If it wasn’t 80 degrees in the shade, I might be able to think of a story. But no, I’m stuck sweltering under the incandescent lights of my room and neon glow of my bitch of a computer. (I wrote a love sonnet about my computer once, but like any relationship it has its ups and downs. I’m too hot and tired to come up with any sort of a story, and she’s been overheated and giving me nothing but system errors and porn.)
So I sit down, take a deep breath, and try to write about a gunfight. Just like the old saying goes, when in doubt shoot somebody.
“Bang,” he said.
“Bang,” said the gun.
The barrel erupted, a leaden volcano…
A leaden volcano that did what exactly?
“Hey Nick,” I turn to my roommate, the six and a half foot Viking-looking fellow sweating away in the leather chair across the room. “I need a metaphor for a gunshot. Got any ideas?”
He pauses, staring at me for a moment as the corners of his mouth struggle to raise themselves against his drooping moustache. “Isn’t it obvious?”
I close my eyes, admitting to myself that I walked into this one, and then turn back to my computer screen. “Never mind.”
The barrel erupted, a leaden volcano…
“PENIS!”
“I said never mind! Now shut up!”
But who am I kidding, really? It’s one of the oldest rules in the book. Write in something like a gun, and people are going to turn it into sex. My brilliant battle between the two brothers, for all of its emotional twists and turns will amount to little more than foreplay. Goddamned English majors...
Okay, so we’ll skip the gunfight. That’s okay, I’ve got all sorts of literary gold stored away in this little brain of mine.
Sarah slumps her head against my pillow in an attempt to make herself comfortable, trying to get some reading done for class tomorrow. I gaze at her for a moment and smile at her beauty. I could always write her into my story. Then again, I think I’d rather not. The last thing that I need is to write about my girlfriend’s breasts, lips, and legs, turning her into some sort of film noir femme fatale.
Film noir, eh? Hmmm…
The room was full of smoke and the odor of old gin when she walked in. The harsh slanted shadows played across the glitter of her blood red dress. Her hips swayed slightly as she waltzed in, moving like a lioness that was about to take this territory for her own…
“Hey Charlie, ever notice how Sarah’s pencil looks like a penis?”
“For God’s sake Nick, will you knock off with the sex jokes? I’m trying to write here!”
Sarah does nothing but chuckle as Nick explodes into laughter and my face burns hotter than the blacktop cooking under the sun outside.
“So what are you trying to write now, sweetie?” Her voice is careful, like a group of kids treading around an electric fence.
“A murder mystery.”
“Oh,” Nick grins like a sadist watching a car wreck, “who done it?”
“It’s a twist. The woman did it…stabbed her husband in the back with a knife. A big…steel…knife…oh dammit.”
Nick chuckles to himself in satisfied victory as Sarah buries her face into the spine of her book, concealing her amusement at my frustration.
Okay, so I’ll skip the story with the phallic knife. There’s got to be something that I can use that won’t be turned into something sexual.
Science fiction. I’ll write some quasi-cheesy space opera like Star Trek. The whole genre’s basically a boy’s club anyway; as long as I keep William Shatner out of it, there’s no way that it will pass for anything dirty.
Moving like a shark through the vacuum of stars and planets, the Orpheus raced toward its next destination. Jack leaned back in the cockpit and lit a cigarette, relaxing as the sleek ship raced its way through space, passing Europa in seconds and heading straight on to the colony on Phobos where his next assignment awaited…
“Hey Charlie.”
I grit my teeth and turn up the volume on my stereo in an attempt to drown out the drone of Nick’s voice.
“Hey Charlie…”
Suddenly, the holographic monitor of Jack’s ship blinked to life as a warning signal broke through his relaxed meditation. Gritting his teeth in irritation, Jack seized the wheel and steered the front end of his bullet-shaped vessel in the direction of the nearest communications transmitter…
“HEY CHARLIE!”
“WHAT?! What is it?!”
Nick leans in over my shoulder, staring at my computer screen. In exasperation I cast a glance toward Sarah, but she’s doing her best to pretend that neither Nick nor I are in the room.
“You ever notice that your hero’s spaceship looks like a…”
“Shut up. Don’t say it. Just don’t say it.”
“Well it does. There’s a big bullet-shaped spaceship underneath a big cock...pit…”
I turn back to the computer screen and scroll through the first two paragraphs. Well I’ll be. I just can’t get away from this smut.
“…get out…I said GET OUT!”
Nick heeds my warning for a change, inching his way out the door as I seize the table fan, threatening to ram it clear through his skull.
“Okay Sarah, I’m fresh out. Do you have any ideas?”
“What about a story about you trying to write a story?”
“...Nah, forget it. I guess I’ll just give it up for tonight.”
My computer gives me a beep as a new window opens up in Internet Explorer. Another porn page, showcasing a man and his oversized…oh just skip it.
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