Locked Groove

A day in the loop between noise and relief

iStock: Mohd Izzuan

Friday starts with the phone. Really, every day starts with the phone.

Alarm. Thumb. Slide. Screen. Email. Texts. Little white numbers waiting in their little red circles. Someone did something somewhere and the phone needs me to know. I know better. I should let the phone sleep, but I look anyway.

Then the voice is awake too.

Look at you. First thing in the morning and already checking whether anyone noticed you.

I put the phone down. Stare at the ceiling. Then I pick it back up.

Open the email if you want. Marketers love you. And why not, you’re such a sucker.

The dogs are still under the covers. I can feel one of them pressed against my leg, warm. The other one is snoring somewhere near my hip. I lie there for another minute, trying to focus on how safe they must feel.

But I’m not. And I’m stalling. And the voice knows it.

I sit up. The dogs surface in stages. One ear. One paw. A full-body stretch and a tiny yawn. They shake out their dreams, and I can see them remember the existence of breakfast as they start to lick my face.

Bathroom. Toothbrush. Sink. Mirror. And I look into a face that’s been around for a while. The wear shows. Gray in the beard and around the temples. Crinkles along the eyes. Is that a new freckle? I take the medicine. I run the shower. I wait for hot water.

Why do you bother?

He says it like he’s bored. Cruelty with a shrug.

You know what you’re looking at. Older. Softer. You can shower, but why bother? You’re not going anywhere and it won’t wash away the age. Invisible is invisible, even if you clean it.

I rinse the toothpaste out of my mouth. One dog licks the shower door. The other stares at the bedroom door wishing it was open, his mind full of food and morning birds to chase.

That helps. Not enough, but some.

The dogs spin as I head into the hallway. They bark. They wag so hard their back feet slide back and forth and the little one falls over. They crash into each other. Excitement has no steering wheel. I scoop the food, add some kibble, and look down to see both suddenly frozen, knowing this is the moment they get their morning meal.

They need you more than they want you. You understand the difference, right? You could be anyone right now. They’d follow a stranger if he had a can of Alpo and a handful of Iams. This doesn’t make you special.

Maybe. I feed them anyway. There are worse things than being needed by animals who lose their minds because you opened a bag. The day gives me that much.

Then, work helps. Work is my world. It’s easy. Concrete. There are emails, deadlines, documents, and clients. Opposing counsel drawing attention to a clause in an agreement while hiding another deeper in the same contract. Here there are dates, facts, rules. I know what to do with that.

I sit at my desk. Coffee. Keyboard. Calendar. Inbox. And I feel useful. The voice knows this, and doesn’t leave. But the strategy adapts.

Oh, here you go. This is the version of you people need.

I answer an email.

Good boy.

I draft a demand letter.

But what do you do, really? Rearrange wreckage? Transfer one person’s disaster onto someone else. Useful little lawyer. You’re not solving problems, you’re just moving them around.

I keep typing. Work is armor with a set of noise-canceling headphones.

That’s the trick with work. The voice never leaves, but the work is louder. Deadlines scream, hearings demand, clients cry. The world can explode into fire, but somebody has to show up to court. Somebody has to help.

That somebody is me. And for a few hours, it’s enough. Then the phone rings. Potential client. And then another. Some emails come in from people who I can’t or don’t have time to help. Then I get a few calls from clients sent to me by AI for work I don’t do. The algorithm has had me wrong for months.

Even the algorithm doesn’t know who you are.

The voice likes that one. It’s new.

You’re so invisible the machine is inventing a better you.

I set the phone down and click open Word. Maybe it’s time to pivot. Take a break. Work on the essay, or the idea of the essay. I open it. A few scattered fragments that made more sense yesterday. I have almost-words. I have almost-ideas.

The voice settles in.

I type a sentence. Delete half of it.

You and me and the blank page again, huh?

I type another one. Worse.

Stalled as usual. How many times are we going to pretend the problem is the phrasing and not your lack of something interesting to say.

I rub my forehead until it stings and stare at the clutter of post-its on my desk, wondering whether I should just focus on work again.

Give it up and go back to writing demand letters. At least you know someone has to read those.

I close the document. Then I reopen it. I don’t write anything, but I leave it open. Maybe I’ll have ideas later.

At lunch, I read someone else’s essay on Substack.

