July 4, 2012

Dear Diary,

If you’re wondering what New York City is like, it’s kind of like Washington, D.C. only instead of people taking themselves too serious all the time, they party. Also this place has an actual personality and it’s big and beautiful like a volumptuous woman who might be considered overly thick by society’s standards but who “owns it,” like Christina Hendricks or Queen Latifah. New York can also be dangerous like excess body fat (more on this later!!!! New York danger, not body fat, not really) but mostly there is just more of it to love.

Of course the last time I partied was also the last time I wrote on you, Diary, it was the night of the studio crawl at artist camp where I had just dropkicked the crap out of everyone’s expectations as far as my screenplay was concerned. By the time I’d finished that gross celebratory drink Laurel had given me I felt so good I had pretty much decided to be one of those famous literary boozehounds like my great aunt Edna or Ernest Herringbone or Allan Edgar Winter, drinking my way from city to city, carrying out sexy booze-fueled affairs with beautiful ladies, and pulling all sorts of weird inspiration and words from the bottle, a real live tortured artist.

But then I woke up the next day and felt SOOOOOOOO AWFUL, like Rey Mysterio, Jr. had given me 619 619s straight to the noggin, plus every time I moved the room tilted up and to the left a little which seemed cruel and unnecessary since my stomach was in shambles, it was like a dangover but from hooch and a million times worse.

Days 20 and 21

Dear Diary,

I read in some book somewhere that the more time you spend with a character in a book or play or movie or whatever the more you sympathize with them even if they’re like a hideous merciless monster because when you see them doing everyday crap like brushing their teeth and going grocery shopping and taking a crap it makes you think hey this guy/gal is still a human being and hey maybe deep down he/she isn’t so different from me or anybody else, I mean I brush my teeth six times a day on account of all the sweets and cavities and all that so maybe we have more in common than I thought and we’re all just people who need air and water and cereal and meat to survive and like a sack or two of sweets every few hours to treat ourselves and fight off the crazy stupor that eating all healthy and boring puts you in just a few hours after eating fun.

The reason I’m rambling on about all this crap is because I’ve now spent three weeks with these crazy artists and for three weeks I’ve heard Abraham in his bedroom at night reading his stories out loud over and over and I’ve seen him brushing his teeth and shopping for groceries at the Great Barrington co-op with all the other horny-rimmed four-eyes and yep I’ve even smelled his crap in the bathroom we share and at this point I feel like I gotta admit that maybe me and ole Abraham aren’t so different after all, except for him being all famous and successful and old (he’s at LEAST forty and his hair looks like someone’s been clapping erasers above his head) and snooty while I am only known at this small theater in Minnesota where my play was named Best in Snow (cough cough yeah no bigs just a $300 prize cough), and also I’m pretty young and pretty much the least pretentious writer in history, look it up.

Days 20 and 21

Dear Diary,

Well the artist camp studio crawl is officially in the books (okay there aren’t really any records of the event except this one, so I guess it’s in the process of being in the book) and to say it was a doozy would be like saying Space Jam is a pretty decent flick, in other words it’d be a HUUUUUUUGE Patrick Ewing and/or space monster-sized understatement. Some artists really thrived in the crawl and some fell flat on their stupid faces, like any good shindig there was no shortage of surprises, laughs, tears, or meat.

I dunno who came up with the order of the crawl since they did it on an email thread that they forgot to include me on—go figure Diary, these artists are space cadets to the very end, I mean how do you blank on an email address like Igot99allergies@AOL.com? But Heather the Queen Space Cadet went first and since I’m not sure where to start I guess I’ll start at the start, with Heather the Queen of the Space Cadets and a gal who used to hold the deed to my heart but no more, Diary, I’m a free agent now and my dad always says that term “free agent” about me like it’s a real positive thing and I’m inclined to trust him given his selfless service to this country and our family and his sixty-two years of experience dealing with the ladies OH MY GOD HOW HAS HE SURVIVED THIS LONG.

One of the nice things about talking to you Diary instead of other people is that I can be totally honest about things without anybody squinching their eyes up or judging me, so I’m just gonna come out and say it: I don’t “get” art and I sure don’t know what the heck Heather’s presentation was all about.

