[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.]
At the airport, like I always am.
Not really. I’m writing this at Mom & Dad’s kitchen table in Kent. Ever since I decided to turn the blog into a book, I’ve been trying to think of a good way to conclude it. My thoughts on True Modern Romance have run out, and I’m ready to move on to Something Else. But a story isn’t a Story™ unless you come back home, different than before. So I thought, as a fun Compare & Contrast moment, maybe I could quote one of my blog posts from a year ago, the way I quote my journal entries.
— Wouldn’t that be cute? —
A satisfying way to button it all up.
No. Too tidy, too neat. And it’s not even solid kismet. This Christmas, I’m not going back to the airport until the 30th, not the 27th. So to make this conclusion work, I’ll have to bend some logic— okay, well, I always give it ±3 days for the synchronicity to Count™, right? No. This ending doesn’t work. The situations are too different. I think a year ago, I would have forced a pattern here regardless. Turned it into a Story™. I can still see the Story™, but it no longer rings true.
So what does that say? Have I broken out of the Infinite Loop? Am I officially Not Going Insane? It seems too convenient. That was all it took? A teensy public self-takedown and now I’m cured? No. The Book’s Not Over Yet.
I’ve mentioned throughout the blog that the name “Max Bennett Kelly” came from the original iteration of my journal, which I started when I was 11. I thought, Maybe that’s how I can end the book. Maybe let’s resolve the Marcello/Max Bennett Kelly thing. I’ve been reading this year’s blog posts back, poring over the typesetting and jerking off over my beautifully interwoven Callbacks & Motifs. That sounds like a good ending. That sounds like what True Modern Romance has been about all along.
Back in LA, I prepared myself to fly back to Kent for Christmas, where I’d get to my childhood home and dig into the ancient hard drive that held The Old Journal. I knew what I’d find there. I was looking for a specific line I could quote for my ending:
“It was then that my Real Self and my Idealized Self converged.”
I imagined what I’d write.
In the days before the flight, I stayed inside and worked on converting the blog into a book. I didn’t do too much living in case something important happened that would force me to turn some life into the blog. I was banking on this ending.
When I got back to Kent, Dad told me he had found the ancient hard drive but warned me that it was broken. Undeterred, I set out to fix it. I meticulously broke off the drive from its solder joints. Then, I ordered a SATA-to-USB cable and waited for it to arrive. While I waited, I holed up in my childhood bedroom. I didn’t see any friends, procrastinated the last of my Christmas shopping. I continued to format the book, add clarity here, emphasis there, context everywhere. Once I finish the book, I thought, I can worry about all that life stuff.
When the cable finally arrived, I sat down in Dad’s office and booted up the hard drive. I sifted through terabytes of disorganized digital chaos. Mom’s work documents, Sis’s homework, Dad’s projects. I found the folder I was looking for: “Chell’s Stuff.” I quickly scanned over mountains of files from my childhood, searching for the inner folder called “Story Of My Lifeeee.” It was hidden in a clever maze my younger self had designed to keep out wandering eyes. If you clicked on the wrong folder, you’d be sent back to the beginning of “Chell’s Stuff.” Without knowing the proper way through, you’d loop ad infinitum around the maze.
— But if you knew the title, you could just search for it —
I don’t think my younger self expected that I’d be the one breaking in.
The Old Journal was last modified 8/11/2011, 14 years and 138 days ago, when I was 14 years old. It was organized into 10 sections: a Prologue, Parts 1-8, and an Epilogue.
Each section was divided into Chapters. The Prologue (Chapters 1-9) was a retrospective, covering my birth through to the present-tense narrative in Parts 1-8. Parts 1-8 were written in real-time, starting from the eighth grade. Events in my adolescent life were diarized into Chapters, and key milestones would motivate the beginning of a new Part. Part 8 ended in Chapter 64. The Epilogue contained a single, unnumbered Chapter.
The writing in The Old Journal was littered with the seeds of the voice I’d later use to write what you are reading now. Capitalized Letters and Trademarks™ to denote my Concepts & Coinages. My crushes’ names substituted with Codenames. The most important moments of my young life, retrofit and retold and reorganized into a Story™.
