Right next to the bros chatting about sports betting and sluts sat a young and struggling writer perched atop a red velvet barstool with black legs. In the corner, Billy Joel was crooning on a tenebrous stage, belting out his world famous song “Piano Man”. Indeed, it was nine-o-clock on a Saturday.
The post-fame depression was hitting the young penman like a brick wall. He no longer knew how to live. He know longer knew why to live. Immediate success is one dirty whore of a phenomenon, and it had gone straight to his head like a stiff Cuban cigar. So he sat at the bar alone, with Billy Joel crooning in the background, furiously scribbling in his alcohol-stained notebook, searching for the next big hit. Searching for his magnum opus, his ticket out of the living Hell he had created.
Women often recognized him – they would approach him with copies of his earlier work and ask for wet signatures. Some would even ask for pictures. They all said the same thing: “OMG, we LOVE you!! Please write more! Write about us!” And knowing how this song and dance went, the young writer would often ask them to stay for a drink or two or ten. And what city girl would deny a free drink?
The night would proceed according to the script that God had handed him when he first auditioned for being a student of the game, and he would recite his lines over and over and over again until he was so nauseous to the point of puking (and subsequently sleeping) in a thorny rose bush. And he would wake up in that thorny rose bush the next morning, one that smelled like Target-brand candles and looked like a demo room at a Crate and Barrel, and he would brush himself off and offer to take her to breakfast. And of course she would accept. And then what? Another dead end. A tunnel painted onto the face of a rock wall. Wil. E. Coyote smacking into the hard surface, while the Road Runner laughs in the distance.
With each drink downed; no drowned; with each drink drowned, he searched for inspiration, hoping it would be conveniently buried at the bottom of the shot glass, But he was no explorer, and Ponce De Leon never did find the Fountain of Youth. The Fountain of Youth was the search itself, an everlasting quest for the magical waters that only existed in a fever dream, with an expedition funded and operated by royalty so afraid of the other side of death.
The young writer took a break from the meaningless scribbling and looked around the bar. The characters from Billy’s song were all present; there was John, his old friend; and Paul, the real estate novelist; and the waitress practicing politics; and the businessmen getting stoned. It was a respectable crowd for a Saturday. There was also another mysterious fellow sitting at the corner of the bar – he had his back turned to him, so the writer could not see the man’s face, but he too was scribbling in a notebook. The writer, seeing there were open stools next to this mysterious man, got up from his perch and inched closer to him to see who he was. He wore thick rimmed glasses on his battered face, and sported a thick, white beard that had been growing for years; and he was wearing a tattered light blue fishing shirt that had seen the worst of a coastal storm; and poking out of the front right pocket of the shirt was a silver flask, which was odd, considering he had a stiff pour of whiskey sitting in front of him. The man finished a sentence and briefly looked up when he sensed someone approaching him, and the young writer was surprised to see the Old Man by The Sea himself sitting atop that corner barstool. Yes, good old Ernest Hemingway was working on his next (and perhaps final) piece of work before passing on to the next world. The young man spoke first.
“Mr. Hemingway, is that really you? I’m a huge fan of you – “
“Oh, cut the pleasantries and kiss-ass crap kid, I know why you’re here. You’re in a rut, some might call it writer’s block, and you want some advice.”
“Well, yes, Mr. Hemingway, I –“
“Please. Call me Ernest. Or Ernie. Or a drunk. Call me whatever you want, except for Mr. Hemingway. We’re at a bar for Christ’s sake.”
“Right, Mr., er um, Ernest, yes Ernest – you are correct. I’m in a rut. Struggling with what to do next – unsure on how to react to all of these new fans and followers.”
“You feel guilty for your success. Why?”
“Because I haven’t accomplished anything yet. I got lucky. It doesn’t feel real, and I’ve only been writing for a few months now.”
“So?”
“So I’m searching for the next big hit, but I can’t seem to find it.”
“I’m gonna make this real short kid, because you don’t need advice and because old Billy here is about to sing the best part. I’ll tell you what I told my good friend F. Scott Fitzgerald. There, you can ask him yourself. He’s sitting over there in the corner booth, with all of those lovely Flappers. Maybe he will share one of those fine young ladies with you. Ha! Anyway, here’s what I told him years ago: Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don't cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don't think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.”
Ernest continued. “Now, I gotta go up to stage. This is the best part coming up. Don’t ever forget that, you hear me? You already have “it”. Whatever magic you’re searching for is already inside you. Use it. Alright?”
“Alright. Thanks Ernest.”
“No problem kid. Now watch this.”
And with that, Hemingway leapt up from his stool with a force so strong that it knocked the chair to the ground. Within a second, he was up on the stage, with Billy Joel, sitting side by side on the piano bench, arm around his shoulder, as Billy belted out the chorus:
“Sing us the song, you’re the piano man! Sing us a song tonight!”
Hemingway and Joel sang in unison. And on the other side of Joel was Mr. Fitzgerald, looking as dapper and dandy as Mr. Gatsby himself. And he looked at the young writer, straight through his soul, with that warm smile of his, and said “Don’t worry, old chap, things will be just fine for you”. And one of his flappers took him by the hand, and they began slow dancing on the stage as Billy and Ernest and F. Scott continued to crone.
And it was in that moment that the young writer realized that Ernest and F. Scott and Billy were all right. It was all in there. Inside that bar. And wherever the young writer ventured to next, it would be there as well. It followed him everywhere, that sickening bug of wordsmithing, and infected every experience and conversation and observation he had. No longer was he a guy at a casino, but rather a gambler, a speculator, a pioneer, a melancholist, chasing his dreams (or lack thereof) down the drains of those velvet halls. The grass was no longer green, but rather it was a perpetual ocean of chlorophyll sprouting from the fruitful nectar of soil spread across Mother Nature’s earth. The homeless man was no longer homeless; he was a living, breathing manifestation of the dark side of the human experience, wearing every heartbreak and misfortune on his wrinkled and weathered face. Cars were no longer cars, instead, they were mechanical death machines hurling through the space-time continuum, violating the sanctum of God’s kingdom.
He looked the young flapper in the eyes and saw Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth smiling back at him.
Onward,
Tony
Humble Wordsmith
Writer Boy
Seer of Hemingway’s Ghost
Not a Piano Man