Conversation With a Ghoul. Me.
How will people know you're not dead? Because that could happen any day now.
Will they be disappointed when I’m not?
Maybe.
Just for missing posts? I mean not posting stories when I should—
Regularly.
What a word.
Don't you want people to follow you, as it's said in these times?
Ultimately. I guess so.
Before you’re dead.
Oh? Well, I do write a lot. Everything can be found in my computer and all my notebooks. There's about twenty of them. And everything, that chronology of loss and fun and mistakes... All that can be published. Maybe all together in a book or come out singly in anthologies here and there— Or a movie!
Who is going to do this for you? Find all that work, publish it?
I have friends.
You're a friend! Have you ever done this kind of work for anyone? Because it is work, what you’re asking— This work that anyone should do for themselves before they die.
There's my memoir about Sam and Robert...
Enough about that! You didn't get that work out fast enough, and they didn’t want you to talk about them and their suffering anyway. They needed you, but not for that.
I never said that it's for me.
It is! And you haven’t done it, gotten your work out there. No one else will.
Will? That’s a good idea. I’ll put instructions in my will.
How easily you find no solution and are so proud of it. What about the fact that all this living the stories of your life keeps you from working, from writing those stories? Today. Everyday. So, again, how will anyone know you're not dead?
You mean if I don't post?
Regularly.
Hate that word.
Regular! Regular! Regularly! Regular! Don’t you want followers? Subscribers?
Oh.
Look at you. Cringing. Fumbling for a cigarette or a joint to smoke.
I have life to live. I'm not dead, I'm busy living and that’s why I miss posting sometimes. Leave me alone!
That’s it.
What?
You think you're a rebel without a cause. You think you're an adolescent in Levi’s and a black leather jacket, misunderstood, screaming for love in a world of rules you didn’t make and so you have to break them. “Just because.” What a child you are.
I could die today (if I want). I'm old enough, stuff happens.
Go ahead. Die. The ultimate rebellion to the system. Who lives like this, like it’s the 1950s?
'60s.
Liar. You don’t want to admit your age that’s all. You always shave ten years off your age. And really, it is more like the ‘50s. Rebel Without a Cause.
I need to live.
Write the damn posts! Regularly. Get followers.
But I kind of like the tension of, is she dead this time?
Nobody cares.
But isn’t it like Harold and Maud and Harold’s cute, fake suicides? That’s really a 1960s vibe isn’t it?
No one knows the truth about you. And nobody cares.
You’re sure about that?
You are, but won’t admit it. That’s your problem. Boo the fuck Hoo.