MATT A.

I would be lying if I said I never thought that I would be a pawn in a local conspiracy made up of people with the same name as me. In a sense, it was inevitable. It is inevitable. For all of us.  

What I’m saying is this is what happens to you if you’re not extremely good or extremely bad. I’m talking this is what happens when you wear collared shirts on the weekdays and collarless shirts on the weekends; when you keep your name even though you hate it, this is what happens.  

The kid made us watch Blazing Saddles six times. And at the end of the final scene, they’re battling, like the outlaws are battling with the residents of Rock Ridge, there’s guns shooting everywhere and fistfights and Mongo punches a horse and the fight spills over onto the next lot at Warner Brother’s studios, where they’re filming a different movie. The fight scene spills onto that lot and then the cafeteria where all these other movie characters are eating, and then out in the street and then eventually into a movie theater, so they’re doing a lot of this like breaking of the fourth wall but my whole thing is, I don’t need you reminding me that I’m watching a movie, I don’t need you to break form like that, like I’m lying in my bed in the dark with my laptop an inch away from my face, I’m trying to decide whether to look at the subtitles or the images, whether to register the pain in the words or in the faces because I can’t have it both ways, I know I’m watching a movie, I don’t need you to remind me that none of this is real, you can’t do this to me, I won’t let you do this to me, I need the illusion of the great wide open, I need this, please. Please.