Page 40 of Rhymes with Metaphor
“All right, all right,” said Martin.
“I’d prefer something funny,” said Juliet.“Joel would too, I think.”
At the cinema, Reg introduced Joel and Juliet to sugared popcorn.The movie was as mindless as predicted, and twenty minutes in, probably overcome by the excitement of the day, the air-conditioned cinema, and the plush upholstered seats, Joel fell asleep on Reg’s shoulder, which was incredibly distracting.Unfortunately, the movie was so inane that Reg couldn’t focus on anything but Joel.As he sat there enduring Joel’s weight on him, he was suddenly struck with an inspiration for a comic poem, with the predicament of having nothing to write it on and nothing to write it with, since Juliet had insisted they leave their phones at home.His cardboard popcorn container was only half empty, so Reg carefully dumped the contents into Martin’s, causing a mild overflow.Martin didn’t notice, as he and Juliet were currently occupied, which precluded Reg asking for a pen.Joel was still sleeping, and Reg could see the top of a pen peering out of Joel’s breast pocket.He teased it out and, moving carefully so as not to disturb Joel, tore a slit along the popcorn tub, opened it out flat on his leg, and jotted the words as they came.They never came when he was sitting at his desk in his brightly lit office, holding his own pen with a clean hand and a non-greasy sheet of paper in front of him, waiting for them to come.Oh no.Inspiration only happened when he had nothing to write on but a piece of sugared cardboard.
Later, they emerged from the cinema, Joel blinking and yawning, Reg holding a deconstructed popcorn box and trying to decipher what he’d written in the dark.
“What did you think of the movie?”said Juliet.
“The what?”said Reg.
“There’s no point in trying to have a coherent conversation with a poet,” said Martin to Juliet.“I’ve wasted many a day trying.”
Chapter 11: Rehoming New Bug
Acouple of days later, Martin took Juliet to his uncle’s cottage in Northumberland.Much to Martin’s frustration, Juliet insisted on bringing Joel with them.Reg couldn’t help feeling smug at the put-upon expression on Martin’s face as they backed out of the driveway in a rented car, Joel in the back, head leaning against the window.
“Bye!”said Reg, waving.“Have a nice time.”
The car pulled out of sight around the bend in the road.Reg rubbed his hands together.Alone at last!
Reg had made extensive plans involving lots of drinking, twiddling with some poetry, and reconnecting with an old school friend who didn’t get on with Martin.
What happened in practice was he found himself blocked again, and his friend was out of town.There was still alcohol, of course.(There was always alcohol.) But it wasn’t doing for Reg what it usually did, namely, leaving him relaxed and contented.On the second evening after Martin & Co.had departed, Reg downed four pints of lager and spent a fruitless session at his desk attempting to write something.He ended up botching it so badly that he took Martin’s advice and wrote a poem consisting entirely of the wordshitin different thesaurical iterations and nonstandard spellings.
Frustrated, he left his attic bedroom and went downstairs to the repurposed office where Joel had been sleeping, where there was a poetry anthology that sometimes helped inspire him.He couldn’t remember the title, but the paper cover used to be red and had faded to orange over years of exposure to sunlight.He was poring over the bookcase looking for it when his gaze happened to fall on the bed, and he remembered covering it with the shirts he’d bought for Joel.He remembered the red-gold light in Joel’s eyes when he wore the mulberry shirt, and Reg had an epiphany.This recent lifting of his writer’s block?Hadn’t been a fluke.In retrospect, he should have made the connection sooner.Every time he’d managed to produce a poem since the spring had been a direct result of an interaction with Joel.It had happened too often to be coincidental.That this latest block had occurred immediately after Joel had left with Martin could also not be a coincidence.
Which meant that that nerdy, consumptive little shit was his muse.
The revelation flummoxed him.He spent the rest of the evening trying to come to terms with it.Admittedly, he needed to sleep off the effects of the lager first, so his immediate response to this was to go to bed.When sleep proved unattainable, he texted Flip:
How are you?
And got no response.
When he woke the next morning (with still no response from Flip), the realization that he needed someone caused Reg to unravel slightly, and he had a small existential crisis.For the past six years, he’d been labouring under the relatively harmless assumption that while human companionship could be pleasant, it wasn’t something he required.Now, he knew that he needed companionship—specifically, one particular person’s companionship.
