this is a cut-up version of the opening to my short story “C6 H12 O6″
which was written a few years ago
i’m staring at a screen.
a glowing white screen.
a computer screen.
i wonder, when i typed the word ‘computer’
just now, i wonder if the computer knew i was talking
about it. typing about it, rather.
see, i’m drunk and not quite sure what i’m doing right now.
or write now. funny, isn’t it? not comical funny,
you know, but… odd…
queer, so to speak.
i had the idea that i would write something
about how when someone like me is drunk
this is what they write about.
except i have no idea to write about.
there are no ideas, there is nothing to say,
nothing to be said with certainty, there is no truth,
reality is absolutely subjective, which is funny
- i mean the odd, queer type of funny -
because how can subjectivity be absolute?
- how very postmodern of me -
anyway
- what i mean is rather, or i digress,
or whatever else someone in a position such as this
might use as a brief, convenient method of changing the subject -
just a minute ago i typed something about ‘someone like me’
so maybe i should tell you about me. i am eight feet three inches tall
and my weight is twenty-seven pounds. i have purple hair,
purple eyes, and no genitals. okay, so that last part isn’t true.
okay, fine, none of it is true. it’s not as if you care
what i really look like
or rather i don’t care
if you care what i really look like
or rather
it objectively does not matter.
yes.
it objectively does not matter what i look like.
with that established, i suppose we can move on
to the matter of my character,
which may or may not matter
- haha, pun intended -
so.
i’d like to think i’m a decent guy
and i suppose the wording of that last sentence
indicates that i’m insecure.
so what?
screw you.
i’ll just say it
i am a decent guy.
i try to exhibit compassion, empathy,
all that sensitive bullspit.
and i’m smart, as in intelligent,
not always street-smart, or savvy,
as some like to say, but smart.
as in, i know things about reality.
i may be timid at times,
but i have bold ideas, or so i’d like to think.
FUNK! i did it again.
okay, fine, i’m insecure
but who isn’t?
i’m also a rather creative fellow,
this i can tell you without reservation or qualification.
you can tell i have a creative personality because of
my tendency to drink too much, smoke too much,
ingest chemicals indiscriminately
supposedly searching for doorways into other dimensions
or levels of perception,
quit jobs without justification, not pay my bills
or at least never pay them on time,
borrow money from friends,
and drink too much.
i purposely repeated the ‘drink too much’ part
because that is the key indicator and
i didn’t want it to be glossed over by all those
secondary indicators, which are important, of course,
but they probably made the sentence drag on a bit too long
to really emphasize my point. which is that creative people drink a lot.
at least, that’s how it seems to me. but we need not get involved in
an exploration of the validity or accuracy of that statement,
i’ll leave that to some psychologist.
psychologists, by the way, are widely known
to be abusers of artificial food additives,
so you see, we all have our faults.
