My childhood best friend Allison has entered the world of podcasting with her uniquely community focused show “The Locally Sourced,” I am so honored to be her featured guest on this week’s episode. You can check out our conversation here. Having known each other since 1994 when I first moved to town with my family, it was cool to discuss both our personal growth and how our friendship has evolved from playing Mortal Kombat in my basement to raising children of our own. She was also the very first person to read the manuscript for what became my first published novel, when we talked about a lot of the things in the book that were inspired by actual people and places it was hard not to step right back into our respective roles as the dorky buck toothed kid with the bad bowl cut and affinity for power rangers and the girl who was constantly protecting him like she was his own personal body guard.
I am super excited to see who else she gets to talk with and watch this passion project become more refined as she shines the spotlight on local businesses, talents, and reverent figures around town. It was a fun transition from the podcast I posted Thursday night where I sounded off on the recent surge of COVID deniers who happen to also be patients actively fighting the disease and contentiously battling with the very people who are trying to save their lives over the validity of the pandemic. Its difficult not to get worked up about the current social climate when I have loved ones working out there on the front lines, putting their lives and their families at risk for the benefit of others. This is not about politics. This is about personal accountability, the lack of responsibility from our government, and the detriment of propagandist thinking and the apathy it has induced in so many people from a malfeasant administration and its glorified fascist leader. At the end of the day, I do not care if you are a conservative or a liberal this is the United States of America not the Wall-Mart Republic of Donald Trump. We must do better than this, people are dying at a staggering rate while healthcare workers, first-responders, and essential workers are feeling demoralized, indignant, and fatigued by the lack of support and the insane behavior of those who are under the spell of a pied piper. I do not want to wear out my welcome with yet another soapbox diatribe, but damn it…. what the hell is going on in this country? I want to wish you all a healthy and happy holiday, I know a lot of us are not going to get to spend Thanksgiving with a lot of loved ones but make the best of the time you have with those who are in your bubble and don’t forget to reach out to those who you are unable to see physically (be it through phone, text, e-mail, or ZOOM) and make sure they know that they are missed and they are loved. We will get through this everyone, we just need to weather the storm and do our best to remain undaunted by the narcissists who made a bad situation THAT much worse.
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Days before my grandma passed in 2010, my mother had the idea to ransack all our old VHS tapes to find home movies they could show her. I was not able to make it to this visit due to my work schedule in radio at the time. My oldest sister had confided in me that one of the tapes prompted my grandma to berate my parents. There was innocuous footage of an infant Eddie locked behind a gate in an empty bedroom (save for a few toys), I guess this irritated the hell out of her and she told them “I hated how you always kept him behind a gate. It never agreed with it, and I wish you had not done that to him.” The remark made me smirk, of all the relatives in my life I felt like she was the only one who understood me, rather why I became the way I did.
