Untitled as of yet

         The rain was falling heavily on the window pane as I looked out on the street below. My apartment was on the third floor of the crummy apartment building I lived in. It was not a disgusting place at all to live, it was the people. Most of the people that lived in the place were not my type of neighbors. Partying people, drunkards, and prostitute housers. I just got tired of it, but I had no other option as of this point. I couldn't stop thinking about how badly I needed to get a higher paying job. But no one hires freelance fiction writers. I had been paying my way through life by selling my amateur, hastily written short stories and poems to no-name journals and magazines. One of my stories actually made it into Reader's Digest, but that was a lucky break. I had flooded them with emails after that, and they must've realized their mistake in publishing me, because they never replied again.
         I couldn't help but think about how sad my life was, as the rain was tapping on the window. I sat on a barstool with my elbows on a high table, and holding my chin in my hands looking out the window. An old battered guitar lay next to my bed. I glanced at it, remembering the one time I wrote a good song, and people were surprised. I looked again between my elbows and saw a pencil and a notepad, the words “Title” scrawled across the top of it. That was as far as I had gotten on my latest story. The word “Title.”
         Often I thought, to myself, whether becoming a writer was worth the sacrifice. Often I thought, “Why not go to school for engineering, or at least something that people will pay you to do?” but without fail my mind wandered back to the hundreds and hundreds of books I'd read, and how all my life, writing was it. Writing was the thing I loved most. The sacrifice was worth it.
         My alarm went off and I snapped out of my dreams. I had fallen asleep at my table with my pencil in my hand, still nothing on my paper. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, and I had to go to my throat doctor to have a polyp checked out. Smoking seemed like such a great choice in high-school but when you abuse something like that it doesn't pay off. I dropped out of my stool and put on my flip flops. Those flip flops and I were like the US Postal Service, no matter the weather they were guaranteed to be there. I grabbed an umbrella, locked my door, and headed down the stairs to the first floor. I passed an old lady who lived on floor two on the way. She sneered at me and walked quickly away. Apparently having a long beard and dreadlocks isn't helpful to making friends with the older generation.
         I got to my car and kicked it in gear and drove off. The old piece from Japan worked well, even after 200,000 miles but it was a pain in the ass to maintain. It was a small coupe that ran like a wooden wagon on the Oregon Trail. If there was a way to feel more than every bump and pothole in the road, this car found it. I swear there were times I was jolted in my seat by a pothole while in in neutral at a red-light. But for paying a thousand dollars for it, it wasn't so bad.
         I pulled up to the hospital a half hour later, after stopping to get coffee and some food, and got my things ready. To be perfectly honest, I was very nervous. The last thing I wanted was to have some kind of disease in my throat that I couldn't afford to pay for. My insurance was crap. As it was, I had to pay 75 dollars for a simple doctor's visit, they only covered what they considered “life-threatening,” which I assume meant nothing, because they wouldn't cover my visit for a possible cancer polyp.
         After a few hours of inspection, the doctor came to the conclusion that it was only a mucus gland acting up and nothing to be worried about, but he said he wanted to take a sample for diagnostics just in case.
         I celebrated with a cigarette when I walked out the door.
         That night my best friend, James, called me and asked me if I wanted to out for drinks with his wife and him. I agreed, since I had been doing utterly nothing for the whole week, and met him at our local Irish pub. Surprised upon walking in, when James decided to tell me he invited a lady friend of his wife's to come with us. I sighed. I was not at all interested in dating, but I decided to see what I could muster up to talk to her about.
         Her name was Adelaide.
         I peed my pants.
         After going to the bathroom to muster up what was left of my manhood, I walked back out to try to entice this gorgeous girl to talk to me about my sad existence. James hated me. This girl was so far out of my league I couldn't expect anything from her at all.
         Adelaide was gorgeous. She had very short, tight, black hair, with black framed glasses that gave her the look of intelligence, and yet made her sexy and adorable at the same time. She was wearing a cardigan that was much too big for her skinny body and average height. Her eyes were dark brown, and her short bangs swept over her left eye, like waves crashing on the beach, while she talked. Her smile was crafted out of pure love and aspiration of perfection by God himself. And when I asked her what her favorite past-time is, I thought I might have to run to the bathroom again.
