June 10th, 2024 - Beyond Imagining
Dear TNY,
It’s early on this Monday morning and I picked up and immediately put down “Beyond Imagining”.
Why? Because after one paragraph, I ascertained that it’s the third part of the same bullshit story that came out years ago, one called “Ladies’ Lunch.” That story kicked off a tirade in my friend-group about how garbage your literature was. It resulted in a podcast, actually. Which fell the fuck apart (but was, to this day, one of my most treasured creative endeavors). And in falling apart, that project birthed a craving in me to start and continue a creative project, but to go solo. So I developed what you see here today at the fine offices of Fuck the New Yorker. Yep. “Ladies’ Lunch” and Lore Segal’s subsequent and absolutely inconsequential work, that has literally wasted the lives of trees on this planet, was a root cause of the animosity you have read in these letters since 2018.
So I reject this story. I do not have to read past the first paragraph. Shame on you, TNY. Shame on you for picking this story, denying likely hundreds of thousands of other stories and writers the opportunity to impart beauty into this world. I refuse to participate!
I will try, though, for beauty. An attempt to impart beauty into this world.
As you know from the last letter, I was on my way to a wedding. And I made it. Crashed down in a Ryanair jet (why do they land like they are coming into Kirkuk, Iraq under heavy ground fire?), shuffled out of the airport to a cab into downtown Dublin. Into a tiny hotel room that had a green light on the ceiling that was on the whole time, basking the room in a verdant hue, akin to The Matrix, that washed over me in the early hours of the morning when I felt so very alone and could not sleep. And then it was off to the estate, and my expensive hotel room, and then on to events populated by couples all interacting together, the TV channel I suffer to watch these days but can’t look away from (except one lone fella, who was, if I’m honest, hard to watch in his desperation for women, he, being so full and proud of himself for living a life of “bagging chicks” after being married for over 20 years, not understanding the electric beauty in the touch of a woman that loves you, him treating one of the servers at our Michelin Star dinner as if she was his possession, she just didn’t know it yet, him, a two-dimensional person, eschewing all of his potential beauty in favor of conquesting, and if he just shut his fucking trap for ten minutes and watched the movements in the room he’d see how unimportant all of his trajectory was, but alas, we all suffered through it, me, giving him warning to leave her the fuck alone as it was obvious that she was trying to do a job and he was just one dude in a long line of dudes who have stepped up to that plate, swinging for the fences, not understanding that she’ll never throw a pitch, never be on the pitcher’s mound, never even be in the stadium with him, just him alone out there, like a little confident puppy, waiting, waiting, waiting, so sure of what will happen next). And I did what I said I was going to do at the wedding. I watched. I stayed on the outside. Took breaks. Removed myself from the situation often. I was quiet. I called my kids many times just to say that I loved them. And knew, you see. I knew. The thing behind the thing.
The night of the wedding, in particular, was something. I kept having to leave the table because I was jetlagged and annoyed (see lone guy) and I just wanted time to move forward. Which is a fruitless emotion, I understand. But I am also human, not a robot, much to my chagrin. On one of my breaks, while in the foyer of the manor, I was listening to the videographer play “Creep” by Radiohead on the piano. And I was looking at my phone, waiting for what I knew was not coming. And that’s okay. I made a deal with myself that I would love wholeheartedly and without fear, even though I know putting up boundaries and adjusting my approach would be far healthier for me, I didn’t and won’t do it. Love, with abandon.
