You might recognize that song lyric. If not, it’s from Britney Spears’ song Hit Me Baby One More Time. Believe it or not, that lyric was the inspiration for my story, My Loneliness Is Killing Me, which was just published in the literary magazine Periwinkle Pelican (note, you have to download a PDF to read the story, but it’s free).

So how’d this one come about? Actually it originated from a very common phenomenon: when you get a song stuck in your head, no matter if you’re a fan or not, and it gets lodged in your brain and plays on repeat. FOREVER. Until it vanishes. Usually it’s a Bon Jovi song for me for some reason (not a fan, but I don’t hate them).

This story came from that. As luck would have it, on that particular day I didn’t have much to do. It was a Saturday. A beautiful day. A HOT day. So I went into Manhattan and bummed around with that lyric repeating in my head.

And an image. Of someone day drinking. Wasted and wasting their life away.

The weekend before I was with a bunch of people drinking and we watched the Sydney Sweeney rom-com Anyone But You. I’m not a rom-com fan but the idea of romance was still thick in my mind. As I walked around the city, this story came to life for me. I would run the lines through my head and then stop at random points and scribe lines into my phone. At one point I passed this white hipster guy who had this perfectly styled mustache, just short of cheesy, but great all the same, and I knew that his mustache had to be a part of my story (which it is).

By the end of my sweaty sojourn through the city, and after a few frozen margaritas (hence the Slurpee reference), I pretty much had the story all written. It’s short and fierce and I’m immensely proud of it. It’s not the type of story I usually write–nothing supernatural at all in it–but it’s loads of fun. And I have to give credit to a great writer, whose work I was reading and whose freewheeling style was most definitely an inspiration: Bud Smith. Check out his great collection Double Bird. His writing taught me you can be ridiculous as long as you’re getting to the guts of your character.

And my favorite part of this story? The opening line: Fuck off, Britney.