Year Two

Welcome to the panic room

Two years ago today I published my first essay here on Substack. I recently reread that piece and was shocked by how bad it was. The lede is buried at the very bottom and the writing is okay, but still I found myself on the brink of tears upon finishing it.

In the course of rereading the essay I relived my manic desperation in that moment. My dad had passed away only three months prior and everyone had stopped asking me about him or checking in before I had even begun to really think about what his loss meant. My insides ached, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t speak it. And try as I might to outpace it through long runs and bike rides, that didn’t work either. Writing was the only way through the pain.

My pain was palpable reading through this first essay, but so too was my euphoria. The revelatory power of writing and the sonic pleasure of a handsome phrase had revealed itself to me once again. Writing offered a way to transform my pain into something beautiful.

Beauty was all I sought in those early months of grieving because beauty was the only thing that made sense. It was easy to find, too. My dad’s sudden death followed by Celina’s mom’s late-stage cancer were by far the most remarkable things to ever happen to me. In other words, life had never been more meaningful. Amanda Petrusich observes this in her powerful new essay about the science of grief and becoming a young widow / a new mother almost simultaneously.

The drama of death enhanced everything about life. My observational powers became telescopic; my emotional acuity as sharp and agile as a butterfly knife. Sometimes, while staring death in the face, I felt invincible. Don’t confuse this for strength. It was not strength I felt, but rather a perverse confidence that no further harm could be done to me. I had already been across the river Styx and back.

Truth came later. Pretty as my words were, I worried they had begun to ring hollow; that they would not hold up under serious scrutiny. I worried I had fallen prey to Joan Didion’s famous warning, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Perhaps I wasn’t a writer after all. Perhaps I was a storyteller who trafficked in happy endings, using them as cheap medicine for the many wounds the world inflicts when what I wanted to do was use those wounds as portals to bone-cutting truths lodged deep in the human heart and psyche. Bloodied but gleaming, I would share these truths from high on the mountaintop, like Prometheus shielding his stolen flame.

As my grip on the narrative loosened, so too did my understanding. It became clear I was entering a new stage of grieving.

My writing has also entered a new stage. For the first time in years, I am writing fiction again. And after enrolling in Geoff Mak’s cultural criticism seminar (highly recommend), I am kicking around a couple of ideas for literary criticism.

I am also venturing into new, uncharted territory, writing about things I’ve never spoken about to anyone in detail—not my wife, not my therapist, not my brother, not my closest friends.

I did precisely this in my most recent piece, which I published on a Saturday afternoon. That evening, I met friends for dinner. On the way to the restaurant, my Mom texted me that the piece was difficult for her to read. We were late to dinner, for which I apologized, but my friend brushed it off and said it gave him time to read my latest Substack. He said he was surprised by my use of “abusive,” but that it was completely accurate. I thanked him and quickly ordered a beer. After dinner, we walked a mile deeper into Bed-Stuy to a bar I’d never been to for a friends’ birthday party where another friend told me how much he liked the piece. The things I wrote rarely had such a verbose reception. Already on edge, I put these comments out of my mind and ordered another beer.

The next morning, I lay in bed unable to sleep, still high from the club. My heart was racing, not from the substances still coursing through my bloodstream, but because I was full on panicking about the exposing words I posted online just hours before.

I tried to regain control by taking several deep breaths. I turned on music to lull myself to sleep. I looked out the window at the beautiful morning full of regret for all that I’d done and all that I’d said. It was the first reasonable day after a week-long heat wave made more insidious by wildfire smoke that smothered the city in a cyberhaze. Turned over to Celina and gently touched her shoulder and said her name. “I’m sorry, love, but I’m freaking out.”

She blinked back to life. “About what?” she said, her voice floating over the sound of birdsong. It was already 7am.

“The piece. I think I should delete it.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about. It’s your story. Everyone was saying how much they liked it.”

“Yeah, but I’m worried, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“What are you worried about?”

“That it was too exposing. That people might look at me differently. That the wrong person will read it. I saw it was viewed via Instagram and I didn’t share it on Instagram.”

“Would it make you feel better to delete it?”

“It would help ease my mind, I think, but I’d feel like a coward.”

Coward or not, I pulled aside the sheets and went to retrieve my laptop. Realized I could make the post subscriber-view only, so that’s what I did, and that’s why I’m writing this right now.

I’m afraid I’ve buried the lede again, but I’m writing to announce that, beginning this month, I will enable paid subscriptions for the first time ever. To be clear, most of what I write will remain free to read. But if you want to be inside the panic room with me, and if you want to read my most revealing stories, essays, diary dispatches, etc., then I invite you to pony up.

Many of you have already generously committed your support, for which I thank you, but I wanted to give you a courtesy notice before you see an unexpected charge in your account and show up outside my home armed with pitchforks. (Happy to refund you if your situation has changed or if you’re no longer interested, just message me.)

Early on, I rejected the idea of paid subscriptions because I wasn’t sure how much I’d actually be writing on Substack, and I didn’t want to take it all that seriously. But in the last two years, I’ve published 58 pieces (2.5 per month on average) and every post receives the same level of care and exactitude that I brought to all of my professional criticism and reporting. If anything, I hold myself to a higher standard now because I don’t have editorial support beyond Celina, my devoted editor-in-chief, and because these essays, etc. are so personal.

This has been a labor of love, and will continue to be so. If you’ve enjoyed reading my writing, please consider showing your support by sharing this newsletter with your friends or upgrading to paid. (Except for you, Mom—I can’t have you reading some of this stuff and risk both of us losing sleep). The rest of you, buckle up for year three.