John Leguizamo Ruins Everything

By Laura Shell

Photo by Hoach Le Dinh on Unsplash

I don't know what to write. I sit here with my eyes closed and ask the poet, the fiction writer, the woman, the wife, the metal head, the recovering alcoholic, the everything in me to come up with gut-punching words and a hard rock tempo, but nothing good happens when my fingers touch the keys on the keyboard. It's frustrating. And then Grammarly gets involved, and I mentally tell it that, hey, I'm not ready for you yet. And then McAfee tells me I have seven viruses, and that's bullshit, so I click on those pop-up windows, so they go away, and they do go away temporarily. Adverbs are stupid but necessary. Sometimes. Look, there's my dog, his paws on my leg, asking for something. He knows some English words. Wish he could speak them. Sorry for the tangents.

New paragraph. What's going to happen now? Can I at least come up with a character? Editors ask for likable characters they can root for, but it's just me here. I've been published too many times to keep track, but you wouldn't know it, reading this piece of crap. Look, there's Grammarly again. What now?

New paragraph. I took the day off from work to relax, but I don't know what that means. Relax. I used to be able to sit in my recliner and watch TV all day, but I can't do that now. I have to be doing something all the time. How annoying is that...trying to find something to occupy your time with every inhale of air? Fuck. I wish this planet weren't on a 24-hour cycle. 16 hours would be better.

New paragraph. Nothing much happened in the last one, so don't expect much in this one either—another McAfee window. Piss off. And now my husband is annoying me with a conversation I don't care about because, hey, I'm trying to write here. "Trying" is the word of the day, I guess.

Oh, great. Now my husband is watching something with John Leguizamo in it, and John Leguizamo ruins everything. Think about it. Every show and movie...he ruins, like finding a runny turd in a nice beurre blanc hand-crafted for you personally by Gordon Ramsay. Hey, maybe John is the reason this story sucks! Because he's in it!

Yay, my husband went to work. I have the house to myself, and that was my wish for this day, to have this whole space to myself. Now it's quiet. And I can think better. A story is forming. A guy with a dog and a gun. No, no gun. A flamethrower. Ohhhh... Excuse me while I get to writing.