My friend Jason
writes on napkins and flyers for events I doubt he attended. I have ripped sheets of
brown paper towels at the local bars and
done my share of this kind of writing. A thought comes up while we're out in public,
waiting for the bus or to clock in for another day of being ordered around. It's nice to know people are making use of all that excess paper that floats around in our neighborhood, even if the act is seldom all that useful to the writer.
It's therapy, at the very least, and that's enough.
Because I find Jason to be a more intricate person to describe, I am not sure how to speak of him, if at all. My most concrete interactions with him have been when he and I and usually his roommate Reed convene in their patio furniture for wee hour weekend debates. Often, most of the gang from my church will go to Denny's and then to a midnight movie. After we get home, most of the married couples are ready for bed while the single people often look for something else to do.
So I sometimes end up at their patio and we all get eaten up by mosquitoes because there's no smoking in their house. We rock in our chairs and talk about just about everything. All three of us write in some fashion, and Jason writes a lot of poetry. We talk about social issues and Biblical contexts and sometimes even movies, books, and music. He's definitely someone to have around, if only to get you through the dark, funny shades of life as we live it, single twenty-somethings surrounded (it would seem) on all four sides by (semi) happily married couples. Of course, the fact that I am female causes me to think that it's easier to voice my frustrations than the guys. And I'm sure I'm more controlled by it than them. But here, within our friendship, we meet on common ground and strive to sustain a life in the singular.
Transcribing napkins to diskettes is a hard thing to do, so I tried my best to stay true to the format. Since his pieces are not titled, I numbered them.
Here goes…..
one
two
three