When you stop giving a fuck you really have to stop. It’s that moment when you might not be able to feel. That moment? You stop. Somebody who actually doesn’t give a fuck. Someone who stopped giving a fuck when you were sixteen and still learning Spanish. That guy sees the same therapist as you. But he also has a knife. And when you have a break and think you do not care for a moment, he brandishes it. He did not care for a minute longer. Do you want your backpack, or do you want to ask nicely the man with steel at his waist where he went to school? I’ve never been stabbed. I assume it’s not fun. I accidentally cut my wrist once and exsanguinated and hallucinated and thought my ex-wife, the first person I had sex with, my mom, and her twin sister were all ten feet from the foot of my bed and waiting to see me. The police were banging at my door and I kept repeating, “I didnt do anything.” “Your neighbor saw a lot of blood.” He wrapped my arm in the welcome mat and spoke to the walkie-talkie thing on his shoulder, said some numbers, and I fainted. Those plastic wrap, non-handcuff handcuffs are remarkably effective. They won’t let you stand up for 72 hours. Even when, especially when, you think you didn’t do anything. Say that out loud and see what happens.
Ambition kills
You don’t know me like I was. The me when I was corporate. It’s why I was always welcome and always rehired through my myriad proclivities. You never understood my value, and it’s why you wrongfully think I have no ambition. I am loyal. I am political to a fault. In that world, I only knew resilience and survival. I ate people I didn’t like or who I thought were unhelpful. I would sabotage your bungee cord and return your smile when you jumped. I’m much, much softer now. There are still teeth in my mouth and bile in my gut.
Letter to someone
It’s weird, all these things I curated to a greatness in my mid-teens have come around to be the defining characteristics in haute couture. You might know the story of how I went to undergraduate Tacoma with nothing but a box of ill-fitting sweaters, two pairs of size-44 Levis 501s (that I squeezed into so I wouldn’t have to buy a bigger pair), and 500 LPs ranging from Kiss to Depeche Mode to Iron Maiden to Nina Simone to Queen to Rocky Horror to Miles Davis to the Escape From New York Soundtrack. I didn’t even pack a turntable and wouldn’t have one for my first three months in school. I carried all of those albums into a future I had no idea what would bring; they were how I defined a pretty big part of myself. And in just 12 months, I would trade all of those albums at the Jelly’s on Pensacola for the promise of about 40 “permanent” compact discs.
The lament I have for that moment is not financial. There are far greater “what—ifs” that would have resulted in far higher values lost or found. At best, those albums might fetch five figures if the collection remained intact, and mostly undamaged (highly unlikely). I lost more selling Apple stock too early (I still made a lot, not life-changing a lot). But that makes for a good story. This one always feels like a blow long lost could-have-been. Those albums were me. And I traded them all in for the illusion of a new permanence. I rebuilt that CD collection even larger, and the mp3 collection larger still. But I’ve never had something in my personal space like those discs.
The salt
This is how you fall when it’s inevitable. Falling when you stumble is so predictable. The shoestring. The inevitable. Falling when you know you’re falling.
Brush off the arms pulling you perpendicular to the ground. “Brush off” has more intent than what happened. Shrug off is a better choice of words. Ignore the whispers. Ignore the screams. Ignore the blood. Blood coagulated. Coagulated. It made the effort to stop. This is not that. This is, I don’t know.
Wake up to a dog licking your knee because it (your knee, not the dog) was still bleeding. He liked the salt. (I type that, and I suddenly find it very funny.) He liked the salt. Not table salt. Not sodium chloride. We iodize it because, by itself, it is not enough. This is all a metaphor.
Now you are her
Heartbreak—no matter how predictable or anticipated—lands as a singularity, a before-and-after point. Once there was warm certainty, now cold distance. Once there was we, now only me. Once there was you, but now you are her.
