Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

But avoiding pain, Zach, isn’t possible. Just because life has hurt me or you or all the people that are here doesn’t mean we have to live in pain all the time. I lived in pain because I chose to live in pain. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. I had this romantic idea about the life of a writer and what he was supposed to suffer. I was Rafael, the artist, the superior being who created beauty out of his own misery. Somehow, I made my own pain a kind of god. I worshipped that god with all that I was. As Sharkey would say, That is so fucked up, dude. Inexplicably, though, and this is the part that really is inexplicable, I somehow avoided the real pain—the pain that was killing me. I avoided it altogether. I think you’re like me, Zach. I think you live in pain even as you don’t want to feel. You’re beautiful and brilliant and in love with words and yet, like me, you remain in an inarticulate space where words are stuck somewhere between your heart and your throat.