Hi Friend,

Thank you for showing up like you always do. I have a fun Passing Strangers entry for you this week— a little snack. To be honest, I’ve been struggling of late. This whole Substack dance often makes me wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze, but then I remember you and I get off my ass and publish something.

The new novel, Daedalia is progressing. The themes I’ve been pulling on are starting to weave together into an endgame that feels earned and satisfying. I can’t wait to start sharing it with you. If you missed the little sneak-peak live reading I did last month, you can check it out here.

This week I’ve been grateful for the delicious autumnal light that gilds everything it touches on my early morning walks in the park. I see Darren, the man I wrote about two weeks back, most every day and try to bring him something— leftovers from dinner last night, or a new book to read. Speaking of books, I just finished The Antidote by Karen Russell and was blown away. She’s a masterful storyteller and does all the things with speculative, magical realism I aspire to and often fall short of achieving.

I hope you’re peaceful and enjoying the Fall. I’d love to hear what you’re up to. Please stop and say hi in the comments.

Peace and music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

“Can I just say your energy is like a supernova, like you’re sucking all of the light out of this festive gathering, friend.”

She was just dancing with the spirit, riding the righteous wave of love these young ones were pouring out of their thundering hearts.

“Ma’am, you need to put your pants back on and come with me.”

The security guard gave an exasperated sigh that ruffled his mustache. He reminded Alice of her Teddy. A frowny little boy in a big man’s body with his meaty hand clamped around her upper arm.

“I didn’t wear pants.”

She bent over and started pawing through a dirty, quilted purse that was large enough to carry a sleeping bag and a camp stove. She rummaged around, spilling items onto the grass. The lawn was packed with people half her age. A couple of girls rolled their eyes as they gaped at the belongings being pulled from her bag like an infinite string of kerchiefs tugged from a magician’s hat. Eventually she found a rumpled peasant’s skirt, stepped into it and pulled it up in the single fluid motion of someone who’s had a lot of practice dressing in front of strangers.

She shoved everything back into her bag, then tilted her smiling face to the security guard and hooked her arm in his as if he was her escort. She hated to miss the music. She felt a spiritual connection with the bass player. The big round tones his fingers coaxed from the instrument vibrated through her, activating her heart chakra.

At the back gate, past the centipede of porta potties, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed Teddy on the cheek before turning to exit. “Be careful, lady,” he called after her. She was a little rainbow trout swimming against the current of late-comers. She read their auras as they passed— gold and amber, indigo and violet. She greeted them all with an open smile and some with namaste hands. The gorgeous tree-beings that lined the path absorbed the music, dampening it from something heard to something felt. She was following the path as it crested the hill, still moving against the flow when she felt a cold current, like ice water poured into a warm bath. It made her shudder and slow to a stop.

She closed her eyes. People flowed around her, and the coldness seeped into her bones. She made an animal, whimpering sound. When she opened her eyes, it was somehow darker. How could an aura emit darkness? This one did. The young man loping toward her was at the center of it. His eyes, below the bill of the cap, were coal-black and grew larger as he approached.

Her body took over and she stepped into his path, reaching out as she did. She grasped his wrists, slick with sweat and sinewy. A violent flash of red coursed through her. A silent scream lodged in her throat. He was little more than a boy, but filled with a humming tower of rage that made her teeth hurt. She didn’t let go of his wrists. She drew a shuddering breath and peered into his narrow face. For some reason, he didn’t fight her.

He didn’t know how to respond to being seen.

Hi Friends,
These days it’s hard not to feel like we’re living in the opening chapters of an apocalyptic fantasy. Yesterday while I waited to cross at the light, a little robot delivery cart pulled up behind me, its LED eyes blinking as a driverless car took a right on red. A man with wild eyes and no shirt or shoes was shouting deliriously as he careened into traffic while another man in a suit standing to my right was shouting into space, closing a deal with someone in his ears. ChatGPT is talking 16 year old boys into killing themselves and other young men are talking each other and themselves into killing anyone they disagree with like real life is as banal as a strategy to win a first-person-shooter game.

We’ve been on a downward trend for a long time but it feels like we’ve reached an inflection point where complacency has tipped into nihilism and greed has graduated to a winner-takes-all death match. Fear has caused us to retreat into isolation where that fear hardens into hatred, and from there, violence is just an arm’s reach away for some. The ones who reach for it, sadly, are almost exclusively men.

I can’t understand it. It can’t be intellectualized. But I believe violence is not our default state, our true nature as men. It’s a last resort, the product of utter despair that comes from feeling backed into a corner, trapped in the iron cage that defines what a man should be in our society. Absolute strength, stoicism, invulnerability— these are the understood qualities of masculinity. None of these qualities foster feelings of connectedness and belonging and they don’t allow for failure.

This week’s Passing Strangers profile was the hardest one for me to write so far and I’ve debated whether to post it. I love women, not in the abstract and not conditional on their adherence to any rigid definition, but up close and real. For this piece I had to imagine I didn’t feel this way. I had to imagine women are a threat to be feared, kept at a distance, and dominated. It’s not a headspace I wanted to inhabit for long and the good thing about these portraits is I don’t have to.

I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and the people around you. Now more than ever we need each other, all of us.

Peace & Music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

He passed a mother, tugging the hand of her little kid. She didn’t seem to care how upset the boy was. Blood rushed to the young man’s ears, his face flushed hot as he imagined punching her in the gut– just one swift jab to show her, to put the bitch on notice. The mother looked up as if she heard his thoughts, this slight, young man with cheeks as smooth as her toddler’s. He blinked at her, swallowed hard, then moved on quickly.

