The Society of St. Vincent de Paul

I was in eighth grade. I was twelve. Tracey was probably also twelve? Maybe thirteen? She’d done that thing that some girls do. She’d grown a foot taller than me over the middle school leg of The Race of Life. I’d done that thing that some boys do. I’d grown no taller. Rather, noticeably wider.

My dad had done that thing that many, many dads do. As we raked leaves together in the back yard, apropos of nothing, he tried on his “best friend” hat.

It’d only been about a year since he and my mom had separated and he’d moved into the spare bedroom of a friend’s house.

My parents hadn’t quite ironed out the finer points of their new separation of duties. (They never would.) For the time being, Dad was still at our house often enough, doing “dad” things, guiding us boys in The Boy Arts, such as raking the leaves.

“Tracey, huh?” he said.

“Mm,” I said.

“Tracey.” he said.

He made a knowing face. I felt a little nauseated.

That year was the lead up to my Confirmation. If you don’t know, Confirmation is the Catholic sacrament where you join The Church of your own free will. Your parents baptize you when you are an infant and promise to raise you Catholic. But long about twelve or thirteen, you promise God that you’ll take it from there.

You know, as the rational, totally-done-pruning, adult-brained person that you surely are.

Confirmation is a big deal. It’s like a Bar Mitzvah. But without the displays of wealth or the fun.

Anyway, community service was but one of the many things on the long, long checklist of special tasks we children needed to complete ahead of our big adult-now day. As such, I’d volunteered at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store affiliated with our Parish.

St. Vincent thrift stores are very much like Goodwill thrift stores, except that they are operated by Catholics. Tracey was the other Confirmation candidate volunteer from my public school who just so happened to be doing her part there at the St. Vincent’s at the same time that I was.

I guess I must’ve let my guard down with Dad at some key juncture. I must’ve rambled on a little too much about Tracey. About how “cool” and “nice” she was.

“Have I met Tracey?” he said.

“Mm,” I said.

“Yes?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t know.”

I’ve written before about my dad’s rage. About how explosive and terrifying it could be. This isn’t one of those essays though.

For much of my young, waking life, my dad was the most amazing person I knew. He was the funniest. The funnest. The coolest. The smartest. The most interesting. He was also my number one puzzle to solve: How can I get the best of him without triggering the worst of him?

When he asked me if he had ever met Tracey, I was just doing that thing that many adolescents do. I was expressing a deep, deep discomfort with sexuality—with the very idea of like-liking girls, though I had been fantasizing about doing hugs and kisses to Alyssa Milano and Judith Light for quite a while by the time I was in eighth grade. Fantasizing about them separately, I should say. And rarely on the same night. I was a Catholic, after all. But this is what the world can do to us as our little baby brains are still hard at work pruning themselves—it can deliver us two inappropriate-to-overlap loves of our lives in a single sitcom.

Anyway, I was doing that thing that many adolescents do. Under interrogation by an adult, I was denying (badly) that girls appealed to me or even existed in any way whatsoever. But I was also trying not to piss off my dad, who, more than once up to that point in my life, had loudly stage-whispered (scream-whispered) to my mom his concern that I might turn out gay without proper intervention and/or the discontinuation of certain perceived coddling behaviors on her part.

This wasn’t a “send him to someone who can fix him” situation. That technology wasn’t available to Catholics. At least, I don’t think it was. Not in 1994. Or maybe it was? Maybe it was available to rich Catholics flirting with evangelicalism? Are there rich Catholics? Who can say.

What I do know is that my dad handled his “oh no, what if boy gay?” insecurities by expressing them to my mom while I was well within earshot. It wasn’t out of the question for him to underscore such a communiqué by punching a hole in the wall. This still isn’t one of those essays though.

What I’m getting at is that saying a grievous thing to a third party with the intention of it being overheard was our charming Catholic way of effecting change within the family. Brutal. Subtle. Permanent. Affordable.

Eventually, Dad stopped pestering me about Tracey on that particular autumn day and did whatever grownups do when they waltz back into the house they no longer sleep in and in so doing have left you alone, still raking leaves in the backyard. He probably congratulated my brother on being appropriately tall and having a girlfriend. Why hadn’t my brother been out there raking leaves with us? Maybe he had been. He probably had been, actually. Memory is weird.

Alone was good, welcome, but the seed had been planted. Alone, I was free to think, but now I was thinking about Tracey. About her very big eyes. And about her roguishly short hair—mousy and curly. Very Greta Garbo.

I shoved a big fat wad of leaves into the black plastic liner of our old-timey, metal, Oscar-the-Grouch-style garbage can.

I could be Tracey’s Clarke Gable. Couldn’t I? Except that I was short. And chubby. And blonde. And effeminate. And instead of finger waves and a pencil-thin mustache, my barber’s dowry would include a peak 1994 silky butt cut.

Very White Jesus

When I was a little younger—maybe eight—I’d drawn a picture of Jesus. I’d used colored pencils because I was serious. This was—absolutely—A Very White Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t know any better. It was a self portrait, frankly. It was me. But with long hair and a halo and a beard. The kind of tall, handsome “me” that maybe I could be someday if I kept growing up. The kind of me that a girl like Tracey might want to do hugs and kisses to. Someday. Maybe. If I kept growing up.

My mom absolutely fucking loved this picture I’d drawn of Very White Jesus. She cherished it. She put it in a thin, brassy frame. It must have proven something to her. Perhaps Very White Jesus could show the world that in spite of her flaxen-haired baby boy saying things like “there is no God” and “I don’t believe in God” and “none is this makes any sense” over and over and over since he was very little, that maybe—just maybe—there was a believer hidden in him somewhere. A tiny little diamond.

Maybe Very White Jesus reassured her that she was doing a good job.

In any event, Very White Jesus was always around—omnipresent, if you like. At one point, he was propped up on an end table in the living room. Later, he was hanging on the wall in the dining room.

Very White Jesus was, you know, like, just okay. He was pretty good. He was a B minus Child’s Drawing of a Very White Jesus. The kind of drawing one might see their kid generate and think, “Maybe I should sign this one up for art classes or something.”

My skill as a figurative artist may have been slightly above average, but it wasn’t mind blowing or anything. In fact, the thing I remember the most about this particular Jesus was that he had very, very small hands. And on those very small hands, he had long, spindly fingers with nubby fingertip pads like an alien. He was so earnest though—the way his strange, tiny hands were pressed together in prayer as he looked up to his Father in heaven, barely holding it together, pretending to be ready for whatever that psychopath asked him to do next.

Before Mom elevated Very White Jesus by showcasing him in that brassy frame, he was just one of many drawings in one of those cheap, spiral-bound artist’s pads you find at Michael’s.

One day, my bully was hanging out at my house. Let’s call him Jake. Jake was friends with my brother—that’s how he got in. Bullies are like that. They’ll divide your House. They’re capricious shitheads.

Jake found my sketch book. I’d left it out in plain sight. It had never occurred to me to hide it.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Give it back!” I said.

Et cetera.

I don’t think that I need to dramatize this. We’ve all seen this futile struggle for power in one movie or another.

The thing about this sketch pad, aside from it having a Very White Jesus with strangely tiny hands front and center on page one, was that it was also, maybe, kind of my diary. There were some big feelings in there. Some deep thoughts. Even some… poems.

Jake saw prey. He saw an opening and went full tilt. He made me sit and listen. Page by page, he went through my most vulnerable stuff and told me what he thought about each and every thing he found in there. He laughed and laughed.

Jake would recount this violation in mixed company for years. I lived in dread.

Here’s an uncomfortable set of facts about Jake: he was the funniest guy in the neighborhood, and—honest to God—he was one of the best artists I knew as a kid. He was really, truly, incredibly talented. So when he flipped through my art and died laughing—when he called me a f***** for the n-teenth time—I really took it all to heart. Perhaps not especially the f***** part, but definitely the f***** part. Something was wrong with me and now everyone would know.

Much later, I would get the feeling that Jake had had a much rougher childhood than I’d had. After those first few years of haunting me, he’d really mellowed out. He’d seemed to anyway. He’s started smoking a ton of pot once pot had become available to him.

I don’t know if pot fixed him or if he’s still a shithead, but I don’t hold a grudge. I haven’t talked to him in decades. These days, I’m more pissed at Jake’s dad and at all of the Jake’s Dads that run businesses and hold public office the world over.

No, I don’t hold a grudge, but holding a grudge and reliving the stabbing sensation that birthed the grudge are two different things.

For the purposes of this story, I’ll say this: Jake wasn’t the only teenager to call me a f***** when I wasn’t quite a teenager myself, but he was the neighborhood’s most prominent teenager to call me a f*****. It hurt more coming from him than from anyone else. And along with a lot of other forces at work, it turned me inward. Way, way inward.

Good Will Hunting

After my parents separated, my brother and I lived with my mom full time. Dad became one of those 90s dads that swooped in on the weekends to take us hiking or to the movies. I never had a second place to live with a race car bed. Divorced dad race car beds are for rich kids, I’m told.

Thus, my brother and I saw a ton of movies. So. Many. Movies. I mean, a whole fucking lot of them. And so, so many of them were entirely inappropriate for children. We loved it. This was the silver lining of an angry divorce.

These are some of the best memories I have of my dad. The movie theater was a peaceful place. It was sacred to me. It still kind of is. Dad taught us to talk about movies—not just to watch them but to engage with them. To thumbs up or thumbs down them in more and more sophisticated ways as we got older. If there were songs, he taught us how to sing them on the way home, unashamedly. He taught us how to love the movies. To be movie guys. To be guys who loved movies.

Yes, he had his faults as a parent. Some major ones. There were an awful lot of things that he didn’t bring to the table. But he brought this sort of stuff—movies, museums, music, the glory of nature—in total fucking spades. I imagine he would have been a great brother or a great friend—the very best—as long as you never got a glimpse of the guy who lost his temper in his home life. And I don’t think very many people did.

In 1997, I was fifteen. I had grown a foot taller, I’d lost twenty pounds, and I’d been photographed going to homecoming with an actual girl—two years in a row.

Dad took my brother and me to see Good Will Hunting on a cold December day. And, of course, in Good Will Hunting, there is that scene. That fucking scene. The scene where Will is in Sean’s office. And Will finally opens up and it all comes out. And he describes the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his foster father.

I looked up that famous dialogue. I was surprised to find that it’s as dry as a piece of toast without Williams’ and Damon’s performances to fill it with pathos:

Sean: It’s not your fault.

Will: Yeah, I know.

Sean: It’s not your fault.

Will: I know.

Sean: No, you don’t. It’s not your fault.

Will: Don’t fuck with me, Sean. Not you.

Sean: It’s not your fault.

When the movie ended and the lights came up, we were all a little shook.

When we stood and stretched, Dad gave me a great big bear hug. And he wouldn’t let go.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“Dad, stop,” I said.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“I know, cut it out,” I said.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“Fucking stop,” I said.

I remember feeling embarrassed. Like, what the fuck does this old weirdo think he’s doing? In one sense, this is very, very basic mortified teenager stuff.

But a rogue wave loomed. I didn’t fully understand it at the time. I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I didn’t really even fully understand what I had just seen.

I can’t remember if he tried the same dialogue on my brother. Did he really try the same bit on each of us, one right after the other? Right there in the theater with the credits rolling? Or did he somehow hug us both at the same time? Maybe he tried the dialogue in the car on the way home?

It’s all a blur now.

I don’t remember everything, but I do remember feeling both “thank God that hot crisis is over” and “I guess Dad’s healed now?” at the same time. Let me tell you: That is a weird-ass feeling.

I’ve revisited that moment many, many times as I’ve gotten older. What was Dad thinking? What was really going on in his mind when he tried out that dialogue? Did he realize the extent of the harm he’d caused? Just the other day, the memory came to me again. But this time I extended the scene. I wrote new dialogue.

In this version, Dad says, “It’s not your fault.”

And I say, “What isn’t?”

“It’s not…” he says.

“What?” I say. “What’s not my fault?”

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“What did you do?” I say.

“It’s not your-” he starts again, but I cut him off.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I say. “What did you do? Say it out loud, you fucking coward. What’s ‘it’? What’s not my fault? What did you do?”

He starts to turn purple, clench his fists.

“Are you going to scream at me?” I say. “Throw something? Break something? In front of all these people? Are you finally going to hit me? Go on, get it over with. What’s not my fault? What did you do?”

“I-”

“Do you really think you’re Robin Williams?” I say. “Did we watch the same fucking movie? You can’t be Robin Williams and Will’s foster dad at the same time. Can you? You can’t. That doesn’t make any fucking sense. Who the fuck are you?”

The Smell of Old Brick Buildings when It Rains

Back at age twelve, a foot shorter and twenty pounds heavier, I step out of my mom’s car and into the church parking lot. It’s a cool, gray, drizzly day. I walk down a short path from the church and into the little school. Mom drives off. Once I settle into the classroom, I’m informed that tonight we have a special opportunity. Father so and so will be taking our confessions in the church proper. Another good practice to check off on our Road-to-Confirmation checklist.

I feel hot panic welling up.

I don’t want this. I don’t believe in this. I don’t remember how to do this. I can never remember all the things you’re supposed to say and the order you’re supposed to say them in. Goddammit. I hate this. I hate all of you.

The students begin to file out of the classroom. Maybe a dozen of us. We walk in the cool rain toward the church. Tracey gives me a smile and a little wave. Tracey…

I try to smile back but it’s impossible. I linger, letting myself fall to the back of the line.

When I see my chance, I make a break for it. I run around the side of the church. I sit on the mulch against the brick wall between a couple of juniper bushes. I cry and cry. I feel my clothes slowly soaking up the rain. My jacket is still in the classroom.

I sit there for an hour, shivering, until I spot my mom’s car turning into the lot from the main road. I run to intercept her before she comes around the front of the church. Startled, she stops the car. I get in the passenger seat.

“What happened?” she says. “You’re soaking wet! Are you okay? Where’s your jacket?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

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I’ve been around a while

And one thing I’ve noticed is that I really love picking a thing and keeping to it. Another thing I’ve noticed is that when I can’t keep to a thing, it falls into a void and tries to take me with it.

I stumbled into a pattern here at If This Is an Emergency, and I decided that it was The Way Things Should Be. That seemed reasonable, you know, considering that I’m my own boss or whatever.

That pattern was to write essays about my autism (diagnosis (feelings)), and then to write essays about other stuff, and then to maybe slide some poems or short stories in there, and, finally, to repeat. That was working out well for a while.

That is, until I’d gotten stuck on the “repeat” part of the pattern—until several weeks and then months had passed me by and I’d become increasingly anxious to write part two of a real haunter of an essay:

I’ve had a plan for how I would approach said sequel the entire time. The plan was to respond to this post by :

Shame and Guilt in AuDHD: Understanding and Managing Emotions

I (almost) can’t believe that I’m still frozen—that I’m still paralyzed by an assignment to respond to a post that was published on May 26, 2025. This is an assignment I gave to myself.

That was almost 10 months ago. If this were a pregnancy, it would be worryingly post term.

It is time to induce

I say that I “almost” can’t that believe I’m still frozen because I absolutely can believe that I’m still frozen. But let’s put a pin in that.

Here’s a quote from Carmen’s post:

Although shame and guilt can feel overwhelming, there are practical, evidence-informed steps that help lighten their hold. Importantly, these strategies are not about toxic positivity or ignoring challenges; they are about realistic self-care and understanding.

She then goes on to detail those strategies in useful bullet points. Near the end of the post, she offers this reassurance:

Over time, these efforts help rewrite the internal narrative from “I am broken” to “I am human, learning and growing”

Near the end of “Autism Feelings: The Hope of Unlocking My Anxiety and Depression (and the Fear of Failing to Do So), Part One” (AF:THOUMAAD(ATFOFTDS),P1), I wrote:

Some days, I believe that if I can just more deeply understand my autism or more fully come to terms with it, then the mostly manageable forever fires of anxiety and depression will begin to die down. Most days, though, I don’t believe that.

In other words, “I am broken. I am not human. I am not learning and growing.”

Some days, my AuDHD combo burrito feels like I am essentially, clinically, tragically, endlessly “committed to the bit”.

It feels like I have Chronic Fuck-up Disorder—merely that and nothing more.

If I had ever gotten around to writing AF:THOUMAAD(ATFOFTDS),P2, here’s what I had intended to say:

• Carmen writes well-informed and highly informative articles about ADHD and ASD

• They almost always feel like they’ve been written specifically for me / at me / to me

• However, each time she gets to the “strategies” part of a given article, I think, “I hate who I am, and I can never change, and so these strategies are probably not for me”

• Each time she offers something humane and helpful like, “I am human, learning and growing,” I think, “I am not, not and not”

That’s it. That is all.

That was my grand plan for AF:THOUMAAD(ATFOFTDS),P2: to state those four bullet points and to then extrapolate—to commit to that particular bit whether or not I or anyone else was eager for me to follow through. That’s what I struggled to do for so long.

The irony of not writing AF:THOUMAAD(ATFOFTDS),P2 for nearly ten months due to obsessive, self-brutalizing task paralysis was not lost on me. In fact, via Carmen, I’ve learned a great deal about AuDHD and task paralysis:

AuDHD + Executive Dysfunction

So what happened after I published AF:THOUMAAD(ATFOFTDS),P1?

• I tried waiting, just waiting

• I published a few unrelated posts

• I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (something I have very much wanted to write about but haven’t because I’ve felt awful that I haven’t come back to this haunting task that predates it)

• I’ve been up and down and up and down again on the twin roller coasters of Anxiety and Depression

• The world has continued to fall the fuck apart

• I was laid the fuck off

• I stopped publishing altogether

• And as time has continued to pass, having stopped has become its own reason not to begin again—a fuck it Ouroboros

And, anyway, here we are

I needed this. A palate cleanser. Permission from my boss—me—to not write AF:THOUMAAD(ATFOFTDS),P2 and to never look back.

Is this essay one of my best? No, I don’t think so.

Frankly, it’s more of an update from Management than an essay. But at least I’m free of the task. The AuDHD snake has released it’s own tail. We’re safe. For now.

Here’s the real update

I’m putting the Autism Feelings series into quasi-retirement. I suppose that this post is technically an installment of that series. Whether or not it proves to be the final installment, time will tell.

I’d written myself into a corner. I may add to the series in some distant future if the mood strikes, but I’d much rather explore other ideas right now.

Say it with me:

Although shame and guilt can feel overwhelming, there are practical, evidence-informed steps that help lighten their hold. Importantly, these strategies are not about toxic positivity or ignoring challenges; they are about realistic self-care and understanding.

Thank you , sincerely.

Yesterday morning, my wife and I rode horses through the park and saw what I can only describe as Mars but with plants. My horse’s name was Elbi—rhymes with Shelby. Elbi is a very good boy. Would recommend.

So, of course, when we got back to the hotel, I sank down into the jet tub and started thinking about LEGO.

I started thinking about my build. The one that I’ve been putting through draft after draft. The one that involves little gray aliens and a gift shop and a stylish apartment. The one that has a flying saucer on the roof.

There, soaking in the tub, for a moment, I wished I was back at home so I could make some modifications to my imaginary alien friends’ little LEGO living room in my LEGO design software.

I want to tell you all about it.

I want to tell everyone all about it.

But I should back up.

To 2007.

My mom had died about a year earlier. It was a bizarre time, but, in many ways, it was a very calm time. My mom’s illness and death were protracted. It was hard. It was exhausting. For everyone.

So when the dust had finally begun to settle, I leaned into calming and soothing things. Some healthy. Some unhealthy.

I had moved back into my childhood home to stop bleeding money and to help my brother sort things out while I took stock of my life. My then girlfriend and I had very simple passions. We liked to smoke pot and drink beer and eat spaghetti. We liked to do all three of those things while we watched Planet Earth with the sound off and the stereo up. Let’s say we were listening to Modest Mouse. Let’s say it was The Moon & Antarctica. Sometimes we played Katamari Damacy on my PlayStation 2.

One time, at the mall, we went into the LEGO store. Just because. Why not?

It felt good to be in the LEGO store.

It felt great to be in the LEGO store.

“I should get something,” I said.

“You should,” she said.

“I love that Hotel,” I said.

“That’s so cool,” she said.

“It’s like a real hotel,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “And the roof comes off!”

