Let’s do a little math. I know—you’re already bored. But math, like profanity, makes sense sometimes.

Compounding. You put in $1,000 at 6%. Two years later: $1,123. Boring. Five years: $1,338. Still boring. Ten years: $1,790. Twenty years: $3,207. Thirty years: $5,743. That’s a 474% return on money you did nothing with.

Exponential growth, baby!

Now add a zero to that investment and bump the rate to 7%. You’ll shit yourself. That’s why those people who tell you to invest early and often are so sure of themselves. They understand the true miracle of compounding. The below graph illustrates my point.

But this is neither a financial post nor an investing newsletter. Remember, I’m an interdimensional being, so money matters are just fun experiments for me.

As I witnessed in Happy’s mind-hole, compounding is not only a miracle divined on financial altars. Its magic operates in any context, in any direction. In a sense, a human’s growth has everything to do with the choices he makes and how those choices chain react across his evolution.

We can say that all our habits, good or bad, compound over time. Attitudes are a fine example of this.

Let’s say a human, Frank from Shipping and Logistics, says something nice to another human, Vanessa from Human Resources. That positive interaction could lead to more positive interactions. And the more Vanessa talks with Frank, the more she is inclined to listen to him. She might even like him. It’s a very simple example of how a human being nice to another human can compound and progress.

It’s a shame, then, that Frank from Shipping and Logistics is always complaining to Vanessa from Human Resources. She feels frustrated and generally shitty around Frank, and every time she sees him, she wants to say, “Fuck you, Frank.” And when she says “fuck you, Frank” even in her mind, she carries an edgy and uncomfortable feeling around with her.

So, avoid Frank from Shipping and Logistics. I would, but I’m stuck in Happy’s mind-hole, which has its own challenges.

I wouldn’t call him an “asshole,” per se, but he’s also not the opposite of one.

This became apparent when I ran into a giant accounting demon from The Department of Human Intentions. He had a pocket protector and wore highwater pants.

Unlike the ski demon I bested recently, I had to be careful with this guy. He could crush me like a grape.

“Hello, you magnificent thing,” I said to The Accountant. I had to crane my neck to reach ball level with the behemoth. He was holding a large bucket of heavy, spherical things, like balls, and ignored me. “Can I help you with anything?” I asked him.

Being a connoisseur of the human mind, I can tell you that the word “demon,” which connotes something that has bad influence on human thinking, is often confused with “daemon,” which tends to be a positive, guiding force. From where I smoke my cigarettes, they are about the same. I prefer “demon” since it has a little edge, although nothing I have witnessed from these entities is malicious.

This large fucker was organizing a heaping pile of balls into buckets. Here is where I witnessed the magic. The buckets had labels that showed a human intention. I saw a bucket for financial planning, for example, and another for exercise. I can tell you that the container for financial planning was about the size of a compact car while the one for exercise was more like a trash can. There was a bucket for family logistics and another for work. And among all the buckets, a very small container labeled “gratitude.”

When the Accountant put one of his giant balls into a bucket, the container just grew larger.

“Why is that one so small?” I pointed to the shot glass labeled “gratitude.”

The giant paused his ball-slotting and narrowed his eyes at me. He was so big and intimidating that I nearly shit myself.

“Do you question my judgment?” He had a thunderous voice, like a god. I did shit myself a little.

“I am but a humble traveler,” I said. “What’s with all the balls?” He blinked and sighed, and realized I was but a simple alien. He bent down on one knee, like addressing a child.

“The spheres are intentions,” he said. “The human is overwrought with them.”

He was pretty dramatic in his word choice, but I nodded and held my composure like I respected that.

“How interesting,” I said. ‘Humans are overwrought with bullshit’ is what I would have said if I hadn’t already shit myself.

“And while some of these intentions are very clear —” he held out a sphere that showed Happy reviewing the top ten holdings of an exchange-traded fund and dropped it in the financial planning bucket, “others are not as clear.”

He showed me a ball where Happy was editing a document for work but really planning out the carpool schedule for the day’s activities. He dropped that one in the “family logistics” bucket, which, instead of overflowing, grew in size. It was big like an industrial barn.

“Your hugeness is very wise,” I said. I made my way to the small jar labeled “gratitude” and picked it up. “Shouldn’t this be bigger?”

“It is not our job to expand the traits we wish to see,” the demon said. “Rather, we must account for the human’s intentions with honesty and accuracy.”

Back on Xobtish, alone with only a BIG DICK to guide me, I never needed buckets. But if Happy’s buckets represented the human experience, then good intentions and rational thought seem contradictory. Fortunately for Happy, I am a crafty alien.

“I’m a novice when it comes to humans,” I said to The Accountant.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve been organizing human intentions for years. I’m amazed at how consistently they focus on the wrong things.”

“I hope to be more like you,” I lied. “For example, I would have put that ball in the gratitude jar.”

The giant turned over his hand and stared at the ball that showed Happy setting up an automatic investment in his children’s brokerage accounts. Each month, he would transfer a small sum into their accounts to invest it in a group of low-cost index funds. It is a simple practice that avoids thinking.

“Humans save and invest money for their progeny,” the giant said. “This is what they call financial planning.”

He had a deep and sonorous voice. I would have loved to hear him narrate a documentary about dinosaurs. “Yes, but I would have put it in the gratitude jar.”

The giant raised his eyebrows. I went on. “My inexperience would have told me that although he is performing a financial act, he is really expressing gratitude that he is able to save something for his children–” I raised my index finger, “–because he is able to lessen a future burden for them.”

The giant stood up, nearly knocking me over with his enormous balls. He smiled and, in the most charitable way, placed the ball I described into the gratitude jar. It immediately grew ten times in size. Afterward, the giant waved me off and continued to organize his balls.

And while I can affirm, having lived in Happy’s mind for a little while now, that changes in human attitude are subtle, I sensed that Happy was a little brighter, if only on the inside. Naturally, I concluded this had to do with an increase in his capacity for gratitude.

Yes, it was still the smallest bucket of intentions, but that’s the miracle, isn’t it? Small things compound,one little ball at a time. And if you’re lucky, there will be a handsome alien trapped in your mind-hole, nudging you in the right direction.

On Xobtihs, where I lived before I got trapped in Happy’s mind, I didn’t have to worry about resources. If I got hungry, my BIG DICK led me to food. That’s my Basic Information Gadget for Detailed Interactions with Content Kingdoms. If I needed to exchange my hiking boots for sneakers, there was always a kiosk nearby. I could sleep under the stars or in the finest accommodations imaginable. Whatever I wanted or needed, my BIG DICK delivered.

And yes, before you ask, Xobtihs has a surplus of sex robots. The BIG DICK is an efficient resource allocation system. It provides everything a user wants or needs, with one key exception—relationships. The BIG DICK is programmed to maximize the distance between you and the next closest user. I couldn’t tell you how many people live on Xobtihs, but it’s a lot less than 8.2 billion, a lot less.

Just saying 8.2 billion out loud makes my mustache tingle. And trapped in this shitbag’s mind, in this slice of space and time, it tingles nonstop.

Humans are very tribal. Despite having the option to connect with diverse groups of people across vast geographic and philosophical distances, humans opt to connect with a small group of like-minded individuals. Call it survival instinct.

Apparently, thousands of years before the current shit show, the humans traveled in groups, hunted and slept together. Kill or be killed—that’s the human way. Defending your tribe is an evolutionary instinct so embedded in their source code that even today a human might fight another human at the grocery store for the last bag of cheese puffs. From where I reside in Happy’s mind hole, modern man still resembles his primitive ancestor. Tribes are just more digital and decentralized now, like the blockchain.

And because there are so many humans, and resources are—or are perceived to be—scarce, humans accumulate as much as they can.

Humans live their lives to retire. Happy is no different than the rest of his cohort.

If I’m honest, “retirement” is an odd thing to want. On Xobtihs, “retirement” means uselessness. If your BIG DICK no longer functions, you retire it. If a robot chef consistently over salts your food, you retire it. Retirement is not a positive state of being.

But in American Suburbia humans covet “retirement”. It’s like the designer handbag that everybody wants. Or a fancy sports car. In fact, there is a movement called Financial Independence Retire Early, or FIRE. This is a financial threshold where a human is no longer required to function in productive society.

The general rule of FIRE is to save 25 times your annual expenses. So if you and your family spend 75 thousand dollars a year, then as a rule of thumb, you might need 1,875,000 dollars to cease working.

Retirement math demands that every assumption hold. But consider the FIRE devotee who has decided he needs exactly $1.9 million to stop working — who saves, sacrifices, and defers living for years to hit that target. Can he really reach it and, only then, give himself permission to enjoy his life?

How does one foretell a lifetime of future expenses without considering unexpected outcomes? And sans BIG DICK?

But the humans work and dream of retirement—and not the other way around. Perhaps with so many people on Earth, there are few good jobs. A human will work a job he is lucky enough to have, to save the money he is lucky enough to make, until he can retire and be happy.

Not that my existence on Xobtihs was perfect, but fulfillment as a function of retirement savings feels dubious. But what do I know?

And although I wouldn’t label Happy a FIRE-brand—and I wouldn’t criticize him or any human for accumulating savings—I would say that a mind overly focused on accumulation misses something vital in the human experience—as shitty as that experience is.

Nonetheless, Happy Julius Pipe toils in these permutations. As you might imagine, the entity known as the Accountant is a formidable presence in the mind of this shitbag.

I ran into him the other day. He’s a big fucker.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Alien Idiom where Kuf—that’s me—interacts with the demon known as The Accountant. And subscribe here.

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I pop one off around the end of every month in the hopes that other humans might read it. Mostly, they don’t, but maybe you will.

I am Kuf, the alien of Alien Idiom. I’m trapped (or possibly imprisoned) in Happy’s mind. Either way, it blows.

This month I battled a ski demon. I shit you not.

Happy was taking his kids on a trip while Renetta went on a bender with her girlfriends. R1 was on the brink of his teens and R2 was approaching double digits. The car trip to the mountain had a lot of “I swear to God I will turn this car around if you two don’t stop.” Fun.

Anyway, demons are everywhere in the human mind. They carve out comfortable homes in the hollow parts of wherever-the-fuck. This thing I faced was tall and blue with a white beard and a gold incisor—a bond villain on snow shoes. He must have mistaken me for another demon. I get that a lot.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

“Fuck off,” I said. “Do you know how to get out of here?” Human minds are generally feeble but hard to exit. I’ve been trying for a year now to leave Happy’s.

