Just A Little Note Of Gratitude Before Returning To Our Regular Program...

Trying to piece myself back together

It’s getting to be that time of year where everything slows down. Seconds minutes and hours are starting to become one big blur until I look at my calendar in shock that it’s been five days since I returned from my trip to Wisconsin and I feel like I just barely walked off the thrice delayed layover last night. How the fuck has it been almost an entire week since I was there?

Everything feels that way at the moment: 16 days since I last wrote anything for the newsletter, three weeks since I deactivated all of my social media pages. And it all feels much longer and I honestly could have gone even longer. It’s been nice. I’ve just been reading, swimming, drawing, journaling.

However, I’d like to help promote the upcoming campaign when it goes live to show my gratitude to the company I worked with. They were so kind and I can’t wait to share more of that with y’all in the near future. Until then, I probably won’t be doing much of anything that requires me to be active online.

The days are getting shorter and now when I wake up at 6AM it’s still dark. Fuck. Wasn’t it just as bright at 6AM as it was at mid afternoon a few days ago? And yet I still rise at 6AM. The weather here has been nice and calming, hovering around a perfect 60°F with chilly mornings. The perfect weather. On the other hand, Sacramento has been seeing triple digit temperatures as Mami forces me to drive her to her doctor’s appointments in the apocalyptic landscape that is the Sacramento suburbs.

As usual, I’m not going to lie to y’all. Finding out a snitch…a mole…a spy…had been implemented in the shallows of my “close friends” (meaning: it’s someone I know in real life, or someone who paid to be there) really fucked with my head. How do I know? Because I planted the trap and the spy took the bait. Which isn’t the first time this has happened. I know this all sounds like I’ve been shacked up in a trailer with newspaper for windows in the middle of nowhere trying to contact extraterrestrial life beings. Maybe that’s the point.

Here’s the thing; the worst I’ve done (that I can recollect) in this industry is call someone an asshole, which I’m not sure warrants an entire espionage operation on my behalf. I guess that’s not true. The worst I have done is reveal what is behind the curtains in Oz; disintegrating the veil of mystery and ridding of the smoke and mirrors. Yes, my personality is a liability. Yes, I’m a moody monster and I’m never satisfied because I’m the type of person that wants it all. But, I’ve never tried to fuck with people’s money. And I know that some people out there still blame me for the occupational destruction of you know who in 2020, but that just isn’t true.

I guess it’s good news that they’ve succeeded in getting what they want because this is no longer a safe space for me. I feel like I can’t trust anyone. When I told one of my mentors about what happened, he said, “My rule of thumb: be friendly, but not friends.”

Dear Publishing Industry:

You won. I’m grateful. Please collect your consolation prize, which is an industrial sized tube of water-soluble lubricant so you can fuck me in the ass at your own discretion. And to show my gratefulness, I’ll even throw in a full length mirror so you can watch me smile through the pain whilst you pummel the shit out of my virgin hole like the masochists that you are. I promise to greet you with gratitude and a smile whilst donning the fallalery you’ve pre-approved when you inevitably tiptoe through the protection of night and fog to come bursting through my door to receive your nightly gift of nonconsensual gratitude. I will shiver with gratitude when you whisper sweet nothing sonnets of a relationship so tender that it could only be compared to the love between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.

I will count my coins of gratitude and promise to be jeremiadianly obedient, to sit by the fire patiently in this room you’ve built up for me in the basement of your Big House so that you have unlimited limitless intimate access to me. And I will be grateful because at least I’m not a field n*&&er.

Sincerely,

Gratefully Stepin’ and Fetchin’

Addendum: Please don’t run over and ask me “what happened?” I clearly don’t want to go into detail. I thought that would be obvious.