David Gessner's Blog, page 4

New Book Tour Coming: Sartorial Advice Appreciated

From time to time invaluable advice arrives in my email inbox.  And while I pride myself on my excellent shampooing skills and first-class Banana Republic and Reny’s (A Maine Adventure!) closet, I’m not exactly a GQ model.  So this anonymous note that came via my website, really made my day.  I’ll take it to heart as I go out on tour with The Girl of the Lake.  Very lightly redacted to protect the sender’s privacy:

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Dear Bill, Can I call you Bill. I was at your reading in B______ and I have some ideas for you. Now if you happen to take this personally, oh well.It occurred to me that you were not dressed in relatively new LL Bean khakis and a fairly new plaid shirt. As a matter of fact, to tell you the truth Bill, your apparel seemed wrinkled and, being up front, here, soiled. Like a human had been wearing the shirt, shorts, even the shoes, for 3 days or so. Maybe 2.

I also noticed your hair. Now I am someone who doesn’t labor over combing my hair because it’s long and a little unwieldy. So I thought – silently- I don’t think he’s cleaned or combed his hair for a couple days. Now, all of this kind of fell together for me at the end when you said you were looking for a new agent. That really went right to my heart strings because I am too. I am extremely talented- 12 poetry collections plus brilliant political and cultural analysis.  Now I haven’t looked for a publisher or an agent. I have had exactly one poem published in the Maine Sunday Telegram. But I might get one or the other or both. So it was killing me when you said you don’t have one either. I thought if I ever try to find an agent, I am not going to dress – female clothes not male- like he does plus I will comb my hair before I do go to the appointment. Here’s what I’m getting at. Have you tried that?

Brian Doyle (1956-2017) and His Head Full of Swirling Dreams

Brian Doyle died yesterday. For the last week I have been e-mailing back and forth with Bill McAvoy, a friend of mine and a close friend of Brian’s since the two of them were young. Bill has been giving me updates on Brian’s decline as well as doing some eloquent writing of his own about their nearly fifty year-long friendship. At one point Bill wrote to say that while he knew that Brian was well-respected he was a little surprised at all the important awards and honors he was accruing, and at the outpouring of support from the literary community. I told him that I, living inside that world, was not surprised.

 

I mostly knew Brian from a time before we were writers or at least before we were published writers. In fact he might have been the only person I knew in my community who said, as I did then, “I want to be a writer.” I played some basketball with him and drank some beers with him but mostly what I remember from that time, when we were both in our twenties, was cornering him at parties and trying to find out if he knew any secrets about this strange quest we had both decided to take up. I don’t know if this is true or not but he may have been the only person I knew in Boston who I talked to in that way. Everyone else seemed to look at you sideways when you started talking about writing and asking, reasonably enough, what you had published. It was a time when we both had, to steal a title from a piece that Brian later wrote about one of his heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson, “heads full of swirling dreams.” That time before the dreams begin to be realized is a dangerous one and I was lucky to have Brian to talk to.

 

It wasn’t until we were both a few books into our writing careers, almost two decades later, that we talked to each other again. I loved Brian’s work, the electricity and humor and play of it and the way that the natural world and animals always wove their way through it. In 2005, I had just started a new magazine called Ecotone and I wrote to Brian to see if he could send us anything. He did and we accepted a piece called “Fishers” and he wrote back: “I am happy to have Fishers ecotoned.” The piece was selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 and over the next decade Brian would be one of Ecotone’s best and most regular contributors.  As we worked on the edits for that first piece, we also corresponded about our careers. At the time neither of us had published novels, which had been our dream when we talked when we were young. Brian wrote:

 

My secret inky ambition is to try to write one of everything — a book of poems, a novel, a play, a movie, a book of fictions — so I think I am sort of stuck on five essay tomes for the nonce. Race you to a novel, though.