“Not my place to leave,” he says. And then, as if I gave a shit, he told me that Happy learned to ski when he was forty. It’s much more difficult to learn new things when you’re older he said. “And not only is he afraid he’ll fall and break his ass-”

“Let me stop you there,” I said. “Ass is a muscle. You can bruise or tear or strain or clinch it. You don’t break it.” I’m an interdimensional being, so I know things.

“Ass-breaks happen all the time,” the demon said. “Anyway, my job is to get him to worry about breaking it. Or that his kids might fall and he won’t be able to get them up. Or that he’ll forget their gloves or ski boots and mess up the whole experience. Humans are so worried about messing things up that they avoid them altogether.”

The more the ski demon spoke, the darker it got. The human mind should be colorful but fear grays it out. The demon seemed like a nice enough entity, but I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me and there was no way I could find my way out in the dark.

“Listen you big blue fuck,” I said. “You have it wrong. And while I’m sure that Happy appreciates you analyzing the risks of this skiing nonsense, he’s not going to forget anything. He has his gear and his kids’ gear so neatly organized that he is basically an advertisement for a Thule ski bag. He’s not going to do anything stupid and, besides, his kids are quite good. You forget that he put them in ski school since they were three. R1 is an excellent skier and R2 is good enough to make it down any slope. I think it’s time for you to take your snow cone and shove it up your peak.”

The demon paused. He wanted to say something insightful but just said, “there are risks”.

“That’s human life, blue. He has to take risks to get better. Happy is never going to be world class skier, but after a few years of putting in the effort, he can ski. His kids genuinely love it and Happy feels good because he gave his kids something he never had.”

The demon got smaller after listening to me. I see it all the time. He shrunk down to the size of a garden gnome. “Good day to you sir,” he said.

Did it go perfectly for Happy on the mountain? Of course not. R2’s boots were too small, so he complained for two runs until Happy rented him new ones. Happy fell on a black diamond slope, but managed to get himself up without tearing anything. On the second day his legs hurt so badly that he only did one run after lunch. But the net impact was positive.

Does he know that I talked away a demon that was stirring fear in him? No. As a general rule, humans have no idea the kinds of entities that fuck with them and that there are heroes, like me, that keep the space bright. Or maybe I had nothing to do with it and Happy faced his fear on his own. I’m just an alien trying to find his way home after all.

What’s interesting is that what makes a good experience for a human has more to do with the humans they do it with than the quality of the experience itself. For Happy, would the skiing have been better if the snow was fluffier or the trails perfect?

Probably. But what really made it memorable for Happy is that he shared it with his kids. There were falls and setbacks, but they left the mountain wanting to do it again— and they will.

Personally, I find the human experience strange.

On Xobtihs, interacting with others is strongly discouraged. In fact, our society is designed to avoid contact. We just follow our BIG DICKs—Basic Information Gadgets for Detailed Interactions with Content Kingdoms. They tell us what we want to do, like computers but more advanced.

One time, my BIG DICK lead me to a Mountain Kingdom—I can’t remember which one. I picked up some warm clothes at a nearby kiosk and hiked up to a chateau that overlooked long stretches of country. I battled no demons along the way and enjoyed the peace of a pristine visual landscape. I could see a frozen lake and surrounding trees covered with snow. I ate a sandwich out of a paper bag. It was beautiful.

But maybe I was lonely. Maybe it would have been nicer to say to someone, “would you look at that!”

I wonder what it would have been like if I had to hold others’ expectations on my shoulders like Happy holds his kids’ hopes and fears on his. Maybe I’d have demons too, or maybe there’d be an alien, like me, living in my mind-hole helping me with my shit.

I’ll give Happy credit. He’s not perfect, but he’s good enough to take his kids skiing. I guess that counts for something.

-Kuf

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I pop one off around the end of every month in the hopes that other humans might read it. Mostly, they don’t but maybe you will.

When you are imprisoned in a person’s mind, as I am, sitting in the childhood living room of Happy Julius Pipe (the human whose mind I’m in), you notice his epiphanies. You note them, meditatively, and if you’re not too intoxicated, you say aloud (to the extent you can be audible in a person’s mind):

“Happy. Epiphany. Drink!”

This is Kuf, formerly from Xobtihs, bringing you another plate of garbage from the mind of Happy Julius Pipe. I have collected a few snippets over the last few weeks and turned them into a story, all while monitoring the electrical anomalies of his brain farts.

We are in the year 2025. Happy sits at the dock on the lake, watching his children grow older. R1 is doing flips off the lake trampoline. In a few years, he will be an adult. He won’t need to ask Happy questions; he won’t approach him with the same curiosity as he did when he was nine. Happy remembers R1 when he was nine.

How much they change in a few short years. A glowing pink jellyfish dances across the forefront of Happy’s mind. Epiphany?

Happy has been having frequent, almost casual, epiphanies on the dock, much like the moment when a person walks and trips over an uneven sidewalk. He stumbles, but he doesn’t fall, and says to himself, if only to be more careful, “that was a close one.” Happy’s epiphanies are like that, far from miraculous and not uncommon.

And yet, images flicker and Happy remembers a moment in time not that long ago…

He and Renetta share a master bathroom, which should be for them exclusively, but the kids are always using it. The kids have their bathroom, but prefer their parents' shower because it has better water pressure and more jets.

Happy remembers shaving, enjoying two seconds of quiet, when R1, his then nine-year-old, storms into the bathroom, steals the shower, and begins his inquisition.

Peace is ephemeral for the middle-aged father.

R1 has a very determined look in his eyes.

——

And now, here is the first memory. I’ll get to the second one later.

“Dad,” Happy hears R1 calling him. “Dad?”

“Can you give me a minute?” Happy asks. (I believe this is a common question that parents ask their children when they want them to go away. Children then ignore it.) Any hope of luxuriating in his shave has come and gone.

Happy is suddenly fearful. R1 wants to talk. (Narrator’s note - on Xobtish, I never had to explain anything and rarely had to converse with another Xobtishian. But on Earth, human life is one talk after another. And even though I am imprisoned in Happy Julius Pipe’s memories and emotional baggage, there are elements of this life that still feel surreal. Kids fall into that category. Children are either wired incorrectly or prone to malfunction. For example, Happy can never get their attention when he wants it, and he cannot avoid their demands when he needs to. It's as if whatever behavior he requires of them to maintain parental sanity, they do the opposite.)

“Hey, Dad?” R1 asks. He is most persistent. R1 believes that he can get whatever he wants as long as he keeps addressing his father. He knows that Happy will relent eventually. R1 is masterful at disregarding his father’s social cues, and as such, he crosses the boundaries of Happy’s personal space effortlessly.

In this situation, feeling the general frustration of wanting to shave but knowing that he might never be alone again, Happy sinks deeply into the storehouse of his mind to find all acceptable responses.

R1 asks the question: “What do your balls do?” This is the first time one of his children has asked him about the balls. Naturally, he is not prepared and falls back on the most clinical answer possible.

“They are essential for human reproduction,” Happy says, hoping this will satisfy R1’s curiosity and stop this line of questioning.

“Do you put it in the hole?” R1 asks. This is Happy’s fault. If his children were self-sufficient and had a baseline awareness of social norms, he wouldn’t be challenged this way. As a consequence, he must resort to using a word he never dreamt of using in front of his nine-year-old son.

“Er, vagina,” he says. “Animals reproduce sexually, which involves both male and female sex organs.”

“So you stick your balls in the hole?” R1 is unrelenting with the balls.

“Again, the balls are essential,” Happy says. “But the part that goes in the hole, I mean, vagina, is the penis.”

The wheels are turning. Happy admires his son when he can see him thinking, reconciling his understanding of life’s mysteries. There it is: the great and powerful sex, capturing the best and worst of the human imagination since the dawn of self-awareness. And this conversation, if Happy is capable of managing it, may navigate R1 to an appropriate level of sexual well-being. (Happy is incapable of managing it; however, and we all know that the best he can offer is uncomfortable blather.)

“That sounds terrible,” R1 says. Why would anyone do that?”

“A fair question. You cannot have children unless you engage”. In fairness, Happy never thought about having the birds and bees conversation, especially at this age. At least it can’t get any worse.

“How old do you have to be to use the balls?”

“Marriage age,” Happy says, somewhat ashamed. “That is, when you have the money.”

“So if you are not married, you don’t use your balls?”

“There are many permutations. Nonetheless, the math involved is complicated,” Happy says.

“Wait, I need math to use the balls?”

“No, what I mean to say is that ball usage is a hard optimization problem for people who study such things, especially as it relates to marriage. What you need to remember is this: when you are ready to use your balls, be responsible.”

“Like when I am old enough to get a dog?”

Is it possible to confuse a child more? “Look. What you need to remember is that the balls are essential and you must use them responsibly. And you don’t need math.”

R1 realizes that he should have gone to his mother with this question.

“I’m done talking about this,” he says and runs off.

Thank God! Happy can feel his insides compress as he connects this scene with another memory.

——

We return to Happy back on the dock, floating in the current moment. The kids are diving and jumping off the lake trampoline. Happy is merely forty-seven and capable of mild jumping, but these activities become more challenging with age. To jump on the trampoline, he must swim over to it, pull himself up on the floating platform, then pull himself up onto the trampoline and jump. It sounds straightforward, but the last time Happy attempted a jump was a few weeks after his failed birds and bees talk. He was forty-four. Exactly three years earlier. How does Happy remember this?

He nearly broke his balls —flashback to the connecting memory.

——

The year is 2022. Happy is standing on the dock watching the children jump in the lake.

The lake trampoline comes with a slide and a log attachment that connects to part of the trampoline. The log attachment serves no purpose except to make the trampoline more phallic. It moves when you walk or jump on it, and no human has the requisite balance to make it to the end of the log. R1 flies through the air. He tries to balance himself on the log, but fails and falls into the lake. It is amusing to watch. All the children try to balance themselves and walk across the log, but fall into the lake.

There are 5 to 7 other children in total, including Happy’s kids: R1 and R2. They play the game to see who can be the first one to make it to the end of the log. Five to seven children try and fail with uproarious laughter. Their resiliance inspires Happy, and after watching them lose their balance several times, he concludes that he can balance himself on the trampoline log.

For one thing, he is a man with an older, heavier, and inflexible body. If he is honest with myself, he is more likely to jump the width of the lake than touch his toes, a fact that should deter him from leaping off a trampoline and landing on the log attachment. But then again, Happy is a man. And as a man, he possesses a primordial idiocy that runs counter to his general character.

