Jack

Ridgewood Interlude

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

{/* Restored from git history 2026-07-03. Two things before this goes live: 1. The "with my boyfriend" clause in the final sentence — your privacy call, made once already when you deleted the post. The sentence works ending at "release party" if you want it out; it's also the most "It's me" line in the piece if you want it in. 2. Consider restoring with the original date (2026-06-14) so it sits two days before the metempsychosis essay — "Moving on from Joyce" followed by 4,500 words on Joyce is a diptych worth engineering. */}

He asked me, "so what kind of literature do you like?"

We were sitting on the deck overlooking the yard, where a bonfire was going. We had been drinking wine and eating oysters. It was a birthday party for someone I didn't know before I got there.

I told him that I had been fixated on James Joyce for a really long time, but I felt like I consciously needed to move on from him. Joyce was too all-consuming and I felt like he occupied too much real estate in my head. Bloomsday was coming up and I figured I'd make that my last moment with Joyce and then move on. I told him that I used to be really into William S. Burroughs, when I was a bit younger.

"He was one of the beats right? Didn't he write On the Road?"

{/* The exposition in your next two replies is the piece's one soft spot — the dates-and-Columbia recitation is informing, not observing. Worth tightening so the weight lands on HIS reply below, which summarizes Burroughs better than the facts do. That exchange is the engine of the piece. */}

"That was Kerouac. But he, Allen Ginsberg, and Burroughs are considered like the canonical Beat authors. They all met in New York when they were young and stayed in touch and sort of boosted each other's work over the years."

"Wasn't Burroughs a bit older though?"

"Yeah, he was like eight years older than Kerouac and twelve years older than Ginsberg. Kerouac and Ginsberg went to Columbia together, but Burroughs didn't."

"So he was like this dark, older gay guy who moved to New York and kind of lurked around the lit scene at the time?"

Somebody came out and joined the conversation and we changed the subject. I moved down by the fire and picked up a raw oyster. It had presumably been sitting there since the beginning of the party. I wasn't sure whether it was still safe to eat. I asked, should I eat this oyster? Everyone told me it was fine, so I decided to take the risk and swallowed it whole. The next day I caught the J train to the Lower East Side to attend the Spectra Poets release party with my boyfriend.

Friday the 13th

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

They directed me to the left-hand line leading downstairs. A German woman stopped me at the gate. She said:

"What brings you out tonight?"

"I wanted to see a show."

"Whose show?"

"L— I guess."

"You guess or you know?"

"I'm here to see L—."

"So you're here to see L—."

"Yes."

"Okay."

She let me further in. At another check, somebody scanned the ticket on my phone. They placed stickers on my cameras. No photos. No videos. No reentry.

The place was completely dark except for thin, red spotlights that scanned the floor automatically. Fog rolled around everywhere and there were many hidden alcoves and corridors.

I walked to the back of the chamber to the all-gender restroom. The graffiti said things like:

Eat shit and die alone

Free Palestine

Where the trans people at?

Punch Nazis in the dick

I mostly drank Red Bull all night. But at one point, I decided to get a drink with alcohol in it. I saw they served Boulevard Quirks and didn't quite believe it. I had always associated them with Kansas City Taylor Swift culture. Seeing them in an underground dance club in NYC made me feel like I might be dreaming. I didn't think they were a national brand.

I pointed at the Quirks and shouted "are those Boulevard Quirks?"

The bartender scowled and shouted "what?"

I pointed again and repeated, "are those Boulevard Quirks?"

He screamed: "Look at ME, in the FACE, and TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT."

I said I wanted a Boulevard Quirk and he pointed to the payment terminal and said "it's right there."

It was a Quirk. I wasn't dreaming. I paid in cash and walked out of the club into the night. I found a pack of Lucky Strikes on the ground. It was 3 AM, Saturday the 14th.

The Capitol Corridor

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The seats on the Capitol Corridor are arranged differently than any other train I’ve been on. Instead of airplane-style rows, the seats are a series of cafe-like booths with a table in the middle, communal. And the attendants check your ticket as soon as you get on. I sat down and, over the intercom, the conductor announced that we had a full train and that our bags were to go in the overhead compartment and not on the seat beside us. I stood up and dutifully stowed away my backpack.

I sat back down and, presently, an enormous man in light-brown, high-heeled, snake-skin boots, cut-off jeans, Hawaiian shirt, and sunglasses like a mask came frantically lumbering down the aisle, bumping all and everyone with his gigantic Kelty backpack. He pointed at the seat across from me and groaned inquisitively.

