October 28th, 2024 - War Dogs

Dear TNY,

Monday.  “War Dogs”.  Okay.

I dreamt of Ben last night. I traveled back in time two years and was at some conference inside a giant warehouse.  Ben was there, looking fresh.  Such a vivid dream.  His face was flesh colored and not yellow like when he died.  He was happy.  Smiling.  He didn’t know a year from then he’d die.  When I first saw him I cried.  And I kept crying.  He came up to say hi like nothing was ever wrong.  Like he’d never died in my timeline.  Left me here.  Left us all here.  Just standing there smiling and chatting with his long hair and his beard somewhat trimmed.  Laughing away.  I wept.  And then, later, when we were doing a walking tour, I pulled him away from the crowd and stopped walking and told him that a year from now he’d be dead.  That she was going to leave him, for real, and that he’d lose hope and drink himself to death.  And that it was fucking terrible.  And he shouldn’t do it.  Get help now.  Let her leave you.  Just take care of yourself.  And he couldn’t understand what I was saying.  He didn’t believe it was real.  He just kept chuckling like it was a joke.

I woke up and he was still dead.  It didn’t work.  I couldn’t save him.

I’ve been dosing down on the antidepressants.  Yesterday I drank all day.  I’m making a jewelry box and throwing everything I have at it.  For purpose.  But the reality is I still feel lost.  Doom has reentered the chat.  But it’s fine.  I laugh a lot.  Smile.  Do shit in the world.  I’m still creative.  And brilliant at a lot of things.  Last night I walked right up to a stranger and challenged her to pinball.  Beat her ass.  Walked home through Tacoma neighborhoods.  Drank vodka from the bottle while I ate meatballs. 

I just wanted her to use me for good.  Not the stranger.  J.  But she didn’t.  And now I believe I have a future.  I have crawled far enough away from the breakdown that I believe I’ll keep living.  But I don’t want this future.  I wanted her to use me for good.  She promised she would.  But she didn’t.  She has no knowledge of the maintenance of this machine.  And she let it fall apart.  Saved herself.  Was not raised to be a superhero.  Was not raised to save the world.  And life continually shows us it’s unfair.

I don’t want to talk to you today.  I want to talk to real people.  I’d like to be listened to.  Heard.  Appreciated.  Cared for.  Used for good.  But that will not happen.  I’ll probably use myself for ill. 

This story started strong.  But the voice got tired.  It struck me, in the beginning, like the narrator from The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.  And I liked that.  This omniscient narrator getting into all the heads of everything, and doing it so quickly that the reader is committed to the POV and psychic distance.  Excellent.  But the story fucking went nowhere.  And that’s a real boofest.  It felt like someone showing me something really close to my face and saying, “This is art, this is art, don’t you see?”  It isn’t.  It’s just beige.

Well, cheery as all this is, I must depart.  Hope you are well.  And you get what you want from this life.

Nick