Admittedly, isolation has been such a large part of my childhood and young adult life that it had become so normalized that grandma’s last remarks prior to becoming invalid days later didn’t really resonate until I saw her obituary page. All the condolences written were specifically addressed to my mom’s siblings. None were addressed to my parents, or their children. I remember when she passed it felt like…I am not even entitled to mourn her; she does not belong to me. She has not belonged to me since 1998, when we reconnected in 2002/2003 she was already very sick and I made the best of our short-lived reunion. However, if I am being honest? It felt like she died, was resurrected, only to perish a second time on me. That is why 1998 was the crucial year to the story of Charlie and his family. While I certainly don’t want to spoil the ending of my own book to those who have not even read or finished it, 1998 did end with tragedy just not nearly as catastrophic as it did in the book. Rather, it did not end in catastrophe at all for a lot of people…just for one person. I suppose now you could chock it up to collateral damage, but in thinking back to what was lost in 1998? Hyperbole or not, it certainly felt like my childhood was incinerated into cinders while the end of the 90s forced me to figure out what in the hell I had left…really, did I have anything at all? When my dad passed, the familiar feeling of not feeling attached to someone came back when I looked around the room clutching a eulogy in my pocket that I was strong-armed into writing and realized no one was there for my dad or my mom, they were there for myself and my sisters. I guess that is why I had to run away from everyone for two years. When I realized the that my lack of entitlement to my own family was being passed on to my oldest child? It was a cumbersome emotional burden I did not want to pass onto him. Like a curse. In my two years away from anyone and everyone, I raised my oldest and then my second son was born and I couldn’t help but feel this newfound need to protect them so that they would never attend a funeral and feel like a stranger sitting in the church while relatives eulogize and talk about a lifetime they were left out of as they watch their grandparents be buried. I mean no disrespect to my two big sisters, but the three of us are so ruined by this family portrait in the frame when you bought it homogenized fallacy of family, that the three of us have suffered tremendously to navigate the world, ourselves, and really how to keep our kids from being cursed by it. I finally found the scariest story I could think of, and who would have known that it had been coursing through my veins for thirty years. We don’t even know how to love each other, we do…but none of us feels comfortable being demonstrative or really vocal about it. When our father died, everything felt like a cheap P.R. facebook moment to shoehorn us all back into each other’s lives again. Its something our mother tried to engineer this coming Thanksgiving. I am so sick of family being this counterfeit currency that people try to spend on social media or to look good for the people they are terrified of disappointing when they realize…this person does not care about family and probably never did. The three of us deserved better. We did, but nothing can come from how bitter or how disenfranchised we feel. It terrifies me to no end that this book can be read by anyone, or not…frankly its an emotional purgatory to exist in. No one’s family is perfect, and I am sure a lot of people have similar stories. THAT IS THE POINT! God, how fucking great would it feel to be able to read a family like yours or meet someone like you and think…just fucking say everything you ALWAYS wanted to say, scream it out! Be honest for once because you can….you bought into the lies that you indoctrinated to believe and then you woke up and went….where the fuck am I? who am I? Why don’t I look like, feel like, or fucking exist where everyone else outside of this dumpster fire?!?! I guess in all the rambling and digression, is that maybe I don’t have it all figured out but when people have talked to me after reading this or getting an iota of an idea about it…it is so fucking liberating to talk to people who get it. The best part (so far, and maybe that’s as far as it will go) of this book? If my grandma was still alive? I can show her that the blonde boy found his away out from behind the gate…and I know she’d be so proud of him. Then she’d smile and say…that’s my boo-boo baby. So, if I have reached out to you after a million years? If I thank you, if you do or never read this book? This book exists because I did not have a family, and I don’t know conventional love…and maybe that’s the best part. Because this book, myself, and my sons? All of us are a mosaic of every single person who for years, for minutes, for seconds, let me into their lives and actually liked, loved, or got to know me. After my first Instagram/ZOOM book reading, a lot of people expressed interest in me doing another one. Frankly, I was shocked that anyone wanted to attend the first one. I have decided on Saturday, December 5th at 6:00 p.m. for the second ZOOM meeting. I think I’m going to avoid the stress of trying to do it on two different platform simultaneously (I was really surprised this didn’t end in a train wreck my first time). This way I can focus more on figuring out and mastering the ZOOM format without being distracted by trying to manage two at once. My question for any of you who would like to attend is, as opposed to doing a conventional reading where I pick a passage and read it aloud…do you just want me to do a straight Q&A for two hours or would you like to hear me read a passage?
