Weed’s diary, April 25, 2016

Weed’s diary

April 25, 2016,

I am started to get tired of Mike again.   It’s been that way since we first met at Western on orientation.  He’s a good guy, but even for a stoner like me, his work ethic is crap.  Sometimes he’s a fun guy to be with and sometimes you want to spend the day slapping him silly and saying, “Get off your lazy butt.”

He got beat up by Mrs. Dingle’s relatives for plagiarizing most of her life for his book Stone Season.  I don’t know why that book sold, but we live in an age where “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a best-seller and it is total garbage.  If you make money, everyone’s looking for a way to cash in too.  I don’t blame Mrs. Dingle.  I remember her telling us those stories about her ex-husband when we roomed in her house.  When I read Stone Season, I knew exactly where Mike got that story. 

We came back from Japan, where Mike tried to get Brian Enjo to tell him his family life story.  Brian basically threw us out of his house.  Now Mike has the outline of a novel and that’s all he can talk about.  “I have an outline, but I don’t have an ending. The thing that keeps me from writing a novel is the arduous task of actually writing a novel! Also, after writing the outline, I realized I’d have to do a significant amount of research on the BC railways in the 1970s. I’ve started doing that—sort of.”

BC railways in the 1970s.  They say, “Write what you know” and for Mike that’s like he is a senile Canadian woman in her late 60s.  The story is about a middle-aged married woman who rides a train in BC in the 1970s to visit her married ex-boyfriend from art school and how she finds herself after shacking up with him.   It’s like The Bridges of Madison County except in British Columbia.  Michael is thinking about calling it “The Trains of British Columbia”, but I think people would think that’s a history book and not a romance novel. 

Here’s the funny part.  When Mike was doing his last book, he said the exact same thing.  Outline.  No ending.  Then he goes to spend a week with his mother and magically a book appears.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that his mother is the one writing the book or knows someone who is writing the book.   Mike says things about how novels often “write themselves, because characters often tell you things you didn’t know, and the story will sometimes take on a life of its own. The ending is sometimes changed by the muse, which takes over, and the author simply goes along for the ride!”  Well, eh, if someone’s ghosting the book for you, then I guess it would feel that way.  For the rest of us, creativity is hard work.

I love the guy.  He’s great in bed.  But then there’s the rest of the day.  I take my own photographs and run my own studio.     You have to have some kind of personal integrity with your art.  You go and do it.  You don’t say, “All I have to do is sit down and begin to write, but I haven’t yet found the energy, the time, or the courage.”  I have to get away from him when he starts talking like that.

I slept with Carleen last night.  It was the first time in a month.  She keeps hoping we’ll get married someday and have babies, but I am not that kind of guy.  I think she would have married another guy, but she keeps hanging around.   She puts up with it when I sleep over with Mike.  She doesn’t even mind when I sleep with my studio models.  My sister Sophie thinks Carleen is only hanging around me so she can get my money or my father’s money really.  She could be right.  There’s nothing creepier than hanging around and being nice to somebody because you hope they will make you rich someday.

The guy with my drugs is here.  I’m out,

Josef Myron Weeder, Jr.