The stuff: There Is No Doubt story excerpt in letter

Friday 2/6/26

As it says.

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Want to see some prose, brothers and sisters? Sometimes I like to imagine that I'm in the MC5 and it's time to find out who is gonna be part of the problem and who is gonna be party of the solution and who is ready to testify!!! This story will be done soon. God knows I've put a ton of effort into it. It's for There Is No Doubt: Story Girls. I've had a slow start to the year, but I'm getting back on it. Which means, torrent time.

I still haven't sent the Christmas story. That's for a different book. This is one of the few stories in There Is No Doubt narrated by a man. They are, of course, all about women or girls. This is a very surprising story. It doesn't go nearly how we think it might at first.

I'm getting stuff out of the way on the journal at the site before it's a whole lot--a hell of lot--of writing, art, and publishing world content. I just need to put in the requisite hours every day with everything.

But ready for this? Look at this. The stuff.

I bought this type of subscription that wasn’t what it was supposed to be, which isn’t a matter of opinion or me being a presumptuous asshole as it’s the kind of thing everyone knows the deal about including older people who have to call their adult kid whenever their computer freezes because they can’t remember what to do since the last time.

And that’s before we get to the no-doubter of a profile photo this woman used which is sufficient to make you imagine a highly approving cartoon eagle saying, “Now that’s spread!” in a thought bubble.

But after you paid the $9.99 monthly fee and got access to her page, you discovered the videos were just her sitting in her car. Clothed. Bundled up, depending on the season. An “I’m-dressed-and-this-is-what-you’re-getting” version of a bait-and-switch. The skin you saw was her face and hands. What you could call the everyday parts. Her hair stood out as much as anything. It was short but like it hadn’t been short for long and a friend would be surprised if they were seeing her for the first time in a while.       

Sometimes she’s drinking a coffee as if nothing’s more important to her in the world, this beam of light in a Starbucks cup for the darkened path that she’s had to go down.

After she takes the first sip she’ll say something like, “I really needed this today so bad” or “This is my little treat I got myself,” and then sort of laugh uncomfortably like she’s embarrassed this drink is so important to her.

It’s one of those laughs that could change before it’s gotten over the lips into someone starting to cry instead, and then when you realized that wasn’t laughter but tears you’d be like, “Wait, what’s going on here?”

Once she’s taken the sip and laughed without quite getting to crying and gone back to picking at the plastic wrapping of her ChapStick and has kind of settled into herself, she begins talking in these life lessons from wherever it is that she’s parked her car about seeing the good in people and how you really do reap what you sow.

The first time I heard that—and she says it a lot—I thought there was no way she wouldn’t spell sow like sewing the activity with the needle and thread and that wouldn’t have bothered me as much if she was doing what she was supposed to be doing instead of making like she was the new hire at the fortune cookie factory who’d gotten her big break to write the messages that week.

The setting for her videos is always the same, an outpost of a parking lot if you can call it that overhung with tree branches instead of somewhere bustling with people like outside a Target. No middle-aged housewives passing in the background and chirping into their phones on their way to the nail salon. There’s a hint of light in the sky by the time she gets there—same hint, regardless of the season—but you know it’s going fast. She has these older videos on her page from when it was warmer with the window open and I was pretty sure I could hear running water, but not a huge amount, more like a babbling brook long on spirit and short on content.