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Look At You, A Walking Crime Scene
Maybe you shouldn’t have become a better person
Years ago, I find myself in Portland. I’m watching Denis Johnson talk about creating characters and I’m nursing a cup of wine, one of many, and later that night a motley crew of us will tumble and fall and cackle in the wet grass. We’ll collapse into one another, knowing that although we’ll write about this evening, this time, for tonight we resolve to simply live it. Live without documenting it. Live without recognizing the things we carry. Things like pain, grief, loss, and so much sorrow.
We’re not yet thirty but the weight we bear is heavy, altogether too much for our bodies. Our faces a mess of pain. And although we acknowledge we are nothing but walking crime scenes, we capture fireflies in cupped palms. We spill cheap wine on the grass, on each other, and later we’ll tumble into bed feeling everything and nothing all at once.
But for now we talk about Denis Johnson — did he sign your book too? — and how we hope we would write as plainly and honestly as he does. What I don’t talk about is the then-famous writer who held a draft of a chapter of what would become my first book in his hands. We don’t talk about the story, we talk about drinking. How much we like it. How it’s the lover who would never leave. How it’s the one thing that will hold you…