The bulk of the Prologue was spent lamenting being an outcast in the social hierarchy of early grade school. I portrayed myself as a Nerd who longed to be one of Cool kids who hung out at the monkey bars at recess. In-narrative, they were called the Monkey Bar Kids, or MBKs for short. I wanted to be an MBK so badly that I backronymed an alter-ego out of those letters. Max Bennett Kelly was the Idealized version of my Real Self. Everything impossible that I longed to be. Charming, popular, confident, decisive. He was an imaginary friend that only I could see. Early in the Story™, when a Monkey Bar Kid would bully me, Max would whisper in my ear the perfect comeback to get the lunchroom laughing. As I grew up, and The Old Journal progressed, I relied more and more on Max Bennett Kelly, and less on myself, culminating in Part Four, Chapter 31, titled “A Fairytale Ending.”
In this Chapter, I recounted asking Codename: Jenny Jones to be my girlfriend, the summer before high school started. This Was Love, I narrated, No More Playground Stakes. I let Max Bennett Kelly take over my body and possess me fully. Chapter 31 contained the quote I was looking for:
“It was then that my Real Self and my Idealized Self converged.”
I became one with Max Bennett Kelly and got the girl of my dreams.
Except that only happened in The Old Journal. In reality, Codename: Jenny Jones rejected me.
I kept reading ahead. Chapters 32-64 didn’t exist beyond Chapter titles with brief outlines. They were predictions of events that would happen throughout the Story™ of my life. Projections based on the trajectory of my life thus far, starting from the false branching path I had written down.
Part Five would start with a chapter called “A Memoir, If You Will” that, once written, would supposedly be about how I decided to turn my life into a memoir.
Part Six would be losing touch with Jevandre and Michael.
Part Seven would be going to LA, fully embracing the path of an artist, and that dream eventually falling apart.
Part Eight would be the fallout of a great love and my subsequent cynical outlook on life. It was to conclude with Chapter 64, “A Boy Called Marcello,” which would be about “wishing I could have the lost time back; a sense of closure; parting ways; heart vs. home and wherever the choice may lead.”
The Epilogue was left empty.
I read the secrets of the universe, just as I had written them in the stars a decade and a half ago. Here it was— the beginning of the Infinite Loop. I had the time and date now. I could finally go back to the moment right before Max Bennett Kelly took over. So I reached in and killed him, mangled him, ate him, before he could do any of that to me. My younger self went home and deleted The Old Journal. The Prophecy was never foretold because it was never written. My younger self grew up as his Real Self and was happy. I smiled for him, because that’s exactly what I would have done if it were me.
The End™.
— Yeah —
That’s exactly how I’d want to end it.
Except that only happened in the blog.
This is just the way I turned it into a Story™, for you to read. The reality is messier, harder to understand, less neat, less elegant. But the reality is the Truth.
In reality, once I broke into the hard drive, I found the Chapter outlines. But I couldn’t find any of the stuff about Max Bennett Kelly. How? I remembered writing it. I needed to find him so I could bring him to justice. I pulled another old computer out of the closet. Maybe Max Bennett Kelly was in this one. He has to be. But the computer wouldn’t turn on either. I was bloodthirsty. I started cracking the computer open. I’d bring the shattered pieces to a repair store after Christmas, and they’d be able to give me the files. Then I could go in and find the beginning, so I could find the end. I just wanted the book to be over, so I could move on with my life. The Infinite Loop.
I stopped myself.
I couldn’t put the screwdriver in the computer. I just couldn’t do it. I was too tired for another autopsy.
I was on the floor of Dad’s office when Mom came in to remind me to get ready for Christmas Eve Mass with the family. I didn’t want to go, because the ending of my book was ruined, and I needed to finish this book, because it’s the most important thing in the entire world. What must it be like to be around me?
Mom reminded me to get ready for church. I had been free to get lost in my own rabbit hole for hours because I knew, subconsciously, she’d do the work to be responsible and remind me to get ready. I’m going to be 29 soon. What must it be like to love me?