“And you can see inside!” I said.

“And there’s a cafe on the bottom floor,” she said.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“It’s $139.99,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Fuck.”

“I shouldn’t,” I said.

But I did. I definitely did. And we took it back to my childhood bedroom and smoked pot and drank beer and ate spaghetti and watched Planet Earth and listened to, let’s say, Neutral Milk Hotel’s On Avery Island on the hifi and opened the box to LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner and spread out the plastic bags and instructions on the floor.

We stayed up late. We made the first floor. Then the second floor. Then the third floor. Then the roof.

Then I had this LEGO object. This beautiful thing that made me happy. This thing I could take the roof off of and inhabit ifsoever I felt the need to do so.

Montage. Insane editing. Let’s say the next paragraph is all quick cuts set to “What People Are Made Of” by Modest Mouse. Sometimes the footage is in reverse, as it was the style at the time.

Big smile at my 25th birthday dinner, martini in hand. Stealing pills out of an amber bottle in someone’s bathroom whose name I can’t remember. Crying in a parking garage alone in my dead mom’s Chrysler Sebring. Drunk on the London Underground, getting harassed by hooligans for having a big red beard. Squaw Valley, California, shaking hands with an editor from an indie press, promising to send him my manuscript when it’s finished. Crying in the Chrysler again, this time after a breakup. Driving alone in the Midwest. Back in DC, downtown, face first in a bush in the snow in the dead of winter. Not wearing a jacket. My friends are still in the club. Crying in the bush, shivering. A friend finally spots me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “Baby,” she says. AA meeting. Waiting tables and passing out on the restaurant floor when a freak electrical short fills my lungs with the fumes of burning plastic. Moving. Moving again. Moving again. Meeting my now wife. Holding her hand in a haunted house. My first day on the job in an office building. Packing up the last of the things in my childhood bedroom when my brother and I finally put our mom’s house on the market.

“Maybe I should just throw it away,” I say.

Emily observes me as I make a stern Miss Piggy face at LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner.

“I get that,” she says.

“I’m just tired of having so much stuff,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

“What if I just?” I say. “You know?”

“No, I get it,” she says. “If it feels like something you need to let go of.”

So I made a decision. I threw it in the trash.

Now, as a forty-two-year-old who loves building and collecting LEGO sets with his kid, this hurts my head and my heart to imagine. As a person who will forever be traumatized by years of financial insecurity, this gives me a near panic attack to imagine. As an autistic person whose special interest laser beam array has been sharply refocused on LEGO in the last year or so, this is… well, frankly, unimaginable.

But, when I was in my early thirties, this was exactly what I did. I threw LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner in the trash. At the time, I suppose it felt like I needed to. I suppose I did need to. To separate from “childish things” or from the version of me who had lived in his dead mom’s house and who had self medicated for so long.

But lately, as you may know, I’ve been embracing my special interests. My nerd things. My autism things. Whatever they are. The things that I might have masked for one reason or another in my younger years.

And having a five-year-old kid with remarkably good spatial reasoning who loves doing LEGO with his dad, well... It was only a matter of time before I decided I needed to get some adult sets of my own that I could admire on a shelf and not have to worry about sharing with said Destroyer.

And it was obvious to me which kind of adult LEGO man I was going to be. I would not be a Star Wars one or a Harry Potter one. I would not be a pirate one or a castle one. I would not be a train one or a robotics one. Nope, I would be—I mean I have been, have always been, through and through—a modular building LEGO man. Obviously.

I like that you can make an apartment building or a fire station or an arcade that your minifigures can live in and work in and play in. I love that you can stick your buildings together and make a city block. You can make a whole little world as big and as weird as you want.

“So,” I said to myself, “Self, why don’t you look for LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner on eBay and buy a used one? That would probably be a good place to start. How much could those be? Probably no one is looking for those, right? It’s not like it’s Hogwarts or whatever.“

Friends, I may or may not be about to blow your minds. The cheapest I could find a used, open-boxed LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner on eBay when I first looked for one was $1,500. The cheapest I could find one sealed in a box was nearly $3,000 dollars.

Holy shit! That’s too much!

So I didn’t buy one of those on eBay, duh-doi.

But did I feel dumb about throwing mine in the trash a decade earlier? Yep! Sure did! Did I feel bad about it? Not as such, no. Not really. At the time that I threw it away, I would have paid someone $3,000 if they could have helped me move on with my life.

Fun fact? I recently learned that the designer of LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner was none other than now-famous TV Person Jamie Berard! If you’ve ever watched LEGO Masters, you’ll recognize him as the judge who isn’t the tall Scottish woman.

Let’s set this next montage to “Everything is Awesome!!!” By Tegan and Sara because my LEGO vibes are nothing if not sincere.

I learn that LEGO 10182-1 Cafe Corner is pretty special in the history of LEGO. I learn it’s the very first Creator Expert modular building. I learn that a new, official modular building has been released by LEGO every year since 2007 and that there are plenty of really cool ones I can just go buy at the store that don’t cost more by volume than human plasma. Cool! I buy a few of them. I read a bunch of the internet. I learn that MOC means “My Own Creation” and that there are hundreds of designers all over the world who sell instructions to MOC sets they’ve designed themselves. Indie LEGO! Imagine! I learn that LEGO Studio is now the official LEGO design software and that it’s really great and easy to use and free. I create accounts on several LEGO-related websites, including rebrickable.com where I go by “malibu_banshee” (no, really) and I have my first design accepted (it’s a jukebox and you can download the instructions for free!) and it already has more likes in a few weeks than any post I’ve ever published on Substack (lol) and I embrace rebrickable’s social media component.

And I have a vision and it involves little gray aliens and an Earth gift shop and a stylish apartment. And it has a flying saucer on the roof.

The Visitors

And I want to tell you all about it.

I want to tell everyone all about it.

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I wrote this poem in my little, yellow spiral-bound notebook when I went back to waiting tables in the summer of 2010:

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I love regional Mexican music—banda, norteño, mariachi

I don’t know how this happened. Briefly, I felt as though I should try to explain the-how-and-the-why of this to myself and to the reader, but then I thought better of it.

Banda is delightful. I delight in it. That’s really all there is to it.

This morning, as I was driving my son to preschool, Carin León’s version of “Soñador Eterno” came up on shuffle. I disappeared into a fantasy.

I’m at a party. It’s one of those sunny-day parties at a local park where a family has rented out a pavilion with a grill and some picnic tables. There are dozens of people there, most of whom speak Spanish. Kids are running all over the place.

Back in reality, I pass an apple slice back to my son while we wait at a red light.

Why would I be at this party? Eh. Doesn’t really matter. I’m somebody’s plus one. Good enough.

There are a few uncles in the corner of the pavilion playing classic norteño songs. Some of the uncles have guitars. One of the uncles has an accordion.

Then the person who brought me as their plus one decides to have a little fun at my expense. They introduce me to the host.

They say, “¿Sabías que Paul toca la guitarra?”1

I shake my head and blush.

“No, no, no…” I say. “Es… uh… No es mi cumpleaños.”

But one of the uncles has overheard. He smiles. He laughs. He has an “oh this will be entertaining” look on his face. He hands me his guitar.

“¡Toma!” he says. “Take it!”

My mind is racing. My heart is beating fast.

“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

The uncle stands. He takes a swig of his beer. He gestures for me to sit in his folding chair. He adjusts the microphone he’s got hooked up to his little PA system. I play a few chords—get my bearings on an unfamiliar fretboard. I look to the accordion player. His mustache is so great.

“Toca… Um,” I say. “Puedo… Shit. Sorry. No, puedas… ¿Puedas tocar ‘Soñador Eterno’?”

Accordion uncle looks at guitar uncle. Their faces show a mix of surprise, respect, and amusement.

“¿Quién no?” says Uncle Accordion. “You play. I’ll follow you.”

I take a deep breath. I take a shot of tequila. (In my fantasy, I’m not an alcoholic, so it’s fine.) I begin to play. The others join in. People are starting to notice that the music is picking up again. They are also starting to notice that some white guy is sitting in with Uncle Accordion and the band.

And then I do this:

The other guests know the song. Of course they know the song. They start to sing along. They clap in time. I’m killing it. Everyone is so surprised and delighted that I can sing a song in Spanish. And such a beautiful voice!

And then, back in reality, back in my car, the light turns green. I hear my son munching on his apple slices. I begin to drive again. The chorus hits.

Y me volví un romántico

Un soñador eterno

Que mira las estrellas

Te juro, las pondría en tus manos, si pudiera

And I became a romantic

An eternal dreamer

Who gazes at the stars

I swear, I'd put them in your hands, if I could

And as I pull through the intersection, I begin to cry. I hold it back as best I can to focus on the road.

Because I remember that at that very moment, people are terrified in Los Angeles and across the country

Carrie Poppy

Something You Can Do if ICE Comes to Your Town

Immigration officials are showing up in cities across the United States to steal people without due process. Yesterday, they came to LA. They ran over a man who tried to stop them. They shot rubber bullets at protestors…

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a year ago · 25 likes · 3 comments · Carrie Poppy

I think of every immigrant in my life. I think about ordering a bullhorn and a box of red cards. I remember that I need to get my son to preschool first. And then, of course, I have to go to work.

For a moment, I am deeply grateful for my ability to live in daydreams

I’ve been beating myself up a lot lately. For living in fantasies while the fire of reality rages. For having trouble understanding people’s intentions and emotions in real life. For investing in an internal, imaginary world. I’ve been feeling selfish about it. Foolish. Childish. Deluded.

But as I was driving that last leg to the preschool—a route I’ve taken hundreds of times—I wiped my tears and smiled for a minute or two. I let myself finish the pavilion-party fantasy. In fact, when the song was over, I played it again. I gave my fantasy a round two.

It wasn’t real. It wasn’t for any purpose. But it was a nice place to be. It was better than reality. It was the best I’d felt all morning.

Then I had a moment of broader reflection. I imagined this essay. Or, maybe I imagined a scene in a novel. Or a movie. Yes. A movie would be better for this. You’re going to want the audience to hear the song.

My difficulty staying focused.

My inflexibility.

My autism.

My ADHD.

Whatever.

They can be very frustrating. They can make me feel broken sometimes. It’s like I said above: I’ve been beating myself up a lot lately for the way my mind wanders—for the ways that it has trouble connecting with other minds. But this morning, I dreamed up a little dream. It was a silly fantasy, but it made me feel happy. And then, in an instant, the fantasy ported me into a reality that I hadn’t been able to fully face or articulate to that point: The terror of ICE raids.

And then, in a kind of protoplasmic state, the euphoria of the dream and the dread of the reality swirled together to form something new. A real, actual thing. Something I could share.

I’m not a religious person. I don’t believe in God. But being raised Catholic, I absorbed a thing or two. I’ve been thinking about this a lot today:

Matthew 22:36-40

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

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One more thing about the song itself

I got to know “Soñador Eterno” through Carin León. I love his version, but check out this live version by Intocable, the band who wrote it. I would love to have been invited to this party:

I’d gotten used to saying, “Yes sir,” to retired military guys

As a seventeen-to-nineteen year old, I waited tables at a small, family-owned BBQ restaurant in my hometown.

I personally took the phone call to cater a rally for John McCain’s 2000 presidential Republican primary campaign.

Once, I delivered a large carryout order in my Volkswagen Golf to one of the construction crews repairing the Pentagon just days after 9/11. (I accidentally drove up the bus route. Another young person who was working his own post-high-school job pointed an M16 at me.)

I liked my job. A lot. I was good at it. I’d been promoted to Baker, where I made nine dollars an hour—a fortune. Then I’d been promoted to Caterer, where, when not catering, I had to work in a windowless basement office with management. I sat at a shared computer station, did data entry, and answered phone calls.

George and January were hired as a pair

They were a young married couple. January was pregnant. In the grand scheme of things, they were both relatively young, but, to me, at the time, they were capital ‘G’ Grownups. They were in their late twenties.

The owner had hired George as a general manager to handle day-to-day operations and develop new revenue streams. January just so happened to be an excellent, experienced server. The couple had just moved from the Philippines and were both in need of work. The owner was so charmed by George that he even hired January’s brother as a floor supervisor. Suddenly, three new people were running the show at the restaurant.

George and January were very publicly in love with one another and with their unborn child and with life and with Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior.

I’d grown up Catholic. As such, I hadn’t really spent much time with this kind of Evangelical—the kind to whom happiness, business, God, and family all seem to be threads of the same cloth. It was the first time I was exposed to this particular kind of performative joy. Sure, I’d seen plenty of people performing misery in my Catholic circles, but the effervescence of the born again was new to me. Suffice it to say, I assumed George and January must have been sincere in their overflowingness.

George was tidy

He was always clean shaven, though sometimes he forgot to remove the little bits of toilet paper from his chin that he’d used to stop the bleeding where he’d nicked himself. He was always sweating. He smelled like a Macy’s perfume counter. He took a shine to me.

My dad died when I was in my senior year of high school. This has come up in a few of my other essays, but I mention it here to highlight that I was publicly “the kid whose dad had died” at that point in my life. It happens when you lose someone that young. “My dad died last year” becomes a part of stage-two banter when you’re getting to know people. In other words, I might as well have had “vulnerable” written on my forehead.

George often made a point of championing me—letting the owner know what a great job I was doing. I’m sure he’s a part of the reason I was promoted often and quickly. In hindsight, I wonder if my shuffle from baking to catering was his idea. As a caterer, I would spend a lot more time working with him in the windowless basement office than I ever would have as a baker.

He assigned himself as my mentor

One day, he started calling me his friend. He made a point of saying the word: Friend. He said it often and unnecessarily.

“Paul,” he would say. “I’m so glad you’re my friend.”

Or:

“I think we’re friends. Don’t you think we’re friends?”

Like that.

While working at the restaurant, I transitioned into early adult life. I still lived at home, but I’d started commuting to college about forty-five minutes from where I lived. I wasn’t happy about this. My mom and I butted heads on it constantly. I desperately wanted to move away and live in a dorm like “everyone else” did. But maybe that’s a story for another day.

While working at the restaurant, I started dating a colleague about my age. We transitioned from waiting tables together to trying to make it work long distance when they went off to live in the dorms at their own college. It was wonderful and thrilling and hard.

One evening, George and I were assembling cardboard boxes for a catering order. We were alone in the basement office. The industrial dryer was rumbling. We were surrounded by metal racks of supplies.

“Paul,” said George.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Don’t you think,” he said, “that friends sometimes hug?”

I suppose young me thought about this question without any kind of critical filter.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes.”

“Do you hug your friends?”

I did hug friends. Girls. I hugged my friends who were girls. I couldn’t think of any friends who were boys that I hugged. Well, maybe some of them. Sometimes. Like at a funeral.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Would you like it if I hugged you?” he said.

“Uh,” I said.

He was sweaty. The Macy’s perfume counter was thick in the air.

“I’m so glad you’re my friend,” he said. “I like to hug my friends. To let them know that I love them. Maybe this is different in America.”

“No, I understand,” I said.

I loved learning about other cultures. His wife January cooked wonderful food.

“Would you like a hug from me?” he said. “I would like that very much.”

What was the harm?

“Okay,” I said.

And then he hugged me. He held me close. Gently. His hand was on my lower back. Moving around. I could feel his sweat. I could feel the grittiness of his stubble on my cheek. His cologne was so strong. It was a long hug. Then it was over.

I suppose I didn’t think much of the first hug after my shift was over. Just a guy who liked hugs. George was quirky.

But there were more hugs

There were a lot of them. Sometimes when we were alone. Sometimes when other people were around. They were always sweaty. They were always long. They always involved my lower back and sometimes my hips. They began to make me deeply uncomfortable in short order, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be culturally insensitive. I didn’t want to be homophobic. I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings.

“I love that we’re friends,” he’d say. “I love that friends can hug.”

All the while, he continued to champion and mentor me at work. Then, one day, after hugging me in the basement alone, something new happened.

“Friends can keep each other’s secrets, can’t they?” he said. “They don’t have to explain everything to everyone else. Some things are just for friends.”

I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. He seemed angry, but what on Earth about? I was very confused and very unnerved. Something was definitely not right with this guy. Nothing further happened, but I squirmed my way out of that conversation and went home.

That’s when (and why) I decided I no longer wanted to work at the restaurant

But that’s not what I told other people. This is how I explained it to the owner and to my mom and to my friends:

I need to focus on school. It’s too much. Having this job and commuting forty-five minutes to campus. I need to move to campus. When I move to campus, I need to quit this job. I can’t do both. Once I move to campus, I’ll find a new job near there.

To my mom specifically, I stressed that I was dying living at home. That I was desperate to grow up. That I needed, needed, needed to move into the dorms. That I was suffocating living in my hometown. This, in and of itself, was all very true at the time.

I stressed that school was more important than the job. That we could afford for me to focus on classes full time. That I would find a new job soon near campus. Neither of those last two things would turn out to be true.

I don’t remember exactly how it played out, but I left the restaurant on good terms. I would stop by and say hi. I still loved the food. Some of my former colleagues were proud of me for going to college full time. Some of them began to resent me—the kid who had worked when it suited him and then suddenly felt like he was too busy and too secure to have a job.

My mom would soon be diagnosed with ovarian cancer. In a few years, she’d be gone. A few years after that, I was living with two guys from my grad school cohort in a townhouse near the same university that I’d commuted to so many times as an undergrad. I was in debt to the tune of eighty-thousand dollars because of student loans I’d taken out without any real guidance. I’d long since blown through the money I’d inherited when my mom had died. My drinking was out of control. I embarrassed myself day after day. I was miserable.

I had hardly worked since I’d left the restaurant. There had been a year or so where I’d worked part time at the campus bookstore for seven dollars an hour, but when I started grad school, I made the same decision I’d made when I left the restaurant. I needed to focus on school, so I quit the bookstore and took out more student loans.

In the spring of 2010, I quit drinking

I was wired and raw. I was sitting in the middle of a thousand life choices and not feeling great about most of them. My roommates were keeping their distance. By that point, the lease was coming up and we’d all decided to go our separate ways. I didn’t have any money anyway. I’d started to borrow from friends to pay back my family.

My roommates and I had come to understand that our landlord was an absentee slumlord. We’d gotten a “deal” on rent, but the townhouse was a mess. We’d never met the landlord, but after a few phone calls, we were all afraid of him. He was retired military. He “couldn’t visit the house himself” because of his knee injuries from the war. He’d send unlicensed dudes to do handiwork when really pressed. I always pictured the angry grandpa from King of the Hill when our landlord was barking orders at us on the phone.

“Now, the fella I sent out to look at the house tells me the grout in the master bathroom is a mess,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

The grout in that bathroom was a mess, but it had always been a mess. It was a mess when we moved in.

“I need you boys to take care of that,”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I was sober. I was crazy. I didn’t have much else going on in my life. I’d recently started a job making minimum wage at Urban Outfitters at the local mall, but I was about to get fired. The new manager wasn’t particularly interested in how many weeks of sobriety I had and wasn’t particularly happy that I had a reputation for showing up hungover and ripe with the smell of alcohol.

So I went to Home Depot and I bought some caulk. I used my dad’s old tools to redo the grout in the bathroom because that’s what an overbearing, manipulative older man had told me to do.

That fall, I enrolled in a class with a good friend

We’re friends to this day. We were fiction writers, but it was a poetry class. Something new for both of us. The class was called “Bookish Beasts” and it focused on visual poetry. We learned and practiced all kinds of wild stuff in that class. We learned about erasure. We learned the basics of bookbinding. “X-ACTO knife” was on the list of required materials.

One day, at the thrift store, I came across an oil painting. It was a portrait of a blond woman in a yellow dress with Carol Brady hair. She was resting her chin on her hands. She had a diamond ring. She was smiling. It seemed to me that she had a secret.

The painting measured about three feet by four. It was clearly made with love. It had been framed professionally. It was signed and dated ‘70 by the artist. I hung it up in the kitchen of our little townhouse. We’d all be moving out soon. Things were already in boxes.

One night, as I was doing touch-up paint in the kitchen at the request of the grandpa from King of the Hill, I had a vision. I stayed up all night to make it a reality. I used my new X-ACTO knife to cut letter-shaped stencils into scraps of cardboard. I positioned them carefully over the oil painting of the woman in yellow and I filled them in with cheap, off-white house paint.