So he swims over to the trampoline, pulls himself up, and balances on the side of the trampoline. He bounces a few times, then informs the children and the other adults on the dock that he, Happy Julies Pipe, will jump and balance himself on the log.

Happy can easily visualize this: the jump, the landing.

But what comes next is pain; the kind of pain that a middle-aged man will suffer if he jumps off a water trampoline onto a log attachment. And it’s not just his balls that hurt. The entirety of his groin, all of it, crushes against this granite inflatable log. He wants to howl a good old “Shit! Fuck!” but holds back. There are children present.

“I’m okay,” he whispers as he doggie-paddles to the dock. He manages to pull myself up the ladder and eases into one of the Adirondack chairs. R1 is there. The wheels are turning in his head.

“That wasn’t very responsible,” R1 says. He shows the perfect balance of concern and devious laughter. On the one hand, his father may have broken his balls, but on the other, nothing could be funnier than watching a grown man attempt something so catastrophic.

“I’m okay,” Happy says, grimacing. He is in severe pain.

“You’re lucky you're married,” he says. “Or you might never use your balls again.”

Happy can’t articulate what he might have taught his son about the balls. Whatever it was, his actions spoke more loudly than his words. His actions hurt even louder.

——

This is how human shitbags make memories and form connections: they sit on a dock and remember their failures.

For Happy, this is relatively easy.

Happy looks at R1. He can see the nine-year-old and twelve-year-old versions overlap in perfect juxtaposition. The twelve-year-old looks so much older and taller than the nine-year-old. It’s hard to believe that he is the same person who, three years earlier, was asking about the balls.

R1 emerges from the lake. Five to seven children are on the trampoline.

“If you ever need to talk about anything, I’m here,” Happy says to R1.

“Like what?” R1 has no idea how his father’s comment is relevant to the current situation.

“Like any questions you might have or feelings you don’t understand.”

“Did you see how much air I got on my last dive?” R1 asks.

“Quite impressive”, Happy says. And just like that, the morning fades and Happy sinks into the day, floating on the dock one memory at a time. Don’t worry. He did not attempt another jump.

And his balls, despite their age, remain intact.

-Kuf out

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Stay tuned for the next installment of Alien Idiom by subscribing to my free newsletter. I pop one off around the end of every month in the hopes that other humans might read it. Mostly, they don’t.

The first question is, why bother? You are stuck in Happy’s mind, there is nothing you can do about it, and you’re probably going to die in Happy’s mind. True facts.

I dig for story because I have nothing else to do. I have tried to amuse myself by drinking and smoking, remembering the world I came from and imagining what I would do if I could get back there, but that isn’t enough to ease the boredom.

I pay attention to Happy Julius Pipe, his human ways and shitbag tendencies, not to help him or even find a way to improve his lot, but due to the immense and overwhelming hopelessness of my situation. In other words, I curate Happy’s mind because I don’t have better options.

The second question you might ask me is, does digging for story take a lot of work? Not really. It’s not the equivalent of physical digging with the exertion and sweat and rapid heartbeating. It’s more like sifting through floating puddles of water and pulling out jellyfish - or such shaped things.

I then organize them in a way that makes sense. Think a tree or an aardvark - or whatever - sculpted from little jellyfish things I pulled from Happy’s mind. I then convert these jellyfish into chunks that I upload to Substack. It’s pretty simple. Pull. Organize. Covert. Publish. Drink.

Here is the last chunk of Happy’s story, The Watermen, found and curated by yours truly. Read it. Dream a little subterranean dream. Then hold your breath for the next tangle of jellyfish from the underwhelming tangle of Happy’s mind.

-Kuf

Now, the story…

The Watermen, chunk five: Animal Control

It takes everything we have to get the kids to bed, R1 especially. We promise him that, although we won’t be able to keep a dog (if there is a dog in the hole), we’ll find an acceptable family to adopt it.

After an exhausting bedtime, Renetta and I fall into the sofa chairs on the front porch and reminisce about what we used to do before kids: have sex, drink freely, see friends, sleep in. Now, the infrequency of these activities borders on severe, and we seize any opportunity to stoke the calling of our youth. The cocktails we consume make us nostalgic.

“What a shit show,” Renetta says. More people have come to the spectacle of our hole. The degenerate watermen stopped working until animal control does an inspection. Given this unforeseen delay, little is being done to stop the leak. Teenagers start another meme on their phones. The ice cream man retires for the evening. The taco truck has run out of salsa. The scene reeks of excitement and uncertainty. “What happened to that man?” Renetta asks about Jenkins.

“There are a few theories in circulation,” I say. “The prevailing one is that an animal attacked him in the hole.” Renetta shakes her head. “Alternatively, the waterman may have crossed into a different dimension, aged considerably, and had an epic confrontation with a stone racketeer. This seems more plausible if you ask me.”

“You said stoned racketeer?”

“No. I said ‘stone racketeer’ as in, made of stone.”

Renetta doesn’t register my words. She doesn’t know what the truth is, but has enough alcohol in her system to wax poetic on my bullshit.

“I need another glass of -,” she says without affirming what the “of” is.

“Fill me up, please.”

Renetta returns to the inside of the house for alcohol. On the outside, there are tens to hundreds of witnesses who can testify, under oath, that I did not leave the porch; that I did not ascend the mound in my front yard; that I didn’t plunge in, Jenkins-style, to the depths of the hole. Without question, many people see me sitting on my sofa chair, sipping an empty glass, yet I find myself dislodged from my porch, in the tunnel system allegedly below my house. Like before, I glide my hand along the smooth bioilluminescence of the walls.

Surely, this marks an odd but natural transition?

I find a clearing that emerges from the depths of the hole. There is a lake and green space - not the hollow earth exactly, but something far more intricate and hidden. I let my intuition go ape shit with the prospect that The Nation of Agartha runs like a seven-layer dip into the depths of Suburban America. This wild, illuminated space beckons me to explore it, and I would have if not for the golem.

He lifts his stone hand. Eyes blink. “Where ya goin’?” The golem asks. It doesn’t appear threatening, but I wouldn’t cross it. The voice has a human quality, which is strange since the thing doesn’t have a voice box. There is an underlying sense that it knows a lot more than your average human; it has lived on its own for so long, seen everything, done whatever its inflexible stone limbs have allowed, that nothing I say can surprise it.

“Argartha,” I say, pointing to the opening behind him. I correct myself, “The Nation of Agartha.”

“Got papers?”

Is it asking me for documentation? “Passport?” I ask.

Eyes blink. “If ya don’t know, ya ain’t goin’.”

“I live up there,” I point vaguely above me, although I have no idea how I’m oriented in this subteranean realm.

Eyes soften, which is also strange since it doesn’t have eyeballs. “Look,” it says. “I haven’t seen a surface goombah in like 100 years, and today it’s like a parade.” It sounds like PUH-RAID. “Ya seem less pushy than the other guy, so I won’t beat ya to two inches of yer life.” The golem stops talking, opens a compartment from its side, pulls out a cigar, and lights up.

“You smoke?” The physiology of the thing is remarkable.

“Mushrooms. Ya don’t live thousands of years smokin’ the filth up there. As I was sayin’, first, if ya want in, get papers.” It takes a deep hit from the mushroom cigar. “Figure the shit out. Second, and this is important, so listen up bettercup, ya can’t live in two worlds. Ya can’t be here and there, up and down. Know what I’m sayin’? Look in the mirror. Ya barely have enough juice to tread water up there. We don’t want strung-out humans toolin’ around down here.”

“We? There are more?”

“I was using the royal we, gimbrony. Point is, ya want to live here, live here. We don’t sell timeshares.”

The golem is getting animated and colorful. It glows. The mushroom smoke wraps around me and carries me off. “Take a beat, human. The stairs are that way. But before ya go, there is one thing I gotta ask.” Eyes blink. “Can I interest you in Jesus Christ?”

The holy man has returned, and so have I. I’m swirling an empty glass on the porch, staring at the bulbous solicitor. “Didn’t we do this already?”

He shrugs. “Can I interest your wife in Jesus Christ?”

“She’s in the house, getting some -um- tea,” I say.

He leans in and uses his normal, excited voice. “Watch that video I gave you?”

“I did. It’s all bullshit, right?”

“The lord works in mysterious ways,” he says.

Renetta opens the front door and hands me a large glass of bourbon. “I drank all the wine,” she says. “What the fuck,” she points to another wave of “oohs and aahs” coming from the crowd. “Who the fuck are they?” She doesn’t notice the holy man, which is odd since he is difficult to miss. Then she sees him. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Pardon my wife, your honor. She has been alone with the children today and has been drinking.”

The holy man doesn’t mind Renetta’s intoxication. “That’s my choir,” he says. “We practice at the church down the street.”

“There’s a church down the street?”

“We do Christmas carols.” He lifts the tree trunk of his leg a step and stretches towards the front porch. “We are nationally ranked. We raise a lot of money.”

“For what?” Renetta asks.

“Jesus Christ,” the holy man says. “Anyway, we heard about the dog in the hole.”

“I don’t know who started that rumor, you honor,” I say. “The dog is wild speculation”.

The rain slows down. Renetta and I are too drunk to notice. The choir of holy men performs a spectacular rendition of “Oh Holy Night”, which the teenagers record on their phones. The crowd has been thinning out with the rain, and the giant mound, which once rose twenty feet above the fence, has melted into nothing special.

“Wasn’t that bigger?” I ask Renetta. She shares my oversized sofa seat. The full weight of her head rests on my shoulder, but she keeps a firm grip on her glass. Faint snores tickle my neck.

The crowd cheers before I can answer my question. Yes, the hole has gotten smaller, and with its reduced size, has lost whatever made it fascinating. Nonetheless, cheers become deafening as the animal control vehicle bumps over the curb and crashes into what’s left of the front fence.

Two men between the ages of nineteen and fifty fall out of the truck. They jump up like rock stars. The crowd eats it up. The animal control guys stand on the fringes of what any of us would call “professional,” but they move without hesitation.

The tall one has a long, angular face and traces of a beard. The short one has the physique of a snowman with a large, round head resting atop a large, round middle. They both wear bandanas with an “Animal Control” logo to keep their hair in check. The bandanas are the only articles of clothing that are well-maintained, because, despite the uncertain conditions of the hole, the rest of their uniforms consist of cutoff shorts and shirts with no sleeves.

The animal control guys move quickly, like children ready to jump in a pool and then heave themselves into the narrow opening in my front yard. Immediately, the crowd goes silent.

