There was a mutual wishing happening in the late summer in the Moscow bookstore, Knigi Mir. The bookstore was to close. Nobody, not even Ivan, knew why, though he wished it would stay open, as it was hip and successful and they held poetry readings on Tuesday night. Young citizens from all over Moscow spent their time here, lovers cuddling over Solzhenitzyn in a loveseat, serving themselves tea from the silver samovars, debating politics in a circle on the Turkish rug, sitting and sipping on the seats placed outside during warm weather. Needless to say, countless books were held here, in all shape and form and size and genre. They had a whole section on Ray Bradbury (freshly translated into Russian), alongside the newest of the new, translations from afar, tomes from the past, and little journals and magazines published by the college kids. They even had a secret section in the back with dangerous books that were not supposed to be sold in the union, such as — ——, ———, and — ———.

Ivan Plovsky, reclining in a loveseat in the bookstore after close, was contemplating all of this, while the large, black, and eternal kitty, Behemoth, rubbed against his dangling ankles. Ivan let the loose paper fall on his lap, and he pushed his wire-rimmed copper spectacles up to the very top of his compact and bald skull. He had hair in a ring around his head, like a monk. He had big eyes and a stiff mustache, which spiked instead of curled, and mingled with his nose-hairs. He was a small, peculiar, but likeable old man, one prone to fits of poeticism and passion.

Besides Ivan, the store was empty. It was around two in the morning, he realized, when he checked the clock above the front door. His bookstore closed at midnight. Ivan felt that he should feel lonely in such a cavernous space, a space to be relinquished to the government in just a few hours. But he didn’t feel lonely. He felt quite at home.

Ivan pondered the fine night outside of the massive windows of the front of the store. This kind of Moscow night was rare: the three inevitable parts of the city, weather, pedestrians, and automobiles, were all but nonexistent, although a random lady’s laugh or man’s exclamation rang out clearly and merrily from blocks away, an interjection from another world.

Ivan looked away from the windows and back at his attempted memo for a few seconds. He looked away again and let his head hang back against the arm of the sofa. The ceiling of this store was extraordinarily high, in fact, it was confirmed to be the highest ceiling of any bookstore in Moscow. This allowed for egregiously tall bookshelves, bookshelves you could barely see the tops of, which then meant there were ladders everywhere. Ladders against shelves, ladders on the floor, they had a whole closet just for ladders. Each ladder was covered in etched signatures and declarations, of political standing, hatred, and love. Ivan realized, from the three decades this store had existed, 1930 to the new year of 1975, not a single person had injured themselves on the ladders. That was something Ivan was proud of. He scribbled that fact down on a note to insert in the memo. The memo!

Ivan was writing a letter to Moscow. He loved his city and all of the friends that stayed with him in the store, and he wanted to tell them goodbye and that he appreciated them. He also wanted to apologize and grovel at their feet for his failure to keep the store open. But it couldn’t be helped. Mail would appear, informing him that the store was not up to this standard, or that standard, or he was being investigated, or there was some new decree. All of that was somewhat typical if you wanted to sell books in this city. But, one day, two weeks ago, he received a very official unmarked letter. It was sitting on his desk in his office, and was probably why he chose the loveseat this fine morning

Ivan Ivanovich Plovsky,

It has come to our attention that your bookstore is to close. Your store will relinquished within a fortnight’s time.

It wasn’t even signed! But, he could tell it was real. He could tell from the smell of the envelope and the off-white look to it. He could tell from the sharp and hard quality of the letter paper, and from the formidable logo on the seal. So, here Ivan was. Writing a letter to Moscow.

He sighed, returned his spectacles to his nose, and attempted to write again. He decided to forgo the entire hassle of dedicating it. Dedicating was the hardest part, and he could figure it out when he actually had written the thing. Now the ideas flowed freshly, about the first day he owned the store, about how he ran old Isamov, the ladder-seller, out of stock, about how, before some writers were famous, they were simply young men and women working on their stories in his bookstore, about how Behemoth one day just appeared, about the amount of–

Crash!

It was a sharp smacking noise, followed by a contained glimmer of glass shattering. Ivan turned to the small door. The clock which usually hung above the door now lay facedown in front of it. This had happened for no apparent reason. Ivan sighed. He was just getting warm. Ivan cursed the clock.

