Well, here’s the scenario: the editor wants another “Exiled” article—maybe it could become a series after all?—so next thing I’m faced with is, sooner or later, I have to write another one....I knew this going in, plenty of notice was given, and yet there must be for me a certain lack of drama inherent to
handing in my homework early. This, and the reality of writing, strangely enough, doesn’t always come easy to me.
      First, one must stew. If you’re me, you stew and then you stew. And work or sleep the remainder of the time....
     So that’s how I came to the decision that I best get started now that it’s early morning on the day it’s due. Grant it, I had some ideas in the meantime: I knew I didn’t want every article to revolve around Main Street, for instance; exiled should be the operative word. And, well, I’m past the point of lying, this time I intended to simply regurgitate one or another thing I had previously written. Things, in my defense, that I remembered vaguely as being apropos.
     The first candidate was a comic bit I wrote on the occasion of Bill Clinton’s Inauguration....At least that’s how I remembered it. It cast me in the role of President elect, meeting the press in my Over-the-Rhine apartment on the premise that that was where I felt most at home. I thanked my Pastor, I remembered, for finding the time to pray for my victory. And wrapped things up by
imploring those at home to close their eyes and just imagine fireworks because, as you’re well aware, we are in debt.
     You were going to get that, or this dream I had some time ago which suddenly had begun to resonate more and more with each passing day. Problem was, I couldn’t remember it. Not precisely, at least. Good thing I use to make a habit of writing them down upon waking and typing them later on my word processor. I considered it the more interesting and honest half of my diary, and occasionally would use them as fodder for short stories.
     The clock read 12:47 in the morning when I finally got around to searching for said word processor, and it was a full half-hour later when I realized the keyboard/disc drive part was actually out in Sharonville, where I work. There’s a warehouse out that way, for some reason or other, I spend most of my hours, and a few months ago I was asked to help with the billing.
     Suddenly, the bottom line: I had no story. The solution, of course, is you’re going to get your ass back in the car and drive straight back into the bowels of Hell. Because to write something new, this late, would be too taxing—you have to work tomorrow, you know—and damn it, Inauguration Day is just around the bend, the timing’s perfect. Fuck Bush. And if not that, then the dream as I recalled it seemed that much more fitting now....
     So I threw a coat over my cross and did just that, hit I-75 but only to
realize, my work place having moved three months ago, that it had been at least that long since I remembered having seen said word processor. Didn’t notice because somehow I was under the illusion that I was a working writer, that I had used it only yesterday, and at home. Immediately decided that if, in fact, I had traversed through the bowels of Hell in vain, well then that’s it, I’ll write my resignation in chalk if need be. And of course it wasn’t anywhere around that I could see, not even under the sink in the women’s john.
     And after much throwing of chairs, I decided I had no choice but to turn one right side up and sit in it and wait patiently for the motherfucker that had supervised the move. When he arrived, at seven after three in the morning, it took him all of five minutes to lead me to a box in the far corner of an entirely different warehouse two doors down from the one in which I work. To a box which contained half of my old Brother WP-3410, among other things. Turned on its side. Rudely. In all that no heat.
     I thanked my co-worker by not saying a single word, got in my car, and soon found myself turning up the heat to uncomfortable levels on account of my machine. I spoke to it like an injured pet that I was rushing to the emergency room. I forgot about you, Isaid, we’ve been through too much together, won enough battles, that such a thing is inexcusable. I was embarrassed, no doubt, my capacity for neglect can be staggering at times....
     I stroked the keyboard in silence most of the way home, mulling over just how much easier the writer’s life might be without my job. This until my reverie was broken by the word processor. You know, it berated me, legend has it William Faulkner wrote portions of Absalom, Absalom on the wall of a whorehouse he once worked the desk at. I didn’t quite know how to reply. And all I could come up with was that, knowing me, I’d probably get even less writing done in a whorehouse. Which is to say, I wouldn’t at all. Sometimes it’s the very thing that allows you to continue that’s in the way of you getting anywhere at all. The warehouse is to blame, not me.
     I wasn’t sure if it was biting on this, and thus had a notion it would hold a grudge and refuse to help me in my time of need. The stores wouldn’t open until....Christ, it’s already three-thirty, I’ll never make it....And just as I pull up outside my apartment, park at a meter that I know will be in
effect long before I’d have a chance to be, the radio checks me and I reason: Screw work, I’ll come up with something.
     And despite my anxieties, I plugged in and it whirred to life. The Brother WP-3410 was one tough sunavabitch. However, this small victory was soon replaced by sour revelation: my supposed Inauguration skit was actually an Election Day victory speech, which made it passé, not to mention the humbling fact that, really, it sucked.
     And the dream, well the dream was a maudlin affair, one that had me stuck in the role of warehouseman....I was busy pulling orders, artfully even, but they were doomed to never leave the dock because I was making them up myself, for no one in particular. Much as if I was writing.
     Besides, the dream has suddenly been exposed as bunk. I made my deadline, despite everything. Now one day I expect to get paid. The order has been filled; you hold the proof in your hand, even as we speak, despite what you say. The delivery was free, but the next line is yours.
     Enough said.