Another Dead Guy at Trader Joe's

Family, friends, and the uncanny artistic bonds that exist in between

Another Dead Guy at Trader Joe’s

By Gordon Glasgow

---

For my father

---

There’s always a crazed atmosphere when the weather starts to get warm again. I sort of don’t like it. It makes me nervous. As a social animal, unless I’m very comfortable with someone, I’m an incredibly awkward being, not at ease in my own skin. Winter this year went by far too quick. I suppose as I continue to age it’ll feel like that pretty often, things and seasons and experiences and meetings going by at a pace that can only be deemed uncontrollable, inexplicable. ‘When the weather gets warm again, all the wankers reappear,’ my father would always say at the dawn of spring. And now, due to his illness, he doesn’t say much at all. I recoil; this isn’t an environment in which I thrive. The clocks used to go forward later in the year but now, at least in the U.S., we lose an hour at the beginning of March. I’ve refused to reset the two clocks that hang in my apartment. It’s all made up anyway, I’m living a little behind you.

One of my first jobs out of college was a short-lived stint at some awful place in Berlin, a members club for tech people, a ‘Soho House for those of math and science.’ I was deemed copywriter for this punishing institution. They paid me thirty-two thousand euros per year and having the salary made me feel rich. I’d spend all the money within a week or two of being paid. I went to Paris, Madrid, London, Rome, and Ischia with a friend who was (and I think still is) equally suspect with his finances, and we spent our money at exquisite restaurants and on-trend bars, buying drinks for all the most beautiful women who agreed to talk to us, many ugly ones as well, for our horniness had no bounds. During this period, I’d write all morning and edit while at work. I’d masturbate in the disabled bathroom and take long naps in the members lounge. All my colleagues assumed I came from a rich family, and were surprised, or didn’t believe me, when I’d tell them, ‘no, in fact, my parents are poor artists who never made it, I just don’t believe in savings… and fuck you, middle-class pleb! With your post-it notes and to-do lists, color-coded calendars and severe punctuality…’ My tasks, which included writing descriptions for member-events and emailing tech executives asking if they’d like to, ‘join the staff for a cappuccino’, piled up and up and for the most part I ignored them. My rent in Berlin was only four hundred and fifty euros a month. I was living the high life. To help you understand my state of mind, here’s an excerpt of a conversation between the beautiful Stefan Ruitenbeek and Kate Sinha, of KIRAC:

Stefan: I don’t think artists are natural spenders because they’re impulsive, per se, but because they know the feeling of being very content with themselves, and with luxury, eternal bliss. They’re comfortable with that feeling, so luxury comes natural to them.

Kate: And this is also why as an artist you can feel on par with someone who is wealthy, because you can sometimes feel entirely unburdened by your own financial worries, etc.

Yes indeed.

‘You spend money like… like, you have it.’ My ex, Nikki, once said.

At the copywriting job it was my ‘responsibility’ to send out a newsletter once per week to all the members, giving them an update about what was going, all the events and happenings, the technocrat news and technocrat meet-ups. Because I was living as if I had no job I had no clue about any of this info, and I didn’t think it was my place to find out. Instead, composing the weekly members newsletter, I’d write eight hundred words about the weather, atmospheric deliquescence, the subtle daily change in season. I wish I still had access to some of those emails, because I think I wrote some beautiful sentences about the constantly shifting clouds of Germany’s capital, ‘the bloated dancers,’ is what I’d call them. Some of the members even responded to the email saying they enjoyed it. This made me feel like a literary success, if not something of a subversive genius. My supervisor, Sandrine Perrier (sic), an austere French businesswoman out of an equally austere French business school, didn’t like it at all. I’d gotten word that she was planning to fire me, so out of pride, I quit before she had a chance to. My lifestyle declined and I went back to scraping by with hardly any money, which was fine. I have had all my life great contempt for anyone with material wealth, and/or (therefore) power, who requests I do anything other than whatever I’d like. Someone having ownership of my time is repulsive. Writing is freedom! Absolute freedom. It’s also all I really have. But oh boy, what a great thing it is.

***

‘Yoo Gasda, now this is on the record.’ During a conversation earlier in the week, Matt Gasda concluded an opinion with: ‘all off the record, by the way.’ I think because of the piece I’d published on Richard Hell. If you write for long enough, all of your friends, those you hold dear, begin prefacing everything they say to you. All off the record, by the way. Now this is between us. To avoid finding this in print, I should say that what I’m about to tell you… And it goes on, except with family. My immediate family doesn’t seem to care what I put in my work, whether fictionalized or as fact. It could also be that they trust my judgment on the propriety of just what, on an ethical level, a moral level, should and shouldn’t be included, sacrificed for the sake of art, though on their part I think it’s more indifference than it is trust. Indifference not because my family doesn’t care, or read the work, but because they’re artists, and all good artists have a sense of proportionality. They know an embarrassing piece of copy is not the end all be all, and that it’s healthier, more useful, to be utilized and played with rather than suppressed.

…‘Yoo Gasda, now this is on the record. Quoted in my new novella length disquisition on friendships, family, and the uncanny artistic bonds that exist in between, “my friend and contemporary Matthew Gasda says people should/can/will be judged by the concepts they keep.” Can you elaborate on this? And define - concepts? You can write in an email if easier.’

‘Yes I will but tell me about last night first.’

‘I was going to tell you in person on Saturday, a lot to text, especially to a flip phone. Interesting though. Yes. Loserish malevolent no-fun vibe. Eyes Wide Shut meets Caddyshack directed by Adam Sandler and an unknown talentless nephew of John Cassavetes. C’est denouement, more on Sat.’

‘Emailed you answer.’

And the email says:

comes from jaques barzun's book about william james (A Stroll with William James)
it's connected to pragmatism

‘concepts are for the sake of experiencing, living, testing, deciding
your concepts are a map of your life’

Concepts (definition: abstract idea, general notion, something conceived in the mind). And now I can begin to write the original, intended string of sentences for this piece: My friend and contemporary Matthew Gasda says a person’s character is known by the concepts they keep. So the natural question that follows: what are mine? Answer: Vast and many. That’s why I write; to pour them all out, to objectify and distance myself in order to gain clarity, a peace of mind, perhaps serenity, eventually wisdom. But there is a concept I keep, close to my heart, about the way in which I approach this task of getting it all down on paper. It's about the perception of narrative, from Roland Barthes’s The Death of the Author, heavily influenced by the ideas of Adorno and Foucault.

