December 31st, 2021 - FTNY, Year Four in Review

Dear TNY,

Holy fucking dickballs and vertical smiles.  It’s the end of year four of this ludicrous project.  Four fucking years of this craziness.  According to my records, which are subject to the fact that I’m a busted fucking human, flying sideways through a life of infinite razor blades strung about like tinsel, meanwhile I’m tightly wrapped in rubberbands whose job, as a whole, are just to keep me together, and everyday these fucking razors slit a few more, them popping off like gunfire, me bulging and stretching and threatening to come apart…this guy is the guy keeping records…and so according to the records, I have written 199 letters (including this one).  But that’s not even true.  Because one time I wrote a midweek letter that was pages and pages long that wasn’t even about one of your stories; it was about a woman that I love because she was bursting out of me and I couldn’t write about anything else.  And before this project began, I wrote to you occasionally alongside work being submitted.  In fact, this year I wrote a few letters along with submitted work.  So it’s safe to say I have written you over 200 letters.  That’s the work of an insane person.

And what to say after four years?  I don’t even know. 

Let’s start with the metrics.  I am mostly abandoning the metrics this year.  Because the subjectivity of the rating system, and the complexities that I originally built into it, they don’t interest me anymore.  I don’t think, year to year, I could replicate them in a meaningful way.  I knew that at year two but tried to limp it along.  But I will be keeping a few of the metrics.  The first is how many stories I could not finish vs how many I did.  And the breakdown for 2021, for 50 stories, is 26% unfinished, 73% finished.  After reading the previous year reviews, those numbers are more or less consistent with the past.  This year I felt like I tried harder to read all the stories, but these numbers don’t seem to say that.  And what is there to say about that?  Probably nothing. 

And that’s a common theme here to be sure.  Like, what more can I say that I haven’t already said? 

The quality of your fiction is bad.  It’s not even literature.  It’s not even airplane literature.  It’s just fucking trash.  For instance, I rated over half the stories this year as a 1.  As a reminder, a 1 means the story should not have been written or published.  Ever.  Also, one reoccurring issue I saw with this year’s stories (as opposed to the largest reoccurring issue for the past four years: “Nothing fucking happens”) was that many stories had a “Karen” character.  I have been fucking sick of the victimization in your stories for a while, but I was especially upset by it this year.  You have bad characters acting badly and when they get shit on, they act like it’s not their fault, even though they mostly deserve it because they are not self-aware.  And that’s bullshit.  Because real people read this shit.  Does your demographic need more material to validate their poor behavior?  Is Deborah herself a “Karen”, and this is why she identifies with these stories?  Blech.  I’m fucking over this shit, Mr. Remnick.  Fucking get over your New York ass and find different shit to publish that makes the world better, not just profitable for your fucking trashheap of a magazine.

And…now I’m bored.  I’m bored with writing this letter.

Like, truly, what more can I say after so many years? 

It’s Christmas morning and I’m in an AirBnB in the town of Potlatch, WA, and my sons are talking to relatives on the phone while I type this up.  And you, TNY, are what I have prioritized. 

Yeah.  Yeah, that’s what I want to talk about.  Me.  I mean, your stories don’t fucking matter anyway.  I spend all fucking year talking about that.  What I did this year with my letters was, weirdly, different.  Last year’s tentative vulnerability in the letters opened the door for me to start writing more personally to you, to bury my life content into your critiques.  And by bury, I mean kick some dirt overtop the rotting corpse.  But this year, I kind of just went full bore (also, really happy that I stuck to my guns about trying to be less political this year; I didn’t cringe so much reading this year’s collection of letters).  But this year my real life was fucking crazy.  I haven’t had a job since 2018, and this year I really didn’t do much side work.  I just existed, without much purpose, staring at the vacant places in my life, rotting from the inside out.  I traveled through 36 states.  Two countries.  I spent most of this year on the road.  And man, I was alone.  I am alone.  It’s breaking me and that was apparent in the letters.  And also, I wrote two of my best non-fiction essays this year (one will be in The Sun and the other will be in River Teeth; both in the spring).  Those stories were born of that pain of loss and being alone.  Like, I have to break myself to find the work, you know?  And you guys were there to reap the rewards of an insane person week after week.  Like now.  I don’t even know what I’m typing anymore.  Just fucking babbling like a dying brain, misfiring dream tidbits, sputtering to an end.

Fuck it.  There’s only one reader anyway.  Sir David, in your Palace of Pages.  Thanks for sticking by me.

Back to the insanity.

