Holding My Son as We’re Violently Burned to Death
But, son, I was not lying when I said I’d do anything to protect you.
Anything to keep you safe.
Sometimes that meant watching you put yourself in harm’s way.
Life is pointless without risk.
Sometimes it meant watching you get your heart broken
or hearing your bones break from the bleacher seats on the sidelines.
Harm and hurt, you see, are unfortunately, required of us.
The Universe demands it.
They are two of the many ways we learn and become stronger, better people.
Or so I always tried to be better
and I hope that I instilled that desire in you.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 26, 2020
Failure is necessary. It helps us learn and grow. It keeps us humble. But there exists one unredeemable failure, which is having untied shoelaces past the age of seven.
Hope Idiotic | Part 44
And there’s the biggest difference between us, Michelle. There’s the difference that should have kept us from maybe ever even becoming friends to begin with. Hope doesn’t mean anything. Hope is what people have or do when they can’t have or do anything else. Hope is inaction. It’s sitting back and just waiting for what you want to come. It’s hoping for everything to work out. It’s what we have when we feel we have nothing else. I don’t ever want to hope. I want to have. I want to try. And I’m okay if I fail. Hope won’t get anyone a goddamn thing. It never has, and it never will.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 43
A year had passed since Chuck died. I had quit Tigris and put my dusty PhD to good use as an adjunct professor at Nevada State University where I taught uninterested twenty-somethings the finer points of Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The schedule allowed me to work on my novel, and the pay was enough that any freelancing I did was out of choice, rather than need. My nights were void of death-metal concerts, replaced by bath time with my boys.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 19, 2020
I hate how much old white people love the song “Uptown Funk.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 42
We spend our lives surrounding ourselves with the right people and the right job and right amount of shit to call our own. Life is a puzzle. We gather the pieces and put each one in place, and when we can finally make out the picture, we’re complete. But then a piece is taken away or lost. People die. Friends become strangers, lovers lie. At best, we can still make out the picture, but it’s clear something is missing. And those pieces can never be replaced.
Hillary Clinton is an AR-15 Assault Rifle
Hillary Clinton should do what ex-presidents do: sit back, pop some popcorn, and watch the shitshow unfold. My God, the woman has earned that. She should relax, count her millions, enjoy time with her grandchildren. She should write more books. But no more about her successes or her failures or how her failures aren’t her fault. She should write political thrillers. I would love to read a novel ripe with House of Cards-type intrigue, murder, sex, and corruption. Who knows that shit better than our girl HRC? Perhaps only her husband. (And please note, I’m not calling the Clintons corrupt, although, they did have Jeffrey Epstein killed, right? No? Oh, okay.)
Hope Idiotic | Part 41
Mark decided to move to New York, which meant Lou was down his best friend in Chicago and had to find his own apartment. Mark came with him on the final walk-through. It was a two-bedroom just a few blocks away from where they had been living. Lou liked the neighborhood, and the rent was right where he needed it to be. It wasn’t the flashiest apartment—the walls bulged out in certain spots, the kitchen floor sloped ever so slightly, the rooms were small, and although Michelle would have thought it was a total shithole, it was just what Lou needed.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 12, 2020
I’d rather have lunch with a Grand Wizard of the KKK than with a teed up woke white person. The Grand Wizard lunch will be far more civilized.
Hope Idiotic | Part 40
It wasn’t that Lou was hung up on Michelle, it was that the past three years of his life had been so focused around her. She was central to everything, and it was all he had to talk about. Talking about anything before The Age of Michelle seemed entirely out of context. That’s the hardest part about breakups: finding a new definition of yourself. Since the breakup, Lou had continued sinking in a sea of whiskey and cigarette smoke while searching for that new definition among the fragments of the past three years. He didn’t talk about Michelle because he missed her; he talked about her because he didn’t know how not to.
Hope Idiotic | Part 39
Brother, do not blame yourself for Chuck’s death. He was on a course to destruction. If it hadn’t been your house, it would have been someone else’s or the highway or by a policeman’s bullet.
If anything, it’s my fault.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 5, 2020
A poor tradesperson always blames their tools. A good tradesperson blames their union and buys new tools.
Do You Have Any Lotion?
I woke up angry. I always wake up angry. I eat my breakfast toast angry. I get dressed angry and put on my makeup angry. I adjust my hair angry. I reapply one of my damn press-on nails that always falls off in my sleep. Somewhere in the hill of sheets is a mountain of lost press-on nails. I don’t drink coffee or tea or juice. I don’t need a morning pick-me-up because I’m wound up from the start. Anger is my morning fuel and I love how it tastes. It makes me happy.
Hope Idiotic | Part 38
“When he was done, I stood up and said, ‘Hey! What the fuck are you doing?’ Then I punched him in the face. I almost knocked his ass out and right into the pool.”
“Hang on a minute. You said, ‘When he was done.’ Do you mean that you woke up and even after you saw Cal Keller was giving you a blowjob, you kept letting him? So, you actually finished.”
R.J. stopped pacing. “Well, yeah. I mean, I was drunk. I didn’t know what was going on at first. Not until I blew my wad.”
“Oh, my God, R.J. Okay, so then what happened?”
“I made him take me to the ATM and made him give me all of his money in his account or I’d beat him to death.”
“You mugged the guy after he sucked you off? And how much money did you get?”
Hope Idiotic | Part 37
Lou and Mark shuffled their way around a line of people, and Lou pulled open the door. A large bouncer pushed it shut in their faces.
“Line forms out there,” the bouncer said.
They turned and looked. “There’s a line? For what?” Mark asked.
“To get in,” the bouncer said.
Mark looked through the window next to the door. “But there’s plenty of space in there. There are even empty seats at the bar. What gives?”
“Line forms back there,” the bouncer said again with even more authority.
I am a (Hu)Man of Items Not Action
I use a weighted blanket and melatonin chews to get a good night’s rest instead of going to bed earlier and committing to a bedtime wind down routine.
I use a bidet instead of learning the proper way to wipe my ass clean.
I use a juicer to lose weight instead of balancing my diet and exercising more.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | New Year's Resolutions Edition
Think of how amazing our lives would be if we approached each day the same way we approach each New Year.
The Most Popular Pieces of 2019 | A Literate Ape Roundup
The Top Ten most read pieces of 2019!
Hope Idiotic | Part 36
Lou picked Michelle up from work on his way back into the city. It was Friday and they were going to try a few a of the neighborhood bars. When they arrived at the condo, they headed straight to the bedroom to change out of their work clothes. Lou could have worn hole-filled sweatpants to the shop; no one would have cared—it’s not like he met with clients on a regular basis. Most days he was the only one in the office with a handful of union workers out in the shop doing whatever union workers get paid to do when not on a job site. But wearing a nice pair of slacks and a tie made him feel a little more professional. His mother taught him long ago that what a person wears directly affects one’s attitude. It helped motivate him to look for other jobs if he was wearing a tie. It also made him feel like less of a degenerate drunk when he would have two scotches for lunch.
A New Decade Resolution: Don’t End Up Like the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
As we begin this new year and new decade, most of us are going to be in the midst of taking stock of our lives thus far and the year/decade that just was. And though life can never be a perfectly packaged film, we can make plans to live the next decade with some sort of clarity and purpose. Making plans of this nature is the default human setting unless you’re a sociopath, a nihilist, or Kathleen Kennedy.
How do you want to be defined? By one action? By some opinion that could evolve? By a mistake, regrettable only with hindsight? Or by the sum of your parts? Okay, do that for other people. Start the trend.