404 Media wrote about a Queer Online Zine Can Only Be Read Via an Ancient Internet Protocol. Great read, and the zine, New Session, is fantastic. You can access it via the web (linked above), or my preference, via the aforementioned “ancient internet protocol”, telnet.

telnet issue3.anewsession.com

While sorting through old papers, I found a copy of the first cover letter I wrote out of collage.

I was trying to score a writing gig, and knew absolutely nothing about anything. I walked around NYC in a suit and handed out this cover letter and a resume with can’t-not-hire credits like, “wrote for my collage paper” to doormen at The Daily Show and Late Night and places like that. I tried to mask my inexperience with a funny cover letter, which, like Carmex on a blister, only servered to highlight it.

The whole thing was, of course, phenomenally ineffective. On the plus side, only several people openly laughed in my face.

The cover letter did give me a chuckle now almost twenty years later, so I’ll take that as a personal win.

Here’s the letter transcribed in its entirety.

To Whom It May Concern:

Please give me a job. I have recently graduated college with an English Degree, and am currently living in a cardboard box. I would like to purchase some duct tape to waterproof said cardboard box, but in today’s unstable economy it runs as high as $4.00, which is well outside my budget. If you could give me a position paying between twenty and thirty dollars a year, it would really help me out. Obviously, I would prefer a job paying at least $100,000.00 a tear, as I could by a lifetime supply of duct tape. Please respond as soon as possible, as the box is getting rather mushy.

Enclosed is my resume. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Christopher DeLuca

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

The wind whipped my hair, slathering it around my skull. I was standing alone outside my family’s church, looking up the hill to the grotto where the Mother Mary statue stood. We went to a Protestant community church, even though my parents were raised Catholic, and they raised me hair-shirt New Age. My pants rippled against the wind.

The “church” was a rec hall the congregation rented from a convent. We hired a visiting priest every week to give the sermon, and took turns bringing wine and bread for the sacrament. The convent was perched on the New Jersey cliffs overlooking New York City. For a while, Gwyneth Paltrow’s aunt went there.

It was after Service as I stared up the hill. Maybe I was eleven. Wind, dark clouds, the manicured humble grandeur of the grotto and its winding approach; it dripped dramatics.

I lived in my head, a verified space cadet, as my aunt put it. I’d wander around, head down, too scared to look the world in the eye, lost in stories I told myself of saving the day from incursions of Saturday morning cartoon villains invading the real world. I didn’t identify with kids who saw fantasy as an escape. It was fun! Just an interesting place. Why imagine what you already see when you could imagine anything? Why then, did I always imagine a fight?

I was a good boy. Very dutiful. Unwavering dogma at home; things would have to work out if I did everything I was told. “This is my son, of whom I am well pleased,” my mother would coo, reciting the Bible, God speaking of Jesus. Escape was for lesser minds. I was too mature, too knowing, too far down the rabbit hole.

Everything I did and thought and felt needed a definitive ending. A purpose. An answer. Leaving questions open felt like a cop out. No, a betrayal. I had divine expectations to live up to. It was my destiny, an inalienable fact. And yet, I could still fail at it. I was failing. The gap from what I was, to what I must be, was immense. Of course it was. How can that gap ever be closed?

Yet that day, it all fell into place. I had claimed my birthright. There was no one else around to tell me otherwise. I lifted my head, eyes raised, invigorated, a hero. I saw my path—mine! It was snaking up the hill, to the grotto. I knew every curve. I knew it. I would meet The Devil at the top. There would be a fight, of course, and I would win.

I’ve known Byrd and Valentina for over a decade. Byrd and I met doing improv in New York, before we both burnt out. I ended up returning several years later, but Byrd decided he’d had enough of that shit, and became a school teacher. Byrd was always an encyclopedia, and emotionally intelligent, so I can only imagine he’s an excellent teacher. He loves Long Island pop punk, goofy, well crafted jokes, The Knicks, and golf.

Valentina and I met when she and Byrd got together. She’s warm and bubbly, with strong opinions and a stronger belly laugh. She has a background in illustration, and now works trying to make people’s lives better as a UX designer. She loves cute things, tea, books, and silliness.

