The Poppy Rip-Off

It was early summer. You were living by yourself for the first time ever, after your divorce from the woman who convinced you to move to this city. It was a lovely, small but clean, studio apartment, for which you paid $400 a month in rent. You were walking over to Broadway when you saw this beater Honda screech up to a blue bungalow. Then this white guy with dreadlocks, cargo shorts and no shirt, leapt from the car, ran up to the front garden of the house, ripped out two or three tall blossoms, and then escaped, roots dribbling dirt, back to the car.

A woman ran out of the house as the car peeled away. She looked at you and shook her head, more exasperated than enraged. “They stole my poppies.”

“Your poppies?”

“They’ve done it before.”—Why the hell would anyone—“They think they can make heroin from them.”

“They do?”

“They can’t.”

You both looked in the direction the car drove off.

“Idiots,” she said.

That was 1994. You had met Gary by now, at Annex Theatre in Belltown, but you weren’t close friends.

 

Palimpsest

You and me. We came here for the same reason. To get away from each other.

It’s why anyone comes to Seattle, comes out West, comes to America, comes to consciousness.

We love each other and we need a fucking break.

From each other.

We’re always looking for room. Room to grow. To spread out. Lebensraum some called it. “Living room.” And, man, the lengths we are willing to go, and the depths to which we are willing to plunge, to get it.

 

⚓

 

This book is about Seattle.

In case that thought hadn’t occurred yet.

“Seattle is dying”.

That’s what they say. It was on the TV, so who are we to disbelieve them?

Monroe says, “There are always three sides to every story. Your side, my side, and the truth.”

You’ll meet Monroe later.

But the right now truth is—and some part of you knows this fundamentally, bone sure—that whatever downfall you’re watching take place in this city, in all cities, is the direct result of:

• your greed,
• your pride,
• your neglect,
• your preference for your children over all children,
• your inability to genuinely connect with other people in any truly meaningful way.

“Seattle is dying?”

Of course, it’s dying, ya jug head! Everything is dying. You’re dying. Your children—remember? The ones you preferred above all others?—they’re dying, and so are their unborn children’s children.

Meet the new loss.

Same as the old loss.

Grow up.

 

⚓

 

This book is about Heaven and Hell.

In case that thought hadn’t occurred yet.

But it’s also about running out of time.

The concept of Heaven and Hell being separate places is a luxury we can no longer afford. There’s no time. There’s no room. To fit everything and get it right Heaven and Hell have to exist together as a palimpsest: an overlay of texts, of stories, one on top of the other.

Then you can fit them wherever you want.

Even Seattle.

 

⚓

 

“Where are you from?” It’s so common in this city to be from somewhere else that this is the first question we ask upon meeting someone new.

“Dude, I’m from here!” is the proud Seattle native’s reply.

But you’re not from here. You’re from a there in the past, a least more than one Seattle ago.

 

⚓

 

There’s a house in Green Lake.

It has only one bathroom.

It may be the only house left in all of Green Lake that has only one bathroom.

We live there.

 

⚓

 

There’s a black guy selling street news on Fourth Avenue South right between the two train stations. A big bald white guy says something to him as his passes by. The black guy hollers after him: “I’m out here selling newspapers. How is that not working for a living?”

Later he tells someone, “Nah, it’s better this way. With Trump in the White House people tell you what they’re really thinking, and not lying like snakes in the grass.”

 

⚓

 

That house in Green Lake?

We’ve lived there 15 years.

 

Gary / Monroe

Tell the story about how you started your new gig at Charles Street Yard on the day you found out Gary died. Only you didn’t work that day. You realized you couldn’t, but only after idiotically thinking you could.

Explain how an “out-of-class” job works at the City. And… well… how they don’t, sometimes.

 

⚓

 

It’s not like you didn’t give them warning. You started lighting them up with emails at least a month out. “Hello from SDHR and greetings from the 55th floor! Just a heads up that my out-of-class assignment is up on May 3 and I have decided to come back to my old job. So please let me know if this works for you guys. Otherwise I’ll see you on 38 on Wednesday.

[Insert here a hint of how horrible Susan was (out-of-class boss, head of HR for the city), but only a hint. Save the juice for later. Build suspense.]

