Derek Maine
June, still somehow, 27th, 2026
Austria and Algeria are playing in Kansas City in a strange World Cup game. If the game ends in a draw, both teams get through to the knockout stage. If one team wins then Iran takes the losing team’s spot in the knockout round. The game is 1-1 in the 48th minute. Iran is still alive in the wartime World Cup, but will Algeria or Austria push and attack for Iran on the pitch?
Austria scores in the 54th minute to take the lead. A clinical quick strike for Marcel Sabitzer. Algeria will have to attack for their World Cup lives, Austria defend for Iran’s.
Almost all of the viral social media videos of Europeans (and Australians) experiencing American excess are part of a CIA operation. The captain of Algeria, Riyad Mahrez, scores in the 60th minute. Tie game, thirty more minutes to either pass the ball around and both go through or attack and let Iran through to play in the wartime World Cup on enemy soil. A match break (necessary due to the extreme summer heat and humidity in much of North America) at the 69th minute.
The crowd is loud, storming through my scream. Chants I cannot understand. In languages I don’t know. Any single individual’s experience is so small, our perspectives so thin. The world is everything outside our periphery and we process all of it inside our narrow passage. The world is everything that is the case. The game has slowed to a crawl here in the 81st minute, both teams seemingly comfortable with the draw. Iran waits.
The scoreboard in the stadium switches to a live Messi goal. Roars and roars of roars. Players looked up and watched. The ball is staying in the midfield, passing and passing time.
Pattycake paddy cake out there. The crowd whistles its disgust at the pace of play.
In the 93rd minute Riyadh Mahrez breaks away and scores again for Algeria. Austria is shocked. Iran is alive.
June 28th 2026
In the last seconds of play Austria’s Sasa Kalajdzic on his first touch, with Austria on the brink of elimination puts a header in the back of the net. The game is called. Iran is eliminated in the wartime World Cup.
Russia threatens to blow up “half of Finland.”
July, War(s)
On this, the eve of the semiquincentennial of American independence, in this century of the empire falling, I take two Xanax before lunch, smoke half a joint, and head to the municipal pool. It is good to get out in the community to take the temperature of a thing. We are under a heat dome, the whole east coast. Highs are 103. It has not rained in weeks. I have heard from my people in DC. The city is under construction. Hazards everywhere, smothered in reds, whites, blues. The things a heat dome can do to a city is diabolical. The work of the devil, it is no wonder the defining feature of hell is the heat. There are no skyscrapers in DC, in our nation’s capital. Did you know this? Many people do not. There is an ordinance relating to height and the capitol dome. It’s a city on a marsh. Most people know this. It’s a city with no representation. Important to know this. I have elected to stay back, trust my eyes and ears to my team in DC (I have just this morning enlisted an audio visual documentarian), and, instead, report on the semiquincentennial from one of the nameless, supposedly charming small American towns which, I’m told, make up something called the ‘heart of America.’ There are so many Americas. We can only stand on one patch at a time, looking out. Perspectives limited, obscured by the sheer size of this nation of states.
I am reading Death in the Afternoon under designer Italian shades at the pool on account of the sun and wanting to be a better writer.
A settling high kicks in during adult swim.
I float on my back and study the clouds. The sun bores down.
Until I find the evening has once again gotten away from me.
July 4th 2026
On her big, beautiful birthday I went to one of her lakes, traded the rest of the courier’s hashish to one of her teenagers in exchange for thirty minutes on the jet ski. I sacrificed a touch of my high for water sports, and I did not regret it.
I would eat an ice cream if handed one, but am too stoned to initiate.
Suburban bombs in the air. Where was I this time last year? Somewhere stuck beneath the pages of Wartime Author and if I had any mettle about me (a little ‘get up and go,’ as they say) I could lug out the manuscript and check rather quickly but inertia sets in, as it often does, and I hear the fireworks, municipal and homegrown alike, and the dogs, hooting and hollering tonight. How long will it last? Is it truly celebratory? What with all these dark forces milling about?
Meanwhile Charles, next door, is blasting some television special. It sounds like Lawrence Welk with explosive diarrhea. I can hear him, through the thin motel wall, giggling. Chortling. The motherfucker is chortling. There’s nothing left but the ride down the mountain of empire, and Charles is chortling.
This July fourth is one of those swampy, endless summer nights. Imagine fireflies. Imagine a heat dome. Skittering children riding motorbikes on the lawn. The city is tensing up. Record heat today, up and down the coast. The night air is a heavy warm blanket. There is no relief, only atrition.
7.5.26
It was so hot the fire alarms went off this evening at the King’s Motel. The leftover fireworks sputtered out around nine, maybe ten. England defeated Mexico in the Azteca, 3-2. I have no reports from Mexico City (where I do keep a few attachés). The heat is making everything seem sinister. Likely I have said this before or made a similar point. This is the curse of the column. I cannot look back in the true spirit of currentivism. And I owe a debt to currentivism. This is me working it off. There are several things I have left out, only one or two on the advice of counsel, and my debts have thus far been spared the shame of being confused for literature. Suffice to say a semi-professional poker player and freelance writer living in a motel at a monthly rate has a few debts to pay. You don’t arrive here flush.