The year is 2015. In an overheated Film Theory class on the sixth floor of the NYU Tisch building at 721 Broadway, I’m dozing off in the middle of lecture, alerted and reawakened by a couple of sentences from our Professor, the inimitable Chris Straayer. I immediately jot them down. ‘Narrative lies in the eye of the beholder, not the author. A film’s narrative, a novel’s narrative, is constructed by the audience, the receiver.’ As a wannabe writer, a wannabe storyteller, I found complete freedom in this concept of powerlessness. It’s balancing the act of composition with something like death, finding freedom in the inevitable one ultimately can’t control. When I write, I can do all I’d like, meticulously assemble and forge, yet it’s up to you, the reader, to decide what this all means, what it entails, and moreover, even further, how it connects and deconstructs. On the other hand, there’s a great sense of power to this concept. Whatever someone writes and then puts out into the world ceases to belong to them. It becomes property of the reader, and the reader can do whatever they want with it and think whatever they’d like. In turn, all of these great stories I’ve consumed throughout the course of my life belong to me. And the more I read the wealthier I become. That’s why, through this interplay, the aphorisms, what’s personal is the most relative, what’s personal is the most creative, hold so much truth.

‘That interview with you and that Matthew Gasda guy was good,’ my mom says at Shabbat dinner. ‘Was good’ from my mom is a compliment of the highest order.

‘He’s uhm. He’s the one who? Oh yeah. He’s very good looking.’ My dad adds, before my mom continues:

‘I liked the part where he talks about how theater’s never been an art form that’s produced much quality and quantity at the same time, when he says how even the Golden Ages of Theater have only produced a handful of classics. It seems like he knows what he’s talking about.’

‘Oh yeah? Hm. Yeah, I met him and his fiancé Sophia, they’re very nice. Those flowers on the table are from the shop Sophia works at. She gave me a discount, said you might appreciate the fresh lavender. Something about Matt and Sophia makes me think of the image I have of you and Dad when you were young playwrights and actors in New York City, trying to make it.’

‘He reminded me of you a little bit.’ My mom says.

‘Who are we talking about again?’ My dad says.

‘Matthew Gasda, the guy Gordon interviewed, the one I read you last Saturday. Matthew Gasda.’

‘Asda, Gasda, Gasda, Asga… Matth..you, Gaz. Hm.’ My dad starts to laugh. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh C’mon.’ My mom responds, becoming a little frustrated. ‘Matthew Gasda. We read the interview together last week.’

My dad shrugs. He begins to slip off his chair a little bit and my mom gets up to help stabilize him. I would’ve been the one to do it, all his constant falls have begun to really hurt my mother’s arms and shoulders, but she was closer. ‘Anyway,’ she says while sitting back down. ‘Matthew Gasda.’

‘Mm yeah, no, I don’t know. I don’t think he’s that similar to me. Maybe the goy iteration. The Catholic version from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.’

There’s this big insecurity. I want to separate myself from all the other artists in New York who didn’t grow up here. It makes me feel more special than them, that I have more of a birthright to success, to genuine work. It’s a little pathetic but it works well for my ego. On top of it all, the funny thing is that all the artists who move here from out of town are more excited, more hungry, more in some sense willing to grab the city and all it can offer by the scruff of its neck. Being a native has made me complacent. But since my fiancé and I split, and I moved back to New York, I told myself I’d live like one of the outsiders who’s come here to find success, to make a name for themselves, a recapturing of the ego, the superego, and all that entails.

Matt Gasda, following our interview, is the person who encouraged me to keep going and doing more. ‘It’s a great format. And what makes it unique are your introductions.’ He gave me the number of Christian Lorentzen, my second interview, and then from there it all blossomed. Gasda and I have gotten along ever since. Sometimes I’ll spam text him throughout the day to see if any inspiration comes through and often it works. Between us, there’s been a real understanding from the start.

***

I’m in my parents kitchen with the writer Shayna Goodman, my oldest sister, and we’re talking shit back and forth. I throw something out:

‘You know, I think the thing is that all actresses are whores.’

‘You know mom is an actress.’

‘Oh. That’s true.’

Well, this isn’t exactly true. My mother was an actress who became a playwright, then eventually became a mother that didn’t have much time to write because she primarily catered to the needs of her husband and her children, but yet she continued, on occasion, to write plays that had strong roles for younger actresses. And it’s funny, Shayna said, if you switch the word actress for whore in every conversation. My mother was a whore who became a playwright…

When I was fourteen years old, on the soccer field, I told Gustavo, our team’s captain, that I thought his mother was a fucking whore because he kept giving the ball away and we were losing. Gustavo punched me in the face as hard as he could and almost broke my nose. I never called anyone’s mother an actress again.

***

There’s the changing of seasons and, of course, by corollary, a consideration of the recent past. My close friend was attacked by an Uber driver this past fall. In the middle of the night on her way home, the driver stopped the car in the middle of a quiet street, locked the doors, came around to the back seat and began trying to molest her. Tough as she is, she managed to fight him off, scream as loud as she could, before dashing out of the car and running away. She looked over her shoulder in complete fear but found, oh so luckily, that he wasn’t chasing her. Couldn’t be bothered, I guess.

We had plans the next day, Saturday, to have a coffee, hang out, maybe go to a pretentious exhibit that a friend was putting on. Instead she called me at around 9:45 AM asking if we can meet for breakfast. For breakfast? This was bizarre. And at breakfast, in Kreuzberg, she was shaking, off, something was wrong, and I said: ‘C’mon, spit it out, what happened?’ Then she told me.

I accompanied her to the police station but we were turned away because no one there spoke English. So we tried another station, and same thing, we were told to fill out a report online. But we called a German friend of ours, who, as we sat across from the portly officer, explained what had happened over my iPhone’s speaker, and the policeman said, in a bemused broken English, ‘Here ja, fill report on ze eenternet,’ sliding us a QR code to the proper link. Afterward, my friend who had been assaulted went to spend some time in the company of three girlfriends, a form of support, feminine support, much more appropriate than what I could possibly offer. Leaving the situation, I felt a mix of unsettling emotions. And one of them, the most disgusting yet interesting, was a sense of pride in being there to help. Something like: male savior complex, or, ‘ah me, yes, one of the good men in town.’ What a load of crap.