Byrd and Valentina are lovely people. They converted their second bedroom to an office and exercise room, where they also have a guest bed. I was got to take advantage of that bed several times.

They live in Astoria, the same neighborhood where my ex-wife and I used to live. We were there for seven years, before my ex’s art school ambitions and COVID moved us out. We would see them a lot, and I needed to see them again in this new reality, to keep seeing them, to develop a new relationship with the place.

I’d wander the streets, seeing familiar shops, restaurants, street corners, parks, all soaked with my past life, someone else’s life. Putting into context all the memories. So much time. Was it always good? Always bad? Always both? Why didn’t I leave, even as the whole thing crashed. Just trying, trying, trying to pull the vengeance out of the ghosts around town.

There are three cats—Peter, Bernie, and Chantelle.

Peter is the oldest, a grumpy tabby. He is a dick. He howls and tries to fight the other cats, and slops around because, as Valentina sarcastically whines in his pretend voice, “my life is so haaaaaard”. He likes to be pet with wet hands.

Bernie is a large, sweet, shy black cat, who mostly spends his time hiding. He’s very affectionate when he feels safe, which, in my experience, ends up being about six minutes a day.

Chantelle is the youngest, the only girl, lithe, with an orange coat, and a born hunter. She has her own time zone, mostly ignoring the boys, and is not very bright. She has a blithe swagger that demands attention without seeking it. She’ll often be in the closet, not so much hiding, but lying in wait.

There’s a big cat puzzle in the middle of the living room. It’s this big, plastic spiral, with clear tubes wrapping around it. Treats are put in the top, and the cats have to bat them around the twisting tubes through periodic slots to get them down to the bottom and out through a dispenser.

Chantelle was very good at this game. Peter was okay. Bernie would watch from under something.

While Byrd and Valentina were on vacation, I played the first few dungeons of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Nintendo Switch. The game’s art direction is gorgeous, recalling shiny plastic toys come to life, but with a human, lived-in warmth. The whole time I played, I felt a blanketing sense of childhood, in small part from the narrative tinged with innocence, longing, and impermanence, but mostly because it’s a remake of a game that came out when I was a child. Guiding the hero Link through the dungeons felt safe, and I relished the indulgence of the escape.

How long could I allow myself to stay in the fantasy, the enforced hallucination, the tunnel vision of solving imaginary problems, secure in the non-reality, yet aware of the indulgence, aware of the pushing away of the hard table in front of me, the unread emails? I craved the escape, and allowed it—we all need a break, right?—but not for long. It couldn’t be the last thing I did before bed. I couldn’t play in the morning before work, or during a lunch break. There had to be rules. I couldn’t afford to get lost.

I set out with purpose. I could see Satan’s face in the clouds, really see it, just about! I could hear his laugh, right there at the edge of my hearing. The wind grew as I crested the hill, painting my clothes against my body. Destiny, doom, extravagance, purpose. Fear scattered like insects brought to light. I glowered, coiled. My inevitability laid before me. The grotto, the statue of Mother Mary, the view of New York City. Giddy, I slashed the air with my fists. Again. Again. Again.

I was breathing hard. Satan stayed in my mind.

Coward.

The days were short, the nights were long.

I’d wrap myself in the thick comforter of the guest bed, pulling the covers up over my head to block out the first rays of the morning sun. While I slept, Chantelle chewed off one of my watch straps. Turns out, the watch didn’t need it, so I guess I didn’t either.

The strap is looser, but here I am, still in time.

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

I wrote an essay about Scientology after visiting New York City while attending Hofstra University. It was probably my freshman or sophomore year, so circa 2005. I wrote it just to write it, never … Read more

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

I wrote a humor column in college for the Hofstra Chronicle under the pseudonym Silence Doless, a nod to Benjamin Franklin I didn't come up with. I was very proud of this work at the time. It's all … Read more

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The same words tell different ideas
Different ideas tell the same words
Words tell the same ideas different
Ideas tell words the different same
Different ideas tell tell different
Same same different ideas
Same same different same
Words words tell words

What’s that got to do with it

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I entered a erotica fiction contest for the popular comedy podcast Double Threat, and I was lucky enough to have my submission given a superlative on the show. What follows is that submission. Content … Read more