But just as I didn’t want to resent my kids, I also didn’t want to find myself too much

in love with them. There are parents who don’t like to hear their little girl crying at
night, at the vast approaching dark of sleep, and so in their torment think why not feed
her a lollipop, and a few years later that kid’s got seven cavities and a pulled tooth.
This is how we’ve arrived at the point where we give every kid on the team a trophy
in the name of participation. I didn’t want to love my kids so much that I was blind to
their shortcomings, limitations, and mediocre personalities, not to mention character
flaws and criminal leanings. But I could, I thought, I could love a kid that much. A kid
really could be everything, and that scared me. Because once a kid is everything, not
only might you lose all perspective and start proudly displaying his participation
trophies, you might also fear for that kid’s life every time he leaves your sight. I didn’t
want to live in perpetual fear. People don’t recover from the death of a child. I knew I
wouldn’t. I knew that having a kid would be my chance to improve upon my shitty
childhood, that it would be a repudiation of my dad’s suicide and a celebration of life,
but if that kid taught me how to love him, how to love, period, and then I lost him as I
lost my dad, that would be it for me. I’d toss in the towel. Fuck it, fuck this world and
all its heartbreak. I’d tell that to Connie, and she’d tell me that if that was how I felt I
was already a slave to the fear, and good luck.

Joshua Ferris
To Rise at a Decent Hour
August 2, 2015

In the hospital men’s room, as I’m washing my hands, I glance in the mirror. The man
I see is not so much me as my father. When did he show up? There is no soap; I rub
hand sanitizer into my face–it burns. I nearly drown myself in the sink trying to rinse
it off.

My face is dripping, my shirt is wet, and the paper-towel dispenser is empty. Waiting
to dry, I carve Jane’s name into the cinder-block wall with the car key.

A hospital worker almost catches me, but I head him off with a confrontation: “Why
no paper towels?”

“We don’t use them anymore–sustainability.”

“But my face is wet.”

“Try toilet paper.”

I do–and it catches in the stubble of unshaven beard and I look like I’ve been out in a
toilet-paper snowstorm.
 A.M. Homes
May We Be Forgiven
June 27, 2015

Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull: another sunrise, the
lives of heroes, failing love, war, the discoveries people made about each other. The
only thing that didn’t bore me, obviously enough, was how much money Tim Price
made, and yet in its obviousness it did.