On days when I have no time to write, I feel a vacancy, a black hole in my gut so painful and endless it reminds me of the first time I was in love. His name was Dan. He had a New York accent diluted by years in the Midwest. He avoided the draft because the Army didn’t have combat boots big enough to fit him, and he restrained his hormone saturated body to perfection in a tight slim width of nylon known as a Speedo. I loved him because he admitted I was smarter than he and it didn’t frighten him. We talked every day. And a part of me shriveled and retreated into self-loathing if I didn’t see him or hear from him. I was 17 years old.
I use legal pads and pens or my computer to write. If I don’t sit down and hard copy the words and sentences and dreams that torment me in the early morning hours, I flash back in time and relive the feelings of deprivation I experienced when Dan and I were apart. There is a longing, even a lust to decorate a page with thoughts I don’t want to forget. When I hold a pen, I think about linking my fingers between his. When I smooth a page before decorating it with loops and dots and t-crosses, I return to a time when I ran my fingers through his hair, around his ear, along his jaw. On the computer, the requisite light touch on the keyboard mimics how I teased his lips when he fell asleep in my arms on a bus trip. I knew every nuanced crease of his mouth. When I finish a scene I experience the surprise and awe of our first French kiss, a kiss making heat and tongue and wet the flavor-of-the-month.
I like to think I am mature now, married, secure, consumed by efforts to crush stagnation with generativity. My writing renders my age meaningless. Passion ignites me via a circle of energy passing through and around me. I wrote the last word to my novel and asked my husband what word should end my work. He chose the same one I had moments before in my work room. “Amen.” (So be it.) I made a hard copy of the last chapter, sent the full manuscript to g-mail for storage, and hooted and hollered and danced around the house. I thought of love and the shuddering final ecstasy of the act. I reeled from the concoction of words birthed from me in the form of a book. The French call it the petit mort. I call it writing.
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