The Enema

Dear Blaire.

Sorry I haven't written you a letter for a while, but as you of all people should know I haven't written much of anything for a very long time. I know that as my literary agent you should be receiving writing from me, but in fact recently it has been me who has been receiving more from you -- a rather ironic turn of events, don't you think? (I'm sure you must have.) Well, Blaire, I'm sorry, and many thanks for not abandoning me. And the good news is: It's over. The block has gone. I'm flowing freely again.

Blaire, I know I can confide in you and I know that you won't repeat any of what I'm going to tell you in those literary circles that you move in. The embarrassing truth is that I tried just about every way I knew to cure this affliction, the details of which I don't want spread around.

I started by trying to get ideas from TV and movies; harmless, you might think, but I didn't limit myself to dramas and European films (as any self-respecting writer would), I stooped to lifting ideas from cartoons, kids shows, and even Hollywood. Please don't repeat any of this.

Next I started to pillage the newspapers for good material: home news, foreign news, even the obituaries for Christ's-sake. (Remember that awful story I sent you about pygmy prostitutes in Burundi? Well, that idea came from a deceased colonel of the Dragoon Guards whose obituary I read one morning in the Telegraph!)

I thought the Internet was a gold-mine, Blaire -- my kids got me online. I wasted hours on end sifting through the rantings and wafflings of every semi-literate halfwit from Brighton to Bombay; and do you know what? I didn't even realize it was all crap. Of course, now I've come to understand that cyberspace is a virtual dumping ground, better left alone.

I went back to the classics. I would read two or three Maupassant tales, sitting at my keyboard, and would hope that one of my own would roll off the end, so to speak. It worked a few times: I remember getting to the end of a few Jack London stories set in the South Seas, and coming out with 'The Pearl Diver's Sister', remember that one? I suppose it's still sitting on your hard disk somewhere.

I have to admit, Blaire, I did drink a bit, mainly to drown my sorrows but always with the excuse that it might give me some inspiration. I don't know whether you've ever tried whisky on an empty stomach in the morning; it does give you some intense ideas -- but hardly literary ones. But at least I didn't try drugs. (I wanted to try some mushrooms after reading a piece in The New Scientist about the influence of hallucinogens on creativity, but luckily it was deepest winter at the time.)

Suicide never crossed my mind, but looking back I don't know why not; I was in such despair and suicide attempts can seem to have some kind of literary consequences. Conrad survived shooting himself in the chest to go on to greatness and Russian Roulette probably didn't harm Graham Greene's creativity any. But how about all those budding geniuses who succeeded?

I thought that research would end this fallow period of mine. You know, immersing yourself in a topic so deeply that some angle is bound to appear, some germ of an idea, something to run with. So what did I do? I took a mistress, in the name of research, of course. She was also married, a bored house wife. I thought that a bit of romance, some tension, heartache, might bring out another Madame Bovary or Romeo and Juliet, but the problem was that she also thought of herself as a bit of a writer. She kept pestering me to check her work and I'm sure she was using me in the same way as I was using her. She wrote trashy romance and travelogue (who am I to judge, eh?). I did, however, get a poem out of it, but I never sent it to you; It was about freedom and I wrote it on a dried leaf and sent it to her when I wanted to end the affair. I never saw it again (or her for that matter).

Plagiarism, now there's a word that I know well. I suppose we're all guilty of this crime at some time or another but really, Blaire, I'm ashamed to say, I was robbing wholesale. One nice little piece I found in an old copy of The Gibraltar Gazette whilst on holiday over there I plagiarized word for word, copied the whole damn thing out exactly. Luckily that travel magazine we sent it to wasn't looking for an article on North-African camel safaris at the time and didn't print the bloody thing.

I know it's fashionable to rewrite bible stories or Greek myths as some kind of modern morality tales, but I couldn't even do that. It always seems so crude, even for my low standards. Who needs another 'David and Goliath' in corporate America? I guess I shouldn't have been so proud.

So, there it is: my confession. And you're probably wondering what was responsible for ending this eighteen-month drought of mine. Here's what happened:

I was on a train in Sicily (remember that piece I did on the hermitic friars of St. Dominic?) where I was suddenly attacked by abdominal pains: knives sticking in under my ribs; for a while I thought I was dying. Luckily, the night before I'd been reading a health piece in a women's magazine (the only thing available in English at the pensionne where I was staying) and realized that I was severely constipated. Of course I knew that already, but I wouldn't have known that the stabbing pains were coming from the blockage if I hadn't read that piece in the women's magazine. I'd had this irritating condition almost since the exact day Doreen left me -- too many microwave meals I suppose. Anyway, I immediately put the two things together -- my writing block and the constipation -- and I saw that if I could rid myself of one the other would follow. I could hardly wait, I was so convinced that it would work. I could see it so clearly: if I could only physically unblock myself, mentally I would flow again. Now, I don't know whether you are familiar with this rather embarrassing bodily condition, but I can assure you that the quickest way to its removal is the enema, hence the title of my letter to you.

The Italian pharmacist didn't understand at all what I was getting at and I almost had to give up and wait until I got back home, but Italians are masters at body language, as I'm sure you know, and after a few simple improvisations he quickly produced the necessary equipment for me.

The results were almost immediate. I filled two notebooks that evening in the local bistro and another two on the flight home. That was at the beginning of last week and since then I've had scores of ideas and written thousands of words.

Don't worry about the enemas, since then I have changed my way of life and diet, so I no longer have to inject things into my rectum. I'm flowing freely at both ends.

I want to close this letter, Blaire, by outlining a few ideas I'm working on at the moment: you might want to start thinking about how we can make some money from them. I'll apologize beforehand if I start gushing too much -- sometimes that seems to be almost as serious a problem as the block itself, I can't seem to contain myself at times.

I have a great theme for an anthology of short stories: Chess. One story for every square on a chess board; it's going to be called At Chess. Each story will revolve around one aspect of chess (an opening or a gambit for example) and will develop the character of a real or imaginary chess player. Isn't that a fantastic idea?

I'm not limiting myself to fiction either. I've made that mistake before. I've heard of a rodent in Tahiti that can self induce minutes-long orgasms, and I want to use this information in a piece on how we humans have inherited courtship and sexual practices from our animal ancestors. It could be fascinating, don't you think so?

I also have an idea for a series of articles for Tattler on food and sex. I will introduce one staple food in each piece (the first one will be spaghetti) and try to describe its erotic connotations and how we have used it in our history of lovemaking. I want to discuss things that can be rediscovered -- readers will certainly be able to try my ideas at home. Each piece should be informative and practicable, I think it's a wonderful idea, don't � sorry, there I go again, gushing.

Of course I have a few ideas for novels, but I want to keep them under wraps for a while. Without giving too much away, one of my novels will be set in darkest Africa of the nineteenth century. The hero is a missionary who discovers he is gay and develops a fetish for phallic totems, as he earnestly tries to spread the gospels among tribal heathens. It should be compelling reading.

I'll be in touch.
Your good friend.

© Paul S. Davey, 2002

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Paul S. Davey is a freelance travel and fiction writer. He started life in the UK but now turns up in the strangest of places around the world -- usually with his notebook handy

novels:
Ghost Money first chapter of a new novel
Fei Azzis and the Water Table of Sa' An (coming soon)

travel:
Tryin' to Get to Mexico
Freedom in Cambodia
Saigon Gary
Pedalling Taipei
Tofu Culture
Urban Betel Adventure: Sex, Drugs, and Spitting
Hawking Carrot-Cake and a new President
Cambodia, Freehand