So this woman walked through the foyer. She was coming back from the bathroom, I guess. Not really sure. And she stopped dead in her tracks. Didn’t even look at me. Just fucking stopped and stared straight ahead. And she said to the air in front of her, “I need to hug you right now.” And she swung her gaze over to me, her standing up and me sitting on an uncomfortable bench. And the videographer stopped with the piano playing and looked at us. And she said, “Is that okay? May I hug you right now? I feel a strong desire to do so and I can’t explain it.” And I said, “Sure,” laughing a little, and I stood up and she plowed into me, almost knocking me over, and buried her face into my chest. This woman was in her fifties and she hit me like an eight-year-old girl whose dad just got back from war. I squeezed her tightly, but not as tightly as she squeezed me, her, redoubling her grip around my body to pull me closer. And that’s how we stood. So beautiful that the videographer didn’t lift his camera up. Just watched. And she let go slowly, easing away from me while dragging her arms across my back. As she pulled away she looked up into my eyes and she was crying and she brought her right hand up and put it on my cheek, caressing it with her thumb. Her eyes were bloodshot and glassy and she kept her hand just there, right fucking there, a small smile on her face, her bottom lip quivering, and then smoothed my beard out with her hand before restoring it to her side. She nodded and smiled bigger, and then she turned and went back to dinner. I had not spoken to this woman prior to this. I know who she was, I guess, based on her marriage to a guy I knew through the groom. And I did not speak to her again. That was our entire interaction across four days time.
What am I to make of that?
What am I to make of the groom’s daughter rolling up on me later, after finding out that I took our dearly beloved friend Ben’s ashes and gave them to the groom to hold for a bit of the day, and then her trying to explain how beautiful that was to her, and trying to explain what she knows to be true in her heart, trying to explain that she sees, like sees, but then discounting herself over and over in her speech, so much that her point is never made, always unmaking it as fast as she can make it, until such time I put my hands on her shoulders, cut her speech off, and said, “Hey, please stop doing that, stop telling me you don’t know what you are talking about and that you are too young or not smart enough or don’t have enough experience and all this bullshit. Stop. I believe you, stop telling me not to. You’re good enough, right now. You are good enough. You’re enough,” me, keeping on the “enough” train until she broke down and I broke down and we cried together, her turning away from me to face the wall, wiping the tears away for makeup reasons, her beauty, embarrassing enough to her that she would only give it to the wall, but it’s okay, little one, I saw it anyway, you can’t hide from it. And her boyfriend, seeing the distress, coming over to hold her even though she was fussy about being held, me, taking the opportunity to leave the exchange for fear of being accused of nefarious purposes, so I wandered off to the bathroom and upon my return, they were both in the hallway together and she was smiling and he, the boyfriend, with this manicured moustache, said he wanted to meet me, and I talked about his moustache, trying to keep it light, but then his eyes glassed over as deeply hidden tears rushed to the surface and he said, “I heard that you brought your friend Ben here for the wedding,” and I said, “Yeah man, he would have loved to be here, and even if he was still alive I don’t think he would have made it, the agoraphobe that he became near the end. I wanted him to feel the energy in this room,” and the boyfriend sobbed and told me he lost a friend and he’s in so much pain because he never talks about it. He threw himself on me, collapsing in my arms and I could feel his heartbeat as he sobbed, him, pushing his face into my beard, right up against my neck, his tears wetting my skin. I’m taller by about six or so inches and I could feel his legs go slack so I held him up like he was a boy of my very own and felt his pain come out of him, still so much inside, so I scooped him up and let him go at it, a real fucking moment, and he kept breaking the hug and holding my shoulders and telling me how much pain he’s in, how much he hurts, every day, that it never goes away, that he’ll never see his friend again, that he doesn’t know how he knew, but he knew I’d understand, he knew I could hold it, he said those words, “I knew you could hold this pain,” me, smiling, telling him it was going to be okay, knowing that yes, in fact, I can hold this pain for him, no problem, bud, knowing that at 22 years young, he was only going to accumulate more and more of it, until it stops looking like pain but instead becomes a museum of love inside you, the pain being a marker or index of sorts, to bring the things you loved most back up the surface, as visceral and lovely as they ever were, a function of human existence, to love things so dearly that you can feel them inside you, almost on command, what a life that we lead, a miracle inside us all, for such a goddamn brief moment, so I gathered his pain and fear and dread and anxiety up in my big hands and I ate it all, and I watched his face redden and then, with tears still in his eyes, his head cocked to the side, he smiled. And hugged me again, like he was trying to pull himself into me or me into him. And then, dear reader, I saw that it was time to leave, so I faked having to pee and went to the bathroom and cried on my own. Just for a second. A weakness, I know.
