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.

Miss January, 1972

Driving along, I stare at the sand. Out here, it’s everywhere. It is a desert after all.

On the radio, Lucha Reyes belts out “Guadalajara”. I stare at the sand some more. The landscapes out here are beautiful. I’d forgotten how much. I left the desert in 1998. Didn’t go back again until 2005. Now, I’m watching it go by again. I’m only stopping for gas and food. Gas and food. Not that I have somewhere to be. I just haven’t figured out if I want to go someplace at all.

The song ends. A commercial starts. I switch the channel. It’s on the AM dial. So it just keeps moving. Until it stops. On a discussion.

“Why the hell did Orson Welles have Charlton Heston play a Mexican in “Touch of Evil”?” the voice asked.

The other voice, a woman’s said simply “Well. Hollywood in the late 1950s would not have let Janet Leigh be married to a Mexican! So, they said “we’ll put Moses in Mexican face!”

Seemed to be about right to me. Well, historically, at least. And I didn’t want to listen anymore. Click.

The next station my radio found was playing something straight out of the “Three Little Bops” Looney Tunes cartoon. I leave it as it brings a smile to my face. A rarity of late. I start to play along with my fingers on the dashboard of my car, a la, John Candy in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

The song ends. Another commercial. I stare at the sand some more.

I start to wonder what the hell I’m doing driving in the middle of Arizona staring at sand. I pull off to the side of the road. I want to walk in the sand. I take off my shoes. I get out of my car. I walk to the west. Immediately, there’s an obstacle -- barbed wire fence. I slowly work my way over it. I guess I’m trespassing now.

The sand isn’t like that on a Florida beach. First of all, there’s no Gulf of Mexico to look at. Just buttes and plains and a couple of cacti. I was always disappointed with the lack of cacti when I lived in Arizona. Except in certain places. But most of them in the high-cacti density kinds of places were shot by idiots and their guns or ruined by exhaust fumes.

And when you actually get out and walk around, barefoot, you realize there isn’t really sand in the desert here. It’s just dirt. Hot dirt. With lots of twigs. Lots of burrs. Lots of other things.

I find an old can. It’s rusted and brittle. I kick it. It mostly falls apart.

In an old river bed, well, old in the fact that it’s been there for a long time, I see an old car. A Mustang. Probably from 1974 or ‘75. Whichever year they started screwing with the design. What I would call the downfall of a great car. But I’m sure there are fans of those versions too.

I look inside. It’s still a beautiful car without any upholstery. The radio, shockingly, is still in the dash. I marvel at that for a moment. Think about how unlikely that is. About as unlikely as me walking around out here on a spring day without any shoes on. Not the brightest of ideas, but I’m not a light bulb.

The walkabout continues. I kind of wish my buddy John was here with me. He’d dig the strangeness of it all.

I come upon an old travel trailer. It has no tires. It has no door. I look inside. On the wall is a painting of a Playboy centerfold. Miss March 1972. A perfect reproduction of the magazine spread. Some one really had a thing for that gal. Even did the info part.

“Marilyn Cole. Miss January. 1972,” it read.

“36-24-35. 5-feet, 8-inches. 119 pounds. Born May 7, 1949. Portsmouth, England”

“Pretty thorough,” I think to myself. “But no turn-ons and turn-offs.”

She’s standing in front of books. Holding one even. I look a little closer. Why? Because I’m in the middle of the desert staring at a life-sized painting of a Playboy centerfold on the wall of a travel trailer, that’s why. The painting is very life-like. Her hair is brown, with beautiful 1970s waves. She also has blonde hairs on her belly. Something they’d airbrush away nowadays. Not then. Beauty shone through.

I take a mental picture. This is one to remember.

The sun is starting to go down. It’ll be dark soon. I turn around, got to go back to my car. Got to drive some more. Stare at the sand some more. Think about everything and nothing. Some more.