Derek Maine
March 31, 2026
At 30,000 feet in the air, on my escape from Fajardo, I began drying out and replaying certain scenes in my head. The conversation with the ferry captain, for one. I had occasion to spend several mornings and cups of coffee with the ferry captain. The ferry runs on the hour from the El Conquistador resort to their private island, Palomino. “Every day back and forth.” He hated his job, bored out of his skull. The emerald waters, craggy coastline. He hated it all with every sinew of his being. “Every day back and forth.” Here he was shepherding rich tourists each day to a private island amidst some of the world’s most serene, natural beauty and the route was poison for him. He looked at the waters and the coastline like an office worker might look at a Microsoft Teams message. I thought about this for a long time.
April 3, 2026
Back at the King’s Motel, mid-Atlantic squalor. The recession has begun.
U.S. fighter jets (2) shot down over Iran. Scant details. Conflicting reports. At least one soldier was successfully rescued and evacuated. Oil up, markets down, Easter weekend.
The United States and Israel are unsure of the new Supreme Leader’s health and have not, at least publicly, acknowledged receiving any proof of life. Iran reported he was injured in the initial strike that killed his father, the old Supreme Leader, and his wife. There has been no evidence he is alive or conscious or well. Dear Leader has mentioned, on several occasions, talking to new people in Iran. While the internal politics of the current regime, in place since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, may be incredibly complicated, shifting suddenly, roles reconfiguring, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has decidedly proven their skill, power, cohesion, and creativity. Ownership of the Strait of Hormuz is no longer a theoretical question, an incredibly powerful economic and geopolitical victory for Iran. Sanctions against Iran, levied by America, have been lifted, by America, in a desperate attempt to keep oil and jet fuel prices down (and markets up) by allowing Iranian oil to fill gaps in the market. Billions and billions of dollars, now flowing daily into the country that were entirely absent when America started the war. The war it cannot get out of and cannot win, some are saying.
War brings out the beast in people. I am certainly no exception. My ex-wife wants to see me. I do not recall where we last left off or what I last shared. I must be honest: I have been taking a lot of drugs (mostly painkillers and whippets, kratom but that’s to take the edge off, a clinically insane amount of weed but that’s prescribed to me, or was prescribed to me at a tarot reading, three different types of benzodiazepines mostly prescribed though not taken as) and have not written or followed the war or edited or sold my novel (Wartime Author, awaiting press, 2027) or even found someone interested enough to simply say “hey, saw your column. Sometimes it is good. Send me some pages and a synopsis with a couple comps but no more than twenty pages.”
So I have no recollection of what I have shared in these parts and what I have collected for myself to stew on and misinterpret ungraciously at some later date. Where we stand is: the (absurd, ridiculous, there are two sides to every story, no one is a saint, who amongst us, etc…) TRO has been lifted by her at her request. My father, or whoever was giving me shit about it last, can eat a bag of dicks. I am not a danger to myself and others, and the State of Maryland concedes this. I am codified. Look me up, Dad. Your son is so far from a danger to himself and others that there are notarized court documents attesting to such. I mailed her the storage key but I have not gone to Bethesda to claim anything yet. My work gives me occasion to travel to Washington, DC to the center of power of the failing falling American empire in its hedonistic, foul last gasps of a lion era. I will visit a storage facility in Bethesda, Maryland on my next reporting trip. Farewell Transmission covers all expenses, has been nothing but kind. She wrote me the letter. I recited the first line. I still do. I sing it around my room. The temperature changes here so suddenly and drastically in the mid-Atlantic onset of Spring, and I have to constantly change settings on the heating and air unit. The rest of the letter was not terribly incising. I have written her worse. Certainly, and always, longer, which any writer’s partner will tell you is its own suffocating, nasty punishment. We punish each other. We always have. It has at times turned us on and at times turned us off. She will meet me, she thinks, in May, on a beach in New Jersey I have never heard of and whose name I cannot recall. I immediately wonder where the wars will be when I attend to my small, personal battle in May on a beach in New Jersey and I immediately wonder what she might be wearing.