Yesterday, waking up in New York, I received an email from four thousand miles away. A detective in the sexual crimes unit for the Berlin police department was looking into my friend’s case and I was named as a witness. The detective sent sixteen questions which I was to answer either typed or in ballpoint pen. My first feeling was how annoying this was. I have an endless list of things to write, read, edit. I have to clean my apartment and go grocery shopping. Do the laundry, walk my dog, all that, everything in between. This is the last thing I wanted to do. What a drag. This must be, I thought for a moment, the same feeling the subjects I interview must have. They agree to take part in something out of vanity or subtle interest. And then I send them a double-digit list of esoteric essay questions. Now I empathize a little more. This was the 12 Questions for Gordon Glasgow — 8) To what extent was your friend affected and/or injured by the incident? 9) What was your friend’s mental state during the conversation with you? — that I never asked to take part in. And yet of course I resolved to not be a total monster, to become a halfway decent samaritan, and I began performing my duties with much dismayed expedience.

In Berlin, around a month ago, right after a birthday party late at night, the same friend and I walked a few blocks out of traffic to find a taxi. I asked if she’d like me to drop her off on my way, she declined, said it was unnecessary since we lived in opposite directions. I put her in a cab by the Ostbahnhof station and then proceeded get my own. She said she’d text me when she got home. I was confused. The whole experience, the walking of a half mile to find a taxi, the uneasy nerves on her end, the avoidance of the actual, inevitable act of getting the taxi, had an eerie tone I couldn’t place. And then I realized, not until the next day, that I had forgotten about what happened months earlier. All by myself, I blushed in embarrassment.

How do I write about this awful thing that happened to my friend without coming off like a sanctimonious prick? Without sounding as though I’m signaling to all my female readers what a helpful ally I am? Why even write the story in the first place? No other reason, I don’t think, than the compulsion to write like any other. I think I got the tone down, as straightforward as I can be. See, I don’t consider myself a stylist. I write how I write by describing events the only real way I know how to describe events; there’s no contrived manner, it all just spits itself out in the most peculiar of ways. And then I edit, out of deference to the reader, to make sure the whole thing is at least legible. Houellebecq was right when he said that authors shouldn’t worry about style, how style is just a summary of a writer’s flaws. This is apt, this is true.

A contradiction exists here, with this whole charade; my self-consciousness will destroy me and still I’m full of blind spots. Where lies the source of all I cannot see? The unknown knowns remain unknown, and this tortures me to no end.

It’s 2:00 pm in New York, 8:00 pm in Berlin. I call my friend, and while she’s on her way to dinner, read her the above. I won’t publish this without your blessing, I say. During the reading I’m nervous, prepared for it to end with her getting very angry, expecting something like, ‘this really wasn’t your story to tell.’ Or, ‘Honestly, Gordon, I think it’s really too much for me to handle, this being out there.’ And I’d have listened, would’ve removed the section in its entirety. I get to the last sentence, ‘this tortures me to no end’ and I hold my breath for a few seconds, heart racing, expecting pure admonishment. And instead, she responds with great laughter, a sense of joy. ‘Honestly, Gordon, I love it. I’m so happy you wrote this.’

Through the receiver, I sigh in relief.

***

Another great artist I’m interviewing, Peter Vack (nèe Brown, name changed following a contentious 2015 marriage to the famous painter Shlomo Vack, now deceased). I’d somehow never heard of Peter until recently, from the aforementioned beautiful Stefan and Kate. Peter and I are both Jews who can pass as non-Jew, and we both grew up in New York City, him uptown, me downtown, parallel worlds, though he’s a bit older. I’m writing separate pieces on him and his sister, Betsey, about their films, their process, their sentiments and perspectives. I went to hear Peter read some of his work at an event down the block from my apartment. I hate going to these things. Also aforementioned: I’m incredibly awkward, especially in new social situations, these quasi-literary-performance-based-get-togethers. I’ve picked up the art of conversation with interlocutors of one to two, when I know them well, when there’s a real connection. Though in large groups, big parties, the situations when subgroups form naturally, when one is supposed to go from person to person casually, mingling and saying funny things, I’m fucking lost, merely aphasiac. I miss that about Nikki, having a partner to be shy with at all these events, a sense of home in public. If I bring a date to a gathering now, everyone would assume the date’s my girlfriend, and I haven’t yet met anyone I’d want people to think is my girlfriend, or rather, to play the role of my girlfriend, Gordon Glasgow’s girlfriend, the ingenue of my public self. Yeah, I haven’t moved on.

I begin speaking with Peter in the venue’s backyard after the reading. I tell him I enjoyed his long poem, a unique collection of meme text and internet speech collected into verse, a mixture of confessional poetry and experimental metric, a sort of internet-fucked 2024 sonnet without the pentameter, the fourteen line structure, the whole thing altogether rebelling against any defined form. ‘Man, I really enjoyed your poem.’ I said.

‘Oh yeah? That’s nice to hear from you. I know you’re a pretty critical guy.’

If the scheme for a Shakespeare is typically, ABABCDCDEFEFGG, and for Petrarch, ABBAABBACDECDE, Peter Vack’s would be, TTABBUMME#(FsG{}BA, which is what makes it interesting and personal, if not a summary of our online-doom zeitgeist. If society doesn’t adhere to any form or logic, collective ideology or belief system, why should poetry? Here’s an excerpt:

Why is it always hot take and never hot give?
Why is it always retarded and never retardalive?

Eventually into:

The real pandemic is rage
The real pandemic is readers
The real pandemic is readings
The real pandemic is needing to be full without eating
Ya’ll think it’s hot today wait till you go to hell for saying slurs in Bushwick
Ya’ll think it’s hot today wait till you go to hell for liking hot girls
Ya’ll think it’s hot today wait till you got to hell for writing poems

And:

I can only cum when my partner calls me Transphobic Tao Lin
I can only cum when my partner calls me the Sally Rooney of Sus Man-sluts
I can only cum when my partner calls me and calls me and calls me and calls me and calls me and calls me and calls me

Before a finale consisting partially of:

You come to me on this the day of my stepdaughter’s labiaplasty
You come to me on this the day Brandy Melville for men brings back Heterosexuality
You come to me on this the day of my sugar baby’s zoom graduation from Pratt institute
You come to me on this the day of the Tradcath confesses they’re Jewish

‘It’s cool the way you used the language from your meme accounts to tell a poem.’ I say to Peter while sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette. He has a labyrinth of different Instagram accounts with various self-reflexive memes. Attempting to keep up with every account, figure out which person in Vack’s circle manages each one, is an exhausting act of hapless excavation. It’s a whole world within a world of meta-artsy, hyper-self-aware online theater-group, film-group, blocked-writers-writing-workshop memes, memes upon memes of referential inside jokes.

