Content warning: mental illness, self harm, suicide, suicidal ideation

Every day I think about killing myself.

They call it “frequent suicidal ideation”, which is a fancy way of saying that I think about killing myself a lot. The term isn’t usually used to describe instances of heartbreak or frustration or physical pain or unbearable sadness that makes you think about throwing yourself in front of the Metro train. Those are transient suicidal thoughts. Ideation is reserved for people who make plans.

People like me.

It doesn’t take anything in particular to trigger the images – nothing conscious, anyway. I can be just sitting at my computer working and the image will appear in my head of putting the barrel of a gun into my mouth, tasting the oil on the cold metal, hearing the hard snap of the hammer being pulled back. It just appears and won’t leave until it’s ready to go, whether a couple of seconds or five minutes.

Of course, the images can be triggered by events, too. Seeing something that reminds me of a future I don’t have, or of a love that decided I couldn’t make them happy enough, or of a chronic pain, or an illness that won’t go away  – those can certainly cause the images to flood into my mind. But often it’s just an idle thought or memory  running through my mind unbidden – an image of making love to someone I adore, or of walking someone through my old museum house in Gaithersburg, or of being able to really write again, something that people respond to. A palpable sense of loss will always bring them on.

But the worst, predictably, are those that go past simple transient thoughts and into ideation. For example:

Checking into a hotel with a largely empty overnight bag. Putting my ID, contact information, note, and my final instructions on the desk beside the hotel’s stationery kit.Taking a long hot bath, then getting dressed in something appropriately sardonic. Lying on the bed and taking the cocktail of drugs to end my suffering. Sometimes it’s via injection, in which case there’s a segue to finding a source for the heroin or morphine. Yeah, morphine would be better. I know I like the way it feels, and it’ll knock me out. But it always ends with the warm black velvet curtain falling over me, wrapping me in its eternal embrace, absolving me of my manifold sins and taking away the pain of living.

That’s just one example. There are plenty of others. There will probably be at least one more before I get to sleep tonight. It’s something that I have to live with. (So far.)

When I had my cats I knew I had to stay alive because no one else would be able to take care of them. As their numbers dwindled, that safety net became tattered, and eventually they were gone. But my father remained, and I knew he would be heartbroken. Now, he, too, is gone. But what about my partners, my lovers, or my friends who would be hurt by my death? They, too, have largely faded away or otherwise rejected me. For the first time in a long while I have no “special someone” to share my life with, to let us share our joys, to help give me purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, or when needed, to light a lantern in my shadows. My friends, too, have become distant, our friendships the victim of COVID or of distance or of simply growing in different directions.

I know that some of you are silently protesting right now, saying that you would be devastated should I carry through any of these film clips my brain screens for me multiple times each day. And I know that you’d mean it, I do! But I also know that I’m not a part of your lives, and that within a week the “devastation” would be gone, replaced with the need to get the roof fixed or dealing with a new boss or having a new love in your life or just your own problems of daily life. Sure, when something might come up to remind you of me you’d be sad for a moment, but your life would continue. I don’t blame you for that; in fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Life, as they say, goes on.

So why am I writing this? Is this a cry for help, a plea for someone to hear me? No, it’s not. At this writing, at least, I don’t have any plans to carry through with these scripts. If things are this hard for me, some of the more daring of you might ask, why haven’t I done it yet? It’s simple.

Hope.

Depression – particularly MDD (major depressive disorder) and TRD (treatment-resistant depression), both of which describe me – is not curable. It’s not something that any amount of exercise, meditation, therapy, or medication can eliminate from your mind and body permanently. However, it is possible for it to go into remission. This is something I didn’t know until a few weeks ago. Because none of my treatments have been fully effective, I assumed that the best you can get is an alleviation of some of the symptoms. Apparently, it is theoretically possible for me to stop being depressed, at least for a while. I have a hard time even imagining what that would feel like. 

Of course, the federal government and the medical establishment aren’t in favor of making the treatments easily available to patients – the feds because some of the treatments are experimental, and the pharmaceutical/medical establishment because there’s too much money in keeping people unhappy.

Still, the hope that something new will come along that will grant me that feeling of freedom, at least for a while, is what sustains me.