But then, Ivan began to think. The more he considered the implications, the happier he became. Time itself had stopped in his little bookstore. What is tomorrow to a broken clock? Ivan chuckled to himself. Now, he had forever to write his memo.

Thirty-five years ago, I, and in extension, you all, came into ownership of this bookstore. I was younger then, still old, but younger, and when I first stepped into our store, it seemed larger and more expansive than anything in Moscow, larger than the Kremlin itself. I looked up at our fine ceiling, curved high towards the middle like a church, and this ceiling, which I am currently beneath as I write, seemed, and seems, to be as infinite as the night sky itself.

But I cannot be sentimental. I cannot be sentimental for two reasons. The first is that the magic of this store comes not from the ceiling, but instead from all of you. Many a writer found their roost here. Many a dreamer dreamed safely within my walls. Many a lover found a love behind my door. If you writers, dreamers, and lovers did not exist, did not dare to exist, the bookstore would mean nil. The chorus of great literature rose up, and it would have sung in vain if you all did not rise up and sing with it.

I have the urge to name all of you individually, ha-ha. I laugh because that is impossible. I have the urge to name only the most famous of you, but I feel that would do disservice to those who are genius but have not sacrificed themselves to the will of the public.

I need you all to remember, most of all, that even though our bookstore is gone, we are not. There will be places to go, meetings to attend, words to write, dreams to dream, and people to love. There will always be things to oppose, pamphlets to distribute, and signs to hold. The loss of our bookstore changes nothing.

I will be giving away our books, starting the moment you all read this. Come on in, grab what you want, be selfish, there are many, many books in here, carry these books like baby birds against your breast, and rest them gently in your bookshelves. The books have never been mine in spirit. Come take what is rightfully yours.

Ivan

Ivan signed as small as he could. He stood up and walked to the office to type it up. On his way across the store, he saw the clock, and felt an indescribable sadness for it. What is tomorrow to a broken clock? It seemed so helpless, facedown so nobody could see the time. Ivan folded up the memo, walked over, and gently picked up the clock. Beneath the body, a perfect circle of broken glass sat on the floor. The sight increased his sadness to the point that several tears fell upon the glass. The tears found the grooves and cuts, and flowed through them like water in a stream. The broken circle reminded Ivan of those stained-glass decorations on churches, each individual pane pieced together to make a whole work. Ivan could not bring himself to desecrate such a wonderful sight. He instead picked up the body, and took this glassless clock to his office, leaving the perfect circle to sit a little longer.

His office was moderate. He was rarely in it, as he preferred running the register and conversating with customers. There were stacks of books which needed rebinding, and file cabinets with correspondences and finances. The desk was one of the ugly and nondescript ones you may see in an American office, and the chair was an old swivel chair with raggedy black backing. A typewriter and an extremely sharp and beautiful letter-opener sat on the desk. Ivan, seeing his office with new eyes, laughed to himself. He realized his office contrasted quite humorously with the beauty and elegance of the rest of the store.

Before Ivan began transcribing, he made last checks on the other arrangements for the store. He would give the ladders back to Isamov, for free. Behemoth would live with him, or, wherever Behemoth felt like living. The more… dangerous books would go to a few individuals, A. –––––, V. –––––––, and F. –––––. They were set to pick them up this morning. Ivan himself only wanted one book. It was Fahrenheit 451, the first edition in Russian, and in mint condition. This book was not banned, perse, as technically no books were banned in the Union. But, it was most certainly not in your best interest to be caught reading it. He grabbed the book from his safe and placed it next to the typewriter. The placing down of the book made Ivan imagine himself leaving the bookstore with it and sleeping alone in his apartment. He became sad, and could not imagine doing such a thing. Ivan kept the book on his desk, but resolved to stay the night here, sleeping with Behemoth on the loveseat. The captain must go down with the ship, he told himself.

Ivan finally began transcribing the letter into print. He was quite good at typing and made quick time, but little edits kept getting in his way. It was impossible to put the soul of his past three decades and a half in a single memo, but he acted like it was anyways, and tried his very hardest to finalize this into the best, simplest, and most poetic thing he had ever written.

Soon enough, he realized there were no more edits to be made, except for one last blank page, which would be the first page in the memo: the dedication. Ivan leaned back in his chair, but he could not bring himself to type any further. He looked around, somewhat dazed. Despite the hopeful vigour of the memo, he really had no clue what he was going to do with his life. He was older now. He had lived through revolution and war–for what? The only thing he knew was that he had many good friends, and that he had done a good thing for a long time, whether it amounted to anything or not. Ivan again fell into a state of reminiscence, attempting to count every couple he knew that had first met at this store. There were many of them, and he had gone to every wedding, and each time the celebration was–

Crunch!