“Heroes,” says the holy man, who, after a beautiful rendition of “O Christmas Tree”, has interested at least six more people in Jesus Christ. “Come, my brothers,” he says to his choir. They turn on flashlights and break into “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” by the road-closed sign. The voices flow like a stream of water, except “Emmanuel” rises into what sounds like “A-A-Ahh-Ahh-HOLE.”

The crowd backs them up with a rhythmic chanting of “A-hole”. They get louder and louder.

Renetta wakes up and takes a long sip of her drink. “Are they chanting ‘asshole’?” She asks.

“Sounds like it. Maybe animal control?” I shrug. The two of us lapse into sobriety when we both realize that the singing and chanting could wake the kids. Our fear subsides, and we return to being intoxicated when the choir fades. Silence captures us all.

The snowman-like animal control guy emerges from the hole. He is dirty and disheveled, but looks more or less as old as he did when he jumped in there. The tall animal control guy springs up like he jumped on an enormous trampoline. He lands on his feet and does a double cartwheel at the bottom of the now non-existent mound. He is holding the smallest animal trap.

“Raccoon,” he screams. It’s the “rock on” moment after the encore.

We all feel a little exalted, as if we’ve witnessed a miracle, but aren’t quite sure what it is. Whatever is in the trap can’t be bigger than a pound, but they sell it. The crowd is shouting “A-hole! A-hole! A-hole!” Even the choir is chanting.

“The water stopped,” Renetta says, pointing to the top of the driveway. And sure enough, all appears to be well with the world.

I don’t know how many drinks we had after that, but it was more than a reasonable amount. The last thing I remember is the crowd dispersed. The degenerate watermen put my yard back together, and the scene felt increasingly still. The digging machine covered and flattened the hole, and when the watermen drove away in their aerodynamic truck, I saw the outline of a brown suit. I was too drunk to make it out, but I’m sure it was Halloway, the man-in-brown, covering up the last traces of a miracle.

When I woke up the next morning, the hole was sodded over, and the fence fixed. Any traces of last night’s spectacular were gone. There were no candle vigils, taco trucks, moshing teenagers, or government vehicles. The Water Company sent Renetta an email stating that they had addressed the cause of the leak. Our house looked the same as it always has, more or less.

Despite my substantial hangover, standing on the front porch feels strange. Yesterday was intense, illuminating, but I can’t hold onto the memory. I want to say that it happened, Jenkins, the hole, and Halloway. I confronted a stone racketeer and tapped my fingers to choir singing Christmas carols. The crowd was shouting “A-Hole”. Or was the other way around? And despite their fanfare, the animal control guys ended up fixing everything. Maybe nothing needed fixing after all. The only thing I can’t say with certainty, the only question I can't answer, is the one R1 asks me when he wakes up.

“What’s God?” He is standing on the front porch in his pajamas, holding a stuffed bunny. I think about it for a second. I want to answer honestly, if possible.

“He could be a small raccoon that fell in the hole,” I say. “But I don’t know, probably everything.”

It is something we should all ask ourselves, without the help of the water company or in moments that unwind our lives, when the world is confusing and beautiful, and somewhere, maybe deep below the surface, is a miracle waiting for us to find it.

You can find previously published chunks of The Watermen here:

The Watermen, first chunk: Jenkins is nuts

The Watermen, second chunk: the soup (I got intoxicated and published this one on a different platform - whoops)

The Watermen, third chunk: Ever hear of Agartha?

The Watermen, fourth chunk: We call ourselves the men in brown.

What I like about this chunk - if I can give Happy any credit for writing it - is that we see him moving all over the place, going back in time, in and out of his house; failing to remember a small detail from his the past, and then, confronted with the nonsense in his front yard, trying to form a picture of Suburban America that makes sense.

If humans have a habit of being everywhere all at once, then Happy personifies humanity. He tries to package everything he sees, feels, and understands, as well as what he doesn’t see, feel, and understand, into his Suburban America - even though I have the feeling he is skeptical of his Suburban America.

Anyway, the story almost reaches its peak weirdness in this chunk. I say almost because I’m curating the final part for publication as we speak. Keep reading…

-Kuf

Now, the story…

The Watermen, fourth chunk: We call ourselves The Men in Brown

I have lapses. I wouldn’t call these medically concerning, but I haven’t told Renetta about them. Sometimes, I black out for seconds or minutes (or longer) and come back with lucid images that resemble lived experience. For example, an earlier memory of Jenkins comes up like an adolescent hard-on. He got lost in our old apartment. The details bleed from moment to moment in a haze that is just outside my reach.

Renetta and I once belonged to Urban America, an ecosystem that many consider more dangerous and beautiful than Suburban America. In Urban America, cars clog the streets, but nobody who lives there owns one. Coffee shops function as home offices for legions of unemployed job seekers, while underpasses transform into encampments for homeless communities. Space is a varied and unpredictable construct.

The density of Urban America bends you into it. For example, urban dwellings are vast abodes of openness that get smaller gradually, until they are small enough to wear like a jacket. While urban inhabitants can survive in the vastness of small spaces for years or even decades, the presence of children shrinks your perception until your apartment fits like the jeans you wore in high school. As it turns out, a child is an astonishing turn of events that diminishes one’s capacity to survive in Urban America.

I remember our apartment life — getting lost in the space before it shrank. When R1 was born, our apartment became uninhabitable, what we would call youth-sized, forcing us to migrate to the far reaches of Suburban America.

I recall Jenkins, but only as a footnote with just enough impact to advance the plot. I would not have thought about him ever again if he hadn’t returned to this story, exploring the depths of the underground and now fighting for his life in the hospital. Meanwhile, my driveway leaks, and visions of a mysterious underworld dance like an unwanted Christmas poem in my head.

A crowd has formed outside my house since Jenkins reemerged from the hole. You would think that I’m sheltering a rock star in my garage. Neighbors walking their dogs stop to ask what the fuss is about. Cars park in front of the road-closed sign to take a closer look at emergency vehicles and their flashing lights. Teenagers hold up their phones and wave them in a meme that has grown into a YouTube tribute (to whom or what remains unclear). A food truck (mind you, I’ve never seen a food truck in my part of Suburbian America) parks a block away, forming a long line for tacos. I can hear the ice cream man in the distance. Fuck that guy.

I want to tell the crowd that a man almost lost his life in the space below my yard (or saw something that made him accept his life); that whatever exists in that hole may change the world as we (or I) know it.

But I don’t speak of this. I don’t need to. The crowd seeks entertainment. They want to escape the vicissitudes of suburban expectations. Even now, my biggest worry is that Renetta won’t get the kids to bed on time.

I hear her roar from R1’s bedroom. The children are spinning up before bedtime, and we might only have minutes before the inside of the house resembles the outside. Time is running out. I survey the scene, looking for the person in charge, when I notice the guy in the brown suit.

It’s funny how the mind highlights what doesn’t blend in. Take a crowd of one hundred people with their idiosyncrasies and points of focus, and without knowing or understanding why, you spot the oddball: the out-of-place dickweed who holds your attention when he should get lost in the background. That is the guy in the brown suit.

He looks like someone who sustained a concussion and lost the ability to have normal discourse. He is shorter than average but not short. He is wearing a brown suit from a department store chain that went out of business years ago. His mustache is thinner on the right side of his face than on the left. The way he stares at me, I’m obliged to talk to him.

“Can I help you?”

He flashes his badge too fast for me to read it. “Holloway,” he says. “I’m a geologist.”

“Waterman?” I ask.

“No. No.” He pauses like he is waiting for his faculties to come back. “I’m the special unit - uhh, special forces - of the water company. We answer to no one.”

I didn’t know geologists carried badges or that the water company had a “Delta Force”, but today is a day for awareness, I guess. I lead Halloway to the base of the giant mound in my front yard to explain that it used to be my lawn.

“We want to know what is happening down there,” I say. I pick up one of the smooth rocks and hand it to him. Startled, he slaps it out of my hands, shattering it into a million pieces on the ground.

“Don’t touch what you don’t understand,” he says. His voice projects like he’s speaking through a mouthful of water. With great effort, he bends to one knee and takes an oversized magnifying glass from his coat pocket. He looks like a cartoon the way he examines the stone in his gloved hand, and for a minute, I think he is going to break into song.

He doesn't do anything but look more disturbed with each passing second; he crouches over the rocks. It’s getting dark outside, and I don’t think he can see very well. He pulls me aside, not too far from the other watermen watching TV on their phones.

“It’s probably nothing,” he says. “On the other hand.” I can barely make out what he’s saying. He pauses mid-sentence, like whatever words he would use are no longer relevant. His moustache is more uneven than I first realized.

“You think it could be something?”

“It may be something, although.” Again, the pause. “It may be nothing.” He leans closer, as if he’ll whisper a secret that will change my world view, but then he speaks so loudly that the other water men look up from their phones. “Are you familiar with the lost civilization of Lumuria?”

“The what?” I keep abreast of historical anomalies, myths, and legends. I daydream in the subteranean, but Lumuria is too much, even for me. This guy is just your run-of-the-mill kook.

“I don’t have time to get into it,” he says. “Our analysts tell us that you might be susceptible to the truth, so here I am.” He begins to shout. His voice is unmistakable when he shouts. “The Lumurians thrived tens of thousands of years ago. Long story short.”

“What, long story short?” I ask. “You can’t begin a story with outrageous bullshit and then cut off the details.”

“Look,” he says, visibly agitated. “Your hole isn’t the only one on my schedule. I have at least three more holes to plug after yours.” He pulls a flask out of his coat pocket and takes a swig. “Anyway. The Lumurians thrived. Lost a war to another advanced civilization. The world ended, and the survivors of Lumaria went underground and started what I like to call “the downtown”. He points to the ground.

“Most geologists don’t believe in underground civilizations.” He paces beside the waterman’s aerodynamic truck. “Most of my colleagues don’t believe in anything. However -” he holds up his thumb and points it at me dramatically. “I would argue that an advanced civilization has coexisted with the surface world for thousands of years. We live in peaceful coexistence, mostly, and since the Treaty of 1911, the water company recognizes this underground nation as sovereign. We call them the Nation of Agartha now.”

“And? You want me to go down there?” I ask.

He smiles. His mustache has gone perpendicular. “Of course not.” He turns to the other two water men and then back to me. “What happened to your friend?”

“I’m the customer here.”

The other watermen don’t look up from their phones. I am the only one listening to this weirdo.

