“wild watery loneliness”

For the last twenty minutes I’ve been wandering around my house trying to remember what it is I wanted to do with myself twenty mintes ago

I came home from work and found a bunch of people in my bedroom

The whole day I had been thinking, “Man, I just need to get to my bedroom and be alone and maybe cry”

And when I say “cry” I don’t mean “have an emotional moment”—I mean cry in the same way people sneeze or exhale sharply or masturbate or scream at the sky

I’m talking about a biological necessity

It was building up and it had to come out of me in the form of liquid pouring from my face

But then all these people were in my bedroom

So I went out walking and stared at the ground so I wouldn’t have to explain myself to anyone

After a few blocks I realized I had absolutely nowhere to go

I tried crying and couldn’t

I walked home and stood in the kitchen and continued to not cry

I always remember that Charlie Rose interview with David Foster Wallace, where DFW says he received a grant and would take the next year off. And Charlie Rose says something like, “So what will you do with that year?”

DFW says, “I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.”

Yeah.

Do you have a god damn story to tell or what, you son of a bitch? No? Then take your hands off my dick and hurry on home. Also, you’re no longer invited to my birthday party.

For years and years I have bribed myself into writing by saying, “We could take a bath, you know—really think about what we’re going to write before it is actually written.”

“We”, of course, because I am a million terrible flavors of human crammed into one body.

The most dominant flavor says, “Yes, let us take a bath.” And off we go, because the idea of being entombed in hot water sounds preferable to having to dig around in the dirt, so to speak, to try to write some damn thing that basically no one on this entire planet is going to read.

We get comfortable and stay awhile. Sometimes there is music and sometimes there are mostly harmless substances. Maybe we don’t even form a single sentence up there in our head. Maybe we just rot in our own fluids.

Writing this now instead of writing about our friends in Nashville. We convinced ourselves back in November that it was important that we write this. Important for whom?

Does any of this feel good? Not really. But then hardly anything does anymore.

“Have your fun while you can, you cocksuckers!” said Grandpa. “You’re headed to the great black nothing someday soon—just the same as me and everyone else! So go on! Destroy the world, why don’t you! Kill what is good! Eat people! They’re all cannon fodder anyway! Take it and run, baby!”

I have seen the patterns, have seen combinations of them put together like Lego bricks

And it’s all just math and probability

Every configuration has been realized

Then you just wait

Circling the drain is made easier when all sentimentality is flushed out

And god knows we all want that drain-circling to be easier