As a published horror writer, I have to admit something...I don't know if I could ever write anything nearly as terrifying as the cult of Trump. My childhood best friend sent me this today while she was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. I don't know if this is how we cope with everything that has been going on, but this past summer we were shooting texts back and fourth with the most ridiculous displays of cult behavior from Trump supporters. I can't emphasize enough how insane these people come across, I have never in my thirty-three years of life witnessed people supporting a United States President like he was a modern day prophet.
The worst part is knowing how easily he and his administration are manipulating these people into believing all of these baseless conspiracy theories and catering to glorified rhetoric. I don't know if I should be proud of myself for not being so easily duped by the fear mongering, if I should be terrified that the anti-intellectualism movement is thriving and growing daily in this country. You have these people organizing attempts to kidnap governors, protesting outside of the houses of politicians and doctors over their rage for how unconstitutional mask mandates are, and chanting for this man to get "12 more years!" and yet...they are also seething over schools going completely remote because god forbid their children don't get a proper education! The irony is so painful. You want to risk your children's lives and the lives of the teachers and staff of these schools so your kid gets an education while also exhibiting behavior that reveals that you clearly don't value education as much as you want the world to believe you do. It is so frustrating. The pseudo self-righteous types who claim that Trump is the gift of their God while also rooting for peaceful protestors and black people to be gunned down in the streets...at what can you keep telling yourself, there in fact IS a GOD. I am not trying to be offensive, its an honest question. Is there an actual God (he/she/it) why is this happening? What is the purpose of ALL of this? I won't lie, I have always considered myself agnostic bordering on atheist but with kids came an open mind and a desire to have them belong to a community. Right before the shutdown, my wife and I were beginning to narrow down what church might be a good fit for the four of us...and then Trump has protestors tear gassed and manhandled away from a church so he can leverage a photo opportunity to hold a bible upside down and backwards. Upside down and backwards...that's kind of where I am at with all of this. Initially, the poems were flowing pretty intensely. When the book arrived and I started doing promotional work for it, not so much. I have this process though, with writing? My brain takes these fleeting breaks where it just needs to figure out where the hell everything is. It can get pretty depressing. If I'm not constantly writing? I feel like I'm losing time, opportunity, and wasting potential. Its also the best way to keep myself from getting too vulnerable to all the things that drive me crazy about my life and the world around me. Why can't I find a fucking job? Who the hell is reading this book? Is anyone? Did I already peak? Why am I not such a pop culture or horror nut anymore? Do my kids like me? Am I good dad? The questions go on and on... Hopefully a break will arrive sooner than later, for myself and for all of us.
0 Comments
I have worked a number of jobs over the years: furniture stainer, Blockbuster employee, Salem haunted house actor, rat torture victim #2 on a History Channel special, theatrical day camp counselor, Money Matters Radio intern, WFNX intern, WAAF/Mike-FM intern, board-op at WAAF, thrift store manager, West Elm backroom, and finally as a custodian in a nursing home...this is the first time I have ever held a check in my hand for my art. My wife wouldn't stop harassing me until I opened it as she called it a "very BIG moment." Now look, I am not doing Bob Woodrow or Mary Trump numbers and I am no closer to owning a yacht than I was making eight dollars an hour staining furniture in a poorly ventilated warehouse in subzero temperatures and heatwaves, but this was really special.
I don't expect the checks to get bigger or the number of sales to soar, but as a stay at home parent who is desperately failing to land a job and a writer who has just wanted to feel validated in any way, I will take it. So, what happens now? There is still the Book Reading/Q&A scheduled for Friday, October 30th at 7 p.m. on ZOOM (I am still not quite sure how I plan to announce that link, at this point I think I'm just going to post it here and on Instagram the day before the event) and a few opportunities to do podcasts or do a local paper may be on the table. After that? I don't know...I guess that's what makes this both very exciting and absolutely terrifying. I mailed out some donated copies to libraries, I reached out to a local book store today but was asked to call back early next week, and I just keep trying to remain visible on the gram. Really, the best part about putting a book out? I'm putting myself out there again, and people have been really sweet and so fucking compassionate about the material or the things that led to the creation of the material. I am still very self conscious (more so because of my kids) about being so honest or candid about my life, my past, and the work I am creating. That really is the most rewarding part of all of this, all I wanted from this book? It wasn't the money and it wasn't to become a New York Times Best Selling Author (sure, I wouldn't exactly hate those things) but it was to be read and subsequently asked to talk about what I wrote. To connect with people either completely new in my life, faces from a past I felt too shy addressing, or old friends checking in? It is cool to see where everyone is at and get a chance to assure them that it all worked out. How are all of you doing? Is everyone safe? Healthy? How are you all holding up mentally? I hope this writing finds you well and I really hope that we are able to make it out of this waking nightmare together and completely renewed. This book has been lingering around in the recesses of my mind since I was twenty-four years old. I don’t know why, but when I thought back to my childhood (specifically living in the house I grew up in) I couldn’t help but entertain the idea that…you know, so much awful or scary shit that had been normalized for me might actually NOT be normal. I can remember being in third grade with a handful of classmates having lunch with the school psychologist when one of those classmates (and neighbor of mine) began talking about the blonde boy that was haunting my family. The school psychologist looked like he didn’t know if he should phone D.S.S. or goad my friend to keep talking about it.