Ivan straightened. The sound was like fresh ice breaking into shards underfoot. It seemed that someone had desecrated the circle. Could his friends be here to pick up the dangerous books, so early in the morning?

Ivan peered out of his office. Stepping on the glass of the fallen clock was a government agent, with four more behind him. They were all wearing grey suits, and they all had their guns unholstered.

“I apologize about the glass, my friends. I meant to clean it up, but it was so-”

“Ivanovich Plovsky?”

“Yes, that is I. This store will be yours this morning, you know-”

“You must come with us.” The huge agents began making their way towards him, each one of them crunching the glass as they stepped through the door.

Ivan looked at his feet, then gently shut himself into the office, locking the door just after Behemoth slid through. He typed the dedication. He assembled the pages and rolled them up into a spyglass. The door began to explode inwards.

As the door was thrown open, falling with a bang off of its hinges, Behemoth slid out past the five men, who were busy staring at Ivan Plovsky, his throat cut, dead in his chair, and a beautiful, and extraordinarily sharp letter opener sitting on his lap.

That morning, a P. —— was awoken by a scratching at his third floor window. Incredulous, he sat his chin on the windowsill to direct eye contact with a black cat. P. —— opened the window outwards and untied the rolled-up paper from Behemoths’ neck. He left the paper on his table and walked to the kitchen to grab anchovies for the Behemoth, which was his favorite snack, but when he returned, Behemoth was nowhere to be found.

By noon, every artistically or politically inclined young person, and also the old people, were aware of the memo. Ivan is going under! That old rascal! I thought I’d never see it!

The door was ajar when the first ones arrived. Behemoth was still nowhere to be seen, the books in the back had disappeared, and so had Ivan Plovsky. He had simply vanished off of the face of the earth. Because of the glass near the entrance, it sounded like every customer was entering onto a frozen lake, despite it being late summer. All of Ivan’s friends and acquaintances and customers were very sad to not see him anywhere, and they were also shocked to find that an earthquake had apparently swept through the bookstore. The shelves rested their heads against their neighbor’s shoulders, the ladders were strewn flat against the floor, and books had fallen like shaken fruit from their trees, laying ripely alongside the ladders. But Ivan’s friends shrugged their shoulders and honored his wish anyways, and picked their favorite books from the floor, the ones they read over and over and couldn’t bring themselves to buy, because they loved the book so much they wanted everyone else to have a chance at reading it, and they put those books in their bags or just held them like a litter of puppies in their arms, and they left tokens of payment at the counter on their way out, either flowers, or handwritten letters, or beautiful paintings of the store, or poems about the store, or little anchovies in tins. Many of Ivan’s friends, before taking the books, spent the day in the abandoned bookstore. They spoke of all the good times gone by, and acted happy, though in the back of their minds, they could not forget that this would be the last day they would ever spend there. To an outsider strolling by, the bookstore seemed to be making good money, teeming with customers. But by four in the afternoon, when men in suits finally entered the store and proclaimed it government property, all the inhabitants left peacefully and in a docile manner, as they had already agreed upon certain apartments to meet in, or other bookstores as rendezvous.

As time went on, and people got older, and governments fell, Ivan Plovsky’s books changed from hand to hand, household to household, and became tokens of counterculture and generosity, for it was a great honor to have a book with a little red stamp on the inside cover, a stamp which read “Plovsky’s Knigi Mir, — Lusinovskaya Ave.” Many of these books still exist today within circles in Moscow, sat up behind a case, shown as a memento of a past era to younger artists and thinkers. Despite the rarity and importance of the books, the owners still tend to be generous and allow the younger ones to borrow them to read, as Ivan Plovsky himself did dedicate his final memo, quite simply, To Everyone.

Andrei Hunt

The clock fell right around close. I slammed the door too hard, but there was a second slam which I didn’t quite understand, so I turned around to look, and it was facedown on the floor. I sighed. Two weeks in, and I’m already breaking shit. I wanted to calculate how much time this would add to my closing routine, so I checked the clock above the door.

Shit.

I let the clock lay there. Technically, I had all the time in the world now, unless I randomly got a brain aneurysm and died, or something. I was holding the recycling bin, just previously full of mite-infested mass market thrillers, which I had thrown into the dumpster.

