Happy Birthday, DAVID!

on being of consequence

When I was 4 or 5, I decided to learn how to read for two reasons: because I was sick of not understanding the fine print on TV infomercials (“TV REPAIR. VCR REPAIR. HVAC REPAIR…”), and because I wanted to keep a diary.

Being new to the world, I assumed that whenever the TV screen hieroglyphed that every literate in the room—those smug bastards—was getting an important secret message to which I wasn’t privy. This is probably because my dad watched the local weather forecast every morning, black text on a cobalt field that scrolled through all the predicted temps in the tri-county area. As a landscaper and occasional lumberjack, he needed to make sure he wasn’t going to get struck by lightning in the cherry-picker or whatever, but from my perspective, he may as well have been deciphering runic tablets for religious arcana or þingą minutes.

I don’t know where the diary idea came from. My first favorite books were Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and whichever The Baby-sitter’s Club serial featured the ravishing Claudia Kishi, who I thought was beautiful and so so cool (She’s artistic! She loves junk food! She has a phone in her bedroom!). As far as I remember, journaling didn’t feature in either of those. I probably got it from TV.

Whatever its origin, the diary’s appeal was undeniable. If words were important, they would show up in one of the two important places—the TV and books—and important people, like grownups, would pay attention to them. The logic seemed to hold up in the inverse, in that if one wrote words that appeared on the TV or in a book, those words were important by default. To commit pen to paper in one’s own little volume, even if no one else ever read it, rendered the ink consequential, and the inker, of consequence. I remember dragging our KJV Bible and my step-mom’s dictionary onto a wicker couch with a splintered arm, intent on penetrating the former even though my reference text was just as difficult to parse (look up exodus and you are forced to then look up canonical, and then relating, and then—).

It seemed ludicrous and magical and, to my little Calvinist heart, even slightly heretical that I could write words in a book just as God once had (massive white fist gripping delicate feather pen, hunkered over a schoolchild’s desk surrounded by friendly cumulus clouds). Some kids get attention by being funny and some by starting fights, some by excelling and some by failing. I certainly experimented, but my main approach to consequence has always been trying to get up there on the bookshelf alongside Him—or at least on a screen of some kind, which commands as much consideration, if not prestige. Plus, there’s sometimes a soundtrack.

For me, writer’s block is an alien concept. Sure, I’m often confronted with executional challenges (my notes are full of problem-solving for plot holes and character studies in my own version of shorthand), but never since I learned to read, and therefore to write, have I ever felt at a loss for words. Even from inside the poisoned well of dysphoric depression, from which I’ve only recently emerged, when most of what came out was muddled, self-obsessed, and stupid, it has always been easy to write a lot, if not well.

As someone who does almost everything compulsively—working, eating, fucking, moving—I’m accustomed to self-pathologization, but lately I’ve begun to identify the compulsion to write and the will to survive as a single mechanism, one that’s at times maladaptive but which derives, nevertheless, from an essential vitality. What is wrong with a child who wants to be of consequence, to be seen and heard and regarded? Nothing, I think. Writing is just one of the ways we attain that goal. No one is lost who is still writing.

My first book, a tender thing that’s distinguished more by its heart (and its frankly off-the-charts egg energy) than by its craft, which I think as its author I’m allowed to say, was the straw that broke the back of the last abusive relationship I will ever be in. Were I to write my own version of Carmen Maria Machado’s bright and bloodied In The Dream House, the earthquake room would be the linchpin around which that book turned. A week before ter was released, my partner at the time presented me with an ultimatum whose outcome she thought she could predict: I could either have her, the woman who reinforced my long-held belief that I was nothing, or my book, my little golden dream that no one would want to read but which represented a hundred soft hours stolen from hateful jobs and no future and a someday-wife who accorded me the respect of a dog that won’t stop shitting inside.

To my eternal surprise, I called her bluff. It turns out I wanted to live.

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What a year it’s been.

What began as a cozy little newsletter about people named David has become, to my great pleasure, much more. This outlet for my hypergraphia is now my preferred means for journaling, thinking, and temporarily escaping this unfriendly world. It’s also my biggest distraction from my social life (such as it is), my day job, my side gigs, and my forthcoming second novel, X (watch this space 👀). It even landed me in a print edition of The New Yorker (!), which was honestly exciting—though not as exciting as supporting the magazine’s recently unionized workers.

What’s more, it spawned an advice column/mutual aid project, created in collaboration with my very smart friend BAD GAY that has already raised thousands for organizations like Whose Corner Is It Anyway, St. James Infirmary, No North Brooklyn Pipeline, The Okra Project, and G.L.I.T.S. (as always, if it’s preferable for you to support directly, we encourage you to do so. Better yet, give your money to people in your life who need it. You surely have a friend who does.). DAVID has been my lodestar for 2020, and for that, I can’t thank its readers enough.

It would be dishonest to say that none of this could have happened without you, because I will always be writing, if for no one but myself. But you who have been so generous as to share your time, money, and regard have made me feel like someone of consequence. For that, I am so grateful. Here’s to another year!

David tweets at @k8bushofficial.