But those of you who don’t suffer under the oppressive weight of major depression can’t easily understand what it’s like. This essay is my small effort toward helping you to understand what we endure on a daily basis. The hungry, gnawing darkness that eats us alive. The eternal fog that’s keeping us from seeing the world clearly. The sucking void that drains us of energy and desire and life. The hideous spawn of neurochemistry and traumatic experience that makes us the living dead.

Throughout my life all I have wanted is for other people to be happy, to be able to live their lives as they choose without fear or pain. Along the way I’ve done what I can to try and nudge humanity in that direction with all the force of my words and deeds. While this is not a cheerful essay, it’s my hope that it will help you understand the plight of those in your lives who live under the shroud of this horrible darkness.

With these tools your lover can repair the small tears and breaks that form in every life, reaching the places that you can’t reach alone – the cracks in self-esteem caused by unkind words, the fear forming after a serious diagnosis, the arrhythmic beating of a broken heart after a loss, the depression of the modern world – providing patches and repairs sufficient to help you finish healing on your own.

But if they unroll that canvas completely, toying with the marvelous array of tools you’ve given them, they can do as they wish. They can use the same tools to destroy you.

That is love – the faith that the tools you’ve provided will be used for good.

In Doom Patrol (Max, née HBO Max), a group of ordinary people have accidents that hideously deform their bodies but give them superpowers (after a fashion). Do they become heroes? No. They do not deal with it very well at all.

A self-important ’40s B-list movie star who trades on her looks becomes a giant fleshy blob, able to stretch her limbs and grow to enormous size, but who loses her human form when she becomes anxious or frustrated. A closeted test pilot flies into the stratosphere, but runs into an energy field that causes him to crash violently to earth. He emerges from the wreckage horribly burned and highly radioactive, but with an energized second self that can emerge from his body capable of flying high into the sky. A child is brutally abused and develops dissociative identity disorder, fragmenting over the years into 64 distinct personalities. An unscrupulous doctor tests a drug on her that causes each of those identities to form their own superpower, but she is constantly at war with herself for control, and incapable of healing. And a hedonistic race car driver smashes his car into a truck, destroying all of his body except for his brain; that is transplanted in a crude metal robot body. Sure, he’s incredibly strong and bulletproof, but he can no longer taste, or touch, or feel anything but his emotional anguish.

So yes, this is a show about superheroes, more or less. Oh, it leans hard into the weirdness and ridiculous nature of comic book stories, and our protagonists roll with it. The world doesn’t make any sense to them, either — they suffered terrible accidents and all they got to show for it were powers that illuminate their own failings as human beings. But — and here’s the important bit — they learn. For all of the four-color stupidity they encounter dragging them out of their black hole of self-pity, they slowly learn about themselves. They discover than no matter how ludicrous the opposition — a league of dadaists, a fouth-wall breaking villain, a disco master of time, disembodied carnivorous asses — their deadliest enemies are their own psychological traumas and their refusal to address them.

These are our “heroes,” although none of them were very nice people before their accidents, and years of isolating themselves from the world have only further embittered them, sinking them deeper into self-loathing and anger. But unlike a great many “straight” dramas, there is real, earned character growth here. It’s a good thing, too, because the acting on this show is top-notch, and it would be a shame to have wasted the skills of this cast on lifeless scripts. Brendan Fraser gets top honors for the invisible role of the voice of a brain trapped in a brass can. He makes you cry, and then has you holding your sides with laughter. His hollow robotic voice shouting “What the fuck?!” at each new bit of weirdness falls just short of becoming a catch-phrase.

The villains are often similarly pitiable. They have made poor choices and ended up in untenable circumstances, but unlike our protagonists, they almost always follow the path of self-interest, even when it keeps them trapped in their circumstances.

In reality, though, it isn’t a show about superheroes, no matter what Mr. Nobody said in the early moments of the first episode. It’s a show about a group of deeply, deeply damaged people who find themselves thrown together into a family. They learn to lean on each other, love each other, and — in spite of themselves — accept themselves. The world is a strange and fucked-up place, it reminds us, but we are all strange and fucked-up people in our own ways. We can find our way through it together.

Last night (October 12, 2023) the final six episodes of Doom Patrol began airing. For a show I love as much as this — and it is one of my three favorite television programs ever — it sounds strange to hear that I’m glad it’s coming to a close. Not because I wouldn’t love to see it entering its 20th season, because I would, and not because I think it’s run its course. No, I’m glad it’s ending because I trust the writers, actors, and creators to give the characters a proper send-off. I feel certain that the important character arcs will reach satisfactory conclusions, and while it may end with tears, it’s just as likely to end with a cosmic donkey fart. It’s only proper.