Thunderstorms interrupted the 250th birthday party in the capital city.
An image surfaces of Dear Leader watching himself watch himself on television. Images capture so much more than words and that’s their problem.
July 7th 2026
Iran is attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz again, the birthday party is over. The United States tells the world it does not favor the rule of a player having to be suspended for the next game if he gets a red card and we have been nothing but gracious hosts, sooo……
And in this era it works.
Football, however, no stranger to controversy, political favors, bribes, is still settled on the pitch. Dear Leader made three phone calls to the FIFA President, his friend, and the suspension was lifted for America’s best player in this North American World Cup.
Then Belgium completely dominated the United States 3-1, and our goalie made a particularly humiliating, comical physical error. All of the host nations are eliminated. Iran resumed their attacks on the Strait of Hormuz. I shot 109 at the municipal par three in expensive Italian sunglasses and globs of white sunscreen glue stuck to my beard. It was an unattractive sight and I was walking and I was playing alone and there was no worse or slower player on the course and I let every one play through until the night manager had to shut the lights off so I gave myself a triple bogey on 18 to fill out my scorecard (I am working on my short game this week). I blame the quaaludes entirely. For all of it, and I apologize too. For all of it, I must apologize.
U.S. renews strikes against Iran, sanctions back on, peace off, war on.
July 10th, 2026
Overheard tonight, having drinks with the courier, a young pastel polo collared man with boat shoes announces to his table “Have fun with your fucking utopian bullshit. I watched Hotel Rwanda and bought a gun.” The courier needs Manny Machado to hit a home run tonight to hit his parlay.
July 11th, 2026
I wrote this during the war. I wrote in those days, my son. I wrote during the war. I was paid to cover it (am paid to cover it) and bring news home to the common people. I am active on several fronts. It was supposed to last ten days, maybe two weeks at most and I was going to grab my juiciest, nastiest byline yet: The Atlantic. I have dreamed, ever since seeing the photograph of the owner of The Atlantic widow and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, on a sunny day in a bath suit looking radiant and sexy sitting on a couch laughing with Gishlaine Maxwell (her own gifts pouring through the lens) of finagling my way into their pages. Real writers write pieces for The Atlantic. The Paris Review. The New Yorker. The widow benefactor. The CIA. The Fleischmann Yeast Man’s winnings in a poker game. In other words, the holy trinity of literary superstardom. This is still a real thing. This is the thing that was supposed to happen for me but the war kept on, past ten days and past two weeks and The Atlantic wasn’t real (my ex-wife duped me, it’s a whole story), and the war kept on and I was looking for a missing writer and I had his manuscript and he was down to only writing by hand for fear of the machines stealing his work and the war kept on and the land use attorney cut a back room deal with The Estate and the war kept on and new fronts opened up and a solider set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy and the wars kept on and multiplied as my own wars, public and private, played out against a backdrop of an empire falling. Presently, the night sky. Everywhere I went, every room I went in, for ten whole years, I heard whispers. It was during the war, my son, I wrote these things. I covered it.
July 12th, 2026
I woke up this morning on the Crystal Coast, hiding from several things at once and still chasing shadows. First thing, a fistful of ice, black coffee. A morning smoke and stroll on the beach, beneath the pylons at the fishing pier. A death in the senate is the first news of the world. The oldest senate on record, I believe. Nothing reaches me here. The aromas of the day: salt air, marijuana smoke, tobacco smoke, aloe vera, Deet. I sit with Martin Amis on the beach for three hours, racing right past noon, while he tells me raunchy, hilarious stories of John Self (in the voice of). Every hour for fifteen minutes I close my eyes and leave Martin and instead join John Self in my dreams, clinking glasses and making a fortune, sleeping with everything. It’s a much nicer way when Martin tells it, but sometimes I like to sneak off.
July 13th, 2026
America attacks Iran for the second straight evening, striking in honor of their fallen senator, a committed war hawk.
The deck boards at my beach house are wobbly and I have gained ten pounds, most of it fried flounder doused in tartar sauce plus all the goddamn sugar in mojitos, and I am myself wobbly. I finish my last joint of the night in fear of falling through, to the deck below, warped wood, two days rain soaked, giving out.
July 15th, 2026
Smoke from the Canadian wildfires returns, and an explosive diarrhetic parasite is in the food, likely lettuces.
