Tonight, Jake said something to me that I'll not soon forget:

"I suspect that the reason people who choose to write 'Optimus Prime' on that little blank line are the same people who realize, at some level, that the freedom they've been condemned to is theirs, and theirs alone. They aren't willing to allow multi-million dollar campaigns take that freedom away from them; these are the same people who would withstand days of torture with only the word 'no' on their lips, only to give away the secret plans as they were being rescued. Freedom isn't about anything beyond choice, and there's something in many of us that ticks like a bomb, a realization that our senses are being constantly manipulated into losing the ability to make that choice, by presenting alternatives that look different but are in fact identical.

"I think you should carefully consider who stands to gain by your decision. Maybe you'll feel the buckling in your stomach as you realize that you're trapped, that you finally realize what the world is like as you remove the veil from your eyes.

"I think I'll write some Kanji on that line. Maybe I'll fill in the bubble for the candidate I hate. It doesn't matter in the end. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something, and all it'll cost is a little piece of your freedom."

(A 20-minute reply to this 20-minute entry)

"You're right that there is a definite aura of solitude that surrounds us," Jake said to me as he leaned back and sipped at his Rolling Rock, the thick white foam at the top breaking apart around his lips, "and it definitely is about ego." I fiddled with my small cup of Maker's Mark, knocking the ice into the glass walls for the light tinging it afforded.

"You have to be arrogant to participate in this sport," he continued, "if you choose to call it a sport. There's no winners or losers in fiction, of course, unless you consider the winners those who manage to get a deal and sell their work. I don't call them winners, though." He took another gulp of the rancid beverage. "No, the winners are the middle-men, the publishers without a creative bone in their bodies, hocking other peoples' sweat and blood for a Cadillac and beach house. Bastards, every one."

I raised my glass in the air to feign solidarity. I didn't feel so strongly, never having sent a work to a major press. Maybe he had gotten burned one too many times.

"The rest of us writers are in it together. You'd think we'd all get together and encourage each other, submitting work back and forth, trying to generate magnificent works of art that are better than any of us could ever do alone. But of course we don't, and here's where ego comes in: as you put it, the Other is either unaccountably better or indescribably worse than I am. And, either way, I feel a nauseous pit open in my stomach to read their work. No, I'd rather be alone." He stood and walked to the window and gazed at his own reflection, enhanced by the darkness outside.

"So why me?" I asked. "If you don't want to work or share with anyone, why even talk to me?"

Jake sighed. "That's the key, isn't it? I will tell you again and again I'm writing for an invisible, almost epistemic audience, one that only exists in my own fantasy. I imagine the fictional readers riding on fictional busses, but at the end of the day when I sit down to type my thousand keystrokes that night, I find myself unable to focus because that audience isn't real. Even in my fantasies of sending Mary or Joshua my completed manuscript, I know that they'll look at it and smile and feel proud (perhaps) of me, place it on their shelves, and go on with their lives."

"So why me?" I asked. "Why not these online sites, or these communities that do try to provide support to young writers?"

"Ego." He walked back to the table and downed the rest of his beer. "Their writing is phony, derivative, unimaginative. I have nothing to learn from them. And the few who are good are unaccountably good - people that I feel anger about learning from." He chuckled to himself. "Kids these days. Anyone can write, you know. Anyone can open a fucking Word document and scribble down a hundred thousand words. But they all think they're Salinger because they read 'Franny and Zooey.' They've got egos incommensurate with their creations. They're full of themselves, cysts believing they're gods."

"So why me?" I asked. "Why do you even bother to discuss writing with a single competent writer? Why don't you live in your romantic solitude?"

"You'll get no answer from me. All I can concede is I'm asking the same question of you."

"Most of writing is listening," he said to me, "the rest is just sweat."

Jake tapped his pencil off his desk as he turned to me. Half a paragraph sat on the laptop screen in front of him, and from the condensation on the bottle, I could tell that he finished his Rolling Rock not ten minutes ago.

"And what are you listening to right now?" I asked.

He looked back to his screen. "Nothing."

"What do you mean 'nothing?'"

Jake's eyes drifted around the room, and I could tell that he didn't want to answer. "Sometimes everything just flows. I can hear the words that I need to write. I can feel the story bubble up to me. I love those nights, and I'll stay up as long as I need to if it means getting the message down." I waited out his pause, and then he continued, "Tonight is not one of those nights. I write a line and erase it and rewrite and erase it and I feel congested, as if I'm intentionally blocking the thoughts I need to be having." He closed his eyes and put his hand to his forehead.

"So why push it?" I asked. It seemed a reasonable question. After all, the next flurry of inspiration might come tomorrow night.

"I need to practice listening, and I need to practice sweating." He opened his eyes and turned back to the computer. Nothing memorable was going to come of his efforts tonight, and we both knew it. But still he pecked at a few keys, held down the delete key, and sat for a few more minutes. Inspiration wasn't coming, but it didn't seem like he wanted inspiration anyway.

It didn't seem like he wanted a friend either, so I left him alone.