Adios, Scheherazade

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Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

I’m supposed to write a dirty book now. It is one-thirty in the afternoon, Fred is asleep, Betsy is at the A&P, it is the 21st day of November, the year of my God! 1967, and I have ten days in which to write Opus Number 29. In E flat. Scherzo, please.

What the heck am I doing? I put the paper in the typewriter, I typed the number 1 midway down the left margin, I quadruple-spaced, I indented five, and then I was supposed to write the first sentence of this month’s dirty book. So what do I think I’m doing? I’m sitting here typing nonsense, I’m supposed to be typing sex.

I can’t think about it, that’s the problem. I sit here and I look at the paper, the typewriter keys, the desk, the Bic ballpoint pen, the yellow Ticonderoga pencil, the round red eraser with the bushy green tail, and I wind up thinking things like how many words are in Ticonderoga. Ago. Tide. Recoating.

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