I thought of every person who ever has, and wondered when each one realized I had lined them up into a cast list for my Story™. The Story™ I was speeding through to get to an ending I had pre-written for myself, long ago. I didn’t know the extent of what I was doing. But how could I have missed it? Thousands of journal entries over hundreds of pages.
Am I a narcissist?
It’s the big, scary word this book has been circling around for 240 pages, cleverly avoiding being written down.
Mom reminded me to get off the floor, so I got ready for church.
Father Carlos’ homily was strangely pertinent, but everything is strangely pertinent when you’ve spent a lifetime shoehorning symmetry. He talked about randomness and how easy it is to feel purposeless at times when life seems like nothing more than a roll of the dice. I could feel myself narrativizing — Maybe This Would Be A Great Ending — but then I realized I was missing what he was trying to say, so I tried to listen. I couldn’t pretend any longer that Father Carlos was speaking only to me. Everyone who congregated here today came with some variation of the Big Question, and they were all living lives in search of the Big Answer. Maybe some of them found it with Father Carlos. God provides a single Grand & Ultimate Answer to any Big Question that could ever be Asked. That story sounded tempting, now. I started writing my own Story™ to find my own Big Answer, and what I found were Tiny Answers that answered the Tiny Questions I had. And then I found some more Questions, and had to find some more Answers. Maybe that’s all there is. Maybe That’s Been The Big Answer All Along.
— The Infinite Loop will return in True Modern Romance 2 —
Oh God, please don’t let me write a sequel.
Ah, the old ouroboros. Who am I to stop the snake? I am no Adam or Eve, and even they couldn’t resist. We’ve taken the apple, and now all we can do is eat it.
· . ★ ✵ * . ☆• ★ ° •
We got home from church, Mom & Dad and I, and we watched a movie. My parents still live in the same house Sis and I grew up in. I realized I had never asked them why they chose this house to raise a family in, so I asked them now. They told me it was because the upstairs had three bedrooms, so we could all sleep near each other, and also because it had a basement, so that as Sis and I grew up, we could hang out downstairs, and they could have their own space upstairs. They could have bought a newer house, Mom & Dad said, but they chose this 70’s split-level because it had a big backyard and was in a neighborhood with other kids for Sis and me to meet. They told me this casually, as if the enormity of their decision hadn’t reverberated for the next three decades. Did they know that the neighborhood kids would end up starting a band with me? Did they know one of those kids would end up marrying Sis? Did they know that the art supplies in the basement would birth a dream I’d still be chasing, 25 years later?
I told Mom & Dad that AWAL dropped me, but I had a plan, and I’d never stop chasing this dream I had, which was actually an extension of the dream they had for me.
Dad said that if I ever woke up and didn’t want to do music anymore, that he & Mom would have my support in that, too.
But I can’t stop. Didn’t he see that? The dream is all there is.
“I used to dream of making movies,” Dad said, “I used to dream of winning the Super Bowl. But now I have this dream where I’m running…”
That was all he could get out, because then he started crying, and Mom started crying, and then I started crying. I’ll never know what the rest of the dream he had was, because all he could get out was, “…and at the end, none of that matters, because I’m just so proud that I raised a good man.”
Am I, Dad?
Mom & Dad fell in love in high school, and 40 years later, they still hold hands in the grocery store. Mom & Dad are the true romantics in this modern world. Mom & Dad are the exception. I wondered aloud if this path I am on will prevent me from ever having what they have. “Maybe it’s okay if I don’t find it on my own,” I said, “because I am lucky enough to have ever felt it at all.”
Dad pulled me in for a hug, and he said, “I just realized I never gave you a big hug after the breakup.” This is ridiculous, because he had, a hundred times over, given me a hug about this. But I don’t think I ever hugged him back, properly. Not in a way that said, “Yeah Dad, I’m sad. But I’ll be okay.”
In my father’s dream, he was running, something happened, and when he stopped running, he raised someone he thought was a good man. In my life that’s really a dream, I’ve been running, too, and I wonder if I’ll ever stop.
The end
—mbk/novel