‘Yeah, I think the poem works because memes are aphoristic.’ Peter responds, flipping his hair back.

‘Ah yeah, that’s true. Memes are aphoristic…’

There’s a brilliant gay energy floating between us.

‘Also, dude, I really like how you put your parents into your movies. It’s inspired me a lot. It’s interesting how you play with the oedipal transference between the subjects you film and then go on to juxtapose those set pieces with the scenes between you and your parents. I’ve never quite seen something like that, it’s very unique. You know what I mean? I’m trying to figure out how I can integrate something similar into my own work.’

‘Yeah, bro.’ Peter says, squinting. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

Two days prior I jogged north from the Lower East Side to pick up my dog, Alfie, from my friend Moriah in the East Village. Ringing the buzzer, I notice a man with long hair and sunglasses behind me. He takes the glasses off with a frenzied form of elegance.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Are you Peter Vack?’

‘Yeah…’

I reach out my hand. ‘Oh, wow. Gordon. The guy who-’

‘Ohhhh Duuuude.’ Peter’s eyes brighten, a previous squint begins to dematerialize. ‘No waay. That’s sooo freeeekin funnny man.’

For the past month, we’d been texting back and forth about our interview. And here we were, by chance, Peter was going into the same building to meet his friend, Eli, who’s composing music for his new film. I told him I’d be going to his reading in a few days time, and he said, ‘cool, that’s awesome dude, yeah, we can integrate it into the interview…’

‘Bro. Isn’t it funny how we ran into each other like that?’ Peter says while I finish my cigarette. I nod in agreement as he turns away.

***

Earlier that night, following the reading, Peter approaches and says: ‘Did you see I put you in the poem?’

‘I did. By the way, it’s Glasgow, Gordon Glasgooow,’ I gesticulate alongside the flowing O. ‘Not Glasgowwww,’ I make a line with my hand like a conductor on speed, signaling the incorrect hard W full stop.

‘Yeah, I have a weird accent. You’re making fun of my weird accent. That’s anti-semitic.’   

‘I’m Jewish too.’

‘No way.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s sick dude.’

Peter does have a strange accent, something unplaceable yet vaguely American, almost Minnesotan. And another commonality between us. I have the most bizarre way of speaking, a kind of mirror of whoever I’m talking to. The subjectivity of an accent is crazy. Sometimes people think I’m ESL, a vague German or Austrian trying to fit into American culture. This must be because of the seven years I spent living in Berlin, talking in English with ESLs on a daily basis. But if I spend two weeks with a Southern-Californian, there my accent goes again, into the realm of prolonged vowels and light vocal-fry. But I’ve never, despite having spent the majority of my life here, had a strong New York accent. Though when I write, I believe, the voice, the New York voice, is there, loud and clear. Accents are made up anyway, mere cultural signals that can be shed, like tears, skin, feathers, and leaves. Shed, become, start over, afresh. Voice, on the other hand, comes from deep within.

It’s all nonsense anyway, worrying about the accent, the authenticity of voice. Aside from art, and the obscene power of it, writers, in their personal lives, if any personal life exists, should only care about the four F’s: family, friends, food, and fucks. That’s it, the essentials. Family, friends, food, and fucks. And even family is a stretch. Feel free to substitute family with foreigners, that is strangers, to care for strangers, to have an interest in strangers. Yes, the essentials… the essentials. Shed, become, start over, afresh. Foreigners, friends, food, and fucks.

***

A bright white light, the end of faggotry. The end of faggotry? The start of dysentery. The start of dysentery? To misanthropy! Misanthropy? Oh lobotomy.

***

A grocer at Trader Joe’s begins to die right before my eyes. 4:00pm on the Lower East Side, the afternoon before daylight’s savings. It was time to do the dying. Under fluorescent lights. Time to do the dying. He’s in his mid-eighties, hispanic, thin as a skeleton. What’s he doing working at Trader Joe’s at 4:00pm on a Saturday on the Lower East Side the day before daylight savings? America is what. The man is slouching over, eyes rolling to the back of his head and beginning to close. He collapses onto the floor. His head hits the porcelain and the thud echoes across the checkout line. Trader Joe’s colleagues begin to crowd around him with concern. They snatch paper grocery bags and start fanning him off. ‘Someone call 911!’ One of them yells. ‘Wait,’ another grocer says, ‘should we? Will we get in trouble?’ ‘What, call fucking 911!’ Someone runs to the official Trader Joe’s telephone which sits adjacent to the boulevard-esque bagging area at the largest Trader Joe’s location in all of New York City, a real microcosm of a store. Several people continue shopping, several grocers transacting, ringing up bills, as if nothing around them is happening. ‘OH FUCK, NOT ANOTHER DEAD GUY AT TRADER JOE’S,’ a middle-aged man yells. A few people begin to laugh. The man on the floor doing the dying starts to convulse, his colleagues keep fanning. 911’s been called but they’re nowhere to be found, there’s no one to really help. I join in on the raucous, ‘Is anyone here a doctor? A doctor?!’ But I more sing it rather than shout it. Either way, no one responds. A minute later, the employee standing by the line of people waiting to checkout looks at me, opens her face in awe, and exclaims: ‘Sir, you said you were a doctor?’

I’ve already paid for my groceries — my credit card tapped the machine while the man fell to the floor ($89.00) — and I stand near the exit watching this all play out. Two employees stationed at produce come to watch for a minute or two, one of them gets up close: ‘I think he’s dead, man. He totally looks dead.’ ‘Jesus, this is such a bummer, dog. I can’t believe he’s fucking dead.’

Nothing’s really happening. Another ten minutes pass, the guy is lying completely still, unconscious, surrounded by a group of colleagues and shoppers trying to squeeze by. Someone begins to put orange cones around the body and now only the most exclusive insiders can enter the boundary’d off area. A black Trader Joe’s employee is summoned as a bouncer. He begins awkwardly standing around the exterior of the cones to make sure no one passes. The high-pitched sound of scanned items continues to permeate. Out of nowhere, one of the colleagues enters the cone’d off zone to begin performing CPR for what seems like ten seconds before throwing his hands up in defeat, utter capitulation. ‘He’s not breathing!’ The guy yells. ‘No air. No goddamn air.’ A woman with two large bags shuffles past, and says: ‘He’s dead, you moron.’ Another fucking dead guy at Trader Joe’s, another fucking day in the Lower East Side, in this oft-confusing liminal space between late winter and early spring, the purgatory of that dead man’s soul beginning to drift from the basement of the store up through the scuzzy grime of Grand and Clinton, perhaps on toward heaven.

