Bind Me with Whiskey

"There she was, standing alone, a blossoming rose..."

Ah this is crap, I thought, letting my pen drop to the tabletop. I rubbed my eyes, scrubbed my fingers through my hair and looked back down at the paper before me. I always wrote better with pen and paper but for some reason I could not get this scene to work. It had started with a very sarcastic tone, the narrator annoyed at a friend. Then it had somehow morphed into a secret confession of long-held feelings and now I somehow had him waxing poetic. Reading over the passage again, I saw that I was all over the place. Not good for character development.

I sighed and reached for the pen again. Decided to crack my knuckles instead, thrilling as I always did at the pops that emanated from my joints. I looked at the pen, at the page, back to the pen, got up and strolled to the window. Autumn was underway and the array of burnt oranges, cherry reds, and golden yellows was much more interesting than my dismal scene. I watched some of the neighborhood kids playing roller hockey in the street and watching them scatter at the approach of any vehicle brought me a simple, wicked sort of glee.

Oh don't give me that look. It's called schadenfreude and you do it too. We all do. Fact of life. Now where was I?

Scattered kids, wicked glee. My mind made some writerly connection between the kids and the leaves they skated over but I threw it out as useless prose. I turned my thoughts to the scene I had been working on. What was I going for? Darkly humorous? Over-the-top romantic? Shakespearean dramatic? Clearly mixing all three just led to abject failure. It lost the entire voice of the character. He was all of those things but very definitely not at the same time, not unless he'd been drinking.

Considered for a moment adding a bottle of whiskey to an earlier part. Berated myself for trying to cheat the scene. I started waving my hands around trying to come up with some sort of idea of what I was going for, all the while looking quite the lunatic through the large glass window that took up an entire wall of my den. Maybe I could go for the "crazy in love" angle? No, that wouldn't work. Didn't feel right.

The ideas started rolling through my head like high-speed credits. Executive Producer: Sarcastic Prick. Director: Angry step-child. As seen in order of appearance: Raging Bear, Begging Sycophant, Uncaring Disbeliever, Damned Sinner looking to repent. Special thanks to Arrogant Jackass.

While my brain went into autodrive generating ideas, I moved over the sideboard and poured from that bottle of whiskey I denied my narrator. So I'm a hypocrite. I'm a writer. I write for what's called for. But by God and Jack Daniels do I love hypocrisy. Writers would be out of business if not for hypocrisy, the lies we tell others even as we demonstrate it. Do as I say, not as I do. No better material exists for us.

I smiled into the alcohol fumes. I had just found the binding for the scene. With a single quick gulp I sent my thanks to Mr. Daniels before resuming my position, pen in hand.