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You women disappoint or disappear—or sometimes both—and none of you can bear to look at me once I know who you really are. You run, you try so hard to kill your feelings for me that you wind up dead in real life, dead inside. I’m not built like you. I never get over you, any of you. Something had to change, so I put all my feelings about my tragic, no-good love stories into a blender and wrote a novel.
“I’m just trying to find my people.” They look right through me—the truth is always a bad share—and I need to Taylor Swift it, I need to calm down. I will find my fellows.
You couldn’t know that I have been where you are, against the world, the line, living a life behind the counter with no control over who comes in. I have to set myself apart, let you know that we’re the same, but no stories of laugh-out-loud asshole customers from my days at Mooney’s Rare & New are gonna cut it, because facts are facts.
I don’t work there anymore and as someone who did deal with the awful public all day, I know from firsthand experience that there is nothing more annoying than someone trying to relate by whining about a job they used to have.
“I’m not saying I’m perfect…” Yes, you are. And you are, maybe. “But working here, I know the big dirty secret about people.” You motion for me to come closer. And then you whisper. “Everyone is an asshole. Everyone.”
A.k.a. that’s the song I play when I think about you. We are language buffs. You would say that the world’s most misunderstood, overused word is iconic, and I think the world’s most misunderstood, overused word is love. A.k.a. our love is going to be iconic.
You don’t play favorites when it comes to books, but if you had to, you would choose the popular southern man’s saga that is Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides for the language and the family at the center of the story, all the secrets that weigh them down. I don’t lie to you. My favorite book is mine, Me.
they say this about people, that we criticize in others what we like least about ourselves.
You don’t see through him because you can’t see through him. You never got the distance required to adjust your eyes.
“Oh, drat,” he says. “Did you sleep at all? You look like feline vomit.” It’s bad writing—I’m not vomit—and he starts apologizing for his “behavior” on “the dark night post-potluck.” The omniscient, naïve narcissism of this man, assuming that the dark night ended at his house.
My dark night never ended. It turned into an all-nighter that turned into another all-nighter that morphed into this morning, into the unbreakable Bobby trap. It’s exhausting, dealing with someone dumb enough to think he’s smarter than me, and I laugh. “No,” I say. “You were fine. I’ve had a rough week. I’m just tired.” Tired of men getting in my way, treating women like property, and how do I do it, Wonder?
Glenn picks up his prize. “You wanna hold it?” Imagine being so desperate for trophies that you want to hold one you didn’t earn, and I smile—“I’m good”—but he hands it to me anyway, and I hate that it feels good in my hand, that Glenn knows it, and is this what it’s been like for you? Constantly being forced to do what you don’t want to do, then hating yourself for almost liking it?
He throws me a helmet—no—and now I’m holding a helmet—no—and he rubs his hands together. “You need to get out of your head, do something else, challenge yourself in a way that makes you forget all about writing.”
“Roald Dahl wanted to write about that chocolate factory. He only climbed that mountain when he confronted issues in his life that were beyond his control. His kids were sick. Science was failing them. The book was in him all along, but the book never would have made it to the page if his kids hadn’t gotten sick. One of them even died, poor guy.” I know what’s going on in his head. He’s comparing himself to Roald Dahl, wishing his wife would get sick, wishing they had some child who would fall ill, knowing deep down that all this KOM hunting is an act of procrastination. I feel bad for Glenn,
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Inspiration is blurry, and we live in this time where everyone wants excruciating high-def clarity but then you remember that all writers look around at the world and think…‘I have to make something out of this mess, out of my pain, my life, out of the Denis Johnson that made me who I am.’ That’s the great tradition, the writer’s burden, the writer’s gift.”
People relax when they’re at home. People fall down the stairs. It’s not your fault. Bless all nurses, and the ceiling above me that is the floor below Bobby’s feet is rattling and this is it. He’s here.
You get up and sit on the table and you are facing me. You emanate strength, as if every fiber of your being is closer to ideal because of me and you ask me what’s so funny and I tell you that you remind me of Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, part welder, part dancer, all muscle, and you call me crazy. You’re not “pretty like that.”
I run my hands over your legs. Hard. Thick. Perfect. “This is also true.” You raise your eyebrows at me. “This is how you woo me? You tell me I’m not pretty?” “Pretty is everywhere. What you are is rare. You aren’t just beautiful. You’re full of beauty and even if I couldn’t see you, I would feel it.”