 

It was a race Brian easily won. If I am counting right, he published five novels. And in those novels he did something that I had always dreamed, and still dream, of doing: making animals and nature vital characters, not mere background figures or setting. In fact, while we had never talked about it way back when, it would turn out that we worked very similar literary turf. (Not long ago when I was interviewed for a piece about humor in nature writing I was not at all surprised to find Brian’s name in the same piece.) Outside of our twenties, we only met once in person. That was two years ago, about this time of year, before I did a reading at Powell’s in Portland when we had drinks outside a nearby restaurant. I remember we laughed a lot. I remember he had an amused, sometimes skeptical, sometimes delighted look on his face that I remembered from almost thirty years earlier. We probably talked about basketball, and how great we were, more than we talked about writing. But even if we didn’t talk about it openly we both knew we were in very different places than we had been in when we last met. The uncertain quests we had begun back then were well underway, though Brian’s would end much sooner than planned.

 

When I first heard the news about Brian’s brain tumor last November I was shocked. I wrote him a long e-mail which he, unsurprisingly, didn’t have the time or energy to answer. I would like to say I kept him steadily in my mind since then but you know how life works. The busy-ness of it swallows you up, and you stay occupied with your preoccupations, and even the great tragedies of others only break through now and then.

 

This week I wrote to my friend Bill about my new book and he wrote back to say the news about Brian was not good. Hospice had come to the home, he told me in one note and in another he told me Brian could no longer speak. I thought about that, a writer losing his voice. Bill also sent me something he himself had written while insisting “I’m not a writer.” Maybe not but it is a moving piece. It tells the story of the time Bill and Brian, two not-too well off Long Island kids, home from college and working at menial jobs to try and pay off their student loans, snuck into a Springsteen Concert at Madison Square Garden, and then, amazingly snuck backstage where they ended up briefly hanging out with the Boss. Bill also wrote that he and Brian would continue to listen to and talk about Springsteen over the years and that while his favorite albums were the earlier ones, Brian grew to consider The Rising his favorite album. If you know the album and you know Brian’s work, this is no surprise at all.

 

Like a lot of us, I am pretty good at repressing stuff and while I thought a lot about Brian over the last week the reality of what was happening didn’t really ever break through. Not until Friday when I decided to clear a cluttered and stressful workday out of my head by going for a run in the woods. I was wearing my little ipod shuffle, blasting it really, anything to help me plod along at my middle-aged pace. And then it happened, about half way through the run. The song The Rising came on and I was bawling like a baby. Big heaving tears. For Brian yes, but for me too, and certainly for our long-ago youthful heads full of swirling dreams, dreams both realized and unrealized.

 

“I could tell you tales,” Brian wrote me once in another e-mail. “Was there ale and time you would weep. And yet we are all shambling highways for error.”

 

Brian and I were not close, not the way Bill and he were. Are. Not were. During my run I listened to The Rising over and over, four times in all, and during that intense burst I really thought about, or more accurately felt what it meant to lose Brian Doyle and his swirling dreams.

 

After the fifth time listening, I skipped ahead to listen to Mary’s Place, and then finished off with the Promised Land.

 

 

P.S. Here is a short piece Brian wrote about the creation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Brian had more than a little Stevenson in him.

P.P. S. Brian also contributed to Bill and Dave’s. Usually I draw cartoon heads of our guests but Brian distinguished himself by being our only contributor ever to send us a self-portrait. If you scroll down from this entry you will see that we have re-posted Brian’s most recent piece for us below.

 

 

A Sit Down Chat with Bill and Dave

Bill and I have not talked for a while but last night we had a chance to sit down and have a nice chat. Though I did not secretly tape or have my assistant transcribe the conversation, as I usually do, here is roughly how I remember it.

 

BILL: Is it wrong to say that Ultimate Glory is the most anticipated book in history?

DAVE: Yes, I think it would be wrong. In my community maybe. Certainly in my house.

BILL: God, you’re fit! You could still play! And handsome, too.

DAVE: Thank you, Bill. (Blushing). You’re also handsome. (And well-drawn.)

BILL: You know I have a book coming out in June, too.

DAVE: Is there Ultimate in it?

BILL: A little.

DAVE: Well, there’s a lot in mine.

BILL: Yes, yours will likely sell better among Ultimate players.