Days 18 and 19

Dear Diary,

Well we’ve only got a few more days left here at artist camp and I’ve pretty much burned every bridge in Evantarctica so I’ve been working like a madman just like I said I would, the past two days I’ve been writing with the speed of John Wall and the strength of Nene (super excited about the trade!!!!!! I didn’t know Brazilian people could be black) and it’s been especially productive since there’s basically been a giant cargo plane full of ideas flying overhead every morning to drop ideas into my studio. I wish they’d drop some meat too but I guess even with figurative planes there’s a chance the meat could go figuratively rancid so it’s safer to just drop the ideas which don’t spoil unless you don’t write them down.

The WEIRD thing though is that yesterday when I was writing I heard a knock on my door and I kinda groaned because I was totally in the zone, I was like waist-deep in zone, but I answered anyway because no matter how annoyed I am I still feel like I should be polite especially with these clueless artists who have no sense of decorum and don’t even know how to interact in regular society like normal human beings. So I answered the door like I said and Laurel was standing there like a knot on a stump and she asked if I was okay, and I was like Yeah why?

LAUREL: Seemed like you weren’t feeling so hot yesterday…

ME: Yeah I went a little overboard in Great Barrington the other night but don’t worry I feel great now, I just had a little dangover.

Days 16 and 17

Dear Diary,

It’s a good thing doctors are always saving lives because no one would tolerate them if they did anything else, I mean can you imagine if a doctor had that attitude and handwriting at any other job on the planet? If a waiter behaved the way doctors do people would send him back instead of the food and every meal would practically be free because no one could make out the checks and I’m pretty sure if you can’t read the total you don’t have to pay it, that’s my MO anyway and I eat at T.G.I.Friday’s Casual Dining Restaurant & Bar every single Friday, obviously. Sounds like a good way to get fired if you ask me. Anywho you can probably tell I am steamed with a capital M-D after my run-in at the hospital yesterday afternoon. I drove myself there as soon as I woke up at 11:30 and demanded to be tested for Lyme Disease pronto but they made me wait pretty much all day even after I showed the lady the Ziploc baggy with the two ticks inside, I mean how much more serious could this be? Those guys were clamped onto my body!!!! Sucking my blood!!!!!!!!! Right by my junk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There aren’t enough exclamation points in the world, Diary, but I guess it goes without writing that all urgency was lost on this little hospital, they probably haven’t seen an emergency in so long that they don’t remember what one looks like. When they finally DID let me in at like 1:30 (if I could capitalize numbers I would, Diary), the doctor was so calm at first that it made me feel like a total dipstick.

Days 14 and 15

Dear Diary,

Sorry to leave you hanging off a cliff like that with my last entry, that was a real J.J. move on my part but this whole mess has been such a mess that I barely even feel like writing, even to you, Diary, my best friend at artist camp. Yes it’s true, things have gone real pear-shaped with me and Laurel and not in the good way like when a lady has a nice big behind. After Laurel tossed you on the ground at the séance I picked you up and ran back to the house while everybody laughed, and later when the rest had passed out from drinking hooch I went to Laurel’s room and knocked on the door and asked her what the heck was going on. She said I knew what was going on and I said SERIOUSLY LAUREL I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON WOULD YOU JUST SPILL THE GREENS???? Well it turns out that emailing my sister Amy a few days ago wasn’t such a hot idea because apparently she’s real good friends with Laurel’s ex-girlfriend and went and told Laurel’s ex that Laurel had a new ladyfriend that she’s real into. Laurel’s ex got real upset and called Laurel and started screaming at her and asking to know who the new ladyfriend was and at the end of the conversation Laurel’s ex said she was going to kill herself and then hung up the phone and didn’t answer any of Laurel’s calls. She didn’t go through with it and she is okay but it put a real scare into Laurel and now her situation is all mucked up and it’s basically all my fault. (Well it’s a little Amy’s fault, I’m not really talking to her right now.) I told Laurel I had no idea and I was sorry like a kajillion times but she wasn’t having it, she says she can’t trust me anymore and frankly Diary I don’t blame her. This is why I can never hold onto any of my friends, there is always some bizarro scenario where I do something weird or stupid only I don’t know it’s weird or stupid till it’s too late because I am “socially innovative” as Dr. Dave says. Laurel hasn’t talked to me since last Friday night and I figure she probably won’t talk to me the rest of our time at artist camp since she can’t trust me not to run to Amy and spill the greens to her. I should have known making a friend in Auschwitz would be too good to be true.

