The Second Impulse

It’s past midnight and I’ve been drinking.

Having created a life, one I call Harry, my first duty as a writer is to give that creativity away. Before doing so, I like to think Harry’s life is well made. I’d be ashamed of something I’d created being so shabby going off into the world. First, he must be carved, shaped, and planed if he is to fit comfortably into his space. I know Harry better than anyone. He’s a brute.

As a writer of fiction, I’m obsessed with character. Nothing kills the energy in prose or poetry like conscious professionalism or mere technical skills. Of course, in my dealings with the world, I have not always acted with pride, self-restraint, or professionalism. Along with its ego, my persona ought to be something I can leave at the door to the writing study. You’d think.

The blank page is both a private and public space. The writer, naturally, is the first person to look upon this space. I will write for weeks as though my mind itself is running, even flying, independent of ability or knowledge.

As Goethe wrote: The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.

I have written several million words, two million in San Francisco, give a noun or two. I’ve scribbled on walls, park benches, trees, and I even scraped the words I love you on a bar of soap, only to watch those words disappear with use. This, of course, would not be Harry.

Harry’s world exists outside books. A world likely to yield material that is more genuine, funny, exacting in integrity; his life’s experience adding to my writing development. It hasn’t been easy. Harry is not a lot of fun to be around. Asked the question, Harry would rather I gave him the life of a gravedigger, a long-distance truck driver, a sweeper of roads than to imagine himself a writer.

I cannot ever imagine Harry shrieking with laughter. Instead, he runs violently into trouble, having had a great deal of whiskey that day. While Harry is running, I’m still in my pj’s, having woken at 3:00 a.m., coming to my study with a cup of tea.

Why Harry? It’s good to remember that I bought my writing ability at a great price through birth, hardships, education, love, loss, failure, and drinking because, with all that put together, it taught me to fight harder. The dictionary of experience has been worth more to me than a dictionary of language.

Nothing about Harry is beautiful, tender, or ingratiating. Nor would he ever break his word. I didn’t think I would like Harry so much. He’s become so much a part of me we must work together. Physically, of course, his liver is shot, his guts shredded, and his heart torn away from its moorings. In the end, Harry is a roaring wind of a man, without the need to drive fantasy. It doesn’t matter how I work with him; he puts his utmost, all his passion, into whatever voyage we take. He gives up nothing except the ticking minutes of his life. Harry has never been a man seeking comfort, warmth, or companionship. His thicket scratched face has seen its share of horror; eyes so deeply set they are all but gone.

I have done an immense quantity of work since Harry became the subject of my creativity. He has in him the real stuff; he has the tendency for great gentleness, the heart of a child, but body and spirit change with trial and upheaval. I’ve tried everything, every technique, not to have him appear as the villain. I don’t always comprehend why Harry’s efforts at seduction should take up so much of my time, he’s a rake, and no amount of creative genius can deny him his obsessions. If you know Harry, you know he seems forever beaten, lost, hunted, driven by furies. Corner him, and he will talk poetry. It’s a splendid blemish on his reality. Too much water has gone under the bridge since he became sixteen. The boy who leaped into the air is gone. We discuss at length how he wanted to be that cleverest of boys, talk like one, write like one. Sharp knives of discipline cut that notion away. The perilous seas first bought and then broke him. No one has told him it’s all over.

If I were to talk about the women in his life, they remember him, without exception, with pain and love. His relationships were enacted out with bitterness, despair, and madness. No matter what they did or didn’t do, Harry acted badly.

That said, Harry’s first impulse is to write I love you before his second, which is to go for a beer.