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We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity
Wow fuck that is a brutal story - empathetic failure
Which maybe that’s what love was: liking someone how he was and doing things to help him get even better.
Like right now she was helping Jimmy by making his life easier by killing something so he—no. All she was doing was walking, walking away from—
Her. She did.
It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.
spent all lunchtime thinking. It was weird. I had the memory of fucking Heather, the memory of having felt the things I’d felt for her, the memory of having said the things I’d said to her. My throat was like raw from how much I’d said and how fast I’d felt compelled to say it. But in terms of feelings? I basically had nada left.
Have been sleepwalking through life, future reader. Can see that now. Scratch-Off win was like wake-up call. In rush to graduate college, win Pam, get job, make babies, move ahead in job, forgot former feeling of special destiny I used to have when tiny, sitting in cedar-smelling bedroom closet, looking up at blowing trees through high windows, feeling I would someday do something great.
You? I thought. You jokers? You nutty fuckers are all God sent to stop me? That is a riot. That is so fucking funny. What are you going to stop me with? Your girth? Your good intentions? Your Target jeans? Your years of living off the fat of the land? Your belief that anything and everything can be fixed with talk, talk, endless yapping, hopeful talk? The contours of the coming disaster expanded to include the deaths of all present. My face got hot and I thought, Go, go, go. Ma tried and failed to rise from the porch swing. Ryan helped her up by the elbow all courtly. Then suddenly something
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Based on my experience of life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And would go even further, to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you’ll probably make it worse.
I have a feeling that things have always been pretty much the way they are now, with subtle variations. That is: The problems of being alive are intractable and don’t vary in type from situation to situation, but maybe, some, in flavor and quantity. Ego is timeless; also hubris and loss and so on.
There is no such thing as a “level playing field,” genetics and karma being what they are, and to the extent that we pretend there is such a thing (by conflating wealth with virtue) we are playing a fool’s game, taking credit for that which was given to us (a good family, health, affluence, basic ability, intelligence, et cetera, et cetera) by fate. And I expect some of that feeling makes its way into my stories. I hope so, anyway.
But I think what these readers may be feeling is that my stories are crueler than many other stories. And I think that’s true.
