Today, I wrote. Let me be clear. I've had in mind for months this essay I wanted to do concerning whipping. It took shape in my mind slowly. Elements would occur to me while I was in the shower or sitting in the Factory Cafe having a latte. I did a rough outline probably three or four times. With my time off over the holidays, I thought, "Ooh. You can write that essay now." And I got out of bed this morning, and I did. For several solid hours, I sat and I wrote. And wrote and wrote. (Pith and brevity are wholly foreign to me, but that must be obvious to even the most casual reader of my blog.) And it's done. Finis. I emailed it off to ARt, who figures prominently, for vetting, and to Past President, who has written some wonderful things in a similar vein, to see if there are any edits he can suggest.

Can I say I love the experience of writing? When it all comes together like that--ideas that have been percolating for weeks and months all come together, and reading over what you've written has an element of surprise ("Gosh! Did I write that?)--it's just wonderful. I always envied my Ex, who was an artist. His vocation involved periodically sealing himself away in his studio, and just letting his subconscious run rampant in the materials at hand, namely large format photographs of architectural elements, fragments of the human body, vegetation, and the like. When I was but a lad, I wrote poetry. It was sort of the same thing. Riding the bus, a poem would come. And that's truly the apt verb. It would come. The words would come out of nowhere. Each one was like a piece of hard candy, a rootbeer barrel, that you'd roll around on your tongue for a while. But not quite like a root beer barrel, because each one would suggest another. They'd all sort of come out of the abyss, holding hands, each one pulling the next out of the well of the subconscious. (If I were writing seriously now, I'd be pruning these metaphors, believe me. But I'm not.)

And now, I've sent my piece--my child as Anne Hutchinson described it in her poem--out into the world. What I'm hoping for, of course, is recognition and accolade. "Yo. Dude. That's really good." There's a thrill that goes with publishing. And it's not just the a swig of the heady brew of seeing what you've written in print. It's also the knowledge that people somewhere, many of whom you haven't met, are now reading it over. It feels risky and dangerous. Like having sex in a truck stop men's room. You could get hurt. ("I had no idea what you were saying." "I started it, but I didn't finish it. But I will. Promise.") Or you could get caught. As in, like telling your dreams, you could be giving someone--a complete stranger in this case--knowledge about you that you yourself don't share.

But I love to do it. I really do. I think that writing is what I really want to do when I grow up. You know the big reason why I keep this blog? Because of all of these pleasures, to be sure, but beyond that, because it's my secret hope that someone will read this and send me email that begins, "I run a small press publishing company, and I've really liked some of the things I've been reading. I was wondering if you would be interested in..." I bet for you reading this, it must feel like your trick that you've spent such a great night with has revealed himself to be a hustler and is now discussing his fee. But here's the thing. It would be such the great gig to get paid for writing. Did you know Andrew Sullivan just did a pledge drive to support his blog and made just shy of $80,000? My hopes are much more modest.

Now, the sin of the writer is Pride. You never know how good you are, or how bad you are. I've read some really crappy stuff in my day written by people who thought they were on their ways to being Leo Tolstoy. (Not if you can't figure out when to use 'that' and when to use 'which,' Bub.) I like to think I'm aware of my limitations and shortcomings, and that I work to correct them. And, "People Who Know" have said good things about my writing. At my church they have this sort of parish newsletter. Letter from the Rector, The Parish Social Life Committee Plans an Exciting Advent, Meet The New Members of the Choir... that sort of thing. So the editor, who was an actual editor, as in one who keeps a roof over her head and food on the table by editing, once asked me to do an article for the newsletter. I did. She loved it. More assignments followed. I interviewed the new Director of Grounds and Facilities. I did a book review and interview with the author. I started calling myself 'Scoop.' And a decade ago, I met a guy who was an editor of this East Village Anarchist Newsletter called 'The Shadow.' He asked me to do an article on AIDS activism. I did. It was not brief. It took up the entire issue. More articles followed. If you do google search on my name, I show up (ya gotta page down) under 'Shadow Staff, Writers.' I love that. The shadow was a newspaper. I was a writer for that newspaper.

So maybe that will be my new years resolution: become a writer. Or rather, write and get paid for it. Just once.

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Oh. By the way. This amazing man is who I want to be when I grow up: http://www.hard-master.com. Also. And be a writer. Be him, and be a writer, too. Be him writing. But mostly be him. Only he's a writer.

Word. Merry Christmas. Yo.