More from our anonymous narrator in the wilderness, Steve talks with one of his writing professors, and a drunken conversation outside of a bar.
Click Here to Start at Part One
Tentatively Untitled Project about a Writer Named Steve, part 13.
Howling at Some Mythical Sanctuary
The only trees I could see at this point were so far down the mountain that they looked like little pinecones. If there were any other people down there, I couldn’t see them for sure.
I was alone and wildly awake like some 1960s hippy God. Like what’s his name? Allen fucking Ginsberg. Wrote that poem Howl, fucking Howl.
My wrinkled skin had tightened in the brisk air. Muscles could finally breath again. Boots crunched the thick snow beneath me while more flakes fell endlessly from heavy clouds looming throughout an endless sky. Nothing occupied my mind but the absence of pain. It was a feeling I hadn’t been graced with since younger days, when I was still in love with the sky…
The mountain had quickly become some mythical sanctuary for my spiritual resurrection…
Why Do You Write?
“Do you ever think about why you became a writer, Steve?”
The young man leaned his head to the side. “I don’t know… I can’t stop writing, I guess. Nothing else really makes me feel… alive.”
“That’s a cop-out, kid. Think harder. Why do you write?”
Steve’s eyes glanced quickly into his professor’s stern expression before his head dropped his stare to the tiled floor. “You really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?” The teacher was sitting rigidly on her desk’s corner to appear closer to her student, who slouched in front of her on a metal chair.
Steve brought his head back up. “Catharism,” he replied. “Writing helps me see things in a different light. Helps me understand my pain…”
“Pain?”
The student replied to this with a nod.
The teacher brought her hands together, tightening her serious countenance. “And where does this pain come from?”
Stumbling Drunk at Closing Time
“Let me take you home,” the young woman said. “You’re trashed.”
“I don’t even, uh… know your name,” Steve muttered. “Why the fuck do bars close?”
“My name is Chrissy.”
“You look like a Helen.”
“Come on, Steve. I know you don’t want to stumble home drunk all by yourself…”
“I might,” he teased. “But I don’t really got a place to go that’s worth the trouble of going there…”
“Then let’s go to my place.”
His glazed glance looked across the young lady’s curves, forcing his saggy cheeks to shape an awkward grin.
to be continued…
© USA 2009, 2026
This was the 13th part of a cross-genre short story composed in 2009 at the College of Santa Fe.
Steve Part 13: Why Do You Write?