         “Writing,” she replied “mostly poetry and short stories, but I do some freelancing with journals and such.”
         I looked at James. He smiled, gave me a sly wink, and decided to grab some beers, with his wife...
         I look back at Adelaide and said,
         “Mine too! I actually try to scrape a living with it, though it's very tough.”
         She agreed and took a sip of her Sam Adams.
         This intellectual, adorable, woman drank beer. I thought I was in love.
         She asked if I wanted a cigarette. I said sure and we went outside to the patio seating and lit up. She took a long drag, inhaled deeply and began a similar conversation.
         “So who is your favorite author?”
         “Well, that's kind of a hard question. I tend to create piles, or groups of favorites, according to genres...such as, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ray Bradbury. They would be grouped as my favorite authors of all time, but also my favorites in the genre of dystopian literature. When it comes to modern fiction, I would have to say Clive Cussler, and possibly Dan Brown. Mainly because I admire their ability to create cataclysmic conspiracy theories out of seemingly nonchalant historical happenings. I really love Shakespeare...”
         “Wow. That's pretty awesome. I really like most of those, except Dan Brown. I could never get into him. But I'd have to say my forte in writing is poetry. TS Eliot is my favorite.”
         “I love him...you cannot even understand. I took a class in college, just so I could study Prufrock.”
         We both laughed and ashed our cigarettes. I was surprised at this woman. Most girls by now would be running because of how excitedly I began talking about words on paper. Dead people who wrote words on paper mean nothing to much of this culture anymore. But this girl...she understood me.
         A few hours later I made it back to my apartment. I walked in, locked the door and fell on my floor. I was truly happy for the first time in months. I liked this girl, not romantically, well...maybe a little, but she was just amazing. And she made me laugh. Something only James seemed to be able to do as of late. I had been very depressed since I broke up with my ex-girlfriend of two years. She was everything I wanted, except she didn't have similar dreams and life-goals as me, and she hated my hair. Reasons like these are things that are important to consider when jumping in headfirst to a relationship. But I was too concerned about the “now” rather than the “later.”
         I got off the floor, picked out a beer from my refrigerator, and sat at my barstool. I look at my blank paper, cracked open my beer, took a sip, and began to write.
         I woke up the next morning in front of my door with a letter from the mail-slot on my face. I picked it off, threw it on my bed and went to my kitchen to make some breakfast.
         While eating I decided to look at my story and see what had come of it. I walked over to my desk and saw a ten page short story neatly written in my signature handwriting, and paper-clipped underneath my pencil. As I read it, I laughed. This was good stuff. Very good. Perhaps I should get drunk and write more often? I thought.
         I dropped the papers on the table and went to the bedroom to get my letter. I opened it and began to read.
                   “We are pleased to inform you that your story
                   has been selected to be published in our magazine
                   this coming month. We have received numerous
                   emails and letters from you containing your
                   writings, and wanted your permission to publish
                   them all. Please reply in kind if this is your
                   wish. Thank you for your time.”
         I thumped the wall and laughed. This was my lucky break. I didn't remember sending them any stories, but then again I sent so many I barely knew who read them. This was dream. The struggles of being a writer are nothing in comparison to the results one receives and the accomplishment one feels when his writings are published.
         My crummy life seemed like it was looking up. A lot more up than before. I had been on five dates with Adelaide, and not one of them had a single awkward silence during conversation. Not one of them left me thinking I was a loser, or a creep, or the low-life writer (that I was), like most of the other dates I had been on. I felt like things would be good, for a while at the least.
         Though life as a writer may have been tough for me, Adelaide showed me many things about life that I had to look forward to, and things that I had experienced that I didn't even consider as good things. I thought things would get better through time, and after thinking about it for a while, I didn't care whether they did. Adelaide had given me someone to talk to, someone to be with, and someone to love. And that is what, I finally realized, really mattered in life.