like a Madman

This post has been in the works since the early spring, decades it seems, centuries even. For those of you that don’t rely on Tucker Carlson for the nation’s haps, that’s roughly when lockdown began. March 2020. Several millennia ago in single thirty-something years. So you can imagine the material I’ve amassed and hours of Pinot Noir sponsored soliloquys that have occurred since then. On walks with Hudson. On Zoom calls. On zoom calls while walking Hudson. With friends on the weekends and conversing with coworkers during the week, there’s something not right and it’s clear in every interaction I have. It riddles family text chains and celebrations, zoom funerals and showers. To be honest I’m not really sure what to call it, but the pandemic’s ability to magnify and distort, upend and enrage, and ultimately depress and undermine our lives has manifested itself in ways more absurd and annoying than I, or Steven Spielberg, could ever have predicted. Ah 2020, with its barely fragrant dystopian aroma, a year like a pandemic itself. A universal affliction.

I’ll get right down to it, what the actual duck is everyone thinking right now? Yes, even you reading along. Actually, chances are you’re a woman or one of my family members and should share this with a male acquaintance, stat. Just kidding. Though I do believe women are getting the short end of the apocalypse stick, it isn’t just men to blame for the rampant inane behavior I witness day in and day out. But yes, by and large, all you dudes lock it up. Pass it on.

So where to begin. The guy taking a dump next to his uber in front of my patio last week who threatened to shoot me (with his air pistols, pew pew) for inquiring as to why he was defecating on our sidewalk? Nah. Hmm, what about my Halloween-hating bumble date who on our first meeting made me walk three rather hilly miles through Woodley Park with no snacks or beverages of the adult variety (or any other for that matter)? I mean that one is a doozy, we’ll get more details on that in the next post. But no, I’d like to start more generally. An ode to our formerly civilized society, if you will.

This is to the geriatric dickhead who verbally accosted my sister in a Palm Springs restaurant last week, to Jim in the Super Duty Ford who was butthurt I didn’t let him cut me off on River Road that Saturday, and to the wives of both men who stayed silent amidst their outbursts. For the women at work expecting raises and bonuses and the like, only to be told to count themselves lucky to have a job at all. For families and friends at war over politics and prose, you all know it’s not worth it especially those politicians and trolls. Use your energy to vote. Jesus Christ, stop talking and do it.

I’m writing to the friends that were just façades, the fakes and phonies of this year, and to the parasites from the past that have resurfaced once again. To the break-up pizza givers and pandemic basic bitches, to those memories from outside Boston, all trash, I’m fine just to toss them. Ah, the poetry in pandemonium creates the most satisfying melody, it erupts in rhyme as I bid goodbye to the ash of 2020.

But I won’t let go of what’s right, the stuffing worth saving. Though the goodness in us all has been packed out by this year, by these leaders, and by this pandemic, it’s not gone. Be a good friend and a gracious neighbor. Check in with your family and lead by giving the benefit of every doubt we all have. Let go of what is dead and not coming back. I know I am. In a year that’s left no one unscathed, each day that passes I’m convinced this year is one of truth. What that means remains to be seen — though it sure doesn’t feel good. In the meantime, we can do better. So much better. I know it.