“Be my guest,” I told him.

He flopped down, wheezing, pouring sweat, and began to unload his pack upon the table. A half-eaten, unwrapped burrito flopped out and leaked beans and rice on the plastic. Several beat-up paperbacks and magazines and other such pieces of ephemera joined it. Finally, a Nintendo Switch emerged and he began to game, still gasping for breath and blotting his face with his rayon shirt sleeve.

I relocated to the lounge car and found an isolated seat quietly adjacent to a reading girl. I got my Houellebecq out and set it on the table. But it sat there, unread, for the entire trip. Instead, I watched the rolling, golden foothills of the Sacramento Valley pass me by, interspersed with bright fields of blue from the deltas and flashes of green along the irrigation as the empty prairie transitioned to the industrial labyrinth of the bay.

I eavesdropped on a man as he harassed the cafe attendant. The man seemed homeless and on drugs. The homeless-looking man sounded confused and lazily agitated. I couldn’t quite make out what he was on about, but he asked things like: can I get that beer poured into a glass of ice? What about that drink? I’ll have a hot dog. Actually, what kind of hamburgers do you have? Give me a pack of mixed nuts. Never mind. Why can’t I have a cup of ice? And so on. The attendant seemed defeated.

“Sir,” he said, “I have tried to help you. Now can I get you anything?”

A security attendant appeared and asked what the deal was. The cafe attendant’s eyes locked on the security attendant desperately.

“Nothing,” the probably-on-drugs man said, glancing around the cabin, dumbfounded, “I just want to know what my options are.”

He then waded to a corner seat and eyed the storefront suspiciously. At intervals, he would get up, and the entire encounter repeated itself. This cycle went on uninterrupted for the entire two-hour trip.

Eventually, we got to Emeryville, and I caught my connecting bus to San Francisco. The bus was large, silver-plated, with black seats. I had an entire row to myself as we rode across the bay into the city. They dropped us off beneath the Salesforce tower and I strolled out into the tepid sunlight. I hadn’t been to the city since the lockdown. It was very different. Rather than a statuesque ghost town, it felt lively, crowded. My hotel was only a ten minute walk from the bus stop and I marched down Mission street and took a right at the City College.

The lobby of the hotel was completely modern: black tile, black marble, panel mirrors on every wall. But when I got checked in and walked up the creaky stairs, I found the hotel proper to be sort of worn in with worn-down wooden hand rails and aging carpet that groaned as I walked down the fourth-floor hallway to my room.

I Am Not Afraid of Airplanes

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

By the time I was checked in and past security, I still had over two hours before my flight. The sign at my gate didn't even say "Sacramento" yet. The new airport is nice. I think it might be the nicest airport in the United States. I've heard people say that. The bathrooms are an array of unisex pods with neon track lighting. They have restrooms for dogs too. Sexy backpackers, Great Plains working-class people, and businessmen in linen jackets marched the terminals purposefully. I sat down in a booth and read a few chapters of Annihilation.

I boarded the flight behind two ancient Mennonite women. I guess I don't know for sure that they were Mennonite. But they wore that traditional gingham dress along with neon-colored walking sneakers and white bonnets. I asked them whether they were traveling or going home. Traveling, they said with big, satisfied smiles.

The plane was packed full. By the time I got on, no window seats were available. I sat down next to an older couple who had their headphones safely inserted. The flight was five hours long and thoroughly unpleasant. For a few hours, I managed to sink into my book and ignore my situation. The turbulence was bad, the engines screaming. I felt like I was locked in a body-sized cage. I felt like a factory-farmed layer hen. By the fourth hour, the cabin became raucous with coughs, groans, sardonic laughter, complaints, and tired conversation. I could no longer read my book comfortably. I popped a nicotine lozenge and felt it poison my mouth. My airline snacks remained untouched and stuffed in the pouch of the seat in front of me. We began our descent through a maelstrom of even heavier turbulence. The voices began to yelp and whimper. The children held their ears and screamed as the air pressure shifted dramatically. Finally, the aircraft jolted uncomfortably onto the Sacramento tarmac. The pilot told us that, unless we were continuing on to Boise, we were now free to get off the plane. I got a text from my uncle:

Welcome to CA.

He told me to meet him outside the baggage claim.