January 28, 2004
I give up and write a post about not posting.
I have been sitting in the bathtub drinking Ten-High by the pint. The bottles are stacked up by the toilet, and she’s out there now banging the door with her beautiful smooth hands. I should answer, but instead I throw the bottle against the wall and scream: get out you bitch, you rank ambition! The pile of smashed up emptys looks like a city in ruins.
I resolve to write about the culture of the day. I will write about that song.
When I first heard the song I loved it. I played it for her and she loved it too and we decided to make it our song. Things were perfect, for a while, until they played the song at the office party a few weeks later. It was like being cheated on. Suddenly I hated the song.
I will write about this to illustrate the foreshortening of space between the image and the cliché. Then I will link to the other people who have come to the same conclusion about the song, and I'll suggest that the conclusion I am making about cliché itself is actually a cliché. My point will be that the image, the cliché and the criticism are all the same thing. Toward the end of the post everything should seem hopeless. Then, just before the car falls off the edge, I will write about going to a dinner party where no one had ever heard of the song. “It was,” I will conclude, “like waking up from a nightmare.”
I went to a party at Dan and Rose’s house. They have a bobble-head doll of leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a magnet on the fridge that reads: “Too many freaks, not enough freak shows.” They are not being ironic about this. At the end of the night we were sitting around drinking and discussing music. I started to complain about this song I had heard…
She is whispering to me outside the door. You can’t write about pop culture, you don't know anything about it. And you can’t write about not writing. Didn't you see Adaptation? You can’t even write about not-writing about not-writing. There is already a convention of writing about columnists who write about not being able to write. Don’t believe me? Read your weblogs. Everything is gone. You are going to have to pull yourself together.
I throw another empty bottle of Ten-High, it explodes against the door.
She is laughing at me now. You don’t scare me, she says. Drinking is a ellipsis…anyone who drinks whiskey neat considers themself a boozehound these days. It’s a joke.
I want a cigarette, but I just quit. I dip underneath the whiskey bath and hold my breath.
I resolve to make a list. I will make it funny. It will be the list of things people are carrying with them while waiting on line to see a movie. I will go to moviephone.com and find out what movie is popular right now and then write this list. If I have seen the movie, I will write about the characters in it as if they are cast members on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Is that played out yet? It is, isn’t it. Ok, I’ll write them as characters on Celebrity Poker.
No, wait. Not a list, a letter! A letter from someone to an unlikely recipient. The letter will start out formally, but then it will come undone. If the timing is right it will be very funny at the end. If I was clever I could try and make it look like a real letter. I could mail it to someone and then document their response to it. Or I could write the letter and show it to someone and say, "This is a funny letter I wrote from a person who is kind of like me to a person who is kind of like you. It enumerates, in a humorous way, your many shortcomings." But now here's the thing - if they would look beneath the surface and read between the lines they would find that it’s really a letter from them to me enumerating my many shortcomings. Layers of meaning. That sort of thing.
Oh Christ.
She’s inside now. I am underwater but I can hear her lilting voice and it sounds like mermaids singing. I drop one arm out of the tub like Marat. No. That’s impossible. I’m submerged in whiskey and my arm is not elastic enough. Whatever. I reach over the tub and root around for her, but all I can feel are the shards of glass.
She’s still whispering though, and I can hear her. This is not your muse, she says. This is me. You’re exaggerating. Stop being so petulant. No letters. No lists. If, when you are finished, this is a notebook of tiny, ragged, nonsensical type it will still work. It isn’t like you’re getting paid for this. Time is crashing in, can you hear it? It sounds like cattle on the move.
I need an unexpected ending, I say.
Come on. Do you really? You're so dramatic.
Please.
She reaches a hand into the water and strokes the side of my face, and I can’t see her, but her hand is solid, and not a dream.