I have cancer. Again.

I’ve been sitting on* this bit of info for a while, but my family has been going through some monkey’s paw-level curse shit over the last couple of months. My 89 year old father was diagnosed with cancer on a kidney (which he’s now had removed). My brother, Scott, lost part of a toe to diabetes and had to have the same foot rebuilt to repair damage. My sister-in-law, Vikki, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. (The two of them have been taking care of my dad through his illness, too.) And all of this within weeks of my last cat passing away. I’m assuming that my brother pissed off some old Eastern European woman and she hexed us all.

This time around the cancer isn’t in my throat; it’s in my prostate. Prostate cancer – as people like to point out – is very survivable. In fact, it’s virtually guaranteed that on a long enough timeline any American with a prostate is going to develop cancer there. In most cases a “wait and see what happens” approach is sufficient; I’m not one of those cases.

It doesn’t appear to have spread yet, but it has the potential to be bad if it does, so we’re going for surgical removal rather than taking a chance on radiation doing the job. My doctor doesn’t feel that it’s radically urgent to get it out at once, though, so the surgery is scheduled for November 13th – deliberately right before Thanksgiving so that I can use those vacation days as recovery time.

I’m taking advantage of the pre-surgery time to get my affairs in order, as they say. I’m not worried about something going wrong – although accidents do happen – but because an incident like this is a good reminder of the importance of having a living will, medical releases, and so on in place. Plus I have a shit ton of office work to do before I go under the robotically-wielded knife again. The last thing I want is for my workaholic self to be thinking about getting communications out when I should be stoned on prescribed painkillers, watching trippy movies, and letting myself heal from multiple laparoscopic holes in my abdomen.

So there you have it – the most recent bit of news from my part of the world. How are you doing? Better than that, I hope!

*Unintended pun, but I’ve leaving it.

Over the years to come more cats found me. Badfoot, the chunky ball of love who showed up injured on my porch. Queen Nicolette Beigeface the First, who I helped weather a hurricane and who subsequently returned to have her litter of kittens under my window. Those kittens stayed with me, too: Magellan, Turkolette, and Two-Face. Finally, fourteen years ago Gordon Whitefoot joined the tribe.

They moved from Miami to Maryland with me — seven doped-up cats in the back of a borrowed SUV. They did not approve of the move, mostly because they were creatures of habit and they’d only ever lived in my Miami house since being rescued. Still, the new place was a big house, and they had a lot more room to move around and stake their various territories. They got used to it, and I got used to cleaning up after them.

Nothing lasts forever, though. HobGoblin died of old age a couple of years later, a cranky old man to the end. Magellan’s passing was a surprise, though — pancreatic cancer took the resident scaredy-cat from us in a matter of weeks. And even though he loved everyone and everything in the world (except for loud noises and dogs), Badfoot wasn’t the same after the loss of his best friends; he was the next to leave us, having a stroke on a Sunday morning.

When we moved from Shadow House to Mystery House Nicolette adopted the title of cranky old cat with gusto, refusing to associate with any of the others (and abandoning any pretense at personal hygiene, acquiring the secondary name of Hobocat). She was still full of love though, if only really for me.

Age caught up with Two-Face next, dwindling the tribe to two. Her sister Turkolette made it to Cornfield Manor with me, but didn’t last much longer than that.

And today I had to say goodbye to Gordon Whitefoot. As a young cat he survived a vicious, bloody dog attack that his vet was sure would kill him, but he pulled through and became a wonderfully funny and loving cat. He developed diabetes but recovered, his sugar levels returning to normal on their own. But a growth on his liver slowed him down and eventually it became obvious that he was ready to go.

I would say that it was hard to say goodbye, but that’s obvious — it’s never an easy decision. In this case it’s more than just saying goodbye to a well-loved pet, though; it’s the end of an age for me. I won’t say that I’ll never have another pet, but I’m not planning on it. Twenty-five years is a long time to host a tribe of unruly feline overlords, and my own health isn’t the best any longer. It feels unbelievably selfish of me, but it may be time to devote more energy to taking care of myself. And then… perhaps.

