May 28, 2021

Blocked

I realized I had run out of stories on the same day I realized I had run out of maple syrup.

It was well after midnight and I was watching a pretty bad movie with a really good cast, wondering how these actors agreed to make such a terrible movie, when there was a breakfast scene which took place in one of those old time diners. One of the characters ordered french toast and all of a sudden I had a hankering for french toast too. I usually fight back those hankerings because french toast reminded me of my ex-girlfriend Claire who had bought me some vanilla extract especially for french toast- she said it was the secret ingredient- and it had kinda been our thing. Anyway, the combination of the craving and the now accompanying hunger pangs trumped the mild pain of remorse so I paused the movie, because even though it was bad I still wanted to know how it would turn out, and sallied forth to the kitchen.

I make a pretty mean french toast and the secret, despite what Claire might say, is not the vanilla extract at all but the temperature of the pan and the number of flips, which ensure a golden brown finish without a hint of burning. Also, I am partial to bread sliced from a friday night challah and, since it was Saturday, the stars looked very much aligned. At least they were until, upon peering into my fridge, I realized I had run out of syrup. I didn’t spend a lot of time searching for the syrup because there was really only one place it could be and I now had a not so vague memory of rinsing the empty bottle, as my father had taught me, before depositing it into the blue recycling bin. I had no intention of eating the french toast without the syrup because the syrup was the whole thing and I didn’t consider an alternative, like honey or powdered sugar, because I didn’t own either and even if I had, it would have been a poor substitute. No, what I did instead is what I usually do at 1:20am on a Saturday night when I found myself wanting for a kitchen ingredient or a fifth of vodka.

I called Lewberg.

Lewberg answered on the first ring and I said.

“Can I borrow some maple syrup”

Lewberg said “Vermont or New Hampshire?” Which really told you all you really need to know about Lewberg.

I said Vermont and told him I would be there in five minutes.

And so I had the french toast and watched the end of the movie. The writing was so bad that I was actually inspired because I knew I could do better in my sleep and so I decided to write a quick story, just to flex my literary muscles, before going to bed.

That’s when I realized I had run out of stories.

Like the maple syrup, I knew exactly where I kept my stories but had not gone looking for them and hence had no way of knowing that, after having written the last, I had run out. It’s the difference between running out of gas right in the middle of a bbq and running out at the exact same time you turn off the bbq. I had probably been walking around with no stories for about two months. It was a damn good thing I found out on my own alone at my house and not in the middle of some cocktail party.

I go to bed and fall asleep. But I do not dream. Or if I do, I don’t remember a thing. There is no story.

In the morning I call my friend Allie.

“I have run out of stories,” I say.

And she says “makes sense. You have written three books in a year. You deserve a break. You have been prolific.”

A lot of people have told me how prolific I have been. I say that two books in a year is prolific. Three books is a bit like a $9.99 all you can eat sushi restaurant. How good can it possibly be?

That gets a laugh.

But it doesn’t get a lot of rebuttals.

“Yes,” I reply “I deserve a break. I am taking a break. But, after my break I want to think I have more stories. But I don’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I tried to write one last night after having french toast.”

“Vanilla extract?” She joked.

“Yeah. I had nothing.”

“You are being ridiculous,” she says “you have plenty of stories.”

“Yeah,” I replied “You’re probably right.”

But she wasn’t right.

She was wrong.

I had run out of stories.

I call my friend Evie. She is a poet. She will understand about running out of stories.

“I am blocked,” I say.

“You should eat more kale,” she replies with a laugh.

“No seriously,” I say “I’ve got nothing. I have run out of stories.”

“You wrote three books in a year. Over 100 stories. I am still working on a story from two years ago. You should just just enjoy the break.”

“Yeah, that’s what Allie said.”

“Great minds,” she replies.

“I had a good run,” I say.

“You are still on a good run. The stories are there. You just need to mine them. It will come.”

“Yeah,” I say “maybe.” Although I wasn’t convinced.

The phone went quiet for a few seconds and then Evie said.

“There might be a way to jump start it,” she finally said.

“Really?”

“Yes. But you’re not going to like it.”

Evie had a lot of writer friends. She probably had tons of writing exercises and drills that had worked for her in the past. I could probably work up the energy to try a writing exercise.

“I’m desperate here Evie. I'm willing to try anything.”

“You are really not going to like it,” she said “but I think it will really open the proverbial floodgates.” Evie was making fun of me by saying proverbial.

“Ok,” I replied “Bring it on. What’s the exercise?”

“It’s not an exercise,” she said.

“Then what?”

“I think,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect “you should go on a blind date.”

