Content Nausea No. 63: The Map
The doctor pulled out a map. I studied it, and there I saw: Envy, bitterness, love, nostalgia, confusion, guilt, and desire.
Welcome to the 63rd edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 62 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
The last time I saw Benn, I made him sign up for this newsletter. We were in D.C. at the end of November 2019 for Charlotte’s birthday, and the edges of the night ended up becoming fuzzy. The next morning, I saw the email notification from Substack and got excited to have a new reader. Then, I realized I had probably made him sign up for this at the bar — which turned out to be a Texas A&M bar — and I laughed (especially given a timestamp that was rather, uh, early in the night).
A couple months later, I got a few rolls of film developed, and tucked at the end of one of the rolls was a picture of Benn in Charlotte’s living room that I do not remember taking. He looks incredibly bemused and also like he’s hoping that I decide to go to bed soon.
It’s been three weeks and one day since I found out Benn died, and I’ve spent that time piecing together a collage of memories from the nearly 15 years that we were friends. And that bemused look has stuck with me.
Benn was intentional with everything he did, whether it was gardening, bird-watching, music or his work. He did all of his research, gathered all of his equipment and then followed through. Benn made all of it look so easy, but most of us knew the work that went into it.
It’s been humorous to contrast that with the more haphazard way that I’ve gone through life in recent years, with a sporadically published newsletter and an Instagram account for my film photos that has been dormant for three months or so and sort of a general malaise at times. I made Benn listen to so much poorly recorded music and urged him to keep everything so simple — too simple for him — when we jammed. I lacked his perfectionist streak.
But he was always supportive. The afternoon before our adventures with the Aggies in D.C., we got lunch at Bob Evans and filled each other in on what life was like as an NFL beat writer and as a someone finishing his final year of medical school.
Before I got out of bed during another hazy morning earlier this week, I scrolled back through Facebook — I’ve spent more time on that site in the past three weeks than in the previous year combined — and realized that Benn was always among the one or two people who ‘liked’ my articles on the rare occasions I shared them on Facebook. I’m not sure if he personally found Kevon Seymour or Kobe Bryant or Brandon Brooks to be particularly interesting or resonant, but in a brutal industry, especially over the past two years, the little acknowledgments add up in a positive manner, particularly from people on the outside.
One of my favorite things to do was to text him about an injury an NFL player had suffered and ask him what it really was or to explain what the teams’ language was trying to obfuscate. He enjoyed when I would add what the player’s yearly salary was, too. When I was scrolling through our old text messages before the funeral, I found a graphic he sent me that explained the difference between a separated shoulder and a dislocated shoulder.
We both knew the other was doing what the other wanted to do, and it was fun when we could involve each other.
Those things are what have been creeping into my mind over the past week as we’ve entered into the quiet. I’m spending the weekend in State College. It’s a gorgeous Friday night on my deck currently.
I’m not going to convince Erin to fly in from Nashville at 3:30 a.m. and then drive from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., to State College with hangovers of varying degrees anymore. I’m not going to drink tequila out of a hot sauce bottle at 4 a.m. in an Abingdon hotel room with a group of strangers I’ve just met. I’m not going to navigate the 18-wheelers and speed traps on a beautiful but daunting stretch of I-80 in the middle of nowhere anymore, either. And there are no more concrete objects for me to sort and sift through.
I’m not seeking out the memories as actively right now as much as letting them flow to me. Of course, I have no idea what the next few weeks and months and years hold, either.
The morning after that night in D.C., I tried to slink out of Charlotte’s apartment quietly. I desperately needed coffee and breakfast, and I was gearing up to cover an Eagles game remotely that Sunday afternoon. Of course, in my haphazard and rather bumbling way, everyone woke up to say goodbye. I’m glad they did.
Thank you for reading the 63rd edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
I traced the path of the disappearing road until it was no longer a road
Tapping with my finger on what I decided was the threshold of the road's existence
I stated, "It is here where I will retire"
—D.G.