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Meaning-making machine

2025-11-17T00:00:00Z

The first story I can remember writing had a knight in it. It had a prince. It had dragon. It had a battle between the knight and the dragon, of course. If you had asked me then what the story was about, I would have mentioned the knight, or maybe the dragon. I would have sold you an adventure. I wouldn’t have mentioned the wedding at the end, because who cares about weddings; they’re just what you do when there are no more dragons in the way. If you were to ask me about this story now, I’d tell you that it was about love. There are enough jokes about this, I know: sometimes the prince is just a prince, and the dragon is just a dragon, but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t. I can’t tell you why I do this, but I can tell you that I don’t know how to stop.

When Ethan asked me to come over, I hadn’t seen him in years. He was the same as he’d always been: handsome and frail like I’d seen in an oil painting; dirty like he’d just crawled out of the earth. We drank Miller Lite, ate nachos, and talked on his futon until midnight. Somewhere in the middle, he offered me a cigarette. I didn’t take it. I sat next to him while he smoked, even though I hated the smell. I still do. Ethan wasn’t one for a lot of eye contact, but he looked right at me when he asked if I wanted to stay the night. I couldn’t. I was in pain, I was tired. He understood, he said, and he drove me home. He hugged me goodbye just long enough that I wondered what else he wanted to say, but I didn’t ask. Two years later, I learned from his ex-girlfriend that he had died. I don’t know if it was that night; I just know he was alone. I can picture him hanging there like I found him myself. There’s always dirt under his nails. Even in my imagiation, I can’t let him find whatever he was digging for.

Every time I see a man with long hair, I think of Ethan. I wonder if I should have stayed the night, and if it would have made a difference. Did he mean it, that other time, when he got drunk and kissed me? Is that what he wanted – to kiss me again, to prove it wasn’t a joke? Maybe he just wanted someone to hold back the dark for a few more hours. I could have done that, if he’d asked me. We could have kept our clothes on, even. Even in my imagination, I can’t bear to touch him. I think I’ll hold him wrong. I’ll snap him right in half. I think it might even be my fault. He kissed me, and something evil got in, and it ate him from the inside.

Johnny was a very different man. Shorter hair, a stronger constitution, but the same habit of texting me when the sun was down. He always had Miller Lites when I saw him. It’s easy, sitting outside the story, to know that the cheap beer is just that. Inside the story, I connected the dots anyway: “My friend used to love this shit,” I said.

Johnny had this way of smiling with his whole face. “Your friend has terrible taste.”

I didn’t bother to correct him. If Ethan were still here, I like to think his taste wouldn’t have improved. Johnny and I stayed up late, too. There were no cigarettes, but there was a futon. There was a Bowie knife, and there was a guitar, and when Johnny played, I checked his fingernails for dirt, just in case. I never found any, in all the times I saw him, but he died anyway.

Logic suggests that these things have nothing to do with each other. One story is not the other. Things happen all of the time that have nothing to do with anything else, but I wonder anyway. If I had told Johnny the truth, even once, would that have kept him off the freeway on some cold January morning? No, but here I am, editorializing the truth so I can live with it.

I haven’t written in a long time. Not really. Ethan said I could be somebody, if I wanted; and Johnny too. There’s another coincidence I get to turn into something it isn’t. Depending on who you ask, I might be the prince, and I might be the dragon, and I might be the knight. If you were to ask me, I’d tell you that I always find a way to write the story so that I’m the dragon, and so that everyone else is the prince who didn’t deserve it. That, I can live with: a story with someone to blame, even if it’s me. Especially if it’s me.

I may not write much, but I think about it all of the time. I think about the world we find ourselves in now, where someone suggests to me that, if it’s so hard to wite, I could ask ChatGPT for help. I can’t imagine anything that would help me less. These stochastic parrots don't know what I know: I know that someone always lives and someone else always dies. I know there’s always a funeral somewhere, and always a wedding somewhere else, and the only thing that separates a comedy from a drama is which one you get invited to. I don’t need a machine to do some math and spit out a happy coincidence of letterforms; I need to know that I can reach out to someone else and they can see me. I need to know someone else is out there, waiting to give me the the things that are too hard to live with. I need to know that, when I’m gone, I’ve left something someone else can use, even if it's just for a little while. I need to know that the meaning is where people make it. Tell me where it hurts. Tell me the adventure is worth it. Tell me what’s left when we’ve thrown the last clump of dirt on the coffin. Tell me how, someday, all the dragons will be gone. Tell me somebody catches the bouquet in the end. Tell me we all find what we're looking for.

