Animal attraction

How do we want to be loved?

Brother

It’s possible I fell in love with Richard, at least in part, because his memories of childhood are happy. Maybe not happy always in a conventional sense. You can tell they are happy because of the way they are preserved—rich in detail and intense sense memory. I don’t have that. I loved seeing the large room of this absence in my life, comparatively speaking. It’s as if happiness in my childhood was written in disappearing ink. I’m not sure I like looking back that much as an experience. I think, as a mental activity, I’m more comfortable with the more recent past of yesterday or a few minutes ago—otherwise known as Now.

It’s good to be with someone you admire and who has a skill you lack or a history you see as expansive because of its specificity. We were talking about this today before Richard went to make tea, because his brother Roy, who died last week, is much on his mind and because he’s written a stack post for today made up of scenes from their childhood. It’s not just rosy in retrospect or in the feelings the past stirs in him now, or their more recent relationship stirs in him now. Roy was a phantom beloved brother when he was alive, and going forward he will become a phantom limb of a phantom beloved brother. The seductive power and relentless glamor of what is unreachable and what remains mystery. Here’s a link to Richard’s post: richardtoon1.substack.com/p/brother

Roy and Richard circa 1990.

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You see what I mean about memory.

A few years ago, I was waiting in line at an outdoor bakery. Richard said a man ahead of us had jumped the line. The man who’d jumped the line was tall. I said to the woman directly in front of me, “Do you think that man jumped the line?” The man ahead of the woman spun around and said, “I have been waiting here all along.” I said, “I didn’t mean you. You would never jump a line. I can tell that from your back.”

He said, “Thank you. That makes me happy.” He didn’t look happy. He was wearing a large stud in one ear. His face was familiar. Some people look like a mistake you could make again.

One time, on a line to buy books, I ran into a bad boyfriend I thought was a former editor. When the bad boyfriend greeted me warmly and I thought he was the former editor, I let him hug me, although in the middle of the hug I realized who he was. I was trapped seeming happy to see him. Maybe that’s what I’m looking for in life.

I began to wonder if the man on the line for bread was in fact the bad boyfriend, turning up again. I’d heard he lived around these parts. More than a decade had passed since the misbegotten hug. This man looked fragile and depressed and had a face like a puppet around the mouth—all things also true of the bad boyfriend, so far as I could remember him. If he was, in fact, the bad boyfriend, you might be wondering why he didn’t recognize me. Could I have changed that much since our meeting on the line for books? Maybe he did know it was me and, seeing my confusion yet a second time! he made the calculation to keep our connection to himself.

Fine with me. When it was his turn, he ordered two bialys. There were bees around the bread stand. A ton of bees were swarming all over this place and nowhere else. I saw a bee fly into the bad boyfriend’s bag of bialys, and I thought: good.

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Horse

Years ago, I spot a small horse across Warren Street. He’s on the sidewalk in front of a café, and a crowd has gathered. No one has ever seen such a small horse. Not a pony, mind you. You can tell by the proportions.

I say, “Let’s go.” Richard says, “I’m afraid of horses.” I say, “How can you be afraid of a horse? It’s not a dog.” Richard says, “It will try to bite me as soon as it sees me. It will kick up its heels and leave a hoof print on my forehead.” We cross the street.

The horse is the color of caramel. A woman is holding a rope attached to its bit, and the horse is jerking this way and that, and the woman is whispering. She’s a small horse whisperer, and I wonder if the horse resents being small. Early horses were little and had the faces of dogs, but over the course of 50 million years they evolved into equis equis, creating their niche, the way wolves did and also humans. Early horses ate down the tall grasses of the plains, allowing them to run, and the animals with the longest legs could go the fastest and survive. Even the small forest equid of yore had a long, flowing tail, and the tail of the horse on Warren Street is brushed and luxurious. His mane is braided. You can see he’s loved, although maybe not in the form he most wishes to be loved.

I pet the horse, moving gently across the muscle of his back. What does he want? What does anyone want? His forelock fluffs over his brow. Richard’s forelock fluffs over his brow, as he stands against a wall. He says, “You look like a six-year-old,” as he snaps pictures of me with the horse. I say, “Do you want to pet him?” He says, “No.”

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Streaming now

Better Call Saul season 6 episode 12—originally aired on August 8, 2022. In homage to Vince Gilligan and the launch of his new series with Rhea Seehorn Pluribus (Apple TV).

Rhea Seeborn.

