What a silly, incredible string of words. That was perhaps the most compelling introductory line of a story I have ever read. God Damnit I wish you were thinking that right now, but I know that you are not because I have yet to dream up a sentence that would fit the mold. Just maybe though, that little wordy game was enough to keep you interested in continuing and that's really the best I can hope for on a good day.

My name is Bryan and it's weird for me to be open about that because I rarely write about myself. I write enough to be considered a writer in some circles but during most ticks of the clock I am something else entirely. For our purposes though, it doesn't matter what I am at any other time than when I am writing, and the opposite is true as well. No one really cares if I am a writer when I am fulfilling his/her needs in ways unrelated to the pen. Most of the time when I am one, I want to be the other. Blah, blah, blah…

Writing has added no weight to my wallet or bestowed me any degree of fame. But the craft itself, the study, the practice, the wanton need to be profound without personal consequence has made me a man of carefully chosen words. I'm taking a moment here, a moment to reflect upon how I represent myself with the words that I put forth, about the unspoken pressures of fatherhood, about vocabulary, and about the fact that sometimes I really need to forget about who I think I am in order to do something stupid just to feel good. Like this:

After raping her ass, he laid her unconscious body in the hotel bathtub and filled it with buckets of ice from the vending machine. Mindful of the danger at hand and the need for precision, the man she had met over martinis earlier that evening carefully incised her lower back and removed her left kidney. He didn't care about getting caught or explaining to the doctors where the kidney had come from, he just wanted to save his daughter from the injustice of renal failure. Fuck being judged by God he thought as he slid the bloody organ into a Ziplock bag. The bastard should have done a better job during creation.

No wait - I meant to say this:

Truman was strange and kept to himself. Every night at 7:00 p.m. he began to mop the administrative offices and continued meticulously upon a well thought out path all the way to the first floor bathrooms. He whistled Don William's songs and considered the mop an extension of himself. His large, rough hands, gripped the handle with care. They moved it about with hypnotic purpose. At 12:00 a.m. after dumping the last of the trashcans, he would walk back to the dorm that the University had allowed him to live for the last 30 years. On Tuesday March 15th 2002, just after 8:00 p.m., Chancellor Wentworth made a decision he would never forget. The Chancellor, a man not accustomed to visiting student housing, made a personal visit to Hagan Hall, not because he felt inclined to personally inspect the dormitory conditions, but because Truman had not reported to work in two days. The Chancellor was quite certain that his had not occurred in well over 14 years. As he walked through the lobby he could feel the squinted eyes with raised eyebrows watching him pass. It was a common response of the students seeing a man of his stature walking amongst them. But the shit of it was that he had sat in chocolate pudding earlier that day and the clean up had been near impossible. He knew what they were thinking, what anyone would think. He found the door unlocked, and he found Truman lying on a perfectly made bed. Truman's hands were folded and a look of timeless content lay blanketed across his cold, leathery face. Beside him on the bed was a note that simply said, "Thank you for not making me leave when I got too old. Under the bed you will find what is now the property of your institution. It was all that I had other than this job. Please use it wisely and don't forget that supplies will need ordered by Wednesday. Tell Tom the new kid that he is a bright boy and knows what to do. Truman." The Chancellor pulled four suitcases from under the bed and slowly opened them one by one. Just a little over 2.3 million dollars was stacked neatly within the tattered luggage that bore decals from the far reaches of the civilized world. Sometime that evening, hard to say exactly when, Chancellor Wentworth began plans for the Truman Brown Recreation Center, and realized for the first time in what seemed like a million years that he need to give more love to his wife and kids.

If your feeling confused by this, don't worry. I'm here for you. I made it up and I can take it away. Just forget that I wrote all that. Somebody probably told you a story like that before anyway. Nothing really happened here at all, good or bad. Yes, yes, I am trying to trick you. I'm playing with new things and emulating a storyteller. Will you let me? I mean no one is looking at either of us right now. Even if someone were, they wouldn't really know what we are doing here unless we were to tell them or give them a peek.

