1 scribbled! (or: how I ruined the cruise)
hail mary digital!
1 scribbled!
(or: how I ruined the cruise)
by Brian Buchanan
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Hi.
Before we get started with the show, I just wanted to mention two things real quick. First: this is a long show and you don’t got to be be a hero! There are natural break points so, you know, stop when you need to stop, drink some water, and pick it back up when you’re ready. Second: hail mary digital! is an independently produced podcast. Right, like, I’m not on a ~fancy podcast network~ and this show isn’t ~ad supported~ or anything like that. Now, I’m not looking for support BUT if you do enjoy the program, I’d ask that you consider leaving a donation with the Sandy Ground Historical Society. Sandy Ground — which is located right here, on the south shore of Staten Island — is the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the United States and was a station along the Underground Railroad. The Historical Society offer workshops to students across the New York City and they even maintain a museum here in the community. Every dollar helps them continue the work of telling their story. If you’re interested, there’s information in the show notes and on my website.
ANYWAY here we go!
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We’ve all got a story. And, no, I don’t necessarily mean it in the big, cliché, “we’ve all got a story to tell,” kinda way. I mean, I’m sure we all do. But what I mean is: we’ve all of us each got that story. I’m talking about that story your family whips out any time you’re trying to introduce someone new to them. That story they claim is charming or endearing, but isn’t. That story that gets told in the late, sacred hour of Thanksgiving, once everyone is wine drunk and two slices of pumpkin pie into dessert. Somehow that story always grows in the telling, too; the details evolve and are squeezed for all they’re worth. And we can just forget nuance because the stakes are only ever biblical in that story.
The thing is, though, we should be honest about that story — it’s usually the tale of some boneheaded, stupidass thing we did. We were young and naïve and it’s not so bad that it left this demerit on our permanent record — it’s more like a tiny smudge of permanent marker on our soul. And hearing that story retold, that’s the price of our penance. We deserve this. We have to sit there and own it and endure until it’s mercifully erased from living memory.
Which is bad news for me, because I’m about to share my version of that story. There will be heroism, mystery, courage. Espionage, romance, and derring-do. So buckle up, folks — this is how I ruined the cruise.
oh yeah, there will be BLOOD, too.
On Pink, hit it. You’re listening to Hail Mary Digital. That sounds very religious, doesn’t it? I’m also not wild about the acronym #hmd. Episode 1: Scribbled! Or: how I ruined the cruise…
All right. Let’s set the stage. We gotta rewind back a little bit — that story takes place in 2006. OK. So here we are: it’s February 17th, the Friday before Presidents’ Day Week. And here’s everything you gotta know about where I’m at in life:
1) I’m twelve years old and in the 8th grade.
2) Last fall, I played defensive end on my football team at the Staten Island Boys Football League or the S.I.B.F.L. My team — the Saints (of which I was a captain) — made it all the way to the senior championship game against the Hawks. On the last play of the game I had the most athletic moment of my life, pivoting to set the edge and forcing the opposing quarterback — Nicky Barber — into a last-ditch Hail Mary pass. Of course, The Holy Mother, should she exist and concern herself with the outcomes of middle school boy’s football games does not intervene against the Saints. So: the wide receiver drops it, we win the game, bring in the dancing lobsters.
this will not be the final reference I make to The Amanda Show in this podcast.
3) Let’s not get the wrong idea, however: I’m no athlete. I am a huge friggin’ nerd. My AOL screen name is JediRanger57 and for Christmas, my cousin Angela got me a hat bearing the eponymous character from the flash animation site homestarrunner.com. I LOVE this hat and will live in it… until one of my dogs eats it a few months later.
what a MOOD.
4) Forty-Seven days from now, I will play my first rock show — the Talent Show at IS34. I’ll wear an American Flag bandana because I saw Eddie Van Halen do that in a video on this new but slow website called YouTube. My band opens the show with American Idiot and in the break after the solo, when I’m not playing my bass, I will start clapping — and the crowd will start clapping — and I know in that moment I’ll be chasing that kind of power the rest of my life.
5) The number one song in the country is Beyonce’s Check On It. I absolutely do not have the resources to license that song. So instead, I got my best friend Shaun to record a version of it.
Ooo Boy you lookin' like you like what you see
Won't you come over check up on it, I might let you work up on it
Ladies let em check up on it, watch he while he check up on it
Dip it, pop it, twerk it, stop it, check on me tonight…
OK. So. My family was going on a cruise in February. I just mentioned that I’m from Staten Island — which is in New York — and I already know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t it freezing in New York in February?” And you’re right; in fact, only a week before, a blizzard dropped more than thirty inches of snow on the city.
But thankfully we’re not sailing out of New York Harbor. Instead, we’re sailing out of Fort Lauderdale with our eyes set on the sunny Caribbean, baby! That’s right, we’re heading to Jamaica and we’re heading to… and we’re heading to… and this should be your first clue about how much this story, er… how much that story has clouded my memory: I can’t even remember where we went on the cruise that I ruined. But whatever.
ANYWAY so we fly down on the 17th but the cruise itself doesn’t start until the next day — Saturday, the 18th. Let’s call this Day #0. We’ll be hitting the high seas on a MASSIVE liner called the… Something of the Seas? I don’t even remember the name of the boat, all right? I have a photo of the ship, and in the photo you can just make out the name on the side: The Something of the Seas. And I thought, “This is going to be a bit of easy detective work, right?” I’d just have to go through Royal Caribbean’s fleet and see which one ends in …of the Seas. I hit a bit of a snag, however: see, all of their boats are Something of the Seas. There’s Liberty of the Seas, Adventure of the Seas, Quantum of the Seas… I don’t know.
seriously, wtf???
I wouldn’t be making such a big deal about this, either, but that story takes place on a ship and just the nature of storytelling requires that I refer to it, like, a lot. It needs a name so let’s just pick something. Oftentimes, when one of my friends are talking, someone will say something unintentionally wicked and then one of us will jump in and claim it, saying, “That’s the name of my band!” And that’s what we need here. What would be the name of like a kickass, epic-prog-metal band? How’s… The Parallax Collapse? Yeah. That works.
all right, so it seems like it WAS a bit of easy detective work after all, you know, once I googled ‘royal caribbean 2006 itinerary’… but I found this out after I wrote all this and I thought calling the ship the parallax collapse was fucking hilarious so I didn’t change it. but so, yeah, it was the enchantment of the seas~
SO AGAIN my family — my mom, my dad, older sister — fly down on the 17th; but we don’t make it onto The Parallax Collapse of the Seas until the next day. Day #0. We’re also not alone — we’re on this vacation with another family: the Boljonis’. What this means is that I’m on a vacation with one of my best friends in the whole world: Eddie Boljonis.
Eddie’s sister, Brooke, a donkey (with sunglasses???), and Eddie in Jamaica.
Eddie
What’s up, brother?
Brian
Oh my God. How are you?
Eddie
I look like a mess but I’m all right.
Brian
Do you want to jump into it?
Eddie
Yeah, let’s get into it, man.
Brian
All right.
Eddie
So, I bring you up more often than you think, Bri. I tell people the idea of our family growing up with another family. I tell people that often because I think it’s actually, like, very… profitable? You’re — you are, you and your family are a big aspect of my life. We, kind of, grew up together, but more so because our sisters know each other. They danced together which was cool. And then we danced together.
Brian
Yes, we did.
Eddie
Which is, uh… cool. That went —
Brian
Hey, we were — listen! Listen! We were great! We were great.
Eddie
I enjoyed it, to be frank.
Brian
Yeah.
Eddie
To be quite honest with ya? The memories aren’t bad. Like, there are a couple bad ones but, like, overall, like, I appreciated the idea. We played football together; that was a hell of a time.
Brian
Yeah.
Eddie
And then again, to speak to our families kind of growing up together, that brings us to the cruise.
Brian
Yeah, no, and I wanna just say, like, yeah, it’s amazing that we were so intertwined. Like, not only because of our sisters and then football — it was just, like —
Eddie
Like a lot of the aspects of our lives at that — those formidable years included both families.
Brian
Yeah.
Eddie
For sure.
I hope everyone has an Eddie in their life. We’re going to be hearing more from him. The Parallax Collapse is an impressive ship. Or… maybe not. I really don’t know. This is the first and only cruise I’ve ever been on, so I’ve got nothing to compare it to. Maybe they’re all this surreal; who knows? But it looks to me like it can topple over at any moment, a fear that does not abate after the five minute safety orientation they force us into five minutes before we say, “Bon voyage!” Whatever.
obviously we took the safety orientation very seriously which is why my dad’s life vest is nowhere to be seen and we thought to take a picture…
On the top deck there’s a pool that will be filled to the brim with strangers from now until we return to Fort Lauderdale in a few days. Turns out, the deck of a cruise ship is not all that different from the New York subways in the summer: just this Museum of Knees. There are also shuffleboard spots on the deck for the super old folks and a rock climbing wall for the younger ones. There’s actually even a top-er-er top deck, above the pool level if you can picture it. Mainly, it’s these two narrow bridges that span the length of the ship along its sides. They’re curvy and have these installments that look like white spatula wings.
Inside, there’s a casino that I will not be allowed to take more than two steps into on account of being, you know, twelve. But the casino is connected to a larger… central meeting room atrium area(?)… and it’s kind of huge and layered and multi-decked. Everything in here looks like it is made out pure, white marble and there’s a zillion chairs.
From the sprawling atrium you can also make it into the dining area, which is itself cavernous. And even then, it isn’t enough to fit everyone on the ship at once; so they divvied us up to eat in shifts. I mention this because it’s slightly important later on, so don’t forget it!
So that’s the first day. We do the safety orientation, we eat. Maybe we do a little exploring, try to commit different routes through the ship to RAM, you know the drill. Anyway, it’s pretty big and it’s pretty cool. I remember walking the deck at night, just before curfew, and seeing the lights from other ships off on the horizon. Perhaps brothers and sisters to The Parallax Collapse. But anyway, we’re all exhausted, we go to bed. Day #0 done.
Sunday, the 19th. Day #1. Already, my memory is hazy but I believe it was going to be a full day out at sea: casting Florida to the past, swooping around Cuba, and heading down to Ocho Rios, Jamaica. This meant that all the adventure and fun from this vacation was — at least for the day — going to happen onboard The Parallax Collapse. Well, for everyone but me.
My sister and Eddie’s sister were teens and snotty little brothers were NOT to be seen with them the duration of the trip. Which, like, I get it. There were events specifically planned for pre-teens, though. You can probably imagine what they were: some kind of ice breaker-y type things, maybe some kind of bonding scavenger hunt… who knows? Not me; I didn’t go.
I’m a fairly introverted guy now with a ton of anxiety, social or otherwise; back then I just called it being unbearably shy. And I hear ya — how could I be the captain of a football team and play in front of dozens of people and stare down linebackers without any fear? And the answer is I didn’t like doing that, either — I had a lot of fear! — but at least when you’re playing football you’ve got a whole helmet and mask over your face. When you’re just talking to people, though… that’s a whole ‘nother ball game. I mean really: is there anything more vulnerable in the whole world than just… looking at someone?
