The Writing Group

By Ben Leib

John approached me at the Oscar party, an event held for friends and employees of the local indie movie theater.  The fact that I was still attending these parties more than seven years after quitting the job was an indication of just how stagnant life had become.  I’d go and try to feel young amongst the teenage and college age generation of new employees, who I watched sipping their wine and not knowing how to really drink.  I yelled at the television, wisecracking every thirty seconds, lambasting the Academy for their lamentable decisions that I could make better, and I hoped to entertain these kids.

I couldn’t remember meeting or even seeing John before, though he’d been working at the theater for over three years.  “Hey, you’re the guy I see writing downtown all the time, right?”

He was right.  Because I considered it unhealthy to sit at home and write all day long, getting paler and paler, retaining my ability for spoken language only because I chose to sing along with the dated and unhip music that I was into, I spent most of my time in cafes.  I’d convinced myself that my brief hellos to baristas, my nods to passing acquaintances, that these fleeting instances of human contact constituted a social life.

“Why, are you a writer?”  I already knew the answer to that question.  By the way he approached me, I could tell that John was not only a writer, but that he was a special breed of writer: the kind who never wrote.  I was one of this number at a certain point, when I was drunk all the time and would spend the moments before I fell asleep dreaming of how important and talented I was, how inevitably bound for fame.  Since then I’d transformed into the hermit kind of writer, who is productive, but so self-focused, so ironically reflexive, so out of tune with all things human, that my destiny as a loser had become a passing inevitability.

John and I spoke for a couple of minutes.  He told me how impressed he was with my dedication, told me that he wanted to know my secrets: how could I be so inspired? So disciplined?  It was a mistake to compliment me, for he was mentioning the only things which made me exceptional, and it was in my nature to be prideful despite the fact that I was unpublished and unread.  He did not know that I clung to the order of my life for fear that my world might spiral out of control, disintegrating into homelessness or madness, or just plain loneliness.

“Do you want to exchange work?” I asked him.  I was sure that he would stammer and dodge the question.  People declare their intentions to help each other out, but then become so terrified by some nebulous form of competition—maybe they are less talented, maybe they are less productive—that they balk and allow their fears to inhibit them.  I was done with fear.  I was sick of it, though it was still pervasive.  And, because I’d become brave enough to share my prose, I searched for some kind of guidance, and a good reader seemed impossible to come by.  I had grown so desperate, in fact, that I’d taken to printing anonymous books of short stories and leaving them on café magazine racks, hoping that interested and equally anonymous parties might see fit to critique my work.  It was a moderately successful enterprise, but, in a ratio of approximately ten to one, folks preferred to draw dicks in the manuscripts than write critiques.

Because I thought I had his number, I was surprised when John said that, yes, he would love to exchange work.  This was exciting.  I’d be able to improve my craft, and would have an activity that I could point to and say, See, I do have a social life.

—

John called me fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet. “I’m running late, dude.  Sorry, I’ll be there soon.”  Two hours later John came sauntering onto the cafe patio, looking disheveled, affecting a hurried, out of breath urgency.

“I’m always late,” he explained, by way of preemptively justifying future tardiness. “Hope I didn’t keep you from anything.”

“It’s fine.”

During our meeting John seemed to scoff at the solipsistic emphasis of my own prose, though he hadn’t read a thing I’d written.  “I don’t know if this’ll work. I mean, I kind of thought you were doing something different.”

“Look man, take it easy, I read a lot, and I have a lot of opinions.  I’m sure that we could help each other.  Now, what exactly are you looking for?”

John described for me the novel that he was working on: it began as a short story that he’d written for class three years earlier, and had since spiraled into something longer, something more convoluted.  He described to me how each section would jump from subjectivity to subjectivity.  Despite his intentions, John didn’t know how to expand the three year old short story – he wanted to write a novel, but didn’t have a novel’s worth of material.  That, in John’s idealized vision of our little writing group, would be where I came in.  “I don’t really need critique on the writing itself. What I’m really hoping for is just someone to brainstorm with, someone to help me find the direction that I can take this in.”

 “Look, how much have you got written so far?”

“Forty pages are edited and ready to read.”

“All right, why don’t you email me what you’ve got, and I’ll send you forty pages of my work, and, say, by month’s end we’ll get back in touch and set up a time to meet?”

—

I will not dwell on the prose itself.  It would be presumptuous of me to lambast John’s writing when I have experienced so few compliments regarding the quality of my own little stories.  So let’s say then that we were both unskilled amateurs, possessing a surplus of dreams but wanting in talent, where our proclivities would have been better invested.

I guess I knew that John would be late again, he’d as much as promised me that during our first meeting, so it was unsurprising when I got a text message from him letting me know that he was running behind.  There were several more text messages. I waited for ninety minutes.  My phone buzzed one last time. “Sorry it’s taking so long.  I’ll be leaving soon.  Just waiting for my laundry to dry.”

“I’ve got things to do,” I wrote back, “let’s reschedule.”  I controlled my impulses, and did not tell him to fuck himself.