DAVE: And yours with lovers of the short story.

BILL: Yes, thank you.

DAVE: And mine costs less. So it should sell better to cheap people.

BILL: And mine to rich.

DAVE: Right, of course. But back to your first question. What do you really think the most anticipated book in history was? Not the bible. No one anticipated that. And The Joy of Sex came out of nowhere, right? So?

BILL: I don’t know. I really don’t know.

DAVE: Well, it has certainly been a pleasure chatting. You are so polite.

BILL: And you. Until next time then. Pip. Pip.

Here’s the Book Trailer for Ultimate Glory!

Narrated in full-on NFL Films by Justin Peed. Edited by Hadley Gessner, who was ably assisted by Aaron Cavazos.

 

Goodbye to an Old Friend

Tomorrow morning I head up for a week of packing up and cleaning out the Cape house to ready it for final sale on May 25. Here is the painting I did of it that was the frontispiece of my first book, A Wild, Rank Place. Strange for this to be happening when the Ultimate book is coming out since so much of my life in those years revolved around the house. Also strange that the narrator of my just-finished novel is in the process of packing up a house on Cape Cod (though I started the book many years ago). So many memories. Just spoke to the plumber who solved the mystery of the unworking bathrooms when he discovered the beer can that had been dropped down and clogged up the roof pipe. I will be working hard this week but will also be sure to toast the house and piss on my favorite trees one last time.

Losing Brandy

In the end pop culture ruins everything, even one’s (kitschy) love of pop culture.

 

Though Looking Glass wrote “Brandy” I have always felt a little bit of ownership of song. And not just because I sang it on all the major occasions of my life, did a poetry reading of it, and had dozens of people call me from their cars whenever they heard it. It always seem to me the perfect mix of the purely cheesy and things that really mattered to me (harbors, ports, swelling oceans–rise and glory) and a time in my life (I was 11 when it came out in ’72.) Even when I heard that Bill Murray also liked to sing it at parties I was okay with it. (After all, without Bill Murray none of us would have been doing the parody lounge singer thing.)

 

But when my friend Paul Turner texted me earlier today and said, “Go see Guardians of the Galaxy II. Trust me,” I knew the gig was up. I texted him back immediately, guessing that the movie featured “a song with ports and harbor towns.” When he confirmed this, and I learned that the song, in its entirety, opens the movie, I wrote back “I’ve been scooped.” What I meant by that was that, after over 45 years of talking about and singing the song, I finally got around to writing about it just this year. In fact I shelled out 680$ to include the lyrics in my new book, Ultimate Glory.  It is featured in a key scene that takes place a week after my cancer operation, when I get the whole crowd to sing it at my 30th birthday. I wrote:

 

“I don’t know why ‘Brandy’ affected, and still affects, me so; I only know that it had become the closest thing I had to a personal theme song. I sang it sarcastically for years but that night it seemed suffused with real emotion.  After we finished singing, I told people it was the song I wanted played at my funeral (and please note, friends who are reading this, I still do).”

I’m sure you have had a similar experience when something you loved was claimed by the pop monster.

And there it is. Less than a month before the book comes out the song no longer belongs to me but to the world. Aaargghh…

Will I grow bitter? I doubt it.

On the plus side this brings the joy of Looking Glass to more people around the world!

I am told that the character Kurt Russell plays calls it “possibly earth’s finest composition.”   I like that. Though I would have cut the “possibly” and added a “by far” at the end.

And so: I commend the filmmakers for their good taste, and I suppose I’ll have to go see it.

I’m sure I’ll sing along.

Here it is in its new form:

Brandy.

My favorite part:

Brandy used to watch his eyes

When he told his sailor’s stories

She could see the ocean fall and rise

She saw its rage and glory.

 

But he had always told the truth

Lord, he was an honest man

And Brandy does her best to understand.