It’s wonderful. I read it and the walls of my office don’t exist and I’m standing next to the author while she tells me who she is, why she is. It’s alive and she made it alive. I am enrapt. Then the world goes flat. The walls close in. The sandwich on the plate seems cold. The phone rings loud. I feel the desk press hard under my elbow as my head weighs into my hands.

See that?

I do.

That thing they have?

I know.

See the difference?

I know.

They have something you don’t.

Please stop.

Ability. Talent. Something to say.

I need you to stop.

Good luck competing with that.

Please shut up.

You mean shut it down. Because that’s what you should do.

Just shut the fuck up.

Don’t even bother reading anymore. You think you can absorb their talent? You can’t. And you can only pretend so long before people see who you are. You put down the pen 30 years ago for a reason, remember? You talentless hack. You word butcher. Pretender and child. Just. Shut. It. Down. No one will notice and no one will care. You are and always will be invisible.

Water. I need water. Maybe air. A quick walk, to the kitchen and my phone comes with me. Always does.

I stand at the kitchen and open the essay. The beautiful one. The one not written by me. I leave a comment.

A long one. Of course. It’s a real one, but I begin to feel self-conscious while typing, and still I can’t stop. I want the writer to feel how they made me think. I want to be in the room with them. Or near it, or close enough that they can know how they reached me. For them to see what their talent did. They deserve that. I think they must have their own voice and maybe I can be louder than that for one moment. For them.

Nobody asked.

I keep typing.

You always do this. Like they care. It’s so transparent anyway. Your small novel in someone else’s comments? You’re a leech. You need this springboard. You jump off other people’s ideas because you don’t have your own.

I hit send. They’ll read it and think: earnest and feel seen.

I reread it.

Right. They’ll read it and think: a lot.

I edit one sentence.

They won’t think: writer. They probably won’t even read it.

I put the sentence back.

Later, I check a post I published last week. Three new hearts.

Your mom, a friend, and someone who thought she hearted the post above yours.

Refresh it.

I refresh it.

Maybe the number changes.

It doesn’t.

It never will. The number is the same. It’s been a week, Charlie. If people wanted to read it, they would have by now. They aren’t busy, they just aren’t interested in you.

I mouse through to the Substack dashboard and look at metrics for the posts.

This is the exact size of your audience. Look at it.

I click around a few of the articles. Read a few comments.

But keep looking, you desperate attention seeking whore.

Someone I follow posts a note. It’s funny and easy and real. I can see them in three dimensions. They are growing. Faster than me. They started after me. I try not to see it, but I do. It’s hard not to.

Keep telling yourself this is about the work. That you’re not here for the attention.

I’m just happy to be writing again. Good or bad. No goals.

You liar. Why do you look? You know the numbers. Why does it matter?

I look at the numbers. I know it matters.

Because you are a shallow bowl of miserable mayonnaise. You are plain and offensive at the same time.

I close Substack. Even my inner voice is overwrought.

You should delete the app. You have a problem, and it’s not just lack of talent, its lack of depth. You do not belong here.

Open it again. Close it. Walk to the computer. Close the essay draft. For a few minutes, I think about paid subscriptions. Wonder if there is a world where someone would pay to see me write. It’s a fun fantasy. Something I wanted when I was a kid, but doesn’t seem real.

Good idea. Charge people money to ignore you more formally.

That makes me laugh. The bastard has timing. I go back to work and the voice disappears into the background as expertise takes over. The easiest voice. And the day gets thin, which is when Friday gets dangerous. Afternoon is drift.

The voice likes drift. Drift drives out the expert.

You could write now.

I open the document.

But you won’t.

I read the last sentence.

See? Still no ideas. You’re world class at staring at open documents, or misspelled fragments spilled on a page. Maybe you can repackage your bullshit as poetry.

I close it.

There we go.

I send my son a text and ask if he wants to fish this weekend. He says maybe Sunday. Maybe Sunday is good. It’s a door cracked open. A boy with a fishing rod and a few hours to spend.

He said maybe. He’s being polite because he loves you, but he’d rather be somewhere else. You’re already becoming an obligation. Go ahead and take him fishing, but you’ll spend the whole afternoon wondering if this is the last time he says yes.

I hate that one.

That yes is real, but it has a clock on it. You know it does. They all do.

Every yes from a child has a clock on it. Every movie, every errand, every drive, every grocery store run. The fishing trips, the couch surfs, each bowl of popcorn, and every “yeah, sure” is a countdown to “I’m a little busy,” and “I’m hanging with friends,” and then simply “no.”

