Sorry for the long silence. I’ve read your comments and I truly appreciate that some of you have grown concerned after not hearing from me here. You - my core readers - are the best folks on earth, and I love you. Always know that I’m alive as long as my regular column and The Week keep showing up on Taki’s site. Takimag doesn’t have any stored columns of mine; I submit fresh every week. So if I croak, they won’t get no column, and you won’t see no column. And that means ol’ Dave’s ain’t no more.
I do have a long-form Substack piece coming next week. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it.
I will say that I’ve not enjoyed this year so far. Three bouts of gout, which sounds like the beginning of a song…
Three bouts of gout,
Without a doubt,
That I could do without.
Makes me feel like a lout,
As I pout, I wanna shout,
Three bouts of gout.
We’re in the eighth month of 2024, and four of those months I’ve had difficulty walking. I’m fine now - my last bout was in June, and I think I’ve eliminated most of the things from my diet that were inviting the condition.
“Most.”
My body continues to react to alcohol in increasingly unique and exciting ways after 21 years of heavy drinking (with a few intervals here and there). I was telling an old GF last week that it’s maddening how below the neck I’m emaciated - you can almost see abs FFS, but above the neck I’m still Puffy Pete. How unfair! I’d like to have a gaunt face again like I used to. I don’t NEED a trim body. The next person on earth who’ll see me naked is the coroner, and who cares what he thinks. But I’d occasionally like to do podcasts without having to adjust the camera to accommodate my fat fucking face.
Anyway, my liver will tell me when to start my next sober period. I hope it isn’t until September, but when it happens it happens.
Psychologically, I think I was affected more than I was initially willing to admit by being ill-treated by two publishers this year. One rather sizable company turned me down flat because I’m Amazon-banned. It was the sharp, cruel rejection a teen would receive submitting the essay “Tits: I Luv to Suck ‘Em” to the New York Review of Books. It made me realize just how poisonous being Amazon-banned is for an author.
The other publisher, a new company with money behind it, expressed interest in two books from me (the rights to my old one, and a completely new one), but gave me a figure money-wise that was such a lowball, so insultingly meager, I wouldn’t offer it to my yard bean. See, these guys knew my dick’s in a vise, being so toxic to all other publishers because of the Amazon ban. So they lowballed me like midget Cy Young. I didn’t say yes or no, but then the head of the company went on Twitter and did something disrespectful to me. It wasn’t malicious, but the insultingly-lowball figure (for a from-scratch book) plus the inability to trust the CEO equaled no deal.
I was truly fortunate to know Adam Parfrey, the greatest indie book publisher in my lifetime and yours. He paid authors well, and he knew how to support them. He was the best there ever was or will be, and these guys who lowballed me had never even heard of him. Trying to break into indie publishing without knowing about Parfrey is like trying to get into filmmaking without knowing of Welles, Ford, Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, Lynch, or even Tarantino.
“I don’t know them guys, but I really like the work of Bert Fremgold.”
“Who the hell’s that?”
“Oh, he’s great. He just did the film version of ‘Tits: I Luv to Suck ‘Em’ starring Jeremy Piven as Nip Bewbsman. It’s streaming on Hulu!”
There will never be another Parfrey. Which means I will likely never be published again outside Takimag.
Look, I’m not whining. I’m simply stating a fact: I’m saddened. A man can be saddened; it’s no sin. Moron deniers and anti-deniers keep championing/berating me daily on Twitter, and I’m having to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never again get the opportunity to have my say. That does something to a guy. And my psychological responses are as new to me as they are to you. I’m petrified of spending money, I’m logy about fixing things around the house. If you were to walk through my house, it looks fine. It’s not run-down looking. Until you realize how much shit doesn’t work because I lack the will to fix it.
And okay, there is one cosmetic issue - the wall I erected to keep Ratibor out.
Now, I have no idea if there ever was “a” Ratibor, or several. Two weeks ago I saw a similar-looking brown rat in my backyard. He’d gnawed a hole through the plastic lid of my trash bin…that lid is THICK…and he was inside the can chomping away on trash. Scared the shit outta me when I approached the bin at 2am to wheel it to the curb.
I hard-kicked the side of the bin and he jumped out of the hole and scurried off into the brush.
Then I saw him again sniffing around my patio door. Then I heard something coming and going through either my washing machine drain or dryer exhaust vent.
So there may have been one Ratibor, there may have been many, but the point is, I never had him cornered; he was always coming and going at will. Ironically, it was all those fucking traps I laid out with FOOD inside them, and the glue traps scented with rat-attracting odors, that kept bringing him back inside. So now I’ve walled off the washer/dryer.
Why not? They don’t work anyway.
Of course, if he can gnaw through that fucking lid, he can gnaw through my makeshift wall. And that’s why I hate summer because I’m screwed regarding trash. If I keep food-based garbage in my kitchen trash can, I get flies. If I put it outside in the bins, I get rats. To be clear, this is a fairly wooded area. We’ve always had rodents, raccoons, possums, and coyotes. But I’ve never known the rats to be so invasive and aggressive.
Gnawing through a trash can lid? Jesus Christ, dude. I’d put rat poison outside, but the merry squirrels might eat it. Ditto bucket traps; I’d just end up with a bucket o’ merry squirrels.
Stupid as this sounds, I’ve started freezing my food leavings in ziplock bags until garbage pickup day. That way, no kitchen trash can, no outside bin.
Ol’ Dave is SMART! Or descending into psychosis. I’d put even money on either.
Speaking of money…
Remember - every dollar you contribute to Buy Me a Beer goes to food and water/power bills for ol’ Dave. I spend on nothing extravagant. You are helping me stay afloat and sane.
Well, afloat.
And it’s very much appreciated!
Stay tuned. As I said - long-form piece coming next week.
Hey Dave, good to hear you are still with us. If it is really you. A photo of you holding up today's newspaper would go a long way in proof of life.
Once I asked a friend how many guys he thought a very attractive girl we knew who had turned promiscuous was doing. After careful consideration, he replied - probably 10, but they’re like rats, for every 1 you see there are 5 you don’t. This guy was on his way to becoming a veterinarian, and knew about shit like that. So ratibor probably is part of a larger crew. Similarities with your publisher problems are obvious. Hang in there.