Memoir! Working Title: ‘Lying’

I am lying in the middle of Congress and Casco Streets thinking about writing a memoir. It is 40 degrees outside and the discomfort of lying on the road is matched only by the sensible idea that lying in the middle of two roads is a terrible, awful thing to be doing. You are owed an explanation: I am lying here because I have found that it is easiest to think about things if I can trick myself into believing that they are my last, and thus Most Important, thoughts. Unfortunately, after years of employing this trick, I have grown wise to my own tricks and thus must come to new and more ridiculous means by which to induce the aforementioned state of Important Thought-Thinking. According to the Time and Temperature Building, it is 4:16 AM. No cars are probably going to pass by. If they do, and I am squished, this will have been a successful memoir in that nobody will ever be subjected to reading it.

Several weeks ago I needed to leave a bar in a hurry. I was there with the intentions of feeling sorry for myself and getting as drunk as possible, which seemed like a harmless enough idea given its overwhelming normalcy amongst patrons of bars. What I had not counted on perhaps was that most of the time I pursued these double intentions in the privacy of my own home, where I am perfectly free to lie down on the floor of the bathroom. I am also more used to the bars of larger cities, where such an activity is essentially de rigeur. It appears that my bar selection was poor, because my state was commented upon by several patrons of the ladies-room. Most notably, one woman repeatedly requested that I get up. When I silently refused, she called me a disgrace to women, and left to get me a glass of water. I took the time to mull her point over. While I did not particularly feel as though I was exhibiting the grace of a prima ballerina at that particular moment, I also have nothing to lose in terms of social or political standing, and so my state seemed harmless enough. “Women,” though, I thought. Why women in particular? Would it be less of a disgrace to be a man lying curled up around the comforting coolness of a toilet like some enormous gin-reeking cocktail shrimp? I concluded that the remark had been unkind, extreme, and sexist. Lurching upright and putting my nervous system to work stiffening my legs, I proceeded right on out of there at a rapid stagger. Right out the back door I went, leaving my debit card at the counter to be later billed for $28.00. I was home before I knew it, and my last thought before sleeping was of how wrong that woman had been, because look at how graceful of an exit.

The themes of many memoirs seem to involve alcohol and/or drug abuse, which is peculiar to me as something of a blackout drunk. Perhaps there is something common all memoirists and all blackout drunks in that they spend inordinate amounts of time creating memories entirely for other people. At any rate, relating anecdotes that are possibly cobbled together via the recollections of observers for the amusement and pleasure of yet other observers is a type of meta-identity that gives everyday doings a sort of inflated, historic importance. It also makes memories seem tremendously clear when the events surrounding them were not: if others considered the event memorable enough to regale me with tales of myself at a later date, it must be worth remembering. In this way, the blackout drunk becomes a sort of saintly raconteur, gifting benedictions of hilarity and mishap to anyone observant or bored with their own lives enough to pay attention to what atypical things the BD is doing. Why is life so unbearable and unremarkable that we need them hobbling around creating memories for us that they themselves cannot directly experience? It is practically a calling.

Thus, as one is called to increasingly distance oneself from direct experience in favor of exponentially rarifying it for others, the memoir exists, and I consider mine as worthwhile as any of the others published by a bunch of doddering schmos who wouldn’t know their navels from their buttholes. The overriding theme that I am arriving at, while the 40 degree pavement and probably particulate dog shit matter eats into my back, is one of lying down and all the times I have been lying down, both literally and figuratively speaking. Or just plain lying, which I could be doing at any time, and you have no way of knowing! And at this juncture, I am leaving my junction of conjecture, etc., safe in knowing that if the Unknowable Powers did not want it written, I would be smeared down the street and good riddance.