I woke up about ten minutes before my alarm this morning, and it still pissed me off. Oscar slept on the floor because I’d rolled over onto him at about 2:30. He knows my alarm means breakfast, so he bullied me into getting out of bed and feeding him. I brushed my teeth, cleaned out his litter box, made my bed, picked out my clothes for the day, and showered. Since it was super-early, I worked on a drawing until my favorite café in the DMV region opened at seven. I took the Metro the two stops and huffed and puffed it up some very Bay Area terrain. When I arrived, I enjoyed a breakfast sandwich while reviewing the proofs for my novel. I then continued working on my drawing and watched people for the next three hours, until the art store opened. I didn’t need paint, ink, or paper, so I just browsed. I also found the comic book shop Nicole had shown me years ago, but it wasn’t open yet. In this beautiful, late-summer day, I explored Silver Spring, Maryland and went home to open up my social medias.
The one and only post I could find that acknowledged what’s on my mind today was the car salesman meme, this one selling a plane that can crash into two buildings for the price of one.
“Listen. And understand. That cat is out there. He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with. He doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until the birdie-on-a-stick is dead.”
In another regeneration, I went out a lot with my friends. Sometimes it was with one friend (Hugh or Mark) or it was a salon of drunken idiots (Rita) or it was rock and roll (Satanicide). Even though I was depressed, I cherished my adventures, and every Sunday, during my downtime at The Post, I summed them up and sent them out to a select group of friends who hadn’t yet told me to stop sending them.
I’m at an age where I stop telling people how old I am and start rounding up. My ex got custody of almost all of my friends in the divorce, and all of my hobbies are solitary, so I don’t have as many adventures anymore. That said, three big things happened to me Monday and Tuesday, and I’m going to report them to you.
First, Oscar is growing up to be a cat, where before he looked like a black ferret. He’s a teenager now, so all he wants to do is play, and when he’s not trying to convince me it’s dinnertime, he’s bugging me to get the birdie-on-a-stick and wave it in his face. He’s sweet, but I have a job.
One of my favorite things to do with Newcastle was take him outside to explore our backyard. One of my favorite things to do with Henry was put him in a harness and take him for a walk. I bought Oscar a harness, and a backpack so I could go for walks with him. It stressed him out, but if he could get used to it, he might have a good time.
Monday, I got him into his harness, which is hard because he’s coated with a thin layer of butter, loaded him in his backpack, and walked the three blocks to find the only open area of grass in my neighborhood.
I opened up the backpack, and he very slowly made his way out, saw me, and freaked out. He squeezed out of the harness and ran straight into traffic. I ran right after him, kicking off my flip-flops in the street, and I didn’t care if I got hit by a car, as long as Oscar got to safety. You’re not going to believe what happened next.
All four lanes of traffic stopped to let us make it across. I was expecting to watch Oscar die, but the asshole drivers of DC had our backs. I chased him through three backyards until he tried to hide under a hosta, and I scruffed him and brought him home. Because flip-flops are flat, you can’t tell they got run over.
That was Monday.
I love my job, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fray my nerves. Between ending my day with that and public transit (still better than driving), I don’t want to have to deal with the nuisance of our concierge only being at the desk 50 percent of the time. So when I pick up any packages that come in for me, I tend to pick them up after I get out of the shower. Don’t worry, I dress first.
At 4:30 this morning, I picked up a package from Missouri and just assumed it was the carved owl I just bought for my owl shrine. It was not. With Oscar’s supervision, I opened the box to find another box, and in that box was this mug:
I did not order this mug. In the mug was a business card for a potter who lived in Florida, along with something that looked like a bookmark. On the back was a lovely note thanking me (yes, me—it said “Dear Jeremiah) for the letter I’d sent years ago and how moved they were. Life was happening, so they hadn’t replied, but they sent the mug as a token of appreciation. Signed, “William Pona tawa sina.”