 

 

 

 

 

Blurb Begging

Everyone knows that the most miserable part of writing a book is begging for blurbs. Writing to someone whose work you respect, your hat sweeping the floor, all beggy and obsequious and….yuck…

 

Last time I was lucky to land a blurb from Larry McMurtry so this time I said what the hell and wrote John McPhee. Mr. McPhee wrote me a kind and considerate note about how he doesn’t write blurbs. I respect that but couldn’t help but think that in the time he took to write the longhand note he could have read a few paragraphs and said a few words. Oh well.

 

I ended up getting three of my five blurbs from people I know pretty well, including a writer named Bill from a place called Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour (Yes, that’s pretty inbred but Bill gives great blurb.) I also got one from Patrick Phillips which has the word “Yawp” in it, which I love. And when I was a kid I read the Boston Globe Sports page and the articles of Bob Ryan and Dan Shaugnessy so it was very cool to get a blurb from Shaughnessy.

And here they are:

 

“In Ultimate Glory, David Gessner lets loose a barbaric yawp, akin to Whitman’s in Song of Myself: ‘I was the man, I suffered, I was there.’ Read it for all the hucks and layouts, for the epic battles between Hostages and Rude Boys, and for its fascinating history of the sport. But even more, read it to hear one of America’s most gifted writers sing an unabashed love song to the glory of being alive.” —Patrick Phillips, author of Blood at the Root

“The history of Ultimate Frisbee had not yet been written by one who was there, there for the ugly, early, drunken days when men first turned to themselves and one another and asked whether a modified form of football could be played using flying discs, and answered, ‘Yes!,’ or didn’t answer, just started playing it, running and drinking and running. Gessner has come for the game that made him great. Read it.” —John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

 

“In Ultimate Glory, Gessner flings out not only a requiem and a eulogy to a golden era of beginnings that has since passed, but also offers up a trumpet blast in celebration of a game that has somehow remained, against all odds and despite the tendency of almost everything else, uncorrupted by its success and untainted by its mainstream adoption while continuing to offer up a fierce and shining testament to the spirits of those, like Gessner, who gave the better parts of their youth over to its glory.” —Kevin Fedarko, author of The Emerald Mile

 

“Even if I watched him play, I wouldn’t be able to tell you if David Gessner is any good at Ultimate Frisbee. But the man can write, and this homage to his oddball sport is rich with life’s joys, sorrows and universal truths.” —Dan Shaughnessy, New York Times-bestselling co-author of Francona

 

“Ultimate Glory is a book of wild youth, of derring-do . . . it lifts us up into glory’s heights. Gessner is a compelling guide to the scenes of ancient battles, knows where all the blood has been spilled, knows a thing or two about greatness and how it fades, but in that, too, there is glory, and this is a book to lift us up into glory’s heights. Funny, fraught, deep, fascinating, so much more than you thought: finally the game of Ultimate has its Jim Bouton, its George Plimpton, its Bill Bradley.” —Bill Roorbach, author of Life Among Giants

 

A Rant from Mike Branch!

Michael P. Branch is Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has published five books and more than 200 essays, articles, and reviews. Also, he is funny.

His new book, Rants from the Hill, is due out on June 6.

 

A confirmed desert rat, Mike lives with his wife and two daughters at 6,000 feet in the remote western Great Basin Desert, on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range. Check out more about Mike here.

 

Balloons on the Moon

Our part of the desert West is so inaccessible that the common detritus of the dominant endemic species, Hillbillicus nevadensis redneckii, is nowhere to be seen. So while the rutted, dusty BLM roads in the sandy, sage-choked wash bottoms are beribboned with spent shell casings, wide-mouthed bottles of Coors light, and empty cans of chew, there is simply no easy way to litter the steep, rocky high country. However, there is one unfortunate exception to this rule, and that is when trash is airlifted into these isolated mountains and canyons in the form of balloons.

 

I have picked up so many trashed balloons over the years that I find myself wondering what the hell is so jolly about California, which is the nearby, upwind place where all this aerial trash originates. Maybe the prevalence of balloons in the otherwise litter-free high desert should not surprise me, since millions of balloons are released in the U.S. each year. We release balloons at graduation celebrations, birthday parties, wedding ceremonies, football games, even funerals. There is actually a company called Eternal Ascent that will, for fifteen hundred dollars, load your ashes into a balloon and float them away. Balloon launches for a pet’s ashes cost only six hundred dollars, though, so if I go this route, I have instructed my family to claim I was a Saint Bernard.

