A dialogue

Typical of how I usually write, with a noted lack of characterization, just a “he” and a “she” -- “he,” with palpable life experiences behind him, the capacity to make more, and a few real regrets; “she,” in love with the idea of having had such a life, too caught up to live it.

“What keeps you up at night?”he asked with amused curiosity.

“Guilt,” she answered, as though the very word were made of lead.

“Oh? What about?”

She let his grammar slide, but still thought about how if learned people spoke naturally, instead of trying to make themselves sound intellectual, she would enjoy conversations much more.

He had spoken off the cuff, and without a second thought.

“Everything.”

There was silence.

“Um, like, last night – how I'd promised to write a letter to my boyfriend, but I didn't.”

There was more silence.

“This morning, when he called me, I told him I'd been too tired and sleepy last night to write. That'll probably keep me up tonight,” she told him, trying to sound downtrodden, but unable to keep just a smidge of pride from sneaking into her inflection.

“Did you ever think there might be a purpose to guilt? That maybe it keeps waking you up because you need to fucking do something? And you can do something. It's not like you keep waking up because you want to tell your kid who was never born that you love it, or because you had all the time in the world to write a book, never did, and now you have Alzheimer's. Those folks can't do a thing but keep waking up, over and over again. You can, and you don't. Why?”

“I . . . I don't know.”

“I do. Because people like you are fascinated with those people – you think they're more interesting than us fools who actually do things. You want to be the object of your fascination, so everyone else will think that you're interesting, the kind of person they write books and movies about. But the whole world is made up of people like you, and not one of you takes the time to really look at each other. You don't know if anyone's suffering or not, because you have to keep up the illusion of your own pain. So you pretend to give credence to their troubles, show some superficial sympathy, and never notice the difference when someone is really hurting. And you know, the real ones, the ones who really can't do anything – guess who they look at and want to be?”

She stared at him blankly.

“Good answer. They want to be me.”

It's too bad talk doesn't motivate action anymore.