It’s been, you know, kind of a struggle, existing as an artist, an indie author in late stage capitalism America, where I’m trying to find my way amongst the noise and distraction, balance that fine line between what to publish here versus what to publish there, between what to tweet on this tweeting platform versus what to tweet on that tweeting platform, all while switching back and forth between the tone of the novel I’m writing and the tone of my essays, none of which I’m particularly adept at. It’s been making me feel like the system is killing me, quite frankly.
It’s not as though I’m feeling completely hopeless, but I’m also just not all that hopeful for the future given, like, AI, the collapse of publishing, the power of Amazon, the economic reality of what it means to be a writer trying to navigate all of this. Or just, like, a person. Or just, like, a queer, trans guy. Not to mention, like, climate change. Because it’s making me feel like time is running out. So, I just thought, like, fuck it.
No idea what this is going to look like, what the end game is. I’ve just got a feeling and I’m going with it. In spite of my hesitancy, my fear. Not knowing what I’m doing, really. Other than writing this novel. I’ve titled it, “All Apologies: The Beginning of the End in the 1990s.” It’s a coming of age / coming out tale set over the course and tumult of the decade, beginning at seventeen in 1990. It is my magnus opus, my origin tale.
To begin.
I’m walking across Lot F, extolling the virtues of the San Gabriel Mountains in my mind, when it hits me again, my stomach sinking, my heart now racing. It’s not just the fact that my mother is dead, although that overlays everything and only mucks it all up in my head. Just because I’m thinking that may not be entirely it. Jesus Christ, I hope that’s fucking it. I don’t know, it’s just so hard to know where all of this comes from because it feels so, so, just so fucking ingrained. A part, not just a part, though, it’s. It’s. It just cannot be, the difference I have to hide and the difference I’m afraid has finally sunk in. Always so many of them, it seems.
Thank fuck it’s not like it was at Nixon here. Most every one there more intrigued by Guess Jeans and Bongo whatever than reading their Catcher in the Rye or Odyssey. No surprise these cheap, white trash, thrift store threads never won me any points with the popular crowd there. Nor did my status as Smack. A smack would be the same as a nerd. The kids here relish that shit, though, thank fuck. The kids here ARE that shit, more aptly put. It was more than that, though. So much more. Like the Pledge of Allegiance, a version the jock boys and skaters used to relish in saying, and a great many girls, too - “I pledge allegiance to the flag, Michael Jackson is a fag,” with the teacher just standing there giggling. Fucking Nixon, man. Not just there, though. The crew guys at the Company, too. I’ll even confess that I laughed at a few. On more than one occasion. Until they just weren’t that funny anymore. They never were, really. I knew. Maybe not like now. But I knew. And if I didn’t laugh, then they would know, too. But, then again, what the fuck do I know? I’m sixteen years old. I’m not supposed to know fucking anything. Maybe I’m crazy, off in the head, somehow. Cause I sometimes certainly feel that way and I’ve told folks as much. Well, not folks so much, just Meredith Miller.
I read back over my journal when I was with Nancy in Tahoe over break. Isn’t that what they say you’re supposed to do over the New Year? Reflect on the past or whatever and then hope, strive for your very bright future, just there over the horizon. I wish I could live up there with her. She wrote these notes on little slips of paper and then hid them for me to find once I got home, in my bag and guitar case and in some of the books that I brought, telling me how much she loves me, how glad she is that I’m in her life now. It’s, like, hard to describe how reading them makes me feel inside.
I’ve changed so much in three years. It was the Company that started it, I think. But especially now. Especially here. That moment. The moment I stepped into King Hall that day. These people. This place. I’m supposed to feel better than this. Arts High is different, but it sure isn’t making any of this easier. Part of it is the difference, I know. Part of it’s Marty, in spite of having all of these beautiful Mrs. Darlings in my life. It’s just. Not the same. It’s different with them. It has to be. By the very nature of who I am and will always be to them. I mean, as good as they are to me and as much as I love them, you know, it just fucking hurts. It always fucking hurts, seeing them with their own and knowing that I will never have that. Knowing that I will never be a part of that or know what that feels like. To be loved like a mother loves.
Marty. No one I know even called her that. I didn’t know anyone called her that until I found her old work mug from back in the day on the top shelf of one of the kitchen cupboards, way in the back. And then I kept it for myself. Harry found it on my desk, though, and dropped it off at Goodwill when I was in Tahoe. Part of it’s him, too, and these things I’ve begun to see about him and how he was with me when she got sick and the way he let things just fucking fall apart after she died. And the consequences of that.
I just. I just want to feel fucking free. Free of all of this weight. Free without responsibility, guilt. Consequence. Free like I felt before my mother died. Or that I imagine I did if I could remember it all. Free like I feel in my flying dreams. I wish I could stay young forever and never grow up. I hope I never will. Maybe I’ll die. One of those tragic, young deaths still read about and fretted over decades later. The genius claimed too soon and that. I don’t fucking know where I’m going with all of this. I have to stop. These inner dialogues are making me crazy. But I know that I can’t go on like this. Bound to die, no matter what, but still feeling the need to hightail it out of here as soon as I can in all of the ways that I can. Tiananmen Square happened on my birthday last June and the Berlin Wall fell last November. It feels like the world’s gone off the fucking rails, sometimes. I mean, it has. I mean, just having sex these days means risking of your life and I haven’t even done it yet. The whole thing’s just really confusing. All Apologies.