You know what I wanted this year?  To not be alone.  It’s maybe the most alone I’ve ever felt.  I’m tired.  I shouldn’t be left alone.  I’m a high maintenance machine, in that if no one is holding my hand and telling me that it’s going to be okay, it won’t be okay.  I feel sick now just thinking about my kids in the other room talking to their mom, what they will say, why are they even with me, how I ruin Christmas by not even having one, also the van is going to blow up and rust out and I don’t know where to live and my computer is dying (seriously, I can only charge the laptop in the van now because the other cable melted and the van’s rear brakes are having issues in this cold as weather and might ruin what little time I have with the boys on this occasion) and yesterday my oldest (15!) was throwing a shit-fit over having to make sandwiches and, worse yet, the motherfucker didn’t even know how to, like, MAKE A MOTHERFUCKING SANDWICH, even though he should, and then cutting his finger while butchering the cheese and I think about their lives at home, pure screen time, so much sadness in that, they have no concept of a childhood, just TV buddies, and now on this winter break they were sent to me with no winter clothes because they don’t have them because they haven’t been sledding since the goddamn divorce almost a decade ago because outside is fucking yucky, guys, and we can’t be going out in the world because of that.  And this year was ultracompounded by a nagging “should I take the kids or not” feeling (because I finally got permission to but know that if I did I could destroy everything, for everyone), even though I know they are fine.  Happy.  Loved.  Growing up as part of this fucked up generation which has supreme confidence yet no ability to do anything nor the work ethic to do it. 

On the other hand, who am I to watch after these guys?  I’m batshit.  You should have seen the debacle that was our summer trip, almost 7000 miles driven, a million bug bites and sunburns and heat rash and swimming with e-coli and cliff jumping and roller coasters and street food and spicy anus and the best fucking fried chicken of all time and sadness and bruises and skinny horses and fat, fucking stupid Americans and RV park bathrooms where a guy apologizes for shitstinking up the place while we are showering and it’s just nonsense, guys.  I’m fucking nonsense.

I have a lot of anxiety these days.  More than I have had in my entire life.

I don’t want to be alone anymore.  I know I’ve said that.  Maybe I’m just repeating it so it will sink in and maybe I’ll do something about it.

And, for better or worse, you guys keep me from being alone.  Kind of (not really).  Which is weird because you also make me feel alone with your total lack of response.  I really thought this might be the year you said something (because I expected a restraining order or something when we went to NYC).  But alas. 

What am I saying?

Fuck knows.  Some more notes:

I continue to feel bad about this project because I know it hurts feelings out there and that is not my intention, but like a lot of my life I think I might be misunderstood.

Reading this year’s letters made me cry because a person shouldn’t be this broken. I know there are way worse things in the world. People who have it worse. For sure. But the person who wrote those letters, his brain is attacking him violently. And I want to give him a hug and tell him it’s going to be okay. But I know it’s not.

I’m still looking for a job with you; here’s to hoping you see me through these pages and make that offer.

I think my brother dying when I was so young altered how I see relationships to a degree that might be 1) amazing in how close I want to be to another person and 2) eternally damaging to the relationships.

I drink too much.

I almost shit my pants this year about fifty times.

Fruit Loops.  Always go Fruit Loops.

I wish I had a place to live.

I wish I didn’t push people away and/or intentionally offend so I can ensure they feel the same way about me as I feel about myself:  worthless.

I wish my father was still alive because I don’t have anyone to call.

I wish you, TNY, loved me enough to respond back.  But it’s kind of hard to love someone that doesn’t love themselves.  I’ve been hearing that A LOT this year.

“The Party” was my pick for the best story of the year.  It was quite good.  Thank you for publishing it.

Stop publishing stories that don’t have transcendence.  Art is about crossing the plane.  It’s not clever to leave that out.  It’s not cool.  It’s fucking pointless and establishes a standard for “literature” that is devoid of any real reason to do it.

Also, NYC kinda sucks and having the opinion that you are worldly because you exist there is shit.  Super shit.  Be better.

Don’t listen to me. 

Ever.

I guess, as I’m winding down here, I’ll address this project continuing.  I get the motivation every year to stop doing this.  I get overwhelmed by guilt, shame, anxiety…just overall yuck tummy.  Or I just get to feeling like it’s fucking pointless.  Because it is.

But I don’t care.  I’m a glutton for punishment.  And it seems this aloneness is mostly engineered by me.  So why not keep doing something that makes me feel alone often, and then complain about it.

Ka-Pow!

Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and thank you for being a platform that publishes short fiction.  Even if most of the stories are fucking trash, and they are, you still publish around 50 stories a year in a world where no one gives a fuck about literature.  So, maybe you won’t change your style, but I’m glad you’re out there.  For me to tear apart.

Here’s to 2022, which, based on the letters I wrote you this year, will be the year in which I completely fall apart.  Can’t wait to share.

Nick

P.S. After they got off the phone, we ate food, and I took us out to play disc golf in the snow.  We had a snowball fight.  I feel better.  But I’m leaving the letter as it is.  Because it’s real.  And I wrote it.  That’s good enough for me.