He showed up to my book launch—a tiny event in a rented room—and sat in the back. Afterwards, he handed me a single typed page of notes. It was all criticism. Structural. Pacing. Character motivation. At the bottom, in handwriting: “Proud of you. Don’t let it go to your head.” After more than three decades, I’ve learned that the keyword isn’t just a description. It’s a philosophy.
He became, in his own words, “a defensive caricature of a Northeastern elitist.” He leaned into the sneer. He grew his hair long. He started drinking black coffee and reading The Economist in the lunchroom. The kids called him “New England” like it was a slur. He called them “bless-your-heart barbarians” and considered it a fair trade. Here is the thing about Prescott’s bitchiness: it is never lazy. A lazy insult is broad. Prescott’s are bespoke. my only bitchy cousin is a yankeetype guy the exclusive
Because that’s what you do with your only bitchy cousin who’s a Yankee-type guy the exclusive. You refuse to take his advice. And you love him, loudly and publicly, knowing he’ll complain about it. Perfectly. He showed up to my book launch—a tiny
Imagine dropping a lacrosse-playing, Vermont-chèvre-eating, NPR-listening teenager into a public high school in the exurbs of Georgia during the early 2000s. The result was not assimilation. It was crystallization. Structural
Let me unpack that. “Bitchy” suggests a certain effete, gossipy quality. “Yankee-type guy” evokes a New Englander who says “wicked” and knows his way around a raw oyster. And “the exclusive” implies he is a limited edition—one of a kind, not for mass consumption. Put it together, and you have a portrait of the most infuriating, fascinating, and unexpectedly loyal relative a person could ask for. The keyword didn’t start as a keyword. It started as a frustrated text message to my sister during Thanksgiving dinner, year three of the Prescott Era. He had just spent twenty minutes explaining to our Southern grandmother why her pecan pie was “texturally an apology” and that a proper one requires “a whisper of smoked salt and the courage to underbake the filling.”
At a family barbecue, my uncle (a wonderful man who thinks mayonnaise is spicy) brought out what he called “gourmet burgers.” Prescott examined one, rotated it slowly on his plate, and said: “This patty has the structural integrity of a wet ballot. I admire the commitment to disappointment.”
I published it anyway.