escapist wishes

The phone rings around 11 o’clock.

“Hello?” I cradle the phone in the crook of my neck and continue rifling through papers on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Just going over some old manuscripts.”

“On a Saturday night? You were working on that shit last night too.”

“I’ll thank you to not refer to my writing as ‘that shit.’ And anyway, I feel like I’m on the verge of something here. Like something’s going to happen soon.”

“A burst of inspiration, huh?”

“Something like that. I’m not sure yet. It could just be gas.”

“Well, in the event that it is just gas, how do you feel about a drink?”

***

I can quite easily be persuaded to drop everything for a drink, especially if I don’t have to drive. Mark comes to pick me up a half hour later, after I’ve had a chance to primp myself for the gay ghetto. As I close the door to my room on the way out, the piles of papers look more daunting than before.

“How’s the gas?” Mark asks as I get into his car.

“Still stuck in my gut,” I reply. “Unfortunately.”

“It’ll come out one of these days,” he chuckles, half sympathetically.

“I can only hope,” I reply, sadder since I realize what we’re really talking about.

“I told Wen we’d meet him outside the Honeybunch,” he says as we pull out of the driveway.

“Oh God, the Honeybunch?” I snap out of my minute melancholy and instinctively flip the visor down to check myself in the mirror, “Am I done up enough for that?”

Mark reaches over and flips the visor back up, “Stop being a shallow bitch, Will, you look fine.”

“I am a shallow bitch, aren’t I?” I lament, flipping the visor back down to look at my eyes in the mirror. “Just look what the gays have done to me.”

“The gays did not make you a shallow bitch. Might I remind you that I knew you in your pre-gay days? And you were always a shallow bitch. The gays just made you cute.”

trying

“It’s easy not to care what people say, it’s harder to pretend to try.”

—k-Os, The Love Song

Sitting here pondering the mountain of papers filling my bedroom floor, a stack of unfinished manuscripts to the left of me, a mound of finished ones to the right, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that Chara was right; I have a deep-seeded prejudice against all things happily ever after. I’ve read over five different projects from the last six years, and not a single one has a resolution which is even remotely happy. The Last Ditch, circa 1997, Marcus discovers he’s HIV positive just after Dominic realizes that he’s in love with him. It’s a Sin, circa 1998, David’s personality disorder kicks in and he kills his two best friends in a fit of rage. Fold, circa 1999, Nick just plain gives up, doesn’t even try to go after any of his goals. There was the upbeat romantic comedy Maple Leaf Tattoo (a working title) circa 2001, which was supposed to have a happy ending, I think, if I had ever gotten the inspiration to finish it. But everything else, everything since then, has always been about disappointment, unfulfilled expectations, continued longing, and just an overall sense of uneasiness.

“So what?” I suddenly say out loud, startling myself. I have this tendency to start talking to myself without realizing it, and even though I live alone, the self conscious part of me still looks over my shoulder, as though someone has heard.

But really, so what? Is it really that big of a problem? Should I just tack on a happy ending to every seventh story I write just for the sake of variety? It seems to me that you can’t force a happy ending. It’s just going to happen when it happens.