#fictional truth

Is Fictional Truth Reliable?

These lives are rotten. Pre-expired. Found in the aisle with 50% off because they are not sought after.

They bask in simplicity, they move in lethargic content.

Can I blame them? I can not blame them, I have not been granted the power to judge. I, too, a rotting one.

We continue to claim immortality. We watch ourselves go apart in explosions go apart in starvation, murder, war, disease. We watch ourselves evaporate like foam in a turbulent ocean, and we still claim immortality.

Immortality, immorality. 

Siblings, conjoined twins at the head, immobilized at our feet. We seek one to achieve the other.

Couldn't we seek the waters instead? To dive deep, away from sunlight and greater possibilities of causing harm. Swallowed by a sinking darkness.

I accidentally stumbled upon a Writer’s Conference in the middle of a Bostonian winter. The bar was full, the crowd was rowdy, and I was feeling like a tourist: high on my animosity and exhilaration of knowing I was only in this city for five days.

There is some sort of gravitational pull toward fellow writers. I want to say it’s their faraway looks, plotting away the next sentence, or their bearded faces, hiding characters and themes, or perhaps it’s in their ink-stained fingers.

Maybe it’s just jealousy. The envious drumming when you encounter someone who does what you claim to be doing.

Bearded writer #1 was just being clapped off stage by more bearded, flannel-wearer, beanie-head writers, and he was good. His voice was smooth and rose above whatever hit-single the bar played, but his words. His words were real words, real thought out writer words exposed to the world.

I wanted to yank the microphone and break all Grey Goose bottles hovering behind the bartender. Mine were not real words. Mine were university words. Always evaluated, always deemed excellent, remaining within red pens and marks that would account to absolutely nothing except my mildly inflated ego. Temporary inflation.

 “Are you having a writer’s night out?” my friend, the temporary Bostonian, boldly asked Bearded writer #1. I lingered behind her, full with regret and existential doubts.

“Writer’s Conference 2013! We’re here until Saturday,” he grinned as a friend—acquaintance, another writer—squeezed his shoulder to return his attention to the writer-circle, “have a beer. We’re having more readings downstairs.”

We made pathetic introductions. I felt my own beer warm and powdery in my tongue. I am a writer too, I wanted to shout, I do what you do. My eyes got watery and I chugged my glass down. 

Someone else got on the mock-stage, a sad looking piece of black wood, barely raising the speaker above everyone else. She was petite, dressed in black stockings, a checkered skirt, and a cardigan. Of course there was a beanie hat on her red locks. I hated her. She looked and felt like a writer. I was wearing faded jeans, a black turtleneck and boots to brave the snow. I felt fat in my winter coat, and regretted my two-day unwashed hair.

Her red lips teased the mic, of course she sounded like a writer. She blurred and became jagged rocks on an Irish coast, turbulent fishermen and a floating body. I excused myself and headed to the bathroom, where I spitefully left my second beer on the toilet. It was only later that I contemplated the possibility of one of those writers walking into the bathroom and vomiting some tasteful piece about drinks in empty toilets. I could’ve thought about that. Always could’ve.

 Bearded writer #1 was now David, joined by flannel writer Adam, and shaggy hair writer Mark. My friend is gifted like that, people flutter to her and stay for the company, the laughter, the flirting. No one flutters to me; I don’t think I even know how to retain flutters. These three writers spewed their profession like old cars spew oil; magazines, professors, independent publishing houses. Their writerness was validated by their jobs. Their real jobs. Writers with jobs that actually need writers.

 “What do you do?” Polite conversation to the awkward bystander who must be spoken to out of default.

I thought of ways to make my own job appear cool. As I look back to that heater induced, sweat smelling bar, I realize my job would’ve naturally sounded interesting. At that point in my life I was starting out fresh 23s in a modeling company, marketing and public relations. It was my Devil Wears Prada moment. Flights to NYFW, backstage shenanigans, meeting celebrities in the hallways and bagged goods after each show. But in that moment, in the middle of a Bostonian blizzard, I regarded my job as the saddest position a wannabe writer could be.

“I write press releases.” Was the only thing I could muster, “I’m a writer too.”

Their delight made my stomach plunge. A writer too! How lucky for you to suddenly come upon this Writer’s Conference that you knew absolutely nothing about, you cheeky writer, you!

What had I published? What did I write? And the dreaded, do you have a website I can check out your works at?

No one prepares you to be a writer. There are degrees and diplomas handed out to that profession, yes. But no one can give you the writerness. The four years can amount to absolutely nothing if you just sit on your essays and college assignments, if you don’t kick and tear at the publishing barrier standing between your works and a wider audience. No one taught me to be a writer. Maybe I was content being a classroom writer, praised only by professors. I never fought long enough. I admired and envied the great ones, whom I believed had it easy because at –that- time, anything would’ve been fascinating, all stories were new and all styles were mesmerizing. Not now, I would use as an excuse, now it’s harder because everything has been done before.

I left the bar that night dizzy with beer and a purse full of writer-cards. Websites, agencies, names, kind promises of ‘send me your work I’ll take a look at it.’ Maybe these promises were real, maybe the kindness was true. I don’t know. I never pursued any of these connections. I was petrified and angry at these true writers, at how their lives stained my few accomplishments, how their real works existed in real mediums, unlike my hidden stories archived away in a computer file named 'Stories and Whatever'.

It's in the tennis court where they speak, brag, confess, and cheat their women (you are not what I married); these men are muffled by soaring green balls, creaking rackets only used pre-happy hour, and that whishing whizz of tennis shoes against asphalt on tennis courts hitting tennis balls.

"You finally married, then." A self-answered question. Why else would two mid-twenty socially handsome men be so calmly murdering balls, if their masculinity were not already proven and settled.

"Yes, your friend's friend."

The wife, a relation, an acquaintance, a Facebook 'you should add'.

"The pretty one?" Awe and respect, the ball hits the small brown 'ball-collector' example of child-labor in his blue and white uniform. 

The wife, praised for her porcelain-unmasked face, her slim body, her family name. We criticize the past, we condemn the men who wrote before us, soiled us. Yet in a cloudy tennis court the past is now, and their children will bring the past to the beyond. 

"Lucky, all the good ones are gone, huh." The pool is poisoned, only the ugly ones remain. 

Clear eyes.

Stormy eyes.

Thunderous eyes.

And they must follow your steps.