Scene 6: "Cut"

The next morning, he wakes up hungover, and for the first couple hours of the day, he sits half naked in his bedroom chair with a bottle of water glued to his lips. He gazes out the window at the San Francisco hills and contemplates his summer experience, replaying all the torturous days at work, and all the wasted nights at the bars. But most of all, he thinks about the deep abyss of loneliness that his summer had become – the hours spent trapped inside his own head, alone, with no vehicle for escape but his own imagination. Somewhere within this recollection, however, an unexpected stroke of inspiration washes over him. He suddenly feels that he has something to work with – a story to tell. He rips out his laptop and begins to outline a collection of his summer experiences, including everything from sitting at work to walking around the city to spending time trapped in his bedroom. To him, they all speak to something innately human. He isn’t exactly sure what – perhaps loneliness, or sadness, or fear, or perhaps just the state of being young and lost. Regardless, they feel raw and artistic as he churns them onto the page, and this is enough to keep him going for the time being. He throws on a backwards hat and a single-striped t-shirt before sitting back down to resume his work – an outfit that, to him, matches the essence of his creative undertaking. A few hours later, the document is ten pages long, and it contains ideas for over a dozen different scenes. And for the first time in a while, he is satisfied with himself. Unable to bottle his excitement, he calls up his brother, hoping that he can serve as a vessel for his exhilaration and a source of creative validation.

“Dude I think I have an idea for my next writing piece.”

“OK what is it?”

He voices all the trials and tribulations of his summer, and explains that he has spent all afternoon writing down different scenes that illustrate these struggles. He expresses that these scenes contain an important message or story – one that speaks to the lonely, confusing, and at times agonizing nature of the human condition – and certainly one that is worthy of an audience and deserves to be heard. The piece, he asserts, would be a collection of disjointed scenes from his summer in San Francisco, and it would be deeply raw, and sad, and angsty, and lonely. But somehow, it would also be relatable. People would see parts of themselves in it, and this, he believes, would serve as both a comfort and a joy.

He paces back and forth between the close confines of his bedroom as he spits all of his creative juice into the phone. At the end of his pitch, he is eager to receive approval, but there are a few unsettling seconds of silence that follow his rant.

“That is the most narcissistic idea I’ve ever heard in my life. Why would anyone want to read that?”

“Because it’s relatable and…interesting?” he grumbles in defense.

“That’s not interesting at all. That’s just self-loathing bullshit. That’s just you trying to dramatize your life and make a character out of yourself, thinking that what you’ve experienced is so uniquely insightful and deep that other people would actually give a shit. But I mean, who cares dude…it’s not a movie.”

“Yeah”

His brother’s words penetrate right through his initial wall of frustration, and immediately temper his proclivity towards defensiveness. Despite a frantic effort to dismiss this reaction as knee-jerk and impulsive, he is tormented by the visceral, gut-level feeling that his brother might be right. He begrudgingly scrolls to the top of the 10-page document, and starts reading from the top. He combs through all the scenes that he had just devised and all the stories that he had just created, clinging, for a while, to their perceived seriousness. As he continues reading, however, the weight of his narrative turns into nothing more than comical masturbation. But perhaps that’s normal at this age. You do it too, right?

* * *

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