EJ Mason

Meaning-making machine

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The first story I can remember writing had a knight in it. It had a prince. It had dragon. It had a battle between the knight and the dragon, of course. If you had asked me then what the story was about, I would have mentioned the knight, or maybe the dragon. I would have sold you an adventure. I wouldn’t have mentioned the wedding at the end, because who cares about weddings; they’re just what you do when there are no more dragons in the way. If you were to ask me about this story now, I’d tell you that it was about love. There are enough jokes about this, I know: sometimes the prince is just a prince, and the dragon is just a dragon, but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t. I can’t tell you why I do this, but I can tell you that I don’t know how to stop.

When Ethan asked me to come over, I hadn’t seen him in years. He was the same as he’d always been: handsome and frail like I’d seen in an oil painting; dirty like he’d just crawled out of the earth. We drank Miller Lite, ate nachos, and talked on his futon until midnight. Somewhere in the middle, he offered me a cigarette. I didn’t take it. I sat next to him while he smoked, even though I hated the smell. I still do. Ethan wasn’t one for a lot of eye contact, but he looked right at me when he asked if I wanted to stay the night. I couldn’t. I was in pain, I was tired. He understood, he said, and he drove me home. He hugged me goodbye just long enough that I wondered what else he wanted to say, but I didn’t ask. Two years later, I learned from his ex-girlfriend that he had died. I don’t know if it was that night; I just know he was alone. I can picture him hanging there like I found him myself. There’s always dirt under his nails. Even in my imagiation, I can’t let him find whatever he was digging for.

Every time I see a man with long hair, I think of Ethan. I wonder if I should have stayed the night, and if it would have made a difference. Did he mean it, that other time, when he got drunk and kissed me? Is that what he wanted – to kiss me again, to prove it wasn’t a joke? Maybe he just wanted someone to hold back the dark for a few more hours. I could have done that, if he’d asked me. We could have kept our clothes on, even. Even in my imagination, I can’t bear to touch him. I think I’ll hold him wrong. I’ll snap him right in half. I think it might even be my fault. He kissed me, and something evil got in, and it ate him from the inside.

Johnny was a very different man. Shorter hair, a stronger constitution, but the same habit of texting me when the sun was down. He always had Miller Lites when I saw him. It’s easy, sitting outside the story, to know that the cheap beer is just that. Inside the story, I connected the dots anyway: “My friend used to love this shit,” I said.

Johnny had this way of smiling with his whole face. “Your friend has terrible taste.”

I didn’t bother to correct him. If Ethan were still here, I like to think his taste wouldn’t have improved. Johnny and I stayed up late, too. There were no cigarettes, but there was a futon. There was a Bowie knife, and there was a guitar, and when Johnny played, I checked his fingernails for dirt, just in case. I never found any, in all the times I saw him, but he died anyway.

Logic suggests that these things have nothing to do with each other. One story is not the other. Things happen all of the time that have nothing to do with anything else, but I wonder anyway. If I had told Johnny the truth, even once, would that have kept him off the freeway on some cold January morning? No, but here I am, editorializing the truth so I can live with it.

I haven’t written in a long time. Not really. Ethan said I could be somebody, if I wanted; and Johnny too. There’s another coincidence I get to turn into something it isn’t. Depending on who you ask, I might be the prince, and I might be the dragon, and I might be the knight. If you were to ask me, I’d tell you that I always find a way to write the story so that I’m the dragon, and so that everyone else is the prince who didn’t deserve it. That, I can live with: a story with someone to blame, even if it’s me. Especially if it’s me.

I may not write much, but I think about it all of the time. I think about the world we find ourselves in now, where someone suggests to me that, if it’s so hard to wite, I could ask ChatGPT for help. I can’t imagine anything that would help me less. These stochastic parrots don't know what I know: I know that someone always lives and someone else always dies. I know there’s always a funeral somewhere, and always a wedding somewhere else, and the only thing that separates a comedy from a drama is which one you get invited to. I don’t need a machine to do some math and spit out a happy coincidence of letterforms; I need to know that I can reach out to someone else and they can see me. I need to know someone else is out there, waiting to give me the the things that are too hard to live with. I need to know that, when I’m gone, I’ve left something someone else can use, even if it's just for a little while. I need to know that the meaning is where people make it. Tell me where it hurts. Tell me the adventure is worth it. Tell me what’s left when we’ve thrown the last clump of dirt on the coffin. Tell me how, someday, all the dragons will be gone. Tell me somebody catches the bouquet in the end. Tell me we all find what we're looking for.

I’ve been trying to tell you, I promise. I’m going to keep doing it on my own, when I’m ready. If I can’t do that, then there’s never been a point.