For the longest time, if I didn’t want to do something, I would say ‘I would rather have a warm water enema’. It was a funny bit and a funny sounding combination of words and I used it long before I knew exactly what a warm water enema was and long after knowing what it was and being told by more than one person that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was. I eventually switched to root canal because it was pretty widely understood and even though advances in modern dentistry meant that it had become neither painful nor, to be truthful, even that uncomfortable, I didn’t ever get any pushback. Had I been completely honest, my go to should have been ‘I’d rather go on a blind date’ because even though there had been advances in modern technology which greatly reduced or eliminated the visibility element, there had still been no new innovation which, especially since I did not drink, could eliminate the pain.

But however painful, I could not argue with the fact that they had, over the years, yielded a plethora of stories. In fact, the worse the date, the better the story. I would, I decided, bite the bullet in order to get over my slump.

Which would have been all well and good were it not for the fact that I had, over the last twenty years, burned more bridges than the Viet Cong.

“No,” said my friend  Elise when I told her I was back on the market. “No chance.”

“Absolutely not!” said my friend Becky.

Turns out that over the years, both Elise and Becky tried to fix me up with some of their friends. It is very possible that each time, upon being shown a photo, I might have said something to the effect that I would rather have a warm water enema.

Karma, I have been told more than once, is a proverbial bitch.

There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less than go on a blind date but it turned out it was still not less than how much women wanted to go on a blind date with me.

And so I did what I always did when finding myself in need of advice, redemption, or a fifth of vodka.

I called Lewberg.

Lewberg answered on the first ring.

“I need to go on a bad date,” I said.

“Let me ask my ex-wife what night she is free,” he replied.

“Lewberg,” I said.

“Come over and walk my dog,” he replied. “I might have something.”

Lewberg was walking his dog and I was walking Lewberg. He had the leash in one hand and a plastic red cup of Ketel and cran in the other. For some reason, I could never remember the name of Lewberg’s dog. I knew it was either Bailey, Brady, or Brandy but all three sounded completely wrong or completely right. I couldn’t figure out which. I wasn’t going to ask Lewberg because he loved that dog and was very sensitive about it and would take it as a personal affront if I admitted that I couldn’t remember the name. So what I was going to do is wait for some other dog walker to come up the street and do the whole baby talk “does little Bailey, Brady, Brandy want to play with Rover?” Or whatever name that dog might have although it wouldn’t be Rover because, in all my life, I had actually never met someone with a dog named Rover. Anyway, that’s what happened. A woman with a black lab came to a full stop and the dogs did that thing that dogs do and Lewberg and the woman did that thing which dog owners do. The woman called Lewberg’s dog Brandy, which didn’t really sound quite right and it turns out her dog was called Caprice- which sounded about right. I stood off to the side, not wanting to be drawn into a conversation about dogs or neighbours or the garbage pick up situation. Also, I figured Lewberg didn’t know the woman’s name, maybe he only knew her as Caprice’s owner, so I tried to make myself invisible. I guess I was pretty good at it because neither paid me no never mind so I was able to stand there, off to the side, and quietly observe as Lewberg went on about some story about recycling boxes.

She was wearing a yellow sundress which was rather, I think the right word is fetching, looking very much like what Ellie Mae Clampett might look like at 55. It wasn’t sundress weather but after five months of winter, 14 degrees and sunny feels like a beach day and most of the denizens, save for me who was still wrapped in three winter layers, were strutting about in mid July outfits.

Both the dogs and owners stopped sniffing each other and we continued along our way in silence. I knew Lewberg would have something to say but I also knew that it was best to let it come out organically. So we just walked for a few blocks. Lewberg was pretty deep in thought because we walked right by his house. When he finally spoke it was only to utter one word.

“Divorcee,” he said.

Now Lewberg and I were best friends. We were childhood friends. If I asked him to write me a cheque he would do so for any amount without batting an eye. He was also, by far, the best wing man anyone could ever hope for, so I knew that if there were a single middle aged Ellie Mae Clampett doppelganger in our midst, that there was probably a very good reason why Lewberg hadn’t set me up with her. Which meant there might be a story in it.

We had walked to Bathurst before Lewberg revealed the reason.

“That woman,” he finally said “will only date a Pfizer guy.”

I was, like Lewberg, an Astra Zeneca guy.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fantastic,” I say.

“You want her number?”

“Nah. I’m good. I think I figured it out.”

“Ok Pappy,” he says.

I go home and write the story. I send it to Evie. When I’m done, I make myself another batch of french toast. I use up the last of the vanilla extract. It will give me an excuse to call Claire. Maybe get another story out of it.

The end.