Opening up that Vein

I have a friend who has a birthday today; nobody you know, but he's a very nice guy. And yet, despite his niceness, the only thing I wanted to do for him on his birthday was hire a midget to run up and kick him straight in the bully-bag.

The morning sitting in the auto repair place trying to get my words out. There's a flatus and possibly some excreta knocking at my back door but I will not answer. I will not pack up my laptop and cell phone (on which I'm streaming Groove Salad from somafm.com -- great ambient) and decamp to the tiled, fluorescent-pale bathroom where I'll have to make a strategic decision; go for the quick groaning all-out push (and make it fast but violent) or sit back a bit and let nature take its own course in its own time?

The first option gets me out of that single beige metal stall much faster, but it could be embarrassing if someone were to walk in mid-groan and pre-splash. The fact that I'm somewhat anonymous behind my little sheet-metal scrim is no comfort. The other option, of course, keeps me longer in the bathroom, but in that instance I don't have to feel invested. I can tell myself that I just walked in and did what came naturally.

Of course, there's a third option; hold it. Wait for the urgency to pass, let the spastic storm shade to a dull ache above my left hip bone.

Now, about waiting for a response from a publisher, which was, I think, what we were talking about last night. Yes, I can remember well that after querying my last novel I waited, and then almost forgot, and then a response came, and I remember the savagery with which I attacked my own starry-eyed hope, how I tried to plug that vein of fool's gold that ran all the way back to my earliest humiliations when I was a six-year-old boy in homemade plaid pants sobbing on my bed, starting there and incorporating all my failures and disappointments, all those old selves suddenly resurrected and queued up just behind my skin, pushing forward, urging me to open the envelope, open it...all of them waiting to be redeemed by the magical spell of legitimacy inside the envelope.

And with hands of cold clay I open the letter. Rejection. And all those old selves fade into the dark pool of memory, waiting until the next letter when they will rise again...