<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been doing this thing lately where I try to write something and I can\u2019t.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a name for that.<\/p>\n
I, of course, blame it on depression.\u00a0 There\u2019s been all this stuff happening lately.\u00a0 It\u2019s quite sad. Do you want to sleep with me now, girls?\u00a0 I spent a good portion of last night at my friend\u2019s weird druggie crash pad on North Capitol Street drinking his rum and talking to a five foot lemon tree that seemed to thrive on second hand marijuana smoke.\u00a0 My friend sat with his three roomies in front of a giant TV watching Crank<\/em> and smoking up while a steady stream of weird people circulated through his living room.\u00a0 He gave me a joint and it made my world sort of shrink in, spin out, fade away and then return to that lemon tree.\u00a0 And do you know what happened?\u00a0 I had an idea:\u00a0 Post the entire, unedited screenplay I wrote in a drunken haze 10 years ago with a deadbeat friend of mine.<\/p>\n Thank you! I told the lemon tree, then I got myself some violent drunk to drive me through the mean streets of Northeast DC to the closest Metro station.\u00a0 Back alleys flashed by as I told the drunk all about my old screenplay.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know who he was, and he was bent over the steering wheel repeating a strange mantra to himself (\u201cHeadlights \u2013 don\u2019t hit; moon \u2013 can\u2019t hit.\u201d) but he seemed the okay sort.\u00a0 We managed to get to the New York Avenue station in one piece and he took the car up onto the sidewalk and slammed on the brakes before we plowed through onto the ground floor.<\/p>\n \u201cMezzanine,\u201d I said, because I liked the word.<\/p>\n My driver twisted his head towards me, hands clutching the wheel and eyes bloodshot.\u00a0 A layer of sweat covered his dark face. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re on the mezzanine!\u201d I said cheerily.<\/p>\n \u201cMezzanine\u2019s above the ground floor.\u201d He whispered harshly.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, mezzanine means ground floor\u2026\u201d I replied, not sure.<\/p>\n He started to hit the wheel with his palms, enraged, and began screaming: \u201cIt is not! It is not!\u201d He repeated this several times, thrashing around in his seat.\u00a0 Then, collecting himself, he leaned over towards me and put a shuddering, bony finger in my face. \u201cIt is not.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou might be right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou are right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou are on the red line, right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo\u2026we\u2019re at the station.\u201d<\/p>\n I stared at him blankly, then jerked. \u201cGood heavens!\u201d<\/p>\n We stared at each other for a moment until, slowly, he turned his head to the side, his neck cracking.<\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d I said, \u201cthanks for the ride\u2026to the mezzanine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to stop that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just like the word. Mezzanine.\u201d\u00a0 I sounded it out, but pronounced it phonetically and confused myself.\u00a0 Then, awkwardly, I pulled myself out of his car and walked up to the turnstiles.<\/p>\n \u201cWild night?\u201d the guard on the other side asked.<\/p>\n \u201cIs this a mezzanine?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou be careful going home, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in 97, my friend and I had this great idea for a screenplay \u2013 three college guys stay the winter, as caretakers, at a hotel like the one from The Shining<\/em>.\u00a0 Easy.\u00a0 Enter the nasty ghosts, but our boys don\u2019t have much patience.\u00a0 They fight back.\u00a0 One of them gets seduced, much as Jack did in the movie.\u00a0 One of them decides to put on the hurt, as the cooler people say.\u00a0 The third yahoo doesn\u2019t believe in ghosts and, therefore, is oblivious to the raging battle throughout the entire screenplay.\u00a0 If you\u2019re asking me right now, I\u2019ll tell you that it\u2019s simply brilliant.\u00a0 And, you know what?\u00a0 This is between you, me and the lemon tree.\u00a0 It is brilliant.\u00a0 I popped it up onto my screen when I got home and started to read it again and I loved it.\u00a0 I chatted a bit with some of the tech heads on our forums about the best way to make it available to you, the reader, and everyone had a different answer because they\u2019re a bunch of useless women, but it doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 I ran into a problem.