Argentina will play Spain in the World Cup Final. It is the summer of soccer. The summer of shit. The summer of smoke. I am taking my coffee hot and black here on the island. My meals are fried. I have gone surf-fishing every evening and surf-caught next to nothing. The mornings are afternoons instead, and I briefly consider taking up residence at the weekly rate motel in this town instead of the rotten capital city I currently shrivel in but after walking in to speak to the manager about a special writer’s rate and seeing the condition of the place (musty is fine, sour and musty is not; peeled paint and popcorn ceilings preferred but the parade of roaches and mosquito breeding grounds in the bathtub are beneath even my own shrinking dignity) I decided to keep my wits about me and not turn a vacation into a home. People make this mistake. Many do. Yes, it’s true, I am taking a vacation. If there are bombs and deaths outside these beach house walls they have not reached me. I am concerned with the tides and the chance of rain each hour, how, when, and where the yellow snapper are biting and little to nothing else, blessedly. I deserve it. After everything they’ve put me through. I’ve fulfilled half of my assignment: a column every month for Farewell Transmission on the war slash wars in twenty-twenty-six. The money men behind the magazine’s operation forced me to do promotion earlier this week. They asked me to arrive at a time and a place and they put their clothes on me and made me speak nonsense into their cameras. Everyone wants to know what a writer looks like. What a writer wears. The contours of his or her scowl. Etc. Etc. I oblige because I chose to be their jester. I take their dirty money and they take my dirty writing and a couple times a year someone from the New York Times calls to ask for me a quote about the “literary crisis in America,” and I sing for my supper.
I will blur every line there is and disintegrate distinction until you too see reality is negotiable. You can change in and out of them. Reality is not fixed. Reality is more like a menu of options. One of those old tv guides. I put up a shingle today in town. “Discrete Investigations 919-518-4242.”
July 16th, 2026
A second heat dome has hit my mid-Atlantic state and I leave the beach house to get back to work, stopping and playing 18 holes at a retirement town (shooting 116, cheating on several holes and giving up on one to sit under a tree and smoke). The highlight of my day. I thought seriously about why I got into this line of work. What keeps me clinging to the life raft of literature in this rotted out psychotic pornographic digital overlay overlaying everything serving you exactly what you ordered (and twelve things you didn’t know you needed)? It’s a fair question. Quite the navel gazing one, I’d caution. I could say I believe in a kind of transference of consciousness between writer and reader and further believing we are all one consciousness briefly separated here on earth and so reading is spiritual undertaking for me and I take it seriously as such, but to say this would not be fitting with the modern style, nor notions. None of us choose the times we live in. I certainly did not. Am I made for them instead? Absofuckinglutely. I removed the shingle this morning, returned the keys to the owner, took out the trash and put in the lock code and ran the dishwasher and headed West (east would deposit you in the Atlantic Ocean) back to the wars, and my existence as a noticing machine.
July 19th, 2026
Iran attacks a U.S. military base in Jordan. Two service members killed, one missing.
My Russian propagandist tells me, tonight, over several coffee mugs of Nolet’s Reserve, a coup may be fomenting in Kiev. He said language matters greatly and I agreed. I assured him I would let him keep his own language if he agreed to a sit-down interview (it has been brought to my attention, by readers and editors alike, in frequent messages, terse and exhibiting alarmingly high levels of executive function, that I ought to report on the war I started to report on and stop reporting on the wars I picked up along the way and especially, please Lord, the private war I started and so I am trying to please my few and faithful readers and my immaculate editors, all publishers past, present, and future, and get some proper journalism done) and he is mulling the offer over at present.
July 20th, 2026
The Tate Brothers are taken in custody in Miami, awaiting extradition to the United Kingdom for serious sex crimes. Dear Leader welcomed them here in February, 2025. Strange.
July 22th, 2026
The house approves Dear Leader’s request for an additional $95B to fight the war in Iran.
July 23rd, 2026
Trade routes. International shipping. Thirteenth night in a row of strikes on Iran. Houthi’s attacked two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea.
July 25th, 2026
I can hear my editor in my ear now. I can hear the ghost of my literary benefactor. “Get to work! Bring me news of the war! Our people are starving.”
I am fucking working here! I am ON THE GROUND! Days, weeks, and an occasional April may go by without much ink touching paper and it may LOOK like I am abdicating all responsibilities, letting down my legion of fans, stealing paychecks from Farewell Transmission, thumbing my nose at my editor, besmirching the good name of my dead benefactor but, like the poem on the wall in a beach house where you only see one set of footprints during the trials and tribulations, when I am not working I am actually working the hardest. And I am also hanging on for dear life. None of this is easy, and none of this felt like my choice. I wanted to get my ex-wife back. For good. I wanted to be a famous writer, and surprise literary conferences with the rare appearance to stunned crowds of literati, academics, and the press. Well, when I was five I probably wanted to be a fucking firefighter. Dreams are a nuisance. Dreams get you a room at the King’s Motel and bed fleas. Dreams get you a still unanswered letter from Baltimore. Dream long enough and you too can cover a war from a behavioral health center.
I worked plenty this month. I reject all of your claims and insinuations to the otherwise. The war raged on, I’m sure. Empty words, big bombs, a chokehold blockade stalemate prevents safe passage, elections, smoke from Canadian wildfires, the price of goods continues to go up while seven people are getting diabolically richer by the hour. More Iranian citizens were killed. More members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were killed. More American servicemen were killed. We celebrated our 250th birthday. We proved we can cheat and still never make it out of the round of 16 in the World Cup. I sat around, dumbly, and waited. I laid on my bed in the King’s Motel drunk, high, destructive, sad, waiting. Waiting for something to happen, anything, other than what was already happening and the month came and went and circumstances did not improve. Morale remained low.
Derek Maine writes about the war for Farewell Transmission.