There were A LOT of people who knew about the horrors inside of my house (both supernatural and domestic) and I was just this naïve moron walking around thinking…what? You guys don’t have little blonde specters calling out for his mother and waking your parents up in the middle of the night to bring them to the bedroom you are sleeping in? The older I get the less normal I think it was that so many of us growing up were playing “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” or rotating our shoulders in our parents’ mirrors to see the fingertips of our guardian angels. These were things I did, saw, experienced, and ultimately tracked back to…wow, our home lives were kind of weird weren’t they? When you’re so scared to go to school because you’re terrified the teachers are going to ridicule you, or your peers are going to ostracize you then to get off the bus and go back home to a place where all you hear is what a cumbersome economical strain you are on your family? You tend to treat the supernatural with a bit of curiosity and dare I say gusto. When you feel so uncomfortable in your own skin, so unwanted in your own home, and such a leper around kids your own age? You will go to any length to find solace, even if its in folklore or the impossible and improbable likelihood that there is more to your life than being an outcast, a reject, or god forbid a mistake. As a kid, I was only scared of one thing. My father. That was it. I wasn’t afraid of demons, possession, drugs, ghosts, Satan, Marilyn Manson, not getting into college, or the liberal boogeyman. I was afraid of the man who created me. Then I was afraid of myself. The plague that was me. How ironic that we’re all socially distancing now to avoid giving our loved ones something that could potentially kill them, and yet that was how I felt my entire life. Knowing me wasn’t a privilege it was a liability. I used to treat my own existence like a virus that I didn’t want to grow into a pandemic. This story deals very much with people who never ever felt comfortable with who they were, or who they wanted to be. You would just as likely find an avatar to latch onto for dear life than to ever exude any semblance of yourself out of fear that it would ruin others. We are two weeks away from me holding a ZOOM meeting about this book, but I think I can divulge a few nuggets here and there about the genesis of this story. If you’ve read it, you’re reading it, or you’re still on the fence, I hope you’ll attend and we can have fun with the 90s and a lot of the things that made that decade so unusual. The moral of the story? We need to learn from the past, and stop normalizing or romanticizing it.
If you were ever a woman who dated me, or a friend who I loved so profoundly, then I have probably showed you "The Crow," why? Because it means THAT much to me. I remember showing it to my friend Amara when we were probably 18 or 19 and telling her all about Bruce and Brandon and the tragedies of their lives. When the scene where Brandon is scaling buildings and hopping from rooftop to rooftop she just uttered "His daddy would be so proud of him."
In THAT moment...I wanted to be that important to a child. I wanted to be someone that if I was wiped off the face of the earth, I was worth trying to live up to. I don't know if my book will do that for my kids, but god damn it if I didn't want someone to stop on of my kids on the street and tell them..."I knew who your daddy was!" I love my kids so much, that its not enough to love them. I want to leave them something that they can wrap their arms around and still feel my heart beating long after I am buried underground. I hope this book is it.
Its not enough to be there, they deserve to have me leave something for them to believe in and want to remember me for.
