Where It Comes From

I'm not sure about anyone else, but when I'm writing different characters, sometimes the easiest place to find them is real life. One of my lesser talents is a modest interest in social anthropology - people watching, in other words.

I had a meeting with some people in SF on Thursday - taking the train back home on BART Thursday night, I sat opposite a guy coming home from work. The more I watched him, the more curious and intrigued I became.

Meet Joe Failure
"I haven't seen that pattern since The Cosby Show left basic cable", someone said at lunch. He wanted to reply with something smart but the right thing to say seemed to be beyond him. By the time he'd thought of something, it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. It was time to go home - time to roll back to safer harbors.

A slate-gray cableknit sweater with an electric blue pattern and a short-sleeve shirt that had been washed about fifty times too many. He morosely stared out into the darkening western sky - the rattling of the train kept him from dragging out his cell phone and calling a girlfriend. He tried to sleep several times and swore softly each time a jolt awakened him.

It felt sometimes like he was wading through a lake of syrup - each step seemed to take more effort than what it should have. Waking up in the morning and going to the gym or staying out to meet new people...it just seemed like a hassle after a while. After that last blind date, after the tenth or eleventh time he'd heard "I'll call you", it was just easier to crank up "Love Stinks" on the stereo. Sometimes he felt overwhelmed by the comfort - the sweetness pushed up from his stomach into his nose - like someone was holding him face-down in that syrupy lake.

Waiting for the right time to break free of it all seemed to be taking forever. What if we're still doing this when we're fifty? The thought of it frightened him. The thought of doing something crazy - going bungee jumping, skydiving or something - it scared him but it was titillating at the same time. Cheap thrills were the ticket. He stared at his own reflection - who was going to take a fat guy bungee jumping?

Maybe I should rob a bank.

Crime seemed like an option - an extreme sport of the real-deal variety. He'd fantasize about taking his replica Glock with the little orange nub removed and jacking some old lady's car in the nearby Safeway parking lot. That'd be a trip, wouldn't it? The Pillsbury Doughbandit. Why do the right choices seem so boring? What if the wrong choices are too much fun? The sweetness was pushing up through his nose again...something was bound to give soon.

He arrived at his stop - the end of the line in the South Bay. The little coal of desire had started to burn again, something which hadn't happened in years. He wasn't sure what to do about it but he was confident that he would figure it out.

I guess one of the take-aways from this exercise was that I make a lot of projected assumptions about people based on visual cues. This is a bad habit psychologically but from a writing perspective, it makes it easy to build three-dimensional characters.