Rehab doesn’t work
Generalizations are usually not a good idea. This one holds. This is not a qualitative deconstruction. There is no agenda. Look at the numbers. Crowdsource the answer. You can lie, but 1 billion nods move in the same way. Listen to anecdotes. Ask anyone even tangential to the process. Yes and no questions are rare, but here, the answer, like 1+1 is always 2, is always no. I can point to 200 that died today. In memoriam. Black and white. Slow-motion. That’s heroin and alcohol. Those are easy. It doesn’t matter. Choose something slightly less toxic, at least slower. Tobacco? Sugar? Ask someone to stop. Put a black lung on Instagram, then reply with a cirrhotic liver. Give someone a new lung. A new liver. Say,” Don’t smoke.” “Don’t drink.” Metastasis is far more clever than you are. It’s far more insidious than even me. Just quit. You know better. Try harder. Yes, 12 steps that anyone can choose at any time, and it’s all in this big blue book. Now, choose it. Choose. You’re not trying. It’s your original sin that makes you choose otherwise. It’s a choice. You choose no. You choose to lie where you are. You are choosing. To lie. Lie where you are. Don’t choose. Don’t choose. You. For the overwhelming majority, rehab doesn’t work.
Be better
I’m always so certain. Even when I’m wrong. The word perhaps brings this kind of question. All I want to say is a word. But why would I ruin a connection, however tenuous? I’m not crazy. I guess I am sometimes. Or I was. Or I will be. Guarantees are fucking difficult. I saw your name. It made my heart spark in a good way, and, good or bad, I guess for that moment, it was good. I dream about you. Sometimes, in situations we were actually in. And this time, I get to act better. Sometimes it’s a new situation. And then I just get to be better.
“I didn’t say you’re not smart, I said you’re not an intellectual.”
This is why you don’t talk when you’re even slightly annoyed. It’s never correct to say, “That’s because you are not an intellectual.”
English isn’t her first language, so that kind of nuance is misplaced. This is how it started: she said she looked fat in her new bikini. For the record, the correct reply to that assertion is, “No you don’t. You look like a wet seal if it had to wear a two-piece.” What you don’t say is, “I feel fat, too.”
Later, when she says, “You just called me stupid,” even though what you actually said was, “You’re not an intellectual,” don’t respond with, “What I meant was, you’re more corporeal than cerebral.” And when she says, “What?” you definitely don’t double down and try to explain.
That’s not when you remind her that she’s from Europe. You don’t say, “You grew up behind the Iron Curtain,” or, “Romania is a second-world country.” It’s really not the best idea. It’s not even a good idea.
I thought it was funny in real time. She didn’t think so.
Tommy Leeʻs dick
Everyone thinks drumming is easy. Tap your fingers to your favorite song. You can’t handle the backbeat but think you’re Neil Peart because you can hit your knees in time to Tom Sawyer. Now, make your left hand hit at 3/4 time and your right at 3/8 to make that delayed sound. Now make sure you’re right foot never meets the bass while your left foot hits metronomic time. Cymbals. But not too much. Your left foot is too fast. Now all four limbs. Now. Oh, and sing in harmony. You imbecile. Drummers are hidden behind drums. But they do things you will never do. And this includes fucking Pamela Anderson with an impossibly large drummer dick.
A complicated mess
There’s a certain beauty to being alone. A comfort. I wake up with me. I went to bed with me. Whatever I was missing is the same at 4:30 am as it was at 1. It’s quieter now. The kids went to school a little earlier and were yelling. Kids are weird. They’re perfect or atrocious. I like the way life feels right now. I like the way kids sound. I like the motion of the moon across the sky. I like the birds that aren’t endemic. I like you.
Things change though. Love becomes hate. People don’t change, really. So what changed? Perception, most likely. If I could give anything, I would go back in time to the place that was gentle. The place where you found easiness. This fucking complicated mess is a complicated mess. I still love you. I still love everything, And it’s a complicated mess.