the question presented itself: “Do you want your whole career to be determined by The New Yorker?” I don’t know why I didn’t understand that they were out of my league—that I was just a drop of water in the ocean to them, and, therefore, it would have been a very bad idea to base my career on some opinion that they alone might’ve shared. But let’s break this down. Why did such a question appear in the first place? Was a friend trying to motivate me to get back on the saddle—and send even more poetry to The New Yorker? Or perhaps they meant something else—such as, “Are you going to pursue this when, in reality, if you can’t make it in The New Yorker, then they are on the wrong side of history—and subject to your wrath?”
Jack Daniels might’ve reacted that way, AOC said. I tried to prepare myself, that being said, for a life without Alex, since, according to AOC, i might not want to base my life on my poetry—I know you’re supposed to live to write poetry, as opposed to writing poetry to live, but if you can’t look after yourself, then you’re not going to be able to write poetry at all—eventually. You’ll get sick, and you just won’t give a damn. Did that mean, then, that I should write in a way that The New Yorker would prefer? Was there a preferred way—for The New Yorker? I didn’t think that was going to solve my problems, though; so no, i wasn’t going to let The New Yorker dominate how i lived my life—or thought of myself.
I was far more worried about how Alexandria was going to feel—this woman that was doing her best to write this book for me; then Alex said, “I’m going to disassociate myself with you.” Now, she didn’t say she was going to disassociate herself from me—she said with me, so i was curious, of course. Maybe she wanted to reinvent herself? Sometimes you don’t know you need to reinvent yourself until you do, and other times you might not notice anything—but you need to reinvent yourself. Did Alexandria need to reinvent herself? No, of course not. She didn’t need to do anything—even if she left her live-in lover.
So, was it going to be me and Alexandria against the world? Just the two of us—reshaping our existence? Who knows what can happen over the course of a few years, but, for now, the answer to that question depended on our actions, and how, together, we could speak through each other. I’m going to write your book and, who knows? What was meant by that? Well, she’d practically authored this book already, since, as it happens, i am constantly using her voice to tune in to what is going on—both in this country right now and in the world after that. But it went deeper than that. I won’t say that I wrote her a script, but i might as well have, because, when she talked, i couldn’t agree more—there was no way for me to tell the difference between what I was saying to her and what she was saying to the rest of us.
i could feel something happening—no doubt, things were changing. i’d been learning, a little, to shift voices, which made it easier to write—inspiration was flowing in from different sources, which ensured that I would continue to be able to entertain myself—talking to AOC, or the people that were related to us. “Wow!” “Nice!!” that was some unknown voice—it could have been Alex, but it didn’t have to be Alex, cheering me on. The arguments are awful, but the good times are great, Alex said. I didn’t know if she was commenting on her past experience, her current experience, or what, but she sounded like two people that were getting high together—and, sometimes, coming down, together, too—which, of course, is always a mistake.