“I wasn’t a writer back then. I would write and write in notebooks by hand, dissecting my self, my psyche, the decisions that doomed me to failure, all the things that had brought me to the brink of insanity. But there was something down there and I did want it told. I wanted it out in the open, aired out and on display. But not right then.
He stopped writing when we lived at the schoolhouse. He involved himself in online forums and put hours into posts about music, politics and relationships. The science fiction that had been his award-winning life’s work fell away so he could flirt with women and show off his brainy-brain.
He didn’t write again for as long as I lived there.
He told people he was a writer. After a while, I started to think he was lying. After a while, I started lying to him. I didn’t quit smoking and I didn’t want to. He didn’t tell me he was looking for someone who was better than me in every respect, but he would have settled for me if she proved too illusive. He didn’t write and didn’t write and I never questioned anything he said about the women he was talking to online.”