Near Dark

 If you're feeling cheated and can't pinpoint the reason why, I think I may have the answer: You missed out on my very dark, goth period. It wasn't my manner of dress or piercings of any sort. I have maintained a pretty solid streak of T-shirts and jeans for most of my six decades on the planet, and the only holes in my body are the ones I was assigned at birth. No, to fully appreciate my prophet of doom phase, you would have had to spend some quality time with the spiral notebooks I filled with poetry that did not rhyme and sketchbooks full of menace. 

In the mid to late eighties, I was amassing a large body of work that no one else really wanted to see. I know this because I sent a great many of those non-rhyming poems out to magazines in hopes of being rewarded with publication. An audience. That's what I craved. Not enough to go to an open mike somewhere and spout them at strangers in a dark room. That would have been so, how shall I say it, obvious?

What I think I really had in mind at the time was that eventually someone would stumble on this body of work, tucked away in a storage space somewhere, box after box of personal papers filled with the dark wit and wisdom of an understood poet. During this period, I was also still writing short stories, many of them every bit as creepy as the poems and doodles that filled the margins. It was also during this time that I actively avoided using a computer or a typewriter, preferring to scribble in my somewhat cramped and nearly legible scrawl with a Round Stic Bic Pen. With black ink. When it was time to send the latest batch off to The New Yorker for initial rejection, I surrendered to the convention of typing. I am sure that this transition sapped the angst factor down at least a few percentage points, probably resulting in their return via self- addressed stamped envelope which was another convention of the time. 

It occurs to me now that if I could have held on for just a few more years, I might have found a spot writing lyrics for an up and coming grunge band. These were not love poems, more like vaguely arsty cries for help. Help which eventually arrived in the form of a certain level of maturity. As I approached thirty years old, it dawned on me that there wasn't really a market for my marginally tormented soul. The disappointments and anguish that fueled my suburban upbringing were not a window onto a truly twisted victim of his own muses. 

So, now aren't you glad that you missed that episode? And if you happen to be one of those who may have lived through that period with me and have stuck around to see how this all turned out, I hope it was worth it.