Does This Plunger Make My Face Look Fat?

An improper and belated introduction

Yeah, that’s me. My hair is much longer now, long enough for a man bun. Yuck. I’m not impressed. Haircuts are expensive. Oh, well. It’s falling out anyway.

A big shout-out to all my new subscribers. Thank you for the support, whatever form it may be.

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I’ve seen many re-introduction pieces floating around lately and thought I should introduce myself because I’ve not written one introduction. So I decided to share a few things you might find interesting about me. 

I hope nobody minds the departure from my usual—whatever that is. I have been spending a lot of time this week rewriting my bio on various platforms and tweaking profiles, so I needed to write something less taxing on my brain.

The following is not a narrative and is not chronologically ordered. You may read it sitting down, standing up, with one hand behind your back, or while paying attention to something more interesting. Or skip it and scroll mindlessly for five minutes. What would be the difference?

Thanks for reading.

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My name is Corey.

When I was a boy, I saw a cow artificially inseminated. I haven’t been the same since.

I will soon turn 44.

If I could go anywhere in the world right now, I would travel to a wooded area, a cabin with no Internet and no cell service. Give me three months or one, a week or a day, to be left alone without human contact, just me and a few stacks of books, a laptop, several pounds of coffee, tobacco or nicotine, and some stationery. 

I have a lump on my forehead. Maybe it’s a bump. Either way, I didn’t notice it until after I got sober and have no clue how long it’s been there. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t named it.

I shall call it Balzac.

Against my wishes, I started this publication, on an empty stomach, because I thought sharing my words might force me to write more and revise less. I was wrong. I spend 40% of my time revising, 45% trying to think, 14% thinking, and 1% writing. Worse, I put so much time into creating essays that I haven’t been writing anything but essays. I had intended to write primarily short stories on Substack. Now that I haven’t been writing much fiction, whenever I attempt to write a story, I have a difficult time doing so. It requires an alternative mindset in which the imagination must be more active. An essay sucks my soul through my memory and depletes me, hindering my imaginative powers. I’ve written about this already → here. 

I’m a cynic, possibly a nihilist, likely an existentialist, and usually a pessimist.

I’m afraid of snakes, baby ones, big ones, imaginary ones, snakes stuffed with cotton, pictures of snakes, even the word makes me nervous. They visit me in my dreams. I expect one will eventually appear in my tub or crawl out from behind a cereal box. I once hallucinated that snakes had overrun my town, an unintended side-effect of swallowing too many random pills. I thought the snakes were real. You can read about that in this piece → here.

I don’t smile when people snap pictures of me. Forced smiles look creepy.

(Mom: Skip the next paragraph.)

I once repelled drunkenly from a fourth-story porch onto a third-story porch so I could enter my neighbor’s apartment through his unlockable door and steal a case of beer from his fridge. What was I supposed to do? He’d passed out and wouldn’t answer the front door. Three drunk guys wrapped a rope’s end around two door knobs and lowered me. I might’ve been wearing somebody’s hard hat. 

In my early twenties, I would get drunk at house parties and try to impress people by doing a backflip. I could do a backflip. Even when drunk, I sometimes landed on my feet.

I’m a high school dropout with no formal education. I didn’t learn anything in high school other than how to skip class. I couldn’t comprehend the material. I retained very little information. I did what I could to get by in school, but each year, my grades declined. I couldn’t keep up. The harder it became, the less I cared and the more I rebelled.

I’m single, have been since separating from my daughter’s mother, and intend to be until my death. I abhor compromise. I’m selfish and self-absorbed. I want to be left alone with my books. I want quiet. 

I’m kind to strangers, even when they’re rude and annoying, but I avoid them whenever possible.

I didn’t start writing until I was nearly 39, about four years ago. Until then, all I’d written were a few journal entries and my signature on court documents. I’d read maybe five or six books since junior high. So when I started writing, I had to learn the basics, e.g., a noun’s definition, what makes a sentence complete, and other rules taught in second and third grade. I constantly study grammar, style and usage guides, and the criticism and theory of literature.

Noise makes me angry. Even a faint ping of a cell phone irritates me. 

I suffered a back injury two years ago while working at a tire shop. Workers’ compensation was a joke. The doctors were assholes. The images showed nothing significant, so I must’ve been lying. Yet the pain persists, and I am very limited in what I can physically do.

I’ve never been skydiving but have always wanted to jump out of an airplane. 

I practiced Kenpo for ten years, have a second-degree black belt, competed nationally for several years, and was inducted into the World Martial Arts Hall of Fame when I was twelve, in 1993, just before my thirteenth birthday. At the time, I was one out of six or seven people in the world under eighteen to be inducted.

I have a daughter who’s eleven and sick of hearing me talk about Substack.

A year after my injury, unable to get so much as a rejection letter from prospective employers, I started freelancing on Upwork. For a short time, I was a content writer but despised it. Then I was a ghostwriter for a spell and wrote four romance novels, though they were closer to erotica. I’m now an editor. Anybody interested in or curious about my services can message me through Substack or visit my Upwork profile → here. 

I’ve had many shit jobs and am grateful I have made it as far as I have freelancing. It has been a struggle, though, especially without my having “professional” experience. 

I’ve cleaned toilets, bartended, waited tables, laid rubber on roofs, prepped food, installed electrical meters, and spread mulch. I even handed out food samples for a few months at a BJ’s. Yawn.

On the upside, I recently met the criteria to become an Associate Acquisition Editor at After Dinner Conversation, a magazine committed to philosophical fiction. Yes, it’s volunteer work. So what? I’ve been helping read through the slush pile there for a few months and now have a spot on the website below the word masthead—on a list under the word staff.

Perhaps I’m more excited than I should be. So be it.

I need a nap.

How do I end this? Why do I feel like every piece I write must have a meaningful ending, a message squeezed between periods, something to make you go ooh or ahh, to make the blood pressure flutter, whoosh, or drop, a surprise hidden in the last paragraph to make your time worthwhile, the payoff, a word to take home, a joke to tell your friends, a quote to restack, an attack on the senses to make you remember—an impossible feat, I know, but why can’t I stop trying?