The thing about this, its all about YOU. After all, you are taking YOUR time out to listen to ME, and I want to make it worth the investment. Much like the book if you are being generous with your time? Then I want to both earn it and give you specifically what you want. So, that is where I am at currently. I figure, December 5th with give time to new readers who want to get their way through the book before attending a ZOOM session. I talk like any one is interested in this. Again, Saturday December 5th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. I will do a second ZOOM session and provide a link as the date approaches. I still have some stuff in the works, I am going to earnestly begin the audiobook recording this week but a friend had pointed out to me if having a female read Rachel’s parts might be something worth considering. I would love that, however that would require a commitment from people and I don’t know how an audiobook works in terms of how to price it, how to make it accessible, and if I ask for outside help? How would that work in terms of compensating people for the time they spent on it? Right now it’s just an idea, it’s a really great idea, but until I figure out the logistics its just an idea. I also tried to tease a podcast project on my Instagram that probably went unnoticed due to my inability to follow up after the failed promotional effort. I came up with an idea when I realized I had this audio equipment for the audio book to do a podcast called “Seeking a Podcast For the End of the World,” in which I would just try to have a conversation with people about the state of the world we are all living in. How I cope, what I do to keep myself from going insane, and if I’m lucky? Find a revolving door of co-hosts to chat with me about how the pandemic, the election, or life in general has been going for them. Again, it’s just an idea right now but one I hope to get cracking on at some point this week. Alright, I feel better and a little productive to have a trajectory to provide to anyone who reads this. Frankly, I don’t want to spread myself thin with potential ideas to promote this book when I am so eager to write poetry or another story, but as a stay at home parent…I need hobbies. I hope this finds you all well, and that you’re all putting your best foot forward. I hope to see any of you on December 5th, and if you’ve read the book and couldn’t make the last ZOOM reading or just started it…I hope you come to the next one with your questions ready for me!
I always felt like everyone else in the world had a “thing” you know that specific tangible thing about them that defines who they are. Maybe they were voted prom king or queen, got that superlative in the high school yearbook, was just so breathtakingly handsome or gorgeous that they would always be socially coveted by a court of reverent and pious peers. Maybe it was the career they just said until they were blue in the face, this is what I’m going to do, or the fact that they bought their first house due to tremendous fortune and hard work. Everyone has a “thing”, and everyone believes that everyone else has a “thing.” I was not one of these people, at least not until recently.
This is of course, if you don’t count a stoner once referring to me as “that creepy Kurt Cobain kid” to a group of my friends who were getting stoned with him, or the “he looks like Screech with AIDS” comment left on someone’s Facebook page after a picture of us flexing was posted (he was a physical anomaly and I look like what happens when Cancer is killing you, it was meant to be comical). Eddie Brophy and a “thing” were not synonymous with each other unless of course that thing was negative or cautionary. After marriage and children? I gave up on wanting a thing. At this stage in my life? I just hope that I am not a shitty parent, and at some point eventually maybe (if I’m lucky) my college education will help me get a job rather than turn the job search into a glorified effort in futility. I tried, I tried REALLY hard my whole life to have something. I had to. I have buck teeth, I’m 130lbs, I have duck feet (that required me to wear leg braces as a kid), I don’t have a lot of discernible life skills, I’m mentally ill, I have a learning disability, Jesus Christ if you wanted a list of shit that would make me an ineligible member of the human race and the least likely to be deemed a commodity? I could rattle off things for days. I just really hold onto the hope that I won’t be a shit parent. That’s really all I have. I’m sure I will. Parenting is REALLY fucking difficult. I try, but at the end of the day? I make a million mistakes. Hell, I stopped trying to think I could be the best husband YEARS ago when my wife realized how remarkably annoying and flawed I am. Publishing a book is a VERY big deal. If you’re a writer and you publish a book? That is, that is a success very few can take claim for. However, I am also me so that sort of logic doesn’t cut it. My immediately ideology publishing a book? Fuck, this is going to fail. No one is going to read it, or fucking care about it. WHO DOES THAT?!? Jesus Christ, even now I am still thinking…how the fuck can you see something you created in photos or on the shelf of a book store you grew up in and still downplay the importance of that? So what if not every single person in the world knows who you are…the ones that do, do! That was when it fucking hit me, and hit me hard. I have been very fortunate in the past two months to receive private messages on Instagram from people who