I Need a New Best Friend

My writing came of age during the emergence of blogging. WordPress. Internet. Yadda yadda. I was off and running as a blogger, frustrating my wife, mesmerizing myself, and picking fights with the real stars of social media at the time, Guy Kawasaki and old bearded guy, I can’t recall his name. Chris, I think.

And about the time I was getting the hang of it, my wife accidentally let it slip that she’d been to see a divorce attorney. This unfortunate event happened during couples therapy, so I was caught off guard. In my fury I started a blog: The Off Parent.

I knew the consequences of my failed marriage. My kids would grow up with a part-time dad, a weekend dad, a fractional dad. Just like me.

I became world-renowned for a week or so with a viral post on my tech blog, Uber.la. My reads surged to two or three hundred thousand views a month, or four million reads overall. Nothing came of it.

I wrote a lot. I considered all of my opinions worthy of publishing. Have an idea? Write it up and post “publish.” Easy. I still write a lot. My current best friend would say, “You’re prolific.” I don’t know if that’s a compliment or a technical term. He also said, “I dabbled in your latest story about your son, well done, write on, keep going.” I paraphrase. I haven’t heard from him about my writing in well over a year. That’s not true, I’ve only been done with the novel about my son for a few weeks. Anyway, I’m still writing.

In WordPress.

But it’s not a blog. This is not a blog post. “I am not a blogger,” I protested at the first annual Blogathon ATX in 2008. “I am a writer.” I’d probably still say that if anyone asked me. I don’t think the term blog is used anymore. I said to someone on the tennis court recently, “I’m still a blogger.” “What?” “Never mind.”

A different best friend died two weeks ago and I cannot stop thinking about him. All the things I want to tell him. We shared a love of writing and reading. I was trying to get him to write more. Not blog more. Write. I showed him Medium. I no longer write on Medium, but they did send me my royalties for last month, “$0.07.”

When I came up with this idea, just a minute ago, in the hot tub, my nighty night ritual, I was thinking of the best friend who commented on my writing. The one who died told me more than a month ago, “I read your latest chapter. I’m pretty sure I followed the entire thread.” He was both complimenting me and giving me praise for my “modern prose.” He never said that. I made that phrase up. I’m probably post-modern anyway. A post-modern novelist and poet. Oh, and a singer. I sing.

So, now that my reading best friend is dead, I think I need to seek out a different, a new, best friend. I’ve got a poet friend in mind, but he doesn’t talk on the phone or live in the same city anymore. It’s hard. He goes “sublingual” as he calls it. He never wants to talk on the phone. He sends me poems. AI-generated pop art. Occasional conversations like this take place in our thread.

That one there ^^ just happened in real-time. Life. It is now 11:27 pm on a Thursday night. “Hello.”

I try to send inspiring quotes or images to this chat group of four poets. I’m one of the four. Two of the men never respond. Unless I send a, “You guys still with us?” Then I get a response. “Just busy.” “Yep, still here.” But that’s about the depth of it. DJ and I go far. I don’t think he’s up for the role, however.

I need a new best friend. The ones I have are distant and damaged. Fuck. I need my New Mexico older brother figure back.

Who do you call when you’ve lost your girlfriend, survived your best friend, and need to share a touch of creative magic? At the moment, I’ve got a gaping wound. My best-best friend, the one I see here in the real world two or three times a week, is doing his best. Today I said, “Look, I’m going to need to you step up.” He agreed. He won’t. He always thinks about others, so it’s not that. But past 4 pm he’s hard to reach. Did I mention he’s about 18 years older than me? The one that just died was 12 years older than me. We looked the same age.

I have several best friends, as you can see. But talking about my best friend’s death seemed too massive. I refer to him now as “one of my best friends.” It’s more true. He was a curmudgeon, like me. Surly. We didn’t agree on driving styles or nicotine. Or Alexa for that matter. He was a heavy user of all three: cars, vapes, and digital assistants.

I wrote a story about him already, teasing him about his Alexa habit. I don’t think he ever read it. I didn’t serve it up to him. I thought it might hurt his feelings. And that’s the thing about writers. We capture what we see and feel. It’s often not flattering. Oops.

My apologies to all I’ve offended and all I intend to offend shortly. I’m sorry. I’m a writer.

Read more Short-Short Stories from John.