November 27th, 2023 - Beauty Contest
Dear TNY,
Jesus Assfucking Christ is “Beauty Contest” terrible.
You know, my MFA group was fairly diverse. We had some who were very “literary” and others that were more genre. The gamut was covered. And I have to say, this fucking story…most of the shit I read by my MFA group was better than this. And I say that knowing we had a woman turn in a Shel Silverstein ripoff (not saying that piece was better, because it definitely was not; what I am saying is that I was in a group of adults who, for the most part, do not and did not get paid to write (who, in fact, PAID to write), but could cobble together a few sentences, call it a story, and it was better than this bullshit that you paid a motherfucker for).
And what’s so bad about this story? The mother is a cardboard foil. The MC’s conflict is uninteresting. And since conflict is what creates tension, and tension is the reason we get interested, that means this story is uninteresting. Beauty contests, in general, are devoid of interest to most people, particularly if the beauty contest is for children (because it’s appalling to subject your children to something so superficial just because your fucking glory days are over). And while this story hints at how dumb that is for a parent to do, that doesn’t make the story interesting (but the movie Little Miss Sunshine made it unbelievably interesting; maybe take some fucking hints from that). The little girl with the dog is only mildly interesting, but she doesn’t appear long enough to captivate the reader. The opal is dumb. The ice cream is dumber. This is just garbage literature.
But maybe that’s what living is these days. It’s not madeira and hand to hand combat or trout fishing alone in Montana or any of that other shit from the glory days of literature. Maybe literature is doing a grand job of reflecting the human beings we have become at this point in our evolution. Boring. Full of ourselves. Convinced our stories matter, even our Starry fucking Night ice cream stories.
Maybe I’m just in a mood. Yep.
I took my sister to the airport today with her husband and almost-three year old kid. He was, again, a monster all morning long (the kid). I realized how badly I didn’t want to be here. And how alone I feel in my own life (which is sad and maddening). My kids are here, and they are great, but man, I’m a monster too because they are on eggshells around me because I don’t let shit slip. And this little kid, all he does is shit and it slips and slips and slips and…ugh. I realized on the drive back from the airport that I spent—GET THIS—almost ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS CASH MONEY this year moving my body around and living in different places, trying to be around people so I would feel less alone (it’s more complicated than that, but I’m in a mood so I’m simplifying it; also, I gave up on my dream this year because I got tired of hearing that I was alone because going out and doing cool shit with my life was keeping me from meeting people and I needed to give up and settle down to find someone (also, every single person that told me this never had the life I built for myself, so what the fuck do they actually know), which is like winning the lottery and finding out that happiness is actually working all day, every day, just to get by (which I believe is true, now)). And here I am, watching this dog while my sister’s family is out of town. I had to fly in from San Diego. I flew my kids out from Colorado to spend time with me. And I feel like I have so much self-worth, so I don’t understand why the information I’m receiving back from the world is that I’m worthless. Or my time is, anyway. Nor valued. Nor special. Unless it’s in the context of others. And…ugh. All this complaining feels shitty. I’m going to stop. Maybe.
What I’m trying to say is I keep asking myself when is someone going to show up for me?
And the answer is that if I’m showing up for someone else so they will show up for me, I’m not a good person. I’m a real person, filled with selfishness and wants and desires like anyone else. But that doesn’t mean I’m good. I should be doing good things strictly to do them. But I can’t NOT pay attention to the scales of balance. Because I’m terrible.
So here I sit. Not where I want to be. Alone (yes, my kids are here but I’d never see them or hear from them if I didn’t put in 98% of the work (they live in the middle of nowhere, for chrissakes, and I have paid tens of thousands of dollars in travel/cars/hotels/etc over the last 10 years for myself and for them and I still get made to feel like a dick (not by my kids) because I ask that they be driven to the bigger airport so they can visit me (and boy howdy, that’s even off the table now as the tickets I have already purchased for next month (a thousand dollars worth!) fly out of their small town because I was informed that the bigger airport is not going to happen anymore))).
My time is expendable.
My money is expendable.
My efforts are expendable.
I look at what I do in others’ lives and I try to find those efforts in my life by others and I struggle to see it.
And maybe that’s me. Maybe I’m blind. Maybe I’m an asshole. Bitter. Sad. Focussing on the negative. Or maybe I built a life that just doesn’t look normal. It’s too hard to show up for. But then I think: I fucking show up for it, even though it sucks.
I think a lot about an ex-girlfriend’s dad. He was a really, really, really good dude (still is, I just say “was” because my time with him is long over). He is big. Like 6’5”. I took him out for pinball and he hadn’t played since he was a kid. He had the best time. One of his fingers covers the whole flipper button. Strong dude too. Super knowledgeable on how to build houses, including all the systems. Just a real Man. But quiet. Contemplative. Calm. Introspective. And I was really upset with my job at Amazon once. And depressed about my life. The kid situation. Divorce. Having no rights as a father. Etc. And he could see it. We were at the table in the house I used to own in Seattle and he said, “Why are you so mad at work?” And I told him. Can’t remember why now. And he said, “Well, why does that make you mad?” And I told him. And he kept on like this, ferreting out a trail of information from me until he got to the end. And that end was that I didn’t have control and/or something else. I can’t exactly remember. But then he breathed really deep and said, “None of this matters, Nick. We’re all going to die. This work I’m doing on your house? It doesn’t matter. Your job? It doesn’t matter. Everything that we are doing, every single person on this planet, all of them before us and all of them after, they’re all doing shit to distract themselves from the fact that they are going to die. Whether you are making billions of dollars or $15k a year flipping cheeseburgers, it’s all one big distraction from death. You don’t want to be at work because it’s wasting your life and you want to go out and live it with your boys having adventures instead? Those adventures are all a distraction. Everything is. So try not to worry about it all so much. It’s just a distraction. Don’t let it get to you, because that’s what’s making you upset. You’re letting it get to you. You don’t have to.”
