March 22nd, 2021 - The Case for and Against Love Potions
Dear TNY,
It’s another Monday and now I’m in Colorado and I just tried to read “The Case for and Against Love Potions”. I say tried because I just couldn’t finish.
Let’s start locally and then we’ll go macro.
This story isn’t good. The narrator’s personality blows. The overconfidence? The melody of the story? The pacing of the storytelling? This is not a person that I would be excited to listen to in real life, with actual gesturing and facial expressions. Why would I be interested to read this person? So, if the narrator renders the story uninteresting and/or not worth reading, how can a story recover from that? I don’t think it can. And in this case, it didn’t. I don’t have to continue reading this shit. You aren’t paying me. No one is. And that’s fucked. You are publishing shit that doesn’t demand itself be read. You publish a lot of trash and bully people into believing it’s worth reading because you published it. That’s not okay.
Speaking of, I don’t see your old tagline anymore: The Best Writing Anywhere. Everywhere.
I see: The Stories that Matter. The Humor You Need.
Now, I do hope you have changed that permanently. Because your fucking hyperbolic ex-slogan was a real pigfuck of language. Who doesn’t love an absolutely improvable sweeping definitive? But, I challenge the new slogan as well. It’s basically saying either or both of the words “matter” and “humor” have to apply to this story (and all the others). Is this story funny? Nope. In fact, most of your stories aren’t humorous. Even the ironic ones. Some of your stories (and I’m thinking of Saunders here) contain some cleverness that might crack a smile, but that’s about as far as the “humor” goes. So, then the real question the reader must ask themselves with each of your stories is: Does this story matter? And no, this fucking story does not. It does not demand to be read. It will not be placed on a list of exceptional Art that must be consumed to understand literature. It won’t be shit. While it’s not my favorite story, “The Lottery” matters. It holds a fucking place, man. This potion story is just holding pages that could be filled with something better.
So what the fuck, you dinks? What gives? How is it so fucking hard to publish, week after week, stories that matter? How many submissions do you get monthly from the slushpile? How many “friend of a friend” submissions do you get? How many agent-pushed shitstains do you get (like last week’s puddle of diarrhea)? What’s the total number of possible stories you could have printed in a year? And you choose about 50. And, like, two might be worth reading. FUCKING TWO. And I wouldn’t even say those two stories matter. So what’s the fucking deal? Has the fiction department become the deadbeat sibling in the family that Ronan Farrow keeps alive by ensuring there is a roof over its head? Because that’s what it feels like. A pet project for little baby Fiction to keep mother happy. Oh, it’s fine deary. Fiction is doing just fine over in the corner playing with its broken toys. It’s not hurting itself. It’s not in trouble. It’s staying out of everyone else’s way. What a cute little Fiction. Keep playing, baby. Mommy and Daddy love you.
And fucking love potions. I’m sitting here in this café, which I come to because I live in a van and goddamn does a human have a powerful need to shit sometimes, and I’d like that to be in a toilet. And they know me here. And they are so nice. And right above the cash register there is a new kitschy sign. It says “Fall in Love” and it has nothing to do with the season.
Fall in love.
Fuck my face, guys. That. That’s the fucking heartbreak your stories need.
I’ve been writing a new story. It’s batshit crazy. Natch. It started as fiction, the kind where one uses real pieces from one’s own life, but kinda smashes them together to create a fictional narrative. And I had to stop writing it after page three because I didn’t believe the sound of my own words. So in the story, I just started writing a letter to, I don’t know, a made up lady? A lady I wish was real because holy fuck do I want to hold her hand. I used examples of ladies from my life that are real that it somehow didn’t work out with. And by the end of the story, I’m maybe writing a letter to the Collective Unconscious itself. To Love? How fucking sad is it that I’m writing a fucking letter to Love? Basically saying thank you for every time it’s lit up my life. Hoping for a little more.
I’m telling you sonsabitches, I want to fall in love. Goddamn do I feel like a human garbage. I have my two sons, my freedom (real freedom, not American Slavery), some friends, and the belief that there is power in literature. The power to fall in love with every story and have my heart broken by the beauty of all of us, all at once, forever and ever, Amen. That’s a fucking story that matters. This fucking potion shit? Nah, bruv. This is a dickturd.
Ugh. And I’m getting fat. What a fucking existence. And I turn 40 this year!
Fuck. What a loose pile of stool this letter is. And I’m going to leave it. Fuck it. This is me. A pile of shit. Unable to be content, unhappy because of it, wishing more shit actually mattered. Because you know what really doesn’t matter?
These letters.
Later.
Nick
P.S. The couple in this cafe. Jesus. Guy rubbing his girl’s back as they both sit on the same side of the fucking table. They are both here. Both wanting to be with each other. Could be doing any other motherfucking thing in the world. Choosing this. Choosing each other. MOTHERFUCKSTICK THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. And I’m listening to “Solstice” by The Antlers on loop, which is fucking LOVE. Making me think of FKA Twigs “Cellophane” and “Home With You”. Making me think of “Samson” by Regina Spektor. Making me think of “The Eighteenth Hole” by Tim Baker. Which, holy fuck, is making me think of this time, briefly, last year, where I had an OnlyFans account because I wanted an opportunity to speak to a person I found fascinating and, as I don’t do social media, that seemed like my “in” (listen, there’s a lot of shit wrong with me and I could go on an on about that; I learned my fucking lesson that I was going to the dentist for an orchestral masterpiece (in that, that’s not what dentists do at their place of work, if at all) and I won’t be doing it again) and she put on a live show and said that if we tipped a certain amount of money she would play a song for us while we were chatting and I asked that she put on Tim Baker “The Eighteenth Hole” and while all the other dudes kept being lewd and she would laugh at their lewdness, this fucking song about absolute heartbreak played in the background and no one noticed but me and I cried and cried because it’s like I’m always at the wrong fucking party, I just want to go to the right party, fuck that…I just want to go home, I want to go home so fucking badly, but you can’t go home because home doesn’t exist, not here in this cafe or my van or anywhere that I know, certainly not in that OnlyFans live show, and then they started paying her money to take her clothes off and I said I pay a king’s ransom if she would just keep them on and we could go to the beach and I’d make her a sandwich picnic and it was then that it became VERY apparent that I didn’t belong so I left, back to the room I was in. Alone. In the dark. Still crying. What a fucking loser.
P.P.S. Ugh.