At the end of the day on Tuesday, you even brought a box of your stuff down to your old cube, where Alysha was sitting, herself working out-of-class. You had your lamp, your ergonomic footrest, and a box of your favorite office supplies. You put it in a corner of the already cramped cubicle. You apologized to Alysha for crowding her, but also reminded her that you had nowhere else to put it, and as far as anyone had told you, this would be your space again tomorrow. You didn’t mean to be a dick to Alysha. And she didn’t seem take it that way. Rather she seemed as puzzled as you were by the lack of communication from management.

Word must have gotten to your once-and-future boss that you had dumped your stuff at your once-and-future cube because you saw a phone call coming in from him on your cell when you were headed home on the bus, but you had no interest in having that sort of conversation when you weren’t on the clock. You assumed it couldn’t be good news, since he had waited so long, but you honestly didn’t have a clue what sort of bad news it could be. What was the worst they could do to you, a protected civil servant?

At home you listened to the voicemail. First thing the next morning, Andrew wanted you to meet him and Genesee, the SDOT Director’s chief of staff, at the Seattle Municipal Tower Starbucks to discuss “a really great opportunity.“ This almost certainly meant you weren’t getting your old job back. Otherwise why not just meet in Andrew’s office right next to your old cube?

You barely slept that night as your mind cycled through ways to fight for your old job. They owed you that much: it was just that simple. But then, nothing’s simple at the City, and for a counter-attack like the one you were conceiving, you needed air cover, possibly from HR, and you just burned all of your bridges up there on the 55th floor. You’d get no help from that Hell.

Heather advised you to wait and hear the offer. Be patient. Plan your counterpunch.

 

⚓

 

May 3.

You get to SMT early. Kill some time in the downstairs lobby’s public gallery.

{Art should be a theme through this book, especially since Gary both loved and loathed it with the same kind of ambivalent passion that you do. He especially hated the kind of “safe art” so celebrated at the City. And he would’ve loved the idea of Monroe’s “road art”, even if he would have hated the actual painting. [NEED physical description of painting.]}

The offer tendered: “An exciting opportunity to help Maintenance Operation optimize data tracking on their summer campaign, ‘Potholepalooza’.” Eeesh! Andrew assures you that there’s “room for growth and advancement within a few months.” (It’s been over three years as you write this. Never even offered a raise, let alone a promotion, and with the end of this pandemic nowhere in sight, the situation unlikely to change soon.)

Andrew walks you across the street to the Bank of America building, where Maintenance Operation has its downtown offices. But you aren’t going to be working downtown. He tells you that you’re going to Charles Street Yard, well south of downtown, beneath the I-5/I-90 interchange. It’s where people in coveralls and orange vests work.

On the way across the street, your phone rings. You see it’s Gary’s girlfriend, Jamey. She’d promised to update you after Gary’s procedure today, but you can’t deal with that right now. You send the call to voice mail. You’ll have to get back to her. It’s weird she’s calling you so early. It gives you a slightly sinking feeling.

Andrew takes you up to the 31st floor. He introduces you to a woman, a fellow admin, and then leaves you in the lobby to go to another meeting. In a few minutes someone else is going to walk you down to Charles Street Yard and introduce you around. Sitting in the waiting area, you get a chance to listen to Jamey’s voice mail. She’s so hysterical you can barely understand her, but the gist is clear: “Please call me as soon as you get this.”

You go to a window with no desks nearby and call. She picks up. She’s still hysterical, but she manages to tell you Gary’s dead. Last night. It was a struggle until the end, but the doctors could never get his heart and fluid levels under control at the same time, or something. You tell her you are so, so sorry. You tell her you’re going to need to call her back from somewhere you can talk. You tell her you’re going to call her back in exactly ten minutes. You promise you will call her back in exactly ten minutes, no matter what.

You stare out the window at the Seattle Municipal Tower across the street. You wonder how the hell you’re going to start your new job today. And then you realize there’s no way in hell you’re going to start your new job today. And so you tell the nice lady who comes to take you to Charles Street Yard that your best friend just died and you’re going to have to leave.

And then you realize you have to tell Heather. And then you realize you can’t tell her on the phone. You just… it wouldn’t be possible. And so you take a bus to Northgate. On the bus you call Jamey back and she’s a little calmer now, but not much.

From Northgate Transit Center you walk to Heather’s office building and you take the elevator one floor up to her offices, and you ring the bell at the reception desk, and she comes out, surprised to see you. And she says, “Oh no, did you get fired?”

And you laugh, and you say. “No. I had to come tell you in person. Gary’s dead.”