Soon thereafter, I moved back into my childhood home with my brother. My brother, who’d managed to graduate on time and hold a steady job during all that we’d been through together. He took care of me for a while. And once I’d settled in, it was time to find a job. I knew I needed to, but I was paralyzed by the thought. All of my grad school friends were either adults who’d come in as grown, working professionals or they were young people who’d nabbed their first professional gigs as grad students. I’d just quit Urban Outfitters before they could fire me.

I had panic attacks whenever I tried to work on my resume

I’d gone to the local Target and picked up an application, but I’d chickened out. I was twenty-seven years old.

One day, I did the only thing I was comfortable doing. As weird as it may seem, I drove to the old restaurant and asked if the owner was around. I explained that I really needed work and asked whether he had any openings for waiters. He said that he did. He was happy to have me back. I was so ashamed.

To my surprise, almost a decade after I’d left, a few of the same people were still working there. One of them was January, George’s wife. We had an awkward reunion.

“Is… George still here?” I said.

“No,” she said.

Something was wrong. She had a far-off look.

“No,” she said. “He and John moved back to the Philippines.”

“Oh,” I said.

Later, another one of the long-time servers pulled me aside.

“George and January got a divorce,” she said. “Yeah, it was… We don’t talk about George.”

I worked my ass off there. I got back in shape. I slowly got my mind back from the years of drinking. I was humiliated at first. The weather had rusted me. I was bad at waiting tables. Eventually, I was humbled. Eventually, I was mediocre at waiting tables.

And then one day, when it was time, I left

Diamonds forever

Snow melts on a sunny day

I'm leaving you, Carl

Paul Zaic

2010

Epilogue

As a single person, I hung Diamonds Forever proudly in every apartment I ever lived in. When I moved in with my wife, I gave it to my friend Dan, who hung it proudly in his single-person apartment. When he moved in with his wife, he gave it to a colleague at work. I reached out to Dan’s colleague on LinkedIn, and she was kind enough to send me pictures of it in its current home for me to use with this essay. Thank you to her and to Dan for taking such good care of it. And thank you to the woman in yellow, whoever you are.

Finally, I should say that George and January are real people, but those are not their real names.

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When I was pretty sure I had autism but hadn’t yet received my professional diagnosis,

I had a window of optimism

regarding my ongoing, unrelenting depression and anxiety.

Series Note

This essay is part of an ongoing series in which I explore each of the feelings that washed over me when I received my diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at forty two.

I tested that optimism on my then psychiatrist, who I later replaced. I didn’t replace her for any single awful offense. I replaced her for being a nothing-if-not-consistent B- psychiatrist.

“I’ve been wondering,” I said. “If I do go through with this testing and it turns out…”

She smiled, placidly, like Janice, the Muppet who plays lead guitar for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

“… if it turns out I do have autism,” I said, “would that diagnosis have any impact on my medication? Like, do some antidepressants and antianxiety meds work better for people with autism?”

“Well,” she said, “it will be good information to have. But whether or not a person’s depression or anxiety is correlated to autism, it’s the symptoms themselves we’re treating, ultimately. As far as finding the right combination of medications for you… Well, our approach wouldn’t change with an autism diagnosis.”

“Huh,” I said.

I’m paraphrasing a conversation from months ago. I could be misremembering, but that was my takeaway. “No, sorry, dude. Knowing that you have (or do not have) autism is not going to unlock any obvious new medication avenues to treat your anxiety and depression.”

Or maybe I misheard? Or maybe I misremembered? Or maybe she was wrong? Wrongish? Incurious?

A quick search tells me she was probably correct. I am at least reassured knowing that I’m not the first person to ask this question. Researchers are researching it. Maybe someday the answer will be, “Yes, it’s called Sensapram. We don’t fully understand the mechanism, but it converts the sound of others chewing into collectible figurines.”

Soon after broaching the subject with my B- psychiatrist, I would have my autism diagnosis. And soon after that, I would move on to an A+ psychiatrist. The A+ psychiatrist’s feelings on the matter were (and are) the same (mostly) as those of the B- psychiatrist. She didn’t pull rank or anything like that. She just gave me a more detailed answer and was better about communicating the way ahead.

Assuming your psychiatrist is certified and knowledgeable as a baseline of competency, the key differences between an A+ and a B- may be subtle but they are important. To earn an A+ from me, The Patient, my psychiatrist needs to:

• Ask a lot of questions

• Take time in discussion

• Communicate proactively with other providers in my life

• Remember to fill prescriptions and plan ahead for trips out of town

That’s it. My current A+ psychiatrist has not found the perfect meds for me or vanquished my depression and anxiety. I don’t require that for an A+. I just require a clear plan to get closer to that, a passion for continuing education, and a “detective” vibe—someone who enjoys solving puzzles rather than someone who is annoyed by them.

Anyway, back when the B- psychiatrist told me an autism diagnosis wasn’t a golden ticket to a bespoke suite of anxiety and depression meds, I suppose I told myself that she was probably some combination of wrong and cautious. I had already started to wonder whether there was an A+ psychiatrist somewhere nearby who was taking new clients. Dr. B- had made a simple case with sound-enough reasoning, but I had doubt for doubt’s sake. Interestingly, my mistrust of Dr. B- gave me hope, which, briefly, cheered me up.

And as I was cognitive-dissonancing that

I began to quietly move a few of my hope eggs from my psychiatry basket into my therapy basket.

My thinking was something like this:

Okay, so if

autism diagnosis + psychiatry ≠ end of anxiety & depression

Then perhaps

autism diagnosis + discussion of diagnosis in talk therapy = end of anxiety & depression

Or perhaps

autism diagnosis + blogging my related feelings = end of anxiety & depression

Maybe?

Yeah?

Anybody?

Here’s the thing

It’s been about eight months since my twinsies diagnoses of ASD and ADHD1. And, wouldn’t you know it, I am still depressed. And I am still anxious. I’ve been up and down and up again on different medications and have transitioned to Dr. A+, yet both conditions are as bad as they’ve ever been. Along the way, I’ve had little moments of optimism that have revived me. I’ve written about them here. Several times over the past few months, I’ve perked up. More than once, I’ve clung on to the latest “maybe this will be the thing that helps me turn the corner,” and I’ve been moved enough to write about that latest thing in some form or another.

Some days, I believe that if I can just more deeply understand my autism or more fully come to terms with it, then the mostly manageable forever fires of anxiety and depression will begin to die down. Most days, though, I don’t believe that. Most days2, I remember that depression and anxiety are a pair of those novelty birthday candles that sizzle and sizzle while you blow and blow on them like a sad dope.

So, here I sit, metaphorically speaking, alone at my dining room table, wearing my special hat, striving to more deeply understand my autism, and enduring perpetual defeat by novelty candles at an unwanted surprise party, which, for some reason, I keep throwing for myself. I sit here thinking my funny little thoughts. I mean, I don’t really need joy. What if I threw the cake into the middle of the ocean? No. No. Too complicated. I would need boat. Maybe just. Lie down for a while. Just. If I could put my head down. Just. For a little while.”

Remember how I said I’d begun to quietly move a few of my hope eggs from my psychiatry basket into my therapy basket?

Well, to put it simply, progress in therapy has been slow going too. Sometimes, it’s has been going sideways or slightly backward.

But I’d like to explore that in its own essay in the context of something else I read recently. So let’s consider this the end of part one of a two-part post.

A Glimpse of Part Two

So far, my diagnosis-blogging journey has been focused on my autism. I’ve been curious about my ADHD diagnosis, but until recently it’s felt like a bit of an afterthought. Only in the past few weeks have I been reading about the experience of having “AuDHD” (a term I’m not totally enamored of but am willing to sprinkle in here and there for color and context).

Next time, I’d like to use a post by carmen_authenticallyadhd as a guide.

carmen_authenticallyadhd

BONUS EPISODE Shame and Guilt in AuDHD: Understanding and Managing Emotions

Shame and guilt are heavy emotions that many neurodivergent people know all too well. In AuDHD (adults with co-occurring autism and ADHD), these feelings often run deep. Unlike simple embarrassment, shame goes to the core of “who I am,” while guilt is about “what I did”. For example, an AuDHD person might feel guilty for forgetting a friend’s birthday, …

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a year ago · 2 likes · carmen_authenticallyadhd

When I first read it, I had one of those little sparks of optimism. Maybe, I thought, if I keep my ADHD diagnosis front and center, I’ll have some fresh, concrete things to work on in therapy. Maybe this is something like the open door I’ve been looking for. Maybe. But then I start to have feelings. Big feelings.

In the next Autism Feelings installment, we’ll go stand next to that open door. We’ll perseverate on it and wonder. We’ll consider its door-ness. We’ll… um… sorry, what?

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Editor’s Note: I accidentally sent this out with a large swath that was an early draft. It was full of typos. It was ungraceful, but if you’ve already read it, you probably got the gist. I was working from two machines and didn’t catch the failed sync until it went out. Rookie mistake. My bad! I HAVE ADHD. IT IS VERY FITTING. I’ve fixed the version of record here, but decided not to create a new post and flood your inboxes with a correction email.

Hey!

Guess what?

I have twenty-five subscribers!

I think that’s remarkable.

Especially considering that I do not have twenty-five friends!

In fact, if I comb through my subscriber list, I can only make a case for nine of you subscribing out of a sense of loved-one-based duty or acquaintanceship-based curiosity!

That suggests that more than fifteen of you (sixteen of you) subscribe simply because you like my writing!

Wow!

As such, I have decided to turn on “pledges”

Somewhere along the way, I told myself that twenty-five subscribers would indicate enough mutual interest between writer and readers to turn on pledges for If This Is an Emergency. So, I‘ve done just that. Pledging is essentially pre-subscribing. If you click the pledge button, you’ll essentially be signing up for a paid subscription in some bright future where I decide to go to a subscription model.

Will I be turning on paid subscriptions… soonish?

Another somewhere along the way, I told myself that fifty subscribers would indicate enough mutual interest between writer and readers to turn on subscriptions for If This Is an Emergency. So, you know. Maybe?

But don’t you have, like, a steady office job?

Yeah, but fuck that.

Seriously?

Seriously.

Come on, man.

Okay, look. I have a nine-to-five office job that I’m very grateful for. It could be worse. I’m good at it. And I like my colleagues. And for the most part I’m proud of the work that I do. But I really, really, wish I didn’t have to do it. It’s so exhausting. I hate it.

At times in my life, feeling stuck in my work, friends and family have tried to help.

“Well,” they would say, “if you could do anything you wanted to do, what would that be? You just need to figure out what that is and go for it!”

To which I would say, “I know what it is! It’s art and stuff! But I can’t leave a steady nine-to-five for art and stuff! I have a family!”

To which they would say, “No, you’re right, be a grown up. Just find a way to also do your art and stuff.”

Tough, but…

What this book presupposes is

Maybe I can keep my job but also just see where this blog thing goes?

After-work Passion Project → After-work Side Hustle → New Career

Why not?

Other dingdongs have done it, haven’t they?

Will you help me get there? Help a dingdong do art and stuff? Help a dingdong with a dream?

I’m listening. But if you do go to a subscription model, what would I even be subscribing to?

Essentially, this? I suppose I don’t know yet. I’ve been reading a lot about how to make the most of a subscription model. Do I put some of the best and most popular things behind a paywall? Do I leave the best and most popular things out there for free and then put little fun things behind a paywall? I have no idea! All of that is TBD, and it depends on me getting to fifty subscribers (because that’s the magical number that appeared in my mind and I’m sticking to it).

I can say this: If I do decide to go to a subscription model, I can commit to posting twice a week. I’ve tried out different styles of posts. I’ve tried different genres and different subjects. I have a tendency to go dormant for a few weeks and then release a flood of material all at once. Moving to a subscription model, I can commit to a steadier release schedule.

Granted, I intend to continue to try new things forever. Kanban never gets out of your brain once it gets in there. However, thinking back over these first few months of experimentation, there are a few categories of posts I am sure will recur in the medium term:

• Autism Feelings Essays - These essays are core to the If This Is an Emergency project. By the numbers, they are the essays that my subscribers most connect with, and so theoretically they are the reason many of you are here. Sometimes I need to take little breaks from this topic because it can be emotionally draining to dive into, but I still feel like I have a lot to work through in writing in regard to autism. I can commit to pushing forward with this series. In fact, I’ve got a new essay queued up. Stay tuned.

• Open-topic Personal Essays - “A Statue of Don Quixote on a Piano That Cannot Be Played” is one of the best things I’ve ever written. I don’t hesitate to say that. I believe it. I’m very proud of it. But this was surprising to me. This essay came out of nowhere and came together like magic. The writing process itself was sorrowful and joyful and healing. Releasing it out into the world was cosmic. Coming into this project, I thought of myself as a fiction writer. I thought of myself as a musician. But “Personal Essayist” had not been etched into my resume lobe. To you all, to you readers: It’s really meant a lot to me to have gotten such warm feedback for the Don Quixote essay. And, statistically, it’s one of the most successful posts I’ve had. I can commit to exploring these kinds of personal essays as they come to me.

• Songwriting Feelings Essays - This was a weird one! It taught me that I could never be on TikTok, and it made me deeply uncomfortable for a little while. The post itself had middling engagement and just sort of sat there, out in the world, making me wonder if anyone actually listened to the song as they skimmed through the essay. If so, did anyone like it? Did I just humiliate myself for no good reason? Total. Emotional. Void. So vulnerable! Strangely, foolishly perhaps, I really want to keep going with this. When I start to feel that urge to share a song, I want to roll it out here on If This Is an Emergency. When I do, my goal is to have the essay that showcases it do the work, not the song. I want to get the songs out into the world, but what really interests me as a writer (and what I hope will be interesting to readers) is working through and around the personal discomfort I have with being a prolific songwriter who never performs and hoards his songs.

• Short Stories - This is a real heartbreaker for me. I’m so very proud of “Artist in Residence at Fisher-Price” and other short stories I’ve written. I only have a small sample set to go by, but it seems my short stories are just fundamentally less popular than my essays. Measurably fewer people will even open the email if “Short Story” is in the header. What can I do? I feel in my heart like Paul Zaic, Fiction Writer is me at my very best, so it’s been hard to confront the numbers. Still, I’ll likely publish some of my fiction here in the future. Masochistically, I’ll continue to pursue the lit-mag route to find my stories homes, but sometimes stories comment on a moment in time. Sometimes they just need to be out there where people can see them.

• Poems - By the numbers, my poems are deeply, deeply unpopular! Christ, you guys! But I can’t help myself. Sometimes I’m going to drop a sonnet down the well. I hope you see them as they fly by. I hope their wake musses your hair.

And on that note? If… I…

Thank you, subscribers! As stated above:

More than fifteen of you (sixteen of you) subscribe simply because you like my writing!

And that’s really something!

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Artist in Residence at Fisher-Price

It’s a good job. They pay me pretty well. I get a lot of leeway. We get free stuff for the kids all the time. We have so many toys.

The pandemic has been hard though. And the sprouting coup. And all the white supremacy. Those things have also been hard. But we’re doing our best here. We can’t complain. A lot of people have it a lot worse.

They let me work from home. I can write my ten-to-forty-second songs about colors, numbers, and letters from right here in the spare bedroom. Pretty low stakes. I’m not running a hospital. Being home with the kids, there’s that extra inspiration too. They’re always around. All the time. Being kids. They should have the job, really.

I’ve been having trouble focusing the past week or so. I sit at the piano or I sit at the easel. I plunk out some chords or I paint an electric blue bunny holding an American flag.

I’m writing a cartoon show for kids. I've got a pilot ready to go and a few more episodes after that, but I haven't figured out how to wrap up the first season. Fisher-Price doesn't need or want a cartoon show for kids, but that's what I've been spending my time on lately. Mostly that.

It’s called They Nap by Night.

It’s Baby Noir.

Or maybe it’s called Bubble Indemnity.

I don’t know. I go back and forth.

Footy Pajamas and Zelda Bassinet have a dream. Make it big in the milk racket and then settle down in a little blue house upstate, so someday their kids can have a better shot at life than they had. But Rock-a-bye Sam has other ideas.

Sometimes I feel like Footy Pajamas. I too have to deal with gangsters of a sort. We all do these days. I have my own Zelda to think about. The real Zelda. Zelda, my wife, who’s great, and our kids, Io and Stephen, who are also great. We already have a blue house upstate, but it’s not technically blue and it's not as far upstate as we'd like. It’s very nice though. There are trees, and there is a creek where Io finds salamanders and sometimes neat old cans and stuff.

Still, the smoke from the fires can be hard. And the constant threat of floods. Being so close to the woods and the water and all. And what with all the climate disaster and what have you.

Io was our first. She's eleven now, which doesn't seem possible. She came early. Seven weeks early.

The NICU had a Fisher-Price Corn Popper in a toy basket in the family lounge. It had been stocked by the March of Dimes. The toy basket was there to give the siblings of the early babies something to do while their parents stayed awake. Parents who bottled their emotions the best they could. Parents who just sat there with their skins off, nerves exposed to giant, roof-penetrating zap rays from outer space. Parents who microwaved instant coffee and who made sure to always say hello and goodbye and thank you to all the nurses because they knew all their names even though they would someday forget them.

There was a Jean. Or a Jeanie? Wasn’t there?

"Did you work on this one?" Zelda said.

She pulled the Corn Popper out of the toy basket and pushed it around the family lounge. Pop. Pop pop pop. Pop.

"I wish," I said. "Arthur Holt, 1957.”

She nodded.

“The Corn Popper's older than our parents,” I said. “Huge success. You didn’t have a Corn Popper growing up?"

Zelda's parents didn't go in for toys much, bless their hearts, so Zelda wasn’t really a toy person when I met her. She is curious about toys now though, and if she isn’t, she’s awfully nice to pretend. When we first started dating and then when we got married and even further along when we began the work of having a baby, Zelda didn't know much about toys or toy history. Eleven years later she knows a lot.

If our whole family died tomorrow in a fiery flood—knock on wood—you could just write "Toy Museum" on the front of our house and charge admission. Assuming the house wasn’t also destroyed when we died in the fiery flood.

Summoning up my memories of our days and nights at the NICU is more or less unscrambling eggs at this point. A short film about a young couple who falls into a black hole played in reverse in a dark space in a museum gallery.

I remember a few moments well enough though. At least I think I do. I remember I laid my hand on Io's tiny tummy in the keep-the-baby-alive box. Our little rainbow. In a box. I remember Zelda put her hand on my hand through a port on the other side of the box. I looked over the top of the box and into her eyes. I got distracted though when I saw a reflection in her right eyeball of one of the hospital gizmos, all tangled and whirly.

I thought: A-ha!

That's when the Rainbow Reactor came to me. I mean, it's not in the same league as the Corn Popper—no way—but it was a pretty big success in its own right, if you don't mind my saying so.

As far as The Craft of Toys goes, The Craftspeople of History really picked all the low-hanging fruit before I was born.

That’s not an excuse! It's not so easy to make something truly new in this world, but when you manage to snag a tucked-away mango from the top of the mango tree, it's a wonderful feeling you feel. I hope you’ve felt that before. I hope you feel it again someday soon.

The Rainbow Reactor is still a top seller. It got me the job that paid off the student loans—the job that paid for the Honda and half of the blue house that's not really that blue. The not-really-blue house that could be a toy museum with some very minor changes.

The American Dream.

We named our daughter Io after the moon of Jupiter, which is itself named after the character from Greek mythology.

The character from Greek mythology is one of those poor mortal goofs who “gets involved” with Zeus and then, sure as the day you’re born, faces Hera's wrath. Soon enough, someone turns Io into a beautiful white cow—Zeus or Hera does, depending on which version you’re leafing through—and then I don't remember how it ends, but what really sticks is:

Turns her into a beautiful white cow.

!

That's not who our Io is named after, for obvious reasons, but a little while after Io was born, I wrote a thirty-four-second memory bank song for the launch of a new Fisher-Price keyboard. The song didn’t have words, but I called it "Beautiful White Cow". No one else knows it’s called "Beautiful White Cow'' because toy keyboards don't come with liner notes. But I know!

