My summer bath had just gone from tepid to fart-warm, when I heard a rustling at the door.
I assumed it was the village hoodlums, no doubt angling for a peek at my unrobed flesh beneath the crack. “Fie, horse thieves!” I shouted, sheltering my nether regions behind my well-worn copy of Eat, Pray, Love. “Away with your wretched tom-peepery!”
To my chagrin, it was the mailman. Said he had an important delivery for me, marked urgent from the Oval Office. It read:
“Get out of that sordid tub and do something for your country! War is still raging, health care still failing, and there you are shriveled as a washerwoman, searching for enlightenment, aroma therapy, and a fab recipe for pesto. Your nation needs you. Take up that pen and write on a weekly basis, until your stomach bleeds! Sincerely, Barack Obama, the President.”
Right away, I had a sneaking suspicion that the letter was not actually from Barack Obama, but my grandpa. He’s always talking about doing things until your stomach bleeds. Seemed like a dead give-away. Only after I stuffed the letter down the drain did it occur to me that my grandpa was no longer living. An ulcer took him from us five years ago. Which meant the letter really was from the president!
In a panic I fished it out, but all the ink had been washed away. All that remained was a sequence of letters that formed the nonsensical words “Stanford Daily.” I took this as an auspicious sign, searched the internet for direction, and was guided to the very publication you now hold in your hands. I swore on the American flag and the pickled remains of my grandfather’s anomalous organ that I would write for this “Stanford Daily”— until the blood gushed from my innards.
At the time I was mystified by this strange series of events. Only later did I piece it all together. There is a chance that one Zed Shwarma, alleged student and editor of the “Stanford Daily,” wrote the note on the back of a sheet of Stanford Daily stationary as a sick joke, hoping to swindle me into submitting a weekly column to his newspaper. But the more likely scenario is that my grandfather’s ghost blackmailed President Barack Obama into writing the letter, and Obama, to avoid rumors that he was being haunted by my grandpa, set Shwarma up as the patsy.
Either way, I’ve been roped into this writing business—if you can call it that. I always thought writers were scandalously rich and famous, dated movie stars, and drew tens of thousands of adoring bare-chested fans to watch them kick a ball around a field for ninety minutes in matching shorts and socks. It turns out none of this is true. Well, at least as a writer you get to eat donuts all day, ride around in a car with loud sirens, and shoot bad guys, right? Nope. The lies we teach our children….
So, what is it really like practicing the world’s oldest profession? Well, for starters, you have to wake up at five in the morning because that’s when the creditors in Delaware start calling. This is not so bad, since I can use the steady rhythm of the phone rings to structure my work day. For example, rings 1-100, scream into pillow. Rings 100-200, eat breakfast. Rings 200-1000, prepare to write. Rings 1000- 1500, cry into pillow. And at ring 1500, I dry my eyes and wet my throat with gin.
And that’s when the real writing starts. I often do my best writing completely unconscious. Sure, sometimes I wake up in a black linen sack full of tarantulas in a cemetery outside Juarez. Occasionally I receive mail from the Navy demanding recompense for a battleship I have no recollection of sinking. And there is the infrequent coming-to in the white light of the airport detention cell after having removed my pants mid flight. But every time, I emerge with a column of limpid prose written in gravy stains on my undershirt. If only my cleaning lady would stop washing my undershirts, I’d have some truly great writing to offer you.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep spending hours staring into the abyss of my soul reflected in the computer screen, listening to my wife nag me about how she doesn’t like to be called my cleaning lady, and wondering what in the world this job has to do with getting paid to have sex with strangers. I’ll add word after excruciating word, and pray to a hybrid deity of President Obama and my deceased grandpa that it see fit sooner rather than later to fill my stomach with blood.
Until then, I hope you enjoy this column!
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