Upon my return, his girlfriend, the groom’s daughter, was wearing my tux top and said we should get shots. And we did. Then she corralled me in a corner when I refused to dance, and she said, “I see what you do for people. I see it. Who’s doing that for you?” And to be honest, and maybe I don’t see it as well as I should, I don’t think it gets done all that much. Ben, my lovely brother on this earth, the one that didn’t get taken too early, even though he did, he’s dead. There are a few people, to be sure. Moments. Luna, the stripper in Portland took some from me. Bill from boat school. The Wizard of Kindness. Others. But it doesn’t happen often. And I told her that. And she said, “I want to do that for you. I want to do what you do for others, for you. You deserve it.” Dear reader, I want you to know I held it together. I did not cry. Maybe it’s because she’s 22 and I was able to rationalize that she didn’t know the cost of such things. Not to mock her effort. No, the try was amazing. And I hope she stays on that train, as painful as it is. I hope she survives it, to be honest with you. It’s a tough one. Definitely not for everyone. So, I lied. I said I was okay. That I’m good. But I’m definitely not. And she saw that. Saw right through all of it.
As things go, people shifted and the songs changed and the ebb and flow of energy in the room pulled me away from everyone, where I wanted to be, winding up at the bar downstairs and avoiding the cigar smoking for fear of ruining the tux, finding the bride and telling her goodnight, congratulations, and crying softly in her ear as I said, “Today, in your vows, you said everything that every man should want to hear from a woman. Thank you for that.” Then I went upstairs, alone, and fought my way from the tux before crawling into bed, rolling on my side, feeling like I was made of undulating gold dust while I cried and cried.
What am I to make of that?
Love. I think that’s what to make of it.
When I worked for Amazon, I had a question I would ask in interviews. One that should have gotten me fired. I would ask, “Say you are 93 years old, on your deathbed, surrounded by your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and they ask, ‘How did you do it, how did you make it through all the years, what kept you going?’” Inevitably I’d hear about spreadsheets and data manipulation and project management. That is how I would uncover who was human and not. I’m always trying to hire humans because that’s who they will be at work anyway. I’d rather just know up front. Occasionally when I’d ask the question, someone would be real. And it was amazing. And they’d ask back and I said iterations of the same idea: Love.
I was looking for something. Am looking for something. And finding it slowly over the years. I don’t know what to call it other than Love.
There are predominantly four phrases that the dying resolve themselves to:
I love you.
I forgive you.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
You’ll note that those don’t have anything to do with most of your life. Your job or your soccer games or your Playstation or the size of your TV or what car you drive or how many numbers are in your bank account. I think in that bed, in that room somewhere outside Thomastown, Ireland, I knew that my isolation came from living the direction of those four things. That my trajectory is Love, and that by doing these things, living this way, seeing and recording these moments, it is the attempt to capture the complexity of all of this, everything, all at once. So big and incomprehensible that the hope is to cast you into the waters with mere words so that you will find the feeling of it, without words, all on its very own. You, alone in a little rowboat adrift in the ocean of Love, the sky above breathing a bespoke borealis, dazzling to behold, you, even alone and no way home, having been removed of your fear, your loneliness, your sadness, your wanting. Just in awe of it all, for a moment.
And that’s got to be okay for me. Even though it hurts every day. So much pain. Those texts that never come. The touch that is so hard to find. The way, in an argument, I experience so much pain, that I am almost incapacitated by it, because of the thing behind it. The way the data betrays the woman with the hug, the data that says even if I’m special, that the specialness will ensure I’m alone. The way that I can’t shut up, because, as Raymond Carver would say, “She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.”
Guys. I’m dying. But in doing so, as painful as it is, maybe I can get a glimpse of what living is.
And that’s got to be good enough.
Maybe I’m good enough, too. Maybe I’m enough. Maybe, this one time, I get to be good enough too.
Nick