We named her Io after the moon because Io the moon has the highest density of any moon in the solar system. It's constantly being tugged and stretched between Jupiter and the other Galilean moons. The tidal heating from all that friction makes it a volcano bloodbath—literal volcanoes, metaphorical bloodbath. In short, it's incredible and full of energy, and so is our daughter. She’s one tough little moon. Tougher than I ever was.

REDS LAUNCH BABY MOON was a real headline in a real American newspaper in 1957 after the Soviets popped Sputnik into space.

That’s what somebody told me anyway.

Sputnik and the Corn Popper in the same year! You can't really do much better than 1957, can you? Actually, you probably can—not everything that happened in 1957 was good.

It’s nice, everything that we have, but I worry.

Yesterday I painted the word NIHILISM in all caps in acrylic on a canvas roughly three feet by four. NIHILISM was fifty feet tall, adjusted for scale. NIHILISM was 3-D. NIHILISM was made of compacted old fossil fuel engines and plastic water bottles. Here and there you could see the leg or arm of a venture capitalist sticking out. NIHILISM was standing in the otherwise empty parking lot of a Sears. In the back of the Sears, behind a dumpster, I painted an electric blue bunny holding an American flag, looking earnest and sad, but not for any obvious reason. It was just an electric blue bunny looking earnest and sad.

I tore up the painting and threw it away because I didn’t want anyone to see it.

Stephen surprised the heck out of us. We had so many ups and downs trying to get Io out into the world, that we’d really given up any idea of a second child. Stephen was born right on schedule, just this April when the hospitals around here were bursting at the seams. They took our temperatures at the door and gave us masks. Blue masks. The yellow ones were for staff. They told us not to take them.

They wouldn't give Io a mask because they said she wasn't old enough to need one, which doesn’t make any more sense to me now than it did then. We didn't leave Io with a sitter when Zelda went into labor because we thought the hospital would be safer for her. What did we know? At that point in the pandemic, the hospital was only allowing each patient a single companion—me, the father, in our case—but they waved Io through because they felt bad for us. At least I assume that’s why they waved her through.

There were hand sanitizer stations everywhere you looked. Nobody was calling it airborne yet. Only later would we find out that the temperature checks were mostly theater. They made us feel safe at the time, but in hindsight there was an awful lot we didn’t know. Safe or not, we had colorful stickers that told us we were safe. The stickers made us feel like someone who knew what they were doing was in charge.

People started to take the pandemic seriously in March. Some of us did anyway—started taking it seriously in March, which is to say, a lot of people didn’t. Stephen was born in April, right on schedule.

After we passed through the checkpoint and made our way to the delivery ward, everything seemed normal. Stephen was born without any serious complications, so, in some ways, his birth in an overflowing hospital on the crest of a wave in the great pandemic was much closer to anything you could call normal than Io's birth had been.

Io loved Stephen right away.

From the time we arrived at the hospital to the time we left to take Stephen home, we heard a fuzzed out “Don't Stop Believin” blast over the PA more than a dozen times. "That's eight times," Io would say. "Nine now."

All of the staff would cheer every time.

It was only when we were filling out discharge papers that we asked why. It had happened first spontaneously in another hospital. Someone played "Don't Stop Believin" over the PA to boost morale when a patient was pulled off a ventilator. Then they did it again and again. And then somebody posted a video. And then it was The News. Then a lot of other hospitals started to do the same.

I wondered then how long they'd keep it up. Now I wonder if they still play it here and there for old times’ sake. I wonder what the nurses and doctors and hospital staff think when they hear it in a bar or at a wedding reception. I wonder if they'll play it again in twenty years when we're all having A Look Back, rifling and rifling, or if it will be one of those things that gets lost.

Of course, a lot of "Don't Stop Believin" meant a lot of people were pulled off ventilators, but each time it happened we were heavy with the knowledge that many other people would not be pulled off ventilators.

Stephen's middle name is Atlas, which, among other things, is a moon of Saturn. Before that, a Titan who got left to hold up the sky.

I wrote an episode of They Nap by Night called "Goodnight, Moonshine: Part I" where Rock-a-bye Sam needs a favor.

He enters the stock room of the Sleepytown Club from the loading dock door. It's dark in the stockroom but for a single cone of light from a blinky old bulb. He finds Footy Pajamas there, straining to pry open a crate of Genuine American Electric Blue Bunny Milk with a crowbar.

"Footy, ain’t it?" says Rock-a-bye Sam. "I hear you play a little piano."

"A little. Yeah-sure, Boss," Footy says. Footy who—we should take a moment to remember—is a baby, just like everyone else in this universe.

"And I hear you got a nice little wife at home. Ain’t that right?”

"That's right, Boss. Nice. Little,” says Footy.

"Might be nice to have a little extra dough then, wouldn't it Footy? A little extra dough to move outta that apartment and settle down in a nice little house with lots of toys. Start a family?”

"Sounds real nice, Boss. A little blue house. Upstate."

"Sure, blue, whatever color you like, Footy. Now listen. There's a party tomorrow night at the big house on the hill. You know the one?"

"Sure, Boss"

"Well, the big party at the big house on the big hill is going to have some very important people in attendance. Yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Now that's a good boy, Footy. Let me ask you, what's your tuxedo situation?"

Later that night, Footy comes back home to find Zelda still up, drinking a bottle of Electric Blue Bunny at the kitchen table, reading the extra edition of the paper.

REDS LAUNCH BABY MOON.

Footy hangs his hat on the coat rack and kicks off his booties.

"I’m worried." Zelda says.

"About the Reds?" I say.

"No, dummy, about graduation.”

She looks out the kitchen window and into the window across the alley. There are too many babies to count over there, and the parents are fighting again.

"What if I can't land a gig at the university after I graduate?" she says.

"Then they're fools,” I say.

"But what if I can't?"

"Sam takes care of us. We'll get by until you find a place that appreciates you. No wife of mine is working for some fly-by-night university that doesn't appreciate her."

"You're sweet, Foots. But I don't like this business with Sam. It seemed like it was one kinda thing, but it's starting to become very clear that it's another kinda thing. I don't like it."

"Listen, Zels, I need to tell you about a gig I have tomorrow night at the big house on the hill."

My baby sister was born December 7, 1987 on the eve of The Washington Summit, roughly thirty years after Sputnik, if you're playing along. By the time my sister came home from the hospital to meet me, Gorbechav and Reagan had signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty. Gorbechav was on a plane back home.

Reagan threw a paper airplane and it went all the way around the world and hit him in the back of the head. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind.

Mom and Dad named the baby Alice and let me hold her right away even though I remember thinking that wasn’t a good idea.

Hello, Alice.

1987 was the same year that Fisher-Price introduced the Fisher-Price Medical Kit and the Fisher-Price Starscope Set. I know this because a few months before Alice was born, Mom and Dad took me to the toy store to pick out a welcome-to-the-world gift. I agonized over it. Medical Kit or Starscope Set? They were both, perhaps, not the best choice for a baby, which my Dad, gently, let me know. Perhaps a little stuffed animal or a rattle would be best, he kindly suggested. But even at five years old, I knew that if you were going to make it in this world, you needed the right tools.

In the end, I chose the Starscope Set. The telescope was made of red and black plastic and it came with a white plastic tripod you could attach to the bottom. There were slides that you could insert so that when you looked through the eyepiece you’d find the whole universe in there. The moon. The planets. Stars and comets. Everything.

I remember Dad at the checkout counter writing a check. I remember Mom giving me a look when I gave her a look, running my fingers across every Snickers bar in the Snickers bar display. I remember how I felt, sitting in the backseat of the Celica, eating my Snickers bar, studying the words and the pictures on the box of the Starscope Set the whole ride home. I remember the Celica’s brown leather seats and the cigarette smell.

When we got home, I took the Starscope Set up to my room, opened it, tried it out a bit, nodded to myself, put it back in the box, and then slid it under my bed. It stayed there until Alice was old enough to play with it (with a little help from her older brother). Alice would sleep with it, holding it like a teddy bear. This went on for years.

Alice is now a doctor who works in the emergency ward of a hospital. She’s a critical care physician in the ICU. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten her the Fisher-Price Medical Kit instead of the Fisher-Price Starscope Set.

One day this summer, Io rushed into the living room to tell me and Zelda that Dr. Aunt Alice had the virus. She saw a video that Dr. Aunt Alice had posted. Io was scared. We all were.

After the Washington Summit of 1987, I couldn’t say that I understood much of what was going on, but I did understand that it was important to watch the evening news. That’s what my parents did, so it must have been important. I learned to say Perestroika. Nicaragua. Contras. I didn’t know what those words meant back then, but I held on to them, put them under the bed with the Starscope Set so I could give them to Alice someday.

This morning I painted the phrase “We’re updating our Terms of Service” in shock yellow letters over top of a landscape I painted a few years back. As I was sitting there, just looking at it, Io danced her way into my office studio (the spare bedroom) looking for the charger for her laptop. She was missing her virtual math class again. Zelda and I have several unread emails from Mrs. Patel—all with very similar, stern subject lines.

We’re all doing our best here.

“What are you doing?” Io asked.

My best?

“Painting some yellow words over this old painting,” I said.

“No, I know, but what are you doing? What are you doing-doing? Why are you doing it?”

Stephen, the baby, floating five feet in the air, poked his head around the edge of the door jamb and spoke.

"Hi Dad. Hello Io," he said. "What are you two up to?"

"Looking at a painting," Io said. "Trying to figure out what Daddy's doing."

After a moment, Stephen the floating baby said, "Well, if you figure it out, let me know. I'm very curious about that myself. Also, lunch. PBJs. DIY. Mommy has a conference call with the faculty at two. That’s when Daddy needs to watch me. Because I’m a baby. Named Stephen. Actually, more like 1:45 would be great. Love you guys. Yeah?"

“Yeah, yeah. Love you too, Stephen or whoever you are,” Io said.

We heard Stephen the baby walk down the hall and down the stairs. Io and I looked over the painting in silence for a bit.

She said, “Why is there a blue rabbit by the stream? Why is he holding the flag?”

After a while I said, “I don’t know. I think of him as more of an electric blue bunny than a blue rabbit.”

After a while she shrugged and left with her charger.

I wrote an episode of They Nap by Night called "Goodnight, Moonlight: Part II'' where Footy Pajamas plays that piano gig at the big house on the hill. It’s a fundraiser for The Inertia Society.

Conversations and bubbles swirl around the ballroom. The mood is easy. The crowd is elite. The guests are coughing and sweating. There are chandeliers hanging from the chandeliers. A waft of talc and milk. A soupçon of VapoRub. Lest we forget that all of these people are babies.

"Well, well, well, Footy,” says Sam. “You ain’t half bad at that, are you?”

He’s standing at a highboy table beside Footy’s piano. He’s accompanied by a husky pair of associates named Marty Cribs and Binky Robinson. The piano has a giant logo on the lid. “Proudly Sponsored by Genuine American Electric Blue Bunny Milk.”

“What's that song called? I don't know that one,” says Sam.

"It’s one of mine,” says Footy. “It’s called ’Beautiful White Cow‘."

He plays on. He adds a flourish or two.

"Catchy. Catchy. Maybe play it again sometime. But, say, Kid. Maybe play a little ‘Ring Around the Rosey’ right after that? When the mood strikes?”

Sam looks at Marty and Binky. He taps his watch. He winks at Footy.

Suddenly, rattles rattle all over the place. The chandeliers dim and the chandeliers hanging from the chandeliers dim.

Sam shushes Footy. "Take a break, Kid. Listen up. Be ready."

Footy takes his foot off the sustain pedal and wipes the sweat off his brow with a receiving blanket.

One of dozens of servants rotates a spotlight in a dizzying sine wave around the ballroom until it lands on the host, Commander Blocks. Commander Blocks, having never served but always having made much ado about spending his teenage years at a military school, is covered head to toe in military regalia. His belly is such that his bars and medals—which he himself had commissioned—face the ceiling. He commands the attention of everyone in the ballroom. He stands, halfway up a sweeping, gilded staircase, and he raises a glass.

"To money!" he says.

The crowd cheers.

"To America!" he says.

The crowd cheers.

"To American money!" he says.

This gets the biggest cheer of all. He coughs a terrible cough and braces himself on the banister while he catches his breath.

"Friends, when my white grandfather came to this country..."

"Wait, what?" says Footy.

"Shh," says Sam.

He taps his watch.

Commander Blocks goes on and on. His address meanders in and out of scientific racism, prosperity gospel, the invisible hand of the market, and sailing. Bootstraps and so forth. His coughing is outrageous, but so is everyone else’s. Two guests drop dead during the speech and are dragged away by the servants.

“So, in conclusion, God has assured me—we’re very close, God and I, believe me—that The Inertia Society can count on your increased financial support tonight.”

Clap clap clap clap clap.

“Now how about a round of ‘Ring Around the Rosey’ while we pass the baskets?” he says. “Don’t tip the servants with the baskets. We’re not paying them to take handouts.”

Footy mops the sweat off his forehead one last time before easing into ‘Ring Around the Rosey’. He’s a very nervous baby.

The guests, like amoebae swallowing bacteria, start to form something like circles around the servants who are holding the baskets.

Every time Footy hits the Bb below Middle C, hidden gears in the piano churn and clunk. The Electric Blue Bunny logo on the lid begins to glow. Footy stops playing the third time through the melody when he can no longer hear his own playing over the churning of the gears.

“Boss!” he says. “I don’t feel so good!”

“Keep playing that song if you know what’s good for you, Kid. It’s what we’re paying you for.”

In a panic, Footy starts into “Beautiful White Cow,” which, mercifully, never hits the Bb below Middle C.

Sam grabs Footy by the bib.

“I said ‘Ring Around the Rosey,’ Goddamnit! Do your Goddamn job, kid!”

Footy starts to cry like a baby. Like an actual, helpless baby. Because that’s what everyone actually is.

“If you can’t play along, I know a lot of babies ready to take your place.”

Marty Cribs and Binky Robinson crack their fat baby knuckles.

“I’m sorry, Boss,” Footy says through sobs. “It’s just … all these people. They think they’re getting one thing but it’s becoming very clear that they’re going to get another thing. I think I need to talk to my wife.”

Marty Cribs and Binky Robinson open their husky tuxedo jackets to reveal some very professional-looking slingshots.

Footy jumps up from the churning, glowing piano, knocking over the bench as he does. He runs away as fast as he can. Marty Cribs and Binky Robinson are in hot pursuit. Footy clambors through the kitchen, throwing pots and pans behind himself as he goes. He sprints out of the servant’s entrance. Dogs bark. He swims across a pool and then across another pool. He climbs a fence and then a hedgerow and then disappears into the night.

A few weeks ago, Dr. Aunt Alice, who had just gotten an all clear to go back to work, called to tell me that Mom had the virus. Alice was crying and it was hard to understand her. She kept saying that it was her fault. Saying that she’d been checking in on Mom before she had her own worst symptoms because she was worried about her. Making sure she had whatever she needed. Keeping her company. Dad wasn’t around anymore—lymphoma, 1996, the same year Fisher-Price introduced Big Bubble Machine, the same year Dolly the sheep made history as the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.

Alice said she’d been keeping tabs on Mom's oxygen levels overnight at the hospital and that they weren’t good. They were bad.

Mom was in the ICU on a ventilator for nine days. Funeral services were conducted entirely outside, alongside a new grave next to Dad’s grave. Zelda and Io and baby Stephen and I watched from six feet away. The other mourners were in little family pockets, each six feet away from the other. Mom was in a hole six feet deep. The square root of six squared plus six squared is just shy of eight and a half. I was separated from Mom by an invisible hypotenuse roughly that long. I didn’t want Zelda and Io and Stephen to feel scared, so I tried not to look scared or sad or angry.

I was born in 1982. That was the year Fisher-Price first rolled out the Husky Helper Rescue Rig. Everything your child needs to rush to a make-believe emergency and to rush the wounded to a make-believe hospital. There was a little blue stretcher you could load and unload. I never had the Husky Helper Rescue Rig as a child—I just know that it was available.

1982 was also the year that Fisher-Price introduced the “Over the Rainbow” Tote-o-Tune Music Box Radio. I did have one of those. I had one from the day I was born. I still do. Story goes, it was the first gift Mom ever gave me, and that even before I was born, she knew it was for me. She used to tell me, “I played this for you when you were in my tummy.”

She used to turn the dial and let it play for me while I fell asleep. She said that she used to sing along and that my sister and I, as babies, were the only people she was ever really comfortable singing around.

She said, “When I was little, the choir director stopped a rehearsal to tell me that I was a bluebird and that I should just mouth the words and not sing out so much.”

“Why a bluebird?” I said.

“He told me that bluebirds are pretty but they don’t sing,” she said. “I want you to sing whenever you feel like it, okay?”

I’ve been thinking about that story a lot lately, and it breaks my heart every time. I miss my Mom. Terribly. I am scared and sad and angry.

Also, bluebirds do sing. I looked it up. Some choir directors are real shitheads.

The Tote-o-Tune still works. The colors are fading, but you can still make out the lyrics on the outside of the plastic shell. You can still see the boy and girl holding hands, skipping up the rainbow to a magical castle in the distance. A bluebird guiding the way.

Someday I’ll wish upon a star

And wake up where the clouds are far behind me

Where troubles melt like lemon drops

Away among the chimney tops

That’s where

You’ll

Find

Me

The rise of the melody in that bridge—hopping along from major to minor and back to major again—makes me feel like I’m dancing up a set of stairs that you can only see when you’re dead.

Whenever I need to cry, I go somewhere private and give the old Tote-o-Tune a listen. And then I put it back where it’s safe.

Sometimes I wonder how life would be different if Mom had gotten me the Fisher-Price Husky Helper Rescue Rig instead of the Fisher-Price “Over the Rainbow” Tote-o-Tune Music Box Radio.

I try to sing to Io and Stephen whenever I can.

I am writing an episode of They Nap by Night that doesn’t have a title yet, but when it’s finished, you’ll only be able to watch it through a Fisher-Price Starscope Set that, once upon a time, you gave your baby sister.

When you put your eye to the viewfinder, you’ll see stars and comets and Ronald Reagan throwing paper airplanes while paper airplanes hit him in the back of his head.

You’ll see REDS LAUNCH BABY MOON painted in shock yellow on the side of an abandoned Best Buy that is full of raccoons and snakes and birds and bugs. It has trees growing out of it. There’s a twenty-foot tall statue seated on the edge of the Best Buy’s roof with its legs hanging over the ledge. It’s an electric blue bunny holding an American flag, looking earnest and sad, but not for any obvious reason. It’s just an electric blue bunny looking earnest and sad.

You’ll see Poopy Diapers, who is Commander Blocks’ personal attorney, standing at a podium, sweating, dripping crude oil, surrounded by the press.

The press conference is outside in the middle of the parking lot of a random light industrial complex. It’s somewhere between an adults-only novelty store and a crematorium, just off I-95, a little north of Philadelphia.

Why? Well, to lie and to cheat. In the hopes of persuading people to help overturn the results of a fair election that had just ousted Commander Blocks and his goons.

To persuade anyone still listening to hold steady and forge ahead in the ages-old crusade to bilk minorities and the poor out of anything that matters to them or that might matter to them at any point in the future.

To scoff at science and scientists. To look on, seething and reveling, as the death count from the disease that Commander Blocks and his goons had willfully ignored shoots past a quarter of a million people. All in the service of some half-baked Nothingness god.

You’ll see Sputnik and millions of Fisher-Price Corn Poppers leave orbit and get as far away from Earth as they possibly can.

You’ll see street lamps cast their light at oblique angles in the dark night. You’ll see Marty Cribs and Binky Robinson approach Footy and Zelda’s apartment building. They materialize out of the fog. They blow spit bubbles. The wooden shards and metal coils of a broken piano, cold in the wet street, slowly reassemble themselves and float up into the air. The piano rises and enters the building through the shattered sliding glass door of a balcony many floors high. Marty and Binky toddle up the stoop and smash their way into the little lobby.

“Got a message for a baby you may know,” says Marty Cribs to the doorman. “If you should happen to see Footy Pajamas anytime soon, you let him know his Uncle Sam says hello.”

The doorman is an electric blue bunny holding an American flag.

When Io takes the viewfinder away from her eye and asks me if that’s really how it ends, I don’t know what to tell her.