Plus, I was set. I brought a book with me. Naturally, it was a big chunky fantasy novel — the second book in The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini called Eldest. Which — for those that need a recap — sees the armies of Galbatorix attack the Varden; our hero, Eragon, faces off against a mysterious dragon rider that turns out to be Murtagh who — spoiler alert! — is his brother? Are you kidding me? And then, just to add insult to injury, he takes Eragon’s sword Zar’roc?
me, in my Saints jersey, reading Eldest. also pictured: my sidekick. I had a whole two paragraphs in this essay about why the sidekick was the best phone ever and how I’d drop my iPhone in a heartbeat if using a sidekick was, at all, feasible in today’s world. but alas.
The whole series is about dragons and it’s wildly considered to be this low-effort amalgamation of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. But listen, true or not true, you got to remember that I was in 8th grade. Put another way: this was it, right? This was perfect, this was the stuff. So I was perfectly content reading my sophisticated, seven hundred page epic — only stopping for meals and I suppose, you know, to relieve myself. Socializing, no thank you. Thank goodness for Eddie, though — he had enough social capacity for the both of us. Whatever events they had planned for us preteens, I’m fairly sure he went. But even if he did, I wouldn’t’ve heard about them until the next day…
Monday, the 20th. Day #2. Jamaica. I believe we wake up here? We end up spending the whole day on the island. We hit Dunn’s River Falls nice and early, we eat local. At some point we come across a guy playing the world’s most beat up electric guitar, missing strings and all. But he’s busting out these AMAZING Elvis covers and saying, “Tank you very much, mon!” after each one. So: typical vacation stuff. That night, we’re all beat, we go to bed.
Tuesday, the 21st. Day #3. We’re still in Jamaica and will be for at least a few more hours, so we hit up Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. People, they have a BAR in the POOL. But by noon we need to get back to the boat so we can make it to our next destination which was…
Brian
That’s the thing is, like, I don’t even — I know we went to Jamaica. Jamaica I remember. I don’t remember where else we went, like, I know we went somewhere else —
Eddie
Cayman Islands. Cayman Islands.
Brian
It was the Caymans? OK.
Eddie
Mmhmm. I have a shirt, that’s how I know. And I remember Michael Jordan’s at the Cayman Islands while we’re there. There’s a casino that my dad — ‘cause, like, I think we were, like, going to try to like gamble together. Like, joking around, play some slot machines. There was a casino and we go to the casino and it’s closed down and a bunch of people standing outside of these windows ‘cause Michael Jordan had rented out the entire casino.
Brian
Oh my God.
Eddie
I was, like, “Oh, cool.” Like it — but that was a better part of it, like —
Brian
Right, right.
Eddie
That was better than, like, me betting my dad’s twenty-five cents, that was the best.
Brian
Yeah.
Eddie
Seeing, like, something close now to Michael Jordan.
Brian
Oh, that’s so cool.
Thank you Eddie. This — night three of a five night cruise — is when the dominoes that will ultimately culminate in the ruination of this trip begin to set. How so? Well, by now, I’d for sure finished my book. Or, in other words: I no longer had any excuses to stay cooped up in our tiny cabin. My parents were going to make sure I went out and enjoyed myself, damnit, so I really didn’t have a choice. I might not want to go meet the other preteens aboard The Parallax Collapse but, again, worst case scenario, at least I had Eddie. So I was good; I was golden.
That first, officially sanctioned preteen event took place in the ship’s game room arcade. I don’t remember it being all that impressive — maybe you could win candy or play ski-ball to your heart’s content; it’s all a colorful, noisy blur. Regardless, that had become the de facto meeting place for the preteens. What was immediately clear, though, was that we were not there for any corny cooked up events — Eddie was introducing me to a pack of rebels.
I only remember a select group of the gang: there was me and Eddie, duh. There was a tall, dark haired girl named Sara (no H); she might’ve actually crossed that sacred threshold into teendom — and she certainly seemed to be the wisest of the bunch — but she chose to hang out with those of us that were more her crowd. There was also a girl named Caitlin and it was immediately clear that Eddie had the hots for her, or at least I remember them being a flirty pair.
Eddie
There was a girl on the trip that I, like, was really interested in. I don’t even, like — I was in the sixth grade so I don’t remember — I don’t even know what her name was! But there was a girl that I was with the whole time. What, were we all hanging out? Was it like that? Did we just, like, make a community out of those, out of our peers? Which is, like, often what we would do, right? We’re going to make friends with similar interests and peers and, like, ya know? And, like, I have no idea what anybody’s race or ethnicity was. I couldn’t even tell you what someone’s face looked like at that time. Like, obviously just you. I don’t remember what Sara or possibly Caitlin looks like. I have no idea. No idea. And slight memories of possibly the girl Caitlin. But barely.
Beyond that there was just one other girl… Another Sarah.
Ooo Boy you lookin' like you like what you see
Won't you come over check up on it, I might let you work up on it
Ladies let em check up on it…
Very funny, Shaun. No, for 8th-grade-Brian who played upright bass in the string orchestra at school, it would’ve been something more like this…
This Sarah — who did spell her name with an H — immediately… I don’t know… ensorcelled me. She had these stormy eyes; big, duo-Jupiters — I was caught in orbit. And if you could make her laugh, the lines on her face were… yeah.
A parrot (above) and Sarah (below).
But that was just the start. Like I said, I was the newest recruit in an ongoing rebellion — we weren’t hanging out in the game room; we were going to hang out in The Lounge. We all crammed into an elevator, covered wall to wall in mirrors (which made it easy for everyone to ogle everyone else) and rode up to the ship’s penthouse. I was already nervous — kids were definitely not allowed in The Lounge aboard The Parallax Collapse, and I can assure you: a rule breaker I was not.
And yet, nobody stopped us as we stepped into the Lounge so… we went in and hung out. We all just scattered about, lying on the largest, comfiest couches you could possibly imagine. This is when and where I was brought up to speed on everything I’d missed the first few days and nights: everyone’s name, where they were from, how they were enjoying the cruise. If they’d seen the guy playing Elvis tunes and yes, they had, how could you miss him?
At some point, it must’ve come up that I was a musician. There was a piano in the Lounge and — of course — I noodled around a little bit; I’d taken lessons when I was really young, but I remembered the basics, a few chords. Trying to be real slick, right?
But then Sarah sat at the piano and… that was talent. Real talent, with fire coming out her fingers and the whole thing. She was a musician? What the fuck was I doing alone in my room reading a book when I could’ve been here with her??? I didn’t have a lot of wit or charm, but there appeared to be a connection between Sarah and me. I’d never really hit it off with someone before, but here I was. And that’s the scary thing about liking someone, even today: when you’re in it you just know. My brain might’ve been running at max capacity, all my neurons firing off at million cycles per second — but the result was somehow, somewhat natural. I didn’t have to work to say the right thing, I just did. Confidence bred confidence… but I was getting so far ahead of myself.
I don’t think I would’ve been so brazen to even try and show off if I hadn’t been real with myself from the get-to. I liked Sarah immediately but I also knew that there was no way I was ever going to be able to tell her. And even if I did, she probably wasn’t going to like me back — this kid in a homestarfuckingrunner hat. And even if I did tell her, and even if she could (against all the odds) put aside my innumerable flaws, this was night three of a five day cruise — the voyage was already half over and soon I’d be going home to New York and she’d be going home to whatever faraway state she came from (probably Alaska).
I mean, I was a STUD and clearly fashion fearless, but…
And here’s the other thing: 8th grade was not too early to start quote-unquote, “dating.” Like, of course — of course! — I would’ve done anything to be someone’s boyfriend — to be their guy… There was a lot of responsibility in being someone’s guy — not unlike being a football captain, strangely — but you wanted to be in that role, wear that badge. At that time though, it was scary! I mean, it still is! ‘cause either you’re going to last forever with someone or not and both of those outcomes are terrifying (in their own way). And like, this is going back to the start, the height of my stupidity!!! Become someone’s boyfriend… it had never happened back home, just never worked out with anyone. Not for real. Why would this be any different? Why should it?
And yet… when you fall for someone when you’re twelve it’s not like at any other point in your life. There’s just magic. And it’s irresistible; you want to just tap into it and you don’t know what tampering with that magic means, all the risks and the rewards, because you just don’t have the experience yet. You just find yourself in a position like I was where everything was only ever theatric to the fucking extreme. I was living and dying with every new fact I learned about Sarah, how everything about us seemed to line up.
Anytime that story gets told, it’s important that the oft repeated salient details get real hammed up for dramatic effect. In this case, it means giving Sarah real depth as a player in this tale by recounting the small details; you know, what made her her, a real life person. And that’s how I can tell you about Sarah — and do so with certainty — even though the things I learned about her that night I learned fourteen years ago. Details like Sarah’s favorite song: at the time it was The White Stripes’ My Doorbell. It’s how I know that Sarah was seriously into her art — drawing, painting, illustrating; I have a very vague recollection of her just doodling on some napkins or whatever and it being clearly evident that she was brimming with yet another talent. Not that I was surprised…
It’s how I came to know that actually, she didn’t live too far away. A state away, sure, but that was it. One state. My mind began to run… maybe… just maybe… no, no, stop it. There was no way, no way something was going to happen. Or could happen. I was mature enough to recognize the situation for what it was and, besides, maybe I could make a new friend and that be it. Right…?
We departed the Lounge a little before curfew and I swore to myself I wasn’t going to rock the boat. Lord knows I was convinced a small breeze could’ve knocked over The Parallax Collapse — it didn’t need my help. So that was that. I was going to be content.
Day #4. If only I could’ve kept content… All morning my mind was split between dodging stingrays in the clear waters off the Cayman Islands and ways in which to woo Sarah. Even Eddie could tell something was afoot, that something was brewing. But what was I supposed to do? Talk to her? No no no no no. Listen: IF this was going to happen at all — and this was still a big, gigantic, fangorious IF — I needed an extremely elaborate, overthought, exaggerated scheme that would net me all the key information I needed to know before I made what would be a perfectly calculated move in my favor. I didn’t make the rules; that’s just how these things were handled in the 8th grade! We had a civilization. There needed to be a sense of care and grace. I mean, really, just talking to her? Are you out of your mind???
By the time I made it back on the ship later that day, I had it all sussed out. This couldn’t be me, and Eddie would’ve done fine I suppose. But this was sensitive intel. I needed someone on the inside. I needed the other (no H) Sara.
The other (no H) Sara was a saint in the truest, non-football sense of the word. I broke it all down for her, that Sarah was really cool and she was into cool music and she could play piano and draw which was also really cool. And should she choose to accept this mission, I just needed her to, you know, casually drop that into a private conversation, the other (no H) Sara to Sarah. “No big deal, take your time. But also report back to me as soon as humanly possible.” The other (no H) Sara was game and she was off.
It is at this point in that story that I remember The Rival entering. I don’t remember his name, just that he was younger than the rest of us, he was short, and that he, too was crushin’ on Sarah. This operation was becoming less and less covert by the second… Equipped with the knowledge that I was making a play, The Rival confronted me. This kid claimed that he liked Sarah, that she liked him back, and that I’d better stop whatever it was that I was up to or else I’d be sorry. I laughed him off. Whatever was going to happen between Sarah and me was going to happen (or not) but who was this? And what was he going to do? Maybe he just wanted to speak his piece before he no longer had the opportunity, I don’t know. I left him alone ‘cause, frankly, I had bigger fish to fry than this minnow. And what did I have to worry about? In big, mythological tales such as these, hubris hardly ever has its moment… right?
