Your Story

Not mine | Fiction | Fresh Soup

I’m writing this story exclusively for you. If you didn’t exist I’d probably be taking a nap or smoking a cigarette on the balcony right now. I don’t need this story anymore. Or any story. After forty years of writing, I’m made of nothing but stories: I breathe them, I spit them, I shit them. The last thing I need is yet another story to get stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Stories—I have plenty.

And it’s not that I have plenty of everything. I’d be happy to pick up some more health, money and justice. I’d kill to be a couple of inches taller and a few pounds heavier. Because although I’m still around, there’s not that much of me and it would be nice if there were a little more. But a story? It wouldn’t be mine anyway. It might pass through me, gathering up some of the guilt and fear that clog up my emotional gutter, but in the end it would be yours.

Like that parent in the flight safety instructions, the one who first puts the oxygen mask on himself and only then on his child, and not because he wants to live. He doesn’t. When they finally land on the other side of the ocean he’ll probably hand the kid back to his ex and jump off a bridge. But he puts his mask on first, and the only reason he does that is to save the child. Just like I’m writing this story now to save you.

“Is this guy for real?” – you’re probably muttering to yourself now – “sounds like someone’s getting too big for his britches.” You can keep muttering, I won’t be insulted. Insults would only distract me from the plot and make it harder for me to steer this story I’ve written for you to a safe harbor. Yes, a safe harbor. Because right now, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you’re out at sea in the middle of a hurricane and this story, like a life-preserver, is the only thing keeping you afloat.

I know, this is no masterpiece. I’m not expecting it to win me a Pushcart. But it does the job, and as long as you keep reading it, you’re completely safe from the outside world. That’s why I’m still here, trying to draw it out. This should really be a one-paragraph story, tops, but I’m working hard to spread it thin, just to earn you one more minute in the story, which equals one less minute in the world.

Translated by Jessica Cohen