Crash and Burn
I am not good in crowds. And since ‘tis the season to network, with holiday parties every night, it becomes a struggle to wade into the midst of it all, shaking hands and exchanging cards left and right, dispensing witty banter, above all keeping up the necessary momentum to move from one end of the floor to the other and then out into the soothing, empty night.
Friday night is George’s party. This is fine. This is hookah and rum and video games on two big televisions in the living room. As controlled by me, Master Chef dodges and blasts his way through Halo with all the skill and accuracy of a special-needs student charging across a classroom after the afternoon juice. The ingestion of controlled substances actually helps my game-play, imbuing me with enough skewed focus to at least put a clip’s worth of ammo in the approximate area of the next slobbering beastie. “Go ahead, make my day,” I growl with sufficient Clint Eastwood gravitas, the controller jumping and vibrating like a live thing in my hands.
Saturday is the office party, which means expensive catering to the tune of crab cakes and lamb kebabs, an open bar on a back porch encased in heat-retaining plastic, people milling about with their significant others. Such work-sanctioned events require a Kabuki-like dance of graceful rigidity, and I often leave them feeling more exhausted than those other, wilder parties that usually climax with somebody riding a mountain bike through the living room while screaming incoherently.
A slow Monday afternoon and M. in NYC and I are emailing back and forth:
M: “I’m being priced out of this city.”
N: “Don’t worry. The plebs will revolt. The rich will be forced to sell their houses, entertainment centers, cars, timeshares, dogs, and children in order to buy weapons in a futile effort to turn back the human tide determined to rip them apart like uncooked pizza dough. The blood-dimmed tide will be loosed. The goat with three eyes will walk down 5th Avenue with the Anti-Christ on its back.”
M: “Nick, I … don’t know what to say to that one. I think now is as good a time as any to go get plowed.”
N: “I am so bored.”
Yes; and frustrated. The infamous writer’s block came down like a brick wall yesterday, cutting me off some 36k words into the book. I need to go back and revise, rewrite, re-think. Yet every time I write a fictional sentence, it comes apart on the page irrevocably as ash in a high wind. I run. I stomp. I screw. I cook. I curse. I watch most of the discs of 24: Season 4. I toss a stress ball against the wall, over and over again, like Steve McQueen in ‘The Great Escape,’ until the next-door neighbor starts banging on his side of said wall in furious response. And this is just yesterday afternoon. Then, walking to work in the predawn, headphones on and listening to Tom Waits, the answer comes. I sprint to work and slide in front of my workstation and jot out three sentences, and – boom – the glacier cracks apart, water and chunks of ice beginning to move again.
At this juncture I harbor no more youthful illusions that the first book out of the gate will make me a solid seven figures, allowing me to grow a beard, get weird and disappear to some far-off swath of beach. Right now I simply want to finish it; it’s become a looming shadow, ever-present, ever changing.
Friday night is George’s party. This is fine. This is hookah and rum and video games on two big televisions in the living room. As controlled by me, Master Chef dodges and blasts his way through Halo with all the skill and accuracy of a special-needs student charging across a classroom after the afternoon juice. The ingestion of controlled substances actually helps my game-play, imbuing me with enough skewed focus to at least put a clip’s worth of ammo in the approximate area of the next slobbering beastie. “Go ahead, make my day,” I growl with sufficient Clint Eastwood gravitas, the controller jumping and vibrating like a live thing in my hands.
Saturday is the office party, which means expensive catering to the tune of crab cakes and lamb kebabs, an open bar on a back porch encased in heat-retaining plastic, people milling about with their significant others. Such work-sanctioned events require a Kabuki-like dance of graceful rigidity, and I often leave them feeling more exhausted than those other, wilder parties that usually climax with somebody riding a mountain bike through the living room while screaming incoherently.
A slow Monday afternoon and M. in NYC and I are emailing back and forth:
M: “I’m being priced out of this city.”
N: “Don’t worry. The plebs will revolt. The rich will be forced to sell their houses, entertainment centers, cars, timeshares, dogs, and children in order to buy weapons in a futile effort to turn back the human tide determined to rip them apart like uncooked pizza dough. The blood-dimmed tide will be loosed. The goat with three eyes will walk down 5th Avenue with the Anti-Christ on its back.”
M: “Nick, I … don’t know what to say to that one. I think now is as good a time as any to go get plowed.”
N: “I am so bored.”
Yes; and frustrated. The infamous writer’s block came down like a brick wall yesterday, cutting me off some 36k words into the book. I need to go back and revise, rewrite, re-think. Yet every time I write a fictional sentence, it comes apart on the page irrevocably as ash in a high wind. I run. I stomp. I screw. I cook. I curse. I watch most of the discs of 24: Season 4. I toss a stress ball against the wall, over and over again, like Steve McQueen in ‘The Great Escape,’ until the next-door neighbor starts banging on his side of said wall in furious response. And this is just yesterday afternoon. Then, walking to work in the predawn, headphones on and listening to Tom Waits, the answer comes. I sprint to work and slide in front of my workstation and jot out three sentences, and – boom – the glacier cracks apart, water and chunks of ice beginning to move again.
At this juncture I harbor no more youthful illusions that the first book out of the gate will make me a solid seven figures, allowing me to grow a beard, get weird and disappear to some far-off swath of beach. Right now I simply want to finish it; it’s become a looming shadow, ever-present, ever changing.
posted by NiK @ 5:15 PM
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