The moment a balloon is released it becomes trash, and this trash can cover serious ground. A sixteen-inch diameter, helium-filled latex toy balloon will float for twenty-four to thirty-six hours and can cover hundreds of miles while climbing to an altitude of 25,000 feet, where it freezes, explodes, and rains down to earth in the form of garbage, which some desert rat like me then has to tote home in his backpack. And while latex balloons will, eventually, biodegrade, the same is not true of metalized nylon balloons, which become a permanent feature of the natural environment. That is the downside of these so-called foil balloons; their only upside is that they are really shiny.

 

Because they conduct electricity, metalized balloons also cause hundreds of blackouts in the U.S. each year by short-circuiting power lines, which de facto suggests the vulnerability of the grid. If Edward Abbey or Barry Commoner were alive today, they might enjoy the idea that the elaborate infrastructure of post-industrial capitalism can be brought down by a single, drifting, metalized Mickey Mouse. So the next time you release a balloon, do not think of it as a celebratory symbol of freedom. Think of it as trash. You should also think of it as you would a message in a bottle, because someday, somewhere, there is a chance that someone like me will have to read whatever unimaginative nonsense is on your balloon. Given this rare opportunity to communicate across time and space, please try to come up with something more clever than the message on the frog-shaped foil balloon I recovered out here yesterday: “Hoppy Birthday.”

 

By now, you may be wondering what kind of dark-souled curmudgeon would go out of his way to profess loathing for the universally beloved balloon. I confess that I am taking this principled stand against balloons in part because I would otherwise need to stand against something harder to fight, like corporate greed or global climate change. But there is one use of balloons that I approve of whole-heartedly: to make one’s lawn chair fly. Manned balloon flights date back to the early eighteenth century, but when Mark Twain defined a balloon as a “thing to take meteoric observations and commit suicide with,” he anticipated the incredible adventure of a true Western American folk hero, “Lawnchair Larry.”

 

Truck driver Larry Walters was a man with a dream. On July 2, 1982, in a backyard in suburban San Pedro, California, Larry tied forty-two large, helium-filled balloons to his aluminum lawn chair, which he dubbed Inspiration I. He then outfitted the lawn chair with the same gear that Western heroes have always provisioned themselves with: sandwiches, beer, and a gun. But Larry had made a serious miscalculation, and when his friends cut the cord that tethered him to California, he disappeared in a meteoric rise of more than 1,000 feet per minute. Larry did not level out until he reached an altitude of almost 16,000 feet, where he drifted into LAX’s airspace and was spotted by a TWA pilot, who found himself reporting to air traffic control that he had just seen a gun-toting guy in a lawn chair sail by. Larry managed to shoot a few of his balloons before accidentally dropping his pellet gun, after which he descended slowly into a Long Beach neighborhood, where he became entangled in power lines and caused a twenty-minute blackout. Perfectly unharmed, he climbed down from his lawn chair and was immediately arrested. When a reporter asked about the inspiration for his epic, fourteen-hour flight, Larry replied, “A man can’t just sit around.”

 

Larry’s heroic adventure notwithstanding, the fact remains that, unless you want to fly in a lawn chair or take down the power grid, balloons are trash. Fun trash. Colorful trash. But trash just the same. Now, the problem with being both an environmentalist and a father is that, whenever I rant about an issue, I always end up caught by my daughters in some act of complicity that exposes my hypocrisy. In this case, the trouble started when little Caroline insisted that we celebrate sister Hannah’s ninth birthday with a balloon release. I was in a tough spot, since I had to choose between being an uptight, sanctimonious, balloon-reviling ecogeek and being a really cool Dad who happened to be externalizing the true cost of his coolness by exporting some aerial trash downwind to Utah. I remained on the fence, until Caroline explained that our balloons would not go to Utah but rather to the moon, where she intended to clean them up herself, just as soon as she becomes an astronaut.

