My hands pick up speed as I type. The words pour out of me with an anger at myself that cannot translate to the screen. I feel my tongue swell too large for my mouth and I reach for a cigarette that has been smoldering in the ash-tray for the a paragraph. A feeling like sickness creeps up my legs and wraps around my midsection. None of this appears on the screen. When I scan back across the words I see nothing but evidence and analysis. Thousands of words seem to flow from my fingers. Cold, emotionless, words void of any real meaning to me. This should make me feel more confident but it does not.
My best friend Andrew is messaging me. The yellow flashing icon on my computer tells me this before I open his question. For a moment my attention is broken and the memories that assault me fade into the background.
Malivor: Hey how goes?
Captain Awesomepants: Anxious, I have a lot of work to do.
Malivor: Ha. I figured, I'm lost in this research.
Andrew is a doctoral student in New York who always claims that he still does nothing but graduate work. I want to empathize but I can't. I can only think of the fear that has taken root in my stomach and fills the space in place of food.
Malivor: The research I need just doesn't exist. I have a great question that needs to be answered with no idea how to go about answering it.
Captain Awesomepants: I wish I could help. I don't know anything about early modern theater.
Malivor: It's a research problem so don't worry about it.
Captain Awesomepants: You'll worry about it.
Andrew is not responding. I assume he has returned to reading much like I return to writing. I bring my paper to the front of the screen again. Capture my thoughts. My hands lay still on the keyboard. When my fingers begin to move everything fades away. The paper slowly pushes back through my concern for my friend and the stress he is facing in the ending of his own semester.
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"Fuck.... John .... don't you ..... pay attention?" Bob's voice is stilted through a fine haze of smoke. We are smoking weed on the couch together as MSNBC plays in the background. Al Sharpton on mute. Lightin' Hopkins is dancing his fingers across the string of a guitar from the speakers. I want to feel the sound but I feel numb. It is the presence of my brother. He is larger than life and seem to fill the whole space of the room. His gaze is inescapable as he looks pointedly at me.
"You can't just sit on your ass your whole life."
My silence has his voice spilling over the conversation. He takes control as he hands me the glass pipe that I stare at for a moment. It sits in my lap leaking smoke up at me before I cover the top with my thumb and feel the burn of the ember. "Seriously, you're going to be that lazy, stoned, forty-year old who's still living in the bedroom he grew up in if you're not careful. I'm not saying keep doing art. If you don't like it then fuck it. Find something you like, find something you're good at. Hell, find something you're good at that you like. Just stop sitting on your ass in front of a computer all day long doing .... nothing! How can you even stand it? I'd go crazy if that was me, just sitting there staring at a screen without thinking all day."
His gestures grow erratic as he gets stoned. They sweep and point, shake and curve in at angles forming various shapes that express the mood of his voice. He is not irritated with me. Circle. He is not even disappointed in me. Triangle. Bob wants for me more than I want for myself and he refuses to keep that inside. Square.
"I write some."
My meek defense come out as I lift the pipe to my mouth. I never enjoy dragging in the embers someone else starts. He is looking at me as I strike the lighter and bring the flame to the blackened contents of the bowl. I remain staring at the burst of red glow with the silver-gray ashes beginning to fleck over the surface. I like how the hot color bleeds through the stained glass against my hand.
"You write? Seriously? See now that's cool, you should do something with that. And I mean do something, John, don't just sit there behind the computer all day but get out there and train yourself. Don't just be good at it, or decent at it, or even talented at it. Be great, man." Bob's attention returns to the television. "Look at this asshole!"
The music flashes into silence. Sharpton is replaced by a dry, pasty, political pundit who looks uncomfortable in a suit. A politician I do not know floats eerily alongside his head. The hand gestures on the screen remind me for a moment of brother's only not as eccentric.