A CORRUPTED CONSCIENCE

            Writing. Writers. Literature. I have been saying so much about these lately. I notice. But for a good reason.

           

I ponder about literature all the time. All the f… (How it aches to not use the word) time. You reckon that once this seizure swoops down on you, you can’t help but oblige. It’s like flu. You know what flu does to you?

You bolt. It catches up with you. You pull away, it yanks you back. You pretend to mind other things. It wrests you from their grip. It’s hopeless tryna resist. The more you do, the more you excite the wasps of literature.

If you grew up where I did, you probably know a wasp sting is helluva an experience.

Finally you throw in the towel. Here you look like you’ve come from the wringer. Pounding. Bashing. All that shit.

            I’m a captive. A sorry prisoner? A proud slave? Do I know? Lemme see. Actually, I dunno my state. That’s another trashy feeling. Terrible. Not knowing my state. Tell me, is there worse?

            Today I’ll share how writing has changed me. It has. A great deal. I feel violated against. Like a victim of rape. Because what writing does to you is worse than rape is capable of doing.

            

             Before I began writing, now four years ago –fancy four years of servitude –I was this courtly bloke in whose mouth butter could not melt. A Mr. Goodie-two-shoes.

About if I have dementia I don’t know, but of whether my thinking and behaviour have gone off the tangent, I could never be in doubt.

The fit makes impromptu attacks. Not with stealth. With a boom. Right when your arse is as empty as a spent cartridge. You try to sit but all your derrière does is swing in the chair, like someone with stormy bowels.

The other day I took a bus home. I thought a ride would ease the weight in my cranium. Buses where the touts are so loutish and music so blaring you think passengers had signed up for an eardrum torturing session. Those.

So I was seated next to these two middle-aged mamas. Is mamas courteous to say? The duet were conversing in the highest decibels as though in contention with the raucous music. But how sanely else would they when the environment that was so damn like Hades?

That’s not what was striking about them. Rather their language. Whatever tongue it is that they were using, because I won’t lie that I could comprehend a darn thing. Snoopy. Me snoopy.

You must have heard of the bullshit of a writer’s block? No? You shoulda. I’m not gonna talk about this. Or should I? Fine.

The search for creative triggers compels one to do absolutely crass things. Sometimes I choose to eat out at joints popular with young people. Those joints that are so full of patrons clad in all manner of outrageous outfits and behave like five-year olds.

As a man approaching forty, you realise you’re in strange territory when you hear everyone sing along to Shawn Mendes’ song. You Google it later. Treat you Better is the title.

Writing makes you a pervert. Your imaginative mind becomes a troll that is so hard to tether once you immerse yourself into the pool that is pen and paper. What would you say when someone sees everything in life from a purely debauched POV?

Knitting erotic scenes particularly whittles down your moral fibre. If you own that.

Picture this. You’re talking to your supervisor, or any other person you hold in high regard. But your creative mind wanders away, undresses her, starts stroking her nipple, asks her to bend over, dress raised.

Your mind then then starts to tease her cast-iron nude butt, and tugging at her…apple.

Am I saying too much? That’s far from worse.

As a writer, you become reckless. By design. Financial ruin doesn’t trouble you in the least. Profanity becomes a companion. Ill thoughts a staple. You stop caring a rap about decency.

And indulgence. Most a writers lead larger-than-life kinda lifestyles. Like a prince royal. Sapping at all the gorgeous splendours that life has to offer. On credit. Or anything. What you call champagne on a beer budget.

You find carnage flattering. Any carnage. Blood, distress and wretchedness electrifies your cursed mind.

See? Writing is not the kind of risk to plunge into. If you already have, chin up bruh, hun. It’s a brutal intercourse for which you dropped your undies. It’s more than taking a bullet for someone you don’t like. Let alone one you don’t love. 

Or cooling off your hot balls on the nose of an angry Rottweiler. Would you do that, folks? I bet not.

There is money in writing. Lots. But of what use is money with so much heartache?

There is talk of how ugly enslavement is. But no servitude could get uglier than that of the mind. And you don’t earn your freedom back. Even when you’re old and frail that holding a pen is like trying to fart while holding your goddamned breath.

But we grin and move on.

Imma drop my pen now.