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Hello there, tree

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Very Rare Sand

The year was 2010?

“Mr. Jobs?” said Yan.

Mr. Jobs didn’t respond.

Yan cradled an iPad prototype in his arms. Every now and then, he would risk the iPad’s well-being by freeing one of his hands and scratching at the bare spot on his scalp. He’d created the bare spot by scratching there compulsively for his entire life. He’d learned to hide it by parting his hair just so.

Yan didn’t like that he was taller than Steve Jobs—yes, that Steve Jobs—who was famously taller than you might imagine someone like Steve Jobs would be. Yan hunched himself down to stand level set with his boss at 6’2”.

Jobs raked his fingers through a waist-high plane of glowing green sand on a giant rectilinear light table in the center of the Light Table Chamber at Apple HQ.

Steve Jobs looked exactly like Steve Jobs.

”Mr. Jobs?” said Yan.

“Alec,” said Steve Jobs, “It’ll take some getting used to, but I need you to call me Alec from now on.”

“Alec?” said Yan.

“Olivine crystals,” said Steve Jobs.

“Sir?” said Yan.

“The mossy green sand on this light table,” said Steve Jobs, “is aggressively and inescapably calming. Olivine crystals. Very rare sand.”

“I see, Mr. Jobs,” said Yan.

“It’s Alec now,” said Steve Jobs, “Call me Alec iPhone. I need you to call me Alec iPhone now. I need that.”

“Okay,” said Yan.

“Try it,” said Steve Jobs. “Touch the sand. Find something. Take something. Lose something. If you’re blocked, give it to the sand. Why not?”

Yan looked all around. The airy, tennis-court-sized Light Table Chamber, with the exception of the floor and the ceiling, was somehow made entirely of glass.

But none of the glass walls were windows to the outside world. They were windows to other rooms with names. They were windows to hallways.

Alec iPhone née Steve Jobs had noticed that his assistant Yan, when prompted to touch the sand, didn’t seem to know where to safely set down the iPad prototype he’d been cradling. Mr. iPhone sighed.

“You can lay it down on the light table,” he said. “On the sand. That’s fine. It’ll be fine. What we’re working on now is much bigger than a tablet, Yan.”

Yan looked at the iPad prototype. Then he looked at the giant light table covered in the special green sand. Then he looked at his boss.

Resigned, he set the iPad prototype down on the sandy table as though it were an infant—as though he, Yan, were its au pair—as though he and Steve Jobs were on a deeply uncomfortable vacation together.

“Okay,” said Yan. “Alec. Sir. Mr. iPhone.”

“Olivine crystals,” said Alec iPhone.

“Olivine crystals,” said Yan.

“This, Yan” said Alec iPhone, “is some of the rarest sand in the world.”

“Yes,” said Yan. “I can see how central that is now.”

Yan ran his fingers through the sand. He watched as light from the table peaked through the little valleys that he’d created. The sand felt like sand. The light looked like light. It felt nice to touch the sand and to see the light. But why did the sand need to be rare? Or green? Was he missing something?

“Wow,” said Yan.

“Yeah, wow,” said Alec iPhone.

There was a sci-fi-movie-spaceship-door-opening sound—a pink whoosh—as a sci-fi movie spaceship door opened on the far end of the Light Table Chamber from Alec and Yan.

Rana walked in with great purpose. She had her own iPad prototype. Hers was slightly slimmer and had a slightly less noticeable bevel than the one Yan had set down in the rare green sand. She adjusted the horn-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose.

“Alec,” she said, “It’s time.”

“Time,” said Alec iPhone.

He used his index finger to draw an equal sign followed by an open parens in the rare green sand in an untouched spot on the giant light table just a few feet away from where Yan was sorting out his constitution.

“We're two and a half minutes behind,” said Rana. “Rounding up, that’s three minutes, really. You’ll take the stage for the keynote at 11:03 a.m. Cupertino time. That pushes Pixies back to 12:03. The time slip is my fault, Mr. iPhone. I am to blame. You have my sincerest apologies.”

Alec iPhone flattened his palm and extended his fingers. He smoothed over the frowny face he’d drawn in the sand moments earlier.

“Well,” he said. “I’ll just have to speak for three fewer minutes. We can’t push Pixies back. Not an option. I called this in as a personal favor from Joey Santiago.”

“Of course,” said Rana. “From Joey Santiago. The guitar one.”

“Yan?” said Mr. iPhone.

“Sir?” said Yan.

“Are you coming with us?” said Mr. iPhone. “Do you want to come see the keynote, or do you want to play with the sand? This is a sincere question. There is no right answer. Each is a means to an end.”

As Alec iPhone and Rana had been speaking with one another, Yan had been casually writing the Preamble to the United States Constitution with his fingertips in the very rare sand.

But he’d gotten stuck. Something had gone wrong.

After “provide for the common defense” he’d written “promote the general welfare” eight times—nine now.

He looked at Steve. Or was it Alec now? Sure. Okay, whatever. He looked at Alec.

“If it’s all the same to you, Alec iPhone, Sir,” said Yan, “I have some things I’d like to work through with the sand.”

“Great,” said Alec iPhone. “That settles it then.”

After the keynote, as the applause began to die down, Alec iPhone looked around the stage. He looked at the drum set and the guitars and the bass and the amplifiers that were all set up behind him. Then he looked out and met eyes with members of the audience. He tried to spend a few silent moments with a few people he’d never met before. He tried to give an extra moment to the ones with the brightest eyes and the bushiest tails. He smiled. He stopped. He smiled again. He winced in pain.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he said. “Pixies!”

The audience stood and erupted as the band entered stage right. The lights dimmed. Alec iPhone exited stage left and watched from the wings. Pixies launched into a blistering version of “Alec Eiffel”. Rana had negotiated a few clumsy alterations to the lyrics.

Little iPhone stands in the archway

(Little iPhone, Little iPhone)

By the time the janitorial staff found Yan, it was too late. The police would treat it as a crime scene. They would photograph the giant light table from above.

Promote the general welfare.

Promote the general welfare.

Over.

And over.

Promote the general welfare.

Promote the general welfare.

Yan had crashed through the middle of the glass surface. His body had settled down into the light table’s smoldering, sparking core. The aggressively and inescapably calm sand had filled the void. Most of Yan was a mossy green monument now.

In the autopsy report, the coroner had noted several severe contusions and lacerations but had declared “electrocution and a sustained, environmentally induced inability to derive meaning” as the official causes of death.

In an addendum, the coroner noted the rarity and the composition of the mossy green sand but would ultimately come to question whether it held any inherent value.

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Even in the Beginning

Even when I had my hunches but could only sit and wait for a specialist to come along and open my Schrödinger’s autism box,

Even over the days and weeks that followed my formal diagnosis,

Even before the election,

Even then, I knew.

I knew that I couldn’t predict how learning that I had autism would or wouldn’t make my life any easier.

Series Note

This essay is part of an ongoing series in which I explore each of the feelings that washed over me when I received my diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at forty two.

In the Immediate Wake of the Diagnosis

I learned only that it had gifted my brain a coop full of chickens. Sure, over time, the brain chickens could prove beneficial to my mind’s emotion farm. Who doesn’t love a good serenity egg now and then? But at what cost in the short term?

At first, the coop was just overwhelmingly chatty and messy. The brain chickens seemed to require a great deal more maintenance and continued education than I’d signed up for when I’d signed up for not brain chickens.

In hindsight, the hope that came out of that time was more of a wish list than a hypothesis. But a wish list is something. It’s not nothing.

I tend to approach these Autism Feelings essays with a not-always-intuitive yet more-than-most-folks-would-bother-with structure in place. I like this tendency. I think it’s fitting.

For this essay, I summon a wish list to Autism Santa as my scaffolding.

Dear Autism Santa,

We’ve all had a bit of a year. I know none of this has been your call. I know you’re just here to help—to spread a little good cheer. But Jesus Hunger Games Christ, dude. What a bleak fucking world.

Anyway.

Thank you for your continued service to the neurodivergent community in spite of the darkness. Thank you for specializing. Thank you for focusing. Thank you for looking closely.

Lifted by the spirit of Autism Diagnosmas, I have prepared my wish list for you in the manner outlined so clearly in the High Council’s helpful little trifold brochure:

1. I would like to make a bunch of new friends as soon as possible. I assume that by joining the autism club, I will rapidly, readily connect with my people—that friendship writ large will become much easier for me.

2. I would also like this diagnosis to somehow make things easier for me at work. I haven’t really thought this through at the nitty gritty level, but it really feels like it ought to be true.

3. I would like to become self aware enough to subsequently become less rigid when I butt horns with call center workers and other maddening professionals.

4. Finally, I would like this diagnosis to somehow—magically if necessary—make all of my other day-to-day social interactions go more smoothly. It follows that I would also like to spend less time perseverating on how I must have fucked those interactions up.

If granted, those four wishes would indeed make my life meaningfully easier. So, please. Do what you can.

Do you want to hear a joke?

Q: How many autistic reindeer does it take to fly Autism Santa’s autism sleigh?

A: The reindeer is classified as Rangifer tarandus. Interestingly, the caribou is also classified as Rangifer tarandus. However, studies suggest that Rangifer tarandus should be split into six distinct species. The Sámi word raingo…

And then you just keep talking about reindeer for as long as you can. It’s very funny. Situationally, I mean. If the other person doesn’t laugh, that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.

At any rate, again, thank you for all that you do. I’ll take my good cheer wherever it comes from these days. Any ship in a storm, as they say. If you’re a port.

Happy Diagnosmas to you and yours,

Paul

At This Point, It’s Been a Few Months since I Snail Mailed My Wish List to Autism Santa

And it feels like the right time to check in on my wish fulfillment progress bar:

1. I would like to make a bunch of new friends as soon as possible.

This has sort of happened? First, I found a subscriber chat here on Substack where I’ve been getting along swimmingly with other folks who have ASD and with some allistic folks who are open minded and are welcoming of neurodivergence. This is lovely, and I’m really grateful for it. It’s a good start. But the spirit of the wish is: New adult friends in real life. Friends to talk to about everything any nothing. Friends to go do stuff with locally.

The ASD diagnosis hasn’t given me that on a silver platter, but in just a few months, it’s given me reason to reach out to some old friends. As an ice breaker, it’s led to a handful of rekindled friendships, though, to date, these have been medium-to-long-distance friendships. Thus, unfortunately, they have not transmuted into many chill hangs.

Still, overall, not too bad! I give Autism Santa a B- in fulfilling this wish. Honestly, I think the rest of it is up to me. It’s hard for any middle-aged parent to make new friends. But I’ve got leads. And I’m feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.

2. I would also like this diagnosis to somehow make things easier for me at work.

This might wind up as its own essay someday.

If there were a blog called “Autism at Work” where someone narrated their ongoing saga with masking and unmasking at their job, I would love to check it out. Please do comment if that blog exists and drop a link. And please do DM me if it’s your blog.

From where I sit, all I can say about whether my diagnosis is making my life easier at work is that it’s coincided with the dismantling of our federal institutions. And, nota bene, I’m a government contractor living and working in DC. People are afraid and angry and not always sure what to say to whom. People are also still trying to do good work and complete projects as though the sky were not falling.

Based solely on vibes, I’m going to give Autism Santa a D+ for their fulfillment of this wish. I didn’t tank the grade any lower because I’ve had some really supportive one-on-one exchanges with my boss. He’s been great about it.

The grade is all the way down at D+ though because the professional climate is such that I’m really afraid of asking for any kind of special treatment right now. My foray into sharing my diagnosis with HR went way more awkwardly than I imagined it would, but that was merely sharing and it was merely way awkward. I’ll refrain from passing judgment for now. At some future date, if the rubber hits the road, and suddenly it’s time for HR to really step up, we’ll see whether they rise to the occasion. At present, I only know that I feel scared. Uneasy.

The end of democracy aside, my newfound knowledge—about masking, about unmasking, about burnout—has not yet made my life at work any easier. Within my own head, it has made work harder for me. I’ve learned enough about myself to feel a heightened awkwardness, but I have yet to deploy any new practical skills that could make my professional life any easier. This is something I’m still hopeful can change over time.

3. I would like to become self aware enough to subsequently become less rigid when I butt horns with call center workers and other maddening professionals.

Imagine Greta Thunberg being righteously angry, but instead of it being about climate disaster and directed at the UN, it’s about “principles” and it’s directed at the person on the phone telling me that Toyota won’t cover a failed shock on my car under warranty.

My diagnosis has not helped me with this tendency. I’m still supremely ethically rigid and quite bad at seeing when it’s time to be flexible. I’m still particularly maddened by capitalism’s deformed nerve clusters—the trigger points where two otherwise friendly people are nudged to temporarily hate one other over some impossible transaction.

Nope. Sorry, Autism Santa. You get an F for your “fulfillment” of this wish. Maybe Therapy Santa can help with this someday.

4. I would like this diagnosis to somehow—magically if necessary—make all of my other day-to-day social interactions go more smoothly.

To respond to this wish, I would like to quote my own “Relief and Joy of Feeling Seen” essay if you’ll allow it. It’s the part where I fantasize about making a “Hi! I have autism!” T-shirt, and then I become a supernaturally social parent when bumping into other parents at preschool.

Such a beautiful morning! So good to see you! You’re a lawyer? And your partner is a lawyer? That’s so great! I have autism! Why am I staring at your shoes? Because I have autism! I know! I am very handsome, thank you so much! Good noticing!

That was fun for me to write. I really did find joy there, imagining some new future, fully aware of how silly it was.

But the reality at present is that one hundred percent of the time, I still say nothing to my peers in these quasi-social spaces unless someone says something to me first. I still avoid eye contact. I still beat myself up for avoiding eye contact. I still perseverate on each interaction. I still spiral into anxiety over it. I’m still up at night wondering what people must think of me.

I still sometimes wish I were someone else. Sometimes, I’m not even at the wishing-I-could-unmask or the wishing-I-could-take-it-all-in stride stage. I wish only that I were not me.

So. Yeah. Unfortunately, that’s another F, Autism Santa.

I feel bad for giving you so many bad grades. We were off to a decent start with the B-, but…

Listen, I still appreciate what you’re doing. Frankly, at least two of these wishes probably shouldn’t have been directed at you. Not right away at any rate.

But wishes are wishes, you know? Hope is hope. Can you blame me?

In the orbit of my diagnosis, I thought, “Oh, wow. Autism. Fuck.”

What would that diagnosis mean if it were true? Would it let me give myself a break sometimes where I wasn’t giving myself a break before? What if I could tell other people? Could that help too? Could having an explanation for some of the ways that I’ve struggled help me struggle less? Could the explanation itself make life easier? When making friends? When interacting at work? When dealing with confrontation? When representing my family as Dad?

Well, yeah. At least, I do think it’s made it easier for me to form new friendships—that was almost immediate.

And even though I gave fulfillment of the “easier at work” wish a D+, I think the self awareness that stems from my diagnosis did indeed have great potential to help me at work. And it might have helped quite a bit more if I were at a progressive workplace under less tenuous political circumstances. The potential is still there. I’m not giving up on this one.

And the two F’s? Getting along better with the wider human population? Feeling more at home in my community? Even those wishes, I think, can be still fulfilled indirectly by embracing the diagnosis in the long run. For those wishes to come true, it won’t be as simple as knowledge itself yielding change, but self awareness will still play a crucial role in the bigger picture. There are more steps I need to take. Self esteem and trust don’t grow back over night.

So, please, don’t feel bad, Autism Santa. I look forward to seeing you year after year.

And hey, check out these sunbaked cats in Viejo San Juan. No matter what, remember that they’re there. All the time. Take comfort in your awareness that whatever is going on in your mind and in the world, these slack and toasty little guys are doing life completely, effortlessly right.

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Oopsie Doopsie

I tried something new. I clicked “New post > Video post” and then I uploaded a video and wrote an essay about the video. It was weird. So, of course, what follows is a meta essay about that original essay about my feelings about my video performance of my original song.

It is a kind of cosmic correction.

Here’s What Had Happened

A few weeks back, I’d recorded a video of myself performing an original song moments after I’d finished writing its lyrics. I had just barely sorted out the chords to a new bridge. It’s common for me to do this with my audio recording app—the equivalent of a journal of works-in-progress.

But when “Here” was done, I decided to capture video along with the audio. This was a different for me. I was thinking, “Hey, what if I shared a song on Substack?”

But then I watched the video and realized, “Nope. This is just a draft for your notes. This is practice. Do not share this. You didn’t even bother to set up a decent mic.”

And then I forgot about it.

But Then I Went on a Little Baby Vacation

I took a four-day weekend to myself. Daddy needed a mental and physical break. (Don’t worry, Mommy will get one too.)

I didn’t drive far. I spent a few days walking around a small city that I love. And I ate some nice food. And I got a transcendental Abhyanga massage. Here’s an unsolicited plug for Boketto Wellness1: If you’re near Richmond, Virginia, Kayla is exceptional.

I had my ukulele with me. Not at the wellness center—that would have been weird. I mean I had it back at my Airbnb. I sat on an olive green couch under that haunting light fixture and decided I ought to practice that one new song I’d finished the other week—the one without a name. I ought to play through it a few times to iron out the kinks. And then I remembered I had a recording of it for reference.

And Then I Tripped and Started Writing Prose

Before long, I’d written my first video post for Substack and convinced myself that the video was good enough to be the subject of an essay (if not a stellar stand-alone recording).

And Then I Tried to Preview the Post

Emphasis on “tried”.

I tried to get a sense of what it would look like—how it would be experienced by subscribers. There were a lot of settings that had to do with podcasting, linking to YouTube, and some other things in that universe. I’m not a podcaster. I’m not a YouTuber. I set all that stuff to “off” whenever I could. I tried to carefully pick a thumbnail for the video.

The previews showed a basically normal post with a video at the top. I was satisfied—nervous, but satisfied—so I clicked “Send to everyone now” and then bounced my knee a whole bunch, sitting there on the olive green couch. I had a barbecue chip or two.

Then I Opened the Substack App and Yikes

“New post > Video post” is clearly not for me, you guys.

That middle icon with the “play” symbol is something I actively avoid in the Substack app. How had I managed to compartmentalize that when I was drafting my post?

Call me old (I am old), but I have zero interest in an auto-playing video of some jabroni2 loudly “interviewing” people on the street about “the immigrants” or whatever.

And I have equally zero interest in subsequently swiping right to find some overachiever3 in a homemade dress in a homesteader kitchen with a wood-burning stove holding-a-baby-splaining to me how to cook something the correct way when I already have no problem cooking it on my own with or without a baby on my hip, thank you very much.

Fuck all that noise.

And then I clicked the link from the subscriber email I’d just sent out. The app opened and…

There I was. Moving around. Practicing my song like a dodo. Without any context.

I swiped right in horror to make it stop. And then Will Ferrel was doing something. And then I screamed. And then I threw my phone into the James River4.

After My Phone Dried Out

I poked around the app, and depending on how I navigated to the post, I was able to find variations of it with weird, unplanned thumbnails. I scrambled to find the settings to correct them. It was hard. It didn’t always take.

I was also, eventually, able to find more soothing variations. The post was pretty straightforward on the desktop site. It was more like I had imagined—more like the preview.

But I really didn’t like the idea of some stand-in human swiping through video after video of who knows what and then winding up at me singing my understated song for grownups in a wonderfully imperfect recording without any context.

“What does this overachieving jabroni think he’s doing?” they would say.

And then they would swipe right to someone with a hot take on The Semiotics of Tree Sexuality.

And then they would have no idea that there was an essay that I really wanted to share with them.

So That’s Why I’m Doing This Redo

As I was writing the original essay, I was intrigued by the idea of chronicling the laughably, endearingly long and weird birth of a song. I was intrigued by the idea of articulating the complex feelings I have, generally speaking, around sharing my songs with anyone at all—let alone, ostensibly, the world.

That’s what intrigued me, but what I wound up with was a mediocre TouYube post that buried my prose and hurried the audience past what I most wanted to share with them.

For that reason, I’m going to un-publish the original video post and recreate it nested within this more straightforward text post. I think I’ll feel better about it this way in the long run.

In the short run, my apologies to my subscribers—I shouldn’t be sending out first drafts, but this one was a learning curve with a learning curve.