My wife came home this morning after taking our oldest to Wal-Mart to grab a few things for school. She showed me this outfit and it took me a few minutes to process what I was looking at. Then I realized that the hooded sweatshirt she bought for my son also came with two face masks that attach to the hood. Eight months into this pandemic that was handled so poorly by our government and no vaccine readily available in the foreseeable future? Department stores now have apparel on their racks that contain face masks to keep the owner safe. God, that felt so bizarre to write. Then staring at this outfit reminded me of a trip my family took to Wal Mart a few days ago where my wife and I watched a young woman zig-zag through aisles wearing a shirt that read “I Don’t Give a Fuck,” instantaneously we both gave each other a look that said “Are you believing this shit?” I called her from the deli at Stop and Shop today asking her what the hell happened to public decorum as I spotted a man standing in line proudly wearing a hoodie with “YOUR FEELINGS” printed on it with a stick figure seemingly fucking them. The logo of a firearm on his shoulder told the whole story, and frankly? I was not interested and just got in my car and drove home. All I kept thinking to myself was…what the hell is going on out there? This must be a new development, right? Then I thought back to when I was an intern at the radio station I worked at and checked my Facebook page to find that an old classmate wrote a very racist and frankly ignorant thing about then President Obama on my wall. I remember replying that I had zero interest in being questioned by the secret service regarding the vitriol she left on my wall, and within minutes she took it down. Did I get complacent? I mean, Barack Obama served two terms over eight years, that surely meant that racism was over? The answer is an emphatic no, in fact? It only seemed to get worse during that eight years. Another memory came from a friend years ago who was a Marine telling me that one of the guys he was in boot camp with had gone off on a diatribe about serving under an N-word. While I voted for Obama both terms and was an unabashed supporter of his policies and his abilities, I have to accept that my white privilege fitted me for a pair of rose colored glasses for the eight years he served. Now, four years into Trump’s administration with a potential four additional years to go (knowing he will pull every dirty trick imaginable to rig the election, or flat out refuse to leave office and spark a civil war) and I am seeing the America that black lives and all non-white people have known for hundreds of years. Early this morning my wife was laughing about how our three year old took a relative to task over new bumper sticker on her car and trying to figure out how she could support a “bad guy,” when she asked him who taught him that he defiantly told her “DADA DID!” I just do not get it. I do not understand the people who honestly believe that this man gives a shit about any of them. Specifically, those who fall well below the financial bracket Trump caters to.
This world just feels so cold, ignorant, blissfully complacent with its unwarranted hatred, and frankly? Unabashed about the possibility that it could be on the verge of extinction. You think that’s hyperbole? Consider how many lives have been lost to COVID (much more than being reported) and the ineptitude of our leaders. Consider the fact that this decision to swear in a new supreme court justice could irrevocably change the futures of the LGBTQ and black communities, not to mention healthcare for people who pay more than $750 in income taxes. Yet, these are the holy rollers doing the work of God, right? I hate to say it, but if this is God’s will? You can officially call me an atheist. I am just so frustrated, so angry, so incredibly angry, and I just feel so helpless. It’s a shame, I shouldn’t be motivated to have an aversion to faith and community because so many horrible human beings have perverted faith and weaponized it, but…. here we are. On a happier note, Its always nice to reach a new reader! It has been a little bit since I have written a blog, a good friend of mine was concerned maybe something was wrong. I reassured him just doing my best to utilize my new Instagram account to spread the word that this thing is out there, and it does exist. Admittedly, I am absolutely god awful at using it. At thirty-three years old I feel like a dinosaur when I am trying to comment on a reply or post, and I find myself three threads deep (spelling errors GALORE!) trying to finish a thought. I work better with a laptop than my smartphone, and even that can be questionable. My head works so much faster than my fingers that I often find myself just typing everything my brain wants to produce and cater to the ideology…meh, I will fix it later.
I have also been trying to do more than simply have a social media account to say “Oh hey, remember me? Buy my book!” I find myself reconnecting with people again, or for the very first time? Reaching out to people who have just remarkable stories. I do my best to find a balance between promoting my book and getting on my soapbox about this upcoming election. Did you vote? I took so much pride in dropping off my absentee ballot at the town hall while my boys watched. Sadly, you don’t appreciate democracy until you have a glorified autocrat who fancies himself a fledgling authoritarian claiming that he is the poster child for law & order when the rest of us just see flagrant corruption and malfeasance. It’s a tough thing to navigate because on the one hand, I am a while male American so I don’t want my personal ideologies or notions to come across as efforts for virtue signaling or missing the god damn point entirely. However, as a white male American…should not it be my job to take time with what I am hearing, what I am seeing, but also make a point to address it? I do not want to be one of those complacent morons who sits back and says well let these people handle it, they know more than you and they are much more qualified to talk about these things. One of the big reasons I want this book to be read is because I do feel it addresses one of the biggest problems in this country, this fallacy about the nuclear family and the detriment of that propaganda. It is not just the current administration, America has propagated this narrative for decades about what the nuclear family should look like, where they should live, and where they should fall in the social hierarchy. I was talking to another friend last night about being in the Special Education program and how emotionally humiliating it was as a child. I never heard him talk like that before. We had several classes together, but we never really addressed what we were both individually thinking in our respective corners. I remember being pulled out of classes in front of all my peers and brought to the basement to take memory tests and have recorded interviews about my family. It was humiliating, but a necessary evil for someone like me who had a non-verbal learning disability. I remember being in a sociology class and realizing through a video we were watching that I never stood a chance because of my learning disability. It really resonated with me that my friend brought that up. I talked with another person I went to school with who is out of the closet and just loving herself and treating herself with so much respect because she finally feels liberated and free of the cumbersome burden of who she was supposed to be. Its been a much different experience this go around on social media than it was when I was a depressed and miserable twenty something just dying for anyone to try and save me or give me the answers that eluded me. I am sorry I have not been very good about keeping up with this blog lately, but eventually people will stop caring about the book or stop caring about me talking about it and this will become my only refuge again.