I had no idea who the holy hell this was. I did not remember writing that letter years ago, and I didn’t know a William who made pottery. I visited the website and found out that’s a luxury mug. The clues clicked into place. It wasn’t the potter, it was one of my college roommates, Will. He lives in Missouri. I sent him an essay I’d written about him two years ago, and I’d never heard back.
I figured it out, but I didn’t figure it out in time to stop me from sending a polite email to the potter thanking him for the gift and expressing joy that my words touched him so much, as if I knew him.
That squared away, I had one last detail to attend to. What the hell is “Pona tawa sina”? I looked it up, only raising more questions. Pona tawa sina is from a language called Toki Pona, which was invented in 2001 and bridges the gap between all languages. Kind of like Esperanto, only less baffling. Pona tawa sina literally means “goodness toward you.” It’s a way of saying goodbye or thank you.
That was before work. When I arrived, there was a surprise waiting.
One of the many, many perks of my job is that we get stretch breaks lunchtime Wednesday and Thursday. When I started eating at my desk a year ago, the stretch instructor was Katja, a young, slim, petite, cute-as-a-button person with a pink pixie cut and a lot of energy. Katja was recently replaced with Hali, a young, slim, petite, cute-as-a-button person with a pink pixie cut and a lot of energy.
I hang drawings of Newcastle, Oscar, myself, and other pictures I’ve done, practically daring people to ask me about it. Hali took my dare, and I found out they were a bit of an artist themselves. They’re just learning about watercolors and painting around town, so the next day, I brought them my retired brushes, the cool travel set I’d purchased in Doha. There’s nothing wrong with them, I’ve just traded up. They’ve been occupying a small space in my art drawer, and I wasn’t going to throw them away. Now they have a loving home.
There was a thank you card on my desk when I got to work this morning. Hali wanted to tell me how important those brushes were to them, and they could not wait to take them out for a spin. They have an Etsy store, and I bought some stickers.
I’ve become such a hermit, it’s hard to imagine that I am having any sort of impact in this world. And yet today, the first thing that happened to me today was someone making sure I understood I had affected them, twice. Maybe I was wrong about my impact.
The decision is made, after I have educated myself on the finer points of crochet, to enter that vast, unforgiving hellscape on my quest for that sacred nectar, which is Half & Half. Maybe some of that Creamed Ice.
10:01
After crossing vast, unforgiving swaths of the Apartment Complex of Totten, during which I crossed the threshold of the Door of Fire, I was forced to endure an Endless Staircase to the ground floor, to the Sidewalk of Riggs Road, next to the entrance of that wretched pit where the reasonable dare not tread. The sign over the door was in a language that is not my native tongue. The English translation is “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.” In Elvish, it reads “Walmart.”
10:02
I encounter my first obstacle before stepping foot into this dark place. It is a vast, unforgiving sea of shopping carts, clustered in the entrance. Had they only queued properly, there would not be this barricade, but they all insisted rolling into the terrifying visage of Capitalism before all others, and even the extra-wide doors could not accommodate them. Madness has me in its grip, and I’m not even inside yet.
10:08
I have found freedom from the crush of acolytes to this terrible shrine, and now I will cross this vast, unforgiving wilderness retrieve the elixir. The dilemma weighs mightily on my heart: the Creamed Ice is located in a Frost Machine near the front door, but if I put it in my grasp first, it runs the risk of melting. I determine the time it takes to walk quickly to the Aisle of the Dairy and walk back to the Frost Machines would be negligible.
10:12
I have been anticipating an eternal wait in the vast, unforgiving wilderness of the line for the Checkout of Personal Agency, but I could not see the length of it until I was in that place. I feared those ahead of me in the aisle were also going to be waiting in line, and yes, my prophecy was fulfilled when the gentleman with the cart steered for the blind area which prevented the line from spilling all over the store. I stood behind him and waited.
10:17
I have been deceived. My worst fears have been realized. I have been smitten by the Sword of Irony as I discover that the line holding me prisoner did not exist. Indeed the real line was a vast, unforgiving wilderness, twice as long as the one I’d deluded myself into standing in. I resigned myself to my fate and took my place behind the Monk of Small Stature, who crippled me with his Gaze of Stink-Eye.
