“Writer’s Block” | Trinity V. Fritz Lawrence | Fiction

Writer’s Block

Trinity Fritz Lawrence

Little slivers of brown hair fall onto the towel in my sink. Some miss the towel and drop onto the speckled ceramic sides of the bowl, and later they will clog up the drain—not all at once. Every time I trim my bangs, more hairs fall down into the drain and get stuck, but water can go around them. The trouble arises after months of bang-trimming leads to a buildup of bang-bits and the crud that gets stuck in between trimmings: toothpaste, coconut oil, morsels of shit, probably.

The splinters of hair that miss the sink fall into my eyes, my bra, the nose of the dog. They hit the flame of a candle, and the smell rushes into my nostrils. Air is forgettable unless it carries something: fire, musk, or hot air balloons. As I trim, my eyelids, brows, and a greasy strip of forehead are revealed in patches.

I have been trying to write a manifesto, you see. It isn’t going very well.

Yesterday, I left my house to get a latte. It had been five days shut up in the house, and no manifesto had been written. I’d changed the settings on my laptop so that the screensaver would only come up after an hour of sitting, staring at a blank Word document. It became a way to keep time. 2:03 p.m.—pictures of Iris Apfel floated around in a space which had become my whole reality. 3:03 p.m.—wrinkled woman in Large Glasses and orange lipstick. 4:03 p.m.—two black circles, a wavering blob of orange—I had to get out of the house.

I drove to Starbucks without pants on. I parked the car across the parking lot by the Goodwill to take advantage of my sacred outing by nature of a stroll through an asphalt and chewed-gum-spot field. I realized I didn’t have pants on about seven parking spots away from my car. A dog barked at me from inside a parked Cadillac, which didn’t directly tip me off, but in looking towards the bark, I saw ghostly twin towers in the custom-chrome finish of the car, and lo and behold—those were my thighs.

So, I went back to my car, got in, and went through the drive-through.

“Thank you for stopping at Starbucks, what can we get started for you today?” The shrill voice came through the impersonal little holes beside the menu.

“Uh,” I had not prepared for this. “Iced latte with, uh, soy milk? Tall.” Soy milk because I wasn’t deserving of the real stuff until I’d finished this manifesto. Iced because that’s what was in the laminated picture beside the speaker.

“One tall, soy milk latte on ice! Anything else I can get for you today?” the voice chattered back.

“No,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“We’ll have it right up at the window for you. Have a fabulous day!”

I drank two-fifths of the latte on the silent ride home—silent for fear that music would disrupt the manifesto percolating somewhere in the rear of my mind. The rest of the latte was set on my bookshelf and mostly forgotten in front of the six volumes of A La Recherche De Temps Perdu, which I pretend to have read.

I finish trimming my bangs, flip the edges of the towel into the middle to trap the clippings, rinse down the sink, and fluff my hair. I go back to my blank Word document, and the bang-bits stuck in my bra itch. This could be a good thing, like a hair shirt that monks used to wear in penance. Maybe it will inspire my manifesto. It doesn’t, and after about fifteen minutes of this, I decide that a shower is what will inspire the most manifesto-ing.

It doesn’t. I grab a glass of water on the way out of the bathroom, head back towards the standing desk with the loathsome blank screen, and the dog runs out of the bathroom with a trail of toilet paper following after her. After culling this gleeful mischief, I stand in front of the Word document. Soon, I realize I am thirsty and that I set the water down in the other room to chase the dog down. This is no time for luxury—I have a manifesto to write. I do not go and get the glass. The Starbucks cup is still three-fifths full, in a puddle of condensation, seeping into the spines of several volumes of Proust. I drink the subpar, watered-down remnants of a fake latte.

The screensaver turns on, and I change the settings again. Five hours before the floating crone invades my field of vision. Five hours later, she crosses my blank screen again. I let her go this time, watch the images fade in and out of existence in hopes that this distraction might inspire some manifesto—a manifesto which may have been washed away with the water of the shower.

I will not risk showering again. The images of Iris wipe away all thoughts of manifesto, and thoughts of silk scarves and Skee-ball cross my mind. I dash out a little poem on the legal pad beside my laptop— cross it out just as quickly. What horror