The bookstore dumpster is sad because it’s full of a lot of books. I always imagined a local writer coming around to check stock, dressed nicely and holding a flat white, arriving to see if their book is flying off of shelves, and finding all their copies missing. Holy shit! They’re selling! The writer thinks to himself. He imagines readers gobbling up the words he typed and prepares to leave the world of vanity press behind. On his way out, he splurges on a book by another local author, partially to support local authors, primarily to compare their work to his. He walks through the alley to get to main street, stopping at the dumpster to drop off his coffee. He opens the lid and looks down and sees books by James Patterson, weight-loss guides, books for and against political correctness, instruction manuals, Dr. Phil’s self-help memoir, and lastly, the fifteen copies of his own he sold to the store six months ago. He closes the dumpster in shame and throws his coffee out elsewhere. At home, he writes a Substack essay about bookstores throwing out books and the downfall of society.

Anyways, the clock was still there, on the floor. I didn’t know what time it was. I kept checking the blank space above the door and laughing to myself like a freak. The clock was a good clock. It was silent, easy to read, plain white-and-black, and consistent. I occupied myself by balancing the register. I made $1.45 in tips today.

I eventually decided to get the sweeper and clean up the whole mess. I picked up the body of the clock and placed it on the counter, then turned and knelt down to sweep up the glass, but as I leaned in, I realized that the circle was perfectly preserved. It was a stained-glass mural, the jagged lines unable to hide the previous completeness of the piece. I stood back up, unwilling to deface it, letting it sit for a little longer.

I was locking the window when the front door opened and someone muttered, shit! I turned around as I heard the glass crunch, ready to tell the customer we were closed, but Death, the Grim Reaper, was standing there, hopping up and down on the glass. He took a few more steps into the store and awkwardly leaned over to wipe the shards off his bony soles. After doing so, he straightened and we made eye contact.

“Hey there,” said Death. He shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands, sheepishly asking me to sue him. He was seven feet tall and his scythe was huge and shiny. He was all white bone.

“Hi.” I said. “Am I dead?”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to be. Brain aneurysm. Happens to the best of us.” Death looked like he felt bad for taking me to the underworld for such a reason.

“I don’t feel dead?”

“Well, you should. You know what they say. Death always shows up on time.” But Death gave me a long look and realized I wasn’t dead. “Huh. I must be early! That’s never happened before. You got the time?”

I considered unlocking the window and jumping out.

“Don’t you dare unlock the window and jump out. It’s not preventable, you know. Aneurysms happen to anybody, anybody at all. From a bookseller, to a reader. It could even happen to somebody reading a story on some sort of online website or app. There could just be a little... pop! In their head, and, well, there I am.” Death kept looking around for the clock. “So. Do you have the time?”

“I did.”

“Huh.” Death cleared his throat. “Well.”

We looked at each other for a bit.

“Listen. You’re sure- you’re sure there’s no way out of this? I mean, you made a mistake, being early. That means I have a chance, right? You made a mistake, so I can challenge you for my life. I heard that somewhere.”

“To what?”

“Something. Like, uhh, if I can tell a joke so good it makes Death laugh, my life is spared.”

“Shoot. I like a good joke.”

I paused and cleared my throat. I already knew which one to tell.

“Okay. So, there’s these twins. One’s a dentist, a really good dentist, he’s the guy all the toothpaste companies go to, he’s nationally acclaimed for his plaque prevention treatment system. The other one is a bitchass bum loser. He works at a bookstore two days a week, and the rest of the time he smokes weed and watches television. These twins, they share a place together, but the dentist pays rent. The bum twin doesn’t do any chores or anything, so the place is a mess. Anyways, one day, the dentist walks in and sees his brother watching tv, and there’s literal flies-”

“Flies!?”

“-Literal flies hovering around him. This dude seriously smells. The dentist has finally had enough. He had a shit day at work and he’s tired and there’s no food in the fridge. ‘Bro! You fucking bum!’ The dentist says. ‘Jesus, at least go and get us some doggone groceries! Take my credit card! Take my car! Just fucking do something, for Pete’s sake!’ So the bum reluctantly agrees and hops in the dentists’ car and goes on his merry way. The dentist, finally home alone, silences his phone and takes an amazing nap. While the dentist is napping, the bum is turning into an unprotected left, one of those LA lefts, the kind you really wish you had protection for. He ends up getting smooshed between a truck and a hard place. The scene is absolute carnage, I mean, it’s probably just another day on the job for you-”

“You can say that again.”