My dog hasn’t been out in five hours. I’d like to wait until 911 arrives to see how this will end but there’s the stress of time, my dear Alfie. I go upstairs with my groceries and see an unmarked black van with an emergency light speeding toward the store. The car screeches as it pulls over onto a puddle of water, which splashes, drenches, a homeless man clutching a cardboard help me, I’ve got five kids sign. Four Chasidic paramedics from Hatzalah, the Jewish volunteer medical service, run out of the van, down the stairs, in full garb, their synagogue outfits, in the middle of their sabbath, their Shabbat, and well yes, I suppose, my Shabbat too.

Through the pouring rain, I walk toward my apartment. Earlier in the day I was in Brooklyn having lunch with my friend, Mai, a senior editor at Vogue. We sat at the bar of the hard-to-get-into restaurant Sailor, discussing the difference of the will-to-power between Anna Wintour and Chloe Sevigny. ‘Chloe wears the fashion, becomes the fashion, and in that sense is an embodiment of the experiential nature of the future of fashion. That’s her impetus, that’s her will. Anna Wintour is a curator, mercurial, she imbues from the outside, discerns from distance, several meters away. Her will-to-power, therefore, dictatorial. Both Sevigny and Wintour of course desire control, if not pure clout, but their way of getting there couldn’t be more different…’ And this went on. My nose was stuffed, I could hardly breathe. I went across the street to the pharmacy to get a nasal spray, but upon using it realized I’d bought the wrong one, the one with amphetamines in it, so I’m a bit jacked up, my mind racing. ‘OK.’ I say to Mai, deciding to pose another question. ‘And then where, not with fashion, but in terms of culture, society, and clout, does David Remnick come in to the equation?’ What a decadent afternoon, I thought to myself, in truth having a bit of fun. It was a gloomy day with torrential downpour. As summer approaches violently, I remember looking out Sailor’s window and becoming sad; how many more of these days have I got left?

Hustling back from Trader Joe’s, I arrive home and Alfie leaps on me, nearly knocking me to the ground. The groceries spill out of the bag. I’m soaking wet. I fall to the floor to kiss my beautiful dog, caress his soft, velvety fur, and am all the while filled with images of the grocer collapsing, the sound and echo of his head hitting the floor. ‘I just saw a man die, Alfie, I just saw a man die!’ I tell him repeatedly. And he gets excited, continues licking my face with real vigor. And then he starts to bark, to really yell at me. He hasn’t been out since the morning. And in the storm, the downpour, the stream of God’s tears, I walk Alfie back up to Trader Joe’s in search of some closure, to see if I can find out what actually happened.

Two Chasidic EMT’s are standing outside. A large fire truck full of Asian firemen, The Golden Dragons written on the front, speeds up to the curb, but the EMT’s wave them away. ‘How come?’ I ask one of them.

‘We can’t say. HIPAA.’

‘Oh C’mon!’ I respond. ‘What you did today is a real mitzvah toward Hashem! I’m a fellow Jew. Good Shabbos, by the way. Thank you so much for your help, breaking Shabbos to come and do this. You’ve given Jews around the world a good name.’

‘He’s alive.’ The guy whispers to me, before walking back to the unmarked black van. Two minutes later, the revived Hispanic man is carried out of Trader Joes by two more Chasids. He’s sitting upright on a stretcher, eyes wide open in shock, face strewn with a half-smile, the bewilderment of continuous life. The man is carefully transferred inside of a branded Hatzalah ambulance which has just arrived.

‘Wow!’ I say to one of the Chasid EMTs. ‘That’s honestly, hah. That’s honestly the most I’ve ever seen someone do to get off work early.’ And they look at me and shrug without laughing one bit.

***

Earlier today, the day before this piece will be published, I find myself at the same Trader Joe’s on an equally rainy Saturday. There’s an attractive grocer with jet-black hair named Jacqueline ringing me up. Unprompted, she begins telling me about her upcoming dance recital, how sore her back is and how much pain her muscles are in.

‘You really have to give yourself, sacrifice your whole being to dance,’ she says. ‘At least if you take it seriously.’

‘That’s so cool.’ I respond. ‘I saw a guy almost die here a few weeks ago.’

‘Ohhoo,’ Jacqueline covers her mouth a little bit, gets up closer and begins to whisper. ‘Oh my god, you were here for that? I was off but I heard about it the next day. So much crazy stuff goes on here, you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Yeah, I can imagine.’

‘Who almost died?’ The grocer at the checkout in front of us, a blonde woman in her 50s with a raspy voice, chimes in.

‘Dom.’

‘Really? Dom?’

‘Yeah.’ Jacqueline says. ‘Like almost completely fuckin dead. Hospital guys with the Jewish hats had to come down here and like CPR him and all this shit. Apparently it was insane.’

‘Yeah it was insane.’ I say.

‘Wow… Dom. I can’t believe it.’

‘I mean he must be like eighty years old, no?’ I ask.

‘I think older.’ Jacqueline answers. ‘That man. Oh. That man’s a beast though. Yo like, the next day, he called in saying he was coming to work.’

‘He called in saying he was coming to work? You’ve seen him here since?’

‘Yeah. He’s a beast this guy, I’m telling you. He gives his everything to this job.’

‘Dom. Wow, I had no idea.’ The grocer in front of us repeats.

Jacqueline continues ringing me up, she tells me another story that’s supposed to illustrate all of the crazy things that happen at Trader Joe’s on a daily basis, but I’ve already forgotten it.

There’s a nice atmosphere between us.

‘I actually wrote about the crazy scenario of the guy almost dying here.’

‘Oh really?’ She says. ‘You’re a writer?’

‘Yeah.’ And I give her my name and the places where she can find my work, read this piece.

‘That’s awesome.’ She responds. ‘I’m gonna for sure read that shit.’ And then she tells me where she’ll be performing her dance recital this week, but again, failing to have written it down, I’ve already forgotten the name. The notes on my phone after the encounter just say: new section with Trader Joe’s grocer encounter from today. Man's name was Dom. Discuss why would be bizarre asking grocer on date.