honestly? Would not believe would waste their time on my sorry ass if I was on fire. Here they are, congratulating me. Telling me they bought a copy. Sharing things from our past. In some cases? Asking if I remember them. What?! Do I remember you? I am pretty sure I didn’t exist in my hometown. A few of these experiences have made me think about how much depression stole from me growing up. The fact that I was too scared, too anxious, too quick to think everyone hated me to even try to initiate conversation or strike up friendships with these people. So much of my life has either been hiding behind long hair and a somber disposition or trying to numb myself from the fear that no one gives a shit about me and I am going to die without a “thing.” So there I am, driving around in my SUV after dropping off a copy to a woman who reached out to me last night asking where she could get it. I have known her since second grade, I can literally remember one encounter with her at the Boys and Girls Club. Like so many others? I just assumed I wasn’t on her radar and if my name came up it would either make her break out in hives from her disgust of me or she would say “Who?” And she reached out to me to tell me that she had failed to pick up a copy at Barnes and Nobel after telling her husband that’s what she wanted for her birthday. This woman wanted MY book for HER birthday. Fucking…WHAT?!? Of ALL things to want? Why my book? In high school? I was the kid who became a recluse because he didn’t want to upset his parents by getting into trouble. I would fill notebooks up with narratives about just wanting to be somebody else, someone who was attractive, smart, funny, worth loving. I wanted prom night, the superlative, the friends, the ability to not feel so uncomfortable with the idea of girls that I avoided them completely or found myself in relationships where I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing because my only knowledge of being a person was informed by television or film characters. There was one summer when I was trying to make my neighborhood friends laugh outside of a gas station, the clerk was smoking a cigarette and was getting a kick out of my Chris Farley self-loathing throw myself into things to make people laugh and said “If this kid did drugs? He could be a star. He would be funnier than he is now.” That fall? I was into drugs. I was so tired of climbing through windows my sisters climbed out of to run away and my dad shoving me in their room to unlock their doors. I was sick of sitting in a cold basement by myself watching VH1 specials about rock stars who were train wrecks, but people loved them for it. I was so sick of not being remarkable or worth talking to. I tried to become a dead guy so people would think I had some iota of character to me…and listening to this 2001 hits Pandora list…that made me so FUCKING angry. Why couldn’t I have just been me? Then I thought about how a few people had been messaging me and telling me their stories or expressing interest in my book. Maybe this whole journey from lunacy, neglect, pain, regret, manic episodes, and bottoming out…what if this is what finally helped me create my “thing” what if I finally found it…now what? Well, that mere thought made me pull my car into a parking lot and sob. All I have wanted my whole life was a fucking thing, and maybe this is it. That both filled me with pride and scared me. If this is my thing? Is this my only thing, and can I live with that? Can I live with being the guy who wrote this book and have that be all I get out of all that emotional fatigue and rueful affirmation? Time will tell I guess, in the meantime. Jesus Christ. A gentleman had messaged me and complimented me on the book…. last time this guy saw me? He was exiting an elevator in the nursing home where I was scrubbing toilets. He is in politics, he looked like a juggernaut as he casually walked by me. We exchanged pleasantries and my first thought? I am such a fucking loser, and he knows it. I felt vindicated when he wrote his message to me, not because I was comparing myself to him…but because I respect him so much and it felt like he might respect me. I don’t know where I am going with this blog…I am just working out a feeling. It felt amazing, too amazing, like I don’t deserve to feel it. Then it was followed by…a sadness, not a bad or hurtful sadness. A sadness because I just miss people. I wish before COVID and in high school I did more to show people how much I appreciated them. If I can be honest with you? I love the conversations I am having more than being a published author. If this book was what it took to get to have them? Then all the pain in my life was worth it. I just fucking love getting to know people.
What did it take for us to brush the gossamers of our complacent or indifferent stupor to us to collectively realize just how important democracy is? An election that looked like it was going to take this country closer than it has ever been to a potential authoritarian regime led by a man who shouldn’t be trusted with a potato gun, much less the codes to nuclear weapons. In 2016, our ignorance about the constitution, about our own sordid historical genesis, and our inability to decipher conspiracy from detrimental lunacy elected a glorified tyrant and megalomaniac into the most prestigious office in the world. I write this seething with anger, as I too was part of that problem. In 2016, I became so apathetic about the two candidates in front of me that I sat out what I thought was circus of an election.