 

Well, that was pretty persuasive, so we began preparations for our birthday launch. We would use latex rather than Mylar, we would release only one balloon per kid, and we would be careful to aim them at the moon. We also decided that, just in case they ended up on the other side of the Great Basin—in the Wasatch Mountains instead of the lunar mountains—we would write something witty on the balloons to help compensate the finder for their trouble. On one balloon we wrote, “PLEASE RETURN TO LARRY WALTERS.” On the other, “SORRY, UTAH!” We then ate some birthday cake and ice cream before heading outside to position ourselves for the launch. The girls aimed for the moon, I counted down from ten to blast off, and they opened their small hands and sent the bright yellow and orange balloons on their way into the azure Nevada sky. The balloons rose, the girls cheered, the moon waited. It was one of those sparkling experiences when time, worry, and even the desert wind—everything in the world, save two rising balloons—stood still for one long, gorgeous moment.

 

I try to tell myself that, because I have retrieved more than a hundred trashed balloons from the remote desert, I have earned the right to release a few, but I know that is just more of the same evasive horseshit we all tell ourselves every day. The plain fact is that I littered, and that I had a lot of fun doing it. I hope my neighbors in Utah will cut me some slack on this one. After all, a man can’t just sit around.

 

Before I Go External….

I spend a lot of time alone.  Writing. Walking in the Woods. Brooding. The usual writerly stuff. It’s part of my job.

 

But there’s another part of the job. The part that involves waving my arms and yelling “Look at me!” The part that, unless you are Franzen or Diaz, you better do if you hope to sell more than six books. The part that many writers, myself included, find onerous at times.

 

Of course I understand that I am better suited to this aspect of the work than many of my flock. I have always been part Carnival Barker. That is, I’ve always liked to talk in public and sing at parties and while I sometimes feel acutely embarrassed the next day, others, including my wife, seem to think I am lacking a crucial embarrassment gene. I have heard the word “shameless” more than once. When I do, I counterbalance it with another word: fun. Why do we writers have to be such profound and dire drips? Why do we have to act like we hate the spotlight we crave?

These thoughts are bubbling up now for a simple reason. I’ve got a book coming out in June. For the last few months I have been relatively quiet, by my standards, not doing a lot of posting, publishing or public speaking. Part of that has to do with the fact that I became Chair of our creative writing department last summer (something I’ve also been pretty quiet about) and there is a lot of non-writing work to get done. Part of it is that I am gathering my internal forces for what is to come: a very external time of speaking, promoting and arm waving. During my last book tour I briefly re-defined myself to keep sane. I was still writing in the early morning but I stopped calling myself a writer and re-christened myself an “Impresario.”

And an Impresario I will soon be again. I need to warm up my vocal chords for singing Brandy and spewing about Ultimate. I’m not quite ready yet. But I know it’s coming….

See below for rough draft of tour schedule….

 

 

Events

TUESDAY JUNE 6, 2017

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH BREWERY 6201 OLEANDER-

EVENTS ROOM

7:00 PM Event HOSTED BY POMEGRANATE BOOKSWEDNESDAY, JUNE 7 – DURHAM

THE REGULATOR BOOKSHOP

7:00 PM Event 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – ALBUQUERQUE

BOOKWORKS ALBUQUERQUE

3:00 PM Event 4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87107MONDAY, JUNE 12 – TELLURIDE

BETWEEN THE COVERS

6:30 PM Event 224 W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435• They would like to organize an outdoor Frisbee mini-match or demo or interactive target throws in the pocket park near them. The reading itself will likely not be in their shop.

• They are thinking that the interactive part would start at 6:30pm and the reading will start at 7:30pm.

THURSDAY, JUNE 15 – EDWARDS

BOOKWORM OF EDWARDS

6:00 PM Event 295 Main St, Edwards, CO 81632

TUESDAY, JUNE 20 – BOULDER

BOULDER BOOKSTORE

7:30 PM Event Pearl Street Mall, 1107 Pearl St, Boulder, CO 80302

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21 – DENVER

TATTERED COVER BOOKS

7:00 PM Event 2526 E Colfax Ave, Denver, CO 80206

Contact: Daniel George (303.322.1965 x1737)

• This will be a reading and/​or discussion with a Q&A and book signing.

