I Guess I Should Announce This Today
My 35th birthday came with a real-life 'stranger than fiction' moment that may define the future of this Substack, my writing career, and my mental health.
This is the last Dispatch I will write before putting this section of my Substack behind a paywall. The cost to access my Dispatches and everything else I write is $5/month, $50/year, or $150 if you consider yourself a Patron of the Arts and want access to exclusive benefits I still haven’t made up.
I encourage you to subscribe because, judging by what happened this past Sunday, things are about to get crazy. These are the subscription options (if you’re having trouble, here is an explainer for upgrading your subscription).
This past weekend, I turned 35. And I wasn’t up for an hour on Saturday before I started feeling lousy about myself. Fortunately, Haley gifted me all morning and afternoon the day to write, so I got to Dunkin’ on Kingston Pike at 6:45 a.m. and started typing away in an empty Google Doc.
After I sent an email announcement out to you, my faithful readers, about my decision to add a paid option to this Substack, I spent the rest of the day library-hopping while trying to finish the first half of a story recounting the epic ping-pong rematch I played this past December against my eternal rival (more to come on this, stay tuned).
When I returned home at 4:30 p.m., Haley was in rough shape. She hadn’t wanted to interfere with my writing time, but the diseases my children had been spreading for the past month had finally gotten her. So we cut our date night short, settling for a quick meal at Bida Saigon and a stroll through the mall before getting home and in bed before 10.
This is how I know what happened next isn’t a dream.
When I woke up on Sunday, Haley was still half-zombie, so I took the bigger kids to church alone. Charlie Johnson, Ben Bannister, Michael Crowder, and Harrison Collins can all verify that I was there. By the time I got home three hours later, the kids were ready for lunch and a nap, so Haley and I fed them, got them down, and then she passed out with the baby on the couch while I descended the stairs to watch a movie in the den.
Not five minutes later, someone knocked on the front door. I knew that if I let them go longer than a round, Haley would wake up and I’d be in trouble. But there was something funny about the rhythm. The knocker didn’t follow the expected pattern: dut, dut-dut dut, dut…dut, dut. Instead, he knocked out the opening of the Super Mario theme song: dut-dut-dut, dut-dut, dut…dut.
“That’s exactly how I knock,” I thought.
Before Haley could yell down, I was at the door, expecting to be greeted by either a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness.
“Hey,” the stranger said, nodding.
The hair on my forearms stuck straight in the air. The stranger looked just like me—short, burly, wearing a dark flannel shirt, jeans, and scuffed-up sneakers. Except he was older, maybe 20 years older, with patchy five-o-clock shadow and thinning hair that clung for dear life to the top of his skull.
“I’m coming in,” he said before I could get my expression back to normal. And then he just pushed his way inside.
“Dude, my wife is sleeping…” I said before he interrupted.
“I know, I know, on the couch,” he said. “We’re going downstairs. Be quiet.”
“No, dude, you be quiet,” I said, shuffling to get in front of him. “This is my fricken house. Are you homeless or dumb?”
“You know who I am,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He signaled downstairs, hinting I should lead the way. Once at the bottom, I turned to face him. Before I could get a word out, he asked, “Is the dog still alive?”
“Gilda?” I asked, perplexed.
“Yeah, the brindle dog, the one you’ve had since you moved down here from Bayonne,” he said.
“Yeah, Gilda’s lying on the futon in my office,” I said.
“Let her over here,” he said. And then he whistled—phwee phweeeee! “You won’t have a dog again for a while,” he said. “I know you’re probably tired of this one, but she’s a good dog.”
“I know she’s a good dog,” I said. Gilda rustled from her sleep and joined us in the den. She stared at both of us, as bamboozled as I was.
“What the heck are you doing in my house?” I asked, annoyed. “Are you playing some kind of birthday joke for Mickey or Jeremy or something?”