10:26
When I finally emerge from the meandering queue, weaving in and out of clothing departments, I see the Checkout of Personal Agency. Of the seven machines displaying banners with the Checkout of Personal Agency’s motto, “15 Items or Less,” three of the machines have been struck dead, and the life of a fourth drained from it as I watched. The Monk of Small Stature needed to apprentice himself with an employee until he could operate the machine. He is half my age. There is a vast, unforgiving wilderness ahead of me. Morale is low.
10:29
I swipe my two items through the red light, and one of them freezes the machine. A denizen must unlock it, and one does, after a fashion. It happens again. Finally, I allow the machine to suck upon my credit card. The exit is blocked by lost souls who needed their receipts checked, so I wait. When I am free, I ride the elevator to my floor and walk across the vast, unforgiving wilderness to my home.
10:35
I am greeted by my faithful ward, who tells me, “Mew!” He has been alone for the past thirty-eight minutes, the poor wretch. Was this dark, harrowing journey into the vast, unforgiving wilderness of the underworld worth it? I think of the sweet nectar as I put it in my Device of Refrigeration. Yes, it is worth it.
My novel was accepted by the publisher almost two years ago. I read the contract very carefully, looking for tricks and traps, but it was straightforward and very generous. The cover looks great, and they were very responsive to my concerns about fonts. Because the title is a Navajo word, they were able to accommodate the unique accenting of the language. The layouts went well. Everyone has been extraordinarily professional. But that’s not why this is taking so long.
I received the first edits fifteen months ago, and they were really bad. When I realized the editor had caused a lot of problems, I asked Production to fix it. They rejected all the changes and brought in a new team. They were just as bad. So was the third edit. The fourth edit was a vast improvement, though it wasn’t until a later round that they stopped changing “Oxen’s Razor,” which was the term used by a teenager trying to sound smart, to “Occam’s Razor,” not getting the joke.
I’ve been going back and forth with them for fifteen months, during which I’ve reread my novel nine times. I’m getting kind of sick of it.
(To be clear, I’m really proud of this book, and I think it’s some of my best writing.)
Now that they’re only sending me the final proofs, I have to edit my own book. Because of my attention span, I can’t catch all of the errors on a pass, so I have to go through it again and again, stripping out the errors. On the ninth pass, I saw that I had misspelled Jennifer once, and I didn’t notice the other eight times I read it. Also, I’m catching some continuity mistakes, like who gave the main character his pickup. These things should have been spotted by an editor.
To be clear, I’ve liked working with them so far. I just can’t figure out how this one department can be so unskilled and unprofessional. And I can’t figure out why the publisher isn’t taking this more seriously. When I self-published three years ago, my novels went up covered in typos. I reread them at least three times, and I still missed a lot. And that’s embarrassing. How am I able to hold up a book proudly and brag about it if it looks self-published? This looks bad for the publisher too. So I just returned the latest round of proofs. I will spend another fifteen months doing this if it’s what it takes to make this perfect. I painted this picture of Aaron and Jen, the main characters of the novel, Hanììbààz Rising because it was on my mind again.
Prior to Sunday, Oscar and I were living in Nicole’s apartment, formerly our apartment. I stayed there for two weeks, and Oscar stayed a week longer than that. The problem is, Henry has been really depressed and crying all night since Newcastle and I moved out, so she was thinking of getting him a kitten. But she wanted to practice with someone old enough to defend himself.
Oscar and Henry did not get along. When the former first showed up at the latter’s, there were some really bad fights, so Nicole’s boyfriend cobbled together a gate to keep them apart, but they could get used to each other. They called it the DMZ. Oscar could jump on top of it without much effort. They could be in the same room together, and on my first night, they snuggled up on opposite sides of my lower legs and we all slept together.
His last week there, Oscar finally had the Surgery That Dare Not Speak Its Name, and I walked him to the vet in a backpack. I couldn’t watch his reaction, but he was quiet, and I think that’s a good sign.