A couple of months ago I wrote a story about myself. Since releasing it I have learned that it is a very dangerous thing to do, writing about yourself that is, particularly if you include some narrative of those who will be reading it. You can call them by other names or give them other jobs, but they will always put two and two together. But anyway it was a story written in third person with a very strong, assumptive narrative. I was trying desperately to create this character that the reader would believe to be confused, a man with sideburns that were just a bit too long, and tendency to think about life in terms of cartoons. It worked, but it wasn't without its foils. I wanted the reader to be sympathetic with this man that stumbled successfully through life in the sense that he achieved great things but needed someone to look after the small things. Like he could give a great speech about novel and heartfelt ideas. He could be stealthy about making people feel better just when they needed it most, but he had a hard time remembering to pays his bills, or enjoying a bowl of soup that he had made for himself. Everyone around him realized this and without any more thought than, "Well that's just the way he is and we still love him," they did what was necessary to clean up in his wake. Eventually he became dependant upon it and could hardly do a thing for himself. I knew that telling the story was risky because I was describing myself. What I didn't realize is that these people knew that they did this for me but chose to ignore it, and when they found out that I knew, man they didn't like it a bit. So now it is necessary for me to remember on my own when it is Christmas and to keep tabs on how much detergent is left no matter where I go. Blame readily falls in my lap, and no one wants to grab me a soda even if they are closer to the refrigerator.

I know what your thinking. Your thinking, "Isn't this guy doing what he said he wasn't going to do anymore." He's writing about himself and doing a very poor job at that. Does this guy have enough guts to give me something worthwhile, something that will make me rub my chin without even knowing that I'd been doing it? Maybe. I can take a few steps back and tell you how this whole thing got started and then hopefully you'll perceive a rabbit or something where there is just empty space and echoes.

Why? Because I'm fighting a deadline. I don't want to be the odd man out. It's important for me to write, to write something with meaning. I'm obsessed with achieving new levels, of besting the string of words I wrote just before the last. I try and most times I fail. It's warm outside and then it's cold. It's the nature of this ugly month. And like all 28 years past, I've done nothing to be proud of during the days of March. I gave it my best though. I sat down and wrote the first couple lines that you read a few minutes ago. Now here we are near the end and I am prepared to tell you why you are reading this. But I want to tell it like this:

It was no question that the day was rough for Bryan, the entire freakish month for that matter. It had nothing to do with love, because he felt more loved that he had in a long time, and he was prepared to give more love than usual. Something nagged him though, something odd. Sure he was a writer, but he often felt that he was mocked for thinking so. He felt that he was accommodated when he spoke about it or when his loved ones reviewed his work. He also believed that people shrugged and whisked their brows clean of anxiety when he walked away, thankful for the moment, that they had not become a character in one of his partially fiction fantasies. He considered it to be the nature of the beast though and continued to try and make sense of his intangible, fleeting ideas. He worked desperately at putting down his thoughts, no matter how mad or nonsensically they came to him, so that posthumously or even in the present people would know what he was thinking and agree that he was cool. Just as he had written what you read not a second ago, his girlfriend walks in and gives him the look, that look that says I need attention. Bryan considers the potential implications of continuing his work. It does not look good. He stops writing and watches television. He asks about her day. He begins to act like something is bothering him and continues until she asks what it is. He says it's nothing but he is clearly not comfortable - silence ensues. He's listening to her talk and looking at the television but he cannot forget the words he had just written about being manipulative, admitting it and paying the price. He wants to finish the fucking thing.

So he did and here it is. He told her that he needed an opinion about the garble he had just written and that it was very important because he felt that it might be a tad too strange. And it was - the writing as well as her reaction. While she was reading it, he wrote the rest on a piece of scrap paper. She encouraged him to finish because she was intrigued, which is exactly what he wanted although he continued to act bothered about the whole thing, insisting that he didn't really want to write. Really he asked? Keep going? Yes, she said, go ahead. So then he felt like a cheater. He struggled to remember the initial point of the whole thing. In the exact spot you are reading this sentence, he wrote at least ten others. A couple of them the dealt with the idea of requesting forgiveness, forgiveness for being a turd, and forgiveness for sometimes failing to tell a good story, but he found it tiresome and futile. At last he wrote a sentence that was inordinately successful at saying thank you to his readers, thank you for being around because it can be a lonely life when you can't stop your soul from seeping through the tips of your fingers.

He feels really close though, really, really close to writing that one sentence that says it all. Maybe it'll be the first, maybe the last. He's not sure but he can feel it coming. Sooner or later he'll get you when you least expect it. He wrote one final thing before going to bed, something very serious. He leaned forward and cracked his neck. A cloud of smoke erupted from his mouth and wafted about the screen. His fingers whisked across the keys in near silence. No babies cried and no there were no trains in the distance. He offered this:

Read the Millennium Papers for God's sake because you never know what you might find. It's consistent in every way and not subject to fluctuations in temperature. Perhaps April will be better.