“-It’s probably just another day on the job for you, but seriously, the bum is in bad condition. He’s unresponsive. They cart him off to the hospital and hook him up with everything they’ve got, but it looks like it might be wraps. His heartbeat is slowly deadening.”

“Back at the apartment, the dentist is sleeping soundly until he’s woken up by loud knocking at his door. The knocks are slow and resonant, like church bells. The dentist assumes that his twin forgot the keys like an idiot. He walks down to the front door and opens it, ready unleash verbal abuse, but lo and behold, Death-”

“Me!”

“-Is standing there in front of him. Death is seven feet tall and has a massive scythe, and he is all white bone. ‘I’m sorry,’ Death tells the dentist, ‘but it’s time for you to come with me.’ The dentist is shocked. ‘Did I die in my sleep? Brain aneurysm?’ He asks Death. ‘No, son,’ Death responds, ‘You died in a car crash attempting to take an unprotected left.’ ‘Well that’s better. My greatest fear is the brain aneurysm.’ But then, it suddenly dawns on the dentist. ‘Holy shit!’ He says, ‘are you talking about my twin?’ Death takes a good look at him, then throws up his hands. ‘Jesus! I just went to the address on the form. Twins always get messed up in the system.’ ‘Well, Death,’ the dentist says, ‘it seems you’ve made a mistake. Is there any way, any way at all, you can spare my bum twin? He’s a real pain in the ass, but I love him.’ Death laughs and shakes his head, but the dentist is determined. ‘With all due respect, sir, you did make a mistake. That’s got to give my twin some leeway, right?’ Death thinks about it. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘you can propose a challenge. If you win, I let your twin live another day. If I win, I take him down, business as usual. Just know, I have never lost a challenge to a mortal in my entire unlife.’”

“Death never loses,” Death said confidently.

“But the dentist is prepared. ‘I challenge you, Death, to a teeth brushing competition. Whoever can make their teeth shine the brightest after two minutes of brushing wins.’ Death, who is always grinning, grins. His teeth are bone, the whitest bone you’ve ever seen. ‘I accept your challenge,’ he says. So, they go upstairs to the bathroom, and Death brushes first. He applies a dainty glob of toothpaste to his toothbrush, which is made of bone, and he begins to scrub. He scrubs nonchalantly, in large, scythe-like swoops. After the two minutes is over, he grins at the dentist. His teeth are impeccable, they’re so white you can’t even see the distinction between beaver and canine. But the dentist is not deterred. He applies his super-concentrated, industry-leading toothpaste onto his personalized toothbrush, and he brushes, he scrubs, harder than he has ever scrubbed. Foamy paste covers his entire face by the time the two minutes is over. He gargles some water, spits everything out, then smiles at Death. The light that emanates from the dentists’ teeth is stuff of holy glory, blinding, his canines sharper than Death’s scythe, his front teeth full-size mirrors. Death has to avert his gaze.”

“‘Okay, you win,’ Death says. ‘Your twin brother is spared. You, my friend, are a dentist of serious quality.’ And with that, Death fades away into the aether.”

“Twenty minutes later, frantic knocking arrives yet again at the front door. The dentist walks down and opens it. ‘Sorry, I forgot my keys,’ says his twin brother, ‘but Jesus, you do not understand what just happened! I almost died! I feel like a new man! I’m gonna get a fucking real job! They told me it’s a miracle I’m alive, and an impossibility that I can even walk! I was this close to Death!’”

“But the dentist just smiles at him wryly and says, ‘well. You could also say… I had a brush with Death.’”

The bookstore fell silent. I blinked and waited for Death’s response.

“Jesus Christ,” said Death. “You just wasted so much of my fucking time.”

I felt a strange pressure building up in my cranium.

“Well, that terrible joke was so long, I’m late for my next appointment, for a J. Epstein. Apparently, he killed himself, but I’ll have to double check. Shit looks fishy. Anyways, I’m actually gonna let you off, just because if I take the time to bring you down, I’ll be late to all my other jobs tonight, you lucky bastard. But don’t ever tell that pointless joke ever again. Or else I’ll personally make sure you have an aneurysm, right after the punchline.”