I don’t know exactly how long I waited — two, two and a half centuries — but eventually special agent other (no H) Sara pulled me aside for the debrief. I wasn’t expecting a good news/bad news situation, but that’s what I got. Let’s start with the good: by some miracle, by some strange confluence of events, Sarah did indeed like me, too. And like, a lot. And I was just like… what???
But then there was the bad news: she did like me, but just as I’d been fretting about what would happen after this was all over, she was, too. I lived all the way in New York. How was anything going to work? Again, in 8th grade, relationships couldn't’ve felt more like everything when they were in fact these mere vacant vessels. And that was in the best scenario; long distance relationships were unheard of. It’d never work, so… what was the point?
To my surprise, I was actually relieved. I’d cooked up this undercover gambit and it went off without a hitch, the girl I had fallen for had fallen for me, too, and the key reason I was ultimately reluctant to do anything was also her ultimate reluctant reason (not) to do anything, like our own little O. Henry-esque twist (which, in a sort of irony, only served as more proof of our same wave-length-ness (there’s almost definitely a better way to say that, but you get my point)).
The whole gang met up again later and Sarah and I talked — there was no reason to keep anything secret anymore. We reaffirmed everything we’d said through our intermediary and we were on the same page. We agreed that this sucked, unquestionably, but ultimately the right decision was to not pursue anything. We would ride out our last day on the cruise and enjoy each other’s company — everyone’s company — and that’d be that. We’d just… talk about music or whatever. I didn’t really care so long as I could — and for as long as I could — feel trapped by the tug of Jupiters A & B.
Day #5. I don’t know what changed overnight; but the other (no H) Sara sought me out as early as she could — she had to tell me something important:
Sarah had changed her mind!
About what?
About becoming an item, stupid! About dating and about [me] becoming her boyfriend and her being my girlfriend and to hell all the space between us starting tomorrow!
Really?
Really!
Really?
Really.
I had to find her. Sarah. Fuck the no running policy aboard The Parallax Collapse — I had to find her fast. Let’s be real: in my heart of hearts I honestly, truly didn’t care either; I didn’t need to be convinced into trying to make this work, however we had to, whatever it would look like, anything it would take.
I found Sarah was in the Lounge, alone. Just me, her, and that piano she’d smoked. All the stuff the other (no H) Sara had told me… that was true? It was. Would she like to, you know, “go out?” She did. She smiled, and again, the lines on her face did that thing they did and I knew it was me that had made them do it. And just like that, I was somebody’s boyfriend. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Here we go.
That seemed like a lot of immediate pressure — like there was an entire butterfly colony jittering within me — but it wasn’t too much to handle. Not even close — are you kidding?
Once everything was official, Sarah and I hugged. To this day, it remains one of the most distinct hugs of my life; it’s quite possible that neither of us had ever touched anyone like this that wasn’t a family member. So it ended up being more like we were bowing to each other. The hug was so weird… I can only imagine what it must’ve looked like on a security camera…
Stories are conflict. And conflict is just intentions versus obstacles. Characters are motivated to succeed in their goals and the way that they overcome their foils… that’s the interesting bit. That’s the thing that compels us. If the intention and obstacle are balanced such that the stakes get raised at just the right moments then the story has a certain kind of inevitable thrust to it. Done poorly, and the story feels meandering; anticlimactic. So must be thinking, “Huh, it seems like you and Sarah kind of just dropped the obstacle between the two of you; you just decided to ditch it.” And you’re not wrong but here’s the thing: we haven’t yet hit the real conflict in that story. Sarah and I becoming an item is not what ruined the cruise. Not directly. But we’re nearly there now; have some patience.
Shortly after our awkward hug, the rebel alliance was forever banned from The Lounge by cruise officials. God bless ‘em, I can only imagine how annoying a pack of preteens must’ve been the past few days and nights, these roaming hooligans wandering the halls at top speed, riding the elevators with the million mirrors up and down and up again. They claimed they needed The Lounge for some kind of flag ceremony, but really, any excuse would do. I mean, make no mistake: we were punks so why would we listen to their authority starting now??? But, it was a fight or live to fight kind of situation and we figured it was probably best to just get the hell out of there before we were all made to, you know, walk the plank.
This part of that story becomes a bit hard to remember. For one thing, it was the final day of our Caribbean journey. The Parallax Collapse had to whip around Cuba’s west coast and zip us back up to Fort Lauderdale by 7:00 AM the next morning. This was another whole day out at sea and I’m sure there was tons of packing and last minute to-dos to do whenever we weren’t all, you know, being a nuisance. Rousing rabbles. For another, my memory might just be crowded out by everything that came next…
I wish my recollection was of spending mountains of quality time with Sarah that last day; it isn’t. I mean, it could’ve happened, who knows? I know we saw each other at least briefly because at some point, she had to go meet up with her family for dinner (her family’s shift being different from mine (and see, I told you it was going to be important!)). But we promised we'd meet back up later in the game room to say goodbye to everyone and each other. And so she left.
I continued hanging out with Eddie and Caitlin. They’d become their own couple in all this, too, and I had a hunch they were (get this) making out with each other. Could you imagine? But I had the other (no H) Sara to hang around with, too. True OG.
At some point, we were just looking to kill some time. This being the last night and all, they’d literally scrubbed the deck of The Parallax Collapse. That meant that it was real easy to get a running start and slide across the deck (Risky Business style). You could go ten, fifteen, twenty feet depending on how fast a running start you got beforehand. This was so obviously dangerous — sometimes the only thing that stopped us was ramming into the safety railings on the side of the ship — but like, duh, that’s what made it so fun. So thrilling. And what’s the worst that was going to happen? I was going to get in trouble on the last night? Big deal. I was changed; I was brave. I started this trip shy and now here I was, leading an actual charge.
I have one strong image in my mind from that moment — so strong that, ironically, I don’t even know if it’s real or if it’s just some nostalgia implant that my brain has fabricated. But I’m sliding across the deck, I cut through the warm wind. We started sliding around dusk, but here, we were nearer now to twilight and stars started to show. Not a lot, but enough; the perfect amount. The sky was a mix of orange and pink over the dark ocean. And everything was just right…
We got shut down not long after (of course) and told in no uncertain terms that curfew was coming up soon and it would be strictly enforced. No problem. I just had to meet up with Sarah to say goodbye and then I’d get back to my cabin. Simple. I went down to the arcade where kids were getting their last games in and waited, minding my own business, recounting the whole week with the other (no H) Sara. We talked about the strangeness of it all — how everything came together so fast, the twists and the turns, how exciting it all was. How we were all going to miss each other and how it seemed so weird that we’d all become good friends despite knowing each other only a short amount of time. How we were all going to keep in touch and chat and call and friend each other on MySpace.
Things were starting to shut down but there was still no sign of Sarah. Where could she be? Was it possible she had last minute stuff to take care of with her family? Maybe they didn’t want her out wandering the boat anymore? I had no way of knowing; all I knew is that it was getting late. “Brian, you idiot! Why didn’t you just shoot her a text?” Look, I don’t think we exchanged numbers yet and I’ll get to that in a minute. But folks, even if we did did you forget that we were in the middle of the fucking ocean??? “People still had cell service in 2006, Brian — even off the coast of Florida.” OK but even if we exchanged numbers, and even if she had service, my family were early T-Mobile adopters. Those that know, know, but for everyone else, let's just say that T-Mobile coverage back then was not unlike Sarah in this moment: lacking. My point is, not I, nor anyone else, could just give Sarah a buzz to see what was up. Where she was was a mystery.
That story has been told many times over the years, like I said, but as a collective oral tradition. Never from my point of view alone. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever committed it to paper, sparing no detail. Seriously. I mention this only to say that the act of doing this has been odd. So many infinitesimal details are cropping back up that I’ve not recalled in the fourteen years since this all happened.
For example: up until a literal minute ago, I lost sight of the fact that I’m pretty sure Sarah told me what her cabin number was, her family’s room on The Parallax Collapse. Or maybe as a group we all knew; perhaps we met up with her there one time or something. Point is: I have this vague inkling that that was information at my disposal. And that would’ve solved my predicament. I could just go see if she was in her cabin; we could say goodbye, do the whole bit, the end, right? If only. You might be asking, “Why does it matter? Why [am I] even mentioning it?” I’m mentioning it because, if I did, it makes perfect sense as to why I ended up with The Note.
Let’s talk about it real quick… The Note. I’m sure there was everything you would expect there to be. My home address on Staten Island, my home phone number, my cell phone number, my screen name. I’m sure I also attempted to write a message to Sarah, scribbled out my first love note. You can conjure in your mind all the romantic delicacy woven together by JediRanger57.… ugh. Can you imagine what sort of witty, endearing sign off I tried to come up with? God, I hate even thinking about it.
ANYWAY we’ll get to why The Note is crucial to that story in a second but in all the tellings before this one I never had a clear, concrete motivation for writing The Note — I always just had it at some point; it manifested itself into existence (which, come to think of it, is maybe something that happens a lot on the Quantum of the Seas, I don’t know).
I can think of two equally likely scenarios that could’ve played out. The first being that I wrote The Note and went down to Sarah’s cabin to give it to her but… chickened out. If I know anything about myself, that tracks. ‘cause like, what if her parents answered and not her? I would’ve shriveled into a million pieces. And what were we going to do if her parents were right there? Bow-hug again? No way. That’s why The Note was perfect — I wanted to make sure that we could keep in touch after the cruise for, you know, obvious reasons and a note was clean, it was quick, private. The other likely scenario is that I said to hell with all that and summoned the courage to knock on her door… and nobody was there. Maybe their dinner ran super late that night; it’s certainly possible. Regardless of how it played out, I always wondered why I had to write the note in the first place; strange how the mind works, isn’t it?
Whatever happened happened or, you know, didn’t (or both if we were on the Quantum of the Seas) but in either case I ended up back upstairs, near the game room. Going over The Note. Nervously folding it over and over again. Adding crease after crease. Spinning the pen in my hand, waiting Waiting WAITING for Sarah to return. We were getting dangerously close to curfew at this point and the crew wasn’t screwing around when they said they'd enforce it. What could we do?
At this point, I must’ve called an audible and decided that we’d better off if we all split up. I think this because… Eddie wasn’t with me at this point. Maybe he was out looking for Sarah, maybe he was smooching Caitlin. I guess it’s possible to’ve done both of those things at the same time, somehow, but… as I write this out it’s dawning on me… he was probably just smooching Caitlin.
Eddie
Bro, I’ll give you my base.
Brian
Sure.
Eddie
My base knowledge is really weak.
Brian
Sure.
Eddie
I remember you getting hurt that time. But I don’t — I remember not being with you when you get hurt. And I don’t remember why I wasn’t with you. But I remember I was suppose to have been with you so, like, fault there for me, one-hundred percent.
It’s fine. Forgive him. That just left me and the other (no H) Sara. We set off. So Sarah was not in the game room, nor in The Lounge. No sign of her in the atrium, and she wouldn’t be in the casino. We decided to head up to the top deck — that’d be the longest view we had of the ship and with everything winding down and people heading off to bed after one more late night stroll, it’d be easy to spot her. So that’s where we went, patiently waiting by the rails along the spatula wing bridges, listening to The Parallax Collapse rip through the Atlantic.
