Days Of A Fool

I'd been drunk for days, many many days. I was working on a story, a short story. Just a little exercise really. But the more I wrote, the more I felt needed to be written. The story grew, it grew and grew. 5 pages turned into 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 40. I realistically considered the fact that I might just be insane, that I had always been insane, only when your pictures appear in ads and magazines, people never think that you might very well be insane. You get away with it, is what I'm saying. But what the hell, what could you do about it anyway? All I knew was that the story would not cooperate. It had a life of its own. I felt it did not like me, that it didn't want me writing it. The agency sent me an email. I was still with the biggest agency in the fucking world. I had almost forgotten. It didn’t seem plausible. What was the world anyway? What was I? What was anything? I booked a job, that same Boston job. I hadn't worked in a while, a long while. The checks still came in when you weren't working. They mostly came in when you weren't working. It’s not a healthy thing. Nothing made sense, nothing ever makes sense. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked down at my gut. I grabbed it with both hands. The hole of my belly button went deep, deeper than ever. I remembered the scene in Poltergeist where Craig T. Nelson is standing in front of the mirror, doing the same thing. Shit, he was probably younger than me then. I used to climb rocks. I couldn't imagine climbing rocks. My brother came for a visit. We drank. I drank MUCH more than him, enough to make me worry. I took out the week's recycling. There were 2 plastic bins. I figured around 80-85 % were mine. I continued to worry. The sun was shinning. We went out in the backyard. It always astounds me that I have a backyard. I don't feel like I deserve a backyard. I showed my brother how I liked to toss Henry's yellow toy bat up in the air. I had gotten good at it, very good at it. I showed him how I could throw it behind my back. I showed him how I could flip it backwards, frontwards, under my legs. I seldom missed. I told him how it could replace everything, that I may never climb again. I tossed it as high as I could, maybe 25 feet in the air. We watched it twirl a good 15 or so rotations and I caught it with ease and simply tossed it again. He was impressed, he was sincerely impressed. I could tell, I knew my brother. Sarah rolled her eyes. I thought about writing a story about a man, a family man, who is so defeated, all he can do, all that makes sense to him anymore, is to toss his son's yellow plastic bat in the air. I drank and the job loomed. I decided that one day I would definitely write that story. "What a great fucking story!" I thought. "Very Raymond Carver right?" What would you call it though? The bat? Tossing the bat? Bat tossing? My brother left and then we found out we were pregnant. Part of me knew something was up. But that part of me was just as dumb as the other parts of me. I drank more, much more. I worried about the job and I worried about us and the new baby and what would come, but I kept drinking, writing and drinking, pretending that I was a writer and not the failure that I was. Then her parents came to visit. I drank with her dad. Her dad would go to sleep and I would drink with myself. One day we were out in the yard and I tried to show him how talented I was with the bat. I tossed it in the air and caught it. I looked for him but he had already walked away. I also walked in on him once in my writing room. He was standing there with his hands on his hips, looking around at the walls, at the thousands of brightly colored scribbles I'd written all over the walls. "Hey," I said. "Hey" he nodded as he walked away. We celebrated Sarah's birthday. It was a good visit and then they left. Henry was sad. I woke up and wrote more pages. I did a word count- over 19,000 words. I kept writing until Sarah yelled at me to stop. We talked about baby names and moving to Canada. That night I drank. I could tell Sarah was starting to worry. I had 2 days until the job. No doubt, I'd pushed it too far. But I always pushed it too far. The next day, I woke up and hiked the mountain. It felt good. I felt like I might actually be okay, slightly okay. I came home and then I turned around and hiked it again. I had one more day to get things together, to at least try to get things together. I was coming down the mountain when my phone lit up. It was an email from the new assistant at the agency: "Amtrak reservation for Philip Bram tonight." I wrote a frantic response: "WHAT????????!!!!!!!!!!!!! The ticket I have is for TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!" My agent called immediately. I was out of breath. "Bram, sorry. This job got all fucked up. We got the dates wrong. How soon can you be in the city? We have to get you to Boston ASAP!" So here I am on the train. I made it to Penn Station in time to catch the last train out. Do I have a beer? Yes. I've had 2, which will most likely become 3. Am I a fool? Yes. Yes, I am nothing but a fool. But tell me, is there anything more fitting for this world than a fool? No, I think not.