April 5th, 2021 - Featherweight
Dear TNY,
Fuck yes, you published “Featherweight”. Thank you.
I’ve got my quibbles with it. It could use some compression. Some line edits. I’m not going to grab examples because they are throughout. There are words and phrases that could disappear and that would sharpen this whole thing up. And I think that could happen without sacrificing the writer’s voice and the trajectory of the story, because those are fine. And the outside-looking-in window scene at the end is somewhat cliché. And I wasn’t moved by this story, per se. But I don’t know how to fix that, as always. That’s the hardest thing. Maybe I’m just a cold bastard and that’s the problem. Who knows.
That’s the totality of my issues with this story.
What did I like, though? Its authenticity.
I’ll tell you a story. I’m in Colorado and visiting my kids on their spring break. And we drove two and a half hours recently just to play pinball (COVID has fucked up pinball playing nationwide, sadly). But we found a spot with some good games and good beer and good BBQ. Unfortunately, it was near a ski town. This meant that at dinnertime, a host of white folks flooded the restaurant, still wearing their brand-plastered ski pants (complete with their day pass dangling from the waist) as well as their branded sweaters and thoughtfully crafted knit hats. They rolled up in their fucking ski boots, for chrissakes. You know these people, TNY, because you are them. And there were dozens of them. And I was infuriated at how they treated the staff (like the staff owed them something; also making jokes at the staff’s expense and whole tables laughing in someone’s face) and how they ignored that we all live on this fucking planet, together, and that your whitebread ski-time assfuck of an afternoon doesn’t mean shit to anyone but you and your cockass Instagram friends, who are sadly cut from the same filthy stock that should have been aborted. And my youngest (11 years; Christ does time fly by) asked why I was so mad at them. And I thought about that and said:
“These people are paying for the chance to touch someone else’s passion. They aren’t skiing to ski. They aren’t climbing to climb. They aren’t alive. They are just living. They aren’t Sir Edmund Hillary or Tenzing Norgay. They are the plebes that pay Sherpas to set the lines and do all their fucking work just for one good Facebook post. These are the people that buy all the shit from a photo in an REI catalog, but don’t know how to do a fucking thing with said gear, especially have a real experience. They are the people that buy prayer flags because they thought the colors were pretty on the ones overhead when they paid someone to walk them to Everest Base Camp. They are the people that act as if they are above everyone else; in reality, the people’s passion they are paying to emulate, those people are generally the most humble on the planet. Doing shit just to do it, not because someone else will ever know. So, son, these people are fucksticks. Worse, they are inauthentic fucksticks who paint themselves in the veneer of better folks in the hopes that one day they can feel real. But they will never feel as real as us. Not once. Not ever. They will live shallow and die shallow; they will never know genuine respect. They will never understand the depths and pain of real love. They will never feel Art.”
Yes, I talk to my children like this. Who knows if it’s fucking working or not. And no, I don’t think everyone is one or the other, deep or shallow; people fluctuate. I was mad. Sue me.
But, TNY, most of your stories are those ski people. They are bullshit masquerading as literature. This story, “Featherweight”, has authenticity. And that’s why I am surprised that you published it. This story speaks to a truth. Not some bullshit NY writer struggling to find an apartment, a beyond first-world, completely pointless untruth; but an actual fucking kernel of horrifically and painfully glorious truth. An authentic truth. I cannot fathom you will publish a story this year that will be better than this one from an authenticity perspective.
You know, I dated this girl once. And she was shimmery. But I couldn’t place my finger on this dark thread among her shimmery ones even though I could feel it. It took years, but I finally figured out that she was inauthentic. Her agenda was her persona. The person inside that persona was made of nothing. She was a shyster continually trying to manipulate the world into believing the persona was legit. This story isn’t that. It’s not building a persona. It’s not manipulating me into believing it. It’s just telling the fucking truth. And the truth, it shimmers more brightly than any persona can. So yeah, maybe I have my quibbles with it. And it could be better. But it’s still telling the fucking truth. And that’s maybe the hardest thing to do in literature.
Hell, in real life.
So congrats to the author, if you ever read this (I don’t expect that). I am not this complementary about something this important very often. Hats off, whomever you are.
On another note, I had this vivid dream the other night in which I was being asked to work on a documentary film that was produced and directed by Vince Gilligan. After negotiating my wages ($2.5 million!), I overheard him in another room talking to Kristen Bell about my wages and the wages of the other folks in the movie (she was co-producer). I entered that room, which was large, and there were a lot of bystanders in it. And Kristen looked at the list of names and wages and she said, “It seems to me that there is a major disparity between male and female wages on this list. Someone could do something about that.” Now, I had seen the list previously in the dream and had already decided I was going to break my wages up and fill in the gaps on the pay scale so that everyone got the same pay. But I was angered because now that Kristen had said it aloud, it would be assumed that I could not come up with this idea on my own and was guilted into doing it. In this dream, she and I were friends. So I informed her of this, in a joking manner, something to the degree of her taking the wind out of my sails. And we joked back and forth about it, knowing I would divide my pay anyway, and everyone in the room was laughing at our jokes. And finally, as she was walking away, she said, “Yeah buddy, well you can go fuck yourself,” laughing the whole time. And I said, “Yeah? Well you can eat a dick.” And the whole room came to a complete halt. Vince said, “Dude, you can’t say that. It’s 2021.” And some of the other women in the room were screaming. And Kristen said, “You can’t tell me to do that. We have policies in place. I’m the fucking chairman on the sexual harassment board, man.” And I was backpedalling and saying it was a joke, but she said to me, “It doesn’t matter how you meant it, it’s how we all heard it. If any one of us was offended, you fucked up.” And then she cancelled me. I got fired from the movie. I had to personally apologize to everyone in the room. I was dragged in front of the studio and required to give a lesson on sexual harassment and all I wanted to do was go home. They would not let me go home.
I say all this to say that I woke up with the very specific thought that I have signed off some of my letters to you with “Eat a dick”. Joke or no joke, doesn’t seem to matter. And I felt sick, once again, because, for better or worse, this project reflects my personality, and it seems that my personality isn’t very PC right now. It seems that my subconscious believes I am not very PC right now as well. And that worries me. Because I want this to be taken with the same level of humor that I take it (and same level of passion). Also, because I want there to be a place for me. Even if I despise your publication, TNY, I respect that there is a place for you. It’s got me thinking all the same, and I don’t know what to do about it. I told a friend about this dream and my feels and she said that they represent my whole adult life: I’m driven to do things a certain way, a big passionate insane way, but I feel immense emotional discomfort if that way causes anyone pain (myself included). Fuck. What am I saying? I don’t know.
I’m saying this, I guess: I’m sorry if I have hurt anyone’s feelings. That’s not the intention, but sometimes we all fuck our intentions up. I’m sorry. Let’s get a beer together and laugh a little, okay? I’m actually not a giant asshole most of the time.
Blech. Feelings. Yucktimes.
Anyway, thanks for publishing this story. I appreciate it.
And…eat an asshole, baby! (Because everyone has one! (except the few that do not because of birth or other medical reasons; I apologize if I have hurt your feelings)).
Nick