Naturally, whom else do we encounter in this fateful moment but The Rival? Yuck. My hand clenched a fist around my pen. He’d only cropped up here and there in these insignificant brushes about The Parallax Collapse as the gang galavanted from one side to the other, and he was always sneering in that way that only the people you hate the most know how to sneer. This smug twerp was all smug and twerpy because this was the end of the road, wasn’t it? The final showdown. He couldn’t get what he wanted but at least after tonight, I’d be denied what I wanted. I was frustrated, to be sure — I didn’t want to deal with him, I had to find Sarah. I had to give her The Note. And that’s when his smile curled up the side of his smug, twerpy face.
like this.
“I know where she is,” he squawked. And he did it with just a little too much certainty to be dismissed outright, like he accidentally betrayed his own confidence. I wasted my breath trying to appeal to his better angels, that if he wanted to have any shred of personal integrity he’d accept the situation and just let me know where she was. But alas, nothing.
If he wasn’t going to tell me, he was just wasting my time — I moved to leave when he said, “I’ll tell you… IF you can catch me.” If I could catch him?
oh?
OF COURSE I could catch him. I was bigger than him. I was stronger than him. I pivoted on the last play of the championship game and forced Nicky Barber into a desperate Hail Mary (which failed). And even if I didn’t have ANY of that on him, I was somebody’s boyfriend for a few hours now and EVERYTHING about that lived up to hype. Nothing — nothing! — would stand between Sarah and me.
“Sure,” I said, “it’s on.” And so it was.
He took his first step, then I took a step. Then he picked up the pace, and I matched him. And in the blink of an eye he bursted into a squirmy sprint and I planted my foot to catch up. But we were outside on the deck that had just been scrubbed so I slipped and I fell and I put my hands down in front of me to break my fall. Meaning: when I hit the ground the pen I was holding dug into my left eye.
There was a flash, black and white and fuzzy. A big spinning disco moon. The Rival kept on running, over the bridges and cackling into obscurity, never to be seen again. Thank Christ.
I got to my knees and instinctively, the first thing I felt around for my Homestar Runner hat; I hit the deck so hard it popped right off. In the entire trip, I think I only ever took it off to sleep, so it felt like my own head had rolled off. But thankfully, the hat didn’t get too far. I put it back on, still not able to see out of my eye. I touched it, gingerly… imagine my relief knowing a pen was not sticking out of me.
That said, you ever stub your toe or something and there’s that moment, that pause in time when adrenaline’s doing its thing and it doesn’t hurt but like, you know it’s going to?
I knew something had happened, something potentially very bad. I know that because as I stood up, I turned to the other (no H) Sara and asked, “Is it bad?” She didn’t even say anything; she immediately covered her mouth and started crying. I took that to mean, “yeah, it’s bad.”
There was blood. A LOT of blood — enough that I had to do something about it, like, immediately. I went back into the heart of the ship, into one of the bathrooms which — like all the elevators on this ship — had these gigantic fucking mirrors. I got a good look at myself with my one good eye and… I was in ROUGH shape.
This is kind of funny. There was another guy in the bathroom just minding his own business. He had to’ve noticed me in the mirror as he was washing his hands, but he looked at me side-eyed and kept it totally cool. Didn’t ask me how I was doing, if I needed help. I don’t know if he’d seen some shit like this before, but he definitely wasn’t about to make it his business. And in retrospect, I respect that — I ain’t even mad. Like, imagine your him, you go to relive yourself and then you come out to wash your hands and here’s this child hemorrhaging from his eye. Yeah, no thanks, buddy.
ANYWAY I was trying to get my hands on some paper towels to clean up any blood and stop more from gushing out. Unfortunately, no amount of paper towels seemed to be enough. I just kept bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.
At this point, these few minutes in the bathroom alone, three key thoughts dawned on me. The first is that I think I was beginning to regain my sight. I’m surprised at just how cool I was able to keep myself between when I’d hit the ground and then because it definitely felt in the realm of possibility that I’d popped my whole fucking eye out of my head or at least blinded myself. I even cracked a joke at my own expense about that to the other (no H) Sara on the way down to the bathroom to try and get her to stop crying (it didn’t work). This was the point I finally allowed myself to cry. Probably not a coincidence that this is when everything started to really hurt. BAD.
The second thing I realized was that I had all these paper towels in my hands, which meant the pen was gone… and so was The Note. I’d felt around for my hat, but not The Note. I let go of it and… who knows? I can only imagine that it went tumbling off the side of The Parallax Collapse of the Seas, drifting ever aimlessly until it hit the water, eventually finding purchase at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (where it belongs, if we’re being completely honest here). I didn’t really have time to think too much about The Note or Sarah because the third, creeping thought started to emerge: my mother was going to kill me.
I don’t know if the bleeding stopped, I don’t know if it even slowed down. But at some point I left the bathroom and tracked down a crew member in the grand atrium, dripping red droplets onto the obviously just-cleaned-for-the-last-day white marble. That’s when I was informed that the ship’s doctors had turned in for the night and were no longer on duty and, in all likelihood, sleeping. Any emergency procedure was going to cost $137.
I took that off the table right then and there; there was no way I was going to put that cost on my parents, not because I was chasing down a boy and slipped on the deck in order to get a Note to a girl I liked. Not happening.
Still, at some point I had to return to my cabin. The other (no H) Sara — bless her — walked me back to my room and wished me luck before we said goodbye. I knocked on my door and as expected, my mom freaked out. I can only imagine the horrid sight it was as I bled tears, confessing the astronomical amount of money it would take to even wake up the doctors. Thankfully, my mom told me not to worry about it, and marched me all the way back to the atrium so that the crew member could lead us to the medical center.
There were two doctors — or maybe a doctor and their assistant, I don’t know. But they checked me out. They were both from South Africa and every few seconds switched to speaking Afrikaans, I’m sure to swear about what an idiot kid I was, getting all busted up and disturbing their holy slumber. My mom made some small talk with Die Antwoord as they prepped, and they claimed they dealt with this sort of thing all the time. Well, maybe not this sort of thing specifically. But people walking around late at night, drunk, hitting their head on God-knows-what.
Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any major, lasting damage to my eye. What I’d really sliced up — why I was bleeding like a fountain — was my eyelid. I needed five stitches. They patched me up in no time, and that was it. I took a shower to wash off any blood I missed earlier and slept with a paper towel patch over it in case there was any more bleeding after that, but that’s all it was. Nothing major. I was fine.
the damage.
And that’s generally it. That story. How, with mere hours to go before making land back in Florida and going all week without incident, I went and had this big, calamitous event. There usually isn’t too much more to add to the story. We woke up in Fort Lauderdale and departed The Parallax Collapse with our luggage bags and I didn’t see Sarah again. We flew home to a chilly New York and we all got on with our lives. A few days later, I went to the doctor to get the stitches removed.
Someway and somehow, Sarah and I were able to find each other online after all. All of us managed to find each other on Myspace and we kept in touch, even calling each other sometimes. But, as both Sarah and I had expected, the distance between us became a bit too hard to maintain; daily AIM chats, it turns out, does not a relationship make. We broke up.
That didn’t mean that contact ended. I still followed an art page she kept online and was absolutely FLOORED by what she created. One day, we all logged off Myspace for the last time and logged on to Facebook, and Sarah and I found each other there, too. There wasn’t too much communication, though I did ask her to create some album art for one of the million bands I’d bounce between during high school.
how cool is that?
And then, yet again, somewhere along the line I left Facebook behind and didn’t take much with me. Any trace back to Sarah — and really anyone from that trip besides Eddie — was irrevocably severed for good.
That story started to get told at various family get-togethers immediately and over time, details were fabricated and forgotten in equal measure (to the point that I think what I just told you was like ~85% a true story; I mean, I didn’t make anything up but I might’ve sharpened some of the blurrier edges). And you know what? I’ll admit it, when it gets told right, it gets a good laugh or gasp from everyone in the gallery… it’s not a bad story to have told at your expense.
I’ve got a legion of unhealthy habits. For example, making momentous the innocuous, not unlike creating a big podcast episode about an otherwise straightforward vacation accident. I’ll also cop to entertaining grand delusions (but hey, at least in my defence, I’m not delusional about having them). One of my worst habits, however, is my need — my drive, really — to complete tasks, to put a bow on things and define a clear ending.
So here’s the thing: there was always this nagging itch about how I ruined the cruise. Whenever that story got told, someone would inevitably ask, “Well, did you ever get to deliver The Note to Sarah?” At which point I’d say what I said a few minutes ago: I didn’t even know I let go of it. I reached around for my Homestarrunner hat and then got up and went to the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding. And then I’d add in the bit about how it was probably terrible anyway and with any luck, it went overboard.
I was on a mission that night, though, a mission that I woefully failed. The contents of The Note didn’t even matter, really — obviously Sarah and I found each other online despite not delivering The Note — but it was representative of something larger. Of what, exactly? I don’t know. The act of it. I send people letters and notes, even now. I like receiving them, the thrill of opening my mailbox and inside, packed between all the bills and all the junk there’s this tiny morsel of someone’s soul, proof of their existence that they packed together, just for me.
Even back then, talk had been reduced to something free which, by definition, meant it was cheap. But sending a letter to someone, writing something down in your own handwriting — if it’s legible enough, which mine often isn’t! — and then having to pay to send it… there’s a permanence to that. Not just the physical card stock or the ink, but the moment. I have a shoebox full of letters and even some printed emails that I’ll pull out and read (most often in times of crisis, unfortunately) but not once, ever, in my life have I gone back and reread a text conversation.
Am I making the case for some bygone candle lit era or saying that there’s something inherently better about the antiquated? I’m not (though, I’d love to meet the Luddite with a podcast). But reading a letter someone has written to you forces you to slow down which is, like, not the worst thing to have to do in today’s day and age. You have to take in what they have to say and you’ve got no chance to interject yourself. You see the compromises they have to make because of the limited space, the acceleration to their point as the page’s end creeps up.
Notes are just a nice, small joy. No more, no less. And I don’t care how dumb that sounds, I’m not going to cloak it in irony. OK, maybe putting all that to that music was a little ironic, but still. And I mean, obviously, I wasn’t concerned with all that the last night of the trip. And I wasn’t able to adequately express that nagging sting from this unfulfilled task for years. My soul was not consumed by this. If anything, it just started as a joke. “Reach out to Sarah again… wouldn’t that be funny…?” So there was that and one other thing, a second follow up question on everybody’s mind whenever that story came up: “What ever happened to Sarah?” I didn’t have any answers.
I don’t remember exactly when I started seriously considering writing Sarah a note… a NEW note. That said, I don’t know how serious you’d consider booting up Facebook again. First of all, what a big mistake that was (and, oh yeah, Sarah wasn’t on there anymore, either). I checked the old ghost town that was jediranger57@aol.com to see if there was some old email address, but just like me, I’m sure she had stopped using the email attached to her screen name forever ago. I remember that name she used for her art page but even that had been scrubbed from the internet. I know I wouldn’t like to have my old art floating around online; I figured she felt the same.
