November 10th, 2025 - Mother of Men

Dear TNY,

I’m a couple of days late, which I know you don’t care about, but strangely I do, I just can’t seem to do anything about it, and “Mother of Men” is a godsend.

I couldn’t help but read who the author is.  I think, hands down, she is the best writer you are publishing now.  By a large margin.  And this story doesn’t fall short.  The pacing is dead on.  I don’t see much fat (maybe the part about the Venezuelan disappearing).  The language is vibrant and full of life, or rather, fear in this case.  This story reeks with fear.  It permeates the whole piece.  But it’s done so rather masterfully because the men that live in her house seem to be devoid of said fear.  The fear is firmly based around her and her experience. 

It's just…is really fucking good.  Groff is incredible.

I cried really early in this piece, but it was mostly about parenting.  I’m going through my own issues with my boys growing up now, like somehow all the years just went by and left me behind, and the question I’m haunted by now is how do I remain relevant.  I say that, and it’s something I think about a lot, but my oldest son has called me three times today.  On his lunch break, after he got off work, and after he found a key in his pocket and had to return to work, thereby getting himself honked at in and intersection, and he didn’t know why so he called to ask me, like somehow I had seen it from a distance with my steely squints and could help suss it out, but then he quickly changed subjects, rattled off some desire to see some new movies that had come out or will come out, and then cut himself off to tell me he had to go and take “the biggest shadoobie of [his] life.”  And that was that.  I guess that means I’m relevant. 

Meanwhile, my mother sent me a text out of the blue to let me know that I was the one that could choose her in my life.  Yeah mom, it’s my fault.  Oh, mom, while I have your attention, your job as the parent will always be to be the parent.  You don’t get to act like a fucking baby and expect that God’s demands will make me honor you.  Fuck a god that doesn’t believe in earning respect, but instead demands it from children to parents.  And I don’t know if she can process this, but she’s missing out on my life and the lives of her grandchildren.  What am I missing out on?  Someone who can’t say they are sorry and where everything is always about them? 

Meanwhile, I dated that person.  And I am in love with that person.  And I miss her.  I miss the smell of her sweaty armpits.  I miss the way she sits on top of me instead of next to me.  I miss making her laugh.  I miss hearing the absolute batshit stories about all the pets she had growing up and their insane names.  I miss cooking for her.  I miss permission.  The permission to touch her.  To talk to her.  The permission to say I love you.  The permission to make plans with her.  Fuck, I miss going to all the places she wants to eat and sitting where she wants to sit and having to share my fucking food with her because it makes her happy.  At least I had her then.  I miss the way she snores.  Every fucking night.  Baby freight train.  I miss her vulnerability, which, after the hurricane of our finding each other in this vast and endless universe, the floodwaters of vulnerability rising from the deep and enveloping us, slowly receding until I could no longer find even a puddle of it.  No forgiveness left.  No humility.  No fight.  Just a resolute departure.

I miss listening to the softness of her breath, the shifting undulations as our hands found each other in the night, the musculature of the midnight organ fight, the fast blood, and I miss when we worked hard and disabled so many of those coping mechanisms and found ways to invite beauty into the room.

Meanwhile, back the present, I got sick.  I probably mentioned that.  And I proceeded to barely leave the bed for 10 days.  I have lost the will to do anything.  Which is foreign to me.  My whole life I have been a force of nature.  Now, I am pathetic.

Oh well.  We mustn’t dwell on that. I did make it out of the house today. It was wet.

It’s time I’m off.  Once again, this was a good one, guys.  Keep it up.

Nick