Sometimes I get into lulls in this blog, or my zine The Inner Swine, where I’m not sure what to write about. I mean, Jebus, I been writing this stuff since I was ten. Novels, stories, sure, but also just essays. Ramblings. Opinion pieces, stuff like that. Millions of words. Possibly billions, by now. It takes a certain kind of self-centeredness to come up with that many words just to describe your Inner World, fans, and hopefully there’s a certain amount of charm in that. Otherwise I am screwed.
I’ve written about everything. Every voice in my head, every emotional breakdown, every embarrassing failure. Somewhere there are words of mine describing it. The self-regard is amazing. But, on the other hand, I also have very little left that normal men might term dignity.
So: I talk to myself.
All the time, a running monologue. If you didn’t know me, you’d think I was crazy. In fact, some folks who do know me do think I am crazy. When i was a kid there was a fellow in the neighborhood who would walk around all day long with a transistor radio clamped to his ear, talking to himself. He was always insanely cheerful. I have grown up to be Radio Man, albeit a slightly more Ready for Prime Time version of him, and sans radio.
I have two different Talking to Myself modes. One is just a profane soliloquy I keep up on a constant basis. Sometimes this is superficially aimed at my cats, Pierre, Oliver, and Spartacus. Sometimes it is just in the air, a seamless rant at no one and nothing in particular. In this I’m probably not too different from other alcoholic, misanthropic people who work at home and have no human contact for days on end.
The other mode I have, however, is a little worse: I write. Well, I enact scenes, have dialogs. Work out plots by pretending to be one of the characters. This can get a little involved, and I even lose track of time. Suddenly, I’m standing in the shower, and I stop and think: Why am I pretending to be an alien sociopath whose alien mental illness causes him to think like a human being and thus is the perfect Fifth Columnist? And then I look around, thank goodness I’m inside and away from people, and get on with showering.
This is fine as long as you don’t get caught. Trust me, once someone walks in on you either a) talking to the cats like they were small furry men capable of responding or b) talking like you’re acting in a role and think you’re being secretly filmed, you don’t live it down. I repeat: You do not live it down. You will hear about it for the rest of your life. If your wife, The Duchess, is the one that catches you, she will also repeat it to people, telling them the story as if it’s simply hilarious and not humiliating at all.
Of course, sometimes it happens when I’m just walking down the street, too. I’m pretty conscious of my Rain Man tendencies, so I don’t really walk down the street talking to myself out loud. But I do often walk down the street talking to myself inside, and sometimes I think it must be really obvious. At least based on the way people get out of my way as I approach. When I was a kid there was a crazy guy in our neighborhood who walked around all day with a transistor radio held up to his ear. He was nice, he would stop and talk to anyone who flagged him down. When he wasn’t talking to people, he just talked, out loud, to himself, responding to things he heard on the radio. We came up with the genius name of Radio Man for him when we were kids.
If I were any less socialized, or if my Mom had had a few more drinks while pregnant, no doubt I’d be the Radio Man of 2012 Hoboken. Actually, maybe I am. Certainly the neighborhood kids run away when I approach. Hmmmn.
Sometimes I suddenly realize I’ve been talking to myself for a long time, deeply buried in some scene I’m working out, and I have this unsettling moment of realizing that for the last half hour I really wasn’t in charge of myself. I was just operating, you know? It’s kind of disturbing. I have to assume that it’s all part of my process for generating the genius writing ideas I have. Otherwise I am just nuts, and I don’t want to think about that.
To the bar!
I got caught — worse, apparently, I’m also a pervert.
My office has a fitness center and I frequently work out during my lunch hours. I didn’t like the ending I’d written for my current WIP and it was bugging me for weeks. It was in the gym while pedaling the elliptical machine when I had an epiphany (ellipiphany??) and nearly fell off the machine in my zeal to find something – ANYTHING — to write with. I think I used a paper towel and sweat.
I was feeling all smug with my bad self when a colleague stopped me that night on my way out. “Patty, that elliptical machine sure made you happy today. You were grinning from ear to ear. Any chance I can have a turn?”
*face palm*
Don’t worry Jeff, I also participate in an internal dialogue as well where I make stories up in my head. Mostly, this is in order to make it through my painful mininmum wage job in which, lukily, higher level functioning of the brain is not required. I am often bounced out of a stupor by a customer being needy and half my shift is gone!
Humiliating or not…I need to talk to myself.