April 4, 2026
Pooh Shiesty got out of jail, linked up with his Dad and robbed Gucci Mane.
I have given up betting on basketball. I am back to my roots, betting on a fight between two men in the ring. But only the sweet science. I have never enjoyed watching men wrestle. Tonight I put two weeks rent at the King’s Motel on Sam Goodman knocking out Rodrigo Ruiz. I know nothing about either fighter. It is just what’s on television right now and I liked the look in Goodman’s eye in the corner and the +400 odds. Round 4 ends and the fight is likely tied. But it’s a twelve round fight. If I lose this I have to find a mail room gig through the office services temp agency this week. If I win I can avoid this psychic damage. Tomorrow is Easter.
The fight goes the distance. Monday I will have to call Carol. Carol controls the couriers, the mail rooms, the corporate caterers in this sputtering downtown. I will have to take whatever she can find me, and pray I do not have to shave.
The pilot from one of the downed fighter jets is being hunted by the Americans and the Iranians. The Israelis as well. The mighty American military, so far losing bigly in this war (Iran more powerful as a state regardless of regime, strained international relations and loss of any trust and faith left with all of our allies except, notably, Israel, loss of American lives, serious ongoing economic costs, etc.) claimed to have destroyed Iranian air defenses. They are apparently still able to shoot our planes out of the sky. Pray the man is found alive by his men.
Dear Leader gives a new deadline for Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz: 48 hours. Speculation Dear Leader is at the hospital, a recurring bit.
Conspiracies are usually leaks.
April 5, 2026
12:48 am – Dear Leader announces the missing service member has been rescued, injured but will “be just fine.” It is Easter today.
Dear Leader rises on Easter morning and proclaims to the Iranian people, and the world: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
April 7, 2026
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he promises.
He changes his mind. Announces a two week ceasefire instead. The ceasefire lasts one minute and 39 seconds.
The ten point plan being discussed to end the war calls for the United States and Israel to stop attacking Iran, for Israel to leave Lebanon, for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz and receive a $2 million toll for each ship’s passage (it will split these fees with Oman) in lieu of war reparations to further enshrine control over the rules of passage in Hormuz (prior to the war it was an Internationally governed body of water), and all sanctions will be lifted against Iran. An appropriately humiliating defeat for America and Israel.
April 8, 2026
Israel attacks Lebanon. Iran closes the Strait.
April 9, 2026
Days of bed rot, unable to shower or leave my room, I begin to suspect the world as it is and my existence are somehow incompatible. At odds. In a tussle.
An impasse, uneasy truce.
My ed. texts me an article of a parking garage collapse. 1 dead, 2 missing. Incoherent string of texts, i told them this would happen1.
April 11, 2026
There are less hours in a day then you might want, and sometimes far more.
Or else it was some phrase in German. It doesn’t matter. You forget how to write. It happens. Sometimes it happens that you forget how to write. It happens to the best of us.
The worst person you can imagine is purchasing a $1.50 pimento cheese sandwich at Augusta as we speak.
The Vice President, a certified creep, a professional loser and bestselling author (the bastard), is in peace talks with Iran this Saturday while the markets are closed and the strait is closed and my ex-wife has moved in (temporarily) with me at the King’s Motel (primarily for sexual research) and I have become obsessed with Helen DeWitt who revealed this week she turned down a $175,000 literary prize from Yale (no strings attached) because she could not make the promotional (the strings attached) demands work on account of some logistical issues with wifi and European data roaming plans in Berlin and signs of severe depressive episodes and an almost artistically enviable lack of executive function and I come up for air very little as I immerse myself in her words and work, poring over her novels, interviews, profiles, personal history.