“My job, as part of the water company’s special unit, is to stop contact between Suburban America and the Nation of Agartha.”

“You Men In Black?” I’ve watched a YouTube video about them. Halloway fits the profile.

He spits on the ground. “Those phonies. They think they’re sooo important because they’re in charge of UFOs.” He pulls me aside so he can talk to me in private. “We call ourselves The Men In Brown,” he says in the voice of a twelve-year-old boy claiming to have seen real boobs once.

I’m increasingly suspicious of this guy’s authority. “Brown? Why brown?”

“Because realities can only coexist when they are separate. The more you know, the more you’ll want to know. This creates an instability that threatens the very fabric of society and culture.” He takes another swing from his flask. “Here’s what I’m telling you. Go inside. Put your kids to bed. Get these lazy fucks to fill your hole. Then work your nine-to-five job for the next twenty years. Pay for the kids’ college. Go to Europe a few times and call it a life.”

Halloway flashes his badge at the useless watermen.

“I am a special unit, “ he says. “I believe a lone fox, or possibly a raccoon, attacked your colleague. A wild animal is probably causing all this hole stuff.”

The other watermen look up from their phones. “Whoa now. You say a wild animal got Jenkins?” They are giddy and energetic. The mention of a raccoon sheds new light on the situation. “Call animal control,” they say. “We can’t work with wild animals down there.”

“It could be something,” says Holloway. “It could be nothing.” He hands me his card. It’s a black rectangle with nothing on it. “I wish you luck. In the meantime, I would advise to,” he says, leaning close to my face, then speaking at a decibel level that will probably damage my hearing, “be suburban.” He fades into the crowd, which is remarkable given the asymmetry of his mustache.

On the front porch, my wife sends a distress signal.

******

R2 runs in circles, occasionally stopping to look out the window. “Ice cream,” he says.

“Son of a bitch.” The ice cream man has been public enemy number one since we moved to Suburban America. His little jingle transforms the children into sugar-craving zombies. When the jingle plays, we have no choice but to buy ice cream. “The truck is closed,” I say before turning my attention to R1, who, from the look on his face, is more interested in explanations than ice cream. I don’t blame him. I also want to know the truth about the hole, but Renetta gives me her “please censor yourself” face. She is an attorney and much better at making an argument.

“The waterman went into the hole,” I start. “He hurt himself, so the ambulance came to take him away.”

“To the hospital,” Renetta says.

“Is he really hurt?” R1 asks.

“No,” I say. I look to Renetta for support, but she magically blends the truth with her eyes. No one knows what happened in the hole, but I can tell you that Jenkins did not trip and age twenty years. “He was wearing a helmet,” I say. As a parent, it’s essential to promote child safety wherever possible. “That’s why it’s important to wear helmets.”

“Those men work for the water company,” Renetta says. “They have tools to fix the pipes. The man got a little hurt trying to fix the pipe, but he is okay.”

“Because of the helmet,” I say.

But R1 is good at asking questions I cannot answer. I wish I could explain the contradictions, the irreconcilable events, and oddballs that fray us at the edges of our lives. But how can I boil this down for a five-year-old? He knows my ineptitude.

“I opened the window up,” he says. This must have been when Renetta was chasing R2. Those guys said,” he points to the people accumulating around the vehicles in front of our house. God is in the hole.” He looks at me, Renetta, and back at me.

I look at Renetta, then at R1, and then back at Renetta. “Everything is fine,” I say. “They said a dog’s in the hole.”

“A dog?” His little head rattles in confusion. He wonders how a living animal fell into the space below our house.

“That’s right,” I say, looking very matter-of-fact. “It happens all the time. It’s fine, probably fine. They are calling animal control. Also, stay away from the hole and always wear a helmet.”

You can find previously published chunks of The Watermen here:

The Watermen, first chunk: Jenkins is nuts

The Watermen, second chunk: the soup (I got intoxicated and published this one on a different platform - whoops)

The Watermen, third chunk: Ever hear of Agartha?

If this is your first chunk of reading, and you are interested enough to read the previous two installments, you can find the first chunk here and the second chunk here. Sorry, I drank too much and posted part II on a different platform.

Anyway, here’s the third chunk of The Watermen.

-Kuf

Now, the story…

The Watermen, third chunk: Ever hear of Agartha?

I’m on the porch waiting for Jenkins. The other watermen don’t realize that the rope, once connecting Jenkins to the surface, is loose. He must have detached himself to explore deeper inside the Earth.

I pass the time by explicating life’s poetic interruptions. Just today, a treacherous pile of earth has replaced my once green grass. A man has taken a heroic plunge underground. My children run wild in the house. My wife faces the wall to breathe. I can’t put a bow on any of it.

Still, the rain has a pleasant rhythm, and the water that imperils my house is soothing and melodic. I nod off and come back, going in and out to the comforts of sound. Although no part of me wants to join Jenkins in the hole, I keep thinking about what’s down there. I can almost see it, smooth tunnels that glow in bioluminescence. Paths converge, fork, and descend, forming an interconnected hodgepodge of wonder. I’m walking inside the network, frightened and fascinated. I can feel the weight of my feet and cool air at my sides. I call Jenkins, but my voice disappears into the depths of the tunnels.

Brushing against the walls, I keep walking, marveling at wild illumination. I’m not imagining anymore. I’m below my house. How deep below I cannot guess. I want to explore further, but a statue cuts me off. It’s not a statue, but an animated stone guy that resembles a 1920s gangster. It’s two feet tall, eyes glowing, and a mouth moving up and down like a nutcracker. “This ain’t no juice joint,” it says. I tighten my jaw, but can’t think of anything to say. What can one say to a golem? After a long pause, and an eye flicker that mirrors a blink, the tiny gangster asks me, “Can I interest you in Jesus Christ?”

I’m back on my porch, face to face with a wet, bulbous solicitor. Despite being half awake, I can tell this man is not affiliated with the water company. The solicitor is indeed a human being familiar with surface-level conversation. Judging by his robe and disinterred demeanor, I would say he belongs to a holy order. Maybe Catholic? “Can I interest you in Jesus Christ?” He asks me.

We don’t have many solicitors in this part of Suburban America. However, they must be out in droves with all the rain and flooding today.

“Thank you, your honor, but not now,” I say. I explain to the solicitor that the Catholics gave me all my sacraments. “I basically have a black belt in Jesus,” I say. I omit the part about not believing it. I like Jesus, but the god-fearing flock that sells his likeness for the low-low cost of 50 bucks a month scares the shit out of me.

The stranger narrows his eyes with calm judgment. He’s looking through me. “I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ, our savior.” He turns and stares at the monstrosity that was once my front yard. “That’s a big hole. What’s down there?”

“Could be a leak? The watermen’s leader jumped in over an hour ago.”

“Is that right?’ He reaches into the pockets of his robe and fumbles around for something. “I know I have a card here somewhere. A little wet, but- You are always welcome in the House of - found it.” He hands me his card. On the front, it says “Jesus Saves”. On the back, “your eternal soul”. There’s a phone number underneath. He blesses me, but as he walks away, he turns and speaks in a more natural voice. “Ever hear of Agartha?”

I did, but I hadn’t thought about it until now. Agartha is one of those myths that warms me up like smooth whiskey. It’s an underworld story, something about ancient humans (possibly gods) who built an elaborate underground civilization with housing, transportation networks, fresh water, and gardens. The Garden of Eden might have been underground. Agartaha is the kind of story that makes me wonder what happens when we dig deeper, a layer at a time, revealing a level of reality - and a world - that makes sense.

I’ve seen YouTube videos suggesting that there might still be entrances to Agartha in the remote corners of Antarctica, Nepal, and perhaps Cleveland.

“Is Jesus from there?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It’s a story I loved as a kid,” he says. He looks over his shoulder like he’s afraid somebody could be watching him. “Beware Satan and his lies.”

He stands up and smooths out his rain-soaked frock. Before he leaves, he asks for his Jesus card back. He pulls a pen from his sleeve and writes a web address underneath the front of the card where it says “Jesus Saves”. Water gets on the ink, causing it to bleed. “Here’s a new link to a good video about Agartha. You should check it out.” He blesses me again. “Go with God,” he says.

What if the waterman discovered an underground civilization in my Suburban America? What if a thriving metropolis exists a few feet below my front yard? So many what-ifs. I look up to ask the holy man another question, but he has disappeared into the rain.

R2 rams into the window. “Jesus H Christ,” I yell. I move out of sight before Renetta catches me loafing. I crouch below the enormous pile of earth and let rain wash over my face.

There are broken discs with geometrical patterns at the base of the mound. They are probably rocks, but they look too smooth for rocks. On occasion, I ask the neighborhood listserv for recommendations. Here is my post, which by listserv standards, is not that weird:

ISO a reasonably priced geologist to evaluate the strange rocks the water company dug up in my front yard, possibly from a lost civilization. Thanks, HJP

A few minutes later, Jenkins emerges from the hole.

The fiery confidence is gone from his eyes. He looks fifty years older than when he jumped in. The slick canyoneering attire hangs like rags on a decrepit body. His hair is long and braided, and I wonder if this is the same man from an hour ago.

“Is that you?” I ask the man vaguely resembling Jenkins.

“So much more,” he says. He is blind now. A faded gray replaced the intensity of the color that made him slick and cool. He feels his way around the bottom of the mound and touches my feet with his hands. It’s like he lost an epic battle that will have dire consequences for the fate of humanity.

“Call 911,” I say, hoping this will revive him.

“You gotta phone?” He asks.

“I won’t leave you,” I say. Dry patches of clay melt off his face into the heap of debris at the bottom of the mound.

“No,” he says, rising to his feet. He takes his badge from his back pocket and hands it to me. “Golem. Tiny mafia,” he says. “Scary motherfucker.”

I brave my way to the top of the mound and stare into the blackness. Nothing. I drop a stone and listen for a plunk. Nothing. Of all the places I might find a diminutive mafia golem, a hole under my yard is not one. “God?” I ask. My voice falls into the depths of the hole. Nothing.

I turn to Jenkins. “You find Agartha?”

His voice stops. He starts convulsing like he has been struck by lightning.

“Almost,” he says with a smile. Jenkins has come to terms with the world. He passes out on the sliver of mud that remains of my front lawn.

In just ten minutes, so many vehicles are in front of my house that nobody notices the ambulance. I hear the driver fighting his way through the crowd.

“Step aside. This is an emergency.” The other watermen are leaning against the digging machine, sharing a thermos. I ask them if they know what caused the leak.

