The master failed writer

I write this post on behalf of failed writers. The definition of a failed writer is simple, and not so simple. A failed writer is one who claims he is a writer; he may even write regularly. Perhaps he writes every day. He might arise each morning at 6:00 a.m. to put pen to page. Let's say he comes up with as many as two thousand words in a sixty-minute interval. We don't care what he writes. Brilliant blog posts. Articles a propos endangered species. Interviews with high profile community figure heads. Full chapters toward potentially best selling novels. Comedy sketches witty and thoughtful enough to put SNL to shame. He dabbles into it all, in fact.

But though this lonely gentleman may be a very skilled writer, and quite a versatile writer (if he does say so himself), he is failing. Because nobody recognizes him as a paid writer. He has no freelancing gigs to speak of. He quit his job as an online newspaper reporter, where he was making a measly $200 a month writing about dog owners (an executed decision because he needed "something deeper"). He toils away at aforementioned materials, sends out resumes for part time this and that for a copy writer, a resume writer, a blog poster, a features editor. In return, he gets no response; in his mind, the sad man is a failed writer. A wordsmith who has thrown his hands in the air and shouted, there is no money to be made--meaningfully or otherwise--in this stupid business.

I know how the man feels. I ran into this stranger one night, late, at the Walgreen's in my Chicago neighborhood, coined Ravenswood. I was there on a mission for eye drops, given my unrelenting, late-summer allergies. And he was there, in aisle 8. His eyes were blood shot (I could relate to that detail too, as it were), and he looked as though he was going to cry (if he had not done already). He appeared drunk, but somehow I knew that he was not drunk. Call it a hunch. Now, I realize it might have been a writer-to-writer hunch. Writers can often sense things of other writers--a sixth sense of sorts--among their species. Is this true? Oh, I don't know.

In any case, this failed writer who appeared drunk but in the end proved only sad and confused and lost as a writer, painfully sober was he, managed to look up to face me. He forced a half smile, and then his gaze returned to what he was erstwhile eyeing: a Maxim magazine. A surge of sympathy--empathy, even--warmed my skin. A blast of raw, sanguine compassion deliberating through my insides. And there, in that moment, I really did feel his pain.

I had half a mind to say something to the red-eyed man. Ask him if he was okay. He certainly didn't appear okay: his hair was a-muck. Either he had recently been having love relations, had come to from a very long nap, had suffered the labors of an unskilled coiffeur, or had been pulling at his roots from frustration and mind chaos. I realized it was the latter--a feeling I know. All too well, in fact.

Many a night have I spent awake, as a writer, or a failed writer, or a not-yet-tried writer, wondering how I could dare put words to page. Words unlike those of the extolled greats, but instead phrases and fragments which read as hardly more than horseshit, really. None of the conjunctions or transitions or topics making sense in juxtaposition. Mismatched metaphors. Hyperbolic expressions, like a child would weave. Weak euphemisms swimming through my prose, like drunken sperm attempting to blindly fertilize an egg--all the while hackneying any attempt at a unified, authoritative voice. I wrote like a fucking child!

'Tis what I thought, when I was alone during those late nights. And so I felt this man's pain in that moment. But though I started to say something to the poor guy, nothing came out. I even tried a couple different times, in a couple different ways. Nothing. As I selected my eye drops and commenced to go, he said something: It's a bitch you know. But when he said it, he was looking down at the Maxim magazine. I didn't respond, but I didn't leave, which to him must have been the same as saying, I beg your pardon?

Avery Dushane, he said. This woman was featured on the cover, I surmised. Later, when I would go home and look it up online, I would learn the featured subject was indeed Avery Dushane. As far as I could tell, just another floozy model that had probably done a million other covers like such. And again, there in the moment, I refrained from an audible response. I only looked at the sad man, which must have conveyed to him, I don't know what you mean.

You know I dated her, he said, as he ran ink-stained fingers through his disheveled coif. It was a question, I guess. Still I didn't say anything; just stood there like a deer in front of a car at night. Long ago, he continued. I took photos of her, even interviewed her. I pitched the piece months after the fact. And this is the bitch of it, he added, his tone moving toward excitement.

And there was me. In a grimy, offensively lit Walgreens somewhere on the northeast side of Chicago. About to hear what the bitch of this man's run in was with Avery Doucheman or whatever and the sad man's business of pitching to magazines. There I stood, serving as listener to this lonely writer's tale. I could tell he was getting a big bang out of it. I'm sure that's how Holden Caulfield would think on the matter, anyhow. For a moment, I even felt like a kind of hero, revealing to this man a sliver of interest in his insignificant plight.

The bitch of it, he repeated, emphasizing the word bitch, was I pitched it to Maxim! We've featured too many European models these past several issues, the man said, in a nasally voice, like he was imitating a whiny child or something. Check back in two years, he mumbled, now in his own voice, and flicked the cover with his inky middle finger.

And then there was silence. Just me standing there, feeling kind of lost and naked and largely sympathetic still, and him shaking his head, surveying the magazine cover as if the opportunity to plunge into its pages and strangle the bodies which comprised the publication's masthead, or Avery such and such herself presented itself, he'd take it at the speed of a sonic boom.

Eh, who cares, it's just a stupid magazine, right? This was his revelation, the sad man's newest audible thought. But this time, I answered. Exactly right, I said, and I managed a subtle smile ... just a stupid magazine. Yeah, he said, nodding and putting the magazine back in its place on the rack. Just a silly magazine. After he said this, we looked at each other for a long moment, with all of the comfortable feelings silently exchanged between old friends. But we weren't old friends, not but for that final moment.

After our few shared seconds, I wondered if the man would be okay. But then it was time to go. I knew I'd never find out. And even now, I hope he is okay--or even writing about not being okay. Failed writer in his mind perhaps, but in mine, a master failed writer ... at least.