Climbing Up the Walls (22-23)

22.

Friday came. Payday, I suppose. Indian Tommy and his girl were over. She didn't say much. That was fine with me. We sat around the fire and the fall, despite being in full orange and red force, was warm and it was a nice night for beer and pot and people you call friends when you don't have any.

“I was thinking of starting a band,” Indian Tommy said.

“Yeah? You play anything?” I asked.

“He doesn't play shit,” his girlfriend said. “Idiot.”

“Whatever, babe,” he said. “I can sing though I think. Maybe play drums.”

“You have a kit?” I asked.

“No, but, you know, I'll buy one if I have a band. If the commitment is there.”

“Right on,” I said.

“How are you going to write songs with a band if you wait around to feel out their commitment before you get drums?” she asked.

“I don't know babe. Shit. I guess I'll sing then. I have a guitar amp and microphones can't be that expensive.”

“You know any musicians?” I asked. I stared at the fire and watched it dance and sway and burn away each moment and word in the air.

“Not really. My cousin Ted plays bass, but that's about it. Maybe I'd put an ad online or something. I don't man, I haven't thought about it.”

“I've been thinking of writing a book,” I said.

“Yeah? Confessions of a Hermetic Drug Dealer?”

I faked a quiet laugh. His girlfriend laughed.

“Can you write?” she asked.

“Yeah, can you even write?”

“I don't know. I can read, so I guess I can write. I've been thinking about it a lot. I know how I like things to sound. I think I understand rhythm and I don't know. I don't have a great vocabulary, but maybe I don't need one.”

“I think you do, dude,” Indian Tommy said. “All writers, aren't they all fancy words and bullshit?”

“A lot of them probably, but maybe it's because they think they have to be. Maybe it's because that's what they think make them writers. Taking group writing classes and trying to out-vocab each other. I don't know, maybe none of that shit's necessary. Maybe I just need to write whatever comes out.”

“Maybe,” he said. “What are you going to write about?”

“Who knows. My life, maybe? Shit that happens? I have no idea. I've just been thinking about it.”

“I'd read your book, David,” his girlfriend said.

“Thanks.”

“So, where'd this come from? The writing thing?”

“I don't know. I get a lot of time out here, you know, to myself and I was thinking about prisoners and how they have all of this time to themselves and some of them write these books and some of those are really surprisingly great, so, maybe I could, right?”

“You aren't a prisoner.”

“Look around, Tommy.”

He looked at the black outside of the glow of the fire and a few moments passed.

“We should get going soon,” he said.

23.

My crop was nearly exhausted. And I was sitting at the table in the camper smoking my second joint of the morning and drinking from a jug of port wine that I paid Indian Tommy to bring to me a few days earlier. I was going to write.

I sat at the table and stared at the notebook and I wrote a few lines.

Maybe I'm not here at all.

I crossed it out.

For the best, I guess.

I crossed it out.

I could feel the words in my chest. The need to say them. The need for them to be understood, but my brain, my hand, wouldn't let them out. They got muddled and I realized the difference between people who create stories and people who read stories and I worried I was a reader.

I tried again.

I've spent six months living alone in a derelict camper in the middle of fucking nowhere.

It was better. I took a swig from the wine and went on.

I sell weed and am alone in every sense. I have considered killing myself. I miss my mother. I met a beautiful girl. I still consider killing myself. I can't stop thinking about it. Any of it. It has become maddening and my crop is nearly gone. I am writing this smoking the last of it and drinking fucking port wine and wishing the beautiful girl was here.

I looked it over. There was something there, but it was awful. I drew a large “X” through it all and closed my notebook.

I pulled from the bottle and thought about jerking off but I just wasn't in the mood then.