“Could be anything,” they say.

I ask them what they think got Jenkins.

“Not sure,” they say.

I ask them how often their coworkers emerge from a hole with life-threatening wounds.

“You’d be surprised,” they say.

The paramedics place Jenkins on a stretcher. They ask me if I want to ride with him to the hospital.

“I’m the customer,” I say. I look at Jenkins one last time. Then it hits me that I know him. I have seen him before, but I’m unsure where. I stop the short-tempered paramedic from sliding him into the vehicle.

“Uh, emergency?” he says.

I ignore him.

“Jenkins, were you in an earlier story of mine?” It’s funny. I can’t remember, but I know that I know him. We met before. Our stories intersect, even though I can’t remember where.

A mask covers his nose and mouth. He inhales whatever they give him. One of the paramedics pushes me aside and closes the door, but I can still see Jenkins. He has a smile on his face. It’s a look of acceptance and understanding, something I rarely see in Suburban America. He points at me long enough for it to mean something, maybe a clue from another story, or a scene from another time and place; Jenkins is trying to jog my memory, but my memory stuck where it is, and with all the shit that’s happening, I just can’t remember1.

You are probably thinking, Kuf, what does one do in mind prison? On the one hand, the mind of Happy Julius Pipe has an unpredictable topological groove. On the other hand, it belongs to a human shitbag with limited range.

If you read the first chunk of Happy’s story, The Watermen, then you will know from my opening salvo that I have been drinking. This shouldn’t be problematic, since drinking (in theory) shouldn’t impact an alien like me.

Unfortunately, the difference between theory and reality is a shit sandwich.

Interdimensional beings imprisoned in the minds of human shitbags suffer a doom loop of underachieving existence. Mistakes can happen.

For example, I posted the second chunk of The Watermen on Medium. I must have created an account on Medium after a bout of late-night recklessness and forgotten all about it. Does this make me proud? No, but mind prison can do unspeakable things to an incarcerated alien.

From a practical point of view, my little unforced error means that you can read the first chunk of The Watermen here and the second chunk here.

I’m sorry. It’s a lot of jumping around the internet.

I’ll sober up for Part III, most likely…

-Kuf

You may recall that Happy Julius Pipe will expire on November 11, 2035. You may also recall that I am the interdimensional being (some say “alien”) imprisoned in his mind. The calculation is straightforward. He goes, I go. The sitch is a bitch, no?

This is why I drink. Drinking in a person’s mind is easier than it sounds. Happy has a wine cellar. I see it, open a bottle, and… I drink it. Anyway, while rummaging through the racks, I found a story that Happy wrote in the throes of middle age.

I don’t hate it. The story pokes at Happy’s fascination with subterranean, those unseen realities deep below the surface that challenge his understanding of the world.

If you ask me, he spends way too much time thinking about “what lives beneath”. Mysterious underworlds haunt his imagination. Still, I find his interest in the subterranean amusing, especially when considering his superficial mind.

For Happy, the most interesting spaces are those that have unknown dimensionality and depth. He believes that what we observe on the surface is only the smallest part of reality.

For once, I agree with him.

I invite you to read Happy’s story and discover what lives beneath the clean, well-lighted streets of Suburbian America.

I plan to break this piece into five distinct story chunks. Call them scenes or parts, sequential things that graph like a plot diagram. I don’t know. I have been drinking…

Until I come up with a better name for it, let’s call this one The Watermen. Scroll down an inch for the opening scene. Happy Julius Pipe is the writer, narrator, and principal protagonist. It’s his story. I just happened to find it.

-Kuf

Now, the story…

The Watermen, first chunk: Jenkins is nuts

My driveway starts leaking. It’s slow at first, and then water gushes from deep below the earth. Then, the tremors nearly undo me, although the origins of these could be internal. Whatever the cause, it feels like the world is ending. I panic, which makes sense under the circumstances.

I call Renetta from the driveway. Water parts around my sneakers. “It’s happening,” I say without considering our neighbors. “The end.” She steps onto the porch to validate my hysteria.

“Why are you screaming?” She asks. “Should I call 911?”

“No time,” I say.

I grab a bucket and do my best. It’s raining and impossible to tell where the water is coming from.

Renetta is on the phone. When there is trouble, she is the one who calls people. A few buckets later, she tells me they are on their way.

“Who?”

“The water company,” she says. She is calm now, like she knows they will save us. I heard stories of the water company. Everyone has. They perform miracles in inclement weather for a few well-run municipalities.

Hours later, the watermen show up in an aerodynamic truck. They look more like spacemen than watermen in their white suits and slick helmets, and I ask them:

“You come in peace?”

“You got a water problem?” Asks the tall one, the leader. He has confident eyes like an alien.

I point to the calamity bubbling from the top of our driveway and pooling around a wall of sandbags at the bottom. I got the idea from a neighbor who highlighted the flaws in my bucket method. “The sandbags should hold it back for hours,” I say.

“You built that?” The leader asks me.

“Adrenaline”, I say. It is an impressive structure, probably the greatest thing I’ve ever done.

The leader pulls out a card from his space suit. “Call me if you‘re interested,” he says.

I thank him. He slides a large rod from his truck and leads the other watermen to my front yard. It’s really coming down now. The waterman looks up and stretches his arms wide, holding the thing like a prophet. He lifts his rod and strikes down, chanting primordial notes.

I pull one of the short watermen aside. “Is that procedure?”

“Naw,” he says. “Jenkins is nuts.”

Still, his confidence is reassuring. After an hour of what appears to be a comprehensive diagnosis, Jenkins removes his space helmet and nudges me awake on the porch.

“Sandman,” he says. I like the nickname and wonder if he can spread it throughout the neighborhood.

“Did you stop it?”

Jenkins shakes his head. “We gotta dig,” he says. I nod, although the prospect of digging frightens me. Who knows what they’ll find down there?

“I got a wife and kids,” I say, pointing to the house.

“You have my word,” Jenkins says.

He takes two orange flags from his utility belt and lands an oversized trailer in front of my house. The other watermen emerge with two gleaming “road closed” signs. Then, waving the orange flags like a drum major, Jenkins guides the machine off the trailer onto the front lawn. The fence goes down, but the tree holds.

“Careful, shit,” I say. They can’t hear me.

The machine roars off the truck and plants into the lawn with intention. Jenkins sits cross-legged in front of the hole, directing the shovel with his palm. It looks more like he is summoning than leading a team of engineers. In minutes, large buckets of earth pile around the hole. The size and shape of the mound appear disproportionate to the diameter of the hole, suggesting that whatever lives down there goes much deeper than the water main. My yard resembles an oversized papier mache volcano, and I wonder what will happen if I pour vinegar down the hole. Jenkins raises his palm, and the machine stops.

He goes inside the bullet-shaped truck and changes out of his space suit. When he reemerges, he looks more like a mountain climber than a waterman. Unknown technical instruments dangle from carabiners on every part of his body. He holds a machete in his left hand. Over his shoulder is about 200 feet of rope. He ties the rope to the machine and climbs up the volcanic mound in my front yard. I would say it goes up at least 20 feet. The top of his head looks over my roof line.

“If I don’t come out,” Jenkins says, “call HQ”.

“What’s down there?” I ask, pointing to the machete.

“We gonna find out,” he says. He lights a flare and drops it down the hole. Before I can ask him what that means, he jumps in. “Geronimo!” The rope unspools rapidly until it’s completely taut. I don’t hear Jenkins or any indication that he reached bottom. I call his name, but I’m not in a position where he can hear me.

“Like I said,” one of the other watermen says, chewing a cigar. “Jenkins is nuts.”

Stay tuned for the second chuck of The Watermen by Happy Julius Pipe. I’ll post it when I sober up - Kuf

Those of you new to Alien Idiom should know that I am a prisoner in the mind of Happy Julius Pipe. Because of this unfortunate situation, Happy’s experience is my only on-ramp to what we might call “the human condition”. Happy’s vision encompasses a narrow angle of Earth parts, though, and due to his poor judgment and emotional baggage, what I see comes through tainted, except (and this is the interesting part) in Italy. In Italy, Happy can see a cleaner slice of space-time, which differs from the usual gray tones of quiet desperation. Andiamo in Italia. Shall we?

Italy 2006

Happy Julius Pipe lived in Italy in 2006. He visited the country before and after, but in 2006, he made an effort to become Italian Italian. He took a taxi from the train station to the top of Peruiga, where he landed in the Corso Vannuchi, the main drag of a medieval hilltop. He found a trattoria, ordered a carafe of red wine, and smoked all the cigarettes he packed in his shirt sleeves. Three carafes and eleven cigarettes later, he wrote something on his napkin, put it in his pocket, and forgot about it altogether.

From Happy, circa Perugia 2006.

I used to believe in three telltale signs of decline: 1) watching too much television, 2) sleeping through the afternoon, and 3) smoking alone. Smoking, especially, can hide the boredom of uninspiring routines. Each puff distracts from a scar that shows no marks on the body, but throbs in the mind. I was planning to quit, and then I arrived [on the Corso Vannuchi], where each cigarette pokes the imagination with color and wanderlust.

Happy went on to smoke cigarettes with other people. He made friends and marveled at the Italians' superhuman awareness: to be less in the future and less in the past. Italians were content to be, in the moment, as they smoked and gesticulated, drank and touched each other's arms with gentle affection. The Italians were neither uninspired nor unwilling to improve their lives through hard work. Rather, Italian ambition seemed to coexist with simple priorities: talking, drinking, or sharing a cigarette with friends.

Happy became Italian Italian in 2006.

By the spring of 2025, Happy had lost his Italian-ness. To revive elements of his former self, Happy and Renetta planned a trip to Italy for “a European family adventure”. R1 was 12, and R2 was approaching 9. The timing was good. The boys were old enough to endure long plane rides without inciting noticeable outrage in their parents.

Renetta had passed through Italy in both her preprofessional and professional lives. She was the more well-traveled parent: respected, glamorous, and likely to offload those little insights that plant seeds for positive development. Happy, on the other hand, was just Happy. But Italy was his to share, if for no other reason than he had been Italian Italian in 2006.

The children skipped through the Roman airport and greeted the customs agent with mild exuberance. They declared that two parts of themselves were Italian (two among how many parts remains unclear). R2 informed the customs agent that he would wear pants throughout his adventure.

“Because Italians don’t wear shorts,” R2 said. Happy remembered this fact from the summer of 2006. Italians lived in the moment, and always in long pants.