Oh right. There’s a line I had in my head. Something like, asking your grocer out on a date is the epitome of the aphorism: Don’t shit where you eat. But then again, who is it appropriate to ask out? Don’t fuck your grocer, don’t sleep with the waitress, don’t date your colleague, don’t flirt with your neighbor, don’t start with family friends, don’t have sex with the cute attendant at your local movie theater, or the people who go to your gym or yoga studio, work at your gym or yoga studio, or, for that matter, anyone who either attends or manages the bars or the bookstores, or any store, you regularly frequent. Don’t get romantic with anyone in your literary circle, it’ll get weird, and try to avoid their friends as well, you don’t want to run the risk of developing a bad reputation. And definitely don’t meet up with and hook up with anyone you encounter online, they’ll probably post about you. Everyone you coalesce with must be foreign and anonymous, invisible and non-existent, pure speculation. Don’t shit where you eat, don’t let connections unfold, compose yourself in all scenarios, kill yourself at work, castrate your emotions, repress your interests, crush your persona, keep your head down, eat shit and die, do it alone.

‘Duuude.’ My friend Josh says as he reads this over. ‘Why you be spending so much time in the grocery store?’

***

The hardest I’ve ever laughed. An early summer night in Berlin, sitting at a table outside a Spätkauf (the German for bodega) with the musician Charlie Perris, a lifelong ‘brother from another mother.’ Charlie’s a good encapsulation of what Christopher Hitchens said about the best of friends: the rare people you look forward to seeing just as much as you would a beautiful woman.

Pilsner in hand, Charlie poses me a question: Would you rather one hundred million dollars… or…

‘Yeah?’

‘Dinner with Duane the Rock Johnson?’

It took a little while for this to settle in, before one of the hardest and longest guttural bursts I can remember. Both of us sat there in absolute stitches for what must have been at least twenty, thirty minutes.

‘Consider never being able to have dinner with Duane the Rock Johnson… all the sudden that hundred million ain’t looking so good.’

Of course you’ve had to be there, but it’s a moment I’ll never, ever forget. Surely worth a million, if not at least one hundred.

***

And after laughter comes tears, as the song goes. In mid-December Alfie developed a strange, harsh cough seemingly out of nowhere. In the morning and afternoon he was fine, and then I came home from a night boozing and, like a bronchial senior with lung cancer, he was lying on his stomach coughing up phlegm with a thick, dark yellow consistence. I waited a day or two to see if it would pass, before taking him to the vet, who ran tests which all came back negative. Having no idea what caused the cough, they put Alfie on antibiotics and hydrocodeine, which didn’t do anything other than make him lethargic and take away his appetite. The round of antibiotics ended and the cough got worse. I woke up one night to find him by the side of my bed weeping and shaking, helplessly trying to clear his throat. He vomited all over the floor and I rushed him to the emergency vet, and seven hundred dollars later they still had no idea what the cough might be. They referred me to an internal medicine specialist, a kind of vet which, according to Google, has obtained ‘intensive, additional training in understanding how a pet’s internal body systems function and in diagnosing…’ You get the idea. A vet who’s more of a vet than a normal vet, which also means more expensive. Alfie’s condition getting worse, I booked the next available appointment at the BluePearl pet hospital in Gowanus, Brooklyn with DVM, DACVIM (SAIM) Joseph Campbell. Decorated with more acronyms than your average Nobel winning astrophysicist, I had hope that Dr. Campbell would be able to diagnose and treat Alfie. After examining him for about two and a half minutes in a private area in the back, Dr. Campbell came to me with some news. I was pacing around the examination room.

‘Have a seat.’ He said with meager authority. Instead I leaned against the wall. Sitting, somehow, felt too luxurious for my nerves. He seemed to be fine with this.

‘So, I can’t 100% confirm this without doing a small procedure and opening him up, but, given my expertise, by the way I see dozens upon dozens of dogs a week, many of them Labradors like Alfie, many of them in his age range, and I can tell you with some confidence that what he has is something called — now, are you writing this down? — laryngeal paralysis. There’s a small chance it could also be a kind of chronic bronchitis, but I mean, he shows all the signs of laryngeal paralysis.’

He went on to define it, something to do with a failure of nerve endings which control the muscles that open and close Alfie’s larynx and breathing canals. Similar to my father’s disease (lewy body dementia) it’s eventually fatal and there’s no real cure, only management techniques and lifestyle modifications. I’d no longer be able to take Alfie out for more than five minutes or so on hot days, and he’d no longer be able to exercise. Unlike my father’s disease, Alfie, given his age (nine) and what Dr. Campbell cited as the apparent severity of his condition, would likely have under a year left to live, and even that would be a stretch.

‘And you’re saying there’s nothing I can do about this?’

‘Well there’s an intensive operation, and it costs around ten thousand dollars, and the success rate isn’t high.’

‘There’s nothing else?’

‘Just lifestyle management, I’m afraid. Making sure the time he has left is as easy — and that’s to say palliative — as possible.’

‘And how can you confirm diagnosis?’

‘A small procedure, we’d sedate Alfie and go into his throat to check the nerve endings. But it’s also not cheap.’

‘Can you find out how much it is?’

Dr. Campbell left the room to get the cost and, not really broke but starting to get there, I was on the verge of complete surrender to the news, listening to his unconfirmed diagnosis and accepting the little time Alfie and I had left together.

I adopted Alfie from a shelter in September 2016 when I’d just turned twenty-two years old, a few months after an ex-girlfriend’s abortion; the unconscious surrogate. I remember having tea with my parents at around 4:00 pm on a Wednesday, telling them, a few months later, about the abortion. It was a bizarre experience, and I don’t know, or didn’t know at the time, why I felt a need to tell them. I didn’t need any money or practical help. I just felt an obligation to let them now what had happened. And the need to tell my parents (you know, the people who fucked and then decided to keep what ended up being me) that my girlfriend terminated a pregnancy makes absolute sense. There’s theories upon intellectual, psychoanalytic theories as to exactly why someone in my position would feel the need to reveal the abortion to my own parents, probably something to do with absolving myself of everlasting guilt, or receiving the spiritual guidance no one else on earth could possibly provide, but at the end of the day, the decision to have to tell them, and hear their opinion, makes sense in a way that can only be deemed self-explanatory, that is to say intuitively obvious. And, as part of the intuitively obvious decision to confide, my mother said something I wonder if I’d ever have thought of alone. ‘Well, then, you know why you got Alfie, right?’ (We didn’t grow up with pets).