Days 12 and 13

Dear Diary,

Yesterday was Friday the 13th so naturally I was standing on my toes keeping my eyes peeled for ladders, black cats, mirrors (no cracking), and corks (no stepping on them) but one thing I didn’t know to keep an eye out for was traitors, Diary—the most dangerous threat of all because you don’t have to walk underneath them, step on them, let them cross your path, or break them in the bathroom for them to ruin your day or even your month. Well I guess they have to cross your path, but still it’s not like one is going to dart out in front of you and you know you’re hosed afterwards.

Also this treachery was extra treacherous because Friday didn’t start out too terrible, I ate an entire box of Lucky Charms at eleven to be on the safe side which was real nice and filling, plenty of marshmallows FOR ONCE, seriously is there a marshmallow shortage or something? I feel like when I was a kid the oats were pretty much swimming in marshmallows but now finding one is like trying to find a writer who isn’t an alcoholic. But anyway after breakfast I checked with Laurel and Heather to make sure they didn’t hate me for the whole Louis CK fiasco the other night and they seemed to have accepted the long apology email I sent them, they said everything was fine and it wasn’t a big deal, so I went about my writing like usual—with the kind of passion most people reserve for athletic competitions and sexual endeavors. Instead of the standard five pages I wrote like NINE (!!!!!) which was really excellent, this script is coming along real nicely although I’m sure it’s just awful, first drafts always are, that’s a little insider’s nugget for you, Diary, writing is really a whole lot of revising and that’s no foolin’. But early on you can never tell how awful something is, when you’re writing it you always think it’s the be-all-end-all to literature and then you read it a couple months later and you’re like, How gorged on Lucky Charms was I when I wrote this, I must have had one foot in a food coma because it’s a load of junk and the characters’ motivations are cloudier than the milk at the bottom of the bowl.

Days 10 and 11

Dear Diary,

I know it’s racist to assume that all the short-haired lesbians in San Francisco know each other but I mentioned Amy again yesterday and Laurel said, “Wait a second…” and then it hit her like a bunch of bric-a-bracs, I guess she hadn’t been paying much attention the first time I mentioned Amy because I’m pretty quiet and mumbly sometimes but this time Laurel realized that SHE KNOWS MY SISTER WHOOOOOA at least a little and she seemed kinda freaked out by how big a coincidence it was that they have some mutual friends and things, but Diary the world is so small sometimes it feels like it could fit in your pocket. Anyway it doesn’t seem like Laurel and Amy are best buds or anything and that’s fine but I hope they don’t hate each other’s guts, that would be awkward for me since they are two of the only people I can talk to on a pretty regular basis these days.

Anywho even though I got to page fifty in my script yesterday (I am writing five pages a day, don’t try and stop me Diary!!!!!!) it wasn’t that eventful of a day, today was the eventful one because Laurel and I talked about Heather and she thinks I have a real shot with her so then we came up with this genius plan to get me alone with Heather on the couch so that I could put the moves on her, I’m talking third base at least—hugging and heavy petting. The genius plan was this, Diary: we would ask Heather if she wanted to watch a movie with us and since the drunks were all going to a bar to get drunk and since Jason never leaves his room, it would just be the three of us. Then Laurel would get a Skype call from her ladyfriend thirty minutes into the movie (what are the odds!!!!! LOL) and leave and it would just be me and Heather, and pretty much anytime you’re watching a movie at night with just a girl you KNOW something is going to happen, you might not even REALLY pay attention to the movie because it is just a big loud excuse to sit next to a girl for two hours and then hug and pet her. So that was the plan but you know what they say about making plans, you make them and then people laugh at you because what were you thinking making plans, nothing ever goes off without a hitch not even in those Jason Bourne movies and that guy was specially trained by the flipping CIA.

Days 8 and 9

Dear Diary,

I wish you could’ve seen the looks on everyone’s faces when Heather and I got out of the cop car tonight. Their jaws pretty much unhinged and dropped straight through the floor but Heather and I agreed on the ride home that we wouldn’t tell any of them what had happened so they are going CRAZY, but I can tell you Diary because you are my most trusted confidante. You are a vault, Diary, and I’d like to deposit a real stemwinder of a story into your impenetrable pages right now if that’s alright with you.

