[Author’s Note: this Blog Post was heavily changed and repurposed to function as a chapter in the TMR Novel. This is the Revised & Refined version. Toggle under the title to read the Original & Unedited form.]
This is a journal entry from 4 years ago, almost to the day.
I just wanted to see how that would feel to type out. Cause I’m Max now, officially. Irreversibly.
I saw my Kent friends today at Ryan’s house. Chris, Rae. [REDACTED], [REDACTED]. Log. [REDACTED]. But I don’t think they saw me. Chris and Rae did, to some extent. Ryan and Log, maybe. But the others who I hadn’t seen in a while didn’t seem like they saw me at all. I asked them about their lives, their jobs. They didn’t ask me back. Later Chris said it’s because they just assume I’m doing good. I can’t tell. Do they not care? Do they feel intimidated? Do they think it’s cringe?
It doesn’t matter.
At Shari’s, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] thought I was the crazy one for asking if [REDACTED] had friends. No one has friends, they said. I’m the one living in fantasy land LA. They just go into their jobs, day in and day out. Jobs that they hate. They don’t care about money so they work their entire life away for it. They don’t have friends. They don’t have hobbies. They, they, they. Who cares? These are not my people anymore. Move on.
How much bigger would my life become if I lost touch with [REDACTED]? With [REDACTED], even? People who have been here my whole life but are not pushing me. Not at all. They’re just people to kill time with. But I am on the brink of bigger and bigger things. And I waste my time worrying if these people like me. I get sad when I no longer fit in with them. I care when they don’t ask about what I’m doing.
But they know. They know what I’m doing, and what I’m capable of. It’s going to be me. I’m going to do it. For Jevandre, for them. To spite them. To say fuck you, you cowards. You spineless, pathetic, sorry wastes of life. You sell your one shot at this game for $16.25 an hour and get told it’s good money.
What are you thinking about, every minute, if not in pursuit of something more? Jevandre once told me that I have a sense of optimism about the future that he didn’t have. And look at him, he’s dead. I see my Kent friends dying before me, too. They just don’t know it. Or maybe they do. Daily, they sap their own life away until they die. I think Jevandre saw this and decided that he’d die a dark quiet death on his own terms rather than waste away and die accidentally.
When Nonna died, I thought to myself, this is just what happens. Old people die. When Jevandre died, I thought to myself, this isn’t what happens. This is wrong.
But no. That is what happened. People fucking died. Nonna died. Jevandre died. And it will keep happening. My Kent friends will keep on dying. And they already are, before my very eyes. My childhood died. My idea that everyone’s life has an ultimate purpose. Dead with Jevandre. The idea that every action leads to something else. Dead.
My old friends are dead. Kent killed them. The world killed them. And I fucking knew it. I knew it since I was a teenager. A kid. A toddler. This life will kill you if you let it. But I also fucking knew that there was something else out there. A great beyond, where youth stretches eternally and your life is neatly divided into chapters and arcs. And I’m there, right now.
So yes, when I ask if [REDACTED] has friends, and they look at me like I’m crazy, I’m going to reconsider who these people are. And I’m going to reconsider how grateful I tend not to be for my fantasy life in LA. I’ve already fucking made it. Anything else is the cherry on top.
I spend my days worrying about if I’m as successful as my LA friends. My dead friends back home don’t have any friends at all. It is the pursuit of this life, this dream I have, that keeps me away from this bottomless fucking pit of suburbia and middle America and waking death and standstill contentment. From ticking clocks and wasted youth and endless timecards.
Maybe Jevandre was right. Maybe he had a point in what he did. “Why do something every day if I’m fucking miserable doing it?” he said, that last phone call. I thought he was talking about his job. Now I know he was talking about living. He’s a man who sought truth, and the truth beneath the truth. And I think what he found is that the truth is plain and simple and staring in our faces all along: this is all it is. This is life. The mundane, dull, in and out, repetition, endless haze. He had his degree. His prospects. His intelligence. And a fucked up brain. What was out there for him? Could a man as intelligent as him stomach the rotten taste of growing older and raising children in this fucked up world, where you get caught in the machine and turn gears for the chance at a few hours a week of redemption?
I don’t blame him for what he did. I forgive him for it. I understand it. He saw the truth dead in the face. Maybe when he did DMT. Maybe when he did acid in a dark room. Maybe when he didn’t eat for 5 days. He saw something. He knew something, more than I did, always. But he died and I think I see it now. His final revelation. This is fucking it. This. Is. Fucking. It.
The eternal pessimist sees the almost ludicrously small scope of life and decides what’s the point of continuing? The eternal optimist sees it and decides to squeeze out every last drop.
Jevandre, you fucked up. Dude, C’mon. You gave up that easily? I know your face you’d be making right now. It was right around the corner for you, I think. You could have figured it out. I know you would’ve. You might’ve taken a few more years. Or thought of it one more way. I’m sure you see it now. But you were tired. I understand. And I hope you’re not haunting me so that you can get some rest. Your Mind’s Guy likes to be asleep in his cave.
At your funeral our friends told me how much you loved me. [REDACTED] said you talked about me all the time and that he’s sad this is the first time we’re meeting. [REDACTED] said that you showed her my music. [REDACTED] said that you told her about our pact. Your dad said he knew we were brothers. And we fucking were. We had a bond, man, a bond that transcended that tiny little bubble of existence in third grade, where we were absolutely certain about the infinite possibilities of life and the destinies that awaited us. That’s who you are to me, man, and will always be. I don’t know what you became, but that’s not you. Not to me. I’ll spend the entire rest of my life tossing you around in my head trying to make sense of you. I’ll find the words to best describe the way you laughed.
You told me that in third grade you think you liked me. I like to think you weren’t in your right mind when you said that. Or maybe you were fucking with me, as one last thing to get over on me before you went. You loved fucking with people. You didn’t fuck with me that much. Remember when you called me and said you were sorry for calling me Choji? It’s okay, man. It hurt me real good back then, I think you could tell. You were always kind of mean. But that’s fine. I’m sure you were hurting, too, all the way up to the end.
But now, I take your flame, and carry it on. I will do it. I told you. I will fucking do it.
I am going to be the first famous, ridiculously rich person from Kent, WA. I don’t care if it’s delusional anymore. It’s going to happen. And I’m going to pursue it. I’m going to have 2 places, a mansion in LA and an apartment in Manhattan. My mansion will be in the hills with a view of the skyline. It’ll have a pool and a hot tub. It’ll have speakers throughout the house. It’ll have a grand piano. It’ll have white marble floors and a kitchen island. It’ll have a library. It’ll have giant bay windows. It’ll have a backyard and a trampoline. It’ll have a tatami room for guests. My apartment in Manhattan will be minimalist and sparse. It will have art and sculptures and fine furniture. It’ll have down comforters and a TV in the wall. And with my first check I will pay off my student loans. Then my parents’ house. Then I’ll buy my mom a Red Jeep. And I’ll produce my dad’s movie. And I’ll buy my sister a trip to anywhere in the world she’d want to go. And I’ll buy a house for myself but not live in it, just rent it out. And I’ll buy a car. I’ll buy a Black 911. I’ll upgrade my studio. I’ll have synthesizers and furry red carpet and big windows and vintage microphones and golden guitars. My friends will be the most famous and interesting people in the world and will have great parties. I’ll even throw some at my house. I will travel the world and see all there is to see. Because I am from Kent and my friends are dead and my best friend killed himself and I promised him I would do all of this. And I fucking will. And I will do it because it is me and it is my destiny. I am the only one living this life. I will make it possible. And by the next time anyone sees me I will be famous and my song will have a million streams. And I will be the person I have always known I was but no one has seen yet of me. And I won’t need to talk about myself on Ryan’s porch because my eminence will be tangible. And I will know who the fuck I am.
I am shook up by your death, Jevandre, and perhaps you did me a favor. When the silt settles I will not be Marcello. Marcello is dead. I am now Max Bennett Kelly. Perhaps I always was. But today, I have confirmed it. I am Max Bennett Kelly. And I will be so far from Kent, WA that I forget I was ever from here in the first place. My life starts now. Marcello died. Max Bennett Kelly is born.
I wrote this right after Jevandre’s funeral. I was so angry. I thought I was using this rage as fire back then, as fuel. When I read it back, all I can see is how scared I was.
In the 7/13/21 journal entry, I make it seem like the switch from Marcello to Max Bennett Kelly was an instant transformation. But really, it was a series of small decisions that snowballed until it was too late to go back. Up until this entry, I had publicly used “Max Bennett Kelly” only professionally1. When I went solo, after The Old Band broke up, I didn’t want to go by “Marcello Mottola.” I told myself it was for logistical reasons. Marcello Mottola is Dad’s name, I don’t want our careers to get confused. Marcello Mottola is too long, too wordy, too hard to spell, too hard to pronounce. It’s Just SEO. Marcello Mottola can’t sell. There are other Marcello Mottolas in the world; it’s not unique enough. Marcello Mottola is not catchy enough. Marcello Mottola is not memorable enough.
Marcello Mottola is not enough.
Max Bennett Kelly was the name of a character I came up with at 14, in the earliest iteration of my auto-fictional journaling nonsense. He was my Idealized Self, representing everything my Real Self wanted to be. What better name to go by professionally? Plus, no one has ever been named Max Bennett Kelly. The Instagram handle was up for grabs. It’s Just SEO.
Once I adopted this moniker, I would introduce myself by saying, Hi I’m Marcello But I Go By Max Bennett Kelly. This was wordy and long, and when you’re introducing yourself in LA, you have precious few seconds to make an impression.
“‘Marcello’? Is that Italian? How do you spell that?” They’d follow up, “Why do you go by ‘Max’? ‘Marcello’ is such a cool name.”
After enough of this, I started saying, On Second Thought Just Call Me Max.
Pre-“Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted,” everyone in my life knew me as Marcello-But-Goes-By-Max. But post-“Happy, Healthy,” everyone in my life became dwarfed by the millions of people online who just knew me as “Max.”
Eventually, when the barista would ask my name at the coffeeshop, I’d just say “Max.” It’s shorter, quicker, easier to spell. I started convincing myself that Max was a reasonable nickname for Marcello. But then my logins became maxbennettkelly. My thoughts became Max Bennett Kelly. I started dating as Max Bennett Kelly.
When I met Codename: Didi, I introduced myself to her as Max. It’s not like I Lied about my Real Self or anything, she knew I was Marcello right away. In the early stages of our relationship, she’d still call me Max. I liked this. It made sense for the persona. Of Course Max Bennett Kelly Had A Famous Girlfriend. We were traveling the world, going to events, getting papped. Max Bennett Kelly was famous, just like I manifested.
I couldn’t pretend this was the Truth forever, though. At best, I was famous by proxy. More accurately, I was Some Fucking Guy with a semi-viral TikTok song. At worst, I was coattailing my own girlfriend. But at least I wasn’t Marcello.
Codename: Didi saw Marcello, though, and she loved him even though I couldn’t. She began calling me “Chell,” which was Mom & Dad’s nickname for me. I didn’t like this. Chell was a small-town kid who got lucky with a viral song. Chell was a Normal guy dating miraculously out of his league. Chell was either broke at home or traveling the world on his girlfriend’s dime. I hated Chell.
I liked the Story™ more when it was Max Bennett Kelly. Max Bennett Kelly was an inevitable success. Max Bennett Kelly was famous with his girlfriend, not because of her. Max Bennett Kelly was a Jetsetter because that’s how inevitable people live.
Chell was a Nerd. Max Bennett Kelly was Cool.
I’m not stupid. I saw the Infinite Loop. I recognized my age-old narrative. I tried desperately to reframe it the only way I knew would work: Delusion & Denial.
I pretended like the whole relationship was Normal. Rather than letting myself be impressed or amazed or dazzled by it, I just went… Eh. This Is Normal. It was the only way I knew how to make sense of the access my relationship with Codename: Didi gave me. I was seeing behind the curtain of the world in a way the vast majority of people never see, only it wasn’t by my own doing, so I couldn’t let myself be impressed by it.
I loved Codename: Didi, not for her status, not as a femme fatale in my murder mystery, but as a Real person whose real name I still can’t type out. I refused to let her question whether I was in love with her for any reason other than love. I would barely post us online. I didn’t want her or anyone else to think I was showing her off for engagement. I would barely speak with any of the industry people she knew, in case they thought I wanted something from them, from which they might have inferred that I wanted something from her.
All Marcello wanted was to love her. Marcello wanted to love her as if they were cavemen. Marcello wanted to give her a shiny rock and grunt in a languageless noise that said, I Love You. Marcello wanted to love her in a world where love was the only thing there was. Marcello wanted to love her in a world where context didn’t matter, where our jobs and reputations didn’t define us. Marcello wanted to love her in a way that was pure, in a way that didn’t die in the Industrial Revolution when the first guy got the first job and had to slave away all day to provide for a home he barely got to come home to. But Marcello didn’t have a job. Marcello didn’t even have a shiny rock. All Marcello had to give her was Me. But to Max Bennett Kelly, Me has never been enough.
Maybe all I had to do was be present and grateful and honest. I don’t know if that would’ve saved us. But I do know I wasn’t giving her that. I was resentful of how maintaining our Jetsetting life was taking time and energy away from Doing Music. I was insecure that she was providing this incredible lifestyle for me. When she’d come home from a long day on set, instead of letting myself be proud of her for doing the Coolest Thing Ever, I’d just say, How Was Work?
I pretended that this was all Normal, even though Normal was what I was running away from all along.
When I read back my journal entry from 7/13/21, what I see is a boy so scared of being Normal that he co-opted his best friend’s death into some tragic origin Story™ for his personal myth. I see a boy using that personal myth to treat his old friends as Antagonists for daring to live a Normal life. I see a boy so ashamed of who he is that he convinced himself his only salvation would come from conquering the world.
When I look at my life now, I see a man who was given everything the boy ever asked for, and it still couldn’t make him love himself.
I wonder if Codename: Didi thought I didn’t love her. I wonder if she felt unseen, underappreciated. I wonder if what she needed was a Normal guy to keep it all together. I’ll never know. We’re No Contact™. All I have now is True Modern Romance.
If True Modern Romance doesn’t take off, AWAL may not pick up the option for Codename: EP3, and I won’t get my advance, and I’ll run out of money and have to go back home and face all those people whom I looked down on. I look at them now with envy. All those things I scorned them for — Normalcy, stability, contentment — all seem so far out of my reach now. Maybe they always were. Maybe I had this contempt for my friends because, despite all my Talents & Ambitions, they were capable of something deeper that I was not. Chris married Rae. Sis married Log. I thought I was going to marry Codename: Didi.
The last time I went to London, I told her parents I was planning to ask her to marry me. I didn’t ask for their blessing, but they gave it to me anyway.
“Oh Max, we’d love to have you in our family.”
Max.
We were eating breakfast tacos on the hammock in our backyard when I told Codename: Didi that I was finally ready to propose. She was always so sure about the dream of us, even when I wasn’t. But having a dream is always better than a Dream Come True. Once a Dream Comes True, you don’t get to have a dream anymore. She went off to Wales to film and said she’d think about it.
By the time she got back, I had moved out of the yellow house with the red door and into my lonely high-rise downtown. With no one left to fight for Marcello, I could finally be Max Bennett Kelly.
So did Max Bennett Kelly kill the relationship? Did Max Bennett Kelly kill Marcello? Where did this begin? Codename: Max Noir will get to the bottom of it. The mystery deepens. Oh, Jesus. Anyways, True Modern Romance is coming soon, and it’s all I have left of my relationship with Codename: Didi. I have no choice but to hope that the trade-off was worth it, somehow, whether or not the EP is successful (it better goddamn blow up).
No sign off
—mbk
FOOTNOTES:
1. Professionally as in, When Doing Music-Related Things. I wasn’t making any money yet. ↩
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