But now we’re home. Nicole’s apartment is 850 square feet, mine is 435. I’d love to take him for a walk, but on the rare occasions I don’t pass out from blood loss and get him into the harness, his feet stop working. His motto is “Death from above!”; but he doesn’t have a lot of heights to aspire to.
I don’t want Oscar to get bored. I play with him a few minutes periodically. I talk to him, I let him sniff whatever’s in my hand, I scratch him behind the ears whenever I see him, I open my window in the middle of a heat wave. I don’t want him to get bored. I bought him a new cat tree and backpack. The tree arrived today, it took me over an hour to assemble it. It’s the perfect height to loaf out in front of the window. On the lower tier, there’s a ledge that’s perfect for hanging out with Dyad while he’s working.
Unfortunately, I have to get rid of the old one. Until January, I’ve never lived alone in my life, especially when it came to Newcastle. I’d never made a big purchase for my cat, the love of my life. It came from our joint account when I was married, and Nicole and I split expenses for the cat. So the first thing I bought was a tree for Newcastle. It was not a tall one, for an old man, but he never used it anyway.
Newcastle only lived alone with me for six weeks, and he never used it. Sometimes he’d get into the hammock that was the same height as my desk. Even if I wasn’t looking, I knew he was there. He was my anchor. Since then, Oscar enjoyed the hammock a lot whenever I was working.
I hated throwing the tree away because it’s the last monument I had to him. But I got a new kid, and I’m buying presents for him now.
Last week was a terrible week at work (this one’s not looking much better). I was just basically buried in work, but I fell sick for half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday, and no matter how efficient I was, no matter how much Adderall I took, I could not catch up.
Some of this momentum must have carried over to the weekend because I chose to work on a project I needed to finish by this morning at the latest, but I also wanted to finish some art I’d worked on during my busy week.
In addition, I was thinking about ink-washes and the fact that I had several bottles of ink left over from when I was writing my books by hand. I rushed through these drawings, so they are not great drawings. I’m not sure I really enjoyed them very much, but I’m also not sure I did them right.
If there’s one thing people know about me, it’s that I’m a writer. This goes all the way back to the fifth grade when I wrote my first short story, a Top Gun fan fiction. I showed it to my dad, and he had notes. Everyone’s a critic.
I have over thirty novels to my name, as well as countless short stories, a well-curated folder of most of my essays and blog entries, as well as a memoir and whatever the fuck “Three Stories in One” is supposed to be. Between “Three Stories in One” and my school newspaper column, writing made me a celebrity in high school. I went to college to learn to write. I moved to New York to become a writer, and while I didn’t become published, I certainly enjoyed the craft.
My marriage was great for me as a writer because she had an idea for a novel (I’d only written short stories so far), she got a lead on a contest I ultimately did pretty well in, and she bullied me into submitting my work. Ten short stories were published in various anthologies, but I got over sixty rejections on a novel I wrote by accident while she was in Namibia.
That basically stopped me from writing until seven years ago, when I entered another season of the contest and decided that I was going to write a novel. I did. And then I wrote the next one. I wrote the novels to write them, and I wasn’t going to kill my self-esteem with dozens more rejection letters. I tried again, though, submitting my best novel so far, but after thirty-plus rejections and Covid, I gave up.
Years later, I saw an ad for a writing service. Among the their many offerings is help (from agents and editors) with writing your query letters and synopses, copyediting your samples, and helping find the agents and publishers your work is the best match for. I purchased all of these. They found me five agents and five publishers because I didn’t want more than ten rejections. I got nine. The tenth should be publishing me in a few months.
If there’s two things about me that people know, it’s that I’m a writer and a Doctor Who fan from way back. I grew up with Classic Who, where the effects were cheap (but very imaginative), the acting was not Method, and the serials were always one or two episodes too long. Then it got cancelled, and seven years later, there was a movie with flashy effects and motorcycle chases. When that went over like a fart in a car, they rebooted the series nine years later, and it runs to this very day.