—

When John and I finally did meet up, we chose to do so at his house.  It was a strategy to neutralize his propensity for lateness.  John told me that he loved my work, which helped thaw my frostiness, for I was so desperately wanting of praise that I would go to great lengths to seek it out, and I could recall every moment that someone had told me, I like this, or, This reads well.

In turn, I did my best to fulfill John’s requests, and avoided a critique of the writing itself.  I tried to help brainstorm ways that John could expand the word count of what was, in my opinion, a project that he should brush aside in favor of fresher ones, and in that way I was not a good editor.

John, I discovered, didn’t get along well with people.  He rubbed them the wrong way.  He’d been fighting with his roommates, he explained, because they couldn’t keep the place clean enough, or didn’t do whatever it was he expected them to do, and it led to animosity and resentment.  John wanted the world to conform to his strange notions of its inherent workings (and I could relate to him on this level).  For example, he was looking for a new apartment because of these household frictions. He was in the process of sending out rental applications, but every time he was invited to an open house John would make up an excuse as to why he was unable to attend. Instead, he would ask the landlords to set up a special walk through just for him.

“That way,” he said, “I don’t have to compete with a house full of people.”

I thought this strategy unwise. He was granted very few of these individual appointments with landlords.

Furthermore, John’s strategies for composing fiction struck me as foolhardy, or, at best, misguided.  He divulged an elaborate fantasy that, in whatever room he moved into, he would construct a simulation of the bedroom that his protagonist might have.  He would buy her DVD collection, hang up the posters that she would have chosen: he would live her life, and therein might find inspiration.  I thought these drastic measures for a man who hadn’t written a new word in months.

It seemed to me that John was trying to escape himself in some way, as if all he needed was a change of environment, a slight tweak in this or that aspect of his life, and then he would find inspiration.  I’d lived through that craziness. For too long it had been my approach to life in general. I’d searched for the magic bullet that would set everything right.

By the time we finished up at John’s place, I had come to the conclusion that we would probably never meet again.  I would never be able to impart the secret of productivity because the truth was that I’d bartered my identity for my own reservoir of inspiration.  I’d stopped drinking, stopped using drugs, stopped (not by my own determination in this case) having sex – I was celibate, sober, and furiously unhappy, but I wrote over a thousand words a day because it was all I had left.  How can one person impart such a thing to another?  I wrote out of desperation and out of terror, for, without it, I would have nothing.

—

Nevertheless, I did meet with John one more time.  He called me and suggested we hang out, maybe get dinner, play some pool, just to stay connected, you know, not to let things fall to the wayside.  It was a way for John to keep in touch while he spent his time procrastinating.  And maybe I am not giving human credit where it’s deserved, for John also wanted to be friends.  But, unfortunately, and as testament to the coldness that I’d fallen prey to, I did not want to be John’s friend.  I wasn’t so frosty that I would avoid his calls, and I was still human enough that I would do a favor for almost anybody who asked, because I still wanted to be available to people who felt the need for some support, an extra set of arms to move a couch, a ride to the airport. But as far as being a friend, I didn’t have those skills just then.

Nevertheless, I felt for John, for though I had no lasting investment in our two man writing group, I could see that he was lonely and lost, and I know that this world eats its lonely.  I told him to call me before noon so that he could tell me where and when to meet him.  I figured that I was compensating for John’s compulsive lateness by allowing him to dictate when and where we met just hours before meeting.

Friday rolled around and John called a little before noon.  “Let’s meet at three o’clock at the 515.”  The meeting was set: a late lunch and then some eight ball.

—

At a quarter to three, John called to tell me he was running behind schedule.  He mistakenly figured that since I’d given him room to schedule our meeting at any time of the day, I wouldn’t mind if he ended up being an hour or two late.  I told him to call me when he actually arrived at the 515.

He called at five o’clock.

“I’ll be right there,” I told him.

I passed a little sidewalk sale at Logo’s bookstore on my way to the restaurant.  I perused the selection a bit and bought a couple of books before meeting John at five thirty.  He seemed speechless when I showed up with my little shopping bag and the news that Logo’s was having a sale.

John was unkind to the wait staff: he was pushy, he asked too many questions, and he wanted things for free that would clearly cost money. He made a point of announcing how long it took to get the bread (bread that was conspicuously absent from the other tables).  He wanted to share meals and then ate ninety percent of the food we ordered.

But it was at Surf City Billiards, during the last hours of interaction I would ever willingly have with John, that I really got to know him.

John couldn’t play pool, so I wondered why he’d suggested it as an activity.  “So, you found a place yet?” I asked.

“Well, it’s complicated. Without an income it’s hard to know just what to write on the applications.”

I interpreted this as an exaggeration.  I assumed John meant that his wages at the theater were so small that they barely constituted an income.  I asked him whether or not his parents would be supplementing his rent, and suggested he offer them up as cosigners.

John was leery.  He felt he was too old to be relying on his parents, and that he was sure he’d find a job soon enough.  Otherwise he might be forced to move back in with his folks.

“Shit man, what about the theater? I know that they don’t pay much, but plenty of people get by without a second job.”