“Oh, snap! I forgot it was your birthday. Happy birthday, loser!” he said, sarcastically, then rubbed his left hand through the few strands of hair still on his head. “Matt Osborne always said he’d tell me when to shave it,” he muttered. And then he chuckled and collapsed on the couch. “I’m exhausted. Can you get me a Corona?”
“No, dude,” I said, trying to stand my ground. By then, I was shaking as bad as if I’d just been shown a second yellow for protesting a bad call. “Again, why are you in my fricken house? My wife has strep. All I want to do is watch a movie.”
“She’s a saint, that one,” he said, in a serious voice this time, then pointed upstairs. “Alba write you yet? From the future.”
“DUUUUUUDE, leave me alone,” I said. “She’s asleep. You know these stories because you read my book. You and like ten other people.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, stopping me short. “I can’t tell you much, but I’m gonna tell you this.” He whistled a second time and Gilda jumped right up on his lap.
“NO DOGS ON THE COUCH!” I shouted.
“Are you seriously trying to wake that woman up?” he said. Now he was annoyed. “Sit down, moron.”
After a minute of stubborn refusal to comply, I settled, and he explained why he had come.
“You want to be a famous writer, right?” he asked, petting Gilda. (The stupid dog looked happier than ever.)
“Not famous,” I said, feeling self-conscious. “I just want people to read what I write. And I’d like to be able to support myself, at least, doing this.”
“Shut up,” he said, knowing I was lying. “You want to be famous and sign books for other losers who think you’re smart and funny. You’re an egomaniac, just like every artist in the history of mankind. You want to go on book tour and hang out with movie stars.”
“No, I don’t,” I protested. “I just want people to read my work, and maybe go to Paris one day and see where Hemingway used to hang out, and then, like, maybe own one beach house in Florida.”
“You’re such a moron,” he said, dragging out the descriptor. “You won’t even see Myrtle Beach if you don’t listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you.”
“How in the world would you know I’m a loser?” I said, half-shouting. “You’re bald!”
“That’s a red herring, dummy,” he responded, waving a disappointed finger in my face. “Me being bald has nothing to do with the fact that what you’re doing isn’t working. Trust me, I’m from the future.” Then he smiled a big, annoying smile.
“Future, my ass,” I said.
“You’re a religious man,” he said, not bothering with the rhetorical question. “You know your future’s already written. So just shut up and listen.”
Alright, hear this out, I thought. Maybe it’ll save me from having to post on Facebook.
“Let’s have it then,” I said, ceding my dignity to the stranger.
He talked for the next 20 minutes without stopping. The future me—he never claimed this outright, but I can’t imagine he was pretending to be anyone else—eventually explained that I did the right thing by putting up a paywall on my website. “If you don’t believe readers care enough to drop $5 on this nonsense, then you’re never going to be famous,” he explained.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to spam people asking them for money,” I said. “I’m not a sales guy. I don’t want to trick people. I just want to write.”
“You won’t have to trick anyone,” he said. “You think people like Austin White and Michael Shuemaker aren’t going to forsake a damn Starbucks drink a month to read your stories?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said.
“No one’s going to pay for the crap you’ve been writing,” he said. “Because you’re writing the wrong stuff. And even worse, you’re writing it for the wrong people. Give me a pen and paper from that drawer,” he said, pointing to where I keep Alba’s craft stuff.
“I’m gonna shoot you straight, partner,” he said. “You’re not that smart. You’re not funny, at least not like stand-up funny. You’re not attractive, and you didn’t go to some ritzy private school where everyone reads The New Yorker.”
“Frankly, you’re a loser,” he said. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just—remember when you had that whole emo phase? You weren’t really a loser to other emo kids because you were all losers. You were cool, but only to uncool people. To cool people, you were definitely a loser.”
“Alright, alright, stop, dude,” I said. “You’re making me feel even worse than I did before, and it’s my birthday.”
“No!” he protested. “No, no, no. I’m telling you what you’ve gotta change. This is the only time, ever, I’m allowed to come back and tell you this. This is like your hall pass, your GameShark.”
