skip traces, pushing drugs, or coming by to audit you.

Sitting in my living room where the phosphorescent overhead kitchen light pervades the darkness I stare at a thin black line blinking and waiting for stimulus. I regurgitate the triumphs and tribulations of entertainment that people have poured their money, if not their hearts, into. I wax laconic about days past, the people I have met, and the things I have done. I slit my wrists and let the blood fill the spaces between the keys. I find those places and spaces within most people don’t want to talk about and pull them up, ripping out the tendons in my arms and zombie-walking after.

I’m sober. I’m drunk. I’m tired. I’m wired. I’m happy. I’m pissed. I’m whatever the spinning wheel lands on that day.

If anyone asks, wants to know, the most difficult part of writing it’s people. The ones that I create. The ones that already exist and all I do is illustrate them on a page. The fictional ones never hurt you back but take everything in filling in their blanks –their lives, their loves, their loneliness. The ones based on real people run the risk of being read by the ones I emulated.

Even worse is when I directly write about those I know. My friends. My enemies. People I don’t even know. I’m not scared so much as I have to make sure the med kit is stocked when I do. I’ve angered and frustrated several because I shoved them through the same filter as I do everything else. The honesty that so many claim they love about me is a double-edged sword that many would love to thrust back at me when its tip faces them.

And here I fill this white space but resist asking for pity. For my friends that I have trod upon whatever I wrote was not written out of malice but from concern and frustration. For my enemies what bled out onto the page is a congenial jab compared to what I feel. Part of growing up, part of being professional, is accepting the good and bad of what you do and to just keep going.