July 11th & 18th, 2022 - Arrivals

Dear TNY,

Once again the fiction issue is here, and I started with “Arrivals”.

Remember, I’m on a two-month long road trip with my boys.  So I’m taking time out of my day, which will have us arrive in Mammoth Caves National Park, to read three stories and write you a letter about each. And whip up a doodle, too. All on the same day.  So, you know, a little respect.

But good news!  I started before they woke.  And “Arrivals” is unrelatable, bland, dogshit, so I don’t have much to write!

This story reminded me of “Light Tunnels” by Macklemore.  You may remember a little album he did called The Heist.  Or maybe even The Vs. EP.  Those were good.  They were about real shit.  Real struggle.  Grit.  Phenomenal shit (not saying he deserved to beat Kendrick, though).  But he followed this up with a second album, one made after he had become famous.  And I remember being so pumped to hear it.  I was on a work trip in Cork, Ireland, sitting in front of a computer.  Don’t even remember what I should have been doing.  But I whipped open that first single, “Light Tunnels”, and then thought…so you want me to relate to you and feel your pain about getting invited to The Grammy’s and struggling with winning the award and shit?  Fuck you, guy.  It was unrelatable, at least in that format. 

Now, I’m not saying that he’s not human and his problems don’t matter, he just seemed to have forgotten how to relate them to us in a way that felt whole. Like we were inside instead of outside.

But being outside, that’s what happened in “Arrivals”.  Am I supposed to feel things for a guy that’s “never wanted for dick” (I mean, fuck you; do you have any idea how hard it is to find sexual partners for some people, you fucking prick?), whose boyfriend is a famous, ripped actor who provides him with mind-blowing sex, whose boyfriend pays him to live and flies him all over the country?  And little, baby, sad MC wants their relationship to be public, wants his boyfriend to stop pretending and come out, wants…blah blah blah. Like, must be fucking nice, dipshit.  Oh, AND THE FUCKING MC IS A WRITER ON TOP OF IT, WHO COMPLAINS ABOUT HAVING A BOOK THAT ONLY SOLD A FEW COPIES BUT DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT HE HAS A FUCKING BOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE?!  Who the fuck is the audience for this?

There were a handful of moments, the “go for a walk” moment and the “circling the palms” moment, that were relatable, but in this hot stew of dumpster water, they come off as saccharin and ham-fisted. 

Dumb.  Waste of time reading.

I do have some questions that are serious.  The first is:  What’s the proper usage of the term “they” as used in a story?  So in this story we meet a character through the perspective of the main character and without any queues given, begin referring to that character as “they”.  Now, I should state that I disagree with the usage of “they”, grammatically.  I don’t think one can just appropriate the wrong word.  I do agree that there should be a word/words, and understand why people feel the need to use separate pronouns for themselves because they don’t fit in the binary offerings of today’s English.  There have been options in many languages for all of mankind; our hyper-biblical fucked selves have just eradicated them here.  I was on the “ze” train, but it seems that train, or ship, has sailed in favor of “they” which I think fucks language up.  Anyway, that’s not the point.  The point is, how does the character know to switch?  Is the character not just assuming?  And, for that matter, how does any character know to use “he” or “she” without assumption?  Are we to believe the writer can just let us know by making that choice?  And if that is the case, is there not a sense of discovery as the character did not know, but was informed by the writer upon creation?  So, how is it approached?  I don’t think I would have approached it thusly.  I likely would have allowed for it to be discovered on its own in the scene.  But, again, I don’t know what the protocol is.

Okay, question two.  I had to look up what “testing poz” was, as I thought I knew, but I didn’t want to just assume.  And I was correct, that it’s HIV positive.  So my question is from the standpoint of a giant plot hole.  Wouldn’t an actor, who is on his way to becoming very famous (arguably already very famous), who is obviously super afraid of just being openly gay in the industry, so afraid he sneaks a boyfriend around and pretends to date women (and what level of pretend does that go to? sexually?), wouldn’t this actor be terrified of also testing poz as he has a much higher risk of destroying his career via that test, as I assume that’s how he must think about it because he can’t even be openly gay at this point?  Like, why risk it?  Is the sex that good?  It seems that it’s not good enough to risk his career for the love of the MC, as he does not (maybe he does in the end, but who really knows).  So why keep exposing himself to this potentially damaging outcome for his career?  That shit made no sense to me.  Especially if the women he is dating…he’s fucking.  And he must, because they can’t all know he’s gay and just pretend to date him.  He must be pretending with some of them.  In which case, he is likely boffing them, them not knowing he’s having sexual relations with someone that is poz, protected or otherwise.  I’m guessing, based on my contact with sexual partners, that they’d want to fucking know that was happening and make a conscious choice.  Like, they are making uninformed choices about their sex lives and he doesn’t care?  So what gives? Really, it deconstructs the whole story.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

Not looking forward to the other two stories.

Nick