And you don’t know it in that moment, but it’s also hardly surprising in retrospect: your life will never be the same, and you will never not miss him, or ever be free of the sadness that he’s gone.

And the next day you land at the Charles Street Maintenance Facility in a grief haze. Sure you could have taken another day off, but then you’d just be sitting at home in a grief haze.

No one seems to know what to do with you. Your putative boss, a haggard looking white woman named Karen finds you a desk in an open area with lots of other desks around, some occupied, some not. There are two nice young women working as temporary admins. Mary, a petite blonde, late 20s; and Katalina, a large Polynesian girl who comes off as older, but later you learn she’s only 23. When no one’s around they huddle and gossip about Mary’s dating life. Apparently, it’s not going well. The guys she dates don’t want to date so much as hook up. Katalina’s married and has a baby.

Mary shows you how to enter data into a system which tracks usage of vehicles and supplies. There isn’t enough work to keep you busy, however, so you poke around on Facebook and try not to cry in front of everyone.

Karen, your manager, occasionally walks by, going in and out of the building, but if she looks at you at all, it’s only to glance past your eye. She has nothing to say to you, no real work for you to do. You’ve been assigned to her from the Tower, and she has less of an idea of what to do with you than you have, and you barely have a clue. But your clue tells you that by the time she figures it out, the Tower will have forgotten you.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe this is a place to hide for a while. With your grief-blasted heart.

All through the day, guys of all different ethnicities, wearing yellow shirts or yellow jackets with silver reflective stripes, come in and camp at open computers. You’re not sure what these guys do, but they talk a lot about what’s going in the city’s roadways. One of them, a black guy, flat-out asks you, “Who are you?”

You tell him your name. You tell him you were transferred down from the Tower.

“What are you supposed to be doing?” This dude is now looming behind your chair, no doubt looking at your screen

You explain that you’re not really sure. You’re still waiting to find out what your main job is going to be down here. You were told by the folks uptown that you were supposed to help out with spreadsheets for Potholepalooza, but so far no one down here has said anything about it.

“This guy sounds like a spy,” this dude declares to anyone who might listen, which seems to be no one. You can’t tell if he’s joking. If he is, he ain’t letting you in on it. He has a froggish face. “Why they send you down here?”

You tell him again you don’t know. That you wish you did.

“Unh-hunh.” The way he says it is like he wants you to know he’ll be watching you.

And so you decide to watch him. He’s got a face like a rockfish. You learn his name is Monroe, and over the next few hours it becomes apparent that he is Charles Street’s self-appointed gadfly, asking questions of everyone, about how the work gets done, about what management does and does not do. He’s also the self-appointed attention-grabbing loudmouth, hollering when he walks into the building, “Good afternoon, everyone!” and expecting people to answer him back. “I said, ‘GOOD AFTERNOON!’” He annoys you and raises your hackles. This guy could be trouble for you. At some point, you might have to have words.

You stretch the data entry, because you don’t really want to ask for more work. You do your best, in your fog of grief, to reassure yourself that your new shitty job situation is impermanent.

So along with being launched into the unknown of what life will be like without Gary (it will suck hard for a long time, and then, after that, only whenever you think of him, which is every day), you are also launched into the unknown of what happens to someone who has no work in a job he can’t be fired from. Part of you is actually interested in finding out. It’s like reading a book with a pleasantly unpredictable plot.

 

Game Pitch Meeting

You’re writing a book. The action—

Wait. That’s the game?

Yes.

I’m writing a book.

Yes. Hear us out.

Okay.

The action begins with you in your early fifties, sort of lost, not broken, but—

I’m middle aged?

Yes.

And I’m writing a book?

Yes.

What other exciting, edgy twists to you have? Don’t tell me. I’m a white guy.

Well, yes.

I’m a middle-aged white guy, writing a book.

Yes.

Imagine the ground you’ll be breaking.

It could be groundbreaking.

Oh, do tell.

Well, as we said, you’re sort of lost. Sort of Dante-in-the-woods type stuff.

Referencing a 13th century poem? That’ll get the kids psyched.

We’re not sure it’s for kids.

A game, not for kids?

Well, we’re still figuring that out.

Are you sure you’re ready for me?

  

Blake was right

 Maybe April is the cruelest month, but that year, 2017, May turned out to be one brutal motherfucker.

You had known about Gary being sick since November. Which is also when you took your job in the Hell of being the executive assistant to the Director of the Seattle Department of Human Resources for the entire city. Your stint was supposed to be six months working out-of-class.

