EDGEBOI [1.1]

Sequel to Fuccboi, first in Trilogy of forthcoming Works

1.

March 2019

I’d gotten accepted into an NYC MFA.

No way I was gonna go, given my ideologies, my finances.

But RSVP’d for the event anyway, since it was right by where the editor lived, and was the specific MFA the editor, way back when, suggested I apply/go to.

With the, at the time, probably wishfully imagined but nonetheless seeming implication she’d be sweet to me again if I got into / went there.

I wanted to flex on / try to go see the editor.

~

I missed my Bolt Bus turning up too hard with the EMT the night before, flexing on her about the potential power/success getting into an NYC MFA promised. About how different things were gonna start going for me.

Didn’t even buy a bus ticket till the last minute, while already turnt the night before, after texting the editor that I’d be in her hood for a thing the next morning, and her responding like Sean? Sure. I’ll be around.

Like maybe she’d… deleted my number?

Had tried to erase me but then… couldn’t resist?

Either way.

Texted back I’ll text ya and bought a ticket before heading back inside, from the stoop, for another round with the EMT.

~

I realized that, even though I’d missed the bus window, I could drive and still make it.

The event was at noon; I’d arrive at noon exactly if I left immediately.

Felt reckless, even with how much I’d been driving my van of late for my new CSA delivery gig. NYC driving was some other driving.

Probably wouldn’t have even considered this a possibility though, had it not been for how much I’d been driving my van of late.

Crossing the George Washington Bridge, Jersey into NYC, on the final stretch. My first time crossing it since mobbing up to the Vermont farm job I crashed out at last August, I realized, once on it. Only this time around I was way less fucked.

This time around, I was the one driving.

---

The event was at this modern-looking, glass-paned spot on 125th, not far off the Hudson.

Only three minutes late.

Open spot out front.

Sunny out.

Crisp.

~

They hit me with a nametag in the lobby. Told me 7th floor.

Another dude in a suit and a nametag, at the elevator entrance, ushering me into the elevator. Hitting the 7-button, then stepping out before the door closed.

Eager energy, palpable optimism, all around.

Vibes I woulda scoffed at, a year ago. That I, even now, had to stop myself from scoffing at.

Caught the tail end of the faculty speaker, the Great Author’s, inspirational spiel.

Standing around shifting, uncertain a sec. Although everyone was.

Once the spiel ended, a lotta milling about mingling.

I hadn’t had time to eat so beelined it for the food/coffee station, stashing my pack behind a column, in the corner.

Sun radiating in through the glass-paned walls. Killer view of Manhattan, the Hudson; Jersey, beyond that.

~

I was going to town assembling a bagel-Danish combo platter, pounding my second cup, when the Great Author pulled up on me. Like Just here for the food, huh, nabbing a half-sammie.

“Ha. You know.”

I felt I knew the Great Author personally, from pods. From hearing him on the Comedian’s. From way back, when I listened religiously to the Comedian’s.

The Comedian’s pod what got me podcasting in the first place, first I started podcasting.

What made me podcast about my walk, when I walked, Philly to Colorado, five springs ago.

This Comedian-inspired impulse to podcast about my walk what pushed me to walk at all. To keep walking. Since I was podcasting about walking—the two justified each other.

“I know you from the Comedian’s podcast,” I said. “That y’all are pals.”

“Ah. Yup,” he said. “The Comedian’s great.”

Discovering The Comedian’s podcast that final undergrad semester, late-2013, pre-walk, while laying up trying to finish my Bolaño thesis, what made me no longer able to write my Bolaño thesis. That aspect of spoken storytelling, of telling stories literally in your own voice, suddenly making everything I’d been reading, the voice I’d been writing in, sound absurd.

Absurdly disconnected from the voice I spoke in, in the World.

~

The Great Author had been surrounded by a half moon of eager admits, moments earlier, before I’d gone in for round two at the snack table. I’d overheard them asking the most stock questions, answers to which were obviously available on a FAQ page online. And for a split second, the formality of the setting made me think I had to ask similarly obvious Qs.