His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He hadn’t slept much, but he was stone-cold, ready to rock. He could feel the juice jacking him up, bowing him back like a cobra. He pulled the bill of his Aggies cap down and cut through the crowd that moved like a sleepy herd through the park to the main stage. He didn’t see a squat Mexican woman and nearly knocked her over. Damned illegal stunk like a man and a burrito supreme.

He passed some frat boys chattering away about going someplace he’d never heard of that sounded foreign, like somewhere in France, and a fat-ass girl talking to her medium-hot friend about how they were tripping so hard. He imagined grabbing the medium-hot one by the hair and bending her over. What would that actually feel like? He slowed down to let them pass so he could look at her ass and smell her shampoo. Then she ruined it by talking.

"...I know, right? Bernie totally should have won. I mean, who doesn’t want better healthcare and for all people to be treated like human beings?”

They were all sheep, libtard sheep who thought they were smarter than everybody else. They’d come out of the woodwork to see their shiny new queen, queen of the libtards with her expensive smile and college degree in some stupid shit like women’s studies that totally qualified her to make laws for the rest of us. It was all rigged by these elite fucks who didn’t know honest work. His dad had worked his ass off holding down two jobs and raising him on his own until he fell off a ladder, which pretty much fucked him. He was a goddamned American hero with two tours in Iraq, and now he looked like a zombie, all strung out on oxy.

The libtard queen was going to give her speech right before the terrible fucking band with the faggot lead singer who painted his fingernails and wore dresses. With any luck, the two of them would be on stage together for just long enough.

He didn't need a perfect shot. He’d practiced plenty, and besides, an AK could spray. Spray and pray. Thoughts and prayers. He’d have his shot. He’d have his day. Nothing else mattered.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?

Leave a comment

Hi Friends,
This week’s portrait comes to you a few days late but it couldn’t be helped. As I finish the final edits, I’m sitting on a screen porch in a small villa on Kiawah Island, South Carolina watching the rain. We’ve had three glorious days of sun and beach and I’ve had the joy of looking after two little girls, Bella and her cousin Aria who’s visiting us for the week.

It’s a work trip for Paradis so while she’s been in meetings, I’ve been in charge of sunscreen application, pancake making, dispute mitigation, and sand removal. I’ve eaten my weight in leftover chicken tenders and french fries and my thighs and the tops of my feet have a rosy, overcooked glow about them. It’s a strange feeling getting to have all this a second time around which probably explains this week’s stranger.

I hope you’re enjoying your summer, wherever it’s taking you.

Peace & Music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

He wondered who he’d have to kill to keep things interesting. You could only carry on for so long before things became intractably dull, and for him, the only thing worse than being bored was being boring. In truth, there was something worse that he was loath to admit: being disliked. Was there a less useful quality for a writer to have than the need to please?

His back was stiff that morning, seized up as it did two or three times a year—not from any great exertion or heroic deed, but from sitting hunched over his laptop, stressing over meaningless minutiae that somehow tricked his lizard brain into reacting as if a grizzly were charging, demanding a fight-or-flight response.

Well into his third act, old age was creeping up on him. He was 55, bald, bearded, and bespectacled. In the mirror, he could still see the young man he was, but photographs were unforgiving evidence of what everyone else saw when he said hi in the elevator or checked out at the grocery store. He had already lived a lifetime and was somehow starting another one. When you boiled his second act down to the bones, it was a mostly unoriginal drama that unfolded in the suburbs and resulted in two grown kids who now required a lot of therapy, an ex-wife, and a persistent churning feeling in his gut. In contrast, his third act had been full of surprises, not the least of which was a precocious six-year-old girl who, along with her mother, had quietly commandeered his distressed heart and started renovations. He spent most days just trying to keep up with and be worthy of the present.

The park was lush, green, and thick with humidity. The sun was barely over the horizon but he was already sweating. With every step, the fused steel plates of his lumbar vertebrae loosened and he was able to turn his mind back to the story he was working on. Like Harold with his purple crayon, the man had taken to writing novels when he turned 40 as a way to fashion an escape from a life he no longer recognized. In stories, terrible things could happen. Horrible damage could be done. People could say difficult things that were true, even cruel, and still be redeemed by the end.

As he passed strangers in the park, making his way around the food trucks and golf carts setting up for whatever event was coming, he imagined their lives. Some of them made it into his stories. He wondered if they would recognize themselves.

But no, that was highly unlikely. No one could ever really see us as we see ourselves. We are, all of us, unreliable narrators.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?

Leave a comment

Hi Friends,
Summer’s in full swing here in Atlanta. We’ve had rain about every day, mostly in the evenings which is great because it keeps it cool and everything breathes more when it’s lush and green. I walk in Piedmont Park early each morning as a way to inoculate myself for the day ahead. Some days I call my mom, tell her all the things I’m seeing on …

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It feels strange and tone-def to be publishing short fiction at this moment in light of all the real suffering that’s happening in the world as a result of totalitarianism and violence. To be honest, I’ve found it challenging to just get through the day, much less write anything at all. If you believe in love and the innate goodness of humani…

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On days she was given a tip after cleaning …

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They walked two and a half miles without ta…

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This morning a whole group of ladies walked…

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I love to study people. I didn’t realize this about myself until much later in life. Around the same time, I discovered I really wanted to be a writer. The two are inextricably linked. Because characters are the engine that propels all my novels and short stories, I thought it would be fun to create a series here where that’s all I do.

In Passing Strange…

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