I’ve been trying to tell you, I promise. I’m going to keep doing it on my own, when I’m ready. If I can’t do that, then there’s never been a point.

Dreams

2024-10-25T00:00:00Z

I thought I’d already said everything I needed to say to you, but here we are.

I dream that I get to meet her, that nice girl you married. what do you think? you ask me. i like her, I say, because I do. i’m glad, you say. she reminds me so much of you.

I dream that we’re walking in the tall grass. I’m carrying the radio. There’s a song, but I don’t remember the words. You have a machete so you can clear a path. You don’t need a machete – nobody needs a machete – you just want to look cool. You toss your machete into the air, you cut the sun right in half, you catch the handle in your fist. Cool. We talk until nightfall, but I’m never sure if you hear a word I say. There was a time I would have let you cut off any piece of me that you wanted. I would have let you swallow me whole, right there in the field. I would’ve stitched the sun together with my bare hands just to get you to look back at me, even once.

How does that song go again? I dream each night of some version of you that I never had, but I did not lose. No, that’s not it. What do you care how the song goes, anyway? What do you care about these dreams?

I dream that I get to tell you about everything you’ve missed. It’s a quiet night. No more radio; just us and the crickets. You’re kicking the porch swing for the both of us. i almost died, I say. are you doing better now? you ask me. yeah, I say, because it’s what you would have wanted. You reach over and squeeze my leg. it’s not fair, I say. i’m the one who didn’t want to be here and you’re the one who had to go.

I dream, even, about telling you the truth. The bonfire is dying, but you’re still roasting marshmallows. I have my knees pulled up to my chest; I’m watching the embers because I can’t bear to look at you. I say i love you and you say i know, because I never could keep a secret. so what now? i say. what else is there? you reason. You press a marshmallow into my hand and say i love you, too. In the dream, I believe you. I do. I do.

No end in sight

2022-06-16T00:00:00Z

Hey. This post discusses uncomfortable medical procedures and instances of illness, including vomiting. Proceed with care.

Earlier this year, I got a bacterial infection. I’m accustomed to things in my body going wrong, so I didn’t think much of it. It took me several days to get medical care because I couldn’t walk well, for unrelated reasons. After six hours of waiting and blood-testing and x-raying, I finally saw a doctor. He was a balding, gravely serious man who looked me directly in the face as he said, “You’re lucky you came in when you did. You could have died.” I didn’t know how to explain to this man that I’m familiar with this particular flavor of almost. I said, “okay.” He seemed rather nonplussed.

I stayed another two hours that night to get an intravenous infusion of antibiotics. They tasted like metal and drain cleaner, but that was familiar, too. The nurse and and I agreed that it would be best if I kept the IV port in my arm. I returned every day for a full week for more IV therapies, and I took oral antibiotics at home all the while. It was miserable, the getting up, the being in the car, the taste of metal, the feeling of the port in my arm every time I moved, the not sleeping, the not keeping food down. I got better. Then it happened again. This one wasn’t as interesting. No blood work; no x-rays. Just a shot and some pills to take at home. Ten more days of not keeping food down, and then the infection was gone.

One day, I had a hand failure while cleaning glassware. I told myself to hold on, but I didn’t. I watched it fall and splinter apart, and then I used the rest of my energy cleaning it up. I dropped a stack of books, then fell and hurt my shoulder trying to pick them up. I started getting cramps in the middle of a work meeting and could hardly form sentences. I tried not to think about any of it. When your baseline sensations are generally bad, you learn to ignore them. What’s the misery going to tell you that you don’t already know?

I am so tired, all of the time. Things hurt the way they always have, but the pain finds a way to settle in a little deeper. Sometimes I want to vomit for no reason. I oversleep. I undersleep. I cancel plans. It’s a steeper version of the same downhill trajectory I was already on. I think I have cried more times in the past few weeks than I have in the last few years combined, not because it’s that bad, but because it’s worse than it was, and that’s all I am now. I don’t talk about it because there’s nothing worth saying. People tell me they hope I’ll get better. It’s rude to tell them that where I am now is as good as I’ll ever be again, so I don’t say that. I thank them. I move on.

I remember what it was like before, of course. Every time things get worse, the before gets that much clearer. I can itemize every single thing I’ve lost to injury, to illness, to just being alive. If I work my way backwards, I can conjure a ghost who can still do everything I can’t. I try to make peace with it. I dig a grave. I sing a little hymn. I recount the good times. But where does all the grief go when the body is yours? I haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe I just have to live with that, too.