And with that, Death left the bookstore, and the pressure in my cranium faded away quietly.

After he left, I promptly cleaned up the glass on the floor, turned off the lights, quit my job, and began applying for real jobs.

Over the course of several years, he saved enough money to move by surviving on ramen and antidepressants. He flushed both away a few weeks before his flight, dreaming of the new leaf he was turning.

On the plane to Italy, he was reading Hemingway aimlessly when he came across a story called Out of Season. In it, an Italian drunkard wanted to fish with some well-to-do tourist. The tourist could have cared less about the drunkard, whereas for the drunkard, the tourist represented some idyllic state of being. The drunkard wanted them to drink marsala while fishing by the sea, but everything that could go wrong went wrong, and the tourist walked away, rejecting the offer to try again the next day. The story ended there, but the man knew that Hemingway meant for the Italian drunkard to commit suicide on the next page, the one left unwritten. The drunkard reaching out to the tourist to fish was a cry for help. The man thought it was quite a good story.

In his sixth month in Italy, he was standing above the jutting shore, watching the old men laze. He was smoking an Italian brand which tasted terrible and probably had saltpeter in it. He hadn’t made any friends yet because his Italian was lacking and he was an awkward and shy man.

As he smoked alone, a drunkard approached him and motioned for a cigarette. The drunkard was so perfectly fitted in the dress of the tramp that the man almost laughed to himself, but instead, he held out the open pack. The drunkard grabbed the entire thing, lit one, and puckered his lips and closed his eyes in pleasure. He had two fishing rods sticking out of his ragged backpack.

“Nothing like the Italian ones, eh?” His English was great.

“Nothing like ‘em.” As the man spoke, the drunkard kept his eyes closed and pointed them towards the sun, apparently uninterested in conversation. Usually, the man would allow the silence, but today, he was lonelier than usual.

“You have great English.”

“The tourists teach me. I ask each one for a little lesson, and it adds up. But if they seem too retarded to give me a lesson, I just ask for a cigarette instead.”

The man tried to laugh in a confident and self-assured manner, but it came out closer to a loud cough. In order to save face, he decided to use some colloquial joviality picked up from sitting alone at bars and listening to people speak with their friends.

“Vaffanculo!”

The Italian drunkard copied the man’s laugh perfectly. He mimed, slapping his hands on his knees.

“Ah, Italiano, eh? Possiamo parlare Italiano se vuoi, piccolo Americano gay, tua mamma e una prostituta economica.”

He spoke quickly and fluidly, so the man assumed he had misheard the words he could actually pick out. The air was thick with sea minerals and cigarette smoke, and he felt little grey crystals forming in his throat.

“I’m, I’m not too good on my Italian, sorry. But you remind me of this one Hemingway story.”

“Infatti, tua mamma e una prostituta a cosi basso costo che mi strizzerebbe gli coglioni con felicita in cambio per questa sigaretta mezza fumata di merda che tengo qui nelle mia dita! La vagina di tua madre odora di pesce, ma io pescherei comunque nella sua vagina.”

“You... want to fish?” The man asked, as the drunkard walked away with his cigarettes.

Alex is wearing a hat indoors. It says ‘New Zealand’ on it. He begins his monologue:

I’m eating this sandwich… I’m drinking this coffee… in appreciation that you made it to your twenties. Never thought I’d see it. But… next year. You can legally buy alcohol. So. Pretty psyched. It’s a good sandwich. Happy Birthday, bro. Proud of you. You are worth... something. You are worth more than... you think you are. You know? Like you can’t put yourself down, man. You’re twenty, man.

I was reading this book [shows a library copy of Kitchen Confidential] about Anthony Bourdain, and, like, looking back at his twenties, he was like:

Yeah? You know? I was like ruthless, you know? I was like… [looks off into the distance] I was an addict. I was, ya know, I was a dick. I’m a man.

I’ve learned, with my seventeen years of living, that’s what it’s all about, ya know? You gotta look back, and be like, man, what was I doing? So, that’s where you gotta be at, man. You gotta be at that point where you’re gonna look back and be like, bro... what was I even doing? Like, why... Like, I needed to get my life together. So, when you’re like thirty five, with a beautiful wife and a nice house, you better be looking back to this day and being like, man... what was wrong with me? Like, I was a tweaker. And that’s, like, good. I feel like that’s where you should be at this day. So, let this day be a checkmark... a checkpoint... of your insanity. Keep that in mind.