Writing activity

Dear all,

I seem to have killed the Writers' Block I've been suffering from. I've decided to continue Bertie's tale here in part, but if I feel the need to write about it elsewhere...if it has legs, in other words, might write about it in my journals. In the meanwhile, I'll be posting some more segments from my 3AM Epiphany text. Today just happens to be about Bert, but more often, I doubt it will.

Keep reading....

Friends?

Ronnie hated having a mobile phone. For with it, he knew that, even if he did not answer it, the pains of knowing that someone was trying to contact him would grow and grow until it would obscure all other thoughts.

When the phone rang, he saw it was Bert, again, wondering where he was. Their childhood was unimpressive. They met in daycare, their parents kept mentioning. Ronnie always wondered how this would equal friendship. Their parents just put them together. No infant has the concept of friends. It just has the concept of companiship, a complicated way of saying there is another person is sitting nearby and he or she is not bothering you.

Ronnie was sure that if he cried because Bertie had bit him or hit him, the parents would quibble for a few moments, make hush-hush sounds and set them back on the floor or in the playpen. In fact, since they did not talk any more, Ronnie decided that, in fact, his mother detested Bertie’s mother. Ronnie’s mom never invited her over for coffee, even if the java was being served on a special occasion. Bertie’s mom did little towards Ronnie or his mother either.

Ronnie pondered this in a matter of moments, seeking a reason to not answer the phone.

But something inside his chest pounded a bit harder. When he was a freshman in college, he denounced dating all together and could not understand why all concepts of love focused on his chest. His sociology major illustrated for him that love was a feeling, but it happened through various reactions of chemicals in the brain. He would later realize that his was borne from leaving his longest girlfriend yet right after high school graduation. His newer college buddies would emphasize this and point out that he was just telling himself stories to keep from being upset.

His chest hurt, however, when the young lady he met in his junior year finally rebuffed him after a bad day of finals.

Then he knew why the chest was the reference and Hallmark made so many pink and red hearts every February. For all of his education, something in his chest moved when he loved or wanted, it also burned when emotions ran high.

His chest had a similar ache now.

The fact was, he knew Bertie probably better then Bert knew himself. He knew that when he fell and skinned his knee in grammar school—he not accident prone, but avoiding taking quarters from his mother; Ronnie knew that the invite to have coffee this evening was not out of curiousity for Ronnie’s recent past events and college. It was so Bert can see if he was truly alone.

Ronnie did not recognize his friend at the supermarket earlier this very day. The weeks of basic training had slimmed down an already frail physique to a pencil thick frame. But his arms and legs had meat that was honed. But the cheeks were more sullen then ever before.

And Ronnie’s chest hurt.

He picked up the phone and confirmed that he was on his way to the coffeehouse.