Donald Trump was not the clown. I was. In two Massachusetts cities, the election literally came down to one vote. ONE VOTE. That ONE vote in each respective city was what led to a Joe Biden victory. It goes without saying that we can no longer be cynical about the power of our right to vote. While I watch so many people in my community celebrating from the comfort of their homes (still diligently adhering to social distancing) or pouring into the streets of those key battleground states (thankfully, masked…although the social distancing needs some work) what I seeing isn’t hubris or that OUR TEAM IS THE BEST! Post Super Bowl/World Series bullshit…I am watching entire communities realize how close they and this amazing country came to extinction. It only took a global pandemic, a volatile sociopath tweeting from his insulated world of sycophants and likeminded criminals, and a newfound paranoia over whether you should trust your local law enforcement, relatives, neighbors, and top brass decision makers in regard to adhering to any kind of sincere moral compass or incorruptible integrity. I am thirty-three years old and it took me THIS long to figure out that I don’t know nearly enough about the history of my country and this government than I fucking should. There is SO much work that must be done in education, in law enforcement, in government, but most importantly? In every single one of us. Its not enough to say inclusion is important to our communities, we must fight for inclusion and understand how to be more inclusive. It is not enough to say racism is wrong or bad, we must work toward expunging structural racism and looking deep within ourselves to identify our privilege and the areas where we need more work to become anti-racist. It is not enough to say that we appreciate the reproductive rights of all women, we must do that very awful thing that is going to bring up some shit that makes us realize…maybe I wasn’t the good guy. We need to self-interrogate ourselves and say, are we happy with how we have or how we currently treat women? Their rights, and have we always done our best to take a step back and try to live vicariously through them and identify the areas where they have felt personally victimized, ignored, or rejected. I realize this is such a tall order, but because of the country we live in…we are getting our only mulligan. This is the time to appreciate America as the land of opportunity. What opportunity is in front of us? The opportunity to do better. Be greater. If you failed to recognize your privilege, heed the cries from the Black Lives Matter movement, if you see prejudice take place in your home or business? Speak up! If you find yourself getting that promotion over your female co-worker, ask yourself…is this truly merit based. Did I earn this? Rather than accepting and never wondering if you got it because of privilege. Four years in Donald Trump’s America, and I realized how much work we all have ahead of us to ensure that this nightmare never EVER happens again. When I found out that Biden had one the election, I immediately ran out of my bathroom and turned on CNN and screamed for joy to my son…”HE’S ONE AND DONE! WE DID IT BABY! BAD GUY TRUMP LOST!” The absolute elation on his face is something I can’t even begin to illustrate for you. All it took during this pandemic for my son to make that deduction was how arrogant, apathetic, mean, and irresponsible this man was about COVID-19. My son lost someone so close to him (a woman who lived at his mom’s nursing home) and I swear to you…that was the day he realized what Trump really was. Sure, it could have bad Dad yelling at the television, or having mental breakdowns when Trump spewed his deflective rhetoric at anyone and everyone who challenged him…but my three year old can spot apathy when he sees it. I am not going to sugar coat it…we still have a long road ahead of us. Trump is going to try to fight dirty. He already refused to a peaceful transfer of power. I don’t want to scare anyone, but you all remember when he addressed the proud boys and told them to stand down and “stand by,” yeah…this is what he was talking about. He knew he was going to lose; he knew had the public trust (outside of his cult) among undecided voters and that he never had it with the rest of us. I am praying that this gets resolved with Trump being escorted out of the White House and right into a courtroom where he will be forced to stand trial for his crimes against humanity…but that could just be wishful thinking. We have a new president and vice president, and for the first time in four years? I can finally say we have a president and vice president. However, long after Donald J. Trump is an afterthought…remember those who deified and weaponized him. Remember the complete lack of humanity and humility that came out of these four years. Do not dwell, but do not forget. Why? Because these are the people, we need to hold accountable. These are the moments we need to galvanize this country toward improving. At