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.