\u00a0 I started to set up the first 15 pages with an introduction and, putting in all the mumbo jumbo code that brings these words to your computer room, I started to really get into this piece of retarded shit I wrote 10 years ago.\u00a0 I started to clean it up.\u00a0 I wrote the screenplay with camera directions and all that.\u00a0 A shooting script, I think they call it.\u00a0 It\u2019s annoying, I suppose, but it\u2019s kind of fun because it creates an interesting sort of prose quality.\u00a0 I hate the screenplay form, and I did then.\u00a0 In fact, in 2002, I turned the screenplay into a novel.<\/p>\n The novel\u2019s worse, so we\u2019ll not talk about it.\u00a0 Not yet.\u00a0 That\u2019ll be after I work this screenplay through my blood.\u00a0 So now I\u2019m sitting here debating whether or not I should keep the camera directions in there.\u00a0 I\u2019m also debating whether or not I should clean this puppy up and modernize it.\u00a0 On top of that, there\u2019s the big question:\u00a0 Do I try that novel shit again?\u00a0 Really throw myself into it?\u00a0 I was cutting edge horror parody ten years ago, but now the idea of three 20-something guys who take the supernatural by the horns seems a little yawn-worthy.\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t I look for new things?\u00a0 Am I living in the past?\u00a0 Should I not get really drunk and call all of my ex-girlfriends and tell them that I never loved them?<\/p>\n I enjoyed the characters, really.\u00a0 I always like my characters.\u00a0 There\u2019s Martin.\u00a0 He\u2019s the one who gets seduced by the ghosts.\u00a0 He\u2019s also the one who truly has the \u201cshining,\u201d so that makes him susceptible.\u00a0 Daryl Gillette is our hero.\u00a0 He can also see the ghosts, but he\u2019s the shit-kicker who decides to mix up with them and save his boy Martin.\u00a0 Azizi is an Iranian soccer player who destroys everything he touches, cannot see the ghosts and is increasingly worried about his crazy friends\u2026but not really worried enough to get involved in whatever meltdown is going on between Martin and Daryl.\u00a0 Fuck those wet blankets if they can\u2019t enjoy a little snowstorm.<\/p>\n Trapped at the Ridgetop Hotel, the two primary ghosts are a 20 year old girl and a 12 year old boy.\u00a0 The girl seduces Martin and the boy bedevils Daryl.\u00a0 Thrills and chills, baby!\u00a0 And, yes, Daryl is a gun nut.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve spent the last day zipping through the screenplay and editing some stuff but, mostly, just reading it and tripping out on what I was thinking ten years ago.\u00a0 That beautiful glimmer of hope I once had.\u00a0 I never sat and talked to lemon trees back then.\u00a0 No, I sat in my apartment in Bethesda, MD and watched Highlander reruns.\u00a0 My computer was set up in my comfortable and oversized bedroom with hardwood floors, and I typed away with my 56K modem connecting me to the internetwebthing.\u00a0 My roommate was a depressive drunk who paced the floor whenever he talked to his girlfriend in Mexico.\u00a0 He was really cool.\u00a0 Across the hall was the building slut, and I really had a thing for her.\u00a0 She liked anal.\u00a0 Actually, she loved anal.\u00a0 But only if you changed out all the lights in her apartment with red-tinted party bulbs.\u00a0 Once her bedroom was cast in that eerie, Satanic light, she\u2019d get on the bed and raise her legs up, hugging them close to her chest.\u00a0 Then she\u2019d say: \u201cJust pound it in \u2013 balls deep \u2013 as quickly as you can!\u201d<\/p>\n From that position, I\u2019d have to ride her ass while also jamming my hand in her pussy, all four fingers in and thumb pressing hard against her clit.<\/p>\n Best lay I\u2019ve ever had.\u00a0 I should have married that girl.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m about five miles away from that apartment, in a world that feels very different, and I still have a red light bulb in my desk and this screenplay.\u00a0 Something must be done with it, but I\u2019m suddenly sidetracked and thinking about sex. That, I think, is why I\u2019m having trouble writing articles for what my boss calls the \u201cGreat Society Blog.\u201d \u00a0A little bit of balls deep anal lunacy and I\u2019ll be right as rain. Pip-pip!<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,397,160],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-rants","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2613,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions\/2613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}