But it’s been twenty-five years full of fun and silliness and love. What more could we ask for in our lives?

A few months back, though, I realized that I should really go to the effort of wearing shoes more often. One reason is that I have some very cool sneakers — rainbow-hued Chuck Taylors, for example — that deserve to get more use. But in truth, the house is so quiet when I’m working* that the sound of my big feet clomping down the wooden stairs to the kitchen annoys me.

The main reason for wearing shoes more often is a growing awareness of my need to protect my feet from injury. I am a diabetic, after all, and even if it is so well-controlled that I barely warrant a pre-diabetic label most of the time, I know what can happen to the extremities of diabetics. You end up getting an unnoticed splinter in your heel, an infection creeps in, and suddenly you’re eight inches shorter on one side. Neuropathy’s a bitch, man.

This past autumn, then, when I was asked about what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for slippers. Fuzzy slippers. Fuzzy slippers with rubber soles so I won’t slip on the stairs, and fuzzy so my feet don’t get cold when I’m sitting in front of a computer screen for hours at a stretch in a drafty old farmhouse in the midst of a bunch of cornfields.

Santa delivered. I have never felt as old as I did when I opened the gift and realized that I was genuinely elated on receiving a pair of fuzzy, blue, rubber-soled slippers. I wear them all the time — almost literally, since as I mentioned, I seldom leave the house.

But “seldom” isn’t “never,” and every couple of days I do walk the 150 yards or so from the house to the mailbox to see what manner of junk has arrived. I stroll briskly down the cracked and rotted old asphalt drive to the mailbox and back up to the house. If my work is finished for the day and the weather is nice, I might walk the mile-long side street past the neighboring farmhouses, and then just turn around and walk back again. (It’s an exciting life, isn’t it?) It’s a bit of exercise, anyway, and lets my eyes focus on something that isn’t digital for a change.

A couple of times I’ve run into neighbors and chatted with them. They’ve always been pleasant people in that inconsequential small-talk kind of way. One time I met the wife of one of the farmers — a young woman, maybe early thirties. She didn’t have the luxury of working from home since her job entailed handling billing paperwork for a mid-sized local medical practice. We spoke about jobs, and pets, and living in farm country. I enjoyed talking with her quite a bit, actually, even if she did give me the occasional raised eyebrow and half-smile.

It wasn’t until we parted ways that I understood. She’d just spent twenty minutes talking to an old, bald, white guy with a gash healing on the top of his head from a fall down the stairs, wearing a pair of faded black jeans, a logo-ed corporate jacket open to show a t-shirt covered in weird mystical symbols. And oh yeah — a pair of fuzzy blue slippers.

Yep. She was wondering which psychiatric facility I’d snuck away from.

There’s an unexpected bucket list item checked off: I’ve become the weird old guy living in the ancient farmhouse on the top of the hill — the one kids make up stories about.

*The irony of my preference for quiet while using an extremely click-y mechanical keyboard is not lost on me. I am a paradox; I contain multitudes. Sue me.

Far back in the reaches of my childhood I stumbled across a book by Gene Wolfe titled The Shadow of the Torturer. I suspect that I got it due to having forgotten to return a postcard to the Science Fiction Book Club, in which case it was one of the most fortuitous errors of my life. This was the first volume of the Book of the New Sun tetralogy, an astonishingly intricate series set so far in the future that not only has our era vanished from memory, so have the tens of thousands of years following us. It is a brilliant series – dark, mythic, perceptive – told by a somewhat unreliable narrator. The books have rightly taken their place as classics of twentieth century literature.

However, the first time I read through each book, I was immediately certain of two things: that it was one of the most brilliant works I’d ever read, and that I would need to read it several more times to begin to grasp its full elegance.¹

Sortly after encountering TBotNS I came across a copy of Samuel R. “Chip” Delany’s stunning novel, Dahlgren. I still have the battered and coverless mass-market paperback edition where I initially read this story of the badly damaged and broken reality centered on an American city named Bellona. Time has stopped working in a normally comprehensible fashion, occasionally there are two moons in the sky, and the US government has blockaded the bridges into and out of the city – if you really want to go in the National Guard won’t stop you, but leaving is not another matter. Entirely new social structures have formed in the vacuum left by the flight of the civic leaders, meaning that the majority Black population is proving itself to be as generally incompetent as the prior white government was. It’s also chock-a-block with explicit sex in all configurations of two or more individuals, which simultaneously distracted my late-teen early-twenties self from the main “plot” while pulling me deeper into the mindset of the unreliable and befuddled narrator. As I completed my first read-through – it starts mid-drntence and concludes back where it began – I once again knew that I was in the presence of an unimaginably brilliant novel which I was far too stupid to comprehend in a single.²

