Lucifer

A recent episode revolved around a murdered novelist. She had just resolved a five-year writer’s block when a fan bashed her head in with her own vintage typewriter.  I could relate.

Put me in mind of my own first typewriter, a beautiful white portable Olympia in a silver clamshell case. I worked as a gasket-picker the whole summer I was sixteen to get the money to buy it. A guy stood at a drill press and punched gaskets out of big sheets of fibrous material and threw them to the floor where I sat cross-legged on the concrete. My job was to punch out the gaskets, punch out all the little holes in the gaskets, pile up the gaskets into bunches, put rubber bands around the bunches, and throw them into a bin. My first job. My first typewriter. My origin story.