Out-of-class?

It’s a city thing. Well, a government thing. Unlike private-sector corporate jobs, in government you can fill a position, for which you’re ostensibly not fully qualified, on a provisional basis. It gives both sides a change to determine if there’s a fit.

You’d been applying for out-of-class openings for a few months now, never getting very far. But you didn’t apply for this one. They sought you out. Someone in the Mayor’s office passed your name along to SDHR. To this day you’re not really sure who your “friend” in the MO was, or whether you should thank or curse them.

You knew going in the director was going to be a challenge. You’d heard rumors; you observed the studies in blankness certain people’s faces became when you mentioned you were considering working for her. But you also knew you’d been through this variety of Hell before: the “difficult executive.” It was just some bleak territory you were going to have to re-tread, in order to get away from your current Hell at Transit and Mobility. And besides, what choice did you really have? You turn down an offer, even for an interview, from SDHR, and SDHR stops scheduling you for interviews.

When you met with her, the director asked you if you were up for a tough job, and so you trotted out your city interview chestnut, about how before the Seattle Municipal Tower first opened, you were a window cleaner on the construction cleanup, hanging from cables in a two man basket fully 65 floors off the asphalt. Once you’ve done a job like that, you explained, it’s hard to be intimidated by anything that goes on in inside of the building.

And she gave you the job. And it was easily as brutal as you expected. The director constantly taunting and tormenting you, and everyone else who reported to her. She seemed at times to be hoping her employees would break down in front of her. But you’d be damned if you’d give her that.

And less than six months later, when you got the chance to drop out of the Hell of SDHR back down into the Hell of Transit and Mobility where you started, you took it. But instead, you dropped even farther, to a Hell so deep, that once you found your feet, you realized it just might be Heaven after all.

You’re at Charles Street now. And Gary’s dead.

And you’re broken.

You’re broken. But broken isn’t bad. It’s just broken. Hearts are eggs that have to be broken before they can beaten and eaten and grown into new hearts. The point is…

…The point is…. I’m off the rails.

But that’s not a bad thing.

The rails are karma, and I’m off them now.

I ruin everything I touch. I’m like Midas, except for shit. (And even that inverted trope feels like it’s been done before.)

I got nothing, G-d. Nothing to share with the world. And that’s what I have everything banked on. Sharing with the world.

 

⚓

 

This guy sounds sad.

Oh, he’s sad, all right.

I suppose he has his reasons.

 

⚓

 

What am I doing?

First inspiration for the book: April 2019 after a haircut with Cee in Belltown. Fully high, having eaten both halves of a gummy, but no booze, because I was on some sort of mini-Lent.

Lost in Belltown. Tall towers of Amazon throwing off my natural navigation. Was I on Third or Fourth Avenue? (I was on Third.) And which one did the bus come down? (It comes down Third.)

I realized that all of my life has to do with other people. And so of course, using Sartre’s syllogism, that means all of my life is Hell, because “Hell is other people.” And then I realized that this book needed to be me mapping Seattle as Hell. And then later I realized, but also Heaven.

Because here’s the thing about Heaven and Hell. William Blake was right. They’re married. And as much as they love to bicker and differ, they hate being apart from each other for much more than a single moment.

Heaven is power and power is Hell, and Hell is helplessness, and helplessness brings you closer to G-d.

 

⚓

 

November 2019

Second great insight into the book.

It’s a game.

 

Somebody Fell Through the Hatch

You’re writing a book.

Oh, a book, is it?

Yes. We start you somewhere normal, a moment not unusual in your life. Thornton Wilder warned that one should always pick a normal day, nothing special.

Thornton who now?

Wilder. He was a 20th century playwright and novelist—

I know who the fuck Thornton Wilder was. Our Town? The Crucible? The question is: will your players? And if so, will they care?

So… it’s a bleak, gray, rainy, windy day in December. You bus into work in darkness, and you bus home in the same darkness. You swim through it. Viscously. A darkness different from the mere absence of light, possessing a malevolent substance of its own.

All right already. No need to push the sale. I’ve lived through a Pacific Northwest winter. It’s grim. I get it.

So, you’ve been working at Charles Street Yard now for over two years. It’s the city’s largest service facility. The road crews dispatch from here. The fire trucks and police cruisers come here to get fixed. The First Hill street car rolls from here, as well as many of the city’s utility trucks: electricity and water, lights and sewer. It’s where they keep the salt and sand for when it snows, and the gas pumps for at least half of the city’s vehicles. You work as an administrative staff assistant in Building A, a squat, brown, two-story, mid-century architectural turd that houses the Maintenance Operations Division of the Seattle Department of Transportation.