I’ve loyally watched all of NuWho (or Who Redux) as they have gone from Doctor to Doctor and showrunner to showrunner. Prior to last year, the latter was Chris Chibnall. It did not go over well. It started going badly before his era even began because the Doctor was going to be played by an icky girl. I defended Chris Chibnall from the Doctor-Who-not-Nurse-Who/Go-Woke-go-broke contingent who were complaining about the writing so they could mask their sexism. However, I wasn’t enjoying the show anymore. When it wasn’t completely forgettable, the mythos was being torn down, and the character was being stripped of everything I loved about them. The problem was indeed the writing. As a writer, I’m not happy to say this.
When a project goes wrong, especially on TV, it’s almost always the writers. And considering how much people complain about the writing, it’s no wonder the studios want to use AIs to do it.
Movie and TV writing are not art; they’re science. In a movie, you must, by around page 55, have some kind of major conflict. And the audience is so trained to expect this that The Avengers dragged a little in the middle because the epic fight on the Helicarrier took place on page 70. If characters don’t hit their beats like they’re supposed to, people can’t handle it. Look at the reaction to The Last Jedi. I tried writing a pilot, but I couldn’t make it fit into five acts.
Movies have endless script doctors fine-tuning every little thing. A sitcom will have rooms full of writers, fine-tuning every single joke. Producers and studios give their input. Actors love to give their input too, sometimes rewriting their lines. A producer (or a comic book editor) will have an idea, and they’ll make a writer make it happen. The writers everyone is complaining about are a committee, about as far from the process of writing I enjoy.
Don’t get me wrong—I love a good collaboration. Some of my favorite memories are sitting in Shane’s studio, bouncing ideas off of each other and creating a screenplay and a lost screenplay. But that’s not what happens. In movie and TV writing, someone is always reading over your shoulder and telling you they can do it better, unless you’re Neil Gaiman.
I used to want to be Joss Whedon (before we found out he was a violent creep) because he had made a brand for himself. He had fans who would watch anything he wrote, even Dollhouse. They picked apart his mythology, they obsessively watched for Easter eggs. I wish someone would do that to my stuff. Yeah, it would be great to have fans. I wish my other twenty-nine novels had readers.
On the other hand, I sit here in my cozy apartment with my swiftly growing cat, living my life with (mostly) peace and contentment. How miserable would I be if I were a professional writer?
If I were a novelist, I would still need a job because authors get paid shit (there’s a finite amount of money for authors, and it’s all going to JK Rowling). If I were a TV writer, I’d have to hustle just to make minimum wage while the studios figured out ways not to pay me, and I’d have to share my inspiration with a crowd and a belligerent showrunner. If I were a movie writer, the screenplay I poured my life into is going to be ripped up and reassembled, so I won’t recognize it.
The Princess Bride is a classic because of the performances and the art direction and costuming and sets, all brought together by Ron Howard, but every single quirk, every single quotable line came from William Goldman. You can’t have a movie, TV show, or comic book without the writing (though the founders of Image Comics gave it their best shot), but people don’t notice unless it’s bad.
I’m living my best life right now. I’m not famous, and maybe that’s okay. I used to feel like I was supposed to have a bestseller for my twentieth high school reunion, but I don’t want to hand over parts of my soul to people who have no respect for me. I’m a writer. I write. And that’s good enough for me.
As anti-Woke comedian Jerry Seinfeld would say, “What is the deal with Oscar?” Since I think a few people might be interested, I decided to fill you in.
I used to have a cat named Magik. When Magik was a kitten, there was a mishap, and he didn’t get fed for two days. Magik, as a result, was food insecure. He ate each meal like he was preparing for a famine. Since Oscar was starving when Nicole rescued him, I was concerned that he was going to overeat and be a roly-poly like Magik was.
Luckily, he has different ideas. He used to try to steal the food out of my hand, no matter the cuisine. Now he has no interest in human food, except for meat sticks, and even then, he spits out the teriyaki. Original flavor only. That, the wet food, and a little bit of dry food are the only things he eats now, which is a huge relief. If he started getting chubby, I was going to have to start saying no.