Much more recently I came across what’s now known as the Area X trilogy, or The Southern Reach, by the genius Jeff VanderMeer. It’s the most overtly literary of the books mentioned, skilfully playing with perspective, form, and structure to tell the story of humanity’s contact with… an event that has occurred in the southern US. (It might be in the Florida Panhandle, but then, it’s never specified.) The three books are Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance: the first is the best known, having been turned into a fascinating film by the same title that isn’t very concerned with retaining plot consistency with the novel. The film’s director – Alex Garland of Ex Machina and 28 Days Later – wisely opted to write a film about the images that stayed with him after reading the book, focusing on the dreamlike state it induced in him.

Once again, these are utterly amazing books which require and reward multiple readings. VanderMeer³ has written quite a few other remarkable works, seamlessly melding surrealism, science fiction, and literary fiction in a way that few other authors would dare to attempt, let alone succeed so seemingly effortlessly.

So, why am I bringing these all up together? For one they achieved something that rarely occurs – they all made me feel incredibly ignorant on first reading, but never in a condescending way. As a result I made the effort and was rewarded with not merely broadening my intelligence, but in making me a better person with the effort.

But also (and perhaps less pretentiously), they are incredibly original, thoughtful, and engrossing works of world-building. I won’t drag out some hoary cliché like “If you loved Game of Thrones…” because that would be bullshit. No shade is intended toward GRRM, but these aren’t the same kind of books. There is an intricacy to them that goes beyond names and lineages and prophecies; these concern themselves with how we perceive reality and the passage of time, of what it truly means to be human, and our place in the so-called “natural order of things”.

These are stories that could teach you something about yourself, should you be open to listening. However, they are also fantastic, gripping stories for their own sake, too.

¹ This work is dense and respected enough that there are ancillary books and articles published about it on a regular basis.

² I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Delany at the Miami Book Fair some years back. Not only did I get to have a new, corrected edition signed, but I also got to experience what a warm and gracious gentleman he is in person.

³ I’ve never met VanderMeer, but I have it on good authority (pun unintended) that’s he’s a great guy. (So sayeth the Danie Ware.) He maintains an active – and very funny – social media presence, too, mainly on Twitter. I strongly suspect that he would be one hell of a dining companion.

If you have any interest in any of these, they’re all easy to find. The Book of the New Sun, Dahlgren, and Area X series are all available on Audible, for those who prefer to listen. Let me know what you think.

The well-dressed and only slightly unsteady woman drained another cosmo and smiled ruefully at me. “You know how to tell a story, anyway, I’ll give you that.”

This was our first date. We’d met online through a relationship service, one of those companies specializing in “sophisticated computer matching algorithms.” We’d been identified as “highly compatible,” and after a few email exchanges and phone calls had decided to take a chance on a real-world meeting.

Unfortunately, and counter to her profile’s claims, in person she was shy nearly to the point of introversion. In spite of my best efforts at drawing her out, at dinner I had done most of the talking; some of the talking had been a bit colorful. It always is with me, ever since I was a kid. The world’s just more interesting to me than it is to other people.

She set her glass down on the polished wood, concentrating on aligning the base precisely with the existing ring. She was more or less successful.

“Don’t get me wrong, they’re good stories, but do you expect anyone to believe them, really? You wrote a symphony? Right. Most people would just say they’d messed around with a guitar or something. But you’ve got to take it further, make yourself sound more interesting, but it’s all just bullshit.”

“Hey, c’mon, it isn’t like I’m claiming to be the heir to a Nigerian fortune or something! I’m just an ordinary middle-aged guy lucky enough to have some interesting things happen in his life.”

