Two years ago, about this time of the year, I worked from a desk in my room. It’s a desk I inherited from my first wife (the phrase “my first wife” continues to give me pause, but there it is). It’s a nice desk: wooden, understated, clean lines, a few hidden shelves along the sides. I’d put in my eight hours at work on my big, hulking, university desktop computer—I worked from home—and then I’ve pivot 90 degrees to a small round table, where my laptop was. I’d write. 300 words or so. Then it would be supper time, and I’d stop writing and make supper for my Dad and my one daughter still living at home. After that, we’d pursue our own interests. For my Dad and I, baseball was often involved (insert a smiley emoji here).
Last year, about this time, I wrote from my Dad’s desk, in my Dad’s room. My Dad had died about eight months prior. After he died I moved my workspace to his room and his desk. His desk, unlike my late wife’s, was metal, utilitarian, functional but boring. The “functional and boring” is not a result of the desk mirroring my Dad’s personality; rather, it mirrored what he called his “poor boy syndrome.” Why buy an expensive desk when a cheap one will suffice? He did very well in life, but he grew up in rural Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl days, and the hard lessons that era taught hm never entirely left him.
I remember with painterly detail the way the light fell across his desk in the afternoon. My cold, half full coffee cup at the corner of the desk, the ghosts of all my previous cups of coffee haunting the coffee stains of the mug. The legal pad and pen at my side to make notes as I work. My laptop a 90 degree turn away, on the same small round table, current story abandoned in mid-sentence, awaiting me to pick up the thread again. The cool rocks and Hexbots and Lego toys running along the periphery of the surface of the desk. The pictures and memories my Dad had hung on his walls watching me, sometimes advising me. Sometimes I asked for that advice. After all, my Dad had recently died, I had recently applied for early retirement, I was about to leave this house to go live with my current wife (the phrase “my current wife” continues to give me pause, but there it is), and pass the old house on to my youngest daughter for awhile. I was about to attempt to be a full time writer for the first time. My life was not only about to change, it was changing already. My world was, once again, in flux.
I don’t write at a desk anymore. I have a desk, my first wife’s desk I used to use, in the house I share with my current wife. It’s a very nice desk in a very nice office. But for reasons that almost entirely elude me, I don’t use it. I usually hang out and write on the couch, a few feet away from my wife (who still works). Sometimes I write in bed, sometimes the car, or a doctor’s office.
But I think I am growing out of the habit of having or needing a desk. I may be growing out of my want or need for a home. My home is the people around me, and the love I feel for them. My home is my memories. My home is the stories I carry around in my head, trying to bend them to reflect the world around me in a somewhat accurate manner.
And as for desks: I don’t need a place to write anymore. Wherever I happen to be is where I will write. And I will write. Every day.
I miss you, Dad.
Peace.
If you like the writing, consider buying a story, linked below.
August’s story: Monster
July’s story: Goodneighbor.com
June’s story: Feral
May’s story: Nine Lives
April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can
March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill
February’s story: Veronica Scissors
My first novel, Life Under Water
My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)