Thank you for your patience. Bless you for your existence.

Silver lining? I think the essay about the essay about the song elevates all of them.

What Follows is the Video in Question

And what follows that is the original essay, unedited but for the correction of a few typos. I’ve also updated the title of the whole shebang with “Songwriting Feelings” as a category.

Why? Because there’s a huge well to tap into here. What I mean to say is, there’s way more than one essay in the emotional burlap sack with “Paul’s Feelings about Doing Music” stitched onto it.

As the original essay notes below, I’ve written a lot of songs that very few people have ever heard.

What it doesn’t say is that I have terrible stage fright. What it doesn’t say is that I have Axl Rose Syndrome (ARS) on top of my Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ARS is an insidious, progressive disease. And in my layman’s estimation, there is a high comorbidity between ARS and ASD. Research pending.

When I was young, I overshared quick and dirty home recordings of original songs. Dozens of them. With everyone I could think to share them with. Unfortunately, this was before most of the songs themselves had gotten very good.

At some point, I became obsessed with being my own engineer and my own producer. At some point, I stopped feeling comfortable giving away lofi recordings.

I had also become terribly afraid of doing open mics and that kind of thing after a few bad experiences. It started to feel like there would never be an outlet for my music. Anywhere. Not unless and until I “got it right” myself in a basement studio.

That would be the way. If I could just make an ideal recording, then I could share my music digitally even if I couldn’t get on a stage. And if enough people liked the recordings, maybe I’d feel brave enough to get back on a stage.

I’ve been obsessed with getting the right gear together to record my songs all by myself. A lot of work has gone into that over the years—getting everything into place to get everything into place.

This hasn’t happened, perhaps obviously. It’s hard to find the time these days. Plus, ARS, you guys. Though I do have an awful lot of well-organized gear.

Given all of the above, sending out a video of a performance that I knew was rough was a really off-brand move for me. It was scary as fuck.

But I really like the idea of wrapping a scared little song in the warm blanket of an essay. I like the idea of presenting the song as an imperfect thing that I love—presenting it with tenderness and context and self-reflection. To me, this feels like a safe way to share something that I’ve long been scared to share—and a clever way to bypass my ARS.

That said, I’d like to keep at this. Every once in a while, I think I’ll share an imperfect recording of a song that I’m otherwise really proud of. I think that gently forcing myself to create prose around my songwriting process and around my insecurities could make for some truly engaging reading. And, yes, it would be nice if it could alleviate my ARS at the same time.

I like the idea of harnessing an art form where I currently feel very confident and wielding it to nurture an art form where I currently have a ton of nerves.

I hope you enjoy the original essay. I hope you enjoy the song.

“Here”

By Paul Zaic

I’ve Been Writing Songs since I Was Pretty Newly Seventeen

That was when I inherited a classical guitar from my dad—the same inheritance that came with a wooden statue of Don Quixote.

That was twenty-five years ago! And in twenty-five years, I’ve written a lot of songs that very few people have ever heard.

Songwriting Was First

It’s what I was determined to do before I tripped and fell into a creative writing class in college and started writing stories. And it was way, way before I tripped and fell into Substack and started writing personal essays.

One thing I’ve noticed? I wrote some pretty amazing music between the ages of seventeen and, let’s say, twenty-seven. However, the lyrics that I wrote were almost exclusively trash because they were written by a child i.e. me between the ages of seventeen and, let’s say, twenty-seven5.

I’ve gotten much better at writing lyrics as I’ve gotten older. I don’t think this is bragging. I think it would be true of literally anyone if literally anyone gave writing lyrics the old college try once when they were young and then again when they were old.

But my musical creativity (chord progressions, melodies, harmonies—that sort of thing) has gotten really fussy over the years. It’s still here. I can still sit down at a keyboard or pick up a guitar and go into a flow state for hours. The trouble is that I stay there. In the flow state. For hours.

The Flow State Has Become the Goal

It’s no longer exclusively a path to making songs. I don’t know exactly why this is happening as I age, but I have a few ideas.

For starters, a few hours in a flow state might sound like a lot, but historically that’s rarely been enough time for me to transition into songwriting mode. When I was young and dumb, I could chase a feeling or an idea all night if I wanted to. And I often did.

And then there’s the fact that now I’m old and anxious and I could really, honestly use a flow state most nights—much more than I could use a new song. My poor old brain wants me to stay in the part where my hands are just doing music and the world disappears. Who could blame it?

Songwriting mode may be adjacent to flow state, but it’s not flow state. Not purely. It’s hard work. And life is hard enough. And I have a day job.

But in Spite of Myself

I still manage to write a new song from start to finish once in a while. Yeah! It still happens! And it feels really great when it does!

But what a shame—I sometimes think—to once upon a time have strung so many wince-inducing lyrics along the branches of dozens of perfectly good songs—songs that I worked my ass off to write when I was young and beautiful and dumb.

But then I remember that I am not a famous songwriter and that literally no one will care if I excavate a song that I “finished” when I was twenty-two, strip off its lyrics, and laugh and laugh and laugh as I spray them down the drain of the kitchen sink with the garbage disposal on.

So, in That Spirit

Here is a new song called “Here” that I finished a few weeks ago. All told, it took me about twenty years to write.

And since this is a blog, and since this is a place ostensibly primarily for prose, I feel a little weird sharing a video of me singing a song without also offering some inside baseball.

I honestly don’t know what my subscribers (bless all twenty-three of you) feel like you signed up for, but the thought of sharing a song with you here gives me robust, aching “guy who brought his acoustic guitar to a party” anxiety.

So here’s some more prose:

Look!

I’m socializing diligently before I get the guitar out of its case and manage to attract only one other person into my orbit, and it is also a guy, and he has also brought an acoustic guitar, and now we are a binary star system—each star in its own right is massive and inward-looking enough to quickly spend all of its nuclear fuel and collapse into a black hole so that before the party has ended, the other acoustic guitar man and I will become binary black holes, singing fruitlessly out toward our individual event horizons, unable to see or hear even one another, let alone whatever the party was and whoever was there.

The First Thing You May Notice of This Video Is That

I’m not playing a guitar or a keyboard—I’m playing a ukulele. This isn’t an affectation. I own, play, and love guitars and keyboards.

But I also own a ukulele.

And I’m old. And I’m busy. And I have a bad back. And, frankly, it’s the easiest instrument to pick up and play a lot of the time.

But it also just so happens that the proto-song I decided to cannibalize was written on a ukulele twenty years ago6, which, interestingly, was an affectation. (It was the early oughts—ukuleles were falling out of the trees and hitting indie rock kids on the head like so many coconuts.)

Anyway, the first thing I had to do to cannibalize the proto-song was reverse engineer how to play it on a ukulele. If you were thinking young Paul might have written it down, you were wrong.

Then I had to change the key to suit my current register. That took a little while, but it was worth it, I think.

Affectation of a twenty-two-year-old ding-dong or no, the ukulele was something that forty-two-year-old me thought actually worked rather well to set the mood for this particular song.

That brings me to the performance in the video itself.

First of All, That’s Me

Hi.

I’m Paul.

Zaic.

I set up in the laundry room / stairwell nook near my garage because it had the best combination I could find of “pleasant enough acoustics” and “shelf to prop up my phone”. Which is to say, this is nothing more than a phone recording—it’s scrappy.

I both love and hate how lilting and stop-and-start this performance is. You can see it on my face. There are moments when I’m trying to remember the 2025 lyrics I’d written down twenty minutes earlier—where I’m trying hard not to accidentally sing the 2003 beautiful dumb-dumb lyrics.

There's a moment where I might as well be saying, “Oh fuck,” out loud because I’m blanking on the next chord in the bridge. It comes to me—mercifully—before everything falls apart. I find it in the back of my head. I play it. It doesn’t come across as a near disaster in the video, but let me tell you, the rollercoaster in my mind would’ve been shut down for inspection.

I love lo-fi recordings. I love raw performances. I especially love those things when it’s someone else. I even love those things when it’s me until the moment I click send and then I think, Jesus Christ, Paul. You couldn’t have combed your hair before you went to the job interview? Put on a clean shirt? You own microphones. Nice microphones. You could have used one of the nice microphones.

But all that just is what it is.

So What’s Old and What’s New?

The chords of the verses and chorus are almost exactly the same as they were twenty years ago. The only difference is that now I’m a better player. And, for better or worse, the playing style is a little more noodley (because middle-aged guitar men be noodlin’ (even if technically they’re playing ukuleles because their backs hurt)).

The melody is almost exactly the same too.

The bridge, on the other hand, is entirely new.

“There was a time / When we were young”

That part. The old song didn’t have a bridge. It didn’t need one because it wasn’t smart enough to have benefited from one.

Finally, all of the lyrics were written by forty-two-year-old Paul. Twenty-two-year-old Paul’s lyrics went straight into the garbage disposal.

Go ahead, twenty-two-year-old Paul.

Cry yourself to sleep.

You beautiful dumb-dumb.

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Hooray!

Today will be focused on one of the purely good post-autism-diagnosis feelings—one of the very best.

Series Note

This essay is part of an ongoing series in which I explore each of the feelings that washed over me when I received my diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at forty two.

Feeling Seen [comma] The Relief and Joy of

Listen, just between us birds, the first couple of essays in The Autism Feelings Executive Collection are heavy. They’re heavy like angry cars are heavy. Take a minute. Go. Find yourself an angry car and try to pick it up. They’re so heavy.

Stolen-valor feeling! Anger-at-these-people feeling! Anger-at-those-people feeling! Misdiagnosis! The Catholic Church! Meningitis!

Menin-goddamn-fucking-gitis!

After I wrote “Anger at Professionals?” I wrote a couple of not-about-autism essays that I’d hoped would serve as a kind of palate cleanser. They did, I think (and I’m really happy with them), but where autism feelings are concerned, I’m still jonesing for a heaping tablespoon or two of brown sugar straight out of the bag.

Okay, I’ve got my bag. Now you go get your own bag of brown sugar and meet me by the pool.

The Joy of a T-shirt Fantasy!

I literally fantasized about making a T-shirt. I imagined it would be bright green and yellow and that it would have soothing magenta letters. It would have looked something like this:

There’s still time! No one’s ruling anything out! I can still live out this dream for you!

It goes like this:

1. Acquire this T-shirt

2. Get a good night’s sleep

3. Wake up

4. Shower

5. Wear this T-shirt

6. Escort my kid into preschool

7. Smile and wave exactly like the dude on the T-shirt

8. Do perfect conversations with the other parents

Such a beautiful morning! So good to see you! You’re a lawyer? And your partner is a lawyer? That’s so great! I have autism! Why am I staring at your shoes? Because I have autism! I know! I am very handsome, thank you so much! Good noticing! Why am I playing air trumpet with my right hand? That’s also because I have autism! I’m not going to kill myself masking for you anymore!

Here! Have a T-shirt! No! It’s fine! I made enough for everyone! Of course not! No, I know that you don’t! That’s why yours says, “Hi! YOU have autism”!

The Relief of Documents!

Talking about our relief can be tricky because it implies that we needed relief from suffering. Well, not today it doesn’t! Today, we’re just going to skip right the fuck over that part!

I was relieved (never mind any preexisting suffering) when I finally had a document from a doctor. Document and doctor, by the way, both have the same root—docere—which means “to teach” in Latin. Latin, by the way, was a Paul Zaic special interest circa nineteen ninety high school wherein, by the way, at the Madrigal Feast, my Latin teacher Mr. Martin told my father, “The boy has a mind like a steel trap,” which, by the way, made my father feel very proud (never mind any preexisting suffering). Subsequently, by the way, my father’s propensity to repeat this anecdote, would only be out-propsenitied by my own. The Zaics are propensities all the way down. Incidentally, the phrase “by the way” used figuratively to mean “incidentally” does not have Latin origins.

Anyway, my document (my “teachy-dealy”) says something like, “Take whatever this dude says and does with a grain of salt and just be cool if he’s making an inexplicable face or it seems like he’s not paying attention. Assume that he is. Assume that he’s never not been paying extraordinary amounts of attention to the loud, bright, smelly person standing a little too close to him.”

jk, that’s not what it says, it says:

What a wonderful thing!

To have a document! To have a little teachy-dealy that gives voice to the things you may not have been able to give voice to! That asks for the things you may not have felt emboldened to ask for! That, in some cases, implies legal consequences if professionals in your life continue to insist upon being such dickheads! Yeah, that’s right! You heard me, dickheads! Cut it out! We have documents now!

My document even helped me in my most personal relationships. No, I didn’t hand out copies at a madrigal feast in honor of my diagnosis (though, now that I’ve thought of that, I’m totally going to do it). Really, my document just gave me the foundation and the courage to start those conversations with friends and family.

I know when I do X it can be really frustrating. I don’t mean to frustrate you. I can work really hard to suppress X, but that’s actually really painful for me. I’ve been suppressing it most of my life and it’s exhausting. X is just a part of who I am. If you could try to do Y when I do X, that would really help me. Is there anything I can do that would help you?

What an actual relief!

The Joy of Solidarity Tattoos!

I don’t have any tattoos! Neither in solidarity nor otherwise!

The Joy of Solidarity!

But I briefly considered getting one! On the day that I received my ASD / ADHD diagnosis, I began to feel intense, joyful solidarity with my ASD family member. An image popped into my head. I doodled it on a scrap of paper:

Cute right? But then I had a change of heart, best captured by this excerpt from a DM I sent to Carrie Poppy:

… I just googled the history of the symbology of the puzzle pieces and now I know that a lot of people have really painful associations with them / ABA / Autism Speaks. Too bad. They’re so cute. Maybe I’ll doodle a rainbow-ception or something. Anyway, sentiment above remains the same.

So:

Carrie responded in a more measured way:

… the 🧩 originated with AS but obviously has wider use now, so whatever. One influencer I like is trying to push for the fingerprint (as in, each is different) and I like that bc reminds me of detectives! 🕵️‍♀️

So wise! Are you ready, Carrie? Here’s the big reveal:

Perfect! Literally the only thing I can’t decide now is where on my face to tattoo this.

jk, I’ve decided, it’s the middle.

The Relief of Seeing Yourself!

Seeing yourself can be a huge relief, but, famously, it can also be uncomfortable and elusive.

Which is why the expression on this happy little stick man’s face is what we in the business call a Miss Piggy Partial (though colloquially you may hear it referred to as Kermit’s Acquiescence).

Enjoy seeing yourself to the extent that you can for as long as you can!

Which brings me to the way we’ll be walking out door today:

Okay, Kids. Real Talk.

Every joy has a beginning, a middle, and an end. All relief is temporary (with the possible expectation of The Great Relief That Comes for Us All).

Every person is different. Every person with ASD will react to their own diagnosis in their own way.

Traditionally, I am loosey-goosey with my pessimism and I am stingy AF with my optimism. This situation is no different.

Let me explain.

So far, my autism-feelings essays have focused on the particular ways in which I’ve been processing those feelings—my feelings. I haven’t felt at all concerned that in describing my anger I might be misconstrued as prescribing that anger. I haven’t been worried that a reader might come to the conclusion that they’re not angry enough—that they ought to work harder at feeling angry. I’ve been describing these difficult feelings so that someone might read them and feel seen—might find solace in them. To me, that’s an understanding inherent to any covenant to share one’s difficult feelings.

However, in writing about my joy and relief, I do worry that it could be read as prescriptive. I worry that someone with a recent diagnosis might stumble upon this post and think, “I’m not experiencing any of the joy and relief described here. What is wrong with me?”

If that sounds like you, and you’ve made it this far, there’s nothing wrong with you for not being stick-figure joyful in the orbit of your diagnosis. I share these joys because they were true for me. If they hadn’t been true for me, I don’t think I would have been moved to start writing about my autism diagnosis at all—neither the good nor the bad.

And, truth be told, it’s a lot easier to sustain anger than joy. (It is for me, anyway.) I’ve had this post among my drafts for a while now. I’ve had to chip away at it in the moments where I’ve felt joyful enough and relieved enough to do right by the organic burst of joy and relief that came so readily to me in the autumn of 2024 when I was first diagnosed.

World events weigh on me. Run-of-the-mill depression and anxiety weigh on me. My responsibilities weigh on me.

You might rightly believe that you will not be seen. Your family and townsfolk might actually be a bunch of assholes about your diagnosis. Your document might trigger your employer to quietly (or loudly) replace you. While—as far as I know—that is still illegal in America, I can’t promise you that it won’t happen.

You know your situation best. I trust you to judge how seen you will or will not feel. I trust you to judge whether it’s wise or safe for you to throw yourself a parade. I wouldn’t even blame you for deciding that diagnosis itself is too much of a risk for you right now. (Not to mention too much of a financial burden.)

If any of that sounds like you, and if you feel like the three-times-the-recommended-ratio-of-Tang-to-water vibe that opened this essay doesn’t ring true for you, then I want you to know that this essay is still for you—for you especially.

If you have a recent diagnosis and you don’t feel safe to share it, or if you suspect that you might be on the team but you don’t have the support at home or the financial stability to look into it right now, I want you to know that I see you. We see you.

If “here” feels like a place that’s impossible to get to, I want you to know that I understand that feeling. I also want you to know that you’re already here.

Hello! Welcome!

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“Daddy, do you want to see my statue?”

“Your statue?”

“It’s this way.”

I follow my four-year-old son from the kitchen to the living room. We stop at the far wall where one of my painful obsessions is on full display. It’s an old piano.

I should not have tried to fix it. I should not have, but I did. I spent the better part of a year letting all of its curious little parts work their way into my dreams. I had been told by a professional not to bother. So, of course, I learned everything I could about pianos and piano maintenance.

It was going well for a while. Very well, actually. And then it wasn’t. And then it was again. And then it really wasn’t.

Old pianos are full to the brim with steep cliffs.

One day, I gave up. I left the old piano open and exposed. What kind of surgeon walks away in the middle of performing a surgery? If a thing is dead, one should at least have the decency to call the time of death and pull a sheet over it. But I just couldn’t any more. I couldn’t bear to look at it. For my own well being, I needed to pretend that the piano did not exist. I needed to walk away—avoid the living room altogether.

The piano is a stout little spinet. My son stands on his toes and reaches up to it's mantle-like lid. He grabs an old, wooden carving of Don Quixote. I’d placed the statue there myself, once upon a time, maybe a year and a half earlier, when I’d imagined that my days as a piano repair person must be very close to complete.

“Here,” he says.

He hands the statue to me. It’s dusty.

“Oh!” I say. “You’re right! This is a statue!”

As he hands it over, I ask him to be careful with it. I explain that it is old and fragile. I tell him that I broke it once myself.

“You see how the tip of the spear is kind of nubby? And how it’s a slightly different color than the rest of the wood? That’s because I wasn’t being careful with it. The tip of the spear used to go up maybe a whole inch higher.”

But my son is already walking back to the kitchen. I follow him with the statue in my hand.

“You know, this belonged to my daddy,” I say.

“Your daddy’s name is Brian,” he says.

“That’s true,” I say. “It was. It is. And someday this will be yours, I guess. If you want it.”

“What are cookies for?” he says.

This is a trap, but I know the way around.

“They’re a treat,” I say. “We usually have treats with lunch and dinner.”

“Can I have lunch?” he says.

“You can finish your breakfast,” I say, “and I’ll put a cookie in your lunchbox. You know, this is a character from a story.”

“Like Woody,” he says, “from Toy Story.”

“Like that,” I say. “Yeah, like Woody. But this character’s name is Don Quixote. The story is called Don Quixote too.”

“What happens?” he says.

And, just like that, at roughly 7:45 on a cold Thursday morning in February, I find myself in the predicament of having to explain Don Quixote to a four year old.

I decide to go for it. I speak slowly and carefully. There are some pregnant pauses, but it all comes out in a single breath:

Don Quixote is a man

Who sees all of the bad things in the world

And he wants to fix everything

Because he really cares about all of the good things

But he doesn’t always know what’s real

For a fleeting moment, I feel very proud of myself. Good summary, Dad. Then, almost immediately, I start to tear up. It’s really coming on strong—I can feel it.

I do what I can. I hide my face in the fridge while I get the food stuff to fill my son’s lunchbox. I face away from him while I slice an apple. Then I ask him to go get dressed for school. He does. It doesn’t seem as though he’s noticed the tears in my eyes.

