October 27th, 2025 - Final Boy
Dear TNY,
I read “Final Boy” on Monday but I’m just writing this now.
It’s Thursday and I’m writing this from the Philly airport. Remember my special lady who I still believe is the one, even though she chops me up and throws me in the garbage over and over? I just stayed 8 days in Upstate NY to help her sister because she needed an ACL replacement and other heinous knee repairs and I could see she needed help. So I offered to go. And boy howdy, what a week.
Oh, this story. It’s a story about writers writing, fan fiction based on Charles in Charge, and pretty much nothing. I’m having a hard time even remembering the facts that are in the sentence above. This story is entirely forgettable.
The point of Art should be, in my opinion, to make people feel less alone. To connect us to the thing behind the thing so that we can remember where we came from and know it’s all just one thing. Even if that lasts just a fraction of a second, that’s enough.
This isn’t that. These are, sadly, words on pages. It’s a waste of the reader’s time.
But I’m not upset about it today. Who gives a fuck, you know?
I just spent my week helping a person feel less alone in the world. Yeah, she needed a new knee and someone to help her with the aftermath. But that’s never the mission. The mission is always the thing behind the thing. So I cooked every meal and I doled out the pills on their respective schedules. I caretook of the animals. I fixed things in the house. And we had deep talks about how to accept herself and change her life to be more like what she wants. I did what I believe we all want. I showed up. And it wasn’t about me.
Ugh. My brain is screaming about something else.
I want to take the high road and not say all the shit, guys. All the shit I have to say about the special lady. There is a range of emotions, all enormous. But ultimately, I always wind up at the last one. Sad. I feel so sad for her, about her, and where her life is inevitably going to arrive. Everything she wants, deep down, and needs, it’s all behind one single choice. And she can’t make it. And doesn’t care to. And that breaks my heart.
But I know everyone in my life is tired of hearing about it, so I’ll stop.
I helped her sister. She cried when I left. A lot. This morning she came to my bedroom door at 0953 to check if I was still there because she had a bad feeling that I left without saying goodbye. I said, “The airport’s an hour drive away and my flight is three hours from now; how the fuck would I get there and did you bother to look at a clock?” She had not. I made a bunch of breakfast burritos up and left them in the fridge. I said goodbye to the animals, of which Rosebud, a chestnut horse, when I told her that I was leaving, stopped hay chomping and placed her neck on my neck and then spun a circle, throwing me sideways because, guys, I don’t know if you know this but racehorses are fucking huge, and snorted at me before going back to the hay. I pissed her off. I get it.
I’m a little high right now so I can’t quite explain what I’m trying to say. I had something brought to my attention this week which I hope changes my life. Or maybe it already has. I was talking about niche writing and how I have no niche. Been published here and there. But what is it that I write? And the word empathology popped out of my mouth. I just care about all of you. So much. Like, I came to NY to help. And seeing how happy that made the special lady’s sister made me happy. Not just happy, which is superficial and temporary, but, like, whole. Whole! And another lady in my life said that’s what I do. I’m here to do this. Make people feel less alone. And she and I talked about my last couple of years and how many people’s lives I’ve changed. I just cried. I’ll tell you, it feels great to write a story that clicks. That feels like you captured it, wrestled it free from the ether and brought it down to paper, a gift to have witnessed at all. And then if some crazy miracle happens, it gets published and someone reads it, and they feel less alone, that’s like snorting cocaine off God’s dick. But, to step into someone’s life and help, to be fully selfless, and to not even look at it as a story opportunity, but more as just existing, that’s so much more than just writing a good story. Helping for helping sake. Just to do it. And that’s what this was.
Well, now I’m writing about it, which makes me a whore. Goddamn it. I hate how much I question my motives these days. But as my mom would say, not to me of course because she’s got herself ensconced in the lush, ermine-laden robes called “God’s love”, but what she would say if she had the fucking wherewithal to say anything of value anymore, would be, “questioning your motives means you are a good person because bad people never question their motives.”
Well, I don’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about anymore. But maybe my life is Art. To make people feel less alone. Who knows. Sounds like…ego, right now. I hope it isn’t.
I had a good week. Hard. I cried a lot. Fact is, I called my dad’s ghost and asked him what to do. Explained the situation. Told him all the details. And he said, “Do you love her?” And I said, “Yes. Completely.” And he said, “Then you know what to do.”
Fuck yeah, insanity. Let’s fucking do this.
Nick
