hand-me-down advice

I sigh as I plop my ass down on my old, dirty hand-me-down couch. It used to be some kind of off-white color, but that has long ago disappeared. I was given this couch by my sister’s boyfriend. His words upon offering it up were “It’s the dog’s couch right now, but I’m sure a little bit of Woolite and some elbow grease will make it all good again.”

It didn’t seem like a particularly dirty couch. It had some slobber marks from the dog just sitting there on it all the time. Since the dog was fixed, I didn’t need to worry about red-rocket stains. So, I snagged it up and took it to my house at the beach. Yeah, I said my house at the beach. The three-bedroom shithole that I rent for $695 a month. A little price to pay to live at the beach, but a hell of a price to pay on my paycheck.

On the couch are a pile of bills that came in the mail while I was away on vacation. The girlfriend and I spent five days jaunting and juking about the country. We saw 11 states in all. Went to Louisville for the first time, as well as Batesville, Arkansas. Add Huntington, West Virginia, to that list of new places as well. Plus all the small towns in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and others that I’d never been too and it was a damn productive trip.

I also made it a point to find the time to write. Each day. Sometimes in the morning. Sometimes while she was driving in the afternoon and one time late at night. But, it got done.

“What are you writing about?” she asked.

“What we just drove by,” was one of my answers.

Another was “Sheryl Crow.”

Still another was “you.”

She crinkled her nose at that. I asked why.

“What do I do that needs to be written about?” she asked.

“Everything,” I said.

She smiled.

This reminded me of a conversation I once had. A writer of more renown and talent than I was sitting on the beach with me one hot summer day. It was Memorial Day because we were listening to the Indianapolis 500. Hundreds of tourists all over the place and there we were, sipping on Budweisers and listening to a transistor radio. I always dug that about him, he took that trusty old radio with him everywhere. And damned if he couldn’t always find something interesting to listen to. A much better success ratio than those with XM Satellite radio. However, I do believe he now has it.

But the topic of writing about people came up.

“You’ll lose friends when you write about them,” he said.

“Then were they really friends?” I replied.

“Trust me, when you write about somebody, they’ll take it the wrong way. If you mean it as a compliment, they’ll take it as a dig. If you mean it as comedy, they’ll look at it like a tragedy. It never fails.”

“I’ve written about just about everyone I know. Some have read it, some haven’t. I don’t even know who has or hasn’t. It doesn’t matter, really. I just need to type things. Scribble things. Jot them down on napkins or receipts. If you say something funny that I want to use later, the only way I’ll remember it is to write it down.”

“Exactly, and people will want to read it. And then they won’t like it. You could write like Hemingway, or you could write like Nick Sparks, either one they’ll hate it because it’s them.”

“It’s the only way to get people into a story,” I continued to rebut. “Real conversations top fake one’s every day.”

“Yes, I agree. But be ready for the consequences.”

He was right, of course. I’ve written about a lot of people. Friends, family, co-workers past and present. Ex-lovers and current ones. The ones that stumble upon my scribblings usually don’t know what to make of them. Especially if they see themselves.

“You’re such a good writer,” they say, “but what did you mean by this?” And by this, it always means the stuff about them.

“I don’t remember, really,” I respond, completely honest in saying it. “I write something that I feel in the moment. Not something I’m going to dwell upon. Well, except for the damn breakups and tooth decay.”

Sometimes I get a laugh then. But usually not.

But I don’t write for others. The time I tried to do that, it blew up in my face. “You don’t write like you did before,” she said. Well damn it, it isn’t like it was then. “You wrote about her so much better than you wrote about me.” Ugh.

Get off of the horse and you have a hell of a time getting back on. Without the stirrup, at least.