I’m a secretary.

No one’s called them that for like fifty years, but… yes.

I work for the city, but I couldn’t be a cop or a fireman?

You arrive a little before 8 am, which is considered a late start in a department that dispatches street crews. You enter time until your coffee break.

I enter time?

From the crews. They write their time on daily crew reports and you take that and enter it into the payroll system.

Spellbinding

Walking to Starbucks on your break at around 9 am, you begin to cheer up. The Clash is playing. “Rudy Can’t Fail” and he really can’t, can he? And the wind is picking up and it’s reminding you that the world is wild, and wide. And you start to feel like if it’s going to kill you—and it is going to kill you—perhaps you can negotiate better terms.

At the Starbucks counter you flirt politely and very, very subtly with the adorably smiling Asian girl with streaks of teal in her hair. Her name tag says “Nga”.

And when you get back to your desk, all the sudden you’re writing again, after not writing for weeks: notes about said crinkly-eyed, teal-haired girl, all four-foot-ten of her, with her smile, which craves kissing. You’re easily old enough to be her grandfather.

Later that day, coming back from lunch you see an SFD ladder truck with its lights flashing parked across the streetcar tracks in the yard just outside your building. You check the ladder number online to see if it’s your friend Craig’s rig. Craig’s an SFD lieutenant at the U-District station, but this ladder “#1” rolls out of downtown headquarters.

You’re at your desk for maybe half an hour when you hear someone say, “Yeah. It was one of the guys working on the roof today. He fell right thought the hatch at the top of the ladder in the main stairwell.”

“He was non-responsive when they took him away.”

“Harborview?”

“Yeah. I would think so.”

“He might not make it.”

“Have you been up there?”

“Where?

“The stair well.”

“I don’t want to go up there.”

“Blood everywhere, they say.”

“Damn,” you say, finally piping up. “Must mean he hit his head. That’s bad. Very bad.”

Gene, the out-of-class crew chief : “I feel bad for him.”

You: “I feel bad for his family.”

 

⚓

 

That’s it.

That’s what?

That’s the moment.

What moment?

The Thornton Wilder moment. The ordinary, thin slice of your life, remarkable but not profound. Somebody fell through the hatch. Blood everywhere. Must’ve hit their head. SFD shows up. Takes him away. Critical condition. Heart goes out. To him. His family.

And what’s the game-play?

Simple: do you keep writing? That’s the decision nexus that advances the game-play.

Do I keep writing?

Yes.

How should I know?

Decide.

Well…

You have to decide. To not decide is to decide.

…

Decide.

Uh… yes. I keep writing.

Okay. Good…. Maybe.

What do I win?

You have to wait and find out.

But I do win something, yes?

You have to wait to find out.

That’s excruciating.

That’s the game-play.

And absurd.

That’s the game-play.

I’m intrigued.

We’re glad to hear it. So you keep writing?

Yes. Let’s say yes.

Okay. So here’s what you write in your journal that day.

Karen just briefed us (Monroe, “light-duty” Reuben, and me): A roofer fell through the hatch in the stairwell. There’s still a lot of blood on the floor. They took him to the hospital unresponsive. The stairwell’s going to be inaccessible until L&I comes by for an investigation and then a bio team comes to clean it.

Me: Man, never a dull moment down at Charles Street.

Monroe: I been telling ‘em: they need to start filming a reality show up in here.

 

⚓

 

Your second day at Charles Street, this guy Monroe came in after lunch, and started in again, grumbling: “This place, man. I don’t know sometimes. It’s always something. I’m just trying to get the job done, but you never know what you gonna get at Charles Street, y’all.”

The old, white crew chief Steve said in his soft voice, “Do you ever stop complaining, Monroe?”

“Naw, man. Don’t you know? When you stop complaining, that’s when you dead.”

Steve nodded, and grinned almost imperceptibly behind his tinted glasses. Monroe went back to grumbling. You went back to typing, on Face Book, something about missing Gary. [Get this Face Book post.] Then Monroe started speaking more loudly, and more pointedly, “I tell you want I want to know… I wanna know why this guy from uptown is sitting down here all day with nothing to do.”

Something snapped.

