insufferable raze he said he had no idea who i was. he only knew what a few friends told him when he mentioned my name. he bragged about big money jobs and b-list celebrities he'd shot the shit with. he said he used to work as a private eye. so he knew how to read people. he spent the next three hours telling me everything he thought i was doing wrong. he said i was selfish for hiding myself from the rest of the world. he said no one was going to knock on my door asking to see my art. someone really did do that once. but he wouldn't have believed me if i told him. "it's like you have this massive library," he said. "and you've made it inaccessible to the public." he said the work had no intrinsic value if it wasn't available to everyone. he brought up the disgraced hedge fund manager who paid two million bucks for the one existing copy of a wu-tang clan album and then kept it to himself. "let's say someone came here," he said. "and they offered you the same amount of money to buy this thing you've been working on for the last five years. the catch was once they paid you, they were going to take what you'd made and lock it away forever. and no one would get to experience it. not even you. what would you do?" i told him that was a scary amount of money. i'd probably be set for the rest of my life if i played it smart. i'd also be miserable. i'd feel like i flushed my soul down the toilet so some rich sadist could say he owned a piece of me. "stupid as it might sound," i said, "i'd say no. my integrity is worth more to me than any amount of money." "that's a beautiful answer," he said. "and it's a fucking lie. you'd take the money, and then you'd go in that fucking room and make some other fucking thing, because that's what you fucking do." there's something uniquely horrifying about a stranger screaming at you in your own home, claiming to understand everything about your life after admitting they don't know the first thing about you. his teenage daughter kept texting him while he was laying into me. he promised to pick her up from school. he was late. "fuck her," he said. he stood her up. his own kid. left her to cook in the summer sun. i haven't seen him since, outside of a few dreams. i always wake myself up. not because anything bad happens. just to get away from him. he's such an insufferable shit stain, i can't even stand to hear him speak when i'm asleep. 230201 what's it to you? who go blather from