Okay, now is the time for all good men to go into a complete panic. This is deadline hour, no more time for fooling around. Get some fucking words on the page, sucker, or you're dead!

Jesus, no more abstract thinking. Words, words, words, action, camera, lights!

But look, this damn date, it's different than what I thought. Sean and Leslie have been planning to do something special. Something very important to her. She's been getting more and more impatient with Sean and his way of screwing everything up. So now it's really important that he come through for her tonight.

Sean and Virginia went into a bar. She said that she wanted lunch but she just ordered something to drink. She said it was too soon to eat. No, she said they needed to relax a little before thinking about food.

Then they talked. But Sean, as so often, didn't have much to say. Couldn't think of much to say. Virginia asked him a lot of questions. About his classes, about Leslie, about what he wanted out of life. Precisely the questions that always bothered him the most, because he had no good answers for them.

She makes him an offer.

``I have a friend who edits a small literary journal. He's been looking for somebody like you. Somebody young like you, because you have the energy of youth. But most young people are so ignorant, and he needs somebody like you, with a really broad background, somebody who's capable of being interested in all sorts of odd little things and finding things that are out of the way. Somebody without a lot of pre-conceived ideas.''

Okay, this is not Virginia's voice. But keep going, let's get to an ending.

Better a small press publisher than a lit rag.

``He usually shows up here about this time of day. We just need to wait for him. Jack [to the bartender], has Mason been in today?''

But then a little later, she wants to go somewhere else.

``But what about this editor?''

And now she's telling a completely different story. ``Oh, you never know about Mason. He's so unpredictable. If we keep going different places, we'll run into him eventually.''

Okay, let's keep this thing in bounds. I don't have hundreds or even tens of pages.

Okay, good. They're going to go someplace else, but before they can leave Virginia gets into a big argument with some guy. (Or maybe woman? Different dynamics, maybe more interesting.)

Then she starts throwing things, whatever, totally out of control.

Okay, now I'd like to have another male character here, some --- damn it, what's the word? One of these guys who hangs out, a know-it-all, knows everything about everything, but never actually does anything.

This sounds sort of like Virginia herself. But this guy, at first he seems like a real wheeler-dealer.

Okay, he's the one who makes the offer to Sean, supposedly knows the editor.

Maybe. I still kind of like Virginia knowing the editor.

Words! Words! Words! Where are the fucking words?

Go to the very end.

It was now seven o'clock. Leslie would already be wondering where he was. Sean couldn't even leave Virginia alone long enough to make a phone call. In any case, it was too late for that anyway. Leslie would never give him another chance after tonight.

Why the hell didn't he just leave Virginia back at the bar?

Virginia: ``The trouble with you is you only know how to think small. You're worried about your little coed bimbo, when you should be thinking of your chance to become one of the greats. To succeed in life, you've got to think big.''

Sean finally turned to her and slapped her in the face hard and said, ``Shut the fuck up, bitch! Show me where this goddamn apartment we're going to is or I'm going to shove you out in front of the next bus that comes along.''

Jesus, I'm losing it. All I need is to get enough words on the fucking page to have something with a vague ressemblance to a story. Forget whether it's any good or not. This whole idea of planning things out in advance isn't working at all. I'm not getting any fucking words.

``Jesus, I'm losing it. At this point, things are already totally fucked up with my girlfriend. You don't understand what it's like. You don't know how hard it is for me to find girlfriends. Furthermore, we lost all my organic chemistry notes back there, which about screws any chance I ever had of passing that course. So next semester I'll be on probation and good-bye med school. Okay, you don't give a fuck about that. I guess I shouldn't either. You can be a new role model for me. I can just spend the rest of my life hanging out and drinking.''

He's sitting on the steps of the apartment/flat and sobbing. They got to that apartment and nobody's there. He can't go on any further.

``What you don't understand is that I'm intelligent. Really intelligent. I deserve better than this. All I've ever needed is a chance. You don't understand what it's like to be exceptional. You'd think it would be easy, but it's not. Nobody wants exceptional people in the world. Everybody's looking for people who can fit in their little cookie-cutter molds, who can color inside the lines.

``You had no right to do this to me. I thought that you were finally the person who would understand, who could help me find the world I've always been searching for. And you're just a drunk, just a crazy old drunk.''