“That’s right,” said Happy. “In Italy, men wear long pants.” R2 considered himself a man inasmuch as a man presses elevator buttons or has crumbs on his face. R1, on the other hand, didn’t like the idea of wearing pants, but he respected cultural norms. As it happened, both boys wore long pants throughout their adventure.

This was their first step in becoming Italian. Happy didn’t believe the boys could become Italain Italian, per se, but maybe they could appreciate the parts of Italy that differed from their normal, shorts-wearing lives in American suburbia.

It was through this contrast that Happy recalled the cardinal virtues of Italy.

Persistence was among his favorite Italian virtues. Happy remembered taking the train in 2006. Crowded stations forced the youthful Happy to fight for his position at the ticket counter. Italians didn’t form lines or take turns. To approach the ticket counter, you had to nudge yourself into a sphere of intermingled Italians and then edge your way to the front. You pressed forward, colorful syllables firing from every direction of your person.

If you waited in line, you would never get a ticket. And if you were lucky enough to buy one, hopefully in the direction you want to travel, delays or strikes could further set you back. Being persistent was the only way to face the uncertainty of the Italian rail system. It was ingrained in the culture. Wait. Inch forward. Take nothing for granted.

By 2025, Happy had lost his grasp of persistence. Anything that took longer than 30 seconds was either intentionally designed that way or a colossal fuck-up. Happy had become adherent to the schedule, a disciple of efficiency and regularity. Getting to places “on time” was the only thing that kept him moving, even though his children never seemed to follow him with the necessary urgency for on-time departures.

To Happy’s surprise, the Italian rail system was so streamlined and efficient in 2025 that he thought he was in Germany. Happy bought rail tickets on his phone, showed those tickets to the platform agent, and boarded the train. His children did not have to fight with the same level of persistence that Happy remembered in 2006.

But Happy worried. How can one appreciate the beauty of Italian life without fighting through unexpected delays?

Fortunately, all was not lost. Happy and Renetta took the boys to a soccer game in Rome. Although they had electronic tickets, gaining entry to the stadium proved to be a significant challenge. After a hard-fought battle to enter the wrong gate, the ticket agent directed Happy and his family to a flash mob at the other entrance. Italian youths attempted to sneak through the turnstile when legitimate ticket holders were scanning in.

When Happy reached the front of the mob, shielding his body from the turnstile miscreants, his tickets would not scan. He had spent hours online, waiting to buy these tickets, and then hours in line trying to use them. Now, after his children experienced the hardship of moving to the front of the line, they faced the uncertainty of being left outside the stadium.

Failing to enter the stadium upset Happy, but the Italian Italian inside him grew three sizes in that moment.

He pleaded with the solitary ticket agent at the machine, his arms flailing in exaggerated circles. The ticket agent recognized Italian Italian when she saw it, put out her cigarette, and turned up the brightness on Happy’s phone. The machine recognized the tickets, and Happy and his family were allowed to enter.

They were the last ones in the stadium, so they had to bribe the usher twenty euros to vanquish the squatters from their assigned seats. Happy was glad to pay. Getting to the seats he paid for was a test of will that he hoped his children would appreciate one day.

“Why are firefighters on the field?” R2 asked. When a team scored, exuberant fans threw explosives behind the goal. The firefighters would grab them before they exploded and put them in a bucket.

“So no one gets hurt.”

“Are they allowed to throw fireworks?” R2 asked.

“No, but soccer fans are persistent.”

“It looks dangerous.”

“Italian firefighters receive special training,” Happy said. R2 was impressed. Happy remembered what it was like to face routine uncertainty with the belief that everything would work out, but the understanding that it might not.

In the soccer stadium, in the backdrop of smoke and mild explosions, Happy watched his children enjoy the match. Happy bought tickets and made it into the stadium, which is not as easy as it sounds, and something an Italian would never take for granted.

Happy turned to R2: “You can’t appreciate something beautiful until you’ve experienced something ugly.” R2 closed his face in confusion. Happy left it at that. He is a great explainer to children.

The Vatican Museum

The next day, Happy taught the children another virtue: appreciate what you don’t understand. This virtue isn’t strictly Italian, but it often surfaces at places like the Vatican Museum.

After waiting 10 harrowing minutes to find that the skip-the-line tickets they bought were legitimate, Happy and family made it inside the museum.

They rented devices that explained the meaning of priceless things on display. It was simple and remarkable technology. Press the number and learn about the Egyptian sarcophagus, for example, or a mostly intact Roman sculpture. How did so many priceless artifacts hold their forms after thousands of years, except for the genitals?

“What happened to his balls?” R1 asked.

“Erosion,” Happy said. “Let’s go.” He led his family to the Sistine Chapel. The plan was to see that first and then admire the other artifacts strewn about the place.

“It’s all so remarkable,” Happy said. It was happening. History outside of meaningful context is impossible to comprehend.

Assuming his kids didn’t touch or break off the remaining man part of the Nile river god at the edge of the Egyptian museum, they should make it to the Sistine Chapel in 15 minutes.

Happy didn’t realize that the museum is designed to culminate at the Sistine Chapel, so no matter how fast you walk, there will always be 1000 people ahead of you. Unless you are good friends with a Cardinal, you can’t get to the Sistine Chapel in under two hours.

“Isn’t this something?” Happy said, pointing to an enormous bowl Nero once bathed in. “Rare marble.” Happy did his best to eavesdrop on what private tour guides were saying so he could regurgitate some beautiful facts to his children.

The kids didn’t mind. They were learning about the various exhibits that lacked sculpted balls. Hours later, when they finally arrived at the Sistine Chapel, R1 asked why it was so famous.

To that, Happy responded, “Because it is.”

To which R1 asked, “But why?”

Happy, having no idea why the Sistine Chapel is considered a masterpiece, even after pressing the button several times, made up a story about how Michelangelo spent four years on his back finishing it.

“He probably peed in a bucket and skipped lunch, and generally, paintings on ceilings are more celebrated than paintings on walls,” Happy said.

R1 shrugged and went on to poke his brother.

Sorrento

The boys discovered the most Italian of all the Italian virtues in Sorrento: appreciating beautiful places. The hotel in Sorrento was chock-full of melon-sized oranges and lemons dripping from groves of lush trees. R2 discovered a spa and modern swimming pool, complete with a Roman bath carved into the deck area. Cliffside views of the bay made Happy think of Sophia Loren, who stayed at the hotel while filming a movie in the 1950s.

They wandered through narrow streets and bought a ceramic egg with “Sorrento” painted on it. The boys ate sorbet out of fresh lemons and stumbled into a restaurant that was set into an indoor lemon grove, or so it seemed. Sorrento has a dream-like quality.

Happy ordered wine for Renetta and lemon sodas for the boys. R1, feeling inspired by his surroundings, ordered a lobster and crushed it like a 50-year-old wearing a bib. It was the kind of restaurant that, after you leave, assuming you can make it down the stairs, you take a moment to reorient yourself on the street because you can’t remember the direction from which you came.

The evening culminated in the most Italian way possible. Happy and family met up with friends from their neighborhood in American suburbia.

Happy ordered a drink called an Americano, which was full of Campari, and he drank. The group eased into a fogginess that was different from the slow burn they experienced at home. The setting may have contributed to their feelings. Or was it the sweet fruits and scented breeze that went down easily with mouthfuls of Campari?

When Happy made it back to the hotel, he fell asleep dreaming of lemon groves and Sophia Loren movies. The next morning, everyone woke up with a heavier-than-normal awareness of Italian indulgence.

Florence

Happy would call his family’s first European adventure a success.

On the way to the Ponte Vecchio, R1 twisted his shoulder doing parkour-style jumps from medieval stairs. R1 was a child who could not walk to places, go up and down steps, or stand or sit when required. He was always turning, twisting, flexing, or jumping from here to there.

Happy walked ahead to keep pace with R1. Renetta and R2 were a few paces behind.

“Can you please stop jumping?” Happy asked R1.

“Hey, Dad,” R1 said, landing a 360 off a statue. “What do you call someone who builds a building and then sells it for a lot of money?”

“A real estate developer.” With R1, Happy could never tell if he was slowing down enough to observe what was happening around him. Why Florence was the place that made him consider a future in real estate was beyond Happy’s reckoning.

“You can make money, but you can just as easily lose everything.” Happy went for it all here. He knows nothing about real estate. “It takes time to build relationships and learn how to do it. You have to take risks. You have to sell yourself as much as the project you are developing.”

“I can do that,” R1 said.

“You’ll be great,” Happy said. “At whatever you do.”

I remind the reader that I witnessed this all from the cramped accommodations of Happy’s mind. This is my prison cell after all. At least in Italy my incarceration didn’t feel so bad.

Italy allowed Happy to think without the weight of achievement, or imagine without the fear of failure. Although he would return to American suburbia and reverse any positive thinking, he enjoyed the momentary weightlessness, focusing less on all promises to keep and more on the ones that matter.

Happy slowed down, enough to be in the moment, if only long enough to yell at his son for jumping off a statue.

Until next time, humans.

Kuf

Reader’s note: finding something in a person’s mind is a weird game show. It is like removing outdated wallpaper to uncover stranger, uglier wallpaper under that and making sense of it. And despite the nonsense of the patterns, I can’t tell if what I’m looking at is random or had been planted for me to find. Here goes.

The memory I found is from January 2023.

Happy is on the brink of a larger-than-usual existential crisis. He has decided that his children are completely and utterly fucked, or might be fucked, unless they get into private school. R1, his eldest and, by all accounts, the less organized of his two children, returned home with a “C” on a math test. R1 did not realize there was a fourth page to the test, so he turned it in with 20% of the grade on the table.

“Wouldn’t happen in private school,” Happy says to Renetta.

R1’s private school math grade is pure speculation. Nonetheless, Happy has gone down the slippery slope of cause and effect, which starts with a C on a math test and ends with ugly grandchildren.

The Ugly Grandchildren Theory of Education

The Ugly Grandchildren Theory of Education is a simple framework that explains gaining a competitive advantage in Western society. Spoiler alert: it usually starts with having a competitive advantage in Western society. To maintain this advantage, the child follows a distinct educational progression, or his parents face the consequence of ugly grandchildren.

It goes like this. The child does well, or shows great promise, in the school he attends. The child applies and gets accepted into a prestigious private school. (Reader’s note: private school admission happens as early nursery school for such a child.) From there, the child is better positioned to get into an elite college, which leads to better job opportunities, a more promising life partner, and, eventually, better-looking grandchildren.