“First off, you gotta start writing the truth,” he said. “Has crazy stuff started happening yet? You had Waffle House with Pat Finerty after he came looking for you last year, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s just like this. It doesn’t seem real. My therapist doesn’t think it’s real. He says it’s, like, a fantasy. Maladaptive daydreaming or something like that. And I’m a freakin’ journalism professor. I can’t have people at work thinking I make stuff up.”
“Well, your therapist’s wrong,” he said. “And who cares about journalism? Nobody reads the news anymore. I’m telling you, you gotta start writing the truth, doesn’t matter how crazy it sounds.”
I nodded but didn’t say a word.
“Next, you’re gonna accept that you will never get certain people to read you, ever,” he said. “You’re not gonna get smart or successful or normal people to care about whatever you have to say.”
“These are the people who are gonna read you: the kids who studied art history in college and now work corporate jobs they hate because they feel like sellouts; the kids who dreamed of being astronauts and explorers but gave up because their parents insisted they choose more reasonable careers; the construction workers self-conscious about reading philosophy books in public because they didn’t go to college and might get asked questions they don’t know the answers to; all the moms and dads who are so tired of the daily grind, and guilty for scrolling on their phones and streaming on the TV at night, and nervous that their kids will be so broken by screens that they won’t ever open a book, that they decide to finally give this a chance after you mention it for the zillionth time at dinner.”
“Your people are out there, Brian,” he said. “I promise.”
He told me everything that is supposed to happen after today. He gave me the names of the people who would believe in me. “This is how you’ll know I wasn’t lying,” he said. “I can’t lie to you, Brian.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I asked. “Any other proof?”
He laughed. “I thought you were one of those guys who doesn’t believe in time travel,” he said, smirking. “You can’t change the past, my friend. You just gotta let the motion picture play; the future will reveal itself in time.”
When we were done talking, the Future Me kissed Gilda between the eyes. “You’re a good dog, old girl,” he said. Then he got up and shook my hand. “Take care of them all,” he said, pointing upstairs again. “I’ll let myself out through the garage. Don’t follow me.” I nodded and let him pass.
Once I heard the door click, I ran back up the stairs and stared through the thin glass beside the front door to see where he was going.
“What are you doing?” Haley asked, grunting from the couch. “You walk so fricken loud.”
I watched the man walk down the street and out of the neighborhood. Just before he stepped onto Bell, he turned back and waved at me.
“This weird dude came here, and he said he was me. But I don’t know,” I said to Haley, walking a few steps down the hallway toward the couch.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness?” she asked.
“No, this guy told me the future,” I said, going to look back out the window again. This time, he was gone.
I waited to write this story because I had therapy on Monday during my lunch break and wanted to see what a licensed professional thought. “I’m going to suspend judgment,” my therapist said, leaning back in his chair. “But how has this story affected you since?”
I tried explaining that it wasn’t a story, and because he is kind, he insisted he wanted to believe me. “I know you have a very vivid imagination, Brian,” he said, perking up. “Sometimes our minds can create incredible stories!”
“This isn’t The Secret Life of Walter Mitty!” I said. “I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming. But it felt so real.” I slumped back onto the couch, shrugging. By that point, any euphoria had worn off, and I was just anxious again.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to see if what he said comes true,” my therapist said. “Our time’s up for now. But I’ll see you in three weeks. Did this person tell you whether anything is supposed to happen by then?”
“Yes,” I said. “He gave me names.”
My therapist smiled. “Wonderful,” he said. “Let’s pray.”
I closed my eyes, and I’m sure I’ve opened them since. But I still feel like I’m in a haze. So I figured I’d write this—tell you all about this—in case it’s true. I’m sure it isn’t. I met this guy, Craig, at a bachelor party a few years ago. He told me that we’re all likely living in a simulation. And he’s an engineer, so he should now.
But I’ve got a strange feeling about this. I guess I’ll find out the truth soon enough.”
The mention aside, this is one of my favorites so far, Brian.
You just do you, man. <- - - That’s what we’re here for.