Finishing... (aka, why word count quotas can be a bad thing)

Staring.

It’s all I can muster. Just my eyes firmly planted on the book – Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style.”

I have carried it with me now for almost 20 years. It was over a decade old when I bought the copy in a thrift store in Tempe, Arizona. I was 8 years old when someone else bought it brand new in 1979.

I paid 25 cents for it at Gracie’s Cottage. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, may have been in Mesa.

The unknown original purchaser, who put a drink on it to leave the distinctive “O” ring on it, paid more, I’d assume. But the edition – the third of the book, which I’m sure has now reached double digits, according to the cover – had no price on it.

The thing I noticed then, and am thinking about now in my un-air conditioned house in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, is that the spine was pristine.

Then, I was a 20-something who thought “Maybe I’ll be a writer someday.”

I lived in a house with a gaggle of dropouts who smoked dope and rode motorcycles. Except for the guy from Massachusetts who looked way too much like Johnny Thunders. He smoked dope and drove a beat up old BMW. Soon, however, he was replaced by a corn fed, blonde-haired Real World wanna-be from Nebraska. A Mormon to boot. Making him Mormon number three that I had already lived with in Arizona in just over a year and a half. I never even remember meeting one before then. Although, I’m sure I had, visiting Utah and all.

Lots of midgets in St. George. Wonder if any of them do porn now?

That house also had no air conditioning. So, I haven’t done much in those nearly 20 years in between.

I wrote a screenplay about a demonic, well, really just mean, cat.

I threw it away right after I finished it. No one ever saw it.

I guess it was inspired by Rebecca Johnson. She was a mousy cashier that I wanted to date back in the exile year, pining for a lesbian time of my life. But I was not able to do it. Not because she didn’t like me, because she did. She paid over $500 for a plane ticket to fly from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Phoenix, Arizona the summer of 1996. I bought condoms and wine coolers. We got a room in Flagstaff after touring the Grand Canyon.

And I did nothing. I was too scared.

Or my conscious got me.  Which is a good thing. Maybe.

I was a selfish prick at that point in my life. Maybe another thing that really hasn’t changed?

I didn’t however, do what I wanted to that night. Which was have sex with her.

Why? It wasn’t moral, but I’d like to think that way.

It’s because I thought she was “beneath” me in some way. Being a high school educated cashier at a department store at the age of 25. I’m sure that was my mindset at the time.

So, I backed away.

We’d been writing to each other for over a year by then. And I liked her.

But, when she sent me a letter and cassette tape, telling me she “loved” me. I recoiled. I didn’t respond. And that was the wrong thing to do.

Over the years, I’ve thought about her. Too much, probably. I don’t forget the shitty things I do. And there are a lot of them.

I drove to where I think she lives a few years ago. A small town outside of Charlottesville. I don’t know why. I guess I was hoping to bump into her. Tell her I was sorry.

It didn’t happen, of course.

And if it had, she probably wouldn’t have cared.

People are like that. They get over things. It’s how they live.

I think back to those days in Arizona with her. We smiled a lot. And we were awkward a lot. Neither of us knew what to do.

But, in the end, I didn’t do anything. Good or bad.

How dumb.

Instead, I broke her heart. I’d get mine broken repeatedly over the years. I’m sure I deserved all of it.

And I’ve never finished anything else I’ve written.

So, now I’m staring at Strunk & White. I open the book. The pages are yellowed and old.

I start the first paragraph of the Introduction:

“At the close of the first World War, when I was a student at Cornell, I took a course called English 8.”

It took me back to those Arizona days. When I had dreams. When the future looked bright and shiny.

I don’t look at the world the same way anymore. I still think I have a book in me. A good one? No clue. But it’s there. It’ll be about women. And the road. And drinking. I know that. The protagonist will have to be me, there’s no way I’m avoiding that.

But otherwise, I don’t have a plan for it.

Maybe that’s a problem? Maybe not.

Fucking things up can be fun. It can also be tedious, when it’s all you know. All you do.

But beating one’s self up about it for years isn’t fun either. Been there.

Before Strunk and his buddy White entered my conscious yesterday, I was sitting outside. It was late afternoon. My fate was sealed by what I’d done the week before. I was in a contemplative mood. And I was enjoying a Big Boss Harvest Time beer from the previous year. Yeah, it was an “aged” beer. But after the first sip, it was quite enjoyable.

I watched the people drive and walk by. No one paying me any notice. It was nice. It was like it was when I first moved here. My mind was open. My thoughts unburdened by the past. All I had was a blank slate in front of me.

And after finishing that beer, I thought about how little I cared about my broken heart. About the woman who crashed it.

“Six years it took me to get to this point,” I thought to myself.

I’m ready to move on. Westward ho, bitches.

(If that’s not a terrible ending, I don’t know what is) – Randy Jones, August 10, 2012.