Contemporaneous: Chapter 1

I sit in front of the computer, typing these words without much idea of where they’ll go.

Not that there aren’t ideas. There are always ideas. I’ve never had any problem with ideas. But they came with the promise of anticipation. Two published but underperforming novels later, that anticipation isn’t so buoyant anymore. It’s a jaded and resigned prick – if it was a barfly, it’d be the old drunk who rambles about how good things used to be, and sees no merit in the future.

Procrastination’s easier too. Check social media that doesn’t need checking. Play 2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge on the PC arcade emulator that sits on my PC – it’s an ice hockey game from 1995 that only takes seven minutes per match, and jumpstarts my thinking (or at least that’s what I tell myself). But after that first match finishes, I play another, then troll through YouTube clips of old TV shows or movies. But, in the back of my head, I know time’s running out for this session. If I don’t write now, and I don’t write meaningfully, I’ll endure a night of self-loathing, and tell myself, shout at myself, to do better.

Cleaning. That’s what I’ll do. Because in my life, I’ve felt when I put things in order, then that helps me put my thoughts in order.

My study’s a converted bedroom in my two-bedroom flat, the desk some kitchen table my family owned in the 1970s. The computer’s a desktop with a big screen – I used to write on a laptop, because hunching over it was like hunching over a typewriter the way I did in the 1980s, when the dream of writing was virginal and the thought of a writing career was so romantic. But lots of neck problems over the years have illustrated hunching’s not so good.

On my desk, I have a picture of my dog, who died ten years ago; an exercise book I fill in every Sunday with the things I need to do that week; notebooks and notes scattered here and there; knickknacks on my monitor stand, along with a flat, oblong stone with the word TRUST emblazoned across it in gold lettering – my best friend gave that to me years ago when I went through a string of health problems that occupied the best part of four years, and I thought, I was sure, there’d never be relief. It was a time I toyed with suicide – a possibility sprayed like confetti throughout my adult life, and which jags in even now like a habit I can’t break.

I can hear a car pull into my drive – my partner, Lana. She’s bringing over dinner – probably pizza, given Friday night her kids goes to her ex, and we have some wind-down time, but now with her arrival imminent, I lament that I haven’t used the little time I’ve had since coming home from work more wisely.

Sounds, now: her car door opening and closing. Then my screen door, followed by my front door – I’ve left both unlocked for her. (She used to have a key but that’s another story.) Then the screen door slams closed – she always lets it slam closed. The spring in it is unreliable, and she’s never learned to ease it closed, even though I’ve asked her to take it easy. I hear her unload her bag onto the couch, and drop her keys – a big bunch that are like maracas when they’re shaken – onto the coffee table.

“I’m here!” she shouts out.

Like I wouldn’t know.

Like I haven’t heard her.

Like I haven’t asked her repeatedly not to shout out, because it interrupts my train of thought (when I have one), and just to let me come out in my own time. And in “my own time” is a couple of minutes at most, but we once argued about this, and her counter was maybe I’d be keep her waiting an hour, just letting her sit out there alone as if I don’t know she’s out there, as if I don’t know she’s brought food that will get cold, that I don’t know we arranged to catch up.

Or as if I don’t care.

Relationships are a process of showing you always care.

Shutting down my computer, I walk the short dogleg that’s my hallway, feeling my breath grow heavier in my chest with each step. My partner’s already settling in on the couch – she’s poured herself a glass of red wine, and gotten me a beer, a Corona from the fridge.

At fifty, Lana might be ten years younger, an attractive woman who’s compact and petite, her dark hair always too neat, but that says something about her. She’s painstaking in the way she takes care of herself, her makeup the sort of artistry they’d use when retouching classic paintings. Although she’ll occasionally indulge in sweets, she’s mindful when she does add any weight, and then will backtrack. I never know when she’ll want something like chocolates or ice cream, and when she won’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m Binge City nowadays, so there’ll just about always be something available.

I sit next to her, already resentful that she made so much noise, that she shouted at to me so disruptively, even if she didn’t disrupt anything more than my medley of procrastination and self-loathing, and I think that I’m experiencing more and more episodes where I emphatically don’t want to be with this woman.

Wait. Shit. I should show the relationship when it was good, so that by contrast you’ll be able to see how it’s now not-so-good. That’s good writing. It’s what I’d tell a writer to do if I was editing them. And, after writing for thirty-five years, I should know better, but you know what? Screw it. Take my word for it. It was glorious once. Briefly. Like the Titanic.

So I swallow my annoyance, but in my head the countdown’s on – the countdown of how long until we’re apart.