Unsoul'd (9 page)

Wherein the Devil Calls Me a Sap

"You're a sap," the devil said, appearing next to me on my walk home from Eileen's. I was slightly buzzed and for a moment I wasn't entirely sure if he was really there or not.

"Why am I a sap?"

"Paying for drinks like that. And you didn't even get any action."

"I was just being nice," I said defensively.

"No, you weren't. You were caught in some bullshit crossfire between chivalry and a desperate need to get into her pants."

"You've seen her. Wouldn't you want to get into her pants, too?"

The devil snorted. "Man, I want to get into
everyone's
pants. And I will. Trust me on that. But just 'cause I said you're desperate doesn't mean I'm not right, too."

I paused at the door to my building, rooting out my keys. "Yeah, I want to sleep with her. So what? I'm a human being, not an animal."

"The two are the same fucking thing. Do none of you read Darwin anymore?"

"Whatever."

"Oh, 'whatever!'" he chortled as we climbed the stairs to my apartment. "The great human comeback! Such wit! Such pith! Dude, she totally wants to bone you. She touched you on the hand, like, five times over the course of three drinks. She's the one who
suggested
drinks. She leaned over the table four times because she knows how good her goodies look when she does that. Right now she's on the subway home, wondering if you're blind, gelded, or gay."

I stopped inside the entrance to my apartment. "Really?"

He threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know what she's thinking right now! I'm speculating! But it's informed speculation! Trust me!"

Trust the devil.

"Why should I trust you when you haven't lived up to your end of the contract yet?"

This seemed to surprise him. He blinked and then held up a lecturing finger and said, "Regarding the contract--" but got no further because I slammed the door in his face.

Wherein I Write. For Real.
 

I had only two dollars in my wallet the next day as I headed into Construct, but I happily gave them both to Lovely Rita, who smiled her tooth-deficient smile and said, "Happy tappy!" which was her little rhyming way of telling me to have a good day writing. I returned the smile, though inwardly I cringed at the very thought of tapping those damned, recalcitrant keys.

The counter-folk at Construct were cool, but generally not shy about showing their disdain if you tried to use a credit card for something as petty as a cup of coffee. Now cash-less, I could not abide José's guaranteed sneer, so I bought three bottles of water, two bagels (with no cream cheese -- my gut still recoiled at the thought), a homemade brownie in plastic wrap, and a cup of coffee, then decamped with my provisions to a table in the furthest corner of the back room.

The brownie had walnuts in it. I hated walnuts.

Now, as to what happened next... I'm not sure where to lay the blame/credit. Maybe it was spilling my guts to Gym Girl the previous night. Maybe I was just finally Ready. Or maybe -- just maybe -- my rage at the walnuts jarred something loose that morning.

Whatever it was or wasn't, know this: I wrote.

I mean, I really,
really
wrote.

The devil occasionally popped by to take a bite of one of the bagels, but I ignored him because as soon as I flipped up the lid of my laptop, I felt something different and strange and strong.

My fingertips hit the keys and, yeah, it was Happy Tappy Time for a while there. I tap-tapped and the world melted away until all I could see was the screen and the keyboard, and the next thing I knew, the coffee was gone and I had drunk all of the water, devoured the bagels, and even eaten all of the brownie around and between the walnuts. The light filtering in through Construct's flier-and-poster-be-decked windows had changed its slant and its intensity, and many of the people who had been slogging along with me when I'd arrived had now left, replaced by a new coterie of night-time laptop warriors.

Despite my two bagels and three bottles of water and cup of coffee and most-of-a-brownie, my stomach complained. A glance at the clock told me why: It was long past breakfast, long past lunch. Well nigh on dinnertime, in fact. I had been writing in a sort of auto-hypnotic state for hours.

I checked my daily word count and then checked it again, certain that I'd mis-read it.

On an average writing day, I usually write somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand words. On a good day, I might go as high as fifteen hundred. Usually those words are of middling to decent quality, requiring several rounds of massage before they're in any sort of condition to be enjoyed by anyone.

But that day, sitting in Construct, fueled by bottled water and coffee and bagels and chocolate... That day, I somehow wrote
ten thousand words
.

And they were good words. Scanning over them quickly, I found myself absorbed in my own writing in a way that -- in all honesty -- rarely if ever happened. I had literally
just
written these words and yet I couldn't get enough of them, reading them over and over again.

Something had clicked. The dam had been burst. Whichever pathetic, overused cliché you prefer, go ahead and use it -- I was free. The blockages that had kept me from working on this book for so long had dissolved.

Normally, I would call a ten thousand word day a good one and give myself the evening off. Instead, I ordered up some dinner and hit the keyboard again.

The day topped out at close to seventeen thousand words.

Good ones.

Wherein I Speak to My Father
 

Maybe it was some sort of karmic balance for a good -- nay, extraordinary -- day at the keyboard, but that night, as I tossed my laptop bag onto the kitchen table and collapsed on the sofa, my father called.

It's not that I mind speaking to my father. Or that I dislike him. It's just that we have nothing in common.

My father has two loves in this world: professional hockey and masturbation. I'm not sure which one is more embarrassing. I guess the one he talks about the most.

Which would be masturbation. My father will speak at fulsome length about the joys of onanism. He will discuss in intimate detail the distinctions between various lubes, ointments, salves, and gels. He discourses on the complex dexterity required to fast-forward and rewind porn without "missing a beat." Yes, he actually said "missing a beat." With no trace of irony, as best I could tell.

