I looove lettin someone else handle the small talk on an elevator when a new guy gets on. Prob my biggest passion.
Sorry to bum you out, but those two otters that held hands broke up and don’t even speak anymore. There’s kids too. It’s a whole mess.
When two people have the same birthday that shit is crazy and deserves to be both noted and freaked out about.
To reiterate, when not one but TWO people share a birthday, for my money, doesn’t get any more insane than that.
I just blew a 0.28. His name was Frank.
Waldo asked me to spot him at the gym. Couldn’t do it.
When I search for something obscure, I feel bad for making my computer “work hard.” Then I remember it’s a computer. Then I give it a raise.
Wheat thins
Egg basket
Freud
Therapist inward and I was like you dont have to censor yourself, dawg! I’m chill!
Frozen dinners over how much wattage of microwave
Wish I was gay
Dentist
Scaffolding
Mcdonalds Taco Bell
OxyContin poisoning
Orange hair old guy
Google car pigeons
Lohan doc
That guy Plutonium
Jerk off high school hook ups
Lizard escape dog Harriet Tubman
I hate smoking sections unless we are talking about the movie the mask with Jim Carrey. The smoking section is my favorite part.
Pineapple cum
I can hear you saying each and every word in my head so clearly, inflection and all. It’s comforting to hear your voice. Also this: “I just blew a 0.28. His name was Frank.” So good, Harris. I mean, truly good.
I close the Notes app and stare at the screen, hoping to conjure up more of you. The little green phone icon catches my eye, and it hits me that I never checked your outgoing call log. How did I miss that? It’s like one of those detective shows where the case is closed and the innocent guy is locked up for life without parole, but there’s a tiny clue stuck under the cushion of the couch that the dog digs up and starts chewing on and, all of a sudden, everything finally makes sense and the detective realizes he had it all wrong.
You didn’t check out of sober living until February 17, but looking at your call log, I see you called your dealer on February 10. Your friends mentioned his name when we were in LA after the funeral, and I recognized it immediately—it’s not a common name. I know the rehab had been allowing you to come and go freely to work on Master of None, so barring the possibility of an afternoon coffee date with your dealer, I conclude that you’d been using heroin for an entire week before checking yourself out.
I get out of bed and head to the box containing the rehab journals and worksheets that I couldn’t fully comprehend the week we cleaned out your house. I thumb through the pages and discover that you relapsed the day you got out of rehab each time you got out of rehab. But this time, it appears you’d relapsed a full seven days before you got out.
No one could have saved you. Not a girl. Not a sponsor. Not a mother or a father. Not a sister.
No one.
11 Before
February 2014
Harris finally went to rehab the day before Iris turned one month old, nearly a year to the day before he died. It was also my thirty-third birthday, but I wasn’t feeling particularly festive. My baby had permanent hearing loss, my brother was in rehab, my nipples were cracked, and my body was starved for sleep. Still, Mike gave me a card. He’s great at cards. This one had two little porcupines on the cover, giving each other Eskimo kisses. Inside were a few lottery tickets and a note that said:
My love: Well everything seems to be going perfectly to plan—PSYCHE! While the past few weeks have been—at times—chaotic, sad, stupefying, depressing, unrelenting, and unfortunate—in the big scheme of things they have been wonderful: we started our family in earnest and got one beautiful child whose future is much brighter than the din of our recent moods would suggest. It might be right to say that this is a real “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” moment in our lives. And while it is hard, there is no one else I can imagine who I’d rather have these “worst of times” with; or best of times. In light of our recent hardships, I’ve decided to put my faith in lotto games to turn our luck around. Knowing how the past weeks have gone, there is a small chance I chose the scratcher game where you end up having to pay the lottery commission. Take caution. Love You, Husband
I sat with him on the edge of the bed as I read his beautiful words then cried into his shoulder.
Later that afternoon, Mike, my mom, and I toured the Center for Hearing and Speech, the place where, a year later, I’d get a call while changing the baby’s diaper that would cause me to fall to the ground and pound the floor. I don’t know it at the time, but this is the place where my life would forever change.
The center was great. It had a dedicated preschool for kids who were deaf and hard of hearing, audiologists and speech therapists, and you didn’t even have to pay for parking, which was really the biggest selling point for us. It was my first glimmer of hope since the baby was born. This is where we need to be, I thought. We scheduled Iris for her first speech therapy session at five weeks old. I wasn’t sure what an infant could really do in speech therapy, but they said it was critical, so we complied.
Harris wasn’t allowed to use his cell phone at rehab—no texting, social media, or private phone calls—but he could call us from their landline and email freely. So, the next day I