Last month’s column was poor form, I think we can all admit this. I was more comfortable in a European war, I will admit. My editor reminds me Russia is at least partially in Asia and I hang up on him. He has left me a voice note begging forgiveness and explaining that “even the greats had bad periods! You are just in a temporary lull. The war has taken a lot out of you!” He’s not wrong, but he’s still an asshole.
Helen Dewitt never had a bad period, I text him. Of course she did, and many at that, but her work never suffered for it. She never would have submitted the putrid piece of shit column I wrote last month, purporting to cover a war and merely relaying headlines often days (sometimes weeks) behind. She would have told Farewell Transmission to go toss itself.
What interests me about Helen DeWitt and why am I fucking my ex-wife again? Both excellent questions I am in no state to answer.
My editor sends me a voice note: they are LAUGHING at you in BATH HOUSES across EUROPEAN CAPITAL CITIES.
April 12, 2026
I think Dear Leader called the Pope a piece of shit or thereabouts. I am trying my damnedest to stay away from the news. I allow myself certain periods with the phone and it must be dedicated to correspondence and crosswords (but not more than two or three a day, ideally). I break my own rules often or pretend to conveniently forget them and accidentally see the United States Navy has been ordered to block the strait of Hormuz and American leaders are talking all kinds of shit about the Pope.
April 21, 2026
We blockaded the blockade and there was a cease fire and there was a threat of decimation, desalination plants, power plants, bridges and there was another cease fire and a ship was seized and ships turned around and a ceasefire was in place and then was not until it was extended.
Dear Leader, his bottom rubbed with baby oil by Israeli Prime Minister and Raging War Criminal Lunatic Netenyahoo, started a war in Iran he can’t get out of and he can’t win. Iran’s air defenses are decimated. In exchange all sanctions are lifted and they get a toll bridge to print money and everyone in the world knows not to fuck with Iran.
These are the relevant, serious truths about the war. My serious truth is I would like to transcend the war. I would like to find a publisher and move out of this motel and I would like the Ukraine war to end so I can stop covering wars on screens, constantly a flow of massacres and human suffering, information, misinformation, lies and propaganda, images of dead schoolchildren and drone footage, missile strikes, cluster maps, and I started to write a novel where I would follow the war from beginning to end and somewhere in the middle there was no end in sight. I was sent to hospital. Now I live in a motel. My ex-wife is still staying here. She rents a co-working space downtown and makes phone calls all day. She tried to do it here once and she slapped the shit out of me for an hour (I liked it) for projectile vomiting and fucking up her call, ruining her life, being a disgusting freak and subhuman and then she left to buy some cigarettes. That was a weird week. Ultimately kratom was a mistake and things are (thankfully) different now.
April 22, 2026
Iran seized three ships in the Strait, fired on three.
April 23, 2026
Ordering bottle service at the club. Velvet booth, the DJ is playing Tom Wait’s The Earth Died Screaming. Several antelope sit down at the table next to me. It has not rained here in months.
A United States soldier on the Madura mission was caught using his classified information to make $400,000 on polymarket betting on the capture of Madura. Dear Leader announces a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon (we are in a war with Iran).
My birthday present to myself was a futures bet on the North Carolina Tarheels winning the men’s national basketball championship in April of 2027.
April 24, 2026
My ex-wife left yesterday. She will be back in a few weeks. It was amicable, very amicable. But in less than 24hrs I am back to old devices, feeling disrupted. I was supposed to copy and paste from one thought to another and forgot. This is the state of American letters. Everyone is very sorry. They gave us screens to look at that fit in our hands. It’s basically over, already. We won. We basically, it’s almost over. It’s almost over already so I don’t understand what the big deal is.
Do you know how much we lost not being present? Not accepting and learning to be bored? To sit with that. To sit with yourself without constant distraction, companion, mahjong tiles, crossword puzzles, and porn in your motherfucking pocket. Don’t worry, it will all be over soon and your services will not be needed.
