Creative Forum

I went to a birthday party and drank a shit-ton of bright-red punch. It was getting late and noisy, and the few people who’d wanted me there seemed to have left already. The house I lived in was a mile-and-a-half away, and I was staggering. But I was not presently at my smartest, so I decided to walk myself home.

As I crawled into bed, a feeling of nausea came over me. I sat up and let my head spin for a bit, then brought a trashcan over to the side of my bed. Soon after, I was asleep.

I woke up the next morning to find that I had barfed over the side of the bed opposite the trashcan. The carpet was permanently stained red.

In 2017 I entered a one-act-play contest with a screenplay I didn’t start writing until the day of the deadline. My keyboard took a beating for 11 straight hours, and then it occurred to me to look up how screenplays are supposed to be formatted. What came into existence seconds before I had to click “submit” was a hobbled-together, poor-taste comedy about a bunch of mentally-ill kids with superpowers, which would affectionately come to be known as “A.S.S.” by cast and crew.

The submissions would be reviewed by a private panel, three would be selected for production, and then the community at-large would be invited to view the plays and vote on the winner. On the day that the three finalists were announced, I’d still forgotten to subscribe to the theater mailing list. I woke up to a text from a friend that said, “Congratulations!!!” Congratulations? For what?

As stage two of the contest began, I entered a state of guilt over the sheer quantity of time and exertion that A.S.S.’s production team was dedicating toward victory. My play had about a million scene-changes, which soon became everybody else’s problem, solved only by the chaotic mad-scrambling of actors and stagehands every goddamned night. And my team members weren’t the ones that would receive any prize or recognition if we won – I would be the sole beneficiary of immortalization and, like, a bunch of cash. I often asked if there was anything I could do. “You’ve done more than enough work by writing this script!” the director assured me. Not really, I thought.

I was asked to submit one of those “About the Author” paragraphs for the playbill. As briefly as I could, I recounted a story in which an old friend had asked what I was drinking, found out it was straight whiskey, and told me, “That seems like something a playwright would do.” I concluded the little passage by saying I’d decided to justify my drinking habits by committing to the role. Hundreds of audience members would receive this playbill, yet I only ever hoped to feel shame.

It became clear that our main competition was a play written by a woman I’d never met before. It was a heartrending, healing story about the relationship between a loving but deeply-flawed mother and her now-adult daughter. It was textured by imagery motifs, synchronous symbolism, and concise narrative symmetry. The dialogue was simultaneously polished and sincere. The production was simple and flawless.

A.S.S. won by a landslide of plastic voting-tokens. I blacked out most of the cast party and would apparently vomit in the bathtub, but I do remember approaching the runner-up. “Hey, I just wanted to tell you,” I said, my words already starting to slur, “I think you were robbed of the win.”

She would only said one word to me that night: “Yeah.”

You may have heard of this little town because it has some famous vineyards, or something. I went to college here. And now, at the Travelodge, I was going to reunite with my best friend from those times. It was weird being back; we both agreed. Rachel wanted to show me her newest favorite show, which was fine by me, and frankly a perfect homage to how we’d spent our time here as students. There was not too much we wanted to do in this town anyway, at least not while we couldn’t afford fancy dinners.

“I have an idea,” I said as the sun was going down. “Let’s play a drinking game while we watch.” (For any who don’t know, the format of these games usually goes: “Drink whenever character X says/does Y”). Rachel and I had played this game with many shows before – Parks and Recreation, The X-Files, Stranger Things… As two introverts, it was our most-utilized pastime, even though Rachel wasn’t a very good drinker.

She was enthusiastic about the idea, so we went to Safeway and bought two cheap bottles of wine. I’m told we finished the show that night. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the floor in the bathroom and being woken by a text from Rachel that said, “You ok?”

“Yeah sorry!” I texted back, not sure how long I’d been in there. I stood up, washed my hands, and stepped back into our room.

“Ready for the next episode?” Rachel asked.

“Yep!”

I woke up the next morning. As Rachel and I walked to the diner for some breakfast, she asked me eagerly, “What did you think of the ending?”

“Uhhh…” I realized I should probably confess. “I don’t actually remember.”

“Wait, were you really that drunk?”


“I guess so,” I said, and tried out a laugh.

“I mean, I knew you were taking bigger drinks than me, but I didn’t realize how much!”

I made a laugh again. “Yeah, we basically finished all the wine.”

“I didn’t even notice! Oh my god, I’m so sorry!”

I’ve been contemplating for months why she felt like she was the one that had to apologize.

San Francisco is the worst place in the world. The first day of my tourism, I was overwhelmed by the noise, the population, the towering buildings – even the flocks of fearless pigeons contributed to my stress. I wanted to go back to my home, which consisted of vast expanses of sagebrush nested between snowy mountains.

The friend with whom I was staying lived a few miles away from a nature preserve. Left on my own, I wandered up a hill toward the beckoning trees. There were signs posted on the foot-trails that told people not to panic if they saw a coyote. The idea that I might get to see some wildlife made it easier to breathe. But before I got the chance, nighttime came, the park closed, and it was time to get back to the city.

With my friend not returning until 11p.m., I had several hours left to kill. My sister was attending a university here, so I decided to invite myself to her dorm room with a bottle of bourbon. I could hardly walk once we were done.

It was a bit after 11 when I returned to my friend’s apartment complex, having called a cab. The gate in front of the stairwell was locked, and my friend’s window appeared dark. I checked my phone and saw a text message: “Call me when you get back and I’ll let you in!”

I called her a few times, receiving no answer. I sat down on the sidewalk and leaned against the building, the steeply-angled street spinning in front of me. I knew I couldn’t find any pinecones to throw at the window in this stupid city, which was, apparently, the only idea I was capable of generating to get me out of this predicament.

As I stared across the empty slope, thinking about what these rolling hills – now entombed in concrete – might once have been, I saw movement on the sidewalk opposite me. A coyote padded into sight, then stopped and looked my way.

The buildings loomed above our heads while street-lights cast a yellow pall over the space between us. We stared at each other for a moment, then the coyote trotted out of sight.