October 28th, 2019 - The Bunty Club

Dear TNY,

“The Bunty Club” is a conflictless pile of dogshit.

I couldn’t finish.  I got maybe a third of a way into a story that was all summary of women bathing and walking through grass and talking to themselves and having all these tiny, passive-aggressive complaints when they were surrounded with nothing but first-world opulence.  Fucking entitled assholes.  I’d like to say this reminded me of some Alice Munro bullshit, but I’ve never actually been able to finish any of her stories because they started like this.  An Alaskan guy I knew, and ex-fishboat captain, used to say that Alice Munro was who you wanted to read if you were into stories without any real conflict that were about middle-aged women reminiscing about their Midwestern, dull lives.  And he liked that shit.  I, on the other hand, do not.

So, fuck it.  I’m going to write instead.  About the internal conflict of living for others when you want to die.  And the desire to be wanted though you believe you don’t deserve it.  And believing you deserve it and wondering why no one wants to be a part of your life, they just want you to be a part of theirs.  And strippers as therapists. And missing my dead father.  And the agony of actually parenting, not just letting them do whatever the fuck they want.  It’s gonna be grand.

See you next week, dildos.

Nick