THURSDAY, JUNE 22 – FORT COLLINS

OLD FIREHOUSE BOOKS

6:00 PM Event 232 Walnut St, Fort Collins, CO 80524

MONDAY, JUNE 26 – PORTLAND

7:15 PM Arrival POWELL’S BOOKS ON HAWTHORNE

7:30 PM Event 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214

THURSDAY, JUNE 29 – SEATTLE

6:45 PM Arrival ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY

7:00 PM Event 1521 10th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

Bill and His Family Keep Their Health Insurance, at Least for Now

A little neck repair–while I still had COBRA coverage.

 

Happy this week to know that at least for a while, my family’s insurance (and of course that of many millions of fellow citizens—or really all citizens, as the ACA’s protections extend into everyone’s insurance) is safe. It’s been disheartening to watch republicans try to make good on their campaign pledges to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which they made sure to call Obamacare. They didn’t fail because democrats wouldn’t work with them—they didn’t ask democrats to work with them. They failed because their bill worked from a lie, that the ACA is in some kind of death spiral. It isn’t.

The republican professional assholes failed because their stated reasons for the urgency of repeal (that death spiral, supposedly soaring premiums, high deductibles, too few people covered) were not their actual reasons, not even close—their replacement bill didn’t fix any of those things. And those actual reasons were why republicans couldn’t get the required votes in the House of Representatives: factions among them don’t agree.

The further right, the so-called Freedom caucus, just hate socialism, and social medicine is the poster child for that hatred, always was.

Welfare, too, which takes us to the racist right, operating from hatred of Obama and the wish to repudiate everything about him, especially Obamacare, which they see as more handouts to the poor, a group their imaginations tell them is largely Black and undeserving.

Then there is the corporate right, which is almost all of it, who don’t want any barriers to moneymaking, including regulations that require insurance companies to actually provide insurance for the money they receive.

Finally, there’s the moderate right, who may actually see the need for healthcare insurance for all, but who want a market approach. It’s they who kept the insurance industry involved in Obamacare, when most democrats wanted at least a public option, something like Medicare for all who wanted it (Bernie Sanders is introducing such a bill in the Senate this week), something that would operate side-by-side with the market driven system already in place at that time (talk about soaring premiums and high deductibles! My own deductible before the ACA was $30,000 per person, and the policy covered only major accident and illness, though your carrier could drop you at will, that is, at the exact moment you reached your deductible).

The far right couldn’t stomach even vestiges of social medicine, the moderate right wasn’t going to get reelected without those vestiges, and that and nothing else is why the votes weren’t there.

President Trump promised insurance for all for less, better insurance with lower costs. That’s because he hadn’t studied the problem, so it seems. Because the ACHA, which I hope forever is called Trumpcare, didn’t offer any of the things he promised. And even his own voters knew that. It was widely reported that Trumpcare polled at 17%, disastrously low. And even that figure amalgamated two choices supportive polltakers had ticked off: Support, and strongly support. Strongly support got only 6%. Why? Because the bill was predicatxazaed on a series of lies, eight years worth. And yet most republicans voted for it. And more, apparently, would have voted for it if it had been even less likable. Why? Why? Why? Because they are idealogues on the one hand (no socialism!), and corporate hacks on the other (no regulation! profits before people!). Fun watching the republicans, having gotten the on downs, fumble so spectacularly. But these trick plays seldom work.

Joe Barton of Texas put it best: “Sometimes you’re playing Fantasy Football and sometimes you’re in the real game. We knew the president, if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk it would be signed.” Eight years of fantasy football. And now you find yourself on an actual field. One where Obama played very well, and played for real.

Trump says the next step for republicans is to let Obamacare explode, or implode (depending on his mood). No doubt he and Secretary Price have plans to help that happen. Another Twitter metaphor: They’re putting sand in the gas tank and will blame the car when it breaks down. They must be watched closely, and resisted decisively at every turn.