“Oh, please. You don’t even know me at all and you’re telling a stranger this kind of…”

“Um, we had dinner together, we watched a mediocre movie, and we’ve been having drinks for almost two hours. We’re hardly strangers, even if I did need to drag almost any personal details out of you that weren’t already posted on your dating profile. Your name’s Natalie, you’re working on your master’s in social work at Barry University, you drive an Audi but keep the keys on a Porsche key fob, you cover your mouth when you laugh and smile — and you have a great smile! — you’ve studiously avoided any discussion of your relationships, past or present — even while you’ve less-than-discreetly asked about my marriage and divorce.” I paused for a second, a little annoyed, but knowing she had a right. “Yes, I talk a lot, but I listen, too. You won’t find stories if you don’t pay attention.”

I had a hunch I shouldn’t have said that — the combination of too much detail and too much defense pretty much ensured there wouldn’t be a second date. But someone that shy might not even get it, and was probably the wrong person for me, anyway. I knocked back the rest of my drink as I stared into my own eyes in the mirror behind the bottles.

Yeah, maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong. But the world is built on stories, not facts, and liberties are always taken when tales are told. The unadorned truth has plenty of value, but the most important lessons come from stories. Besides, if history is written by the victors, then who wins in the wars we fight with ourselves? The guy with the audience wins, of course.

Smiling, I turned back to Natalie, fresh witticism on my tongue, only to see her slipping her wallet back into her purse as slid somewhat gracelessly of her barstool.

“So, uh, nice meeting you. Good luck with your book,” she said, and executed as swift an exit as she could manage, given the height of her heels and the height of her martini count.

I shrugged. So it goes. I motioned to the bartender to pour me another, but she pointed over her shoulder (without looking) at the clock on the wall and shaking her head.

“Aw, Kim, c’mon, just one more? You haven’t inventoried the bar fridge yet. I know you have time. The boss won’t mind.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I know you, remember? You’ll try to turn that ‘one more drink’ into two, and then you’ll give me some shit about how you thought maybe tonight’s date was ‘the one.’ Next thing I know you’ll try some slick complimentary maneuver to get past my common sense and try to get me to go home with you again, and you’re a nice guy but you snore like a jet taking off and hog all the blankets.” She leaned across the bar and gave me a kiss on the cheek; I allowed myself to believe it lingered a fraction of a second longer than usual.

“G’wan, you. That chick was a waste of your time. You deserve better, anyway. Go home to your cats.”

I signed the check and slid it back across the bar. With a far too melodramatic sigh, I walked into the damp and dark of a late-night Miami swelter. As Kim locked the door behind me I fumbled in my bag for the ever-present pen and journal. Kim was wrong about one thing; the evening wasn’t a waste of time at all. These stories don’t write themselves, you know.

That’s my job.

It was a Pinto, strangely enough, and though it was difficult to tell by the streetlight, it looked brown, but new. The dome light was on, so I could see two people inside, arguing quietly, a strangely familiar woman and a thin guy with long hair. I saw her point at me, and the guy opened the door and got out, walking up the sidewalk.

He was thin, painfully so, with long light brown hair, and a pair of aviator glasses sliding down his nose. He had almost made it all the way to the porch steps — nearly tripping once over a small branch in his path — before I recognized him. It was me.

“Hi, uh, sorry to bother you, but, uh, have you heard of the, uh, Gusman Theater? I think it’s around here somewhere.”

Oh, crap, I thought. I remember this, it’s the Chuck Mangione concert, back in ’78, and I went with… oh, no…

I glanced at the car, and saw Diane staring back at me, fingers drumming impatiently on the dashboard. When I looked away the kid had an odd, puzzled look on his face.

“Yeah, I know where the Gusman is, but it isn’t nearby. Why don’t you come inside and I’ll write down some directions.” I opened the door and motioned for him to come in.

Once he was inside I shut the door quickly. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and certainly didn’t remember any of this, but that was a lot of years and anxiety ago. I needed to take advantage of this opportunity to fix some things from my youth.

I grabbed a pad off the table and turned toward him. He was looking around the living room with wide eyes, saying nothing. Then he noticed me staring, and a small shudder passed through him. “Do I, uh, do I know you…?”

“Look, I know you aren’t stupid, and I know you have an open enough mind to accept what’s going on without understanding it. Yes, I’m you, and yes, I’m older, and no, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, either. But I know some things that you need to know…”

“So are you — uh, am I a musician? Of course I am, I don’t know how to be anything else! Where do you play, in a jazz club? Well, yeah, what else? What else…?”

“Whoa, stop! Look, I need to give you some advice, it is really, really important. That woman out there, in the car…?”

