Down and Out in Washington, DC

Things don’t get better, they get worse. If you’re a writer, you’re really just a lonely creep who keeps odd hours, too shy, too down on himself to make an effort. You’re a traitor to your class. You should have been an academic, but instead you basically bit that hand that tried to feed you, and went off in your own stubborn direction that’s not going to get you anywhere at all.

Robert Frost, he had it right. You’re going to be walking alone in a dark wood a lot of the time, up a strange path, and guess what, it’s lonesome and it’s not good for your sanity.

So you thought you had talent. You thought you had all kinds of talents. You thought your particular talent at writing would be recognized. You thought they’d invite you back to teach, a retirement plan. You wanted to teach. You didn’t know how. You didn’t try. Except in some Jesus suffering way, turning the cheek, bowing, putting yourself through real pains.

But look at your life as it actually is. It’s nothing but fuck-ups.

You get so ashamed of what you’ve done with your life, you don’t even want to talk to anyone, old friends, pretty girls you wait next to for the light to change. Don’t even want to show your face.

Everything’s against you if you’re a writer, and you just have to make do with that. It’s an odd life. And why should anyone else listen to you? By what right, why should people bother to read you?

It is a lie, this job I do. For twenty years I’ve done it, just being plain raw nice to people, to a lot of people. But where does it leave you? It leaves you a pariah. Down and out. When’s it my turn, you wonder.

A college girl you honestly liked suggested you were some kind of a stalker, forget it, you’ll be fighting yourself the rest of you life. The voice that tells you that you’re a creep insidiously pokes at you. You do wonder, what did I do to deserve this? Was it me? Why am I afraid now of my own shadow? A bum, confused, hurt, overly sensitive, stubborn, weird, yes, but not a stalker, I’d like to think. Or do I kid myself.

Then some nice woman, a dermatologist attending to a scar, is remotely kind to you and you almost want to cry.

Saturday night, and this writer has to go to work. And even then, he’ll never ever get ahead.