I go with my gut, same way I do in writing. But it’s like a car crash. We all want to see the body parts that belong inside the body lying there on the blacktop.
you bemoan farmers’ markets, the affluent people with time to relax while the people who actually need fresh fruit are stuck at some awful, minimum-wage job. I look across the street at a Dunkin’ and I wonder if you would even want to be with me if you saw me right now.
The people in power are corrupt, and the only way to change the system is from within. I pick up a pear. “I always forget about pears.”
One nice thing about drunk people is that you can repeat yourself whenever you want.
You’re doing everything in your power to remind our fellows that you work at Dunkin’, that you’re not one of them, not really, and you told her you feel like Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin: “I wanna go out to lunch.”
I rented the movie, Wonder. Goldie Hawn plays a spoiled princess and for some hackneyed, plotty reason, she’s in boot camp, fatigued in fatigues. It’s raining and it’s dismal and her mascara is running down her face. She whimpers for all the women watching, all the women who know the feeling of wanting to give up the fight once and for all: “I wanna go out to lunch.”
But that’s not how it ends. At her lowest, Private Princess Benjamin is weary—Women do get weary—but she bucks up and finds that she does want more than lunch. It’s the lesson of countless stories. Obstacles are our friends.
All that resolve and I have nothing to show for it. Another drastically horrible week without you.
Sarah Elizabeth is not quite as subtle as she’d like to think she is. I’m well aware that she’s deliberately resting her eyes on Sly so that I won’t feel like I’m in the spotlight. But all animals know when the predator is nearby. We sense it.
Your face is an Arnold Palmer, half-rage, half-worry.
people who deal with the worst in the world prepare for the worst—so
my first instincts were right. People who dabble in the dark arts anticipate the darkness in others, but instincts are of no use to me now, and that’s it for me.
“Joe, did you read The Husband’s Wife?” Half of it. Enough of it. “Yes.” “Well, then you should know where I come from in terms of people. I don’t do ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys.’ Most people who commit crimes of passion aren’t ‘bad.’ They’re cornered.
It’s the worst kind of enemy, a smart, accomplished woman with a clever mind, but I’m smart, too. Clever.
“We think we know people, but does anyone ever really know anyone?” She cackles as if what I said was funny. “Yes,” she says. “I know you. I know what you did.”
My soul will live on through my words, through my imagination. It’s not the destiny I wanted. It’s not my time to go. But it’s the other rule of writing. Kill your darlings so they don’t kill you. I am my own darling, and I know it.
A good writer holds a reader captive, a natural-born author’s slow reveal of the truth makes us all want to speak our truth. I know she’s that way because I am too, not that the world will ever know.
I get to die—or go to prison—knowing that you loved me, that you sent me soup. So, if you think about it, I win, even when I lose.
I should know better than to be happy. Being happy is like daring the universe to sucker punch you and I should have killed Sarah Beth when I didn’t have the chance because that’s what real writers do. We create the chance.
A good night’s sleep always makes us see things clearly.
It is possible to love two books in two very different ways.
I’m a little calmer. Being the bigger person really is the most rewarding thing you can do when the chips are down. I bought Mats a bottle of Dom. I came into this basement bar genuinely happy for the guy, and in theory, this should be a good night.
I sip my vodka soda and this is why people drink. To convince themselves they are having a good time when they are just trying to avoid solitary confinement.
Morning, maybe. My stomach is empty and full. I taste the residue of unwashed limes, and the memories crack like lightning.
You tell me I have a hangover but this is not a hangover. This is an ambush from the dead. Every time I open my mouth, it’s not by choice. It’s this thing inside of me that wants out and every time I wretch it’s because of the bitter, entitled demons wreaking havoc on my intestines.
I need an IV of you. That’s what I need. You rub circles on my back and you are at your most lovable when you are in the process of loving me, saving me.
The words come out in a string of fucking belches—“Don’t say vodka”—and you mean well, you do, but you laugh and lecture me about the hair of the dog and I’m sorry, but this is not a hangover or no one would ever drink.
It’s the longest walk of my life. You are strong enough to hold me steady, knowing what to say, what to do. I like you like this and you like yourself like this and then you smile and sink into my chair.
Less is more is the rule with any shrink, especially unlicensed.
It’s always easier to agree with your shrink so I nod like we are the same.
But it is what it is. I will never write a good book as long as he’s out there reminding me that my books are not good enough for him.” I feed her another bumper sticker. “Things always look worse when you’re hungover.”
“I hate that phrase.” “Yacht club?” “Just saying. It’s a complete lie. You’re not ‘just saying’ anything.
