A First for Self

We all surrender eventually to various 'firsts' in life. The first time on a karoake stage; the first hike; the first time on a pitcher's mound in the pouring rain; the first fuck.

This, right here, is another one of my firsts. I am forcing myself to write. Seized by an interminable well of solitude brought on by the assuming block of writer, I am doing what they say to do. Write. Write whatever comes to mind. Whether it's about the speed with which the cockroach scurried under my feet on Seventh Ave. last night, or the fascinating way that the humidity stuck to my skin yesterday, or the joy I have at sitting in Thompkins Sq. Park with Geno -- one of the greatest friends I've ever had -- I am to just write.

That's what they say to do. Force your way through a block. Break down the wall, brick by excruciating brick if you have to, in order to reach the air that sustains the pent-up emotion that not even you can access most days. If this is the case then, how am I to reach it? Henry Miller is in me. I read his words, ambling though they may be. I follow every turn he takes away from Mara, understanding the passion he feels for her, he has for writing. I want to write like him.

But isn't that like saying I want to write like Shakespeare, or Voltaire, or Eliot, or Hegel? Wait, I don't want to write like Hegel. And, no, I don't want to write like Henry Miller, either. I don't want to write like anyone else but myself. But it's that self of mine that is playing a bit of a hiding game. Afraid to escape the air that feeds it, my self is confused by the passion it feels, that it can taste. And then I can't even speak of my self in the first person, as it should be. It remains a third-person entity, whose thoughts (dare I say feelings) swirl about uninhibited, sure, in words only. In words only that remain intact. Inside. Fearful of what they might look like on a page that can be seen by the outside.

So I took a chance at another first. Rather than put words where no one can see them, words that I don't even understand, I've put them out there. In here. I have no stories to tell tonight. Just bricks to dismantle. Something to reach that I cannot identify, and so it must come out here and now, word after unintelligible word, until I reach an endpoint that had no beginning.

Why did Matthew have to die? Why did I almost have to die in a car driven by my intoxicated mother? Why didn't I? They say you're supposed to write through a block, just put words down until a story forms. Like the one about the woman who was just given a most amazing gift from a most amazing person. It was a necklace of 108 wooden beads that she decided she would wear every time she sat down to force words out. But she would never get the chance, something she had no idea of knowing, because she was killed on her way home.

In a random act of stupidity, she decided to reach into her bag for her wallet to give to a seemingly nice homeless teenager looking for his next meal. Holding her new necklace in one hand, she gave the homeless teenager a dollar with the other. But the dollar wasn't enough, the teen screamed, and in one movement, he shoved a 14-inch blade in the samaritan's gut. In the next movement, he jerked the knife upward. And in one final movement, he turned and fled the scene, holding nothing but the dollar in his hands as he sped away. The nice woman fell to the ground, gasping for her last breath as she stared at her new, most amazing gift that she clutched in her hand.

As she lay there, she began counting the beads, despite the fact that she already knew there were 108 of them. Each number brought a new thought that she would never get to write about. Like where does love go when it ends? Can two people actually stay together, or is it all bullshit until the next person comes along? Is trust real? What is the point? Really?

She should have written more, she finally knew as she closed her eyes. She didn't want them to find her with them open.

Or maybe it's the story of a little girl who told the nice police officer her ABCs as he drove her to her new foster home. She lacked fear concerning where she was headed. She only trusted the nice man with the gun to lead her there safely. She would be taken care of, because somewhere in her she knew, even though she was only three (or four), that kids were supposed to be taken care of. But that story is boring.

It's unlike the one about the guy I saw today walking through the park tonight. He had a paper bag on his head. And he wasn't even leashing a dog to divert attention from his stupid hat. And people gawk at me. I wondered what he was thinking. If he was trying to be an East Village standout, like the ones with no front teeth who yell at their invisible friends. The East Village really isn't all that. And yet the people try to make it so.

Good on them, I say, because it takes the pressure off of me. But not really, I realized tonight as I walked the streets with Geno. Butch and the Sundance Fag, it seemed, drew much attention from the others of them out for their own strolls.

Stop editing, they say, when you're blocked. It's the worst thing a 'writer' can do. It impedes the power involved in the momentum of words. Let it all go, they say, because only then can you finally reach the inside, the stuff that the people can actually tolerate. I'm not there yet. My stories have no emotion yet, because I have no emotion. I cannot find it. But Henry Miller will be with me as I try to figure out what the words in me are supposed to look like when it's all said and done. Time and again. His wayward path to fruition is inspiring.

I will soon take a notebook and write with as much raw passion as I can muster. Without care of commas and clauses. Syntax and subjects. Each sentence will represent one small portion of each brick that encases my emotion. Until finally, hopefully, one day I will explode with everything I have, unafraid of my audience. Unafraid that it will judge me. Turn its eyes up at me. Furl its lip. Unafraid of being abandoned because of the feelings I have. All I want to do, so desperately, is let them out. But all I know is that they turn people away.

They say I can change all I know. So I may try to do so. But right now, they even turn my self away. If I cannot reach them, then why should anyone else? The difference is I cannot escape them. I run them over and over in my head, striving to understand them. And they only remain, misunderstood, unidentified, like the wayward Miller.

Brilliant in his method and his mood, he was afraid. But the words came in spite of his fear. And fear is what I must overcome to get past this. To get out of my head and into my heart where I belong. To write despite what I think they may think. To be unafraid of them turning and running from the scene, leaving me there with my eyes closed, clutching the most amazing gift from the most amazing person.

This first is finished. I wrote with nothing to say. And I end it still blocked. Each brick is still layed neatly on top of the other. They are gawking at me in their own way, dissatisfied with my attempts to fight them, unaffected by the empty force with which I try to demolish the wall they make. With this latest swipe complete, I will put my head down, in order that I may wake up to do tomorrow the one thing that I know I'm good at. Work with words.