The clock is real, but the voice weighs the answer and puts its thumb on the scale. Tenderness turns to worry, and the moment turns into inventory. It feels mechanical.

By early evening I’m tired behind my eyes and I wish I could just sleep. I walk back into my office and put on a record. I pull out the sleeve, take the record by the edges. Set it down. Drop the needle. A little crackle comes through the speakers before the song begins.

The voice returns.

Look at you. Staging a personality. A man alone in a room with his taste and nobody to share it.

The record plays. That’s all. It keeps playing. A bass line. A guitar riff. And from the vinyl a voice explodes with anger and momentum. For a few minutes I’m not a lawyer, writer, father, husband, patient, survivor, fraud, hopeful idiot, or middle-aged man looking over the back side of life. I’m a person in a room with music.

There’s a reclining chair with a footrest in the corner of my office. It’s for moments like this, and the dogs have already claimed it. Lying on top of each other, their wagging tails asking me to join them. So I do. And I close my eyes and focus on one thread in the song, find one layer I didn’t notice the last time I listened. Maybe it’s a tambourine or the bass line, or a background singer coming in every other chorus. For almost three minutes it’s just me, music, and two little warm bodies stuffed into a chair I picked just for this.

And the voice doesn’t have anything for that. But my mind is restless. So I head to the kitchen and mix a cocktail. Which is a trapdoor.

Kitchen. Counter. Bottles. Glass. A Bijou. A wonderful drink. Gin, green chartreuse, sweet vermouth, and orange bitters. I should probably write about it. It’s old and forgotten, but it’s one of my favorites. And as I measure and mix, I’m not thinking about getting drunk. I’m thinking about making a drink. It’s something I love. Ice. Measure. Bottles. Bitters.

But the voice likes this part too.

There you go.

He’s almost kind.

Balance and craft. Taste and tension. Something you understand.

I stir the drink. I strain it through the Hawthorne. The glass is cold in my hand. It looks good and it tastes good. For a while, I’m standing in the kitchen after a long week with one good drink and no crisis attached to it. The music from my office calls.

Then the glass is empty. The voice waits until I notice.

So fast?

It did go down easy.

Make another.

I rinse the mixing glass. Wipe up the rings on the counter from the wet jigger. I pretend the decision is forming. I look toward the living room. TV on. Dog asleep. My wife on her phone.

The first was craft, but the second. That’s your relief.

I make the second. And I’m on the slope.

It doesn’t feel like slipping at first. A slide has drama. You feel the ground loose beneath your feet. You sense freedom from friction and your mind casts around for balance. But this, it’s procedural. There is no sudden shift. It’s ice in a glass, bottles open, pour, stir, sip. The easy mechanics of leaving yourself by inches. The paint-by-numbers of giving up.

The second drink is still good. And second drink signals that the first one was not a mistake. The second drink says the day was long and you are allowed to take the edge off. The voice loves the second drink.

You worked. You listened. You wrote almost nothing, but you thought about writing, which is basically the same. At least for you. You had dinner. You were pleasant. Have the drink.

I have the drink. The room softens. Maybe not the room. Maybe me. Maybe my armor.

Less signal.

And he’s right. Less signal. Less noise too, but the signal is getting quieter. And that’s what I want, and the voice knows it. It’s where the voice and I are friends. Oblivion. I want less signal. Less phones. Less comparison. Less hope. Less old body. Less clock. Less.

The glass is empty again, but the third drink already exists. How could it not. It’s where the signal goes.

Now we’re being honest.

I don’t move. I want less signal. Less noise. Less voice. Drink three is tricky. It’s me fighting the signal. Fighting the voice. But it’s also me inviting the voice to take over.

Three. That’s what you need. Maybe four. Give it a try, but you’ll never drown me. You know that. You’re just drowning yourself, and I’m the one still here.

I hate him for saying it. I see the truth in it. I’ve been here before. The drink doesn’t kill the voice. It feeds it. It kills mine. But knowing and stopping are not the same.

You want to erase the last twelve hours. Tomorrow morning you’ll wake up with a headache, your essay will still be a word jumble, and you’ll be one day closer to quitting. Pour it.

I stand in the kitchen, bottles out. The mixing glass cold with ice. The dogs asleep. My wife nodding off in the living room.

It’s just me. The noise. A volume knob that only turns up.

C’mon. How much more can you take?

The house is quiet and I stare out the window while the record in my office slips into a locked groove.

Pop.

Static.

Pop.

Static.

Pop.

Static.

Again.