Cleaning out Closets Part 3B (Creative Writing Continued)
*I almost remember writing this one because I was in a pissy mood and didn’t feel like doing my homework. But, I do remember for some reason everyone loved it. I still don’t see what they saw in it, but some comments are funny. It was supposed to be a story of truth and lies.
“500 mg of Thorazine”
The Thorazine is finally beginning to take its effects. Son-of-a-bitch is making me drool like hell. At least my forebrain is processing my sensory signals. I realize now that I’m in a bedroom. I’m alone, writing an assignment for creative writing, and sacrificing my motor skills for the ability to write a rational piece of work based on reality. I’m completely exhausted and my ears are still ringing from last night’s adventure, but I figure now’s the last time I’ll be seeing the things going on around me and not talking with the man that exists in the cracks between my floorboards. He wouldn’t talk with Sarah. She wasn’t much of a writer, he claimed. We agreed that it’d be better if I sucked it up and did an assignment myself. It was already 3 in the morning and I wasn’t getting anywhere with her. She’s gone now, but man, she had an insane set of vocal chords.
This is a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I wish that I had learned to read and write, rather than roaming those god-forsaken deserts day in and day out. Good thing Jerry, a computer nerd from down the hall who couldn’t get laid to save his life, installed this voice-recognition software on my computer. Of course, he was too busy posting his views on the millennium falcon on some random discussion board when I asked him politely to do me a favor. Even nerds can recognize a muzzle against the back of their head.
I’m sure you’re wondering why I took this class. Even Thorazine can’t remind me of what the hell was going through my head when I made this mistake. And right now, I can’t in good consciousness accept a passing grade in this course. See, this is the first assignment I’ve done for the class.
Let me give you a little update on the way things are really going. I was walking through downtown Oakland last week, when a skinny junkie approached me and asked if I knew where he could score some stamps. I was playing tag with hubcaps and having a great conversation with Mother Sun about the benefits of the holocaust at the time, so my mood was above normal. Instead of flipping him off, I paused for a moment and asked him what stamps were.
Not only did I find out that this boy was a heroin junkie whose name was Charles, but I learned that he was an aspiring poet. Mother Sun shut up long enough for me to lure him back to my apartment. I called my dealer and within 2 hours, Charles was chasing the stars, with over a hundred dollars of good heroin coursing through his veins. He was so fucked up that he didn’t comprehend the steel pipes networking over the seat I led him to, or the furnace that was underneath that seat. He was even nice enough to let me hook him up to a couple IVs. I guess he was too high to notice the fact that the IV bags had a light green liquid in them, not the common tan/yellow heroin that he was used to.
I asked Charles whether he preferred I put in Eminem or Jay-Z. He motioned at some Sisqo and J-Lo CDs I had stacked on the floor near the stereo with his foot. I ignored him and put in Dr. Dre. I wasn’t concerned with his drugged-up opinion anyway. I love R&B and Hip-Hop and it’s always so damn difficult to decide which one of these wonderfully original artists I want to listen to.
When he complained of nausea, I explained to him what exactly was going on. I coined the name for my machine. It’s called the DIPS, Digital Intelligent Punishment System. I explained, in detail, that it was hooked up to my computer and that any grammatical or spelling errors would result in an injection of my own Anthrax-flu strain, and any content errors or clichés would result in a quart of boiling water dumped on his head from the pipes above him. On top of that, the temperature of the furnace below his seat was slowly increasing over time, and that he had better write this poem in a timely manner. Any sign of resistance would result in a loss of a limb, and if all went well, he’d walk away with over a gram of heroin. I never did tell him that the musician from my previous assignment was still soaking in my bathtub full of lime. Man, was that a mistake. That asshole promised me he’d write an essay on composing music, which is what I wanted, but he couldn’t stop whining about how much love sucks. Here’s love for you: I’ve gotten good at talking on the phone and keeping a gun fixated on someone’s head at the same time. Ranise, my 13-year-old girlfriend called at 7:30 while Charles was writing. I’ve been trying to get her to call me after 11 but she insists that her parents wont let her stay up that late.
Charles turned out to be a really shitty poet. Perhaps if he had stuck to one topic rather than bouncing around about all sorts of corny shit then it wouldn’t have been so bad. Not only that, but this stream of consciousness crap really pisses me off after a while. I mean, anyone can do it, and where the hell are the metaphors, Charles? Well, at least it gave me another chance to secretly laugh to myself when the professor asked me to explain the motives behind my writing during class discussion. I’d bring the real writers to class with me to explain what they really meant behind their work, but I don’t think they’d be easily coerced into coming and a gun in the classroom wouldn’t make a very good impression on the other students. Some of them have turned out to be admirable writers, and I could use their talents on later assignments. For now, though, I’ve got Stephen King chained up in my kitchen, and I’m hoping to stretch his talents to two or even three assignments. God, I love my brain. Now it’s time to kick back with my friend Natural Lite at a frat party and get my motherfuckin roll on.
*The part about the stream of consciousness poem referenced a previous assignment I had done that was exactly as I described here. The guy who loved me wrote “THIS WHOLE THIS IS MOTHERFUCKING INCREDIBLE. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.” One girl wrote WOW in a big circle and “The idea was incredibly original. It totally fucks with your head. I don’t know what to believe and what not to believe - well there are some things that I know not to believe, but there are subtle hints that make me wanna believe it.”
Another girl wrote “Greg, I think you have a lot of fun fucking w/ our minds. Watching prof’s face while you read your stuff is great.”
There’s a couple other assignments I kept but these were the only ones with comments.
