"The Writer" By Ben Fagan
The pen may not be mightier than the sword, but it does have the power to make a man pick up the sword, and by that transitive sense, gives the pen all the might. That’s not to say that the pen can only lead to the sword, it also has the power to lead away from it. It’s the only weapon in the world that can both incite and resolve conflict. For some, the pen and sword are synonymous. For 15-year-old Charlie Griffith, he had no idea what any of those statements meant, so he didn’t really give a sh!t about them.
A self-proclaimed writer for six full days and one half day, the writing veteran had yet to produce a single sentence of original work. The Griffith boy frustratingly sat at his desk, hunched over a blank sheet of paper. Charlie firmly believed that the key to writing a great American novel was to stare at the sheet of paper until the words appeared before his eyes on the college-ruled lines.
He had just finished reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for English class. It was the first novel he had ever read. Charlie didn’t really understand the themes of the story but he did have extensive conversations with his friend Tanner about how hot they thought Becky Thatcher would be in real life. Charlie theorized that she would have really big cans but Tanner strongly opposed this idea and proposed that she would have a nicer butt instead. After several convincing arguments from both sides, they agreed that she would have both big cans and a nice butt. It was the compromise of the century.
Mark Twain was now Charlie’s favorite author and main source of inspiration (while Charlie didn’t like Tom Sawyer, he assumed Twain’s other works had to be “way less boring”, otherwise why would he be so famous?). Charlie wondered if Mark had ever been in the same position he was in. He entertained the thought of Mr. Twain staring at a blank piece of paper for hours just before penning the first draft of Tom Sawyer. Maybe Charlie was minutes away from penning a masterpiece or maybe he was months away from penning the worst thing ever put down on paper. The everlasting gamble of the profession. But Charlie knew this gamble because after all, he had been a writer for almost a week now.
Why can’t I be more like Mark Twain, god dammit? Charlie often thought to himself over the past six and one half days. Surely he could come up with a story that had a gripping plot line, flawless prose and colorful character development. He was born to be a writer, of course he could. Besides, claiming to be a writer was half the job. He kept a pocket notebook for story ideas or creative metaphors he may come up with while away from his desk (as all great writers did). The notebook was overwhelmingly blank.
Charlie tapped his pencil maniacally on his desk, flipping through tiresome thoughts like a rolodex filled with blank business cards. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the poster of Mark Twain on his wall that he purchased at a Barnes and Noble three days prior.
“Ah, the life of a writer,” Charlie said aloud to the piece of paper on his wall held up by scotch tape. “Nobody really understands the struggle we have to go through, eh Mark?”
Mark Twain did not respond.
Over the past six and one half days, Charlie had been stealing quotes from vaguely famous authors and incorporating them into his everyday conversations. He believed that all great authors stole from each other, so of course he would have to do the same.
“The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” Charlie said for no apparent reason to Tanner. (This was a quote from Siddhārtha Gautama, more widely known as Buddha. But of course, Charlie didn’t know this. Charlie saw the name and thought he was a Mexican author from the 1800s. His self-conducted “research” was enough for him to confidently go about spouting the words of this unknown Mexican man.)
Tanner looked bewilderingly at Charlie for a moment, confused by the sequence of words that just left his lips.
“So does that mean that if Becky Thatcher thought she could get a great set of cans, she’d get them eventually?” Tanner inquired.
“Precisely,” Charlie confirmed.
While stealing from other authors was only one of the hobbies that great authors had, criticizing other authors was also a necessity to become one of the best. Disparaging other writers’ work makes an author look like they know more about writing than those they’re criticizing. It helps to inflate the ego and provide an elevated level of importance to one’s own work. Charlie used his English class as an outlet to exercise this sentiment.
Five days ago (one and one half days after becoming a writer), Charlie heard a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson in class that he found impossible to not criticize.
“We must first be our own before we can be another’s,” quoted Mr. Roberts, Charlie’s brand new English teacher. “Can anyone tell me what Emerson was talking about?”
Charlie raised his hand in a fury.
“Yes, OK Charlie, how about you?” Mr. Roberts asked, ignorant of any knowledge about the boy he had chosen.
“It sounds like he’s talking about slavery…I mean…it was the 1800s so he probably was. Everyone loved having slaves back then. I think that quote is offensive to our ancestors who were slaves and shouldn’t be seen as inspirational,” said the white teenager to the African-American man standing in front of the class. Charlie went on to point out how Emerson had a “retarded middle name.”
Mr. Roberts quit the very next day citing “gross overestimation of generational hope” in his letter of resignation. Charlie didn’t know what that meant, all he knew was that Mr. Roberts was acting like a pussy. Everyone in class unanimously agreed that Mr. Roberts was indeed acting like a pussy.
