A BAD CASE OF WRITER’S BLOCK

By Jim Kittelberger

“It was a dark and gloomy night and my brain is dead”.

**&^%%$##@#$%^^&&&***^%%$#

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country and me

He pushed himself back from the typewriter, disgusted with the worst case of writers block he had ever had to endure. And to add to his misery, it must be ninety-five degrees in this squalid walkup apartment he called his office. His undershirt felt like it had absorbed ten pounds of sweat and smelled like it too.

From the always-on radio in the corner of the room came the sounds of the announcer proclaiming the benefits of Wild Root Crème Oil Charley. On it’s return swing, the rotary fan by the desk slightly ruffled the paper in the typewriter, but did not stay long enough to have any effect on his physical or mental misery.

As he got up from his desk, the spring of his wooden office chair groaned and snapped with the relieved burden of the slightly out of shape two hundred fifty pound ex-newspaper reporter.

“That’s all I need now, to have the damn chair break. Oh what makes the difference, I can’t write sitting, I might as well try it standing,” he said to himself as he realized he was talking out loud to an empty room. He headed for the small kitchen and a cool one. The refrigerator revealed a pan with the remains of a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup with the spoon still inside, a half empty pack of Camel cigarettes, a sign of his latest attempt to stop smoking, and two bottles of Blatz brew. He grabbed the cold brown bottle and held it to his forehead. The cold from the fridge and the bottle of Blatz momentarily relieving his momentum toward heat stroke, assuring him of a little more time to finish the great American novel.

He had returned unscathed and in the best shape of his life from Guadalcanal to his old job of reporter for the local rag. But after an unsuccessful adjustment to civilian life with all its rules and regulations along with unreasonable expectations that you must contribute something to your employers endeavor, he quit. He walked out after giving a grand speech about fighting for liberty and then coming home to find that his was being denied. It was really almost a teary eyed performance and was well received by other nine to fivers listening and taking in the whole show. He actually received some spattering of applause as he righteously exited into the world of the free.

He leaned against the wall in his Pullman kitchen taking a last swig of the quickly warming brew, and had to smile remembering that moment of liberation and promise. But the promise and the back military pay he received upon discharge were fast dwindling, thus adding to his current miseries of writers block, heat prostration, and a bad case of body odor. As if on cue, the radio announcer asked a rude question that would very probably guarantee a loss of friendship of any real live person, “Do you have B.O.? Then bathe daily with Lifebuoy.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said to the empty room, “I’m getting nothing accomplished at the typewriter, so I might as well hit the shower and maybe, just maybe, my mind will clear and I’ll get some words down on paper,” he said to the void, and nodding his head in agreement with himself headed for the bathroom and a clean start.

Laying his head back on the only chair worth sitting in, with his feet on the coffee table, he lit one of his formerly refrigerated Camels. He relished the clean refreshed feeling, but knew it would be short lived. The heat of the dying day was unrelenting and a breeze was non-existent. Oh, if it would only rain, that might help a little.

It rained a lot on the Canal, and it never helped a damn bit there. If anything, it just jacked the humidity up a few more notches. But that was a jungle. Oh no, he thought, I’m not going there. When I left there, I left there. Like most of the vets he met, there was little or no talk of the bad times. But they did talk of the good times, and there were some of those too. He remembered a time at Pearl with a good buddy of his. They had been invited to a private late-night luau that turned into a lulu of a luau. A smile started on his face, then, just as quickly it disappeared as he remembered that was just before the Canal and his buddy never came back.

He must have dozed because the radio woke him with the loud sound of the contents of Fibber McGee’s closet hitting the deck and McGee yelling again how he’ll have to get it cleaned out.

It occurred to him that in all the years working for the paper before and after the war, that he had never had a time when the words stopped for him. He loved working with words. Whether as a reporter, when he just had to get the right facts in the right order down on paper in a timely manner, or when his editor moved him to commentary and he had to try and make sense out of what was happening in the world, they came in a rush. But this time no words would come.

This was new to him, and he was more than a little frightened. It was not unlike a logjam at the mouth of a river when all the logs strive to flow freely at the same time. They’re all facing in different directions and just the opposite happens, none of them come through. This in essence, he believed was happening to him, the logjam of ideas were all trying to come out at the same time or, and this was the most frightening, there were no logs or ideas to begin with, in which case he shouldn’t be a writer at all.

He leaped to his feet and started pacing the floor. The inertia was making him depressed, and God knows he didn’t need to go there. He had read somewhere that some writers kept an apple in their desk because the smell made them think more clearly. He had no apples on hand, so that was no good.

He fell to the floor and began doing push-ups, ten, twenty, thirty. His muscles quivered, then his arms gave out, and he lay prostrate on the floor. Not only was his brain deserting him, he was also becoming a physical wreck. He used to be able to do a hundred of those damn things. Suddenly, the inertia felt good as he cradled his head in his arms and remained where he fell on the floor.

