Pulitzer My Finger

The other day I got the urge to write a memoir. I sat on the couch and thought about what I'd write. I haven't been to rehab; I wasn't sexually molested as a child; after 30 years, my parents are still married; so, I can't write about that. When I grow up I want to be a; police investigator, writer, author, prolific cartoon voice; cereal-box model; fashion victim; movie of the week; one-hit wonder; junkie; spiritual junkie; heart-throb; bus driver; blind painter; lip-reader; movie-goer...

It's pretty clear that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm your priest who has turrets-syndrome, every blessing is followed by a curse. But this isn't about me, it's about what I'm going to write about me. This is a memoir, though we can bend the rules for the sake of fiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to self-immolate on the lawn of James Frey's house, I just want to create a piece of art.

I want to tell you about the worst night of my life. When I was staring a twelve story fall in the face, but I spat into the night and laughed while I did. I was unemployed, no money, no prayers for rain, lost, random. That's how I lived my life. I read until I started repeating the same sentence over and over again, out loud, until the words lost all meaning. I do that with names too. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. Reading books, watching movies, playing guitar, writing poetry, listening to the static sound of nothing that surrounds my apartment, and lives in it like a silent roommate.

I wanted to be back following her down the road. The setting sun going down on us as we laughed, and held eachother, felt pulses, relaxed, opened our eyes as wide as the galaxy so I could really see who she was. My camera still remembers when it caught her being human. She put the makeup down, sex still in her hair, and before she left the room, she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me. As she did, her fingers pushed her hair aside, revealing the most beautiful delicate I've ever seen. A light dusting of snow that would blow away any second if you moved. So I froze, I didn't want to look away, yet it was burning my eyes just to behold. I wasn't made for this moment, when she would look to me for my love and I would release it through my eyes leaving trials down my face so she could see that my love was a more than a trickling spring a heat-wave could just evaporate. I need her again. When I fall asleep I want to know she's there counting my breaths. And I can feel her body twitch, and I'd be there in the morning to watch her open her eyes.

This is what I would have in my memoir. But I wouldn't use drugs, NO. I wouldn't want her to know that the only thing I could do to forget about her was to try and erase her image from my brian. To rub it out at the expense of what else I stood to lose in the process. Wake-up, burn. Lunch, burn. Movie, burn. Dinner, burn. Homework, burn. Poetry, burn. I burned out and felt like the stuff that was crusting the ash-tray.

I wouldn't replay this story with funnier sounding words. It won't mean the same.