Aphantasia

2021-04-18T00:00:00Z

Your face looks different every time I tell this story.

There’s the part where we’re in that coffee shop you used to work at. I didn’t really go there to read, but I think you figured that out. I still wonder why you never said anything. Why didn’t I? As I’m packing up my bag, you tell me to wait, so I wait. I look up and you’re already next to me.

I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember your face here. You are too handsome; too close. I never thought about it until later – how you always wove your way in closer than everyone else; how I always wanted to ask you to come closer, but I never did.

“Your tag is out,” you say, and God, I want to die. But then you reach around me. Your knuckles brush my neck. I don’t point out that there are other ways you could have done this. There were so many other ways we could have done a lot of things. We never talked about that.

You brush against me again as you pull away; then you pat my chest and say, “Now you’re perfect.”

I never did ask you what that meant. It’s easy to make meaning out of the middle from all the way over here at the end, isn’t it?

You texted me once at eleven-something at night, out of nowhere. Just because.

Can I come over?

I know you knew the answer, but it was nice of you to ask.

Some things must have happened between your text and your knocking on my door, but I don’t remember them. I tend to forget the mundane things. I tell myself I’m saving room for what’s important. If that were true, I would remember what you sounded like when I opened the door and you said my name.

So we’re in my backyard. We’re catching up. From here, I can see your profile. Your nose; your stubble; your Adam’s apple bobboing up and down. At one point, your watch beeps. You glance down at it, then you look right back up at me and you smile. Joy gathers around your eyes, hinting at wrinkles to come. I didn’t say it, but I would have done anything to see that again. Start wars. Boil the oceans. Stay up past my bedtime.

“It’s my birthday!” you say. “Thanks for hanging out.”

“Is it rude to make a wish on someone else’s birthday?” I ask.

“Only if you don’t tell me what you wish for.”

I tell you I wished for another beer. Would it have made a difference if I told the truth? You already know how this ends.

There’s also the part where we’re in your studio. This is the one where most of your face comes from. We’re on your bed. You have a guitar. You’re singing. If I turn my head toward you at all, I can smell your cologne, so I don’t. You do these things like they’re okay, and I’m the one who lets you. I keep thinking about your hands. You make the transition from one chord to the next look so easy, and I’d take your version of Let It Be over Paul McCartney’s any day. You have your knees folded up under yourself. Your leg is touching my leg. My hand is on my thigh. Just a few centimeters to the left and I could touch you. I could. But I don’t. Anyway: your face.

I know what color your eyes are. I know that you smile with one half of your mouth; I know there are parentheses on either side. It’s a good joke – like anything here is optional. I know you had a bit of a beard in this part. I think about all of these things individually. I think about them all of the time, I promise I do, but I can’t put them together.

Did you know there are people who can’t picture faces at all?

I saw a man on YouTube talk about how he can only say what his coffee table looks like because he knows all the words that make up a coffee table – brown and oak and polished – but there’s no table in his head. It’s called “aphantasia”. An absence of fantasy. Imagine that: not being able to imagine.

I have a different problem, I guess. I can see just enough of your face to miss the rest. I can get all of those pieces together, but I couldn’t tell you where they go.

You don’t have to tell me, because I know: I know I am making myself the victim in this story. Boys like you don’t like boys like me. They don’t like boys at all. I signed that contract. I spent time with you anyway. I was never brave enough to ask you why, if we agreed to these rules, I was on your bed at midnight, letting you point your voice right at my heart.

You remember what happens next: you take me home; you thank me for hanging out; I thank you for playing for me. I know you smile at me, and I know it reaches your eyes, but I can’t think of these things at the same time. You see my problem?

Anyway, I have a better idea. You wanna hear?

Let’s say you’re telling me to let it be and let’s say I don’t. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I break our contract. I put my hand on your leg and I can feel your muscles under my palm. You put your hand on my hand and it is all the right things: warm and soft and gently calloused from how much you play.

You can imagine the rest for yourself. You can imagine that all I want is a version of this story where I learn to say it out loud. A version of the story where you kiss me, perhaps. You feel my beard; you laugh and pull away.

“It’s different,” you say. You say that every time. “But I like it.”

I keep telling this story because I don’t know what to do with the ending. I tell myself I can put the right words together to make a version I can live with, but what would that even look like? You’re dead, J. You can imagine that it’s not easy to make that into something narratively compelling. Where’s the theme in it? What’s the lesson?

You can imagine, I’m sure, that my problem is imagining too much.