This post is in response to Le Tourment Vert’s post “Getting the Creative Juices Flowing …” 

By the time I left the military and started college, I knew that if I took so much as one drink I would lose all interest in all other activities but drinking. Earmarks of a real alcoholic. 

Since I wanted to ensure academic success, I hardly drank during the semester, but stayed dangerously drunk between semesters. Which meant that my first week of classes was spent going through some mild but nerve-racking and wrecking delirium tremens.

This also meant that I did little socializing and I was labeled as “does not work well with others.” When an alcoholic does white knuckle sobriety, he is an unlovely creature. I did date, but they were short-lived relationships based more on “how much sex can I get from this bitch before she gets tired of me” than on love or lust for that matter. But enough background! 

In between semesters, when drinking, heavily, I would get these BIG THOGHTS which were influenced by the courses I took the previous semester. However, for some strange and inexplicable reason, I could not remember what the BIG IDEA was the next day. And I would spend the day nursing an encephalitis-inspired hangover and wondering what it was that I thought was so GREAT.

One night I planned to retain my NEXT BIG IDEA by having my typewriter ready before I went out. This way, when I got home, I could jump right on it and bang out the Great American Novel, script or a revolutionary manifesto that would bring about a New World Order (not just another rock band). So off I went.

 As planned, I met my college chum Carl at a hotel bar near the Miami International Airport. Why would two Mass Communications majors agree to meet in such a place? It was a great place to meet middle-aged, traveling businesswomen with expense accounts who were looking for young college boys. Talk about role reversals. As usual, we struck out with the ladies, but we managed to get drunk and hammer out a barely plausible treatment for a movie. We said our goodbyes. Inspired! I drove home like a bat back to hell.

I went into my room and turned on the Sears electric typewriter with correction tape. I sat down and started banging away. I tell you this screenplay was going to be B-I-G big! When this script hit that silver screen (and there was not doubt in my mind that it wouldn’t), all of Hollywood would kneel in my presence. I wrote for three hours. It was 5 a.m. Satisfied with my work, I turned off the typewriter and crawled into bed.

 I came to around noon. Note: alcoholics don’t “go to sleep” and “wake up”; they “pass out” and “come to.” There is a difference. Enough lecturing!

I went to the bathroom, showered, dried-off, got dressed, and ate breakfast: coffee black with lots of sugar, toast and butter, and two semi-stale donuts (Were you expecting? IHOP. I was a college student going to school on the G.I. Bill.) All this time I had that nagging feeling that I need to attend to something or that I was forgetting something.

Then it hit me! The script! I ran back into my room. I searched high; I searched low, and all points in between. I could not find the pages. I checked the wastebasket, my desk. My drawers. I even checked my laundry sack, but no papers. Where were they?

In my mind, I replayed the previous night. I picked it up from when I left the hotel bar. I drove home. Feeling horny, I stopped in a little dive bar that was located in the tiny City of Sweetwater (Think: Tombstone, Arizona circa 1881 only with Cocaine Cowboys, 351 horse powered Mustangs, and hookers.)  Striking out again, I went home. I got home and started to type. That was it. I started to type.

I started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. You know the kind. The kind you get when you have that recurring dream in which on the day of an important meeting you leave your house without your pants on. Only this time it isn’t a dream. But I digress.  

Then it all came back to me. I had run out of typing paper just as I had finished the semester. I remember because I typed out my last term paper very carefully making sure I made few typing errors because I did not want to buy more paper. I mean had more important things to do with my money. But I do remember typing. What happened?

The best I could make out was that I did type, but it was on the naked platen. Somehow, in my alcoholic stupor I did not notice that I had no paper in the typewriter.

In the coming years I made two more attempts, but I made sure I had a full block of paper.

In the second attempt, I remember coming to on the floor and having a bigger than usual hangover, some strange markings on my face and a whirring sound in my right ear. I looked up at the typewriter; the paper was in it, but there was only one-half typewritten sheet in the platen. I looked around; I could not find any more typed pages. The best that I could make out was that I passed out and for a while I must have rested my head on the typewriter’s keys. That explained the whirring sound and strange markings.

On the third attempt, I hit the mother lode! I had actually written on paper. I slept it off, and when I came to, I looked for my masterpiece. It was right next to my typewriter. I picked up the manuscript and sat cross-legged on my bed. I read it. It made no sense. Not because there were a bunch of typos (there were) or grammatical errors (them too), but because it made no sense. There was no narrative thread. No continuity. Nothing! ¡Nada! Zilch! Nil! Nademonai!

Many years later in an A.A meeting, I heard that a well-known writer (I am tempted to say James Joyce) whose fondness for drink was well known would write first, drink later.

I never did write an award-winning screenplay, or the Great American Novel, but I did get sober, and I did realize that inspiration can come from anything, but rarely is it found in the bottle. More importantly, I discovered that inspiration come from within.

But come to think of it, maybe absinthe did inspire me. It inspired me to write this post without alcohol. Thank you Le Tourment Vert.