 

⚓

 

I spin around in my desk chair to face him, tugging out my badge out on its retractable lanyard attached to my belt loop. It’s in a plastic sleeve along with my city-provided-ORCA card. I say, “Look, man: this is my city ID, okay? Means I work here just like you. I don’t know why I’m here. My out-of-class position up at the Tower was up; they were supposed to send me back to my old job, but they didn’t. They sent me here. I was supposed to come Wednesday at the beginning of the new pay period, but my best friend died, so I came yesterday. And I don’t have any clue what I’m supposed be doing, but check the badge, man. I’m a city worker just like you, okay?

Monroe slowly nods his head, as if weighing some matter of grave import, then, suddenly grins, spreading his hands out wide in welcome. “Well, all right. That’s all I wanted to know. Welcome to Charles Street.” He holds his hand out towards me, and I shake it firmly. “Sorry about your friend.”

 

⚓

 

You did it!

What did I do?

You went into it. You played the game.

Huh… yeah… I guess I did. I felt that. I went in.

Congratulations.

Uh… thanks?

That was a key moment you just played. The beginning of your love affair with Charles Street, but only the very beginning. You didn’t even know it yet. One can imagine loving Heaven, but Hell you have to live through.

Still, your love of Charles Street grew, and your love for Monroe, with his face like a river stone, lightly pocked but still somehow smooth, like a salamander, maybe. Screw it. You’re never gonna get Monroe’s face right. So decide.

Decide what?

It’s always the same.

Do I keep writing?

Precisely.

Sure. Why not?

 

⚓

 

Pocket Notebook:

 

11/2

I was a playwright.

It’s such an absurd thing 2B that 2 not B it anymore multiplies the absurdity X itself.

Now I write other things. Like I’m writing this book now.

But for money I work for the city as an admin.

Which actually works b/c all the best stories r here.

 

11/4

This book is k--ping me alive. That’s the only reason I’m writing it…

Why do cop cars have tinted windows? I’m looking at one right now that does, parked in the driveway @8th + Dearborn. One of the new snazzy Dodge Chargers.

But what does that say about my life that I need this art? Did I make an addict of myself in my younger years?

Is this book the story of a failed playwright?

This is a story of being lost.

I’m a gray, blubbery ghost of the young man I was.

If it’s true that people don’t so much Δ as wear out, wear down, then what I’m wearing into?

You quit Θ.

You write books instead.

You get a job @ the city.

You write a book about the city.

You collaborated with an amazing designer.

Your designer dies

__________________________?

__________________________?

Beginning: We are all struggling here. Doesn’t mean that all of that struggle is good, or healthy, or wise.

Some of it’s just the thrashing that brings the predators.

 

11/5

Big stinky bear guy in his corner seat, his reek seeping out to the rest of us. Sharp, full tang. Dare not dig deeper on description for fear of making myself sick.

Bus packed and haven’t even reached last stop yet.

Notes of puke & feces. Mostly just sour body reek.

Breathing through my shirt. It smells slightly of chocolate.

Mr. Fungible.

Elroy Fungible.

Mr. Prithee speaks only poetry to be unheard by the clouds.

The happiness axis.

The stress axis.

Mourning axis (goes up and down)

Bewilderment axis (drunkenness) pushes the mourning axis—spikes it.

Thinking about how Colbert told Conan how his job is breaking him physically.

No one escapes.

1:33

Good God, why do I feel like crying?

We’re miracle machines. Truly. But all machines break down.

Perpetual motion my ass.

 

Doesn’t seem like much.

They’re notes. They’re not intended to seem… well, they’re not intended to seem like anything. They’re just seed corn you’ve left out for yourself, on the hopes that maybe something will sprout from it.

Does it?

Does what?

Does anything sprout from it?

You have to keep playing to find out.

Why was this guy Gary such a big deal?

It’s a great question.

Okay?

You’re gonna wanna keep writing.

Why?

It’s probably the only way you’ll ever know.

 

⚓

 

Heaven nor Hell: you don’t get to choose. If you’re lucky you might get to choose a real place, like Seattle, and go there, with some woman you will likely never see again, because she lives in Texas or some shit. But as compensation, because you do art, you get to meet truly amazing people, like Gary, the likes of whom you will certainly never see again, because he’s in Heaven, or Hell, or some shit. But really, he’s just dead.

Gone.

And instead you get Monroe.

And Monroe’s pretty amazing even if he ain’t Gary.

“Good morning, everyone… I said, ‘GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE!’”