by Derek Maine
“What was it like waiting for the bomb?”
Like this. It is like this.
I have failed my editors, failed my speculative readers. No column last month. The deadline came, passed. October is here and I left my post in June. Farewell Transmission has been understanding, but I did block my editor’s number sometime mid-August. Speaking of August, this is when things really go off the rails. I was good, really, until August.
My notes for August and September are so sparse, most of them destroyed, there is no way I can stick to my signature, beloved style of reporting on the ground live as things happen. Filing my report on two months of war, mine and others, will test my abilities (and my editors). I have two months to recreate, two depressive, drug-addled months to remember where I spent two days at sea against my will, met an attache in Washington, D.C., returned to temporary office services work, and suffered several other indignities. The war beat on.
It was a hot, motionless summer.
August began with Dear Leader winning the Senior classic golf tournament at one of his country clubs. He shot 70. He also almost certainly shat in his adult diaper at Senator Graham’s funeral.
Our munitions law, and appetite for war waning, prices rising, Iran announced to the world it will not open the Strait of Hormuz until the American presidency changes hands.
In mid-August I wrote my ex-wife, “There is an army between us,” only to learn my number had been blocked. The United States attorney general declared Dead Leader never has and never will do something unethical. The law has spoken.
In late August my financial situation soured, my debts piling up, and I was forced to go see Carol, once again, at the temp agency. She placed me in Office Services for an engineering firm where I ate, slept, made copies, collated, jogged, bound, had xanax for lunch and coffee and pie for breakfast. I spoke to no one. My notebook for the rest of August was indecipherable:
The middle managers want to steal my salt! They are but an army of tongues! The reports are due by end of day! A new quarter upon us. Stretch goal: $100 gift card to The Cheesecake Factory, non-transferable.
September came, and nothing improved.
9.8.26
He shit his pants in the oval house, again, today.
9.11.26
Today, the Houthi rebels captured an island and are choking off the bab el-Mandeb strait. Chokepoints everywhere. Twenty-five years ago today I remember exactly where I was. Hunter S. Thompson, in his column for Page 2 at ESPN, understood it perfectly, right away. We are at war and will be for the rest of most of our lives, he said. The party was over, he said. Hunter S. Thompson was a fine carrier of the flame, one of our greatest, and he was, unfortunately, right right away. And who am I to cover a war never ending?
The Red Sea islands control the strait. Ten percent of global trade goes through the strait. The Houthi’s have control over the strait, and the entire western coast of Yemen.
New fronts open.
9.19.26
Common People by Pulp is playing, we are riding in black cars at unsafe speeds.
Saudi Arabia is under attack. Riyadh airport, pipelines, fuel storage tanks, infrastructure.
9.21.26
En route to DC by train to meet with the Ambassador. I am traveling under a cloud of conditions. The roomettes are all taken by mean Russians making their way (slowly) to Chicago. I haven’t the heart to explain to them American geography. So I am sat in coach. I brought Nutella biscuits for my fellow passengers, cough drops, several medications, Helen DeWitt, two plant-based smoothies.
9.22.26
All the signals are jammed in DC this rainy morning, first day of fall.
9.24.26
When I travel south I feel wild and free, reckless. When I travel north I feel anxious, jittery, constantly aware of my own skin. When I travel west I feel untethered, an orphan, consumed with possibility, lonely. When I travel east I walk into the Atlantic Ocean.
9.26.26
At my friend the financier’s wedding in Darien, Connecticut. I am clad head to toe in powder blue and on several conflicting drugs at once. The shuttle arrives any moment. Something the train conductor called a ‘nor’easter’ is apparently bearing down on the Tokeneke Club and the rest of the Connecticut coast. We are not far from Greenwich, someone said in line at Windsor Street Coffee. I don’t know what that means. But I am wide awake and investigating.
9.28.26
They were out of creamed spinach at the private equity steakhouse and Linda was disappointed, already in a mood.
And the rest of the month, including excuses
I began this assignment with Farewell Transmission with selfish intent. I suppose it’s true all writers take on every assignment with selfish intent. Finding no publisher for my 500-page novel beginning with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, covering wars and failed literary movements, a grotesque sigh on our contemporary times, I set out to write a monthly war column with the idea a publisher (or agent, tastemaker, influencer, or critic) would stumble upon my project and immediately request the Wartime Author manuscript to take to auction. This did not happen.
A new war in Iran opened up, and my capacity to take on fresh horrors, while working with my editor polishing up the manuscript for my own war novel, began to seriously fade. I simply could not take on these two tasks at once. The choice was to continue following the wars and writing the column, or finishing my manuscript. I chose, sometime in August, perhaps foolishly, to turn my attention to the manuscript.
Here I sit and type a failed columnist, with a homeless novel. I survey my options. I could enter my manuscript sometime in October in Fiction Collective 2’s annual novel contest. Evan Dara was a past winner. This would be excellent company. I could submit to Rose Press, who published Scott McLanahan and Matthew Gasda, during their open reading period in November. I could bribe Cash4Gold with cocaine to publish my war novel. I could send it along to Hesse Press, a house I am increasingly impressed with. But each option seemed impossible. The manuscript would likely not be “contest-ready” by the end of October (my own fault). Rose Press is lovely but all of their covers follow the same visual lineage and I did not like the idea of Wartime Author written in cursive font, plus I doubted I was cool enough for a hip press. I am too terrified of parties, New York, and Los Angeles to get in bed with Cash4Gold. I am too scared to blindly submit to Hesse Press and do not know how besides. I could, and likely will, self-publish. What another headache! And for what and for whom? To sing my sign into the void, perhaps.
All of these things require my attention and an executive function I severely struggle with. And I am tired. Tired of writing a widening war, unceasing and stupid. Tired from my own poor choices, reckless lifestyle, and unpleasant personality. Afraid of my ex-wife, and Baltimore. I am, therefore, moving out of the King’s Motel at the edge of a faceless, motionless mid-Atlantic capital city and into a more suitable, responsible studio apartment. I am drying out for real this time, and I have deleted the phone numbers of all my drug dealers. If I am to give this novel a chance, I must be serious, sober.
And with that, I bid you adieu. With apologies, this will be my last dispatch for Farewell Transmission, who have been nothing but the kindest souls and have agreed to pay me for the remainder of the year (a blessing I did not deserve, but am nevertheless grateful for). All of my focus belongs to Wartime Author, and making it the novel it deserves to be, and finding a home and (hopefully) a few readers along the way.
With love,
D Money Maine
Derek Maine wrote about the war for Farewell Transmission.