February 5th, 2024 - Life with Spider
Dear TNY,
I read “Life with Spider”.
I also saw the trailer for Spaceman a few days ago. Cool story bro. Way to be original.
But don’t trust me. I’m in a ditch, mentally. Deep, deep, deeply down.
I just can’t seem to care, man. I cannot recall a time in life in which I didn’t prioritize this FTNY space (since the project started). But here I am, rife with other priorities that are, frankly, drowning me. So while I’m drowning, I’m also lacking the satisfaction that FTNY once gave me. To be clear, that list includes: having fun picking apart your garbage “literature”, choice existentialism, open discourse with oneself, and general buffoonery. But now, I don’t have the time/desire to do good work here. Or anywhere.
My life has scooched you out of it. Many would argue that’s a good thing. This project is a blind endeavor into madness, right? Wasted time, to be sure.
But I see it differently. Something is afoot. Somehow a thing I care about greatly has been buffaloed out. How? Why? Where did it go? What’s in its place?
But, and that’s two “but” paragraphs in a row and I can’t be bothered to fix either, no one fucking cares at all. Which is as it should be.
Here I am! Huzzah! Nothing!
That’s all, pal. From one meaningless entity to another, try harder. Because one day your ego is supposed to let go and you’ll see that people actually do care and that life’s purpose is doing things for others. That’s what people keep telling me anyway. Or you’ll be right, and no one cared all along and nothing mattered.
Later, bud.
Nick
P.S. I wrote this last night after a day of yuck work. And I was beat. Down. Sad. But I did get to talk to a good friend about body hair and the smells it holds and how I revel in those, so that’s good. The reason I didn’t post yesterday was because I knew the letter above, which has remained mostly unchanged, was a hot mess. I even took the time to reread the story today. And it’s okay. I like the frank language. The premise is interesting. But, I still stand by that Spaceman is coming out soon and boy does it have a similar premise. I guess. What do I know? I actually thought the first paragraph of this story was such a good hook. But, this motherfucker could be compressed. There’s so much interest generated by the story, why do we need 2,000 of these words clogging up the flow? I don’t. I think, if I remove the “me” from my assessment, it’s probably a good story. I’m just…man, I’m just fucked.
A few months back I wrote about making grilled cheeses in a red art house on acid and that it felt like a nightmare in which if I made enough grilled cheeses that I could go home. That’s how my life feels, kinda. Like, maybe if I squirt out the other end of all this work and such, I’ll get to go home. But to be honest, I’m not even sure what the fuck I mean with the word home anymore. I think it originally came from this phrase which may have come from a friend’s short story: The Way Home is Forward. And, it sure is. But, I used to think of it like when you lay awake at night at a friend’s sleepover, all the boys snoring around you but you’re awake because you wet your bed and you know that tomorrow morning is going to suck so you just lay there, panicked, and just want to go home. And that has been the feel of a lot of the past ten years. Like I wet the bed (or didn’t, actually, because it doesn’t always feel like I made a mistake, just that I don’t belong where I am or something?) and I just want to go home. But now? Fuck knows man.
I think about my friend, Ben, a lot. Did he know a year from dying that he was going to die? What did it feel like, in his brain, as it was rotting from hepatic encephalopathy? Was he convinced it was all okay? Not? Did he see it all coming? I’m certain if he did, part of him was glad. He was so sad. Felt so unloved. He would have taken any door out of that room, even an irreversible one. He visited me in my dream last night. Short hair like before Andrea. He was leaving me voice messages from the past, but in the present and they were pertinent to me now. I just miss him is all. I texted him last night, actually. Right after I wrote the original draft to this letter.
I have been dreaming about my father and brother a lot lately too. My dad always seems so tired and my brother is still 16 years old. Perpetually stuck as he was struck, having never kissed a woman, having never fallen in love, having never smelled the cowlick on the back of his non-existent children’s heads, having no way to save me or help me get where I’m going, having never met my kids or heard their dumb fucking jokes or looked at their dumb fucking faces, so beautiful that I am crying now, there my brother is, in these dreams for reasons beyond me, my special lady asking me the other morning about the spot where he died, some dusty-ass stretch of road in bumfuck, NM, and me explaining how I ran at the guy in the car after he spun out and stopped, him getting out and saying something in Spanish that I didn’t understand, me saying, “Hey, you just hit my friend, you just hit my friend with your car, man!” not having known at that time that my brother was transcending the plane in a dry ditch a few feet from the other kid that got hit, then I ran past the driver to a house by the road and pounded on the glass until someone showed up and I asked them to call 911, me running back to another friend who said to me, “We couldn’t find your brother, then we found your brother,” me, looking at his dead-ass body laying face down…guys…guys guys guys, these are things that happened to me, these moving pictures captured through my organic camera obscura and broadcast upside-down on my retinas, transmitted to specific folds inside a brain I cannot escape.
But, if I make enough grilled cheese sandwiches, maybe I can go home.
I was on the phone with my ex yesterday about my youngest son joining the wrestling team. She said she put her new husband as an emergency contact because “you’re not here, you know?”
She didn’t mean anything by it, and I knew that, but I said as a joke, “That’s right, twist the knife deeper.”
Later, this is an exchange that we had in text:
Her: Sorry.
Me: No need dude. For real. I know who I am.
Her: I feel bad.
Me: Bud. You have to remember I have been doing this for years. Like, a decade. This is my life. I recently had the realization that of all the “made it work longer than I shoulds” I could have made it work with you, like, for so much longer and would have had a better time than a lot of the last decade (it really is shit out here). I’m sure I could have. Given the right attitude. This is on me. I’m on some kind of personally inflicted hell that I can’t seem to escape. But I think I need to learn something with all of this. And I’m sorry that I hurt you in the process. I’m a backward beast. I don’t understand why. That’s not your fault. That’s me. So don’t feel bad. Of everyone on planet earth, I know I’m not there. But I can’t figure out how to get downstairs, you know? That’s not your fault. You’ve been kind through so much of this.
Her: I didn’t know how to fix it then and I still don’t know. That is difficult for me because I don’t like to see people hurting.
Me: I know, bud. But it’s on me to fix. I don’t know what’s wrong. But it’s wrong.
Her: I hope it gets better.
Now I write all that to talk about downstairs. After I blew it all up, but before she left, she was going downstairs to our bedroom to sleep. And I was upstairs, where I slept for more than three years. And she came back upstairs and said, “Why don’t you just come downstairs?” And I said I didn’t know how. I still don’t. And that’s what it kind of feels like right now. Maybe I see the way home, I just don’t know how to go downstairs.
Maybe it’s making more grilled cheeses. I’ve got a few minutes. I can crank out a few more.
Jesus fuck am I falling apart. What a human experiment. Or a self-centered loser. Take your pick!