He's sitting there on the sidewalk, screaming, sobbing, and she's scared. She's blown away. Suddenly their roles have reversed.

She's got her arms around his shoulders. She's talking quietly to him. She's saying, ``You've got to calm down now, somebody will call the police. You can't give up, you know. No matter how bad things get, you can never give up. You have to keep going. Tomorrow will always be different. Now stand up. You're going to be okay. I'll take care of you. We're both going to be just fine. One thing I do know is how to survive.''

And they stagger down the street together.

Okay, that seems like an ending. This thing is starting to have some shape.

Okay, let's look at the scenes. Taxi ride. Get out at a bar. She says they're going to have lunch, but they only drink. Sean's not used to drinking, he's over his head. She says lots of things about sex, about life, about the literary life, things that touch on all his insecurities. She promises him everything he's ever wanted. He's willing to give up everything, forget his classes, forget his girlfriend. It all seems insignificant now, compared to what Virginia is offering. Maybe a third person in this scene, maybe not. Then Virginia gets into a really stupid irrational argument with somebody. She's out of control, in a manic state. He gets her away. Maybe he gets a little beat up in the process, maybe has his money stolen. Now he's had it with her, he needs to try to get back to his own life in time to salvage things. But she's falling apart, begs him, ``Please don't leave me.''

He can't bring himself to just abandon her. She says, ``Just take me to my friends.'' He takes her somewhere, but her friends aren't there. Then he takes her to one more place. Meanwhile, he's completely out of time, out of money. And again, no one is home. Now he loses it completely, starts crying, spilling his guts, and the roles reverse. She starts taking care of him. The End.

That can work. But keep the fucker within bounds! Ten or twelve pages. Fifteen max. Got to write this in four days. Jesus! Four fucking days, this is insanity.

No time to get quotes from Wittgenstein. The library's closed for the weekend and for Monday, since that's a Hawaiian holiday and next week is spring break. No time anyway to scrounge through Wittgenstein looking for good quotes.

Sean: ``You don't know what it's like, always being different, never having anyone you can talk to, always having to pretend to be someone you're not.''

``I know what it's like.''

``No, you think you know, but you're just fucking crazy. Being crazy's easy, being smart is a lot harder.''

``Shhh.... It doesn't matter why you're different, there are always people who will take care of you if you just ask.''

There's still something to be said for telling this in first person, from the perspective of years later. One way or another, have to keep some distance at the end, keep it from degenerating into pure self-pity. It's okay for Sean to get caught up in self-pity, but not okay for the author to.

Besides, I know the tone for first person. The same tone as in my Girls-I-Didn't-Fuck series. The sort of matter-of-fact documentary tone.

In 1974, I was a sophomore at San Francisco State. That was one of the darkest periods of my life. Everything was going out of control for me then and I was getting desperate trying to keep it all together. I hadn't yet figured out that none of it was worth keeping together, because nothing I was trying to do really made any sense for me. I was planning to go into the pre-med program, but I was failing organic chemistry and doing marginally in zoology. And I had no real interest in being a doctor, but I hadn't yet completely realized it. I was trying to take what I thought was a sensible approach to life, and none of it was actually sensible at all.

I had a girlfriend named Leslie whose attitude towards life was in complete conflict with the person I wanted to become. What she wanted was a guy who a surgeon on Park Avenue with a very exclusive clientele and who belonged to all the right country clubs. The only plus about Leslie from my point of view was that she was willing to be my girl friend. But for me at that time, that was a really big plus. There hadn't been many girls in my life who were willing to be involved with me.

And we weren't even having sex. Jesus, 1974, it was the height of the Sexual Revolution, at least according to what one read in places like Newsweek, and I was twenty years old and still a fucking virgin.

Okay, let's try and do this in 400 computer lines max. No, that's too short. Make it 600. Maybe even 800. Jesus, almost 10,000 words.

Now the dynamics with Leslie are different now. It's not that she wants to break up with him. She wants to force him into a mold that he'll never fit in. But she's also threatening to give up on him, because he keeps screwing up. And he's desperate to hang on to her, because she's the only girlfriend he's got or is likely to get in the near future. So he's trying to keep her, but also to keep his integrity.

So what's this date tonight? It's something that's important to her.

And he can still be trying to write a letter to her. But it's a letter trying to explain who he is, why she should stop trying to force him to be something that he's not.