This is what David Segal, writing in the NY Times, has to say about the life of Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) in the six years she has spent since the murder of Howard Hamlin: “We find her in Titusville, Fla., living an utterly pedestrian life designing brochures for a sprinkler wholesaler. She seems reasonably happy with her hunky boyfriend and their suburban, backyard-barbeque life.” On Indiewire, Steve Greene writes: “Before writer/director Vince Gilligan offers up the other side of the phone call that drove Saul (Bob Odenkirk) into a rage-fueled morality spiral, he presents a modest few days of the life of Floridian Kim Wexler. It’s not that “Waterworks” makes Palm Coast life feel less-than. There’s no harsh judgment levied against her new job or her new location or even her Amazing Race-loving boyfriend. All of these component parts are instead presented as pure neutrals, to the point where even the most flowery language ever written about sprinkler tubes disappears into the rest of Kim’s ad copy.”

These men are out of their minds. Kim is dead. She has consigned herself to hell, and she is dead. The boyfriend she has chosen as her hell for getting Howard killed is a stupid mess, the last thing anyone would call “hunky,” a man who fucks her loudly off camera, grunting and bouncing her against the headboard, while she lies there silent. Doesn’t every man on the planet know that scene is meant to represent bad sex? The worst kind of sex you have no idea why you are having except to navigate from the conversation about whether Miracle Whip is mayonnaise to the moment when the man you have appointed as your hell is in the car making another date with you.

There is nothing “neutral” about any of this. Kim is not “reasonably happy.” If you think the scenes of her life in Florida are scenes showing a woman who is “reasonably happy,” please shut up and never speak again.

Now, this is a scene to attend to for its brilliance: Kim crying in the airport shuttle after delivering an affidavit, detailing the scheme against Howard that led to his death at the hands of Lalo Salamanca. Kim is crying because she feels alive for the first time in six years. She feels remorse, she feels horror, she feels like herself, seeing her part in how the world works, how she works, how bad she feels about having once felt good hatching the plan to discredit Howard. It’s a great scene. Rhea Seehorn has been brilliant throughout the show and remains stunning to look at. You can’t keep your eyes off that forehead, hatching an understanding that will set in motion the lives of everyone she cares about because she cares about them and because she can’t help hatching plans. That mouth, setting itself for the lie the world will not see through. In the shuttle, beautifully, she isn’t lying to herself.

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For paid subscribers the next Zoom conversation with guest artists is TOMORROW, Saturday November 15 from 3 to 4 EST with Sophie Haigney of The Paris Review. There is still time to join and to RSVP for a link. To RSVP, email me at: lauriestone@substack.com

Sophie Haigney.

One of the things I love about working with Sophie, my editor at The Paris Review, is an understanding we share that any piece of writing, regardless of the genre others may assign to it, can be crafted as dramatic narrative. When, for example, I use as a prompt a streaming show or a movie, my approach is not to analyze or summarize it. My approach is to turn my reactions into a story--the story of what was prompted in the narrator as the thing she watched moved through her. She’s recreating an experience, not evaluating another artist’s work.

This is one device Richard and I—and all those who attend—will toss around with Sophie, who will also read briefly from her book-in-progress on the human impulse to collect things. We’ll also consider the origins of The Paris Review in the 1950s and its operation as a front, of sorts, for the CIA. Please com with questions about where literary publishing might be heading! The Paris Review now publishes as well on Substack.

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More happenings for paid subscribers

Upcoming Zoom Conversations with guest artists include: Sophie Haigney from The Paris Review (November 15 from 3 to 4 EST), David Cale (November 29 from 3 to 4 EST), David Daniel (December 20 from 3 to 4 EST), and Errollyn Wallen (January 17 2026 from 3 to 4 EST).

Poet David Daniel who will be our guest artist on December 20.

To RSVP to Sophie and/or David, please send an email to: lauriestone@substack.com

To attend one event or receive one recording, with no future payment obligation, you can buy a “coffee” for $4 at ko-fi.com/lauriestone

The BREAKOUT SESSIONS following the Zooms with Sophie Haigney and David Cale are full. To RSVP for the breakout session on Sunday, December 21 from 3 to 4 EST, following the Zoom with poet David Daniel, please email me at: lauriestone@substack.com.

To request recordings of past Zoom Conversations

with Steven Dunn, with Margo Jefferson and Elizabeth Kendall, with Emer Martin, with Perry Yung, and with Francine Prose, please email me at: lauriestone@substack.com

Working together one to one on your writing or starting and growing a Substack publication.

If you would like to book time to talk one-on-one about a project you are working on or for guidance in gaining confidence and freedom in your writing, please email me at: lauriestone@substack.com.

If you would like to book time to talk one-on-one about STARTING AND GROWING a Substack publication please email me at: lauriestone@substack.com. I can help you through the software, choosing a title, art design, and approaches to gaining readers.

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In a NYC garden 2018.