I don’t consider writing a quiet, closet act. I consider it a real physical act.
When I’m home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy. I move like a monkey.
I’ve wet myself, I’ve come in my pants writing. –Patti Smith
All these years, maybe he hadn’t been writing right.
The old man had no idea what to say today. Dial 1-800-Patti. First minute $2.95.
So, he stumbled across a note about walking ten kilometers in summer desert heat and listening to her book. She’s got more than one now. Misfits? No, Just Kids. Struggling to become an artist and figure shit out in NYC in the early whenever. Whenever the beatniks disappeared, the hippies arrived, that space in the early Seventies, when Nixon was President and many sentient beings went around looking to stick a spike in their own eye just to make the pain go away. The old man imagined he might’ve dated Patti Smith. He had been in Washington Square more than once at night.
Separately deciding, the old man needed to become more physical about his writing. He often had a laugh, maybe a chuckle, sometimes he tickled himself. Admit that. The young redhead actually slapped her knee once like they used to do in the old days. But an actual orgasm, wet pants, the big spew? No. Le petite mort? I don’t think so.
Liked to think of himself as The World’s Most Famous Unknown Writer. But, think about it, if he could’ve come in his pants when writing, he’d have gone woody in Miss Nepful’s class or Mrs. Westerholm’s or Sue Truran’s. There are old ladies reading this right now whose skirt he had tried to look up. Maybe he would’ve been more satisfied just by writing. This opens up a whole new line of thinking.
If writing had given him a boner, maybe he’d been, let’s just say it, a helluva lot more productive.
Think about it. He thought about it. Every success in his life had come as a result of preparing for, then playing, sometimes even winning, the BIG GAME.
The genius is not in the art. Never the art. The genius is in being the artist.