How To Write “How To Shit on LSD”
Wake for an hour at 3:30PM next to your sleeping husband. Your essay now seems obviously horrible. People want to read about loneliness and depression and failed relationships, not your "refreshingly whimsical," uninformed philosophizing about reality, especially because it was stereotypically preempted by a drug experience and paired with the cheap "Girl Writes about Shitting"…
By Megan Boyle
Write two-thirds of “SHITTING ON LSD IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM” while sitting on a toilet in NYU’s library on a medium-low dosage of LSD at 2:30PM. Half-close the lid of your MacBook, wash your hands, and hurriedly exit the bathroom to finish writing before you forget the “juicy details.” Wave to your husband, exiting the men’s room. Remember being on a much higher dosage of LSD together at the library two months ago, sitting side by side, creating a two-hour long Gchat containing phrases which have become integral in your joke lexicon. He stops walking near a vague grouping of chairs. Walk to him and hug each other lightly. Ask if you’re going to work in the same room. As he is quiet, considering his answer, know that having an urge to ask the question probably means you’ll work in different rooms, because the last time you were on LSD you naturally walked into the lab together.
He says “Let’s just work separately,” which seems more sensible now anyway. Nod quickly and say “Are we meeting at 4?” He says “I don’t know, we’ll talk on the Internet,” as you briefly maintain eye contact and walk in different directions.
Sit at the least conspicuous table in the cafeteria-area of the library. For twenty minutes, type more of “SHITTING ON LSD IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM.” Don’t look at the Internet. Write the sentence “Think of an overgrown lawn, unexplainably.” Give yourself permission to imagine an entire chapter in a literary criticism textbook devoted to your delicate, bizarrely groundbreaking, hypothesized-as-accidental-“but-given-Boyle’s-oeuvre-we-now-know-this-must-have-been-intentional” symbolism.
Remember things your husband has said to you about feeling neglected when you aren’t available on the Internet. Check your email and see that ten minutes ago, he sent you a forwarded email from “Raw Reform,” noting something funny he saw in it. Email him something funny you see in it. Have a business-like Gchat about meeting times. Read his email again. Find another funny thing and send it to him. Try to open the Gchat from the last time you were on LSD, but it takes too long to load.
At 4:30PM, hold hands as you exit the library to walk to dinner. Say “I’m doing ‘SHITTING ON LSD IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM’ for my essay now.”
Your husband grins and says “You should do that.”
Say “I started it already. I referenced ‘shitting it out’ for both the essay and actually shitting.”
Your husband rubs your arm and says “Seems really good. ‘How To Shit on LSD.'”
After dinner, ingest Adderall together and go in stores, looking for energy drinks. Laugh when your husband screams “Xanax.” Point at a drainpipe sticking out of the ground and say “It’s looking for a better life.” Make an experimental comment about Rube Goldberg machines. Your husband says “Save it for the essay” and pats your back.
At the library, open “SHITTING ON LSD IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM” and change the title to “HOW TO SHIT ON LSD.” From 6:30PM to 10:30PM, mechanically focus on expanding and rearranging parts of the essay, ensuring the voice and tense are consistent, and eliminating wordy or boring parts. It feels effortless. Rarely look at the Internet. Incorporate “Rube Goldberg machine.”
At 10:30PM, your husband hugs you from behind your chair and says he’s working slowly. He seems tired. You feel tired. He says “Send me the essay when you’re done.” Say you will be finished soon. Read the last paragraph. It might just be your opus, that last paragraph. Seems like you could have “stolen” it from Kurt Vonnegut or your husband. Google “Kurt Vonnegut nothingness quotes.” Google “Tao Lin nothingness quotes.”
At 11:50PM, you still haven’t finished. Things look grim. You’ve become fixated on imagining receiving 0-4 comments about drugs that seem to miss the point of your essay, 0-2 bluntly negative sentence-length comments, 2-4 vaguely negative sentence-length comments, and 1 convincing paragraph-length comment that actually makes you think you’re just as much of a “piece of shit” as the commenter does.
Look over your husband’s shoulder as he reads your essay. Agree with his first 3-5 deletions. He rearranges a paragraph. He wants to delete “Think of an overgrown lawn, unexplainably.” Tell him it’s “evocative, or something.” He says “I don’t feel anything when I read it.” Say “I think other people might,” immediately after which you want to shrink to a size that will allow you to live under your chair’s cushion, where you will be sat on by huge asses forever. Realize how fortunate you are that he actually wants to read your essay and that, unlike men in your past who have had either passive or incompatible interests in writing, you share many sensibilities with him and will probably like his suggestions.
He creates a new document for his edits. It seems too long, he says, it doesn’t seem focused. Agree. Get up to stretch. Do a handstand on the wall. Make socially inappropriate movements on a table. Sit next to your husband. He says “Are you okay?”