I’m paraphrasing that speech. For sure. And at the time I know I was thinking, Man, you didn’t have to watch your kids grow up somewhere else and work at a job that steals your fucking soul and on and on…but the motherfucker did. He took union jobs that had him leave town for weeks on end to build shit he didn’t care about and wreck his body doing so. And if it’s not that, for him, or for me, it’s something else. For everyone. It’s always fucking something. And it always will be. Until it isn’t.
It isn’t for my buddy Ben. It’s not anything for him anymore. He focussed so hard on the fact that being here was fucking terrible that he didn’t see that it was also something. And then he could no longer distract himself from his death. He met it face to face. And I miss that fucker.
And it’s exactly like that girl’s dad said: I am letting it, letting all of this, get to me. I don’t want to. I want to be a machine. And I want to control these thoughts. But I cannot. I’m letting it in and it hurts.
My ex-girlfriend’s dad, he was so peaceful. So Zen about shit. And one time he and his wife had come over to my house to do some construction while I was at work and they forgot the key (my girlfriend was at work as well). His wife had to shit when they arrived. But they couldn’t get in the house. They lived a couple hours away. So he tried to get her to go in the backyard. Said he would clean it up. She got so pissed at him. She had a bad hip, and after she yelled at him about the key for half an hour, she hobbled off down the street to find a bathroom (she wouldn’t let him drive her anywhere either, I have no idea why; humans are trash). So, this guy goes into my back yard and cries about how fucking stupid he is because he forgot a key while he removes, by hand, a blackberry bush that was the size of multiple sedans. By the time I got home, his wife was back, they were in the house (my girlfriend got home before me), there was a massive pile of spiky vines in the backyard, and his hands were savagely destroyed.
I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know what to make of my sister’s kid who is spoiled and emotionally manipulative. I don’t know what to make of feeling so alone so much of the time. I don’t know what to make of Ben turning yellow and being so confused by the poisons in his brain that he forgot who people he loved were. I don’t know what to make of my heart, which seems so large and has so much love in it, and why I can’t be selfless the way I want to be. I don’t know what to think of this fucking story (for a banger story about a dead dog, try “Not Much is Known” by Padgett Powell). I don’t know what to make the $100k that I fritted away and I don’t know what to make of what my “life” is. And I don’t know why I’m so fixated on wanting people to be a part of it, even though it sucks to be in it.
But that’s the truth. I want people to be part of my life, not the other way around. At least some of the time.
People want to be loved. Want to be held. Want people to listen to them. Want people to care. And as a biased observer of my life, it often feels like people don’t. At least more than superficially.
And it hurts my feelings, okay? I’m human too. I’m not a machine, as badly as I want to be one. It hurts my feelings when it feels like people don’t care. And my feelings are hurt.
Enough of this pity potty, I guess. Yes, I am aware I made the decisions to get me here. And I’m aware I keep making them. I’m aware that I have it pretty good. Pretty fucking great actually. I’m aware that I have loved and have been loved. I’m aware that all of this is a state of mind. I’m aware that I’m going to die. I just wish the distractions were better sometimes.
I’m human. I’m sorry for my feels. Just not feeling very loved right now. But that shit, that feeling? It does not matter. It never has. And that feeling doesn’t make any change either. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. You know this. And I know this. It’s just wasted energy.
So I’ll scrape my shit up off the sidewalk and get back out there. I need to take my kids to the store and prepare for Thanksgiving. Find fun shit for them to do. Try to make magic for them. Teach them about being an adult. A human. About weakness and strength. About love. And about how it’s okay to feel sorry for yourself sometimes. And how it’s okay to want to be loved. Seen. Heard. All the shit. I’m gonna try to be all the shit for them. And hope that’s enough.
Man, I really miss my dad. He was an asshole. But fuck was he great to talk to about life. I wonder how that ex’s dad is doing. I heard he built a whole fucking house up north. She loves him so much. She lives her life trying to distract herself from the fact that he’s going to die. That’s a helluva guy.
Oh, I got asked the other day if my dad was proud of all the adventures I’ve taken my kids on. He died in 2015. Two months before I left on the first trip with my kids. He has no idea what I’ve done. I look back at the pictures in my phone and I cry sometimes because, really, I had almost no one to share those times with. And that’s what it comes down to, as I’m winding this ramble down, is that, as Shoresy says, success isn’t success if you don’t have someone to share it with. And maybe I’m just sad because I always wanted a family, which is perfectly fucking reasonable, and my family, for the past decade, has been fractured and broken and scattered and I was adrift in an ocean of mammoth waves by myself. And today I’m tired of swimming.
I’m sad about my life. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m just sad about my life and that’s making me angry at everyone (except my kids because, spoiler alert, after I wrote this we went out into the world and played pinball and ate cheeseburgers about bought groceries and laughed and laughed and laughed and it really was magical and you know who was there for most of my adventures, those motherfuckers were, they suffered my anger and bad parenting and they watched me try and try and try again, each day trying to be a little better for them, to fill them up with love as they have done for me, they were here, as they are wont to do (even if I have to make it happen) and it was pretty goddamn glorious doing almost nothing at all with them today, with these two beautiful young men who really do their best to understand me).
But, fellas and fellettes, all of this hell, I did it all to myself.
So, I’ll wipe up these tears and get on with my day.
Nick
