When Syphilis Gets On Your Creative Parts

Me and my new friend, a statuesque, ukulele-playing blond named Sparrow... we'd simply put it all off for too damn long: Writing.

It was the thing we were supposed to say when people asked us what we did. It was our deal. Our main project. But somewhere over the years after college, the main project had become a side project, and then the side project was replaced by an inexplicable malaise.

I mean, after months of acquaintance through our jobs managing at Cafe Gypsy, neither of us had any idea that we both had this selfsame affliction. We never talked about it. It was embarrassing; something we could've taken precaution to prevent; something more serious than writer's block: Creative Syphilis. I almost forgot what it was like to draw up ridiculous conceits for the sake of a good story.

Things changed when Sparrow attended a pre-4th-of-July, post-McQuitter barbecue that Mikki, Betha, and I had thrown at our apartment. She caught of glimpse of my bookshelf and postulated that we might have been friends, based on the titles strewn about my floor. How I missed being able to judge people by the bookcovers they owned!

And just like that, it started up again. We were on the road to recovery. We decided to enter a contest to motivate ourselves, a short story contest through a publication called Glimmer Train. We had a month to write our short stories. Three thousand words or less. An easy side project to pursue.

We wrote sporadically up until the last possible minute: 11:59pm, when the deadline was an ominous, solid midnight... but finally, we each submitted a story. A fine story. But after sharing our work, we agreed that they both felt unfinished. No award-winning masterpieces this time. Considering the word and time limitations--with both of us still having the occasional flare-up of non-writing--our stories were still incomplete.

But it's just that, after years of silence, there is so much to say!

That syphiltic malaise has been replaced by this burning sensation, a compulsion to write...