AES143 The Desk

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room.

No more child’s desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house.

In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylights study.

For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to go nowhere.

A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity, and put in a living room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife’s help.

In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crusts behind when they moved on, but I didn’t care.

They came, and they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them.

I got another desk.

It’s handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T-Rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave.

I’m sitting under it now, a 53 year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg and no hangover. 

I’m doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. And now I’m going to tell you as much as I can about the job.

It starts with this: Put your desk in the corner.

And every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. 

Life isn’t a support-system for art, it’s the other way around.

-Stephen King-