From Write Club: Happy New Fear 01/16/24
Turns out, my mother absolutely raised a quitter. She herself was interstate champion quitter. Smoking? Quit after fifty years. Sure, it was two years before she died of COPD, but she did it! And that was the easy one. She fled to the safety of a new life more often than some birds migrated. Seven kids, two husbands, and one giant bombshell about those first two things dropped on me about two years ago. I thought it was 3 kids and just the one husband, my dad. She quit New York, she quit Chicago but came back, she quit a boyfriend we lived with, hell she quit kids at the hospital. Gave em up - four of em. Why she kept us, I could not tell you. She quit telling the truth to any of us before she quit living. I sure can quit. I was raised by the best.
I spent my 20s hitting it and quitting it. College, studying abroad, after college. I couldn’t go a week without getting some and forgetting some. In college, I quit going to classes I didn’t like until the failing grades came around so I quit doing that. And jobs?
I yelled at one boss for 45 minutes before I quit. It was as amazing as it sounds. I have called in quit, ghost quit, quiet quit, loud quit. Once I left a job early that I got through my agent at the time. Because they had me handing out Oil of Olay body wash coupons at a KMart in Zion and the only person who wanted to talk to me was a dude in an actual trench coat who looked at the coupon and said, “Nice legs. Are those your legs?” He opened the promotional cardstock landfill I was offering to see a fully seemingly nude woman with her knees demurely scrunched under her chin, as though she had to hug herself lest the full weight of having an epidermis this radiant crush her from above like an anvil on a coyote. “This is gettin better all the time. You sure those aren’t your legs?” he actually asked with his real mouth. I quit. l quit smoking 13 years ago, but don’t tell weed I said that. I quit waiting for someone to put me in things and made things I wanted to be in instead. I quit looking for small minded people to do big minded things.
Quitting is a glorious enterprise, and should be used with abandon. Finish what you start? Sometimes. Somefuckingtimes what you started was a terrible idea. Recognizing what does not serve us is just as important as what does, or so Instagram always tells me in some form or another before I quit scrolling for the night.
We have to quit pretending all of our ideas and endeavors are worth seeing through. If you know in the middle that it’s killing you or someone else, you’ve learned the lesson. Squeezed the juice, made the sale. Quit.
Kevin Alves asked to battle me here. I just came home to host a show and teach a workshop and he’s like TO THE DEATH IT’LL BE FUN. Quit. Pushing. Me.
I quit saying yes to everything, but I can’t yet quit feeling bad about it. I desperately long to quit moving my body around like it’s hair and wishing it were different. Wishing we were different only makes capitalism cum and I for one would like to quit making it jizz. Quit letting the mediocrity of the person who raised their hand to help you hold your quality hostage. Quit being an asshole to yourself. It’s infectious. Quitting is liberation. It forces you to say: Enough. I love me and you enough to say so.
I wish we could quit our love of things over people. I wish we could quit pretending that anyone can be anything when it’s only a tiny percentage that gets to do it. I wish we could loudly quit our love for torturing each other. Quiet quitting isn’t working.
Quitting would help us lose weight, you know. The heaviness we feel knowing that rich and powerful men who don’t understand anyone but themselves would be gone if we quit assuming they were smart just because they’re rich. We could do away with thin being everyone’s personal goal. We could quit cowering in fear of aging. We could quit tolerating the scraps of stalled wages while the powerful hoard feasts. We could quit watching innocent people die. Think of what that would do for our figure.
You’ve probably heard this joke before but fuck you I have a microphone and time left.
A father is overjoyed when his son comes home from the war. He is, unfortunately, a head in a box. But he’s alive, dammit, so Dad is going to take his son out to the pub to celebrate. He puts his son on the bar and orders two shots of whiskey. The father holds the whiskey up to his son’s lips, and as soon as he sips, BAM. A torso appears. Father is astonished and gives the boy another shot. A RIGHT ARM. Another shot. A LEFT ARM. He could stop here. This is already more of a life than he believed his son would ever live at this stage, and even then he was just so happy to have him home. But the adrenaline was too hard to resist. A leg came, and then with the last shot, the one that would make him whole again, the son took a sip and, in his newfound power and corporeal form, he sought vengeance on those who wronged him. He wanted them tortured like he was in the war…but it didn’t satiate him. He wanted more blood. He took limbs from children, infants from their parents, and organs from their dead. He starved the enemy and plagued them with disease. He murdered tens of thousands of civilians and, if anyone raised their voice to stop him, he called them traitors. He said traitors were people who would harm the country and people like him, who was once tortured and only a head. But enemies kept coming, calling him a ruthless killer who used his former torture as a shield to shed more blood and cruelty. Once it was clear he would never be rid of his enemies, he took to the people nearby. Those who knew nothing of the war, for they were not old enough to remember this metaphor. He starved, beat and murdered them. Ripped families apart like rockets hitting tender flesh and he called those who told of the deaths liars for sport. He took a celebratory shot while those around him suffered and died of thirst. And as he was about to claim the land free of enemies, to drink the rest of the miracle shot, he was gone. No trace of the man he was. No left leg. No right leg. No Gaza. No Darfur. No Yemen. No maternity wards. No abortions. No hospitals. No children. No empathy. No head. In the rubble of where the pub once stood, the bartender crawled out, coughing concrete and blood. He looked to the dead body of the father, his face still frozen in awe. “should have quit while he was a head,” he said before dying.
I cannot commit to being in pain any longer. I cannot commit to doing nothing. I quit being useless, helpless, and uninformed. I quit being old, broken, sad, and isolated. I’ve committed to quitting, and I’m quitting while I’m ahead.