1. WIDESPREAD STUPEFACTION
My parents and my grandma came to town for Mother’s Day.
For the last several months my mom has been obliquely referring to this writing project of hers.
I’d pretend I didn’t know what it was, but I was certain it was an autobiographical book written in diary form; because in my new novel, the character who shares my mother’s silhouette is writing a book/diary, and my inkling is that I control the world.
She sat me, my sister, my dad, and my grandma down to listen to her pre-reveal spiel. This was a gift for me and my sister, she said.
Turns out, I was way off. Her project that took her from June 27th to May 7th was translating my book Tropicália into portuguese.
I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know what to say, I started crying.
My sister goes, “this is not a gift for US. This is a gift for HAROLD!”
My dad was stupefied in a different way.
He said, “what’s the big deal? I thought the book was translated?”
I said, “what the fuck language do you think I wrote it in?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
To be fair, my dad struggles with both english and portuguese.
Despite having been married to a brasilian woman for 30 years, his portuguese is limited to: Oi, tudo bem? (a phrase which to be fair to him, he absolutely crushes), mais uma, and vambora.
This is not to say he don’t get around in Rio. My dad got the unconscionable gall and horsesense of Christopher Columbus. Devoid of all gringo-compunctions, he dons his bucket hat and cargo shorts and golf socks and struts around sticking out so sorethumbly that people think, Well that guy must be brasilian.
He had a barber for 20 years, Raimundo, who was bewildered when he found out my dad was from the United States and didn’t speak portuguese.
He said, “but we’re always talking!”
To illustrate his anglophone adroitness let me tell you this:
Raimundo’s alcoholism got the better of his hand-stability so he retired and his son took over his chair. My dad went in for a cut and came back euphoric (probably at having experienced a sober barber for the first time) going, “that guy was fucking good he put a fucking spoon on my head.”
I said, “what?”
He said, “yeah he put a damn spoon on there you know, fucking,” he said, tapping his head uninterpretably, “like a fucking fork, a fork.”
“You mean a comb?”
“Yeah, that. A comb,” he said, turning it over in his mouth like it was a new word: comb.
I said, “you don’t know the word comb?”
He said, “I forgot it, I ain’t use it in 30 years.”
But I was hype off my mom’s translation.
She also gave me a copy of the hardcover she was working from, writing notes, journaling as she went along.
What was cool was thinking of her realizing up close how fiction gets made. Lately I been talking about autofiction and what that means to me.
To me it ain’t, I Did Ketamine and Sucked a Cock, (not to decry cocksucking or ketamine, two popular well-enjoyed pastimes), it’s a relationship to literature & life.
The point of literature, I think, is to live more, life better, and understand more. What you do, what you write, and what you read should be all be like a big fucking river or something, flowing symbiotically.
Plus it’s a game, too. It’s more fun if you’re playing with the reality that some people have especially keen insights into.
Here’s what my mother wrote in the margin of chapter five of Tropicália, told from the grandfather’s perspective (translation mine),
“This page is so hard for me. I always wondered. I know this is a fiction but… Everything here is so real and painful to relive.”
I said, “you didn’t give a copy to grandma?”
She said she didn’t want to, without my permission. Because there’s happenings in the book like Daniel takes a girl into the beach bathroom and rawly busts in her fuckfully (try to put that phrase into portuguese, mom).
In the margins of that scene she wrote, “damn Daniel you need some scruples lol.”
My mom said, “you don’t mind your grandma reading that?”
My Christloving grandma has said some of the most depraved shit I ever heard in my life, I said, “she’ll be fine”.
I don’t know what’s gonna happen with the translation, if anything, —cause the brasilian market I guess don’t want no fake-ass HaroldRogers-ass novels about their country, —but this is exactly the kind of attention everybody should be lavishing on my book.
2. CONTENTIOUSNESS ABOUNDS
After an exhausting open mic where a guy pretended to be French during his set and discoursed oddly on the female anatomy for five minutes and then revealed he was actually just joking about being French (my least favorite bit: the fake accent), I was sitting with my friend Brian outside of Breads Bakery in Union Square having an iced coffee, judging his sexually depradatious lifestyle (get it together Bryan!), despite my totally unjudgemental nature.
A guy, —probably in his mid-50s, —was holding the door for other people to walk in; he was erect, pompous, as if holding the door for strangers was a noble act.
A woman wearing an unidentifiable work uniform approaches him holding a big Breads Bakery bag filled with trash.
She holds it out to him confused asking if he left it on the street. He goes, “yeah, I’m done with that,” and then walks inside.
Me, Brian, and the woman were all like, What the fuck?
But she just went and threw the shit away.
Then the guy storms back out of Breads and walks toward her going, “yeah I left the bag on the street, what, are you gonna call the cops on me!?”
Brian goes, “you’re the one who left your trash on the street!”
He scoffs like he can’t believe it and then walks once again back inside Breads. That was at least the third trip inside the bakery in the 10 minutes we’d been sitting there.
It was possible the guy the guy was a babka-freak, and he’d consumed so much chocolate babka that he wasn’t thinking straight.
Once again he emerges and this time confronts me and Brian.
He says, “well I got my fucking head bashed in a few years ago and now I have short term memory loss, is that ok with you?”
I wish I would’ve said, “then how’d you remember we said anything?” but instead we just looked at him.
He saw I was wearing a Church Street Boxing shirt and he said, “are you a boxer?”
I said, “yeah.”
He goes, “keep your hands to yourself and everyone will be better off.”