So I didn’t put too much more into it than that. A half-hour half-assed web search. I failed in my mission yet again, but at least it wasn’t this abstract entity, right? Like, there was nothing I could do so there was nothing I could do. If I’d found her — if I’d been able to send her a note — that would’ve been great, just this side of a lark. But now? Eh, so be it. I tried. I could stop answering that question with, “I don’t know,” and start saying, “Couldn’t tell ya,” which doesn’t seem that different but it is. And that’s just how it would be, twas ever thus…
You ever get the feeling like you’ve just read the end of the internet? You’ve just scrolled through the millionth page or read the millionth tweet and you’re not even processing it anymore? Just loading more and more and more and how could there be even more beyond that? But there always is. An endless supply of nothing! I’m not proud of myself, but I have my days like this. Days when I’m too exhausted to do anything (and yet somehow it's still this colossus, titanic struggle to just melt into sludge on my bed). But I don’t blame myself: an object as rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by some outside force. That’s just physics, a universal truth. And so really, whom am I to conspire against the laws of the entire universe?
While we’re speaking of universal truths, let’s sidestep to another real quick, one that Aristotle lays out pretty clearly (or perhaps not so clearly…) in Poetics, the playbook on how to write a good story. In Poetics, Aristotle says, “A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility.” Let me say that one more time: “A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility.” Perhaps you’re like me when I first heard that: “…uh, what?”
But here’s what I think he meant: I think he meant that there’s a required amount of buy-in for any given story. People — an audience — are willing to make these unconscious concessions because they want to experience the grander verve of a good story, right? I forget where I picked up on this example, but think about the Warp Drives in Star Trek.
Space travel is tough and it takes very, very long to get from here to that star system all the way across the way there, right? We got to get to the new planet of the week each week and we don’t want to have to age the crew up by years or watch them twiddle their thumbs on the journey in-between. So we have the Warp Drive, an engine that’ll for all intents and purposes will zip the Enterprise across the galaxy, faster than the speed of light. We just accept it. Traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible and we will never, ever, EVER be able to break that speed limit.
But that’s not the point of Star Trek. At its core, it’s a show about ethics and culture and not the cool tech itself, but the impact of cool tech. That’s the meat and potatoes we want to get to, so like, let’s just get to it. Put simply: engage the Warp Drive.
And we can all make that leap; it makes sense as something that exists in the world of the show even if we know it really couldn’t. This is a probable impossibility. Another phrase for it might be, “the suspension of disbelief.” This is a tenuous situation, though; a house of cards. And nothing breaks the illusion like introducing an improbable possibility.
Spock is a Vulcan. The Vulcans are notoriously logical and as a consequence they come off as being very brash, cold, and unemotional. Spock isn’t a full Vulcan, however — he’s also half-human — so actually he is capable of showing emotions. But you didn’t see that week in and week out on the original series; in fact, you hardly ever saw it. Exploring that side of Spock was usually reserved for big, dramatic moments where he just can’t hold it together anymore. Perhaps you’re familiar with this little moment:
SPOCK: “I am in control of my emotions! Control of my emotions…”
And so it’s a little understandable that you’d get dragged out of an episode if he shows bits of emotion here and there when all the other times he’s terse and distant. If he isn’t those things and you start injecting these inconsistencies into the story you stop captivating your audience. They’re trusting you not to ask too much of them. You break that trust and you’re breaking a fundamental rule of storytelling.
All that being said, I still don’t know how I can adequately convey the enormity of the story shattering cascade of quantum events required — possible only on a galactic scale and with an impenetrable exactitude of succession — for me to’ve been at the very end of the internet when that story was hit with the mother of all impossible probabilities.
I saw her name — Sarah. I found her. I’d given up, I’d accepted that she was just somebody that I had a nice memory of and a goofy story and that was that. I wasn’t ever supposed to cross her path again. How could I? I couldn’t make this up; no one would believe it.
That I was able to put it all together and connect the dots while I was mindlessly scrolling is really a wonder unto itself. I mean, Sarah’s name is pretty distinct but I wouldn’t call it uncommon. So initially, like anyone would, I defaulted to the probable impossibility: this isn’t her, this was just someone with the same name. Weird, to be sure, but like, it could happen.
But get this: I didn’t see her name as a part of some username on a forum or on an article’s byline; it was in the corner of an image. A comic strip. Already my head was spinning — the Sarah I knew was an artist. A good artist. OK. That’s interesting. That could be something but also could, you know, not. But we’re not even at the crazy part yet.
The crazy part was that I’d seen this illustration before. Or rather, maybe not this exact one, per se, but I’d seen others from this series. I’ve seen the character at the center many, many times over. In fact, I’m sure you have, too — I’d go as far to wager that anyone that’s been on the internet for five minutes has seen the comic strip called… Sarah’s Scribbles.
Seriously. Google Sarah’s Scribbles for yourself and take a look. Am I wrong? I’ve seen the titular character pop up everywhere — she’s become a part of the visual language of the internet! I haven’t confirmed anything yet, but you’re telling me there’s a chance the girl I met when I was twelve — the girl I got five stitches in my eye over trying to deliver The Note — might crop back up after because I just happen to be browsing when I am, a thousand pages deep into the whatever website and it’s in part because she became wildly famous on the internet? What the fuck???
Somewhere on a hill in Northern Greece, Aristotle was spinning in his grave (perhaps enough to generate the power needed to fuel a Warp Drive…).
I pulled out every trick of Google-fu I knew, spending the next few hours furiously trying to figure out if this Sarah was my Sarah from that story. I was naturally curious, duh, but there was more to it than that.
google-fu-ing.
If I could figure this out, I could wrap a nice bow on that story any time it got told again in the future: “What happened to Sarah?” Well, she became unfathomably successful, that’s what. And look, yeah, I guess I just know how to pick ‘em (and I’m sorry but what I have just can’t be taught). But more than that, more seriously, I could finally scratch that last lingering itch that’d built up and never truly gone away, not completely: maybe I could finally get Sarah that note. In this one tiny corner of my life in this one tiny way, I’d be made whole again. How could I not try?
Slowly but surely, the details started to trickle in. Sarah from-The-Parallax-Collapse was in fact the same Sarah behind Sarah’s Scribbles. So. This was Sarah. Confirmed. Step two, then: I owed her a Note. Thus began my new tricky, Quixotic quest. Where to start?
Sarah had a website but there was no contact form. There was an email listed for her agent or her publisher — and for a little while I considered going that route — but pretend with me for a moment how that would’ve play out:
“Yeah, hi, so. Back in the 8th grade I’m pretty sure I met Sarah on a boat and after quite a tempestuous turn of events I busted up my eye, leaving me unable to deliver a note to her which I’d like to do now in order to satisfy this odd construction my mind has construed for me where I’m required to tie up minor loose ends in my life and have a cohesive narrative arc for this narrative my family has perpetuated in perpetuity ever since and oh, by the way, I promise to you I am not an actual looney toon.”
jokes on everyone; I AM an actual looney toon.
Yeah, no. I mean, I probably would’ve worded it a little different than that, but yeah. That was out. I needed something direct, straight to the source. After a bit more scouring, I did manage to find what I believed would’ve been a way to send a note directly to Sarah. And look, this wasn’t, like, trying to pin-point bin Laden in the middle of Pakistan but for her own privacy I’d rather keep these details light. All you gotta know is that I had it.
put me in coach, I’m ready to solve the case.
Now all I needed was the message for the note, The New Note. What was I going to say…?
I knew what I wanted to write, I wrote it, but I was starting to get a little apprehensive. And for a million tiny fucking reasons. Chief among them: what if Sarah didn’t remember me? That whole business aboard The Parallax Collapse and how I ruined the cruise was significant for me, sure. But what if that was just a blip on her radar? What if she’d been on a hundred other cruises, each with their own harrowing tale of romance and stitches?
Part of it, too, I think was just that… look, I don’t ever need a reason to feel anxious. But let me ask you: have you ever reached out to the first person you ever quote-unquote, “went out” with? There’s that cliché, right, that I even referred to before that says two people can be, “On the same wavelength, the same frequency.” And you know what, Sarah and I were on the same wavelength. But, to extend the metaphor, timing is everything: if your phase is aligned, you constructively interfere but if it doesn’t then everything’s going to cancel out. And don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean all this in a ~romantic rekindling~ kind of way, but just as a person… What if Sarah turned out to be totally different? What if she was exactly the same?
Harmless as it may appear, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Like, who was I sending this note to, exactly? Put yourself in my position: going on a cruise and stabbing myself in the eye was, by far, the most insane shit that’s ever happened to me… and now it was only getting all the more batshit. There’s no manual out there on what to do in these situations and how to do it well (at that). So naturally, I worked myself up and it made me nervous is all.
At the same time, I didn’t want this to be all for nothing. Just sending the new note out wouldn’t be enough. I needed confirmation that it got through! And when people asked if I ever managed to deliver The Note to Sarah, I wanted to be able to give a definitive yes; this little, unexpected coda decades in the making. Got to a point where The New Note sat inside my notes app for weeks. I’d convinced myself that she wouldn’t see it or respond. And who put this thought in my head? Fucking Aristotle!!! It might not sound like a big deal, but it was. And I promise this is really the only way I know how to explain it (you ready for this?):
Tune in to the start of any given football game on any given Sunday and you’ll hear all the analysts talk about, “high percentage,” plays. These aren’t plays that teams run a high percentage of the time; rather, they’re plays that have a high chance of being successful. I suppose a question for the philosophers to ponder might be: “Well, wouldn’t you always want to run plays that are going to be successful?” And I admit it’s hard to beat that logic. But how exactly are we defining success?
That’s the thing: high percentage football plays aren’t about scoring. These are easy plays. They’re about gaining some momentum and getting into some kind rhythm. You get all that going and you’ll be able to take a risk running your low percentage plays. Commentators call this, “Setting the tone.”
I’ve run the numbers. In the 2019 regular season of the NFL, the league ran 45,546 plays. That’s every snap, tackle, punt. Every pass, every interception. Penalties, safeties, laterals, returns. Every kick and every miss. But here’s what I found: there is a strong correlation between teams that were winning at the end of the first quarter and subsequently winning the game. How strong? How’s 70% of the time. Now, you’re not going to catch me saying that you only win by winning the first fifteen minutes, but if you’re likely to win games if you’re winning in the first quarter, then I think it’s safe to say that you’re more likely to win games if you can get everything rolling with your high percentage plays.
Here’s the rub: high percentage plays, by their very nature are (not unlike myself) astonishingly unsexy. You’re not going to see them on ESPN or the RedZone because even though they separate the winners from the losers, they’re not highlights. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t begrudge TV producers for showing what they show ‘cause again, they’re bound by the same Aristotelian laws that I am, that we all are. High percentage plays don’t make for good TV — you hardly ever score off them because they’re purposefully designed not to do so. By definition, they are improbable possibilities. What makes for an unrelenting fucking television experience, however, are the probable impossibilities. And football has one of the best probable impossibilities in the world of sports: The Hail Mary.
