I’m walking out of a final meeting with my publisher. They’re offering me $44k for my novel with a $1000 bonus up front. I’ve got my agent at my side and we’re congratulating each other. This will give me enough to survive for a year and write my next novel full-time. The rest of the dream is mainly about happiness and celebration. J and I hug and kiss. I am now driving in a convertible alone and I call K and announce the good news. I’m on my way to a restaurant where my friends are meeting me so we can celebrate with margaritas. I drop in to see Cami who’s just had an organ transplant and is successfully recovered. I tell her I would’ve given her my organ but she says I wasn’t a match. I think about what if I had been a match. It would have been a scary ordeal giving her my organ (what organ was it? i don’t know). I would’ve done it though. It’s either give a friend an organ or let them die. There’s not really a choice. I would’ve done it and been glad I did. This I realize. She doesn’t need my organ though. She’s healthy again and I tell her about my novel, the 44k. She is happy for me but she has known all along that this would happen. She is positive and a psychic.
That is my dream, probably influenced by the movie J and I saw last night, Henry and June. He writes, he gets published, he is happy. Henry Miller and his crazy wife June played by Uma Thurman and that naughty woman, Anais. J says it’s a hot movie and watches the whole thing without falling asleep. In fact, it’s so hot we have to stop watching and have sex in the middle of it. On the couch. It’s been awhile and so it feels extra good. After we finish, I rewind to the part in the movie where we got distracted. Henry and Anais are going at it for the first time. Anais’ husband plays the bongo drums in the next room and never knows a thing.
Before going to bed I finish reading a McSweeney’s short story and then I read some Tropic of Cancer. I can only read Tropic in small chunks since there doesn’t seem to be any real plot. Just an energy moving behind the words. Offensive machismo and a sensitive heart burst through at sudden moments like sun through rain. The beat writers all copied Miller’s style but it was Miller who was the OG. The real genius. Kerouac was an emulator. How many pot-smoking college kids these days know that? I didn’t when I was a pot-smoking college kid.
Today more phone meetings, more copywriting. Maybe I will get back to my manuscript. J says not to desert it. I want to start fresh on something new though. Finish what you started, she says, you can get it published. To me, it doesn’t feel good enough. Not even close. Maybe a paragraph or a page or two does but that’s it. It, the writing, always feels this way. Torment. Love and torment.
