My 2026 has come equipped with a number of anniversaries. April marked ten years since the debut of Renee Patrick, the literary alter ego I share with Rosemarie. In May, we celebrated thirty-five years of marriage. I graduated from high school four decades ago this June. That one’s still unfathomable; I could have sworn I was applying for Pell Grants just a few months ago.
July’s milestone may seem the most trivial. Do not be deceived. I take inordinate pride in frequenting the same bar—in this case, Seattle’s Zig Zag Café—for twenty years. Becoming a regular anywhere is a noteworthy accomplishment. Here, it actually changed my life.
We’d been in Seattle for over a decade in 2006 yet felt as if we hadn’t put down roots. Rosemarie had built a career, one that’s still going strong. But we hadn’t forged any lasting bonds locally. The primary topic of conversation on our rambling weekend walks was whether we should move back to the East Coast, where all of our connections were. We kept inching closer to making that leap.
Our primary solace, then and now, was going to the movies. That’s what we did on July 1, attending an opening weekend matinee of The Devil Wears Prada. We were downtown early on a Saturday. We’d heard about the Zig Zag and decided to stop in for a drink. We didn’t leave until hours later. We returned the following Saturday, and every Saturday after for over six months. Seattle had just banned smoking in bars, and the Zig Zag’s owner Ben Dougherty told us we helped keep the place’s doors open.
The same advice tends to come up when the subject is making connections as an adult. You’ve gotta get out there. Join a club. Start a hobby. Valid points, but difficult to put into practice consistently. I stumbled onto a simpler solution. I found a place that felt like home when I didn’t want to be at home, an extension of my living room with more flattering lighting. I was at ease there, so much so that I relaxed into a better version of myself. One comfortable talking to strangers, willing to linger over an interesting, unexpected conversation.
My Zig Zag attendance awakened an interest in cocktails I didn’t know I had, which became a sideline unto itself. (The introduction to my first book Down the Hatch recounts the tale of our first night at the bar in full.) More importantly, having a place to go put me in contact with a broad range of people. I made friends there, on both sides of the bar. Over the past two decades, those friendships have created opportunities large and small, expanding my world.
One of those friends was the late, legendary Zig Zag bartender Murray Stenson. He viewed regular customers as an essential element of hospitality, both creators and caretakers of a bar’s atmosphere. Establish yourself as a fixture someplace—bar, coffee shop, restaurant, laundromat, anywhere—and you become a steward of that environment. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that committing to something larger often delivers the very thing that you personally need. And what the hell, it gets you out of the house.
We’re not at the Zig Zag as often as we once were despite living closer to it, partly because we’re regulars at several other places now. But it’s a part of our story, and we’ll always pay our respects. We stopped in after seeing The Devil Wears Prada 2 for the symmetry and were back to mark our 20th anniversary, pushing it a day because Seattle hosted a World Cup match on July 1. We were, of course, well taken care of. I’ve got a birthday coming up, one I don’t want to make a fuss over. Odds are I’ll celebrate it there. Where else would I go when I want to feel special and ordinary at the same time?
What I’m Reading
Related to the above, I hung out a shingle on the internet over twenty years ago. I wanted a hangout online, a place people could find me in the unlikely event they were looking. Everything I wrote is still there. Some of it embarrasses me, much of it is forgettable, most of it I’ve forgotten myself. I could take it all down, but you never know when a message in a bottle will wash up somewhere. Or what will happen when it does.
A few months ago, I received an email from Vince Passaro. He’s a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, but more to the point he’s the author of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content (2002), a novel I loved and which I posted about in 2008. Vince1 had discovered my write-up of his book almost eighteen years after it appeared. He kindly offered to send me a copy of his follow-up, which I had somehow missed. Naturally, I said yes.
Crazy Sorrow (2021) opens with two Columbia University students meeting on the night of July 4, 1976, so I vowed to read the book by the fiftieth anniversary of that date. Better to dwell in a meticulous recreation of that optimistic time than marvel at how we ignored this year’s half-hearted semiquincentennial festivities, America now seeming collectively middle-aged and not in the mood to be reminded of its birthdays anymore.
Fireworks shine over the World Trade Center as George and Anna get to know each other. It’s their first encounter, and it won’t be their last. They fall in love then break apart, going their separate ways, their erratic paths occasionally bringing them back into each other’s orbits. They can’t help but wonder, as they sleep with some people, marry others, chase stability and happiness and purpose, if they were meant to be together.
Vince (not me, him) plays with pace to beautiful effect in a book that spans over four decades. The early days move almost languidly, befitting that youthful sense that your entire life can be contained in an afternoon. Time speeds up as George and Anna age, favorite places disappearing, friends and lovers drifting away, children growing up and moving on. The culture shifts around them as the eighties yield to the onrushing new millennium, Anna in particular finding that what once was sufficient now feels like poverty, leaving her determined to catch up before she’s left behind.
There’s also a lot of fucking in this book, of all varieties, as there fucking should be. Desire and the need to be desired are constants for much of life, the memory of both persisting when they wane. Sex is described in terms beautiful and blunt, the act at times proving revelatory as it does for Anna, angrily bedding a needy beau whom she knows voted for Reagan.
She pushed down roughly on him and she thought: So this is what it’s about, this is what it is to feel powerful, this is what it is to feel like a man: what one needed, to experience power, was to find an advantage and use it, to abandon the idea of equality, or justice, or love.
Like its predecessor, Crazy Sorrow is wildly ambitious, finely wrought, and deeply enamored of the promise and the punishment of life in New York City. I emailed Vince to thank him and tell him so. (He’s also on Substack now.) It’s a novel that I would have continued to miss had I not written about Violence, Nudity, Adult Content nearly two decades ago. So instead of beating myself up about the irregularity of these posts, I’ll keep getting to them as I get to them. Bottles wash up onshore all the time.
Yes, it’s strange referring to another person by that name. On Grad Night, when seniors were given free reign at Walt Disney World, I roamed the park with ten of my friends. We had our photos taken together. There were two Erics, two Joes, two Mikes, two Robs, two Toms … and one Vince. Such has been my existence.
"Bottles wash up onshore all the time." With messages inside like these. We're moving to the Seattle area in the fall and will dive into Zig Zag. Also checking Crazy Sorrow out of the library. So thanks.