On the seventh day of being a writer, it was a Saturday. Charlie woke up, took a shower, got dressed and went to sit at his desk to begin the process of brainstorming again. The same sheet of blank paper laid in the same spot for the seventh day in a row. Why hadn’t he come up with anything yet? He must’ve missed a step in the process. Charlie looked down at the paper in front of him, then up to his glimmering poster of Mark Twain, then back down at the paper.
“Jesus, of course! How could I forget the crippling alcoholism that comes with writing?!” Charlie exclaimed aloud to his still inanimate poster.
Charlie and Tanner walked to their local convenience store, a crisp twenty dollar bill in Charlie’s pocket. They sat in front of the clearly marked “No loitering” sign for forty-five minutes harassing customers to buy them a case of Miller Lite with no luck. They decided to go with plan B.
“Sir, do you want to be able to say you had a key role in contributing to the next great American novel?” Charlie inquired to the homeless man around the back of the store.
Without responding, the man took the bill from Charlie’s hands and walked around to the front of the shop.
“Yes! I did it! I’m finally going to be able to uncover these hidden ideas that’ve laid dormant in my mind my entire life!” Charlie cheered.
Charlie and Tanner waited for fifteen minutes before circling to the front of the store to see what the hold-up was. The homeless man was not inside the store, nor outside.
“Dude…I think that guy stole your money.” Tanner accurately concluded.
“Jesus christ, these God damn blood sucking liberals just love getting free hand outs don’t they?” Charlie said, assuming that the homeless man was in fact an active American voter belonging to the Democratic party. “Come on, let’s see what we can dig up from my pops’ bar at home.”
Charlie and Tanner rummaged through the kitchen cabinets only to find a half empty bottle of peppermint Schnapps from two Christmases ago, six ounces of Jack Daniels, a quart of strawberry vodka and an unlabeled bottle of mysterious black liquid from under the sink, presumably to be a cleaning agent, Charlie and Tanner being the exceptions from this fairly accurate presumption. They took all the bottles and snuck them up to Charlie’s room.
“Alright, let’s get to work on all this.” Charlie said, picking up the bottle of Jack.
He put the bottle to his lips and took two large swigs of the sour mash whiskey. He squeezed his eyes shut, curled his lips and finally swallowed after letting it sit in his mouth for a full five seconds. He threw his hand over his mouth like he was going to puke and then puked, splashing on Tanner.
“Dude! Gross! Have you ever drank whiskey before?!” Tanner questioned.
“Of course I have! I just never had this kind before.” Charlie lied, wiping the residue from the sides of his mouth. “Okay your turn.”
Tanner took a swig of the peppermint Schnapps with ease.
“Like drinking a York patty.” He described.
“Give me that.” Charlie demanded.
Charlie grabbed the bottle from Tanner and took a large gulp. Wincing once more, Charlie puked again, this time unable to catch any in his hands, effectively hosing Tanner with the contents of his stomach.
“Dude, God dammit! I’m going home, you’re terrible at this.” Tanner yelled, wiping puke away from his t shirt.
“Fine! See if I care, I’ll just drink by myself, that’s what every great author did anyways.” Charlie explained.
“Yeah and every great author could you know, actually write.” Tanner quipped.
“Whatever, man. I don’t need you anyways.”
Tanner left while Charlie sat in the middle of his floor, covered in pop-tart filled puke. This spectacle clearly exhibited Charlie’s absence of the alcoholism gene that came with every great writer. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Charlie picked up the unlabeled bottle of mysterious black liquid and put it to his lips.
Mmm. Tastes kind of fruity, Charlie thought. He drank every last drop of the bottle before beginning to feel woozy and nauseous. Figuring that that’s what being drunk felt like, he settled at his desk to let the ideas flow to the page. He wrote only 2 sentences before he began violently vomiting. The black, tarry bile spewed from his mouth like a garden fountain. He collapsed on his floor, writhing around for thirty seconds before going limp.
On the eighth day of being a writer, Charlie had died. When Tanner visited to take a goodbye glance at the scene of death, he found the piece of paper on Charlie’s desk with his two lines scribbled on it. It read:
Friendship is like drywall. Sometimes there’re holes in it, but it can always be patched up.
This surprisingly tender sentiment from a notoriously selfish young boy prompted tears from Tanner upon reading it. Tanner grabbed a nearby pencil and wrote beneath the lines:
-Tanner Johnston
He later turned the paper in for an English project and received a B-, the highest mark he had ever gotten on a school assignment. Tanner Johnston went on to become an alcoholic and a best-selling author using Charlie’s quote as the opening line for his novel. What an a$$hole.
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