“Diane? Yeah, isn’t she great! She really understands me. But hey, what I am saying? You know that, by now we’re married to her!”

He looked at me with a huge smile on his face. This was all wrong. What was I going to say to him, that the woman in the car would tear out his living heart, that she was going to dump him, go crazy, and start mailing him pages torn from Bibles with verses circled in red Flair pen? That he was destined for a life unlike anything he expected, not full of music, but filled with heartbreak and pain and weirdness and strange adventures?

“Yeah, look, Kevin, let me just write down how to get the Gusman. You don’t want to be late, we both know how Diane gets if she’s late somewhere.”

I scribbled down some directions, and he said, “Weren’t you were going to tell me something?”

Handing him the paper, I said, “Yeah. Buy her a t-shirt. It’ll mean a lot to her. Buy one for yourself, too. And enjoy the show.”

I walked him out and grimaced as he tripped over the same damned branch on his way back to the Pinto. He turned and waved at me as they drove away toward the interstate, and I walked back into the silent house.

I was pouring my second drink when there was a knock at the door. A shiver went through me as I wondered if they had gotten lost and come back again. I wasn’t sure I could deal with seeing him again, let alone Diane.

When I opened the door for a moment I thought it was my father dropping by, and then I understood. He was a little heavier than me, a few more wrinkles, but more muscular, with solid white mustache and goatee. Muscular? Had I been working out?

“Don’t stand there with the door open, idiot, the cats’ll get out!” He turned sideways and slipped in past me.

“I only have time for two drinks. Get the Green Chartreuse out, I haven’t had that in years.” I stumbled numbly to the liquor shelf and got a cordial glass and the bottle. He took both and poured himself a healthy shot, drained it, poured another, then looked at me with glee. I realized to my horror that his eyes were almost twinkling, like he was fucking Santa Claus or something.

“Okay, look, here’s the deal. Tomorrow you’re going to start thinking about tonight, and agonizing over whether or not you should have warned young Kevin about Diane and the other heart breakers in his future. Then you’d start thinking about career choices, and investments, and next thing you’ve gotten yourself into a self-indulgent, self-referential frenzy of recrimination. Well, I’m here to tell you to knock it right the fuck off.”

I took a slug of rum and regained a bit of composure. “And I’m to believe you because…?”

“Because I’m you, dim bulb! You think I’d go to this trouble if I didn’t have a reason? C’mon, you know how lazy we are!” He wasn’t wrong in that.

“Look, I know we hate that ‘Everything happens for a reason’ crap, so I’m not going to insult our intelligence by spouting it. But who you are is a result of the choices and events that came before. You wouldn’t be who you are if Diane hadn’t broken your heart and driven you halfway insane, and I wouldn’t be who I am if you weren’t who you are in…”. He looked at the wall for a moment. “Wow, I had forgotten about that Alan Moore portrait. That is cool! Anyway, where was I?”

“Something about being who I am so you can be who you are…?” I ventured.

“Right! Look, it’s simple, things are going to work out. They always do, just as surely as we could never see it at the time. It’s the curse of feeling too much, you never believe the pain can end. But you know, our emotions and sensitivity has it’s upside, too.”

As I saw my reflection in the glass curio cabinet it occurred to me that I looked a lot healthier as an older man than I did today. I opened my mouth to ask about it when he interrupted me.

“Look, I know you have trust issues, but you need to believe me on this. You are going to like where you are going. Trust me.”

He raised his glass in a toast and I instinctively followed suit. As he lowered his glass I saw the glint of silver on his finger. He noticed, and laughed. I opened my mouth and —

“Ah ah, no questions! I’m not going to let you fuck this up.” He put the glass down on the counter. “Now you are going to go to the computer and write this down so I can read it and remember what I said, and I’m going to take off so I can get home before she notices I am late.” He winked at me. “Ah, who am I kidding! She knows I’m always late!”

We walked out onto the porch, and he stepped into the fading twilight. “Remember what I said, and relax a little. It’s all going to work out. Oh, and just for the record?”

He paused, somewhat melodramatically.

“I have it on good — no, the best! — authority that you might just turn out to be a pretty good father. So like I said, relax.”

With that he turned to walk away, stumbling gracelessly over something on the sidewalk, then slipped into the night while I went back into the house to wait for my future.