When the child’s father is old and cantankerous, he must prove that the sum of his life’s choices is more than a sack of quarters. It is widely accepted amongst those who maintain a competitive advantage in Western society that the one with the most, or best-looking, grandchildren has won the game of life and celebrates the achievement by drinking highballs at the club. It is unclear what this old man does at the club except drink highballs and tell his friends that his grandchildren are better looking than Franklin’s grandchildren or something like that. That’s winning.

Now to Happy’s memory.

Renetta rolls her eyes because what else can she do when Happy gets this way? “Then look into private schools,” she says.

“I will,” Happy says. “I will.” And with great fear and loathing, he does.

Happy starts an application to a private school.

For Happy, multiple private school applications are overwhelming, so he starts with one. Remember, reader, that R1 is nearly 10 in this memory, and the application process is not too rigorous. Happy only needs to write a few essays and to hope that his kid’s application looks better than the other kids in the application pool. Renetta will ace the parent interviews, so that is on her, and R1 will visit the school with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a future student. What can go wrong?

But nothing is ever simple for Happy. Instead of writing good parent essays, he frets. It turns out that Happy cannot write when his writing is tied to a specific outcome, like admission into a private school. Happy is much better at writing a story in a diner, for example, or a journal entry in a waiting room. The parent essay for R1’s private school application has big stakes, and Happy is a not-a-big-stakes writer.

There is another obvious problem with Happy here: he doesn’t believe what he is writing. And lack of conviction an ugly human makes, hence the fretting.

Fretting begets more fretting, and the ugliness that ensues is ghastly. Now, not only does R1’s C on a Math test threaten to doom Happy’s progeny but also Happy’s inability to write a good essay forewarns ugly grandchildren.

Woe is me, cries Happy.

It is not that Happy cannot sell R1. Happy genuinely believes his son is amazing. Happy’s lack of conviction stems from his doubt that an essay is capable of capturing the truth, that besides smaller class sizes, recyclable biodegradable cutlery in the school cafeteria, and well-maintained grassy areas, a prestigious private school is the better option for R1. He can’t just blurt out “because ugly grandchildren” and be done with it.

I remind the reader that Happy cannot distill the depth of his son’s life into a few paragraphs. “Tell us about your child.” or “What brings your child joy?” How much raw emotion, nuance, and honesty can anyone bring to a few short answers? Is a parent essay even possible to write?

Lacking conviction, Happy abandons writing his parent essays to search for something he believes in.

It is here that Happy devises an ingenious plan. To better prepare himself for this exact moment, where he is a 44-year-old dad writing parent essays that tip the scales of admission for R1, Happy will change the course of his future by altering his past. To execute his plan, he prepares and sends a letter to his 19-year-old self.

The logic is ironclad. Had Happy understood the magnitude of this pivotal moment when he was nineteen, for example, he would have been prepared to write killer parent essays at age 44.

Happy assumes that if a version of a letter exists now, then there must be a version of himself at age 19 who found motivation in it. Therefore, a letter, intended for a nineteen-year-old Happy Julius Pipe, can alter the state of mind of his current and future self.

Sound confusing? Just go with it, okay? It’s Happy we’re talking about.

Now that we have the back story, let us get to the letter.

Happy writes a letter to the Happy Julius of August 1997 to gain perspective and undo his current fretting situation. This is it:

Hi Happy,

It’s me, Happy, from the future. I’m a good quarter-century older than you, and man, have I learned some things.

You are probably thinking, why me? What does the nineteen-year-old Happy have that an older, wiser Happy does not? A stream like a firehose, for one. And so much hope. The nineteen-year-old version of us is on the brink of so many experiences: a new school, new friends, new subjects of study, and a life with many possibilities. The future is just an open road at this point.

You are about to accumulate much that will add to the person that you are becoming. This is exciting, bud.

So much that we hold dear to us, we acquire during life’s accumulation phases: meaningful relationships, not-so-meaningful relationships, philosophical grounding, and gross consumption of low-brow entertainment. Mostly, we accumulate a taste for laughter and love. This is by far the most important.

Laughter and love can feel ephemeral at times. This is why we must seek and accumulate them. Especially because they are very light and easy to carry. We like them. We want to carry them even though we enter great stretches in our lives where laughter and love are elusive.

You’ll meet a woman walking down the street one day. You’ll see her on a balcony and think to yourself, “holy shit my whole life is right there.” Hold onto those moments when they come.

But the problem with life is you’ll also accumulate unwanted things. The intense feeling of shame after your first fight, for example, or the uninformed assumptions that carry you into disagreeable conversations.

There are many things we don’t want to carry, but we carry all the same. At nineteen you don’t understand this. You are nineteen. You piss like a firehose and can finish two cheesesteaks for lunch without heartburn.

So I challenge this future version of us: Recognize and hold onto those things that make you light, and discard those things that make you heavy.

But there is a rub. There is always a fucking rub, Happy.

I say this to you now because at 44, at the halfway point of our life -

Reader’s note: Happy is unaware that age 44 is much further than his probabilistic halfway point - remember, he is destined to move on on November 11th, 2035.

- I have no idea how to discard those heavy things. I cannot simply throw them away.

Heavy things are toxic and can harm others without proper disposal. I am talking about unwanted emotions that blind us to temporary madness. If not properly disposed of, our heavy emotions can spread and harm others.

And the more we spread our heavy emotions, the worse we feel. So you must tread with caution and thoughtfulness. Because at a certain point in your life, you will accumulate as much fear and loathing as love and laughter, and if you do not properly discard those heavy, unwanted emotions, your life will teeter out of balance. And that really sucks balls.

Be mindful of the two-sided nature of accumulation.

Unwanted things start as little seeds of feelings and emotions. “Doubt” is a perfect example of one. I don’t want to use the word “demons” because we are not living in the 1600s. So I will call these unwanted feelings “little fuckers” or just “fuckers”.

“Fuckers” has a playfulness to it, which is why it works better than “demons”. I tend to believe that the worst parts of our nature, which grow from the unwanted emotions we carry, tend to have a playfulness to them. This is why they are not “demons” per se, because the worst parts of our natures have a redeeming quality.

They are still fuckers and you will accumulate them. They will weigh you down. And you must dispose of them. This requires work and planning and I have no idea how to rid myself of them. However, I have a hunch. And sometimes, a hunch is the best place to begin.

Don’t release the fuckers. Releasing the fuckers is bad. This amounts to shouting or yelling. Huffing and puffing like a goddamn dragon, smoking up the joint so badly that no one can breathe. The fuckers you carry want you to release them. You cannot do this. To begin, you should ignore the fuckers and find a different way to express them.

First. You have to accept that they exist and live inside us. They exist inside you, even now, young Happy. For example, you are afraid to write. You are afraid to put your ideas out into the universe, so you accumulate your fears and store them in the junk drawers of your mind.

Neglected ideas fester and lead to doubt, which is another fucker that inhabits our mind. We fear and we doubt, allowing these fuckers to thrive. Fear and doubt lead to anger, and “Anger” is a real asshole. He is the least playful of the fuckers that live inside us.

Now, as I stated earlier, you cannot simply release the fuckers. Releasing a fucker is like taking a shit and throwing it out the window. Now there is shit on your sidewalk, which runs the risk that someone else steps in it. And everyone says, “Don’t go near that house. There is shit on the sidewalk.”

The only way to discard the fuckers is to ground them creatively. Put them into a story or a song. Allow them to exist in a medium that doesn’t get shit everywhere. You can discard them, but constructively.

Now this is important, so listen. Get them out. Write and publish. Write and publish. It doesn’t matter if the medium the fuckers live in is good or bad, clever or lackluster. Most likely it will be bad (most writing starts this way). The point is, you must exorcise them, like demons, otherwise, they will take over your life, and nobody wants to be around a person with his fuckers all over the place.

Fear, Doubt, and Anger have a brother, a big brother with a snaggle tooth and soul patch, who is the worst fucker among them, Uncertainty. He is closely related to all three but far more terrible because you cannot ground him in a story. And while Fear, Doubt, and Anger exist within you, and are an extension of you, Uncertainty lives outside of you.

Because one day, believe it or not, you will turn all of the laughter and love you have into a family, which is a good place to store your best moments. Your family members will become the most precious collection you have, the center of your life, and you will want to protect them no matter what and carry them with you as long and as far as you can.

But you cannot protect them from everything. You cannot control the choices they make and stop them from taking risks. The world can be cruel and full of situations you can’t predict or stop: disease and pain, shattered dreams and hurt feelings, and mean kids on the playground who bully with cruel intentions.

Uncertainty is the worst fucker because he threatens to destroy all of the laughter and love you accumulated over the years. He is that dark cloud on the horizon that lives where you are going. He is that potential storm that can destroy everything.

Maybe that storm will blow over and maybe it won’t. Whatever happens, Uncertainty is there, a big fucker with a snaggle tooth and soul patch lingering in the distance.

The only way to deal with Uncertainty is to live your life, enjoy it, laugh, and love as much as can, right now, because there is always a storm ahead, a big fucker, that may or may not blow over, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Because the only thing we can do is live our best life, right now.

That’s it. That is all I wanted to tell you. Remember to accumulate as much laughter and love as you can, and try your best to make stories out of those little fuckers: Fear, Doubt, and Anger.

And don’t worry about Uncertainty. He is coming for you no matter what. Instead, enjoy all of those good things you have accumulated over the years. The kids’ gut-laughs your wife’s silly voices and every flicker of a good, little vibe. Enjoy them. Carry them with you for 1000 lifetimes and give them back.

Remember this, Happy, you little shit.

Happy Julius Pipe, 44

Happy proceeds to print, sign, and mail the letter to his nineteen-year-old self.

This is very similar to how he communicates with Santa Claus, so he is confident that his letter will reach the 19-year-old version of himself.

Then Happy takes a long breath, stops fretting, and writes the goddamn parent essays.

Are Happy’s essays the best essays a private school admissions committee has ever read? Probably not. Most likely, Happy’s essays look like all the other essays in the application pool.

But he can write them. He can finish them. And somehow, if only for a moment, he proceeds as if he read the letter he wrote to himself at nineteen. The act of thinking and writing creates another version of himself - one with slightly more self-awareness.

Most importantly, the exercise of writing parent essays forces him to think about his kids and remember, that the best thing he can do for them, is to take the advice he gave to his nineteen-year-old self. Enjoy. Accumulate the light things and properly dispose of heavy ones. Enjoy right now because you never know what’s coming and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Sincerely,

Kuf