A Hail Mary pass is antipodal to a high percentage play. The quarterback needs to not get sacked, launch the ball with the pinpoint accuracy of a minesweeper and hope one of the wideouts comes down with it over the goal line, surrounded by the meanest, tallest, most athletic troglodytes their opponent has to offer. Everyone knows it’s about to happen when it’s about to happen. The officials let the players play and the defence has all the means in the world to break it up and the offense has every reason to believe that that’s exactly what's going to happen.
The Hail Mary pass is as low percentage of a play as they come, so staggeringly low that the only shot at success must come at the mercy of, well, divine intervention. They’re next to impossible… And yet the law of large numbers demands that so long as teams keep trying, every once in a while one of them will actually pull it off. And they do.
This — this is what I was dealing with. That I found Sarah again… look at how much had to line up. Or how many high percentage plays I had to run: I had to have a penchant for writing notes; I had to have this general conviction to follow through on stuff; I had to have days I spend sitting on the edge of the internet. But the situation of that story didn’t become untenable until the probably impossibility of Sarah’s success entered the fold. I cultivated my life in a way that meant I had just enough wits about me to catch a digital Hail Mary I didn't even know is coming for me. In the context of that story, Aristotle would approve and call this “preferable” because of its being unbelievable. This would make for a great story… but stories aren’t real life. And yet, here I was, standing before the alter of Aristotle and asking for another.
I was chucking my own digital Hail Mary back into the black of the internet and asking what, if anything, would come back. Would Sarah come down with the ball? You tell me.
Brian
Hello.
Sarah
Hey! OK, I guess my microphone doesn’t work. Hi.
Yeah. That’s right. This worked. Sarah got my Note, read it, responded.
Brian
Yeah, it’s, uh — how’ve the last fourteen years been?
Sarah
They’ve been all right. How are you?
Brian
I’m good. You know, for — it’s my first pandemic so, you know, I’m working through it.
Sarah
Right, same. Yeah. So, I’m Sarah Andersen and I’m a cartoonist. I write Sarah’s Scribbles and FANGS.
I hate to’ve made such a big deal about it, and I don’t mean to be mysterious or secretive — honest! — but what I wrote… that was for Sarah. I was lucky that Sarah was able to confirm parts of what I remembered and added in some gaps that I forgot about.
Sarah
Yeah, so, I remember we were, we were part of, like, like, a preteen group, right? And there was like a little group of… I guess preteens that, like, all became friends. And we kind of clicked, I think because we both liked, like, what at the time was, like, “indie music” which was, like, which was, like, the Gorillaz, I guess? Or like what, what a twelve or thirteen year old this is, like, different and interesting.
Brian
Yeah.
Sarah
We were all a little bit… weird, right? Like, if I recall. I don’t think there was anyone really in the group that was, like… a cool kid. And I also think that’s an age where you really just want to be away from your parents and, like, establishing friendships.
Brian
Yeah.
Sarah
And you’re very slowly entering into, like, teen-hood and adulthood. So I think, you know, for that age group it’s very different from being, like, eight or nine where you’re still attached at the hip with your parents, I think.
Brian
Yeah.
Sarah
We were like all super excited to, like, get to know each other and kind of — I don’t know — establish more independent identities. And it was, you know, as far I remember, it was a pretty good group. What else do I remember? I remember another girl liked you and she was, like, so earth shattered when she found out we were, like, quote-unquote “dating.”
Brian
Oh, lord…
Sarah
Which I continue to feel bad about.
Brian
I remember there was — it was you, me, my buddy Eddie. I think there was another Sara and at first —
Sarah
There was another Sara.
Brian
And then I think there was also a Caitlin?
Sarah
That was the girl who liked you, too. And who was super betrayed. Yeah.
Brian
Really? Really? Wow. Cause I think — I thought she and Eddie were… a thing… but that goes to show what I know.
Sarah
I don’t know. I do, I do definitely remember Caitlin not being happy with me. So maybe, like, at the end her and Eddie, like, connected and that made up for it? In my wishful thinking.
Brian
I feel like I have a memory of you playing piano?
Sarah
Oh my God! Really?
Brian
Yeah!
Sarah
I don’t remember that at all but I do play piano so it must be true. And back then I was quite good. I knew you had hurt your eye — later — but I did not know that you were trying to find me. And that you were, like, chasing down another person. Who was that? Was his name Chris? Was he, like, a little, like, a short kid named Chris?
Brian
I don’t remember the name.
Sarah
OK.
Brian
But I just — all I remember is that he was very unhappy that you and I had become an item.
Sarah
Yeah.
Brian
In as much — you know. As we —
Sarah
Yeah. I mean I remember it was like, fun and sweet, right? Like, it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t anything very, like, serious —
Brian
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah
— or dramatic as far as I recall. I remember not being able to say goodbye to you but I think I did not find out what happened to your eye until after on AIM Instant Messenger which is, like —
Brian
Oh, lord, yeah.
Sarah
— which is, like, ancient history at this point.
Brian
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah
Trying to think what else… what else do I remember? Oh my God. I think for, like, a long time I called you my first boyfriend.
Brian
Oh, lord.
Sarah
Well, you know, up until I was like, fourteen, fifteen.
Brian
Right, right. Yeah, I mean it, it was one of those actual cases where, you know, I return to school the next week and, “I really do have a girlfriend, she just goes to another school!”
Sarah
Right.
Brian
And it was true! Like, and everyone was like, “Yeah, OK. Mmhmm. Oh, you met her on a cruise in Jamaica? Right.”
Sarah
Right, I had the same thing. It was, like I, I, like, returned to school and suddenly had, like, quote-unquote, “experience dating,” you know? So, suddenly I had some clout because of that cruise.
Brian
Yeah.
Sarah
So, so that was cool. And then I remember also that we, we did stay in touch. Like, I, I remember that as, like, part of the sweetness of the whole thing was that we were Facebook friends, you know, after AIM kind of died down. We were Facebook friends and I even drew like an album cover for you.
Brian
So that’s, like, the story, so now you have it for, uh —
Sarah
Oh my God. It’s a lot more dramatic and cinematic than I think I previously though. Which I have a lot of respect for.
How bout that? That story got the epilogue I so desperately wanted. Sarah and I caught up and…
I wish, I wish, I wish that was it, that that was the new ending to that story. But I left something out, a big part of this. A significant detail that cannot be ignored. And it has to do with when I stumbled upon Sarah’s comic and saw her name on it, that first time when I was doom-scrolling.
Reddit is one of the largest websites in the world — easily, a top tenner in the United States. The only way I know how to describe it is that it is the community forum website to end all the others, where users can post links, photos, gifs, and comments. The whole site is built on smaller, segmented community forums called subreddits and there’s a subreddit for almost everything — seriously, if you can think it, they have it.
There are the broad topics, sure, you know — [music], [television] — but maybe you’ve got a question about [personal finance]? There’s a subreddit for that. Or maybe you’ve got a question about [history], in which case [ask-a-historian] is for you. Hell, maybe you just want to pose a question for everyone! You’ve got one of the largest subreddits at your disposal: [askreddit]. Reddit also hosts AMAs — or askmeanything’s — in which celebrities and other prominent VIPs make themselves available for the common man and no topic is off limits. How big is their draw? Well, Presidents have participated in AMAs.
Reddit’s not just a place to ask questions, either. Reddit’s tagline, after all, is that it’s the front page of the internet. So… perfect! There’s a subreddit just for news called [news]. But maybe you want something with a little more ~international flair~ and for that we have [world news]. Or maybe you just want something a little more focused, say, politics. Just subscribe to [politics]. We’re really only just getting started. There’s a subreddit for the city you live in, your sexual orientation, what kind of car you drive. Pictures of people’s guitar pedal boards. Brutalist architecture. Buildings that look evil. Tweets from Scottish people.
Far and away, my favorite subreddit is [blunder years], where people post unflattering photos of themselves from their childhood. You know, not exactly how they’d choose to be preserved on polaroid these days, but it’s all in good fun.
What makes Reddit one of the world’s biggest websites isn’t only that it’s a hub for every group imaginable, it’s that the cream always rises to the top. Reddit is built on a simple voting system — every post and every comment can be upvoted or downvoted. In most cases the most informative, quippy, persuasive, succinct content consistently rises to the top. Reddit is so big that there are some communities that have subscribers in the millions. A post in one of the most populous subreddits can generate tens of thousands of upvotes. And once that message or photo or whatever hits a certain threshold, it heads somewhere else…
There’s one overlord subreddit, if you can call it a subreddit at all, called, well… [all]. Imagine monitoring all the traffic — from the smallest group to the most bloated default subs — converging in one location — that’s what [all] is. At any given time, [all] will show what content is getting the most upvotes from across the entire website. Exposed to everyone, this is when content can skyrocket. This is the metaphorical “front page.” Most often, it’s just the place to go after I’ve burned out on all my personalized content, everything I chose to see. This is where I was, in the middle of an [all] crawl, when I saw Sarah’s comic.
Maybe you’ve seen this particular strip from Sarah’s Scribbles: it’s called Up We Go. I get that explaining a visual thing on a podcast is not ideal so maybe your best bet is just to Google it. But maybe you can’t ‘cause you’re driving (or more likely, you just can’t be bothered, so I’ll do my best to describe it anyway).
There are five panels, two rows of two that read left to right, top to bottom, and one final, centered panel beneath them. In the first panel — the one on the top left — Sarah, the character, is taking a sip of coffee and says, “This coffee will raise my productivity levels!” In the next panel on the right, Sarah says, “Up we go!” as a grey box appears beneath her. Next panel: the narrow grey box gets longer with arrows pointing in the up direction.
The 4th zooms out, revealing the narrow grey box to be the bar of a bar graph; it continues to climb. The graph has a legend that reads: Anxiety. The final panel at the bottom shows a… stressed, regretful Sarah. She says, in all caps, “WAIT NO.” Now, there’s no better way to ruin a joke than to explain it, but I feel like I have to and you’ll see why in a minute. But it’s pretty straight forward, right? Drinking coffee makes people jittery and anxious.
You might expect that there is a [comic] subreddit, and there is. There’s subreddits for that and [art], [digital art], [illustrations]… but none of those were the subreddit Sarah’s comic was posted to, the reason being that it actually wasn’t one of Sarah’s comics.
And now that I’ve come to this part of that story, I’m realizing I need to make an amendment to what I just said: there is a better way to ruin a joke than to merely explain it… I’d like to stop for a second and offer a general content warning. Really, from here on out.
See, the post that I saw rising in [all] didn’t start with Sarah, the character, saying, “This coffee will raise my productivity levels!” Instead, her little word cloud read, “These refugees will raise our diversity levels.” Again, a grey box appears and it continues to grow through the 2nd and 3rd and 4th panels. But when we finally get a glimpse of the graph, the legend no longer reads: Anxiety. “Anxiety,” has been replaced with, “Rape.” The final panel remains unchanged.
Unicef calls the civil war in Syrian the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. The conflict started in March, 2011 but not until May — when the first to flee reached Turkey — did the refugee aspect of the crisis begin in earnest. A “temporary” camp, the Za-atari Camp in Jordan, opened the following year and today — today! — holds over 70,000 refugees. Within three years, the number of Syrian refugees worldwide increased into the millions. Many looked for safe shores far beyond their home, to Europe and North America. And included among them was the toddler Aylan Kurdi and his family.