the end of the day? Work toward a collective and shared goal to be better than what we bore witness to from 2016 until the horrifying finale in 2020. God Bless America. God Bless Democracy. Stay safe. Take Care. Move forward. This is our second chance, never forget how close we came to the end. In 2001, a few weeks removed from 9/11 I was walking around town when I spotted this ridiculous doomsday book sitting at a payphone near the local library. At the time I was really fascinated with literature written by dogmatic doomsayers and also somewhat amused by how grossly and unabashedly homophobic and baseless their claims were. How could anyone actually take this shit seriously? It was glorified hate rhetoric disguised as a prognostication of things to come if western civilization did not repent and heed the word of God. To me? It was evidence that religion was more of a tool to manipulate and exploit people who were (rightfully, so) fearful about the trajectory of our country's future considering we were on the precipice of nuclear extinction (depending on who you asked) by goading that fear and weaponizing it to use against groups of non-religious or non-conformist followers. When I got home I read it, scoffed at it and then it just went into a pile of shit I collected that made me grateful I wasn't as gullible or easily triggered by the words someone printed. Then it was the weekend and I was loading my bass guitar in my parents' car on my way to my guitar lesson when I watched my fanatical mother racing to the car waving a copy of this very book in the air... The unnerving part wasn't that an additional copy of a book that I told no one I found and took home with me found its way to me...it had been sent FIRST CLASS. I finally told my best friend at the time later that night about what I found and showed up what arrived in the mail... To date, I still have NO idea who sent me that other copy first class. Why they did, and more importantly how the hell they got my address? That spooked a few friends in high school. I forgot about this until recently when I was going through some clutter and realized I still had both copies. I don't read as much into it now, it just feels like a fun and bizarre story to share with people. Figured it might be an interesting pre-election day thing to share (considering it feels like we are in fact on the verge of doomsday and the authors of this garbage could potentially rule the world if Trump is re-elected). Stay safe everyone and stay positive! I know its hard, but its all we have left.
I have been adapting to a new phone for the last week or so, at thirty-three I am about as technologically savvy as my grandparents were with the VCR in 1992. I am two more frustrated attempts at getting my professional e-mail linked to my phone away from handing it to my three year old and acquiescing that both age and ineptitude will have me at the tender mercies of my children. I have no problem admitting publicly that my three-year-old is much sharper and smarter than I could ever hope to be. To make a short story long, I finally checked in to my other e-mail tonight to find that I did in fact get a response from a library that has accepted my book!
The news comes three days after having what I am told was a successful first public reading and Q&A for Nothing to Get Nostalgic About. I cannot even begin to articulate what that experience was like. My childhood best friend Allison said it best last night “just seeing the people there made me smile,” yeah…that is probably the most accurate account of Friday evening’s reading. My son’s teacher was there, she brought all her book club friends, my poetry thesis professor and my poetry mama attended, Mrs. Burnham showed up to support me, and so many friends of twenty years or more all came and had brilliant questions about the book. My friend put so much emphasis on how special that was and asked what it felt like. Honestly? You can’t really anticipate this sort of thing, and when the book came closer to publication, I made an effort not to build up expectations in my head for it. I wanted to just let things manifest organically for better and for worse. I am fortunate that people (even those who have known me since I was a kid) genuinely wanted to know about the process, what inspired the characters, and inquire about a lot of the lore that exists within the story. As for now? I would love to do another reading if the interest is there to do one. As for tonight? I’d love to just sit and hopefully come up with some new poetry. There are ideas for a new manuscript, but I don’t want to force anything while I’m trying to promote this current novel. An audiobook is currently in the works, and hopefully I will hear from more local libraries about the fate of the book. I feel good, still cautiously optimistic but good. Hopefully this story will find more readers and people will let me know if another reading is something they’d love to be part of. |
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