To The Man Who Broke Into My Car Last Night

Congratulations, you’re a few hundred dollars richer.

I was only in the grocery store for 10 minutes, so you must be pretty fast, too, and brave, the way you shattered my window on a busy street, unlocked the door, and stole my backpack. Your mother is probably very proud of you.

Now enjoy your bounty: my favorite sweater, my computer, and, most precious to me of all by far, my journal, detailing in careful, tight script the last six months of my life. You, boil on the face of the human race, now have access to a piece of my life that literally no other person alive has access to. But I feel terrible. The story for you — the story of me — will, if you decide on a maggot’s whim to read it, end on an airplane, and my coming home to San Francisco, having landed just an hour before you robbed me. The thought of you sitting on your probably-stolen couch somewhere wondering where the story goes from there, after my most recent entry, is upsetting. I’m a storyteller by nature, is the problem, and I do not believe that any reader should be left to wonder on ‘what’s next?’ indefinitely, no matter the putrid state of his moral character.

So let me tell you where the story goes from here.

Charizard, the young man’s Jeep, stood sadly and ashamed in the parking lot while the young man, forced into his most loathed position of ‘victim,’ assessed the damage done to him. But Charizard breathes fire. At least, when the young man drives to work in the morning, that is what he imagines his Jeep doing in the presence of slow-moving Marina girls in Subarus. Because that is the kind of person the young man is; the young man is the kind of person who drives an EFFING DRAGON TO WORK.

Daenerys Targaryen IRL, bitch.

And I’m just getting started. My computer? You can have it. I’ll get another one. I can do that because I have a job and I get money; I don’t steal it, I make it. The window you shattered was fixed the next morning, son, and Charizard got a cleaning out of it on top. Do you listen to Jay-Z? Because that’s what my year’s about to look like. “I’m so far ahead of my time; I’m about to start another life. Look behind you, I’m about to pass you twice.” I roll deep with a crew of engineers and mad scientists who want to go to Mars and build another world, literally — while you’re breaking windows in a parking lot on Market Street, we’re planning a market on Olympic Mons. That’s how this story continues. Artificial intelligence, robotics, ending aging, and curing cancer: this is what my people invest their time in. This is what I’m a part of. And I’m writing, too. My name’s in lights on billboards all across the future.

That’s what you would read if the journal didn’t end.

My dreams are brought to life on paper and the screen: boys who turn invisible and save the computers they’re in love with from tyrannical Old World statists; giant cyborg dogs named Spok, technologically advanced communities working to subvert our dystopian futures, a disgruntled editor in New York City who saves his superhero boss from a Jekyll and Hyde-ian fate; a ship outside of space and time piloted by James Dean and Britney Spears, but plucked away from this world and replaced with a remote-controlled clone right at that moment when the pop star shaved her head and had an existential meltdown and decided to save the world. Wait. I’m just getting started. Walt Disney reincarnated in a leather jacket and a shirt that says “RIOT,” Snow White with a chainsaw fighting Communists and Nazis risen from the dead by meddlesome, trolling government officials rocking stolen technology, because that’s what this is. That’s who I am. That’s who you just crossed paths with, and be glad for it, because this is as close to greatness as you come.

I want to thank you, asshole who broke into the car I worked so hard to pay for, asshole who stole what I thought were all of my very few possessions. Because when faced with a tally of that which I no longer had, I was made to consider that which I can never lose: myself. Take more than my computer, my clothing, my journal. Take my house. Take my car. Burn everything I’ve ever written. But naked on the streets of San Francisco, I’ll still have me. My journal is my record, but my life is my story, and I am still alive.

I’m going to write history, and you will not even be a footnote.

Superman.

You can steal his cape, but only he can fly around the world.

Now go enjoy my hand-me-downs. I’ve got shit to do.