Like those first Syrian refugees, Aylan’s family were in Turkey. Their ultimate goal was to make it to their relatives Canada. Their direct appeals were met with bureaucratic fumbles, though, after which Aylan’s father acquired four seats on a five meter wide boat by paying nearly six grand. The boat — which is a charitable description, really; it was an inflatable raft — but, this boat was designed for eight people though sixteen were crammed aboard it when it capsized a few minutes after leaving Bodrum, Turkey.
The Syrian civil war had been in the news since it began, sure. But as tends to happen it was just another conflict a world away happening to a number of people that was just statistically unfathomable; it wasn’t a priority here in the US, not a major one. Not until the photos of Aylan’s lifeless body emerged, scrunched up on the beach’s wet sand, did the story come to the absolute forefront here and abroad. That was in September of 2015; the refugee crisis — which, again, let’s be clear, is still occurring — would sustain as a major news headline for at least the next two years or so.
My home borough — Staten Island — is known for… several reasons. To much of the world, I’d wager we’re best known by our ferries, our bright orange fleet that connects passengers from lower Manhattan and lower Manhattan to us. And the reason the larger world knows about the Ferry is due to the fact that it’s the best — at least if we’re defining best as being free-est — way for tourists to view and take photos of the Statue of Liberty (much to the chagrin of local commuters). Most daily riders don’t offer a brief glance at the Statue as they pass and long gone are the days when Lady Liberty served her near-mythological duty: welcoming waves upon waves of immigrants as they arrived at Ellis Island.
A bronze plaque hangs inside the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal containing The New Colossus, a poem by Emma Lazarus (herself an activist for Jewish refugees). I’m sure you’ve heard the poem’s most quoted section: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” But I’ve always loved the penultimate line the best: “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” Mostly for using the hyphenated tempest-tost (which is now the name of my band) but also because, you know, it reaffirms the obligation I have as an American — not codified in any law, per se, but morally — to make my home a place of, well… refuge. “Send these … to me.”
And that holds especially true as a New Yorker. My best friend Steven put it best once: right, like, I can’t go to London and become a Londoner and most of the world is like that. But anyone in the world from anywhere can come to New York and become a legit New Yorker. We might be unique in that regard and we don’t take it for granted.
Maybe I shouldn’t’ve been surprised then, when calls to fulfill that obligation throughout the United States were hampered in November, 2015, after nine terrorists attacked Paris, France. The initial fear — which, of course, subsequently morphed into blame — was that the attack had been coordinated by Syrian refugees. Putting aside for a moment the absurdity of pinning a terrorist attack on people that were themselves the victims of and fleeing terrorism, this claim turned out to be patently false. None of the attackers were refugees or even Syrian for that matter; seven of them were radicalized Europeans and the two others were believed to’ve been Iraqi.
The problem arises with those last two; it seems they exploited the refugee migration in order to make their way into Europe. That was all the justification thirty-one governors — all but one of them Republican — needed to declare that they’d block any admission of Syrian refugees into their states. And you know what, speaking as a New Yorker, I can understand reasonable concern over terrorism. But what I cannot stomach is the hypocrisy these governors, these craven ghouls that were or are the same types that happily tell us, ad nauseam, that America is the greatest. period. nation. period. ever. period. There’s no way they actually believe that, though. Because if that were true, you’d think there was no challenge we couldn’t possibly rise to meet, right? I mean surely — surely! — there must’ve been a space, a gap between impeding the access of bad actors while also making sure the likes of Aylan Kurdi could’ve been welcomed as our newest citizens with as little friction as possible. I mean really, was this it — this was the thing that finally stumped America? The only thing we had at our disposal was to shut it all down? Really???
I’m not so naïve; that’s not what it was about. They didn’t like the people; it’s the people they don’t like. And by 2016, they weren’t even trying to telegraph their message or rely on their old codes: Head Clown at the Florida Circus, Jeb Bush, said, “We should focus our efforts as it relates to refugees on the Christians that are being slaughtered.” Or put another way: “Send these, homeless, tempest-tost to me… you know, so long as they believe in the same God and have the same color skin and aren’t just, like, so poor, and why do they always talk so funny all the time, too?” They just don’t like the people.
The alt-right didn’t feel to need to hide behind whatever laughable rhetoric the Republican governors did. Who knows for sure when in 2016 they started altering Sarah’s art, but by the end of the year, she issued this tweet:
“Some people have been editing my comics to display white supremacist texts. I am blocking and reporting as I see them. Please do the same!”
The comic I saw was not the only one they changed, appropriated. And Sarah is, of course, just one person. Even with all her followers, it’d be impossible to stamp out every last cockroach; I don’t think I saw what I saw on Reddit for another year, year and a half. There’s the rational side of me that knows not to engage; there’s a million reasons not to and that’s a good instinct to follow. But once I’ve seen something like that… I don’t know, it occupies me. I have this other horrible habit of letting this stuff fester in my mind for hours, trying to bridge an impossible distance.
Like, on the most basic level I’m just like… why go after Sarah? She makes a clever comic about the experiences of emerging adults and how all the daily absurdities we witness might actually be what brings us together. How do you not like that? How do you not like Sarah? There’s nothing she could’ve possibly done to deserve any of this. Nothing.
But of course, it goes deeper than that. The next stage. Like, I don’t understand. I just don’t understand. Do they think that immigrants won’t have the, “work ethic,” to make it in America? Because when they altered Up We Go, they did a pretty shit photoshop job. Do they think that refugees are going to be criminals? Because they were the ones to redistribute copyrighted material. And what matchless monolith of American culture were they trying to maintain that Syrians might infringe upon? They were the ones that couldn’t even develop their own propaganda — they resorted to using someone else’s art.
And their repugnant punchline… Don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy of claiming the people fleeing for their lives would have trouble with consent. Sarah did not sign off on any of this, on having her art co-opted with a message of hate. These are the acts of cowards, shielded by anonymity in order to perpetuate their xenophobic white supremacy, which is why they only ever reside in the most decrepit corners of the internet. I’m sure, one day, they’ll reside in hell.
That’s one of their goals — maybe the goal — what just happened. They do what they do to try and get people to lose their cool, their composure. And what I did is referred to as “feeding the troll,” abandoning my better angels to stoop to their level, an act that really only takes acknowledging what they say at all as if it holds any merit. So, yeah, they got me; I’ve been owned. Whatever.
Thankfully, that’s only the small part. The larger part, obviously, is that they clearly targeted Sarah. This sort of thing doesn’t just happen, either. This was coordinated.
Eddie
Uh, I’m in school now. I got — I’m going for my MSW. I know its a trending topic, right, like, Black empowerment. But it’s not really a trending topic for this guy. It’s kind of been an issue for this guy for — like, since Trayvon Martin, wholeheartedly. Not trying to get too political, ‘cause that’s not really —
Brian
No, please! Please, you would be surprised. You would be surprised.
Eddie
OK.
Brian
So this is what they did to it.
Eddie
Something else, huh?
Brian
How fucked up is that?
Eddie
Unfortunately, I’m very familiar to it. You know when you’re desensitized to everything like that? That’s where I’m at right now, man. That fits right in to everything you see from one side.
Brian
What do you think is the mindset of these people? Like, I’m not asking you to, to imagine yourself as a white supremacist. But, like —
Eddie
So that’s the thing, right? So I’ll start right there: we couldn’t. I couldn’t sit here and be like, “So, if I was a white supremacist…” So, we’re good people. There’s real evil out there, right? And then real hate that I don’t necessarily hold within me; I couldn’t imagine myself being someone like that, right? So I also, I get the idea of why they are in so hate but I couldn’t feel the same way they feel. Like, I get racism, but I inherently don’t get racism.
Brian
Right, right.
Eddie
You know what I’m saying? Like, I get your superiority complex and people thinking that — or, you thinking other people are inferior. I get the idea of that —
Brian
Right.
Eddie
— I just don’t understand how someone could feel that exactly.
Brian
And so this, this cute little comic about, you know, productivity and coffee and how coffee makes you anxious or being more productive makes you —
Eddie
It’s like mental health, yeah, like mental health awareness. Like, it’s very, very sweet for sure, yeah. Obviously, and — but you see that all the time. You just see it so often and I’m sorry that she’s a part of it. I — I — what, what do people like Sarah do to fight that?
Sarah
Well, it’s terrible. I, I obviously stand for pretty much the complete opposite of what that group of people has tried to make me out to be. And I think what a lot of people do see is that it’s, like, a deliberate attempt to mimic me enough so people think it is me. And I obviously condemn them and despise them.
Brian
No, yeah, of course.
Sarah
Yeah. You know, it’s been very difficult but it also is, in a weird way, not personal because it’s part of a larger problem within not just webcomics, but women existing online.
Brian
Yeah.
Sarah
And not even just women: many people of I guess what you could call marginalized identities. On a personal level, for me, and — and this has been relevant obviously in our politics recently — is that I would like to see stricter guidelines and a lot less toleration of white nationalism and alt-right and alt-right adjacent movements from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I see no reason why, why it should be tolerated. I consider them, obviously, to be hate groups and, for some of them, terrorist groups as well, so…
And hat’s what really stuns me; how do you build a community around something like this? Just feels like an unanswerable question.
Casper
Wow. There’s so much —
Brian
I — yeah.
Casper
— in that question.
To help try and make sense of all this, I reached out to Casper ter Kuile, co-host of the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast and author of his newly released book The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices.
Casper
I feel like there’s two things that I want to say. One is that, the question of: what do we build a community around? Is it building a community around mutual love and appreciation and upliftment and a shared passion? Or is it a community built around fear and hatred and, you know, not being them makes us us? And Paul Born has a great book called Deepening Community where he makes the distinction between shallow communities that are often build around mutual fear and deep communities which are around shared love. And I think that’s so true with, with hate groups is that you can see incredible bonding, you can see incredible mutual commitment —
Brian
Yeah.
Casper
— and powerful ritual, right? Like, it’s not like those are things that are kept exclusively for groups that we admire.
Brian
Right, yeah.
Casper
Right, you can see that very, very intentionally in hate groups. But so often their core identity is about being afraid of something or afraid of someone in a way that becomes incredibly destructive. And so that, that’s one thing to talk about. The second element is technology. And again, technology can be used for good or ill, right? It’s not inherently set out to, to destroy or, or enrich us. I think one of the ways in which the internet has been dangerous is that it allows people to build power and connect around very destructive ideas, white supremacy being one.
Brian
Right.
Casper
And that people who may be, would not have easily found one another can, can find each other. Now, on the other hand, right, it’s also the place in which, you know, someone who is fourteen and is trans can find other people to connect with and feel like they’re not alone.
Brian
Exactly, yeah.
Casper
And so, once again, it’s ritual, community, technology… they’re not just good or not just evil. They can be used for both. And I mean, I think of people like Dylan Marron who created this beautiful project Conversations with People Who Hate Me —
Brian
Yeah!
Casper
— where he found people online who had said really horrific things to him or, later, to other people and he brought them into conversation. And what happens, nearly every time, is this sense of a personal relationship melting away some of that kind of embittered hatred or that, you know, off the cuff, nasty remark.
Brian
Right.
