confession

Yesterday I talked to d, the guy who always has brunch with Someone Famous on Sundays. I remember the first time I talked to him: It was brunch, about a year ago. Death had come up somehow, and I mentioned death doulas. I had volunteered for Sundance a few months ago, where I’d watched a documentary about one. This I wanted them to know. The death doula was Jewish and a woman, a type the pair seemed to have some experience with. Before d went on about the subject, he raised his eye at me, precautionarily—You’re not Jewish, are you?

d likes to mention how old he is. Someone Famous does not. Someone Famous looks like he listens to Andrew Huberman and has regular chemical peels. d looks like a writer who’s lived in Brattleboro 40 years. I told him about the four months I lived there when I was 19. He told me about the friends he has who pathologically lie and live more or less on the street. His substack subscribers love them. I told him about the walks f and I took at night after probably two bottles of wine, during which we took a stray cat home and once coaxed a guy off his proverbial edge. He was down by the train tracks and his girlfriend had just thrown him out. He was drunk in a can’t-talk-straight, slurring-his-steps kind of way. We talked to him for awhile and f did most of the comforting—I’m not so good at that sort of thing, and I used to be worse. I probably said something like yeah, she seems like the worst. Eventually he agreed to sleep it off in his truck, and we kept walking. 

I told d about my blog and lied about how often I post. Lied, or rounded up. I wrote my email on a piece of receipt paper and gave it to him before he left. Hi, d. Sorry I lied.

Margarine

Fiction drop: https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/margarine

suckers

Five or so weeks ago I left my room in Bushwick. 

For three weeks I drank, worked, and cried a lot.

Two weeks ago I went to New York for a job interview and stayed at Alausi’s place in soho. We all had dinner on the floor and drank beer. I saw an apartment in Chinatown the next morning. The landlady asked me if I was single. I said yes, and she offered me the apartment.

A week ago I worked easter brunch and moved into the Chinatown apartment. Now I live with sometimes up to five other people. Three of us have rooms. My landlady made me lunch while it rained. I’m so happy to be back.

This past week my landlady went to China. Her husband went to North Carolina. I became gravely ill and took the train home. I melted honey in hot water and squeezed lemon into it. I bought a pink nightgown.

These elixirs are healing me, that and advil. 

Today I feel a little better. My throat feels less full of fiber glass. I finished a story.

Tomorrow I will start house sitting again.

The next day we’ll drive up north to see the eclipse.

The day after that I will answer phones at a glass shop.

In a few weeks Ellie will go see the horses race in Kentucky. I want her to wear my hat because it was made for such an occasion. Then I’ll find another subletter. Move somewhere else. I’ll intern, help Ellie move to London, go to Vienna or Portugal. And then what?

I’m such an ends justify the means person that I forget the means are all my life is made of. I always think the future will be better, which is sweet of me. But then I make myself suffer in the meantime because historically it pays off? that’s what the stories told me. Pay your dues. If I accepted my life as is, I think I would be a happier person. Life neutrality. But that’s for suckers.