I think it’s fine and good for boys to cry and to see their dads cry. I probably should have just let it happen to set a good example, but that’s not what I did. I found a way to get him out of the room. I did this partly because I wasn’t in the best head space to explain myself, but mostly because I really needed a good cry. I knew that if he stayed there in the kitchen that I wouldn’t be able to really lean into it. When I heard him stomping around in his room above the kitchen, I let go. I let it happen. I allowed myself a sustained, full-on, ugly cry.

I’m going to go ahead and say the quiet part out loud here:

I am a man

Who sees all of the bad things in the world

And wants to fix everything

Because I really care about all of the good things

But I don’t always know what’s real

My heart hurts. When did this happen? When did I become Don Quixote? Have I been Don Quixote the whole time?

The parallel is pretty devastating on its own—it’s given me some unpacking to do over the coming days and weeks—but it’s the statue’s connection to my dad that triggers the most haunting reverberations—that layers in so many colors of feeling and memory.

The statue itself is about a foot tall. It’s elegant and dignified but it’s also thin and frail—just the sort of attributes you’d hope to find in a statue of Don Quixote. It’s got a mid-century vibe. I imagine there are hundreds of thousands of wooden carvings just like it in thrift stores and storage lockers all around the world.

In 1989, Walt Disney’s Peter Pan was re-released in theaters. I went to see it with my family—all four of us, if I’m not mistaken, before my parents got separated. I was sitting next to my dad. We settled in as the movie began. It was safe and warm—it had long been established as something that we all loved. Then it got to the part where Wendy sings her lullaby to The Lost Boys.

I noticed that my dad was crying. Then I noticed that he was trying to hide that he was crying. I waited until later when it was just the two of us to ask him about it because I didn’t want to embarrass him.

“Why were you crying?” I said. “During the movie.”

“Oh,” he said.

He took a moment. In my memory, it was a very long moment. And then, when he spoke, he was brief.

“It was all that stuff about mothers,” he said.

I didn’t ask any follow-up questions. I just nodded. His mom—my grandma—had died in very recent memory. I was six. I remember feeling surprised (but not too surprised) that grownups still needed their parents so much—that they could feel so lost without them even though they were in charge of their own lives and in charge of the lives of their own children. It was a scary thought for a six year old. It must have been a scary thought for my dad too.

My dad died ten and a half years later when I had only recently turned seventeen—over winter break in the middle of my senior year of high school.

I don’t remember exactly how the statue wound up in my hands after that, but I can make a pretty well-informed guess.

I loved Man of La Mancha, the 1965 Broadway musical based on Don Quixote. It was a family favorite. My dad had the CD. It wasn’t unusual when I was a teenager to hear “Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote)” or “Dulcinea” echoing around the house. I knew all of the words to the songs—to the best of the songs anyway.

I think the transfer of the statue was just one of those things. I spotted it when we were emptying out his little apartment. “The Impossible Dream” began to play in my head and suddenly I needed the statue. No one else felt the need to claim it. From then on, it was mine.

I remember knocking it over when I was in my twenties. I remember the tight-necked realization that I’d broken the tip of the spear. I remember carving a new tip for the spear with my pocket knife. I remember going to the hardware store and trying to find a matching stain. These actions were all the exact kind of actions my dad would have taken if he’d broken an old wooden statue that had belonged to his father. I recognized that at the time—drew the parallels even then.

So I carried this thing around from ridiculous residence to ridiculous residence all throughout my chaotic twenties—through my mom’s death, through the best of my drinking, through the worst of my drinking. I kept it around in my much less chaotic thirties. Later still, in my first few years of fatherhood, I’d given it what I’d hoped would be a more permanent home on top of a piano that had found its way into my life—I gave it a home on top of what would turn out to be another one of my painful obsessions.

Am I a pitiable old man?

I didn’t read The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha until grad school when I was twenty seven. I was—and remain—blown away that it was written in 1605 and 1610 (its two original parts, respectively). There are people much more disciplined than I am who’ve written extensively about why it’s such a special book—why it’s so remarkable given its place in history. I’ll let you look into that as you see fit.

What I’ll say about it here—as a person who’s merely lived his whole life in the shadow of its imagery—is that I can almost guarantee you that your feelings about the hero will change over the course of your lifetime if you live long enough and if you decide to check in with the old man every decade or so. It’s a remarkable thing that Cervantes does. He materializes exactly the right kind of folly and then he blends it into exactly the right kind of righteous indignation such that the two become indistinguishable—the combined gravity of which we will continually underestimate in new and exciting ways as we age.

Until one day it lands on top of us.

When I was young, I cheered for Don Quixote without exception. I didn’t mind that he was nuts—I liked his style. I admired his steadfastness. Frankly, I liked that he was nuts. Knowing the story of Don Quixote made me nod and smile when I met people out in the real world who were nuts in the same way. It made me feel a little better about the ways that I was nuts.

Now, crying here in the kitchen, holding this old statue, I feel a deep pity for Don Quixote. I feel a deep pity for my dad. I feel a deep pity for myself. I mourn the loss of my certainty—my certainty, which I hadn’t really appreciated for its tireless efforts over the years, for the way that it had anchored my sense of self and my sense of self worth to whatever it is that those things are anchored to.

Not everyone is Don Quixote. Not everyone becomes Don Quixote. I’ve known my fair share of people who simply spent some time being old before they died. I can confidently say that many of them never got around to tilting at windmills—not even once. This is foreign to me, but I think I can understand it. This kind of adventure is not for the faint of heart.

For some of us though, at some point in our lives, this kind of adventure begins to feel obvious. We realize that it has always been with us and will always be with us. It is obvious to us that there are giants that need slaying. That there are wrongs that need righting. That the world is a place that’s in dire need of chivalry (granted, a more contemporary, less-gendered form of chivalry than Don Quixote would have been accustomed to).

The harrowing part is that over time it also dawns on us that our wherewithal will eventually, inevitably fade. It is obvious to us that maybe it’s been fading for a while now—perhaps for longer than we’d realized. It is obvious to us that stubbornly, madly, our righteous indignation refuses to fade. That it may grow. And then what are we to do?

While my son is still busy getting dressed, stomping around in his room above the kitchen, I wipe my eyes. I walk back to the living room. I put the statue back on top of the piano—the piano, which, I remember, cannot be played. I feel the sorrow of this in my chest. It literally hurts. I lose all of the air in me.

It’s getting dark now. And I’m afraid. Are you still here, Sancho? Are you with me?

I stand there looking at the statue on the piano for a moment or two. Until the pity begins to subside. Until, slowly, something familiar begins to pour into the empty spaces that self pity leaves behind. And I begin—again—to feel certain that I am the wind—that I am ancient. And even on the stillest of days, what can the wind do but find cause to move again?

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There’s a version of the nineties where no one makes fun of Hootie and the Blowfish.

There’s a version of the nineties where Jerry Brown becomes the 1992 Democratic Party presidential nominee instead of Bill Clinton. Where Jerry Brown selects Diane Feinstein as his running mate.

There’s a version of the nineties where Agent Scully convinces Agent Mulder that it was all in his head, and that maybe he could benefit from some talk therapy—that maybe it would be worth a try. Could he try? For her? Where, later, long after they retire from the FBI, they remain friends and have nice lunches together and are generally pretty good about making time for one another and they continue to care for one another as they progress into their old age.

There’s a version of the nineties where instead of becoming a titan of the senate, Diane Feinstein helps Jerry Brown defeat George W. Bush in a landslide. Where she becomes Vice President Feinstein—a first of many firsts to come.

There’s a version of the nineties where thought-provoking, contemplative hip hop ultimately wins out over juvenile, misogynistic hip hop. Where grunge is limited to an interesting thing that’s happening in the Northwest. Where that’s fine for them but the larger wave of apathy brought on by the disillusionment of the Reagan Era doesn’t spill over and drown a generation. Doesn’t drain us out of the system and into a void. Doesn’t kneecap a generation that history desperately needs to act.

There’s a version of the nineties where we embrace and celebrate queer people and queer culture wholeheartedly, with open arms.

There’s a version of the nineties where President Jerry Brown, still high on Buddhism from his soul-searching trip to Japan, applies the best of the Buddhist principles he’s learned to everything he can think of when he comes home. Where Americans just eat it up, not realizing how much they’ve been craving a calmer, more adult way to conceptualize their suffering and that of their neighbors.

There’s a version of the nineties where all of the Troll Dolls and all of the Beanie Babies make haste by stealth of night. Where they leave our homes and their displays at candy stores and at airport gift shops. Where each and every one of them marches to Washington and occupies the National Mall. Where their wizened elders stand before the nation on an enormous, Woodstock-style stage and warn us of the compounding dangers of plastics in our ecosystem.

There’s a version of the nineties where Bill Clinton leads a less interesting life as a mere multi-term governor of Arkansas. Where he has frequent—if regional—sex scandals. Where Hillary Clinton gets a divorce and moves on with her life.

There’s a version of the nineties where Dave Matthews Band is just a band—just a band that some people like and that some people don’t and that’s fine.

There’s a version of the nineties where President Jerry Brown takes a more measured approach to globalization than Bill Clinton would have. Where President Brown fights for a national living wage and the House and the Senate get on board. Where Detroit is revitalized as America’s hub for clean energy. Where a super group of our best and brightest dedicate themselves to environmental protection. Where every city in America decides to become The City of the Future. Where President Brown and Vice President Feinstein win their reelection bid in a landslide.

There’s a version of the nineties where after that one time when Dennis Franz showed his butt on NYPD Blue during primetime TV, the other networks decided to show butts on their own shows sometimes too. Where butts and boobs and penises and vulvas start to make frequent, casual appearances on American television and no one gets hurt and everyone is fine.

There’s a version of the nineties where President Jerry Brown resigns in 1997 to pursue other interests. Where he doesn’t feel the need to provide a further explanation and we don't feel the need to demand one. Where Diane Feinstein becomes the first woman to serve as President of the United States. Where President Diane Feinstein will go on to win two successive terms in office with a person of color as her running mate. Where America never votes for a man again because they realize what a huge relief it has been—what an undeniable improvement it has been—to drop all pretenses and to let women run things. Women, who are measurably less violent than men, generally speaking.

There’s a version of the nineties where Freddie Mercury doesn’t die.

There’s a version of the nineties where a mental health professional sees Columbine coming and intervenes with those kids. Where that’s enough. Where the headline on the front page of the next day’s news is “Mass Murder at School Averted Thanks to Intervention by Skilled Mental Healthcare Professionals in Colorado Public School System”. Where that alone gets Americans moving on sensible gun control and a complete overhaul of mental healthcare in America’s school systems. Where we are brave enough to shift our culture before the odious maul of manipulative men drops once and for all. Before it wedges us completely, irrevocably apart.

There’s a version of the nineties where I Rollerblade to Australia and I never look back.

There’s a version of the nineties where Russia isn’t taken over by mobsters.

There’s a version of the nineties where rap-rock never happens. Where Kid Rock becomes the person he was always meant to be: an angry little dude just shit-kicking around Michigan.

There’s a version of the nineties where we shoot the internet in the heart with a King-Kong-sized dart gun. Where, while it sleeps, we make our move. Where, like Odysseus, we recognize the internet as the Siren song that it is. Where we plug our ears until we have sailed safely beyond it. Where we see the cauldron of conspiracy theory and misinformation boiling and bubbling. Where we scare off those particular witches before their spell is cast. Where every single adolescent boy on planet Earth isn’t poisoned all at once with a never-ending stream of frequently misogynistic and sometimes degrading pornography. Where the women in charge of the internet take advantage of its dart-induced hibernation and turn it off. Where they tinker with it before reintroducing it into the wild after it has been retrofitted with super-hot, consenting, feminist porn that everyone can enjoy.

There’s a version of the nineties where instead of Bill Clinton announcing the “Don’t ask, don't tell” policy, President Jerry Brown announces the “Can we please all just calm down?” policy.

There’s a version of the nineties where the massive, wave-splitting battleship of American foreign policy is diverted just enough from its course of exploitation that Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden and the many of that model that dot the globe feel safe enough to take a less radical approach to their own foreign policies. Where they feel free enough to maybe smoke a joint now and then and to just get together and kick the ball around with their kids a little more often. Where the battleship keeps on turning. Slowing down. Standing down. Where the battleship is covered in thousands upon thousands of literal olive branches. Where its shipmates all stand together on the main deck, staring at the sunrise in wonder.

There’s a version of the nineties where Mariah Carey is about six years younger and I’m about six years older and we meet backstage at a Boyz II Men concert because I’ve won special tickets from contest on the radio. Where we form a progressive, loving partnership.

There’s a version of the nineties where one of the survivors of Tiananmen Square spikes the tea of the Politburo with copious doses of psilocybin. Where the Politburo decides that Taiwan doing its own thing has never been such a big deal after all. Where it decides that Tibet is actually pretty cool the way that it is and that the Tibetans should probably just be left alone too. Where a Uyghur boy wins a national dance competition. Where a glimpse of the goodness in each and every one of us results in Uyghur culture becoming all the rage for a time. Where that kind of love lasts and isn’t lost.

There’s a version of the nineties where Lilith Fair never ends. Where sensible women dominate American culture. Where we learn to listen to survivors of rape and abuse and we make cultural, political, and legal changes to better serve women. Where we are proactive in our feminism and don’t need to wait for a list of demands before we decide to be decent and equitable.

There’s a version of the nineties where Americans get universal healthcare because it’s the right thing to do.

There’s a version of the nineties where the cast of Friends is black.

There’s a version of the nineties where every single white person in America lines up at a podium on a dais at the Lincoln Memorial and apologizes one after the other live on CNN. Where they say they’re sorry and they mean it. Where they say that they’re sorry for slavery, for segregation, for Jim Crow laws, for redlining, for dog whistling. Where they say that they’re sorry for swindling Native Americans out of their land. For forcing them off of their land. Where they say that they’re sorry for side-eyeing the people at our southern border with such unaccountable, festering suspicion. Where all of the white people say, “We’re sorry. We’re so, so sorry,” and they ugly cry, tears streaming down their faces. Where they say, “We’re so goddamned sorry for the brutality, for the cruelty, and for the hate we held in our hearts and for the hate we let others hold in theirs.” Where one by one, each and every white person asks for forgiveness. Where the next day, President Feinstein declares National All-Races Lunch Day where white people and people of color will get together locally in small groups and have lunch and just talk. Where the practice sticks and eventually we don’t need a special day to remember that we’re neighbors.

There’s a version of the nineties where I get the help that I need while I’m still young. Where I become better prepared for my adult life. Where my mom has better support at home. Where I’m able to ask my dad a thing or two before he dies—ask him the questions that this forty-something version of me has now. Where at the end of high school, I set out into the world a little bit stronger, a little bit braver. Excited for the days to come. Excited to help.

There’s a version of the nineties where my new lunch buddies and I sit in lawn chairs and share our food on the Fourth of July and watch the fireworks together. Where the tension in our necks disappears. Where the music and the colors in the night sky let us know that everything is going to be okay.

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Since joining Substack, I’ve noticed a few recurring themes in my feed. There are some real puzzlers in there, but one theme in particular keeps hitting me in the face like a hot, wet fish.

Does the improper use of punctuation and capitalization employed by some writers here on Substack turn off anyone else completely? Is it just me? I mean, I’m great, yet I still find myself so inordinately frustrated by “writers” who can’t be bothered to stop and learn the basic rules of writing that I can’t make it a paragraph deep into their strange little word caves without screaming at my children and my neighbors [PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE SEMICOLON] what I’m really saying is, maybe I could finish reading these efforts and actually take something away from them if they were written properly. It just makes me want throw my Substack Omnibus—which I print out every morning onto a ream of paper and have spiral-bound in colored plastic that corresponds with the day of the week—right the fuck out of my goddamn window.

Like and subscribe! I’m having a tough time…

The above is not actually a quote even though I put it in block quotes. It’s a pastiche. Please don’t be mad.

Let’s take a step back.

First of all, thank you so much for inviting our kids to Ripley and Connor’s birthday party.

Twins! I can’t imagine! Sorry! I know! I’m sure you must hear that all the time!

I love these decorations! I never would have thought of “The Good Old Days” as a theme for a birthday party for children, but… How did you manage to find so many Cabbage Patch dolls? What’s that? Oh, you made them! That is… Hmm? Oh yes, soft sculpture is… Well, it’s a real tradition, isn’t it? Yes. Yes. A dying art, yes.

You must be exhausted. Sit with me a minute? It seems like the other parents have a handle on the kids for the time being.

Have I ever told you that once upon time I taught and tutored English? The students were all ages—from roughly second grade to twelfth grade.

Oh, I have? Sorry, my memory isn’t what it used to be. But I’m almost certain I haven’t run you through my whole “punctuation as traffic signals” bit.

Trying to teach kids the rules of writing, well… It’s interesting. When they’re young enough, they might as well be on magic mushrooms. You’ll be up there at the whiteboard, thinking you’re knocking it out of the park by drawing your little stick-figure cats “in” a house and “on” a house and then “behind” a house, and then you’ll turn around and you’ll find that two or three of your students have flopped out of their desks. They’ll be rolling around on the floor and looking at their hands.

When they’re that age (and likely for another year or so) you’ll be able to connect with some of them directly. They just need to hear you say whatever the thing is a bunch of times and they need to see tons of examples. But God help you if you tell them something like, “A period is like a stop sign.”

“Stop signs are red!” they’ll say, beaming.

They’re not wrong!

But long about fourth grade, most of them will be down to follow you on your figurative language trip. Every kid is different, but in my experience, you can really lean into this kind of teaching when they’re right around that age.

Sit, sit! Ripley’s fine. Look, she’s already stopped crying. Arsenic’s dad has this one covered. Can I get you another bottle of fashion water? A Capri Sun?

Fourth grade is also around the time they start asking, “Why?” whenever you teach them a new language rule.

And they’re not just being jerks! They really want to know! They want to get it!

“We’re following you, dude,” they’ll say, “but why is there a comma between these two clauses but not between those two clauses? Seems kind of random from where we’re sitting.”

So I did what I had to do. For a while, I just said, “Um…”

But teaching those rules day after day and year after year, I started to summon up some analogies—some landed better than others. This is when the patent-pending Mr. Paul’s Extended “Traffic Signs” analogy began to blossom like a lotus flower. Periods are like stop signs. Commas are like yield signs.

Et cetera.

Different kinds of clauses come together like different kinds of intersections. You just need to pick the sign least likely to cause an accident and/or annoy people. We don’t usually stick a comma between an independent clause and a dependent clause because a comma is like a yield sign and a subordinating conjunction is also like a yield sign, and you wouldn’t need two yield signs, would you? That would be silly.

You wouldn’t want to suddenly stop your reader while they’re driving at speed on the highway. You wouldn’t want to let your reader fly through an intersection. That’s how accidents happen. But you can help prevent these tragic accidents! With punctuation.

I won’t bore you with the whole spiel. It gets a little more complicated when you start throwing in em dashes and relative clauses and all that, but it’s fine. It’s teachable. Maybe someday I’ll write and publish my version of Strunk & White for kids that has pictures and stuff. Maybe it comes with a pair of dice. Anyway, I’m sure you haven’t thought about this particular glossary of terms in years. You’d need a refresher before we kept going. Or maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t know. Based on your strong distaste for writers who do writing wrong, it stands to reason that you must be very good with rules of writing and still have all of the terminology locked and loaded, ready to do correctness battle.

Suffice it to say, the kids liked the traffic analogies. It worked for most of them most of the time. The other ones would come along when they were ready if you kept at it with examples. Generally speaking, kids like it when you mark up a sentence on the whiteboard with octagons and triangles and what have you. They like it when you draw the streets of a make-believe town and send clauses through the intersections to see what happens. It becomes like a game.

Which brings me to my larger point: Writing is a game. It has always been a game. It’s a neat trick that humans can do. And if you want to take it more seriously than that, that’s fine too. It’s been elevated from a game to an integral part of civilization—civilization being another neat trick that humans do. Humans are games all the way down is what I’m saying.

“My teacher told me a comma means you take a breath,” a student would say.