But then I didn’t.

I asked him what he’d been working on, told him what had me hype. We talked podcasts, publishing today, and how essential/overlooked humor was in literature. For a good 10, 15. Till I was stuffed full of pastries ranting.

He didn’t even trip when I asked him what he was working on and he said Well I just released a novel, and I, who’d been acting like I knew everything he’d ever written, went Word? exposing myself for not having known.

But then I just acted according to that information he now knew.

He wasn’t trippin about it, so I wasn’t.

We talked other things, unrelated to his most recent book he now knew I hadn’t read.

I spoke to him in my voice. With all my Fuckin lit’s and my Fuckin hell ya’s and my Oh word that’s fuckin hype bro’s.

He didn’t bat a fuckin eye.

---

Once the gathering dispersed, I went back down the elevator. To meet the editor out front.

Sitting on a bench texting, cute sundress on. Hair still wet from a shower.

“Long time,” I said, hand-visoring my eyes. Squinting.

She smiled in a wistful, slightly apologetic way, for all the ghosting, that reminded me of the smile she gave me when, after meeting her in Mountain View right before R and I moved to Oakland, right after my actual last undergrad semester, so summer ’15, while kitty-sitting at R’s while R was outta town, unbeknownst to R—this fact, that I’d come to meet the editor directly from R’s, also unbeknownst to the editor—and after a couple beers driving her in my box van to where her brother was staying in Los Gatos, that whole ride charged energy like we were a recently linked couple virgin road-tripping together, she saying her dad drove a truck growing up and that my box reminded her of her dad’s, me saying all sorts of wild shit, everything hot and amplified, till finally we arrived where her brother was meeting her, at like a gas station, and me all erect going Wait don’t go, she leaning over and kissing me, touching me, going I wanna but can’t, I gotta go, before giving me that same apologetic look and turning to leave, only my passenger-side door is a bitch to open from the inside, you gotta roll down the window in order to, although the window handle is sticky, you had to jimmy it, and then once you got it down you had to reach out and crank it open from the outside, only that move a lotta people couldn’t manage, it was an awkward wrist thing, so I leaned over and opened it for her.

But that same look. On this day.

Only lasted a moment.

She immediately reverted to the cold impassivity of editor mode.

Went, So. Shall we?

Led me along 125th, away from whence I’d come.

Under this sweet, rusted bridge thing—where the 1 is elevated, I’d later learn.

Riverward.

Energy just different here, in NYC. Because all the trains, I thought.

At any point able to eject oneself from street level and transport oneself elsewhere.

This wasn’t the case in Philly. Or it was, in parts. But the unanimousness of this mobility what distinguished Here.

She said she’d had a boy but ended it because, while she liked him, he obviously wasn’t the one.

“And why waste time with someone who obviously isn’t the one?”

We turned left where 125th met the waterside running/biking path. Walking languidly along, eye out for runners/bikers.

“What about you?”

I told her my thing was messing with a person for a sec, then pushing them away. Hating myself and so hating them for liking me. Telling them to be with other people. Wanting them to!

Feeling like we were cultivating some teenage dream, unabashedly sharing with each other our deepest selves.

Suddenly wanting so badly to come to the program. So I could be near her.

She told me she’d had a brutal winter health-wise. That she just got back from her cousin who’d killed himself’s funeral.

I told her I’d had a brutal winter health-wise also. That it was a miracle I was even functional now. That, had it not been for my hospitalization, my new meds, I’d have still been dead probably. Had almost killed myself holding on to all that breakup rage. On some level maybe trying to almost, how I’d been abusing stimulants / never sleeping.

“Had been addied up that whole time we’d been working on the walk book! Blew through the $5K my uncle threw me buying my plug’s entire XR 30 prescription, monthly.”

This admission. Felt courageous.

I was on the path of honesty now.

Honesty was the way to love.

I kept cajoling her into deep dives on what she sought in a relationship, if she even wanted one, and, if so, what that might look like.

Left things on that hopeful note.

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