Writer's Soundtrack

The world is a tricky place.

This isn't news: everyone on the planet knows that the world is not perfect. In fact, for some, it has proven to be a very difficult endeavor to simply continue the involuntary repetition of inhale-exhale.

Michael Way knew this well. He knew how hard it was to find the will to live when you're thirteen with no knowledge of the wonders of deodorant, and the girl you've been pining after for three whole hours tells you that you reek like something crawled in between your armpits and died there. He knew what it was like to want to sink into the floorboards at sixteen when his mother caught him with his hand in his pants and explicit noises eliciting from the speakers on his desktop.

Michael Way knew that life was not perfect, and he made it a point to never let himself forget it.

If one were to ask his mother what his negative perspective on the world left him with, she would say "angst-y pipe dreams", but he would prefer to say that it just made him a realist and a tidbit more poetic. A little more poetic blood running through his veins because he had a broadened understanding of how the world is, and will forever be: a black hole of routine void of any true love or happiness.

He was just a little bit more poetic, and a whole lot more honest than the general populace, but his mother did not see it that way. As a matter of fact, she saw it in a completely opposing light; a light that emphasized the fact that Mikey was a self-conflicted ball of artificial angst and sadness who had yet to give her any grandchildren (even though he was only twenty-one and had many years left before his reproductive-prime would meet its end) or even bring a girl home (which was entirely false as he had paid Sydney Thompson fifteen dollars in his junior year to come to his home and pretend to be his long-time girlfriend).

It also illuminated the fact that Mikey spent too much time cooped up in his room and typing away on his computer, and not enough time going out and getting a job to pay rent. The way his mother saw it, Mikey was an anti-social, unemployed adult who needed tough love and a taste of the real world in order to get on his feet and stumble onto the right path.

Which is exactly why three weeks ago to date Donna Way kicked her only child out of the house and onto the streets with only a "Give up on that silly dream of yours, Mikey, and find a real job" to keep him warm at night. She had also given Mikey the keys to an apartment in the neighboring city with first and last months rent prepaid, two thousand dollars, and a newspaper with all employment ads highlighted in bright yellow, but the bitterness was still lying fresh in Mikey's heart so he chose to ignore the other minor details.

Yes, okay, he may have had extravagant ambitions about best sellers with his name stamped across the front cover, and tattooed along the spine with his words littering every crisp page, but it wasn't as ludicrous as his mother so frequently made it out to be.

He had already gone to numerous publishing companies with a draft of his manuscripts and ideas for his first novel. One publisher was already eagerly awaiting the finalization of his work in progress novel. So, metaphorically, his mother could kiss his ass.

The plot for Mikey's book was simple: the main character, Rodney Davis, would lead a simple life filled with non-miraculous people and activities until he meets the second character, Sarah Woods. She would be the same as every other love interest in every movie and book- quirky, delicate, and above all, hopelessly and completely in love. She would be a complete cliché and Rodney would be unnervingly simplistic, and that's why it would come as a complete shock to all readers when Sarah abandons him to pursue her months long affair with the local pasta chef.

Mikey thought it was genius; to have two people who were undeniably destined for a happy ending, and then they just don't get it. Cold turkey: good girl gone and simple man who has done absolutely nothing wrong is left in tatters.

It was a good enough plot that people would eat up because that's what people do: they love the idea of love. So when his ending rears its ugly head it would throw everyone for a curve and henceforth reveal the cruelty that this world so often throws in the face of people who don't deserve it, and make him a best selling author. The latter was the main hope, but he supposed that if he could open people's eyes with his work then that would be a perk too.

Nathan Jones seemed to think much the same when he heard the summary of what Mikey planned to do with his book and promptly responded that he was deeply interested and would be looking forward to working with him.

As expected, Mikey had been ecstatic that he was finally getting some sort of recognition for the only talent he possessed aside from dark humor and using sarcasm when sarcasm should not be used. Now, all he had to do was write the story. He figured it wouldn't be a challenge since he had all the characters and virtually the framework for the entire plot planned out, and yet he found himself completely and utterly at a standstill when he attempted to actually sit down and write the book.

It wasn't that he was too illiterate to write, but more he couldn't find the inspiration to do so. He was knee deep in writers block that kept him from actually getting somewhere in his writing. Mikey knew what Point A was and he knew all about Point B, but the in between was simply unfathomable and impossible to carve out.

It had been like this for what felt like forever now. Exactly one week before his mother respectfully kicked his ass to the curb, he fell into the black abyss of writers block. The frustrating state of knowing-where-the-story-goes-and-ends but not how-to-get-going was sucking the oxygen from his lungs and blood from his veins. He needed this book to kick off on a good note, in a way that was aesthetically pleasing to his future readers so that there would be no chance of someone discarding the novel; no chance that his publisher would trash it.

It had been four weeks since he stumbled into the dark and dreary recesses of this intolerable rut, and he couldn't seem to climb out of it. Writers block, for the twenty one year old boy, was a Chinese finger trap: the harder he pulled and tried to escape it, the stronger it became.

Now, sat at a corner table in the local coffee shop, Mikey raked his long fingers roughly through the dusty strands that sat atop his head; inconsolable and infuriated that the clichéd writing environment was providing no inspiration at all as he watched the little black bar on his word document flash on the screen in a way that almost mocked him.

Lifting the cup of the now cold coffee to his lips and taking a fragile sip, he let a frustrated groan slip passed his chapped lips.

"Hey, I don't mean to shit on your tortured artist moment, but we're closing."

Mikey's head whipped to the side faster than he believed it ever had before at the sound of the feminine voice breaking through his inner turmoil. Green eyes found themselves captivated by the red apron tied loosely around a bulky black t-shirt standing approximately two feet away from him. Two feet which therefore meant that this stranger was infiltrating his personal bubble.

The lanky boy's eyes slowly trailed up the employee's body ignoring the curves that stood prominent against the two visible layers of cotton fabric until they landed on the big, brown eyes staring back at him. Her gaze was unwavering and blatantly irate; most likely due to the fact that the girl's shift was nearing its end and the last thing she wanted to deal with in that moment would probably be an equally frustrated young man who had been seated in the same place for three hours doing nothing but sit with his eyes fixated on the laptop in front of him, only moving every so often to furrow his eyebrows and scowl.

As the seconds ticked by and the hostile tension was held out between the two, Mikey eventually forced himself to look away from her penetrating glare, his eyes locking in on the closest relevant item.

A name tag was pinned on the left side of her chest, hanging perfectly straight along the wrinkled black fabric.

Presley Keegan, it read, How Can I Help You Today?

If Mikey had known the relevance that the stupid name tag held, or the fact that Presley Keegan would be a name that he would never be able to forget, he may have simply walked out of the café without ever looking back. But the world is a tricky place and it would soon teach him that walking away from a person like Presley Keegan was just not possible.

Notes