A Disconnected Trilogy of Self-Discovery in Three Parts

Probably I’m too contented to be a good writer. So I tried to be an alcoholic, like Kerouac or Bukowski or Hemmingway. Didn’t work. I never liked the taste of alcohol and mixed drinks just made me sick. So I tried my hand at drug addiction, like Burroughs or Dick or Hunter Thompson. Also didn’t work. Turns out it’s supremely difficult to score hard drugs in Crawford, Nebraska (population: 1,107). Really, this town is Mayberry. No rough side of the tracks, no ghetto, no dark underbelly. And besides addiction is a skill I do not possess.
But back to the contented writer thing. After failing to get on the addiction wagon I turned my attention towards sabotaging my close relationships, like Kerouac or Bukowski or Hemmingway or Burroughs or Dick or Thompson. My family is scattered around the midwest and I don’t really talk to them much anyway, which ruled them out. So I turned my attention to my girlfriend. If I could just get her to throw a lamp at me or smash some dishes maybe it would be the spark necessary to write the next Great American Novel.
I’d come home late and not tell her where I was. She didn’t care. Said I needed my space and that’s okay with her. I’d be emotionally distant as I knew how. She said it’s just a phase and I’d get over it. I even tried leaving fake love notes to non-existent lovers on my desk. She never read them--she’s not the snooping type, I guess. So I told her I was having an affair. She laughed, asked me with who and said there are only seven girls in town within ten years of my age and if I was sleeping with anyone older or younger I had more problems than infidelity. I accused her of having an affair. She laughed.
Goddammit, I’m serious, I said.
Okay, honey.
Nothing but smiles, so I went into the kitchen and took a coffee mug out of the cupboard and hurled it into the wall. Being one of those plastic, refillable jobs it just bounced helplessly off the wall. Laughs.
What’s his name!
A new cup projected into the wall with a successful explosion of glass.
Honey, wasn’t that the cup you made for your mom in the fourth grade?
I slinked over to the debris, knelt down, tears welled up in the corners of m eyes.
Look what you made me do! I was sobbing now, streams of tears and snot sliding down my face.
It’s okay, honey. It’s not broken too bad. Let’s try to glue it back together.
Okay.
* * *
So now I’m on our front porch, lemonade in my hand. The late summer sun is broadcasting its final warm rays of the evening and the sound of cicadas pulses rhythmically through the cottonwoods and a slight breeze trickles through my hair and across my face.
To hell with Hemmingway. All he did was undo everything Faulkner established. Kerouac and Bukowski, too. Just shiftless drunks who embellished their mundane lives. Burroughs and Thompson were too twisted to keep their shit together and managed to coast downhill into greatness on a single piece of work each. And Phillip Dick, he was just a paranoid amphetamine fiend, so caught up in his own delusions to make anything of his life.
She appears through the screen door and refills my lemonade, the engagement ring on her left hand clicking against the cool glass pitcher. They can have their names emblazoned on the pantheon of great literature. I’ll take my porch.