Another reminder that a ZOOM reading and Q&A takes place on Friday October 30th at 7 p.m. admittedly this will be my first time hosting a ZOOM meeting in any capacity so I can't promise it won't be somewhat of a train wreck. The hope is that it won't be a total dumpster fire, but I am at peace with the idea that it certainly won't go without a few hiccups. The initial plan as of now is to give out the ZOOM link the night before the event here on the website and on the Instagram page. Initially, I wanted to build a mailing list so the event couldn't get hacked but I am finding that to be somewhat of another foreign process for me. Fingers crossed that it will both happen without a hitch but more importantly, anyone will show up for it.
Oddball Magazine posted my new poem "Americult" on their site today. Check it out! It felt so good to have a new poem published, this whole promotional effort behind "Nostalgic" has monopolized so much of my time that I really haven't had any opportunities to submit poems or work on new ones. This one was a bit more experimental from what I typically produce so I was really proud that it resonated with the magazine and also because its the first poem in a Boston based (non collegiate) magazine. I am hoping to get some time to tackle more poems and even a new manuscript once I can stop obsessing over how many readers are getting their hands on the novel.
I hope this finds you all well, remember to stay the course. Whether Trump had COVID (debatable) or not the fact of the matter is his handling of this pandemic remains unconscionable and a total contradiction of what we should expect of our nation's leader. Wear your masks. Maintain social distance. Listen to the scientists and doctors. Mute the moron. It feels weird to say this…I am a published horror author. It is October 1st, and I mean I am a born and raised New England resident this date has ALWAYS had a significant feeling to me. Its darker earlier now, you can smell all the fireplaces burning, and there is this really amazing feeling of home when you see the leaves on the ground and can still feel the last gasp of summer in the air. It reminds me of being a kid, when fall in New England was full of monster movies, costume stores, candy, and eventually trick or treating. When you’re a horror fan? God, its even more fun because you get to finally embrace your inner kid when everything around you feels like its catering to your passion for all things spooky and macabre. Something snuck up on me in therapy today, I admitted to my therapist that I was proud of myself. That’s something I have never admitted in thirty-three years. I do not know what it is, the fact that my son’s Montessori teacher was just so lovely and awesome about my book (even buying five more copies for herself, the assistant teacher, and more members of her book club) the fact that her book club seems to love it, or the fact that Dylan managed to find a copy out of the box today and kept pointing to the name on the cover and telling me “Dada! You’re Eddie Brophy! This is YOUR book!” This is MY BOOK. My son says it and gets so excited and just beams with pride. I hope people are still buying it, reading it, and hopefully I’ll get some bites for the giveaway I am hosting. If not? I guess that’s just more copies for me to offer to libraries or have on hand in case anyone feels like getting one directly. It feels so weird to be in this month and feel like…hey I am be just the tiniest microcosm…but I feel like I’m finally on the team. I am finally a real horror writer. Like a genuine scrappy little indie writer, I hope this book finds its audience. I am slowly realizing that it has one. That has been such a cool feeling. I am just excited to hopefully see anyone at the ZOOM book reading. Initially, this was going to be my "TOP SECRET" Zoom meeting Halloween costume. I wanted to dress up as Kurt Cobain like Charlie did in the book. I realized that wig looks more Karen than Kurt so my best friend laughed and said..."Go as Karen Cobain!" She is real folks...and here she is.
As of tonight, the official book giveaway is officially live. It’s simple, if you are an Instagram user just search for @eddiebrophywriter and find my post about the contest. Share that post on your Instagram and make sure to tag me in it. You instantly qualify for the contest. To increase your odds of getting a free copy if you post about the book on Facebook or Twitter and share your screenshot? You are much more likely to get picked. What do you get? You will get a copy of the book; I’ll get to get rid of some of these damn magnets my wife bought for it and the option to have a copy signed. I know, I know…. too good to be true, right?
I am also going to start working my ass off to get these into local libraries in the area. I can’t emphasize enough; I just want the book to be read. I know this pandemic has been a nightmare for so many people, especially economically. I am so proud of this book and if there is an interest for it? I’d love to have every opportunity to just get it in people’s hands without them being unable to purchase one. So, check out my Instagram (its still public, for the time being) and lets just have fun with it. God knows, the world has enough scaring us so hopefully this can be something to take you out of it even if only for a short time. You know what else you can do? VOTE! Election day is November 3rd if you are a registered voter? Make sure you get out there and do your duty as an American citizen! Don’t let this glorified bully and dog shit human being scare you into thinking that you don’t have a constitutional right to vote his tyrannical ass out of a job he never deserved to have. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
September 2021
Categories |