April 25, 2026
The shooter at the White House Correspondence Dinner has been apprehended.
CNN reports Dear Leader and his cabinet are safe and the dinner program will resume soon.
Events of the evening at the Washington Hilton hotel.
The dinner program will not resume. Dear Leader will give his speech in the White House briefing room.
April 26, 2026
Dear Leader says this is why we need the ballroom.
In the initial wave of attacks on Iran, to kick off the war, up to fifty Iranian leaders in the regime were terminated. The new Supreme Leader is disfigured, badly burned and immobile. He receives news by post by horseback. The Iranian republican guard is firmly in control of the Strait of Hormuz and, with it, the fate of the country. Likely we have replaced one hardline violent regime with a new, more ruthless regime. The Middle East, and the world, are significantly less secure.
The White House Correspondence Dinner shooter, Cole, because history demands a failed would-be assassin in the year 2026 be a ‘Cole,’ wrote a little over a thousand words attempting to morally justify the act he set out to do, some history he saw himself performing, a hero, a moralist. Of course it was all bullshit. Political assassinations are never morally good because no one can predict the externalities, butterfly effects, landscape shifting monumental world history moving consequences. Violence is our worst communication means as humans. It does not matter what policy or person or perversion you support. Deportations and displacements are down an estimated 30% since ICE murdered two American citizens a few war columns back. The violence, while celebrated and justified by the hard right, harmed their own political project. We were violent with Iran. A country now controlled by the most extreme islamists to ever rule a country and they have a cash cow toll and world economic disrupter in the Strait of Hormuz. A man, a ‘Cole,’ a tutor from California, takes a train to Washington, DC and checks into the Hilton in DuPont Circle to assassinate the President of The United States and members of his cabinet at the lowest point of Dear Leader’s political career, fails and unifies. Violence is abhorrent even when justified (and here it was most certainly not), often igniting the aims of those you wish to eradicate.
April 28, 2026
Build the ballroom! Open the pools!
I thought I would learn something. I thought something would reveal itself to me. Nothing ever did.
At the sound bath tonight, in the Womb Room of a local yoga studio, I lie in the back, pills kicking in, sobbed silently uncontrollably and realized I cannot fight or write my way out of this, or any, war.
I have to go to bed early tonight and I have to wear my cpap machine because tomorrow I have to meet with Carol and shuffle papers in one of the dimly lit aggressively air conditioned hell box big glass buildings downtown. My gambling led me here and I deserve it. It’s even a little good for the soul, I’d argue, to simmer in the goop of it all for a while. Its numbing powers are transcendent. Perhaps that is exactly what I need? What war? What novel? I have hundreds of readers and several secret admirers. And if the North Carolina Tarheels win the national championship 11 months from now I will have seven racks. I wish someone would bet against me.
Derek Maine writes about the war for Farewell Transmission.
- A parking garage being built in the Grays Ferry neighborhood of Philadelphia collapsed. It occurred in a stairwell when a precast section of the roof failed, which had a pancake effect, rendering the multi-level structure unsafe to enter. One member of Ironworkers 401 was pulled from the collapse, but died in hospital shortly after. Two others would be exhumed from the stairwell after demolition made it safe to enter the site. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pushed this project through a rigorous schedule, and harsh resistance from the community. Pre cast is huge concrete sections made off-site, often years in advance of a project, then stored, often outside, in the cold rain and snow, to be deployed on schedule, by a convoy of big-rigs, lifted by crane, and set by highly skilled iron workers. Steel bends. You can burn a new hole, use the end of the wrench and drift a piece (essentially bend) into place so all the bolts line up. Concrete doesn’t. It also takes sometimes months to cure, so this way you can have it built in a third the time. Unless it fails and you have to start over. The city will find blame in this matter, but those who’ve been on these sites know the one to blame is the one who made men who bend steel for a living go and bend concrete. Because it was cheaper. ↩︎