My father has had three wives, including my mother. The last one had the decency to die before she could leave him like the first two. He lived down South, where it was warmer, and his continued existence was a sort of cautionary tale to me. When Fi had left, I'd been terrified that my future would roll out before me like my father's -- that I would be alone. Then Manda came along and dispelled that particular fear, though Dad's occasional phone calls served as reminders of how close to the abyss I had -- and still could -- come.

Once his life became, by necessity, sexless, he re-discovered that very special joy usually reserved for adolescent boys clutching their first boners. The man is the founder and administrator of the Jocelyn Elders Fan Page on Facebook. I wish I were making this up, but I'm not.

"Hi, Dad," I said.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm good." I stood up. I always felt the need to pace when talking to my father. "Busy."

"Still writing books?"

I thumped my head lightly against the wall. "Yeah, Dad. Still writing books." I'd been writing professionally and exclusively for five years. I had sent my father hardcover editions of all of my books. Somehow he didn't get it.

"I was just calling to check in on you. See how you're doing."

"I'm good," I said again, circumnavigating my tiny apartment.

"Still not seeing that Fiona?"

"Right, Dad. Still not seeing Fiona. I'm seeing Manda now."

"That Fiona--" (for reasons I could never understand, Dad always called her "that Fiona") "--I don't mind telling you: She was one hot number. You did well there, I'll tell you."

"Uh...thanks?"

"I have to admit: I rubbed a few out thinking about her in that little denim skirt she wore that time I came out to visit."

"Actually, that's something you really
don't
have to admit, Dad."

I could almost hear his shrug. "I'm just saying. That Fiona was a hell of a little number."

"I'm aware."

"And you saw her naked!" He paused. "You
did
see her naked, right?"

I looked around the apartment. There on the kitchen counter was my big carving knife. It would look good buried in my skull right about now, I thought. The idea that both my father and I had masturbated to thoughts of my ex-girlfriend was just too much to handle. What was that even called? I don't
think the Greeks had a tragedy for it.

"Dad, I'm not going to talk to you about seeing my girlfriend naked."

"Who asked you about that?" Dad roared, offended. "What kind of pervert do you think I am? She's not your girlfriend anymore. There's nothing wrong with talking about
that
. It's what men do. It's not like I'm asking about Amanda."

"Manda, Dad. And no, it's not what men do. Men do not describe their ex-girlfriends' bodies to their fathers so that their fathers can--" I couldn't believe I had to say it "--use them for wank-fodder."

"I don't know when you became such a Victorian," Dad complained. "You must get it from your mother."

"I must."

"Did you see the Canucks game?"

I had never in my entire life watched a professional hockey game. No, wait, I lie: I watched a game with my father one time when I was ten. He got us tickets to a Bruins game and we went together. It was supposed to be a bonding experience. I hated every last instant of it. Except there was one moment when a player's blood actually bounced on the ice. Apparently something to do with the temperature differential between freshly-shed blood and the cold rink surface. That image stuck in my head and I used it in my second book, where someone's hopes and fears are described as "bouncing in her chest like blood on hockey ice."

I confess to really liking that simile, as well as to being vaguely disappointed that no one ever points it out to me.

Other than that, I had never watched hockey and had absolutely no interest in it.

Which didn't stop my dad from asking -- every single time we spoke -- if I'd watched this game or another. I had learned from long, tortured experience that my answer was immaterial. If I lied and said I'd watched it, he would want to discuss it. And if -- as at that moment -- I said I hadn't seen it, he would...

"Oh, well, then let me catch you up..." And proceeded to spend the next infinity reliving the game for me, speaking of players and cities and teams and rules of which I had not the slightest understanding or interest, boring me to the point that I almost asked him to talk about jerking off to Fiona again. He finally wrapped up, saying, "...well, I guess I'll let you go now."

"OK, Dad."

"It's almost time for the news, and I have a special little bottle of something new waiting for the new anchorwoman."

"That's great, Dad. We'll talk again soon."

He hung up and I went into the bathroom to wash my face, wishing that I could somehow scrub all the way down to my brain, down to my soul (or whatever was in its place now).

Manda came by unannounced, a rarity in our relationship, but somehow -- despite the brain-bashing Dad had given me -- I was ready and hard for her, in fine form bed-wise.

I was thinking of Gym Girl the whole time.

Strange, I noticed in the afterglow, that I didn't feel guilty about it this time.

Manda mumbled sleepily and turned on her side. I stared at the ceiling for what couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds, considering my uncharacteristic lack of self-flagellation before dropping off into a blissful, perfect sleep.

Wherein I Make the Devil Happy

Never one for superstition -- my dalliances with the devil notwithstanding -- I still found myself the next morning in a state of steady sidewalk crack avoidance, lest I break my mother's back. Put more simply: I tried to remember everything I'd done the previous day so that I could replicate the day and -- hopefully -- the concomitant burst of literary fecundity.

Manda woke up before me, as usual, showering and sneaking out of the apartment before I'd managed to rouse myself. I lay awake in bed alone with a useless hard-on. Sometimes she stayed for a bout of morning glory, other times not. That day: not.

Which was fine by me. I had not begun the previous day inside Manda, so I would not start out this one that way, either. I crawled out of bed, considered -- briefly -- wearing the exact same clothes, like a baseball player who fears his streak will break if he changes his underwear or socks. Hygiene warred with superstitious caution for a moment, and hygiene won out, aided by the smell of my previous day's socks.

I headed for Construct, deliberately not stopping at the ATM so that -- as before -- I would be forced to buy more food than I needed with my credit card. The counterista was different today; I convinced myself that this wouldn't matter as I paid for my cup of coffee, three bottles of water, two bagels (no cream cheese), and walnut brownie (they had plain today, but I bought the walnut anyway).