Casper
And so sometimes what’s, I think, challenging, is that we don’t have the, the friction of relationship to mediate the conversation. Or we think that no one will hear us and so we’re just joking, or we’re going a little further than we would and so yeah, I think a lot about how the internet has created a lot of frictionless communication but actually we need the friction of relationship to —
Brian
Yeah.
Casper
— to not let those things spin out of control. I think the thing that’s dangerous — and perhaps the thing to come out of this — is when institutional power online amplifies, supports, or encourages the kind of hate based community that we know is so destructive and I think Facebook is in the middle of this — as one example —
Brian
Right.
Casper
— is not standing up against hate speech in ways that it should.
Sarah
I guess I really wish that I had been heard by… Twitter. It’s sort of this thing of, like… how many times do I need to reveal that I am being attacked and traumatized and my phone number is leaking and all of this. And I am baring my soul to you and asking for help and I’m getting silence and I’m getting, “They’re allowed to do this.” It’s sort of been an interesting thing because a lot of people don’t realize that it is, kind of, like, deliberately tolerated. So, like, in places like Germany’s Twitter-sphere, there are heavier regulations. And they are applied there —
Brian
Yeah.
Sarah
— and then lifted for the states. And, you know, there’s, there’s an interesting, like, quote-unquote “free speech” argument in all of this where, you know, it’s like: the right to speak vs. the right to have a platform. And then I think something that has been lost for a long time is that when they are allowed to exist, many many people of all kinds of identities are silenced. I have been silenced by them. There’s many things and many stories I have not told because of them or am unable to speak about freely because of them. And again I look at myself and I’m like, “I am a cis-gender, heterosexual, white woman. And it has been this bad for me.” I can’t even imagine, like, the many, many groups of people that have just been silenced and frightened away from using their voice. And, like, I was saying earlier, it’s not even when people are speaking politically. It can be people just existing! So, I would like some of the, the companies step up as well.
The altered version of Up We Go was masquerading around Reddit as if it were merely political humor. Once it hit [all], [all] did its thing and all bets were off. Reddit is no stranger to controversy; the first time I remember even hearing about the website at all was when Anderson Cooper did a major profile on a subreddit called [jailbait] which (thank Christ) was eventually banned. They have made attempts to not only clean up their act, take a better stance on what kind of company they want to be. In fact, in the course of writing this, they’ve banned over two-thousand subreddits. Not because of any free speech concerns; this comes because they didn’t fit the criteria for Reddit’s amended Content Policy, the first rule of which now reads as follows:
“Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.”
Before they nuked these most recent subreddits, they’d implemented a quarantine feature, making it harder for people to access fringe communities. Three years ago they made a secondary all-like overlord subreddit called [popular] which filters out extreme content and allows users to narrow the scope of what they’re exposed to.
Anyway, I’m not here to defend the website; they can do that for themselves. But I mention all this because… I don’t know. It’s one of those situations where it’s great we’re planting a tree today but the best time to’ve done that was twenty years ago, you know? Reddit felt like the wild west in the months leading up to the 2016 election. Alt-right groups would routinely conspire to get four, five, six posts to the top of [all]. And again, we’re talking about a top ten website, the “front page” of the internet.
If you’re able to hijack that, you’re able to dictate the political discourse across the web. I have a hunch most people have at least a passing awareness of the effect of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica connection on that election and, to this day, Twitter serves as the Mouth of Sauron.
get you someone that’ll smile at you the way the Mouth of Sauron bids thee welcome on behalf of his master, Sauron the Great.
But I don’t know if we’ll ever really know what exact role or what influence those alt-right subreddits had on shaping the outcome of that election.
To go unchecked at that critical moment had consequences, many of which we’re still contending with today. And what always gets lost are, once again, the incalculable number of individuals among us. And they’re no less real. You can probably imagine the gamut of thoughts and emotions and questions that were going through my head when I first saw the altered comic, the shock of seeing the name of this person from my past and the confusion of seeing it attached to this racist bullshit. There was all of maybe five microseconds before I realized she had no part in it. Which was good news for me, to be sure, but it doesn’t take away from what she had to deal with — or hell, she still has to deal with. At the end of August, 2018 Sarah tweeted this:
“I have not talked much about this publicly, but now seems like the right time. 2 years ago I underwent a targeted harassment campaign so severe that I almost quit comics. I saw first hand how fear and intimidation can silence artists. I did manage to write some political comics since then, some of which are the proudest of my career. However in a very real way, the harassment stifled me and prevented me from being who I want to be. And although this continues to [affect] me, I have seen that the new comics world is ultimately a stronger force. Support from other artists means the world to me. Brilliant and inspiring work is being made everyday by diverse creators with fresh perspectives. I still often feel I’m not outspoken enough. But I’m still here, making work I’m proud of. And other artists are not going anywhere, either, and for that I am so thankful. It’s not always easy but change is happening. Keep drawing, my friends.”
Sarah
For me, I very quickly realized how not alone I was in this. There’s, there’s people doing the work: there’s a book called Crash Override by Zoë Quinn that sort of, like, analyzes a lot of the systems that enable it; a YouTuber who I really like who talks a lot about some of these issues is Franchesca Ramsey — I discovered her basically when all of this started happening to me and so I think, you know, that’s a good resource to point to because there’s many people that have been more vocal and have, I think, clearer answers; and Riley J. Dennis as well — on YouTube — I think she has an entire video about what YouTube can do to prevent harassment.
But, you know, it really was a wake up call for me that the internet is not a safe or welcoming place for many people and even people who are just sort of, like, trying to exist. Like my, my work is definitely, like, feminist and what I would call progressive. But it, it’s not necessarily about those things.
Brian
Right.
Sarah
So I was kind of targeted for no reason. And that’s many people. When I see some of the, the more organized attempts to combat these groups or, or take them down, like, I feel like, “Oh, you know, at last I see something kind of working.” And yeah, I think it’s important for people to condemn and speak up. You know, I really just want to make people feel at ease with themselves and comfortable with who they are.
This isn’t some vague issue. This isn’t confined to some far corner of the world. This is the reality of the internet. And if only — if only! — it was confined there, too…
All right. We’re in the home stretch. The term, “home stretch,” comes from the game of baseball, where, after you turn past third base you have ninety feet between you and… — nah, I’m just kidding. In fact, I don’t even know if that’s true! I just made that up. But here it is, the home stretch:
I’ve mentioned it like, half dozen times now: I’m from Staten Island. And we’ve got quite a reputation, a laundry list of did-you-knows. I talked about our oranger Ferry boats earlier but, by far and without debate, our highest collective cultural achievement was itself a collective: The Wu-Tang Clan. And let me tell you, they ain’t nothing to fuck it.
There’s some mob history here, sure. Perhaps you’ve heard about how Mayor de Blasio murdered the fucking groundhog at our Zoo. Yeah, he fucking dropped our groundhog on Groundhog’s Day and it fucking died. Rest in peace, Charlotte. So, yeah, for anyone keeping track: we’ve all hated de Blasio long before it was cool.
We famously had a dump and we’ve desperately tried to rebrand ourselves as the borough of parks (which sounds lovely). I personally am trying to lead a campaign to get us known for our inexplicable turkey problem. There’s a hospital on the north shore called North and they are overwhelmed with wild turkeys. And you’d better watch out if you ever encounter them. The Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with, yes, but you know who The Wu-Tang Clan doesn’t fuck with? The wild turkeys.
But more than all of that, what Staten Island is known for is… well, let me break it down like this: in the 2016 election, the Bronx went 88% for Clinton; Brooklyn went 79% for Clinton; Manhattan 86% for Clinton; Queens went 75% for Clinton. Staten Island? We went 57%… for Trump.
That all might sound funny or silly or quaint. But it’s not. The culture here is such that on July 17th, 2014, it was possible for an officer to chokehold a man to death for resisting arrest after being accused of selling loose cigarettes. His name was Eric Garner and despite his murder, his final words — his plea that he could not breathe — have not only reverberated throughout the world but have also, unfortunately, been echoed by other Black men and woman across the country.
You know, I wanted to tell that story for a long time. I thought about it, how to do it in a way that was compelling and in the right format. And hopefully I’ve accomplished at least that much. But I never knew if I had a good reason to tell it, at least not until now. See, after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, protests broke out here in New York. Footage from the other boroughs went viral on Twitter.
But there were also Black Lives Matter marches planned for Staten Island. And when they were, the south shore of Staten Island showed itself to be not so ideologically different from those groups that targeted Sarah. Not at all, really, except they didn’t hide behind the anonymity of the internet. Not until a march in favor of acknowledging the lives of one of the most marginalized groups in our society did the south shore decide they needed to coordinate on Facebook in order to form a militia. I’m not kidding. This wasn’t the work of some fringe internet nutjobs, this wasn’t the governor of some state I’m never going to go to anyway. These were my neighbors. And all of this has just been… I don’t know… I’ve been home stretched.
So that’s what this is, a chance to… I don’t know. Witness this. Ask how we got here and what our next steps are. To amplify others. And this is the best way I know how to do that, through these weird stories and moments through my life. And then I’m going to try and wrap everything up all nice in episode three, the big finale. Will I stick the landing? Doubtful! But let’s see. For now: How did Staten Island get like this? I’ll take a look at that next time in episode two: I f*cked up bigtime! or: on finding perfect goodness. I hope to see ya then.
In the meantime, please go check out Sarah’s new book: FANGS. It’s out now, everyone and it’s right up my alley. And while you’re at it, Casper’s book, The Power of Ritual is out now, too! Casper also did the recording for the audiobook version; that’s what I got and it’s great. I’ll put links to everything in the description.
Finally, there’s that modern adage that states that anything that gets posted to the internet lasts forever. Things can be copied, downloaded, screen shotted, tweeted, re-tweeted, reblogged, cataloged, and on and on. But like most maxims it’s not always true. Still, I’ve tried to find as many old photos from the cruise vacation as I could; if you want to take a look, head on over to the website. There’s also some links to the books and other media mentioned throughout this episode, as well as any tidbits that couldn’t or just didn’t make it into the episode (man, imagine being the thing that didn’t make it into an episode this long…).
All right, that’s it then. See ya!
— — —
hail mary digital!
by Brian Buchanan
Mixed by Nick Pitman and mastered by Ian Pritchard.
Special thanks to Erin Janosik, Steve Zimmer, Jason Roschbach, Alex Cadwell, Brian McCann, Angelica Bamundo, Cole Rice, Steven Bacas, and Kayla Elder.
Shout out to Sarah Andersen and Casper ter Kuile.
Intro and outro music by On Pink.
Additional music provided by Sthlm Blush, Collector//Emitter, Chronofile, Shaun Gold, Lincoln Mayorga, Mike Maldarelli, Joe Ippolito, Ross Fish, and Curious Volume. Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov was performed by David Nolan, Enrique Batiz & the Philharmonia Orchestra, was provided courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. “Up She Rises” and “Classic Battle” by Sam Spence were provided courtesy of APM Music.
Promotional material provided by Marisa Sotto. Additional material provided by James Yarusinsky and Marquis Pickering.
For more information, please check out our website at: www.brianbuchanan57.com. That’s Brian with an I, Buchanan, like the president, and 57 like… the ketchup bottle.
Hail Mary Digital is a co-production between Phat Jewelle & Star Command Audio Solutions.
Later stranger!
— ♭rian♭uchanan57