Forget Creative Writing. You may as well never join – or even visit – and she may as well quit. You both have nothing left to write about. On the day I finally saw you together, you were so quick to disappear at the first notion of the session being canceled, fleeing together to roost on the benches. You reminded me of turtles – well, not turtles actually; terrapins – sunning themselves on the rocks. Peaceful. Happy. Oblivious. Unmoving.

I, on the other hand, not-so-subtly extracted myself onto the bench exactly opposite from yours. I wrote around three paragraphs of a short story called 'Harlequin Whore', which may or may not have been about a nice relationship between two nice people, which may or may not slowly crumble because the boy may or may not be a clingy little bitch. In the course of writing, someone came out of the closet to me, attempted to confess his love to a much younger girl, and forced me to go to the canteen twice to buy the same drink. The second time, we passed you, and he said hi. You didn't hear.

Anyway, the foundations of the story sucked, and that week sucked, and life sucks, but at least you're happy. It's good to be happy. If you can't be yourself, then happy is the next best thing to be.

I'd like to know what happened to that monologue of yours, though. I remember you asking my opinion before hers. I wasn't lying when I said it was good. You have the grammar of a severely dyslexic badger, but it was still good. Yet I think you were convinced that it was much better than it really was; that it was the best thing you have ever written, or ever will write. Guess what? It actually probably was. It was probably the last thing you'll ever write in your life.

Here's how you do a monologue, honey:

Love is an open letter.

No, that's not it. Let me try again.

(Shit.)

Some people are born to wander. Other people are born to stay. I was carved out of my mother's stomach to exist in a transitory state; neither here nor there, if I only knew where those places are.

I once said I thought I was a salmon trapped in a human's body. My partner at the time looked at me weirdly and asked exactly how much I knew about salmon.

Wait. No.

(Crap. Nice bit about the salmon, though.)

People use the expression "get the hell out of Dodge" all the fucking time. I figured that I've been practically everywhere but Dodge, so I thought, maybe I belong there. Apparently it's in Kansas. They have thirty-three churches.

No thank you.

Um.

(I can just imagine, in a few years' time, I'll proudly show this piece to a potential publisher, or a guy I want to screw, or maybe both. They'll lift one eyebrow and say, "I grew up in Dodge." And I'll have to assure them that I wasn't trying to insult Dodge City, KS, I'm sure it's lovely, but the idiom always stuck out to me and I Googled "actual places named Dodge" and it was the first to come up, but I'm sure there are some others out there, I'll change it if you want, and don't mind the comment about the churches, I'm not really religious but I am a Christian, and I think everyone should make their own choice. Then they'll notice that there's this rambling parenthesis beneath the offending paragraph, which somehow predicted the exact turn of events our meeting took. They'll be impressed by my psychic ability [though not so much with my preventative skills], and I'll smile sweetly and say thank you, and the conversation will proceed from there. I will probably get a book deal and/or sex.)

I take each wary glance as unsolicited advice against every decision I have ever made.

(I should be taking drugs. I mean, I am, but those are serotonin stabilizers. I need real drugs. The kind that will make me see pretty colours and listen to The Doors. If my writing doesn't get any better, at least it'll seem better when I read it.)

"The question which prevails:"

I read something once which kept using that phrase; an article, in which the author struggled with her identity as a Jew, through a writing style described as "Jeopardy!-esque". It was in an anthology of "creative non-fiction", as if ordinary reporting was too fucking mainstream, as if you have to add any embellishment to real life to be a good writer. What a polite way to say "we want you to show that the world is shit, but not metaphorically, or on a subconscious level. We'd like your writing to be so equally engaging and depressing that your readers feel like the universe took a huge dump on their face." Assholes. Reality is whatever beautiful exaggeration you so choose to believe. "You can't make these things up", except for when you do.

(Hey, is this working?)

Haven't had a good dream in a while. In the rare event that I realise I'm in the middle of one, they slowly turn out to be horrifying or insane and then try to comfort me by telling me to stare directly at the sun. Anyway, now I ask myself, "what is the question which prevails?" It could be that. But I think I have many questions which prevail. My mind is filled with all sorts of questions and answers, but they're all mismatched, like bastard socks from a dryer. I've tried to invite people to the storeroom of my mind – strangers, lovers, faeries, parents, Christians – to help me sort through them. They get disgusted, somehow end up vomiting simile-socks all over the uneven floor, and then leave me alone.

...Oh, fuck.

(What.)

So this is a monologue about monologues...

Sorry. I'm not even trying anymore.

(I wonder: when a schizophrenic character, or one with a split personality disorder, or someone else similar gives a speech, is it a monologue, or a soliloquy? Interesting. A question for the ages. The question that prevails, even. Not for you, of course, because you're never writing one of either ever again anyway.)

Hold on.

I've got one: