The Marcello Rule™

PROLOGUE:

It’s cold on the Upper East Side, but I could wear a T-shirt if I wanted to (I don’t). The leaves are yellow and the breeze over the East River tells me it hasn’t been summer for a long time. It took 9 straight days of drinking to bludgeon out the burnout that built up in my soul like lactic acid. A few of these nights ago, Caleb and I held a socratic seminar on 1st Ave and 89th, brainrot beatniks drinking Beatboxes.

When we reconvene, it’s been 2.5 hours but there’s 25 stories to tell. We look older; worse for wear, but smiling. Soldiers, battle-worn, raccoon-eyed, missing hair and lips and limbs. We’ve done our part in the eternal war against entropy, and we’re on the winning side. Must go— “hungry,” and I say no more. Roma’s Pizza is barely open to scrape me together a final chicken-bacon-ranch. Biddy’s welcomes us with open arms; they love me there while the rest of the Upper East Side rejects me. The neighborhood looks at me like they wish they could teleport me to Bushwick with their stares. I’d be fine with that, even past Myrtle-Wyckoff. I’ve reached the weekly maximum on the MTA. I long for a kake udon.

***A childish wine***
I don’t want to go back home to LA.

I’ve figured for a while now that, at some point, I’d have to Grow Up™. I reasoned I didn’t have a choice as to whether or not it happened, but I could at least have some say as to when it did. Therefore, it was in my best interest to delay that as much as possible.

When I was 17, I took AP Calculus BC with Mr. Harp. In his syllabus he instituted a rule where if your grade for the final exam was higher than your current cumulative grade, then your grade for the final would usurp your grade for the class. I saw an Opportunity— what if I did Zero Homework, studied for Zero Tests, and got an A on the final? Work Smarter Not Harder, right? I placed my wager, and lived my year stress-free, blissfully refraining from turning in my weekly homework and making pretty shapes on the Scantron tests. When the time for the final came, the reality of the situation hit me. If I didn’t receive at least a 93% on the final, I wouldn’t get the AP credit, and I’d have to retake the class¹. But I knew I could make magic happen— because Things Work Out For Me™. And lo and behold, I receive a 97% and my grade shoots from an F to an A. Mr. Harp honored his word, but from that day forward there was an addendum to the syllabus called the Marcello Rule™: Your final exam score can’t raise your cumulative grade more than a single letter grade. Or, in other words:

***The Marcello Rule™***
There needs to be an upper limit to how much Something you can make out of Nothing.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been mulling over this story about Mr. Harp’s class. It’s the perfect metaphor for how I’ve been operating since… well, since as long as I can remember. I’m always looking for an angle, always trying to squeeze as much Utility as possible out of any exchange with as little effort put into the squeeze itself. The irony is, that at least in the Calculus BC case, by attempting to save myself the stress of daily homework I ultimately created myself more total stress in cramming for the final. I Could Have Just Done The Homework. But where’s the fun in that?

Over 10 years later, here I am in New York, once again cramming for the final. I flew out here to present EP3 to AWAL in the hopes of wooing them and securing my next advance. And I really need the A. Because I haven’t been doing the homework. Let’s spell out the analogy. I should have just gotten a job rather than relying on the advance.

***Hi, I’m Marcello, and I’m an addict***
I’ve been gambling on myself for a decade and the addiction threatens to destroy everything I know and love.

Step 4; made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. In 2021 I was late to an appointment to see Dr. David, my old therapist. In a rush, I parked in the yellow 15-minute zone. When I got up, I told him Sorry I’m Running Late, and he said Why? It’s Your Time You’re Paying For.

I told him, In That Case I Shouldn’t Have Parked In The Yellow Because I Could Have Been An Extra 2 Minutes Later And Wouldn’t Have To Worry About Getting A Ticket.

Dr. David said, Maybe You Should Have, and I realized I never would have done that, because I like parking in the yellow.

I told him, I Just Like The Feeling Of Going Out There And Seeing No Ticket.

Dr. David said, Why Play These Games?

I answer, If I Win I Get To Feel Like I Stuck It To The Man I Guess. But If I Lose I Pay $77. No One Is Watching Me Win And I Only Hurt Myself When I Lose.

***Dr. David said,***
That’ll Be $75.

I’m writing this from JFK Airport Terminal 5 Gate 507. It’s 10:53PM and I’m going to be here until 4:17AM because I missed by 9:20PM flight by 3 minutes. That’s a funny amount of time, because it’s coincidentally the exact same amount of time that I spent outside smoking a cigarette while thinking, “that TSA line doesn’t look too long.”

When you live your entire life parked in the yellow, you live with the constant anxiety that the other shoe could drop at any moment. Well, today I missed my flight, and lately, it’s been feeling like the shoe has, in fact, Dropped. It’s about time, I suppose. I’ve been told my entire life that I’m lucky, that things have a way of working out for me, but it’s always said with a bit of disdain. That’s because while people love winners, they hate cheaters. I’m not “winning” anything. I’m cheating the system.

***And worst of all?***
I’m being cheap.

My Dad is always obsessed with finding what he calls Deals™. This could be a $500 Dodge Neon on Facebook Marketplace or winning a bid on a set of Olympic Ribbons on Goodwill Online. I don’t know if he actually wants to buy these things until he sees them listed for a price that he determines to be a Deal™. In truth, the Neon was a steal. Let’s do Economics and say it created $2000 of Utility while my Dad spent only $500. That’s a $1500 surplus, right? Yeah, that’s the way I always thought about it, too. But I’ve come to realize it’s an illusion. Since my Dad didn’t need a car in the first place, the reality is: He’s Just Out $500.

But to my Dad, and by extension me who we’ll return to, that $500 is a small price to pay to feel like you got a Deal™. A Deal™ is worth everything. It doesn’t matter that when my Dad tried this method again on the Mazda Tribute, he got a lemon. He could still taste the Deal™ of the Neon. When I left Dr. David’s office to find that I hadn’t gotten a parking ticket, every other time I had gotten one paled in comparison to the feeling of that sweet, sweet win. When Mr. Harp implemented the Marcello Rule™, I rode that high long enough to forget all about the week of sleepless nights I had already paid for.

***And now, for my final trick***
I will take out a personal loan for the exact amount of my advance and then pay myself back when I get it.

Yeah, that was stupid. Monumentally stupid. I mean, as far as I can see, the meeting went great and I will re-sign. Amazing. Cool! But that’s not the point. The point is, this time, finally, the stress will outweigh the win. I’m finally disgusted by my actions. I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve gone past the point of no return, the shoe has dropped, I want to learn my lesson. Step 6; were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. I Want To Grow Up.

I don’t want to be a “finesser” anymore. It’s bad Economics. But that makes sense, I also finessed my degree. Ugh. Dr. David was right. The stress of parking in the yellow outweighs the Value of getting away with it because there is no Value in getting away with it. Why didn’t I see it until now? Step 5; admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. The stress of cramming for the Calculus final outweighs the Value in not doing homework every day because the risk of failing the class outweighs the Value in being lazy. Even here, in the airport, did I really want that 3 minutes of a cigarette? Or did I only want to see if I could get away with it just for the sake of getting away with something?

***The shoe drops***
I miss my flight.

When I say I was afraid to Grow Up™, I guess what I really meant was that I was afraid of the other shoe, the way it looms, the way it’s always threatened to drop and squash everything around me. As long as I’ve considered myself lucky, I’ve also known that one day the luck would run out. You can’t beat the house forever. And that would be the moment I would Grow Up™ and face the consequences of my actions. Yeah I know; the whole thing is a landmine of deep-woven narratives and internal biases, because what do I mean “consequences?” I guess, like I was saying before, I feel like I’ve been cheating my entire life. Cheating and gambling. And fucking². Step 10; continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Ever since I moved to LA I’ve been trying to keep the plates spinning for long enough that some sort of scaffolding magically forms around me that would prevent the plates from ever toppling. What else was I supposed to do? What else had life ever taught me? But one day, you wake up and you’re looking 29 in the eye, and you realize you’re exhausted, and you wish you could put the plates down, but you can’t because you caught yourself in this infernal fucking trap of your own design and now you are cursed with never getting any rest and also never really winning.

Well, I want to win, for real. I want to earn something. I don’t want to finesse, anymore. Step 3; made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. I will let the shoe drop. As If I Ever Had Any Choice… that’s the real punchline in this magical thinking, isn’t it? The horrible, delusional hubris that comes with it? As If I Could Ever Make Anything Happen At All. It’s a comforting thought, thinking that there’s magic out there. That somehow I, with enough finessing, can create something out of nothing. That I, and only I, in my infinite power and wisdom can Beat thermodynamics at its own game. Step 2; came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It’s easier to be delusional than to let the other shoe drop and accept that we live in a cold, mechanical, indifferent universe where Things Just Happen. The baby I was born as wails his eyes out at the injustice of being brought into that world. He grew into the child that cried himself to bed because Nick Harris had a birthday before him, and he cried because he would never be older than Nick and he cried that it was existentially unfair that even meaningless things cannot be changed. The child became a teenager and the despair turned into a fury and a fire and a rage that one day he would have to grow up and get a job and then he’d die and no, no, no, I won’t do it, I won’t do it, I can’t do it, it’s all machines, it’s all rigged, let me cheat, let me be a baby again, I am incapable, I am screaming, I am scratching, I am clawing, and Nothing Changes.

A wall of black stone stretches in front of you, infinitely to the left, to the right, to the sky. On the ground there is only sand, and behind you is a dense white fog. You are naked and alone. Millimeter by millimeter the black stone wall crawls away from you. You spend your entire life gnashing and clawing and gnawing at the surface of the black stone, squinting your eyes and convincing yourself that you’ve made a scratch. Because if you make a scratch, then maybe you can turn that into a foothold or dig deeper and hook your finger into it, and then you can get a grip on the wall, and pull it back towards you, and keep it from crawling away. You toil away for years, yet the surface remains smooth as glass. And you realize that even if you could hold on, the wall is infinitely wide and infinitely tall and infinitely deep, and you, the naked monkey man in the sand have convinced yourself that you possess even a portion of a fraction of an atom of a quark of the power in the universe to keep it from moving. In all of the trillions of the other pocket dimensions and galaxies of minds and souls that exist in every creature who lived is another naked monkey man who gnashes and bangs his fist at his own infinitely massive black stone wall and every one of these naked monkey men will continue to scream and cry and gnash and bang until each black stone wall reaches its final destination, at which point your wall will still be perfectly unmarred and without even your fingerprints as proof. Your black stone wall is one eyelash of eternity. This is time. This is fate. This is God’s will. And it is not a challenge, or a threat, it is just the alpha and the omega. Every day, as we live, this is what we’re up against, and this is what I fight against every time I park in the yellow and think that I am making any difference in anything at all. Step 1; we admitted we were powerless— that our lives had become unmanageable.

***The wall inches away and reveals 4:17AM***
I remain in the sand as I board my flight back to LA.

EPILOGUE:

The Mustang pulls up to Elie’s. “52 bumboclat pussywagon chicken nugget,” Bat says. Our party favors— the Josh (Merlot or Red Blend)— is paper bagged. I’m nervous here, South Pasadena has a stillness to it, I have to hear me think. I wasn’t going to drink, but I can’t speak. I let the Josh talk. When it’s time to say what we’re thankful for, I pray I’m passed over. Alas— I am intentionally uninvisible.

I drive the Mustang to a coffeeshop and Matt is working, he gives me a lemon scone. I buy an alkaline Smartwater because Grace made an offhand comment about alkaline water last night and I realize I’d never tried it. I wonder if alkaline water does anything. “Does anything,” I start to get philosophical but I’m too hungover, thank God. I go home and I make the best fucking song I’ve made all year, and then I do the same thing the next day. Once again, making something out of nothing.

Thanks for reading
-mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. I guess I could have been happy with any grade above a C, but I was shooting for perfection.
2. This is True Modern Romance, after all. But that’s a different topic entirely.