Author’s Note:

Spit It Out

This piece, I’d been submitting for over a year before finally receiving that golden acceptance email.

When I read the pre-publication proof, I finally understood why. Honestly, I literally, physically cringed. It wasn’t bad, necessarily, but in the year since I’d finished my final revision, I’d become a man of literature (pronounced, LIT-ruh-chuh), and this was, by comparison, just immature.

It wasn’t until I talked to my mom (a.k.a., president and sole member of the joshuabeggs.com fan club) that I realized maybe there was more value in the story than I’d thought. She didn’t tell me that it was fun, or, cute, or gosh, just so good, honey. No. This woman who has sworn maybe five times in my living memory, and who has such an infallibly sunny personality that it makes Hawai’i seem gloomy, told me that this story—this bitter, biting, curse-ridden story—was like reading her own diary from middle school.

It wasn’t ever meant to be my mustache-twirling, monocle-wearing, buttoned-up literature voice. It was the voice of the greasy-haired, grossly misunderstood (and just gross in general) preteen still buried under so many layers of life experience in me. Because, my mom’s anecdote showed me, maybe more people than meet the eye actually have a little bit of evil sorcerer in them. A little bit that deserves recognition, if only so that it can finally leave, like I think writing this story let it do for me.