He thought back to when it felt good to lie on the floor reading his comic books, which were becoming more and more plentiful and the kids loved them. The coal furnace filled the house with its strangely comforting aroma as his mom sat in an overstuffed chair mending holes in old socks. There was no doubt that he had gotten his love of books and words from his mother. She was university trained in English and the humanities, and was teaching school until she married and had her son. His mother introduced him to Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, and Treasure Island, and she taught him to understand and love poetry. She also taught him the power of words spoken and written correctly. When he went to the university he gravitated most naturally, it seemed to him, to journalism. He never regretted his decision except when payday arrived and he was always a day late and a dollar short, as the vernacular of the day went. But he hoped, in spite of the odds against it, that perhaps he had a book in him that someone would pay to read. If that happened, but money did not follow, maybe a measure of fame would, and give the words he might produce afterwards a measure of power. He had a smile on his face as he drifted off.

Every bone in his body hurt as he rolled over and started to awaken. He hated it when he fell asleep on the floor. There was just no give to wooden floors and, even though he had a little padding on his frame, it still felt like all his bones were fused together as he started to move first one arm, then the other, and finally his legs until all the pieces stopped hurting and he brought himself to a sitting position. The radio was playing the national anthem, so it must be midnight. His stomach also told him he had forgotten to feed it.

As he walked from the kitchen eating a peanut butter foldover, he stared at the silent typewriter with a look of betrayal on his face. He was being betrayed by a friend of these many years and he felt obliged to hear a reason for it. The typewriter sat there ignoring him. He took that as a personal affront, stuck his nose in the air, and turned his back on it.

A window without a screen opened onto the fire escape and provided a place for solitary thought and maybe even a stray breeze that might happen by. He picked up the last pear for dessert and climbed out. He sat with his back against the building and felt the residual heat still remaining from the hot day. As he had many times before, he glanced down at the passing world below him. It was after midnight and the traffic was light. Businesses were closing or had closed. A wife, I assume, was walking beside an inebriated man, her husband, I assume, and reading him the riot act for spending most of the weeks check in the saloon and for her having to come after him before he spent it all. Another couple was holding hands, seemingly oblivious to anyone else in the world as they walked along. They were enjoying love in its first blush, deep and belonging only to them. The sounds that carried his way were gentle and muted. Cars waited more patiently for traffic lights to change, then accelerated more slowly in step with the less hurried, more personal nightlife of the city. He had worked many all-nighters for the paper and the difference between the day people and the night people was quite evident to him. Night people were more talkative, less stressed, and more open, as if the velvet blackness of the night shielded them from the reality that the day people had to deal with. As a newspaperman, an interview with a night person was more candid as one person talking to another, conversing instead of make statements. Editors loved night people for personality pieces to fill the Sunday supplements. He liked them too.

He leaned his head back against the building, lit a cigarette and closed his eyes, taking in a deep lungful of smoke. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at a sky so clear, so black, it seemed he could reach out and touch a star. The moon was nearly full, and he could make out textures and shadings. It seemed so peaceful. His mind again tried to comprehend that the same moon he was gazing at from his fire escape, the friendly, beautiful, lovers moon, shining down so benevolently on the city, adding background for everything romantic, is the same exact moon that shined on steaming jungles full of men trying desperately to kill the other guy before he killed him. The same moon shines over people dying of disease or hunger, caring not a whit.

“Oh, to hell with that”, he said as he yanked himself back from analyzing the world condition to his immediate problem. “Maybe my mother was too diligent in her teachings. I seem too often to philosophize and get myself backed into a conundrum and a blasted enigma with no way to get out.”

He lay his head back, gazing up and willing that moon to answer his questions. He closed his eyes for just a moment and a slight breeze ruffled his hair. He remembered another time a breeze ruffled his hair, a bittersweet time of great happiness and great sadness. A time when the moon shone brightly for him until, in his stupidity, he shot it out of the sky. Yes, contrary to what most people thought, there was a time when love had a role in his life. Before the war he had met and fallen deeply in love with a fellow writer, but was unable to live two lives as most normal people seem to be able to do. When a story called, he answered. Until a day came when she, ah she was lovely, made him choose. Oh Lord, why couldn’t I have made some room for her. But he had made his choice for ill or good, and you have no other option but to live with your decisions, as he was every day of his life.

He glanced down at his watch; the luminescent green glow read four o’clock. His rear end was telling him to please relieve it of the burden of his weight for a spell. He obeyed and made his way back inside.

The radio station had signed off for the night and the radio was emitting a strange garbled noise as he rushed to turn it off. He strolled to his phonograph and started to select something that might fit his mood. A mood that would reflect his blasted empty head, he thought as he gave a silent growl. He stacked a few on the changer and flipped the switch. As he sat and laid his head back, he noticed a fly walking on the ceiling. It was not any special fly but just the normal black housefly. It seemed quite big though. He wondered if it was that large because it had survived many missed flyswatters, or was that just the average size of his, his, and what the heck word do I want? his breed? If he had gotten this big, he must he rather intelligent or has splendid eyesight and reflexes. Look at him; I think he’s looking down at me right now. I think we’re having a staring contest. I wonder how long these do-nothing insects live, providing they are able to dodge the before mentioned perils? All of a sudden he flew from his ceiling perch to land on the remains of my dessert pear. My first instinct was to shoo him away, but on further thought, it seemed we had made some kind of connection, some kind of understanding. Perhaps we were the first members of the human/bug alliance. So, in accordance with our new understanding I sat and watched him enjoy himself. Ah, peace, understanding, and co-existence on earth, is there anything better? As he watched the fly eat, his eyelids became heavy and he slept.

© Jim Kittelberger 2002. All Rights Reserved