Raconteur

Frank and Gerard met in high school during their senior year. It was during creative writing, an elective they took for different reasons. Gerard loved the idea of putting his ideas onto paper and Frank was trying to find a way to pass English without having to read too many books.

“How’s it going?” Frank asked, taking a seat next to Gerard near the middle of the classroom. It was the only seat left in the room considering Frank had showed up just as the bell was ringing; maybe a little later.

“Pretty good, thanks,” Gerard said with a smile.

Frank wasn’t so sure if he’d like Gerard. He’d heard the kid was a little strange and too far into his own head. Gerard stuck him as strange and unlike the people he usually hung out with. Then again, Frank didn’t exactly hang out with all the right people.

“Have you been in here before?” Frank inquired, leaning forward on his elbows and resting his head in his hands. He looked to Gerard from the corner of his eyes.

Gerard cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean? Like, in this room?”

Frank sighed. “No, man, I meant, like, in this class. Have you taken this class before?”

Gerard chuckled. “Many times. I don’t know why I keep coming back…”

Frank honestly didn’t care whether or not Gerard liked the class or why he bothered with taking it year after year. All he wanted to know was what he had gotten himself into. “Is it hard?”

“Define hard,” Gerard said, glancing toward Frank. “Is it a lot of work? Kind of, if that’s what you’re wondering. It all depends on how much you enjoy putting your thoughts into words, how much you like playing God and creating a world for people of your own creation to live in.”

Frank shrugged. “Okay then. So, it’s pretty simple as long as I put some shit from my head onto a sheet of paper?”

Gerard frowned at Frank’s choice of words. It wasn’t all that basic for him. It wasn’t putting shit from his head onto paper. It was so much bigger than that; so much more complex. It was creating a place for people to live in, setting up rules… it was making something that was entirely his own.

“You could say that, but I don’t think you’re going to get anything out of the class thinking like that,” Gerard said, disappointed.

“Whatever, man,” Frank said, resting his head on the table. “I just want a C.”

Gerard didn’t bother with a response. Instead, he chose to lean back in his seat, close his eyes, and dream up a story while he waited for the teacher to start the class.

~*~

“I don’t get this,” Frank said, staring at the blank sheet of paper sitting in front of him. They’d been in class for a little over two weeks and the teacher had given out the first serious writing assignment.

He glanced toward Gerard’s paper and saw that he’d already filled two pages, front and back. “I mean, what the fuck are you doing? You have so much shit written down and I can’t think of one fucking sentence.”

“First of all,” Gerard said, removing his eyes from his page and looking in Frank’s direction. “You don’t really need to drop ‘f-bombs’ left and right; it really isn’t necessary. Second of all, the assignment is pretty simple. All you gotta do is put some ‘shit from your head’, as you put it, onto a sheet of paper.”

Frank dropped his pencil and ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, man. You don’t need to be a dick about it, all right? I just asked a fu-" Frank paused, looking to Gerard with apologetic eyes. "... I just asked you a question. I can’t think shit up the way you can. I mean… look at what you got, and look at what I got. My mind doesn’t work the same way.”

Gerard sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just… you act like this is something easy or something that doesn’t mean a whole lot. You see that picture right there?”

Frank looked at the photo the teacher had given him at the beginning of the period. “Yeah. What about it?”

“Mr. Wyatt told you to look at that photograph and make up a story about it. You can write about anything. You can ask fifteen, twenty, two hundred people to do the same thing and each and every person will come up with something different… that’s the beauty of it all.”

“That it’s different?” Frank asked, not fully understanding what Gerard was saying.

“That and the fact that what you come up with is yours. It’s your creation, your thoughts, your feelings… everything about it belongs to you and nobody else. “

Frank tapped his pencil against the desk and thought about what he could write. “Okay. So, there’s a boy sitting in front of his house, right?”

Gerard nodded, a smile forming on his lips. “Yeah...”

“So I write about why he’s waiting there or—“

“Who says he’s waiting?”

“Well he’s sitting right there? Why else would he be outside, it’s probably a hundred fucking degrees outside!” Frank replied.

Gerard grinned, choosing to ignore the fact that Frank had dropped another ‘f-bomb’. “See? You’ve got it.”

“What do you mean?”

Gerard picked up the picture, glancing back and forth between Frank and his assignment. “You looked at it and created a situation: A boy waiting outside in the blazing heat… all you gotta do is figure out what he’s waiting for.”

Frank took the photo from his classmate’s hands and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Huh… that’s it?”

Gerard nodded. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”