Then he strutted off like he just dunked on everyone; presumably he was off to get more babka somewhere else.
I have to say that did make me mad, and though I’m not the kind of guy who would speak up in a situation like that, like Brian did, I am always ready to fight somebody older, smaller, and with less fighting experience than me.
Eric showed up just as the altercation ended. He has an obnoxiously laissez-faire attitude toward other people.
He said, “that guy’s obviously crazy, why even get mad about it?”
I said, “Eric, your obnoxious laissez-faire attitude toward exterior lifeforms is not ameliorating my choleric distemper.”
He said, “isn’t choleric distemper a bit redundant?”
I said, “FUCK YOU!” and then I said, “you know what Brian, I thought you pretending to be French and discoursing on the clitoris for five minutes was NOT FUNNY and you should cut it from your act.”
And I stormed off while Brian’s harrowed voice resounded, “but it’s my closer!”
We were supposed to get drinks, but I knew Eric just wanted me to go because he wanted a caipirinhas and was rightly worried he’d butcher the pronunciation, so I was glad to allow him to go humiliate himself.
As I was walking home up 10th Avenue, enjoying the sunshine, finally cooled down, a man, who looked exactly like the Breads Assailant, wearing a shirt with a vertical American flag on it walked by me and silently stuck a middle finger right in my face and walked off.
I was speechless once again. There are some things that are just impossible to understand.
Here’s an exact re-enactment of that scene with Gaby in the offending role:
3. DRINKING OFF THE DOLDRUMS
Yes, there was a certain doldrumic quality to this week.
Tuesday, me and Sean were supposed to have an eminent luminary on our podcast, but the luminary cancelled last minute; though disconsolate, we consoled ourselves by remembering that they probably canceled due to fear of our intellect and power.
That night I went to Local 42 to drink.
Ethan met me there and we were having an epic time, even though the bar was full of foreigners speaking foreign languages.
I was telling Ethan all about my travails, banging my fist on the table, insisting that I get no respect.
I had to urinate, so I said, “I have to urinate, but man, I’m having a great time.”
When I got back to the table there was a note from Ethan,
“Harold,
I’m sorry, but I just can’t stay any longer. I feel that speaking with you is like pulling teeth. We just don’t have anything in common anymore. Please don’t try to contact me again. I’ve moved on.”
Ethan is a hoot LOL! And then he hilariously blocked my number!
If you’re reading this Ethan, I’m still laughing but unblock my number man, let’s hang out!
4. CAN WE PLEASE STOP FOOLING OTHER PPL?
As if things could get any worse, the next morning I get a phone call from an unknown number.
I answered, as one does, and I said, “hello?”
A gruff, stern voice on the other end said, “This is the IRS. We’re auditing you for tax fraud.”
I said, “ok,” being as cool as possible but thinking FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! maybe I shouldn’t written off every meal I had in 2024 as idea-gestation-time; nor every purchase I made as persona creation; and oh the number fudging, the NUMBER FUDGING!
I made my voice a few octaves deeper and said, “is there anything I should do?”
And the asshole on the other end said, “we’re sending you a letter,” and he hung up.
I had already resigned myself to what google told me would be a 16 month prison sentence, —shit I wouldn’t be able to drink and I’d have a lot of reading time, couldn’t be that bad, —when I called my dad and delivered the news.
He said, “that’s weird, the IRS don’t usually call.”
I looked up the phone number that called me and there was one result… CHURCH STREET BOXING GYM.
Those fuckers pranked me. I was pranked.
I am something of an undupable fellow, but I have fallen for a few things.
For a while I was getting smished all the time. Do you know smishing?
It’s an sms fishing scam. It’s designed to ensnare nonagenarians who lack technological affinity.
What happens is you get a text in bastardized english saying something like,
“USPS mail package in the process of transportation, due to damage to the outer package, address information is lost, can not be delivered.”
And then they say you gotta confirm your address and they give you a url to type in, not a link, for some reason it’s not a link, and for a second you think wow that’s weird that the post office is texting me, and that they couldn’t make your life easier by just putting a link in there, but you just type it in anyway; and then it takes you to this rudimentary website where you have to put all your information in and then pay 48 cents to get your package delivered, and you think, 48 cents! this is an outrage! it should be free to get your mail delivered! and you know you didn’t order anything, but still this could be a book someone is sending you, so you do what you have to do, I mean what if it’s a really cool book?
And then you wait around for your package and it never arrives and you’re like, Oh well, it’s only 48 cents. Then you start getting weird charges on your credit card and you have to cancel your credit card and you think, I wonder if my card got cloned at the bodega, I gotta be more careful!
And then once your new credit card comes in, you get another text from the post office. And you’re like, These guys need to get it together! But you know the drill by now: rudimentary website, less than 50 cents, so it’s easy.
And then, What the fuck, my credit card info got stolen again!?
Reader, I’ll be honest, I was smished three times.
I had to get a new credit card three times in one month. The cycle only ended because I got one of those texts and I showed Gaby like, “I feel like the post office never knows my address, do you get this?”
And she said, “Oh my god.”
5. A PRURIENT REDACTION
My friend, we’ll call him… Harry… had a sexual mishap with his girlfriend, we’ll call her… Abby… but unfortunately my friend is a prude and he won’t let me tell.
Just for the record, know that my friend Harry stays rock hard, dickwise. And he shoots ropes, thick jizzy ropes.
ALL. THE. TIME.
the undupable HDR !!!
Definitively stealing "shares the silhouette"! In Portuguese it will sound even better, the "lh" duplicated.