So last night I was pushing a bunch of leaves and stuff around my plate because NO ONE IS LISTENING TO MY GROCERY ORDERS no matter how many stars or exclamation points I put next to MEAT, so I was real hungry and grumpy, that’s an emotional state I call grungry, Diary, because I like to mash words together the way Shakespeare did and humpy would be misleading because I am not a camel or a female member of the insufferable pop group Black Eyed Peas. So ANYWAY I was pushing a bunch of peas around real grungry-like and I guess Heather could tell I was peaved (this is another word mash-up, it’s when you’re peeved about having to eat peas) or maybe she just had a real good time riding home and touching legs with me the night before because she leaned over and asked if I wanted to hike with her the next day. Well Diary if you think I said anything but Heck yes I do!, you don’t know me anywhere near as well as you should. (Not using quotes is another postmodern writing move, pretty neat huh? Better pay attention when you read yourself, Diary, or you might not be able to tell the difference between inner thoughts and out loud ones.) I knew that Heather hiked and we bumped into each other on the trail that one day but this invitation was a genuine shocker and I took it to be a pretty good signal that maybe she doesn’t think I’m as creepy and weird as most girls do, because most girls wouldn’t be caught dead in the woods with me even though I am pretty much the most harmless male on the planet, ask anybody I don’t have an aggressive bone in my body except when it comes to writing, when I’m writing I am a voracious animal, chewing on ideas and rolling them around in my mouth and then spitting out stories.

Days 6 and 7

Dear Diary,

No matter how nice and big a house is, being cooped up in it for a week can drive you crazy, especially in a place like Auschwitz. I’m pretty much immune to that feeling since I’ve been to artist camp so many times but yesterday Abraham and Lennon and Agnes got this wild look in their eyes like they’d had too much coffee or something. They were pretty much clawing at the walls and whining about losing their minds, so I said Geez Louise why don’t you guys go for a hike once in a while? I know there’s ticks and stuff but Mt. Harvey’s RIGHT THERE, you can see it from the flipping window. LOOK! But they just rolled their eyes and said we don’t want to hike, we want to drink. (So typical, Diary!!) I said well you guys drink all the time but if you want to do it with a different backdrop we could go to Great Barrington, it’s pretty great, there’s this little bar/restaurant called Gypsy Joynt and they have beers and pizza and stuff and they do a cool open mic every week that I always get a real kick out of, some of the singers are real young and talented, like John Wall but white and they don’t shoot hoops. So the alcoholics and I made plans to go to Great Barrington and then I invited everybody else with this hilarious evite that had a pizza on it, and they RSVP’d yes and that’s what we did tonight, Diary, get settled into your seat and hold onto your hat because I’m going to tell you all about it.

Days 4 and 5

Dear Diary,

If you’re wondering what hiking is like, it’s kind of like walking only instead of walking at a nice leisurely pace, you do it outside and strenuously and usually uphill. Laurel and I hiked up Mt. Harvey yesterday and I don’t like to throw words like this around willy-nilly but honestly Diary I think it was a real bonding experience. We talked almost the whole way and Laurel told me that she had just gone through a really hard breakup after dating a girl for three years, and the breakup really affected her emotionally and she was trying to be friends with the girl but it’s hard because sometimes even if you love someone to pieces it just doesn’t work out, and then it hurts you to look at them. That’s the position Laurel is in now but there are two chunks of good news, one chunk is that she is here in Auschwitz for the next few weeks so she won’t look at her ex-girlfriend or think about her as much, the other chunk is that she really likes a new girl who sounds really swell. All of this is TOP SECRET, Diary, so don’t go blabbing to all your little journal friends, I bet all you books are pretty gabby and gossipy since you’re so filled up with words, but you will just have to control yourself so you don’t jeopardize my friendship with Laurel.

Days 2 and 3

Dear Diary,

Well it’s been a couple days so you are probably wondering how things are going here at artist camp, the answer is real good writing-wise but real stupid and annoying people-wise, except for Laurel of course she is the best. More on that later but first I should give you an idea what my regimen is like here, this will be a postmodern kind of writing move, sometimes entire books are just made up of lists and recipes and schedules and stuff, I know I can’t believe it either. Anyway here’s what the last two days have been like, I’m going to put it in military time like my dad does so if you don’t get it you’ll just have to google it or ask a pilot or something:

In April 2012, Evan Allgood completed a twenty-five-day residency at the Millay Colony for Artists in Austerlitz, NY. Allgood kept a diary for the duration of his stay, and after months of prodding from Trop editor-in-chief Tom Dibblee, agreed to reproduce the diary in the magazine. For historical accuracy, none of Allgood’s entries have been edited or corrected.