Oscar has grown. Again, when Nicole found him, he was starving. The vet couldn’t give me an estimate of his age because of the damage. But he’s all repaired, and now he’s starting to become a cat. I mean, I knew he was a cat this whole time, but he had the build of a ferret and an unnaturally long tale. Now he’s starting to fill out, and his coat’s growing in.
His favorite perch is my shoulders. Despite having claw marks (through clothes) all over my back and arms from him making himself comfortable, I really love having him there. Of course, that means I have to stand until he gets bored. Also, he’ll hop up on the bathroom counter while I’m getting ready for a shower, and his eyes will start to focus on my deltoid muscle, and I have to intervene before I pass out from the blood loss. He bit my shoulder as he settled in, but he suddenly stopped, as cats are wont to do.
I still haven’t told management I have a cat.
Even though there’s a heat wave (otherwise known as An Average Summer in DC) right now, I’ve been opening the window so he can experience the outdoors. I’m pretty concerned that he’s going to get bored. I have a very small studio, and he’s already explored every corner. He becomes a fuzz-saw when I put him into his harness, and when it’s on, his legs don’t work. So no walks.
He is constantly begging me to play, and I try to keep up with him, but that kid’s got a lot of energy. I have to tell him, Dad is very old, and his elbow has been giving him problems. His favorite toy is the long, skinny ribbon someone left in the hallway (Exhibit A). As you can see from Exhibit B, it’s the most stylish toy any cat has.
I still miss Newcastle. I’ll remember how happy he was exploring the backyard, and it doesn’t make me sad, for the most part. Sometimes a memory will drag me to tears, though. It’s not because Oscar isn’t a good cat. Oscar is a great, well-behaved cat. But he can’t replace Newcastle.
I love having the little guy around. He’s a great lap cat, and he’s always so excited to see me when I get home. He’s a talker, but at his high pitch, it sounds more like singing. He tends to stick close to me, even if he’s mad about something. His favorite place to play is on my bed, so he’s starting to shred my comforter. He hasn’t settled into routines, so he’s unpredictable, and that is exciting.
I could go on for pages, just rest assured that Oscar is getting spoiled, and so is his dad.
Fort Totten is a border neighborhood with Maryland, and from 1 June until 29 June, all four of the Maryland Metro stops are closed. People are getting shuttled in, but the same number of people are riding. Why do all the cars feel more crowded than usual?
We’re all exhausted. We’re all in drab colors, as if our souls had been drained. On one side are the manual laborers. On the other side are federal workers, along with non-federal office workers. There are even tourists. There’s seats, but I’d have to sit next to someone, so I stand.
For a moment, the mob of students with their backpacks and white-guy afros parts and I get a glimpse of someone I can only call Barbie. The blonde sat down, her back straight, her legs demurely crossed. Her sundress went all the way to the floor, and it appeared blinding pink, but was really white with small red flowers. She looked pleased with herself.
The train pulled into Judiciary Square, and she jumped out and cat-walked out of the station and out of my life, taking the color with her.
I am extraordinarily lucky to have my job. One reason is that they give you a birthday gift every year (an electronic gift card). For some reason, they keep screwing up mine. This year, I waited all week for my birthday gift, and it didn’t arrive. Typically, it would get there on your birthday, or if it’s on a weekend, on the Friday before. I thought that maybe they would email it on my actual birthday. They didn’t. I reached out to HR, who didn’t answer my email until I wrote them again, and they sent me to someone else, who sent me to someone else.
Remember how I wrote that blog post about how it’s great to have my name? They sent my present to the other Jeremiah in the office. That didn’t annoy me so much because I get his email and Teams message all the time. I’ve even gotten into arguments about my own identity. (“You sent this to the wrong Jeremiah.” “But you’re Jeremiah.”) But when you receive a gift card that says “Happy Birthday!” and it’s not your birthday, shouldn’t you say something to somebody? In all this time, he’s either never received an email intended for me, or he just ignores them. Right now, I think it might be the latter.
But I got my gift card. Now I need to buy something that’s not an action figure or art supplies.
Jeremiah Murphy 