“Yeah, I got fired last week,” John said.

“Fired?  But you’ve been working there for three years.  What happened?”

I circled the pool table sinking ball after ball while John stood to the side holding his cue like it was made of lead.

“You haven’t heard?”

“No man. I haven’t worked there in seven years. Who would tell me a thing like that?”

“I was working one night, and…Do you know Esther?”

“Nope.”

“Well, she was managing that night.  I guess I have a hard time with her because she was promoted before me even though she got hired a year after I did.  But she’s also totally passive aggressive.  I don’t think she’s ever liked me.  She nitpicks – like she’s looking for the things I’m doing wrong.

“I was working concessions, and Esther overhears when I get into a fight…well, not a fight, really…when I got into a confrontation with this customer.  In my opinion, this lady wasn’t being respectful, and I was just standing up for myself. She asked for a glass of water, so I gave her an empty cup and pointed out the drinking fountain.  But she got upset because I didn’t fill the cup for her.  I tried to explain that the drinking fountain was the same water as the tap water that I’d fill the cup with, but I guess that she wanted ice too.  She just wanted someone to be her servant, and she started being a fucking bitch about it. I know it’s stupid but it just escalated into this argument. Esther overheard the entire thing.”

“Did you ever fill her cup of water?”

“I couldn’t.  You see, and I guess that this shouldn’t be important in this situation, but it felt like it was at the time, I’m having some problems these days.  I’m seeing a couple of therapists every week, and my psychologist noticed that I have a hard time sticking up for myself.  I feel like people take advantage of me a lot, but I always have a problem saying what I need, you know, telling people, you can’t treat me this way.”

From what John had told me about his experiences with housemates, about his experiences with landlords, from what I’d seen of his interaction with our waiter that afternoon, John had no problems telling people when they weren’t doing what he wanted them to do.  I came to the conclusion that John believed that the people around him were actually far more interested in him than was the case, that people were actively doing the things which annoyed him with the express intention of making his life difficult.

“So my therapist suggested that when people are treating me badly, when I think people are walking all over me, I stick up for myself, I tell them I won’t allow them speak to me like that.  That’s all I was doing with this lady.  I was just doing what my therapist suggested.  It’s a part of my treatment.”

“But that’s your job.  She’s a customer, and even if she is a bitch – which, don’t get me wrong, it sounds like she was a bitch – you still just have to suck it up and get her the cup of water.  I doubt your therapist told you to argue with customers.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think I did anything wrong sticking up for myself.  Esther overheard everything, and when it was all over she asked me to talk to her in the projection booth.  I knew that I was about to get into trouble. The problem was, she just refused to see my side of things too.  She told me I couldn’t ever talk to customers that way, but she couldn’t acknowledge that the lady was being a bitch.  I tried to explain about my therapist, about how it’s part of my treatment to stick up for myself, but Esther wouldn’t hear any of it.  She just kept saying, I don’t care, you can’t do that at work.  She always had to have the last word, and I just found myself getting so frustrated.  I could tell that she wanted to get me riled up.  She’s never liked me, and she could see how upset I was getting.”

“Esther didn’t fire you right there, did she?”

“No.  What happened was that she kind of got the last word and just walked away and left me standing there feeling pissed off.  And I’ve got this thing – it’s another thing I’m working on with my therapist – but when I get mad I direct all that rage at myself.  And sometimes I do stupid things. I just want to hurt myself.  So after Esther walked away I just let loose.  I was so frustrated that I started cussing and screaming all this bad stuff.  I started punching myself in the face, and just cussing because I was so frustrated, and I guess that I was being louder than I realized and Esther heard me.  She walked back upstairs and saw me there, kind of freaking out.  That was it, I think.  She took me by surprise. I guess I snapped at her.  She told the boss about it, and the rest is history.  Four days later, they tell me I don’t have a job there anymore.”

I was struck momentarily silent.  I imagined John punching himself in the face, imagined his fury, each blow a misdirected punishment, each blasphemy meant, not for himself, but for Esther, who had cut him down to size.  John was an intense guy, but I’d underestimated his mental instability.

But what struck me most was how clearly I could see myself reflected in him.  I have known that fury, and I have found ways to punish my own body as if it were the body of another.

And I could imagine Esther’s fear as she walked in on that scene, as she witnessed John’s violent impulses.

“Of course they fired you. No one likes violence in the work place.  They were right to fire you.” 

He took this summation in stride, ignored it in fact.  “I still think I got a case.”

“You mean a law suit?  Why on earth would the theater owe you money for acting crazy at work?”

“Because they didn’t even take into consideration that I was in therapy, that I was only doing what my psychiatrist had told me to do.”

No, I would never come to like John.  We would never be buddies, and our writing group had seen its day (though he would continue to send me messages and updates implying that we were deeply entrenched in some mutual creative enterprise that was inevitably on its way to completion).  But John had come to frighten me, for we were one hair’s breadth away from being the same.

So I cling to what is mine. I wrestle my sanity into submission as if it were an agent that may cut its mooring at any moment.