Jaden

            The lights went down and the energy in the club instantly dwindled to nothing.  I turned on my heels and started walking out the door.  I hesitated for a moment.  What if I'm right, what if he is?  I glanced back to the stage and looked him over - brown hair covering his dark, brooding eyes.  His ripped jeans, his cruddy band t-shirt, everything about him breathed some weird kind of oozing sex drive.  I couldn't peel my eyes off of him.  But I saw the way he interacted with his band mates.  No, he was just another guy, just one of the guys.  And they had their girl groupies already approaching them.  So, I finished my walk out the door and started towards the subway. 

            The street had cleared up a lot in the few minutes that I had hung around.  Thing was, no one wanted to be around here at night - it was the shit part of the city.  Dirty streets, dirty people, and well, me.  I wasn't necessarily dirty, but I'm never going to admit to being the cleanest guy in all of the town either.  But this was also where all the violence happened - and that's what I was thinking about "Geez, I hope no one decides to attack me" when I got dragged into an alleyway by my collar.

            A sharp pain shot through my side, knocking the wind out of me.  "Fucking faggot."  I opened my mouth to scream and felt cold fists cut through my skin, at least it felt that way.  It felt like my head was splitting in two, it felt like my body had given up.  I was caught completely off guard, and I wasn't a fighter anyway.  I was that kid that sat in middle, listened to his parents, and did alright by what "society taught me."  My teachers would call me "goal-oriented."  Hey, no gay bashers, it's totally cool, I'm goal-oriented.  I'm going to give back to society.  Please stop beating me up.  I couldn't even bring my ears to hear what they were yelling, or listen to myself as I sputtered sick copper tasting blood over the pavement.  

-------

I got stuck creatively.  I continued to write some nonsensical things in a document until something more came out.  This is actually a piece about one of my characters from my novel.  The main character, and the first person, is this guy Anthony - who Jaden meets after this unfortunate incident.  But I felt like, maybe, I should get a better look inside my other character's heads, especially since I can't really write anything right now, this is a good exercise.

But a fun except out of my struggling process:

Tapping my fingers to the sounds of Our Lady Peace thudding through my speakers.  Here I am, now where are you?  The brilliant, creative spirit that has been giving me so much motivation, so many words, and so many ideas.  Here is my time, it's on a platter, open to whatever you feel like filling it with.

Waits.

Waits.

Waiting.

Fine.  I tap my fingers some more at you Sir and/or Madam!

-------

And later: 

RAWR.

RAWR RAWR RAWR.  This is the most frustrating, non-creative day I've had in a very long time.  I'm still convincing myself that if I keep writing something good will happen because of it.  Something good usually happens when I keep writing.  I just have to focus, breathe, fill my energy with positive, "You can totally do it!" thoughts.

Different music.

And so the process goes :)