On top of this, while everyone’s relationship with their dog is special, Alfie and I have had something that verges on extraordinary. We’ve spent my whole twenties together, that turbulent, lifetime of a decade with the many thousands of ups and downs, small deaths and dramatic resurrections. Alfie’s lived with me in New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, and Montreal. In addition, with his service dog certificate, he’s been to Poland (three times), Miami, Utah, and France. He’s paid witness to all the friends, lovers, colleagues, and neighbors of the past decade, and there’ve been many in all categories. He took me, Alfie, from the ellipses of adolescence to the rooted seat of adulthood. My buddy, my constant companion. Not a soul on earth knows me better. And now I’m told he’s about to die, much sooner than I expected.

‘The cost for the procedure to confirm diagnosis would be seven hundred and fifty dollars. But as I told you, I’m pretty certai-’

‘Do it.’ I said, with considerable aggression.

Payment was required beforehand. The hospital feared that if they opened Alfie up and the diagnosis was confirmed, and it was true that he only had a few months to live, I would run away and leave him there without paying. ‘You really think I’d do that?’

‘It’s just our policy, sir. It’s happened before.’

I put it on a credit card I never use, one of those credit cards that’ll only ever be paid off if I somehow become rich. They told me it’d take around three or four hours and I could leave in the meantime to eat something, and then, even though I didn’t ask, one of the receptionists started to name off a list of restaurants and cafes in the area. I opted to stay in the examination room. Figuring, earlier in the day, that there’d be a waiting period of some sort, I brought three books with me so I could have options. There was Martin Amis’s Experience, Annie Ernaux’s The Happening, and for some reason Madame Bovary. I of course couldn’t read. Instead I called Nikki, my aforementioned ex-fiance, to let her know what the doctor said. When I left our relationship, our plans to wed, she was devastated that she’d no longer be able to care for Alfie; he was already there when we met, and it was never really a question who he’d be going with. Her family was angry with me enough, calling off a wedding three months before—imagine if I left her with a large dog all alone? And this was all the more sad, because she was such a devoted mother to him. On Nikki and I’s last evening together, Alfie hopped into bed and sat right over her with absolute solemnity. You must think I’m crazy, but I can say with complete certainty that he knew what was happening, that this woman who’d been so close to him was about to disappear from his life forever.

On the phone, I burst into tears, from my depths, the strongest cry since the break-up. I could hear Nikki starting to tear up too but from the way she was talking I could tell that she was holding it in. ‘You’ve had a tough year, a tough year. Your dad’s decline. Alfie. It’s not easy.’

‘We both have.’

And the tears kept flowing, and flowing, complete deliquescence, like those aforementioned clouds of Berlin, straight down the red of my cheeks. Nikki and I used to slow dance around our apartment to I’ll Be Seeing You by Billie Holliday and Alfie would follow us in circles, step by step. And then a vanishing. First Nikki, Alfie soon to come. There’d now just be me, standing idly in the living room with the remnants of Billie Holiday’s poignant voice. Looming over all of this, of course, the impending permanent absence of my father, and even wider, the infectious nature of death itself, death of all themes and things, apparently entering my life from all corners. ‘Just call me if you need anythi-’ And I hung up to continue crying, feeling like nothing but a burden toward this woman whose life I’d already wrecked. It wasn’t her job to now be my therapist.

A receptionist entered the room to have me sign a consent form of some sort (if they kill Alfie by accident while he’s sedated it’s not their fault) and then exited right away in discomfort, before coming back in and saying: ‘Sorry, sir, are you OK?’ A half hour later I left as well. I stopped in a coffee shop a few blocks away and bought a black coffee and a large chocolate chip cookie. The guy said, after I made the purchase, that he was closing up and I couldn’t stay there. I left and began to drink the coffee. I took one bite out of the cookie and then threw it against the side of a building. ‘If Alfie’s about to die the last thing I need is to get fat,’ I thought to myself. I wandered around aimlessly for a few more blocks before, without any reason at all, getting into the subway, like a homeless man just released from a mental institution. I had a crazed look on my face, a bit nauseous as well. It was the feeling of pure, overwhelming desperation, one of the scariest states I can ever recall being in. I boarded the first train to arrive without knowing which direction it was going in and sat there for thirty minutes before finding myself in midtown. I got a call saying Alfie was ready to be picked up and I spent fifty-five dollars on an Uber to go back to Brooklyn and get him.

'I have good news and bad news.’ Dr. Campbell said.

‘Go on.’

‘The good news is it’s not laryngeal paralysis.’

I wanted to leap across the room and strangle him to death, spit on his face, just do some horrible, violent things.

‘And the bad news.’

‘Shut up!’

‘What?’

‘No. I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m just in, yeah, a little bit of shock.’

‘The bad news is, uhum, we still don’t know what the cough is. But, you know, from my experience, it could just be an unusually bad virus that’ll go away on its own with time.’

Could’ve led with that, eh?

The entire visit was around $1400 (‘but at least Alfie doesn’t have “larginal palasis,”’ my mother said a few days later). They put Alfie on a round of steroids to suppress his cough and following a gradual convalescence lasting another three or so weeks, the cough ceased to exist. It’s 12:30 am right now, and Alfie’s lying at my feet, on his bed, while I write this. A large cactus and a tall dracaena tower over him, casting a shadow. Alfie looks at peace, healthy and well. He walked quite a bit today, enjoying the spring weather, frolicking along in complete bliss. Blue Moon - Take 9/M, sung by Elvis Presley, is playing in the background. Haruki Murakami, in an interview, said he loves listening to music all day long. Jazz music, standards, crooners, classical, everything in that ballpark. Except, he said, when he writes he doesn’t listen to music, because, ‘when I’m writing, I’m writing.’ Point taken, though I sometimes disagree. I’ve had worse nights.

***

I used to go back and forth from New York and Berlin constantly, mainly because I couldn’t afford to stay in New York. Now Alfie is far too old to keep flying between the two. These might be the last couple years I have with my father. I’ve promised myself, through all conflict, that I’d stay and make it work. There were a few times during my years away when I tried to move back but each time was a complete failure and didn’t last longer than two months. It’s been seven now, and I think it’s finally coming together. The goal: becoming an adult in the city I grew up in. The challenge: separating myself from the confines, both practical and psychological, of childhood, my family. And for the first time in a decade I don’t feel as though I need to be someplace else in order to be completely myself. My parents are indeed in the city. A thirty minute walk away. But they don’t, any longer, define my sense of place and time.

