Goodbye Hello

Goodbye Norma Jean, I must be out of my fucking mind. I hit the delete key. Good by the side of evil. Now that’s a start, but after an hour and more deleting I found it wasn’t. I stared at the blank page and decided to become one of the ghosts Zoe had talked about. If I simply didn't go back it would be like I was never there. I saw my empty seat and my competitive edge got the better of me. I may fall, but I will not be the first I assured myself. Not this time. I stared once again at the blank page. Panic kicked in. All my old demons returned knives glinting in the darkness ready to serve me up to my insecurities waiting with jaws wide open. My head started to hurt. Why had I put myself forward? My mind wandered off the task ahead hand held by the same demons that were now whispering and laughing. Eight hundred words, must start with Goodbye, must end in hello. I switched from the computer to the laptop. I can type my way out of this I thought, but I couldn’t. Words seemed to run and hide from me and when I tried to coax them out I felt like some kind of axe murderer ready to butcher his prey. I threw my moleskin across the room and felt like a fraud. I cursed my own selfish mind. Who did it think it was? I had spent weeks feeding the thing on Kundera, Kafka, Baldwin, Bukowski and Carver and what was it giving me in return, Goodbye Norma Jean, it’s just not on I thought. I swear I said if you don’t give me something books are out, you can forget it! I’m going out and I’m finding the ‘Elderado’ box set and I’m watching that on a loop for eternity. I sat back and waited. Nothing. Fuck you! I thought and went to bed next to an irritated girlfriend who had wanted me to turn the light off two hours ago. ‘Get it done?’

The next day I got on the bus to go to work with a heart and head full of doubt. How dare I think I can write. I looked around the bus and felt like everybody knew and they were all silently laughing. I even mocked myself for believing I could get something published one day, so I hid. I hid inside James Baldwin’s words. They soothed me, calmed me and created the space for me to think without thinking. I turned page after page ignoring the Millennium Wheel, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. I was lost in the book, but was then suddenly plucked from it. An idea was slipped into my mind and refused to leave. It stood there white on black waiting to be acknowledged. I hesitated, then quickly got out my battered moleskin and began writing Goodbye left a space to be filled as it always does…it was like a hook and I began to tug on the line and more words came and then more. I could almost hear the grown of the demons as they slipped back into the shadows to lie in wait for the next time, but the next time was not now, so I kept writing.

I couldn’t believe it, just as I was about to reel the story in my bus stop and reality appeared. I toyed with staying on and blaming my lateness on the tubes, but while I had been thinking my legs had been walking and I was already standing on the pavement of Regent Street. Shit! I thought, so close and yet so far, but still I was almost there. I took a short cut to give me time to think. It was almost there…the man leaving his parents full of hate because their love had smothered him to the point where he could not function without them…the parents trying to hold onto the son to fend off what was on the other side of a childless household?...the twisted bit about them sleeping in his bed whenever he was away to feel closer to him...his hate for them suddenly turning on him with the realisation that he had not been strong enough to break their chains… yes yes! I turned off Regent Street, I was almost there, but then it hit me…shit, how the hell am I going to end the story with hello?