“Well,” I would say, “Which kind of breath? A quick breath or a long breath? Or something in between? Is a period not like a breath? Is a semicolon not like a breath? And have you considered that maybe it’s the other way around? That taking a breath means you should use a comma? Because we took breaths first, you know? We did a whole lot of speaking before we came up with writing. If punctuation marks and conjunctions are the traffic signs that keep us from confusing our readers with our writing, then why don’t people get confused when we speak aloud the same ideas? We’re not using punctuation when we speak, but everyone seems to get along well enough. Well, the thing is, we are using punctuation when we speak. We’re using short breaths and long breaths and soft tones and loud tones and up sweeps and down sweeps and hand gestures and facial expressions and all kinds of other subtleties to punctuate everything that we say. We’ve been writing for about five-thousand years and we’re still trying to figure out how to punctuate our ideas when we write them down as well as we do without even thinking about it when we say them aloud. It’s just one of those things.”

“Can I go to the bathroom?” they would say.

“You just went to the bathroom,” I would say.

“That’s true,” they would said. “But if we’re still figuring out the best way to write ideas down, then why do we have to learn all these rules?”

“Well, you don’t.”

“We don’t?”

“You’re in fourth grade. You’re basically voting at this point. If you want to get a good grade, then you have to learn these rules. If you don’t, you don’t. If you want people to understand what you’re saying when you send them a cover letter to apply for a job, it’s probably a good idea to learn the rules now while you’re young. But maybe you don’t want that kind of job. Maybe you’d be more comfortable working somewhere that’s a little more flexible and a little less pedantic when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“Are teachers allowed to say that?”

“Maybe,” I would say. “I don’t know, man. I’m not a real teacher. I’m just trying to figure out what comes next for me.”

“Okay,” they would say.

“Listen, I was terrible at this when I was your age. It was impossibly hard for me. I got math. I didn’t get this. I felt really embarrased by it. I struggled with this all the way into college. It wasn’t until I started writing solely because I wanted to express myself that the rules started to make sense to me. I finally learned them because I realized that I would need to if I was going get my thoughts out there to the widest possible audience.”

“Hmm,” they would say.

“Anyway, I highly recommend that you learn these rules. If a big city didn’t have traffic rules, it would be a mess. No one would ever get anywhere. People would misunderstand each other all the time. There would be accidents all over the place.”

What’s that? Oh, no, I don’t tutor anymore. No. No. I mean, I can ask around, but I’m not really connected to the education world these days. Connor seems fine. He’s four years old. Give it a little time, yeah? His resume? I don’t think a four year old really needs… Oh, he did? Really? His picture right there on the cover, huh? Well, good for him! Oh, actually, don’t look now, but he’s eating a… Oh, nevermind. Safeword’s mom just stepped in there to save the day. It really does take a village.

Anyway, I’m almost done, I promise, but I really want to finish my thought. If we stop here, it might seem like I’m strict about grammar and punctuation if only begrudgingly because I see its utility in our society, but that’s not exactly the case.

So anyway, the kid would say, “But my friends and I never use punctuation when we’re writing to each other and no one ever gets confused.”

“That’s a very good point!” I would say. “But it’s not that you don’t have rules. It’s just that you have your own rules. It’s like a small town that’s just for you and your friends. There are only a few roads and everyone knows each other. You don’t really need traffic signs. Plus, you have emojis. They’re doing a ton of the heavy lifting. The important thing is that you all understand one another.”

“Huh,” the kid would say.

“But life is weird,” I would say. “It’s never that simple. As far as writing is concerned, you live in the big city and several small towns all at the same time.”

“Mr. Paul, you are blowing my mind right now,” the kid would say.

“I mean you text your parents differently than you text your friends, and both of those are way different than the way they expect you to write at school—that’s two towns and a city right there.”

“I’m not allowed to have a phone yet.”

“Well, sure. That makese sense. Someday, kid. Anyway, I recommend that you learn these rules because you’re going to need them so people in the big city will take you seriously. Even if you don’t wind up taking the people in “the big city” seriously and you feel like telling them that their rules are old and dumb, you might find that you need to at least have a passing familiarity with their rules so they understand what you’re saying when you tell them that their rules are old and dumb. And when you and your friends decide to build your own city, you’ll at least have been to a city before. You won’t be starting from scratch.”

Anyway, that’s what I would tell the kids.

But there are a few other things I’d like to tell you while we’re sitting here because we’re fucking grownups.

Hmm? Oh, hey, don’t worry. It’s fine. We’re allowed to say “fucking grownups”. Interestingly, it’s because we’re fucking grownups. The kids? They’ll be fine. They’re way over there, digging through that trashcan like a family of raccoons.

The things I hope to impart unto you, grownup, are these:

Whenever you encounter a “typical English-speaking person” writing on Substack (or anywhere else) who you think “should” know the rules of the written road because you ostensibly speak the same language, just try to remember that there are a lot of reasons they may not have populated their town with the signs you’re familiar with. Maybe they want to learn the signs you’re familiar with, but it’s all still new to them. Maybe they’re just now finding their voice and they’ll get around to it. Maybe there’s a libertarian vibe in their town. Not my cup of tea, but fine. Maybe they just don’t want Big Grammar telling them what to do. Maybe there are signs in their town but you just don’t see them because you don’t live there and you don’t know what to look for. Maybe they didn’t have the same opportunities to learn the signs that you had. Maybe they have a learning disability and have struggled with signs for as long as they’ve been asked to learn them. Maybe they know the signs better than you do and they’re subverting them because they can—because they want to take you to a wild-ass town if you think you can hang. None of the reasons they may have for not executing rules the same way that you do invalidate their ideas.

And I assume we don’t need a refresher on how rules in academia have—sometimes accidentally and sometimes purposefully—distinguished people who are in the special club from people who are not in the special club? We don’t? Great. Same page.

In other words, whenever you read anything that anyone has put out into the world, remember that they put it out into the world because they’re hoping someone else will read it—hoping that someone will see them. For that reason, there are a few invisible but strongly implied sentences between every title and its first paragraph. If you could see them, they would read something like this:

Hello. Welcome to my town. I like it here. I’m a little nervous, but I’m very excited to have a visitor.

Visiting someone’s town and telling them that you can’t stand the way they’ve organized things is unkind.

Telling a crowd of people the same thing in a stage whisper that’s loud enough for the town you just visited to hear is beyond the pale—not to mention it’s just plain cowardly.

Maybe their town is not for you. That’s fine. Maybe you won’t be visiting again. But look around while you’re there. Meet the people. Have lunch at the diner and chat up the server at the counter. Walk along their streets and see if the signs don’t start to make sense to you after a little while. Get some ice cream. Have a beer. Take a breath.

And after all that, if you still decide you’re never going back, that’s fine. But please don’t write a blog about how shitty you thought their town was. That’s somebody’s home. Definitely don’t write a passive-aggressive blog about how “frustrating” you thought their town was and how it could be less frustrating for you and better for them, really, if only they would discipline themselves enough to follow the rules.

Was there something actually shitty there? Was it full of nazis? Yes? Then good instinct on your part. Call a nazi a nazi. Warn people not to visit the nazi town. But differently-capitalized titles and “missing” commas are not nazis. They’re not high rates of violent crime. They’re not a tire fire. They’re not widespread racism and misogyny. They’re not an outbreak of dengue fever. They’re not an unattended chemical spill. They’re not hyper-intelligent, four-foot-tall spiders.

Be reasonable. Be kind. Don’t be a butthead. You’re a guest.

No, you’re right, I think you’d better check in with Ripley and Connor at this point. That’s a pretty sturdy-looking table, but I don’t know how long its legs are going to hold out if they keep doing what they’re doing. Twins! I can’t imagine!

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It had been a little more than a year since I’d quit drinking, and I was still working out how I might someday come to enjoy life without alcohol as my central hobby. I was very uncomfortable almost all of the time. I was twenty-eight years old. I was working as a tutor at The Writing Center at George Mason University. I was on track to graduate from my three-year MFA program within a neat four-year time frame. Generally speaking, I was out of my fucking mind.

So, as one does, I submitted a prose poem to the 2011 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose. The contest is still held annually by Gulf Coast.

At that time in my life, Donald Barthelme was “my guy”. I wouldn’t shut up about how much I loved “See the Moon?” I wasn’t fully aware of my neurological differences yet, so I wouldn’t hesitate to read it at you. (I still highly recommend it.) Here are some snippets from “See the Moon?” presented in order but without context:

I suffer from a frightful illness of the mind, light-mindedness.

Light-minded or no, I’m . . . riotous with mental health.

My father on the other hand is perfectly comfortable, and that’s not a criticism.

Gregory you’re going to have a half brother now. You’ll like that, won’t you? Will you half like it?

There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.

Anyway, of course I was going to submit to the literary magazine he’d founded.

The piece I wound up submitting actually had more Grace Paley DNA than Donald Barthelme DNA. Grace Paley being my other “my guy” at the time. She’s probably still my guy more than any other writer. I find it unlikely that I will ever hesitate to read “Wants” at anyone no matter how aware of my neurological differences I become.

Here’s a sentence from Grace Paley’s 1959 short story “Goodbye and Good Luck”:

If there was more life in my little sister, she would know my heart is a regular college of feelings and there is such information between my corset and me that her whole married life is a kindergarten.

I texted this quote to my friend Dan just the other day.

“God, she was so good,” I said.

The Barthelme contest was judged by Sarah Manguso that year. (!!!) I didn’t win the thousand-dollar prize (which, woof, I really could have used at the time), but I was one of “two runners-up”. I honestly don’t know whether it was Sarah Manguso herself or the editorial staff who chose the two runners-up. However, I do know that Sarah Manguso wrote a very thoughtful introduction for the actual winner that year, Erica Olsen. I’d like to think that Sarah Manguso also wrote a very thoughtful introduction for me that went unpublished. You know. Just in case she changed her mind? Maybe she still has it in a drawer somewhere.

Anyway, I was thrilled. And as these things go, after about a year had passed, “Why I Became a Fireman” was published—in print—in a handsome, heavy-in-the-hand lit mag that happened to have a luminous night chicken by artist Allison Hunter1 on its cover. I could not have been more in love with this cover art. I love a good chicken. I was so psyched to be associated with it.

For the first time in my life, I had this very professional-looking, made-of-glue-and-paper object that I could hand to friends and family and say, “Here, [painting nails emoji].”

I was so goddamn proud. It felt like the beginning of my writing career.

It was not the beginning of my writing career. At least, as of now, it has not proven itself to be, as I do not have a writing career per se. Though I suppose if I should happen into a writing career at any stage in my life, “Why I Became a Fireman” will retroactively become its beginning.

Other than a short story of mine that was published about a year later in a lit mag that was—boldly—presenting that particular issue as an iPad app (which was no longer supported in the app store by the time I or anyone I knew had an iPad), I haven’t had a single piece picked up for publication—not once in fourteen years. It’s not for lack of trying. I have amassed quite a few of these little cuties though:

We found much to admire in this fine work; nonetheless, it didn't quite land with us at this time.

Then Things Get Weird

Soon enough, I graduated and transitioned from my safe and happy little gig at The Writing Center with its adorable little stipend to the worst job I’ve ever had.

I was an English tutor and teacher for a local, after-school test prep center for way too long. I was paid in handwritten checks. The hand that wrote those checks liked to speak with me at length about my underwhelming performance while it was wagging its checkbook at me. I had zero benefits. To this day, I consider the “classrooms” they’d cobbled together in off-hours office spaces to be “intrusive thoughts”.

It was a mess. I was a mess. For a while there, I was having near-daily panic attacks. I was also having near-constant brain zaps because I had foolishly stepped myself down from Lexapro without the aid of a doctor. As stated, my job had no benefits, which, in America, meant I had no health insurance. The Affordable Care Act had been signed into law in 2010, but the rollout of its very first open enrollment wouldn’t be until 2013. I had just graduated in 2012 and had lost the basic health insurance I was entitled to as a TA.

So I made what seemed like the most practical choice at the time, which is to say, I hoped that my mental health would work itself out. Do not do this.

But I was sober and I had a job, so things were really turning around for me, right? Right?

It was during this time that one of my seventh graders raised his hand.

“Yes?” I said.

“I know this is weird,” he said, “but are you the Paul Zaic?”

I was terrified.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“My teacher in real school had us read ‘Why I Became a Fireman’ a little while ago,” he said. “Is that you? Did you write that?”

The warm buzz of feeling seen didn’t replace the cold terror of standing in front of a room full of moody adolescents, but the buzz did at least drape itself over the terror like a space blanket over a snowman.

“Um,” I said. “Yeah. I did. I mean, I am. The Paul Zaic. How did your real teacher find that story? What’s your real teacher’s name?”

I never did find out exactly how a local seventh-grade public-school teacher had come across my little prose poem in a lit mag, but crazier things have happened. Plus, there are only ever one or two degrees of separation between graduate students studying English and English teachers working in nearby public schools because graduate students and public school teachers both badly need a side hustle.

And, sure enough, there I was, side-hustling, in an un-decorated interior room in an office building on a Thursday night with no desire whatsoever to be a teacher. There I was, center-hustling, really, hustling right over the middle of the plate, trying to pay the rent with something most people would have been able to recognize as “never meant to be the main gig” from a mile away. Of course something I’d written had found its way to a local teacher. I worked at a teacher crossroads where some were on their way up and some were on their way down and some were just popping in to support their art dreams—all of us just trying to make a buck.

In the end, I figured someone I knew from my cohort must have linked a teacher they knew to “Why I Became a Fireman” and that whoever that teacher was had subsequently decided that a digitally accessible four-paragraph short story would be a good way to pad out their curriculum. In other words, my little prose poem was perfect for children.

And For a While, That Was That

The fact that one of my students had recognized me as “famous” might have been perfectly explicable, but it was also much needed. It was a welcome—if minor—self esteem boost. I was sure at the time that later on it would at least become a fun story to tell. I hadn’t yet had the full-on optimism bleed out that was to come.

As the years went by, I would Google “paul zaic why became fireman” from time to time for one reason or another. Sometimes I just needed the link to share the story with a new friend. Sometimes—if I’m being honest—I just wanted to remind myself that once upon a time I’d accomplished something. I wanted to give myself the injection of confidence I needed to submit “Whatever the Next Thing Was” to Wherever I Thought It Might Fit.

Once, when I was still stuck teaching and feeling completely paralyzed by the “resume” staring back at me from my laptop, I decided to bite the bullet and make a LinkedIn profile. I was going to need to if I was ever going to get out of my health-insurance-less hell job.

I’m a published author, I said to myself. Technically, I am. Right? I should mention the Gulf Coast publication in my profile. (In reality, what happens next is weeks of the shpilkes punctuated by distressed phone calls to friends wherein I endlessly debated whether I should be advertising the fact that I was “a fiction writer” if I was hoping to land “a real job”.) Then I immediately, without worry or consultation, once again Googled “paul zaic why became fireman” so I could be sure of what year it had been published and that I hadn’t misspelled Gulf Coast or whatever. After that, I kind of forgot about “Why I Became a Fireman”. I settled into my “guess I’m not a writer” years and eased up on the habit of Googling that one story I had published that one time.

Then, sometime later, well into my having-a-grown-up-job-with-basic-benefits years, I couldn’t tell you why, but I Googled it again. And for whatever reason, I scrolled through the results instead of just clicking the top link.

At first, I found only the kind of white noise you might expect from a query like that. There were several archived 2012 listserv entries from various colleges that said something like, “last year’s winners,” followed by references that included my name and the title of my story.

But Then!

Among the results, I came across a blog post that had been published on Medium in 2018 called “A Reader is a Noble Thing to Be” by author Brandon Monk. I read it, and there at the bottom in bold type, it said:

Inspired by Paul Zaic’s “Why I Became a Fireman” p. 68 of Gulf Coast Literary Journal Vol. 24, Issue 2.

Mind. Blown.

Wow.

Wait… How? Who… Wait, really? Do I know someone named Brandon Monk? Had I met him in grad school in a blackout before I quit drinking? As over-the-top as that may sound, it isn’t histrionics. It would not have been out of the realm of possibility at the time.

I texted the link to my wife. She thought it was neat. It seemed like maybe she felt a little proud of me, and that made me feel like maybe I felt a little proud of me. I texted the link to the handful of grad school friends I’d stayed in touch with.

Guys, this is fucking wild. Do any of you guys recognize this name?

We had a little group-chat fun with it. We didn’t sleuth too hard to find out who this person was or how they might have come across my story. It was more fun at the time not to know.

Personally, I was mostly just musing on how these sorts of things make their way around. I mean, I’m aware that it was published. Publicly, no less. And with my enthusiastic consent. I’m no dodo.

This is fame by definition, right? People know your name because of a thing that you did. The thing gets around. That’s kind of the goal. But it still felt a bit magical to me. It felt like finding a message in a bottle except that it was my message in a different bottle than the one I’d thrown into the sea.

I thought about commenting on the Medium post back in 2018, but I never did. Life got busy. And after a while, I forgot about it.

Until Just the Other Night

I Googled “paul zaic why became fireman” again. Why did I do it this time around? Well, because I do the Substacks now. Over these first couple of months using the platform, I’ve made a few new internet friends. I wanted to share it with them, so I needed that silly-old, ding-dang URL again. After I’d copied and pasted it for that purpose, I went ahead and scrolled through the rest of the search results. Hadn’t someone referenced it in a blog once? That was a real thing that happened, right? I didn’t imagine it? How many years ago was that?

And, as you might expect, I found the Medium post again that had referenced my story. But this time, it wasn’t on Medium. It seemed that in recent years the author had migrated their oeuvre to Substack. Yes, that Substack. The same Substack where I do my blogs. So this time around I gave Brandon Monk’s post a like and a friendly comment. Because of course I did. Because I’ve grown, man. And really, what thrills do I have left besides these kinds of thrills?

Brandon Monk's Substack

A Reader is a Noble Thing to Be

You’re told, “It’s going to be hard to find the time to read. And really, what do you stand to gain? Reading is a selfish activity, and you’re not even particularly good at it in any academic sense…

Read more

4 years ago · 1 like · 1 comment · BPM

But Finally, There Is the Most Absolutely Bonkers Thing

I kept scrolling through the search results, and wouldn’t you know it, “Why I Became a Fireman” is on a reading list for an online creative writing course that is being taught as we speak in the year of our Lord 2025. Via Falmouth University! Which is in the UK! Apparently!

And, just like any hot blooded and perfectly normal human would do, after taking a few screen shots, I immediately found the instructor on LinkedIn and sent him an invitation to connect with me. No response yet, but here is the draft message I have ready to send if and when he accepts:

Dear Mr. Scott,

I was delighted to learn that you have included “Why I Became a Fireman” on your CRO100 reading list for the 2024-25 study period. I humbly request that you elevate it from the list of “Recommended Readings” to that of “Essential Readings” because, after all, it is very, very good, and I am so goddamn proud of it.

All the best,

Paul Zaic

And as Much as I Am Mystified Whenever This Story Finds me Again

I think I understand why “Why I became a Fireman” has managed to hang in there by its sooty little baby fingers all these years. I think I understand why some people really connect with it and would want to share it person to person even though neither it nor I ever have ever become widely known.

First, let’s just acknowledge that it’s only four paragraphs long. That really helps. You can ask your friends to read it and they will read it because it’s an easy win for them in their capacity as your friends.

And it’s ostensibly about fighting fires. With every passing year, actual fires become more and more of an actual existential threat to more and more actual people. Fuck you, actual fires.

And it’s a middle finger to assholes with power. It’s righteous in that way. And it’s funny, if wry. It’s about a person who decides to do what he’s been told that he cannot and should not do. It’s a David and Goliath story. It’s got a shape and a pattern to it. It’s repetitive in a pleasing way—in the way that galvanizing speeches are repetitive.

It has much to recommend itself, but I think the most important thing it has is the harmony of hope and rage baked into each and every sentence.

There have been very few times in my life where my rage and my hope were in harmony. They most certainly are not at the moment. But long, long ago, in the summer of 2011, for a brief time, they were. And one afternoon that summer, with someone else’s cat on my shoulder, I dosed them out in equal measure and spread them out into four paragraphs. I read the words aloud for a few hours and made tweaks to get the rhythm right. Then I put them in a bottle and threw them into the sea.

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