Crackpots #23: Brad Phillips 2 (Patreon)

Hey Brace here. My friend Brad wrote another thing for us. I ran into him on the train the other day and he was like when are you gonna edit that thing. I said I don't know how to edit but it looks fine to me. So if there's any editing mistakes that's my bad. And don't get mad that there's not a new episode we had to work on some shit. The episodes will all come in this month...

 I really like Brad's writing, you can buy his book here or here is his substack. I think HE edits stuff so you can hire him to do that. Maybe I should have hired him to do that. Anyways I think he thinks the essay is depressing but it's an experience a lot of people have so here it is. Ok here it is:

I MET SOMEONE

I’m fifty years old today. My father died at fifty. My best friend would also be fifty today, but he died four years ago. He felt like my dad. Until recently, I thought I was the only man my age left alive.

I met someone four weeks ago, in a club for people addicted to alcohol. He’s also fifty. I can’t name the club or I’ll be breaking a rule. This someone I’ll call Charlie. Charlie was sharing at a meeting at three in the afternoon on a Tuesday, in the West Village. Charlie described his mind, and it sounded just like mine. It was an awful place, unrelentingly punishing and negative; a toxic swamp of pessimism and self-hatred. Charlie said he’d done a few simple things, and found relief. He said if anyone else wanted what he had, freedom from their thinking—or occasional freedom—to talk to him after the meeting. I was having a hard day, and each day preceding it since 2021 had been just as hard, if not harder. When Charlie said he’d found ‘relief’, that word signalled to me what the word ‘water’ must signal to someone lost in the desert. I approached him after the meeting because I had to. The way things were going, I’d do something drastic soon to change course. I knew this because I’d done this countless times before; stepped backwards to avoid walking off the edge of the earth. I’m the type to provoke someone to send my family casket shopping, and that seems unkind. 

I met Charlie the following Saturday at a coffee shop near Madison Square Garden. He told me he was about to go to court, to face the consequences of not having paid dozens of parking tickets. He might go to jail. He’d definitely have his wages garnished. Charlie worked night shifts at CVS stocking shelves. He used to have better jobs. Today he made a very low hourly wage. He thought he was overweight, and past his prime. But he said he’d never been happier. I have an expert bullshit detector, and it didn’t go off. Charlie was telling me the truth. I decided then and there that I’d do whatever he suggested. 

Every day since that Saturday, I’ve done as Charlie instructed. I was already waking up at six in the morning, but before Charlie the first hour of my day was spent on my phone. I’d wake up anxious then make myself more anxious by flooding my brain with bullshit from the internet. Since that Saturday I wake up at six and I ignore my phone. In accordance with Charlie’s instructions, I now open a small lined notebook and uncap a pen. Before my brain’s able to start worrying about the day ahead, or regretting the days behind me, I start writing. I write down everyone that I feel resentful toward, and detail the source of my resentment, which Charlie says is always fear. I resent X because I fear they don’t respect me, since they haven’t replied to my email. I resent Y because I fear they don’t like me, because blah, because blah blah blah. Then I write a list of everything I fear. I fear I’m washed up. I fear I’ll get cancer. I fear I’ll run out of money. The list tells me I’m consumed with fear, which I’ve always suspected. It also tells me I’m self-obsessed, unable to be present in the lives of the people I care about because I can’t stop thinking about myself. I then say a prayer, asking a God I don’t understand to remove these fears and resentments, and to show me how to live. Then I meditate for twenty minutes. I don’t feel better when it’s over, but I don’t feel worse. Then I submit to my phone, and immediately regret it. 

I don’t know what Charlie’s doing at this time of the day, but I know he’s dealing with a mind that’s much like mind. My heart breaks for him a little bit. It never breaks for me. I never see that I also shouldn’t have to suffer so much. Someone else in some other meeting will one day tell me this is because I don’t love myself, and they’ll hug me, or look at me kindly. I’ll either believe them and maybe feel like crying, or I’ll think they’re kooks, and write off their insights. My money’s on the latter. 

I have a two and half hour window to call Charlie—from four to six-thirty—and read him everything I wrote in my notebook when I woke up. I usually wait until six, because it takes two hours to work up the nerve to read things I find utterly embarrassing. When I call he says only “Do you want to read?” and I reluctantly say yes, then read what I’ve written. 

“Oh man, you’ve got it real bad Brad, you’re just like me.” Charlie says. He reminds me that I’m carrying a brain prone to delusion and self-sabotage around on top of my body, and that it weighs me down. I say that sounds right. That I feel like I’m being pushed into the molten core of the earth by my thinking, and the pressure’s getting to me. Charlie laughs at some of the shit I’m scared of, at my resentments, and it helps. That guy I was resentful towards for not replying to my email—who I thought didn’t respect me—replied to me between the time I wrote in my notebook and the time I called Charlie. Something came up. It wasn’t about me. It never is. Nobody thinks about me as much as I do. It’s almost, or it is, funny. 

Charlie says I’m doing high-level spiritual work. He says I chose to write things down and I chose to call him. He says everyone around me will benefit from the work I’m doing. Not just the people I love but everyone, including the cashier ringing up my groceries, and my dentist. He reminds me that I’m sober, which means I’ve acted against my instincts second after second for days on end. He says I’m like a dog scooping its own poop, that I’m like water that’s learned not to be wet. “Big stuff Brad,” he’ll say, “you’re doing big stuff, you’re defying nature. Who else does that?” 

Yesterday I realized that Charlie’s the first man to ever speak to me encouragingly. He says “good work Brad” and “you’re doing great” and he tells me I’m smart, and points out things about me that seem totally wrong, really off base, like I’m a good person, or I’m doing my best. I’ll send this to Brace tonight thinking it’s totally fucking corny, really embarrassing, and tomorrow I’ll write it all down in my notebook. I resent every single person who might read this thing I wrote for Brace, because I fear they’ll think I’m a sentimental loser who should’ve let an editor stop him from humiliating himself publicly, yet again.

When I feel alone, today, at fifty, missing my best friend and my dad, I feel alone as someone who lived through an era. My earliest memories are of the Jonestown massacre, and Sanford and Son. I remember Marvin Gaye being killed by his dad, because it was the first time I saw my dad cry. I remember the Iran hostage crisis, long lines for gas and the October Surprise. I can’t talk about these things with the people I know today, because they were all born after those events. I’m surrounded by people for whom the late seventies and early eighties are strictly resources for fashion, maybe trivia they can use to sound informed during podcast appearances. I want my dad and best friend back so I’ve got someone to talk to about the assassination of Anwar Sadat, and Rosie Ruiz cheating to win the Boston Marathon. 

But none of this makes sense, not really. I know as much about Sadat and Ruiz as anyone else, which is to say I know what comes up when you google them. I was a kid back then. And my dad and best friend never talked about these things with me, nor did I with them. Like me, they usually just talked about wanting to feel good, the consequences of feeling good, and the nightmare of not feeling good. That’s why they’re not here, and it’s easy to forget that. 

I’ve never asked Charlie about his childhood. Never asked what news event he remembers from back then, or who his favourite guest star was on The Love Boat. Maybe I’ll ask him tonight, after reading that I resent my best friend and my dad for being dead, because I fear I might be next. 

-BRAD PHILLIPS