Honesty in Writing

Or honesty in life?

When I’m not working on a particular piece of work, or when fresh ideas give up on me, it has become habit to resort to writing about the regrets of a lifetime.

I had a lot going on when I was ten years of age; so much advice coming from so many sources. Grandad, though he was mostly amusing, and very interesting, had this habit of telling me if I didn’t eat creamed asparagus with my boiled codfish, a lightning-bolt would come down and strike me to charcoal. I ate it, wanting to puke up every fork-full. I regret, still, not having had the courage to test out grandad’s theory.

To this day, I still wonder when the lightning comes and the thunder of my heart starts to beat fast, if some blue-white flash will sneak up on me and cut me down for all the boiled-codfish I refuse to eat today.

I was so mixed up, it’s no wonder Susan Rafferty never loved me back.

Move forward sixty-years.

People are telling me: be as honest with my writing as I can.

Honesty, really? Here is honesty for you: I got to thinking that maybe the good guys in life never had as much fun as the bad guys. Good guys care way too much. Good guys lose too much. Truly, I mean it. Fuck it, fuck being a good guy.

I regret not being a bad guy here and there; to like, even love a women rough around the edges, maybe she smoked, drank too much, and wore fish-net stockings under a six-inch leather skirt with high-heels.

Honesty…honesty…honesty…really?

Okay…back up again…sixty years:

I was always terrified as a kid. I never wanted to be afraid, for nothing ever feels so badly to a boy of ten. I was being honest with myself when I was the only boy in the entire school willing to play hopscotch with Susan Rafferty. I was hated by other boys for making a fool of myself and them. But if I’d been a bad kid, well, I’d have been up a tree somewhere, or sailing a dinghy in the harbour. I think I told myself, I honestly did, I said; sixty years from now I’ll not fall for this loving shenanigans, it is way too hard. I’m going to be bad, make out with the most beautiful women, twice over, own a E-type Jaguar, fly faster than the speed of sound, belch in public, dance to any tune, and care about everything far less than I do Susan Rafferty.

Yep, you get it….let’s jump forward.

So, when I look backward from this mountain of age, being loved so hard, I can understand much of what has happened. Some things, not. Looking way back, I was never born to be a ground creature, there was always something inside me saying ‘you have no limits’.

The urge to fly was greater than any other feeling, and fly I was sure to do. Dad was a professional fisherman. I was not born of his genes, and would not make a fishing trawler my entire world.

But there was a place, a home for me, and so it was, for thirty-eight years, the cockpit of a Sikorsky Sea King helicopter. Quite something for a kid who played hop scotch, trying to win over the heart of a girl.

How did dad know I was never a ground creature?

Bear with me here…let’s skip back that sixty years…

I was a hell of a disturbed kid. I remember being in trouble at school for going to the top diving board in the school swimming pool, knowing the diving board was out of bounds for kids under twelve. Hell it was high. I screamed as I ran toward the edge, and flung myself off. The teacher gave me the slipper on my backside for showing off to the entire class. What a fool he was, I wasn’t fooling about, or showing off, he just didn’t get it. I was making sure Susan Rafferty saw me fly.

Dad, he got it.

Sorry…okay…skip forward…dizzy yet?

The writer is not someone I can honestly write about. I’m just an old man. I wish I was more, for then I would truly work at making the lives of those I love more beautiful.

The man I write about, is the man I want to be. My stories are letters to the world, written with love, posted, emailed, scribbled down on scraps of paper, fingered into an iPhone. They make no sense, there’s no pattern, no particular style or genre. I can write, so I do.

I cannot take away pain, (hurting at least proves I’m still alive), or build sandcastles in a safer place than the shore. I’ve not had a chance to be normal, only ever envied those that are. I’m the acceptable reactionary. The man who thinks: ‘well, that’s just how it is.’ Is it any wonder that I’m difficult?

My honesty, my belief that I can write, the knowledge that my life survives day-to-day, night-by-night, is no longer confusing.

I don’t regret the pain of loving, just glad I was one who’s life it touched, and even though it has brought sadness, and perhaps some fear, it is most definitely better to have loved and lost and found again.

Honestly, there is no desire to be clever on the page: However, there is a desire to remain the child I was; capable of such friendship, for you, the reader.

I lived in a confusing world a lot of the time. I lived with people who had been kicked in the head, and believed all they read in Sunday newspapers. Not for me, no, I never wanted that for me.

I want to sit on a sidewalk in Paris, drink coffee, and watch the world pass by knowing nothing of me. I want to miss someone very much, some of the time, so that I know what it’s like to come home. I want to have events in my life to share.

Do you honestly know what I mean?

Can you begin to see me between the lines, can you sense the pleasure of befriending a man always trying to blow smoke up the chimney before the fire is lit?

Please, then, just one more time…come back with me six decades…

At ten, I walked onto the shore, making my way toward the harbour, skipping over rocks before bending down, and selecting a large stone in the darkness, which I rolled over, and placed a note to Susan before rolling the stone back.

Sometimes, I regret not going back to see if she found it, but of course I won’t. I never will. My time is almost done. Never mind, I’m here, doing my bit, even the good John Wayne would think me a tough son-of-a-bitch, and Superman would be out of his Kryptonite breath if he had tried to keep up.

If you dare to like who the writer has become as a man, then heck knows how much you would have loved him as a kid.

Honestly, regrets? I have none.

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