IV

Hours pass and one page flows unto the other and as the bottle empties the dull smoldering in my stomach escalates to a raging inferno in my mind. I’m wondering if this is how they all felt. If all the great writers deep down truly felt the passion that I feel right now. This is ecstasy pure, clean and purged of my transgressions. The rapid tapping of the keys is only interrupted when my phone rings and a strange number appears on the caller ID. I let it go to voicemail. Seconds after the infernal racket of ringing and vibrating dies I am greeted with a new voice mail that I will without a doubt ignore.

I often try to recall or understand what has gotten me into this position. Some nights I am sold on the fact that somewhere along the line a woman is responsible. Other nights I am convinced that I am but a coward searching for an exit. I don’t keep many friends and most are repulsed by the lack of will or desire I have to exist under the social norm. I refuse very simply to accept the fact that I should punch a clock and work a real job for a steady pay check. I am to be a writer. I make no apologies for that fact as conceited as it is. Perhaps critics will hail me as the last great guardian of the written word and a man with a deep understanding of being stricken Ill with sorrow and self pity - perhaps not. I came to a realization early on that I was not wired like everyone else. I spent most of my teen years buried in novels and Hollywood films living vicariously on the deeds of men whose ambitions dwarfed my own.

And then it happens. Without knowing it I am fully dressed and showered crossing the threshold of my apartment headed for the first bar with an empty chair. It never takes long at four p.m. in the depths of winter on Cape Cod to find one.