phoning it in

You can tell if someone is a good writer by their first paragraph. Good writing reveals a hidden truth about an object or idea. This truth is obvious when read. Like the end of a good mystery, the truth was staring you in the face the whole time.

I don’t have much to say in this Substack post.

I’ve been falling asleep to old basketball games on YouTube: Lob City Clippers vs Heat Big 3 2012 (Full Game), Grizzlies & Warriors EPIC OT BATTLE – 2021 NBA Play-In Tournament | NBA Classic Game #NBARivalsWeek. Check them out if you are having trouble sleeping.

I started cooking again. I had a BBQ end-of-summer blowout. Someone left a small amount of cocaine on the roof and the sun turned it yellow. I slow-cooked ribs but forgot to eat any. Maybe 20 people came, which felt good considering it was planned day-of. I needed lights to make it more hospitable and more than my five chairs.

But people didn’t leave till the morning, so it was a success.

There were 100 empty bottles of beer afterward. No one posted about it on Instagram.

Readers… subscribers…

I know it’s been a while. And you may be asking yourself: what is he up to?

Well, after my viral Substack post last month (19 likes, 3 comments) I felt defeated. How could I ever top that one?

I didn’t go anywhere since Wisconsin. I stayed in New York during its deadest season, the late summer. I didn’t get up to much. The most noteworthy thing I did was make a bunch of tie-dye shirts, a process that actually took weeks and almost drove me to the breaking point— sweating naked on my roof, trapped up there after a freak accident with a pigeon and my apartment keys. I survived. I won’t get into that though.

I had a restful week enjoying coffee with a splash of cream and losing track of time. I went to Muji and got a great deal on notebooks: $5 for five, all different tasteful colors, even a tasteful pen. 0.5mm if you are wondering, black of course. In Muji, they diffuse essential oils that make you extremely calm. We thought summer was over for two days because it was so wet and cold and the leaves had fallen on the ground, but then summer came back. I went to Coney Island and saw the fireworks and rode the Wonder Wheel and drank whiskey and walked a long way in the sand back to the Russian part of the beach.

My friend gave me a new type of Vyvanse that’s more effective. It has an almost pastel color palette, which makes it seem like a pill from the ’60s. It’s a dreamsicle orange, to be more precise. It hasn’t really been working. Vyvanse just makes me walk around and text people I haven’t spoken to in a while. Sometimes I call them and we chat for a long time until I hang up unexpectedly. This Substack is really a form of procrastination because I have actual writing that I’m getting paid for that actually needs to be good.

I haven’t found a good novel to read and I haven’t had many dreams since being back in New York, except for a few which are too personal to share on here.

There isn’t a center in the writing world. As I see new alliances forged throughout the New York literary scene, it’s hard to see anyone really escaping into any sort of real relevance. The writers I think about now are all dead or writing things that are vile to me on a personal level, but I admire their bravery for throwing away any chance at mainstream success.

If you really look back at good masculine writing—Henry Miller, Céline, Frank O’Hara, Bukowski, Burroughs—they are completely out of tune with any sort of cultural sensitivity to race, gender, or Jews. This writing nowadays would seem out of date and insensitive, which it is, but that is why I enjoy it. I want to write this way without any consequences, either personal or to my career. Is that too much to ask?

It’s kind of a non-starter to complain about how other writers behave or position themselves as far as career advancement goes. I do think a lot of bad writers hide behind a veneer of friendliness and agreeableness to get published and put on readings. That’s okay. Those things don’t really matter. What matters is writing a good book and marketing it and selling it and getting people to help you.

I think people’s sex lives are the least interesting thing about them. People usually don’t know why they are interesting. I find that people who are out of touch with reality are interesting. I find homeless people interesting. I find criminals and drug addicts interesting. I find con artists and debauched losers interesting.

I find the quiet emptiness in a person’s inner world interesting for a time. Sometimes I meet someone and I think that they will have a hard time finding a life partner because they lack interiority. They lack the bravery to say what they think and instead agree with a crowd and have no real opinion on anything. They are more like a puddle of water that flows wherever is easiest. I would feel bad for these types of people if I wasn’t so repulsed by their weakness.

Anyway.

Today I found a rare tall boy beer bottle. I prefer the bottle because it makes the beer taste colder and fresher. The bottle was a Sapporo, which I had only ever seen in cans and tall cans. The cans are made of very thick aluminum. This year, the Year of the Snake, they had a wood snake wrapped around the can. Sapporo is a Japanese beer.

When Japan lost the war they made the Emperor tell the people of Japan he wasn’t God anymore. Then they made him apologize for all the people they raped and murdered when they were trying to take over the world.

The Chinese man collecting cans outside my building demanded a dollar. I had only been giving money to the guy with no hands outside Key Food the whole summer. I wasn’t used to a Chinese can collector asking for money. I was so caught off guard I gave him a dollar. In his world, a dollar is like 20 cans. It’s rare to see Chinese people on my block, except for my roommate.