Metamorphosis

I flipped the lever on the side. It started like an engine.

I typed my first sentence ever, in capitals:

HERE WE GO.

I liked the feel of it. The bricks around me gave the words heavy acoustics. I didn’t want to start out by copying the journals. I had never written them for others to read. I wasn’t some fucking hungry young writer on the road. Instead I just wrote things that came into my head right there. I made many mistakes. For awhile I practiced the keys, finding the quickest ways to correctly write a sentence. Then I began my first short story. It was about a loser waking up in a stripper’s hotel room, his tongue in the ashtray. It went on for about four pages. It was magic. It wasn’t like handwriting. I was actually there in that hotel room. I saw the whole scene through the black keys. I had escaped my life and lived in a better world of better tragedy without the senselessness. I created the sky and the clocks, the curves of her body and the universe, molecule by molecule. I realized I could live forever through doing this. It was purely beautiful. I finished the story. She dropped him off at a bus stop and drove to the night club. He had nine hours to sit there.

I sat and typed poems, poems for the years long since wasted. I remember those poems, the life they gave. Some of them were dark ones about Helena, about the nature of women. Mostly they dealt with the people and the jobs and the nights without escape, the days which promised nothing. The words made me see things differently, more clearly. I wrote poems about places and people and jobs and parks and dogs and sunlight and children and handguns and everything.

I needed nothing else from that point onward. I needed a room, some caffeine and a typewriter. I typed furiously, sweating. I couldn’t roll the next sheet through fast enough. I’d never felt so useful. It was happening, thundering away, bending the walls downward. I sat there all night and typed to my music. Angels circled above and around my room, protecting me, allowing me to move and move. I was in love. It was all action. It was all mine.

I sat back and rested. I had a thick pile of pages piled next to the machine. I stretched out and looked at the clock: 6:23 p.m. I jumped out of the chair and ran to the phone. I’d missed nearly two and a half hours of work. I was hoping that I didn’t get Rob. I hated Rob. A different manager answered. I played it dumb, asked him if I was supposed to work today. He didn’t really know for sure. He’d just go check the schedule.

​“Yesiree. Supposed to be here at four.”

​“Shit. I’m on my way.”

​“Take your time. Not like you haven’t already.”

I had to be graceful. He could have been an asshole about it.

I walked to work every day because it was only eight blocks. Only this time I was armed. I had the pages I had written in my backpack and they were heavy with substance. I read my things on my break. I had typed out all of it. I was proud. I watched the people outside walking with each other, with their spouses to see a movie, with their kids and their tucked in shirts and pressed pants and perfect hair. I finally felt like I had one over on them. I had finally discovered an edge.

By the time I closed I was dead tired. I wanted to write but I was tired. I felt young again. I hadn’t pulled an all-nighter since Manhattan. I fell back across the mattress and read from the pages until my eyes blurred and I fell asleep, long and blue and without dream.