It’s an amazing feeling to connect with the artists you love, for them to eventually consider your work, give you feedback, and in turn enjoy what brings your life its finest fulfillment. I’ve loved conducting these interviews over the past few months. The whole process has changed my life, given me so much, and even, I’d say, something of an elevated artistic family. In KIRAC I’ve found my parents; in Matthew Gasda and Peter Vack two disparate older brothers; in Richard Hell a prickly uncle, in Jia Tolentino a distant cousin, in Christian Lorentzen a lifelong neighbor. And then there are all the esoteric family friends who drop by for coffee and dinner: Rob Doyle, Kirsty Allison, Sean Thor Conroe, Steven Philips-Horst, Tarik Sadouma, Jordan Firstman, Patti Smith and Kanye West. And what about my actual family and friends? The people I’ve spent a lifetime building relationships with? Well, goodbye now. I’m floating off somewhere new… But in all seriousness, it is interesting how the bond between two artists immediately transcends, supersedes, the power of relationships prior; the most important people around, the ones who elevate and stimulate, as Martin Amis once said.

And so my father, the biological one. Deathly ill now, the composer and lyricist Paul Scott Goodman. I often wonder, Dad, when you came from Scotland to make it as a writer in New York, did you think it’d all turn out this way? Minor success… nothing big? A Jewish family downtown? A wife filled with the trauma from survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau? Kids, two girls, one boy, who spent their youth wanting to run away from the suffocation of your artistry, of your ego, your addictions and your neuroses? Your kids who dreamt, and still dream, of growing up to supersede all you could never conquer, the wall you helplessly couldn’t shatter? That’s our role, after all. I’m lucky you and mom experienced no tangible success to speak of because it meant there was no one and nothing I was raised to be reverent toward. The business world and the arts world both betrayed you, and therefore they betrayed me. No one but God, and that only sort of, was deserving, in our household, of real respect. There were no masters and no monarchs. All art world, theater world, film world success stories were dictatorial power-hungry insufferables who you and mom would ridicule to no end, though you did, however, really like John Cleese. No masters, no monarchs, no overlords, no institution I had to show any respect for. My authority complex was well-engrained, my isolation from the world forever cemented, the lyricism from your stuck-in-obscurity music forever pulsing through my veins. And for that, Dad, thank you, oh God I love you, it’s what’s given me the ability to write.

You could’ve written more, could’ve overcome more resistance, could’ve made stronger attempts to relate to your son, but alas you didn’t; it’s my job now. I pity forever the kids whose parents are far too great to ever be overcome.

When I was young I fell in love with fiction, with stories, because I lacked a strong paternal role model. In the unconscious search for one, I fell for books, films, fantasy, and illusion. These stories and myths became my foundation, these narratives, which I constructed from what the author supplied, allowed me to grow and provided the burgeoning interests of the passion that would consume my life like an incandescent flame.

My perverse Oedipal quest eventually led me to Amsterdam, where the famous 17th century Dutch Baroque canal houses sit by the water like Papier-mâché. I walked around the city all morning, up and down and nowhere, totally nervous, anticipating my interview with Stefan and Kate of KIRAC, two filmmakers who’ve provided me a lifetime of inspiration. What impresses me so much about Stefan and Kate, aside from the sheer quality of their films, is how they’re completely dependent on each other to create art, how if one of them passed away the other would be too debilitated to continue. There’s a rare beauty to their partnership that fascinates me. My conversation with them, filmed over a span of four hours, was as moving, peculiar, and thought provoking an experience as I could’ve hoped for (more on that another time). I paused the interview in the middle to tell them about my parents, their own artistic struggles, the psychological reasons I was so attracted to their work, and I think it made us all the more close, and Kate and Stefan a little bit uncomfortable. We’ve kept in touch since the interview. Kate responds to my writing with meaningful, contemplative thoughts. Stefan and I WhatsApp. Like a father and son, it’s a bit more pragmatic, business-like than the conversations I’ve had with Kate. Yet, there’s a sense of care in the background. During a recent phone call, Stefan signed off by saying: ‘Oh, and call me if you ever want to talk about anything.’ I’m at a loss for words trying to describe just how much that meant, but this piece I’ve written, in its entirety, is a testament to just that.

***

I’ve come to enjoy, and now look forward, to taking the B or Q train from Brooklyn to New York. Going over the Manhattan Bridge, the elation of descending into the city, the dystopian world of brick and mortar that’s molded me into who I’ve become, plummeting into a form of the abject dark. The experience, disquieting, is a strange kind of mirror reflecting that old cliche: when you gaze into the abyss, straight into the void, it does nothing but stare right back.

Peter, I hope it’s OK, but I wanted to give your form a shot:

You come to me on this day the day I show concern for a dying grocer
You come to me on this day the day I’m a male savior for my molested friends
You come to me on this day the day I admit my dog is a surrogate for an unborn child
You come to me on this day the day I lay it all bare, nothing to hide, nothing to lose
You come to me on this day the day the past is now an illusion, it no longer exists
You come to me on this day the day I denounce my family to join a cult of artists
You come to me on this day the day I declare all these strangers who agreed to be interviewed my family, without even asking
You come to me on this day the day I become an adult, my 29-year-old bar mitzvah
You come to me on this day the day I do the thing about growing up where I separate my identity, through and through, from the structures of childhood, from the confines of family
You come to me on this day the day Freud and Jung would be so proud of their work, proud of me, that they’d even shake hands
You come to me on this day the day that I’m doing this all for posterity, not prosperity
You come to me on this day the day that I say all artists are immortal, and how lucky am I to have made all these immortal friends
You come to me on this day the day where I coronate myself, formally and thoroughly, an artist, and there’s never going back, for like someone who is gay, I was born one all along
You come to me on this day the day Tarik Sadouma says, ‘it’s a shame, you’ll never really know if you’re an artist, it’ll be the future generations who decide’
You come to me on this day the day I say dad, I wish you wrote more. You were a rare talent that the world deserved more of, this was a tragedy and a sin
You come to me on this day the day that I say dad, I regret I never got to experience all that you never came to write, my kids will regret this too, and so will there’s… your unrealized potential will never die
You come to me on this day the day I say dad, I’ll pick up where you left off and will try my best, for as long as I live, to surpass what you never accomplished

And that’s it for now.

---

Illustration by James Fisher-Smith