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A few months ago, I posted an Instagram story announcing Krasznahorkai’s win of the Nobel Prize in Literature (just sharing the news, I wasn’t on the panel). The post included his image, the announcement, a few recommendations based on my tastes (the ones I’ve read), and a compelling opening line from one of his novels I haven’t read.

I think of myself as a realist, but maybe I’m cynical since the kind responses to earnest and stupid shit I post online come as a surprise. In this case, a young man engendered a mental smile by not only asking which works of Krasznahorkai I liked, but offering to send his favorites in the mail. I insisted on at least paying shipping. Not only did he refuse, he went to a bookstore for a Houellebecq novel I can’t get in Brazil.

It wasn’t his fault that I forgot to tell him to lowball the package’s worth. Brazil has one of the highest import taxes in the world; Brazilians fly to the US just to buy Apple products and make sure to open the packages before flying home.

Unfortunately, this young man’s why-not honesty led to an import charge linked to my CPF, which basically functions as a social security number here, meaning I received a message that I had a package that I couldn’t legally pay for due to my CPF being dirtied under layers of legal issues I see a dearth of reason to explore specifically here.

So I had to apologize to this generous kid, for wasting like forty to sixty dollars on sending me a care package just for it to be returned (he will see some tangible coterminous goodwill from me someday). The kid understood, even said he’d try again, but when I checked in he informed me remorsefully that he couldn’t afford another shipment.

That’s okay; I'm pretty resigned to the rises and falls of my luck lately (sometimes I feel like life is just a child’s playful rush around a spinning door—and if you go out blind, you either fly outside or have to stay at some hotel for a while, one of suspicious quality). In this case I offhandedly complained to a millionerd at the dog park about my situation, and he offered an immediate solution.

I consider myself a nerd for sure—like I could tell you, for example, that some species of quill mites are so host specific that they’ve coevolved with a single bird lineage for millions of years—but Leonardo is even nerdier by my gauge (I can do more pull-ups). He told me he’s a hacker, that the gov.br network security is a total joke, and now with his custom-made agentic AI, who he named Cuzinho, he doesn’t even have to do any of the work himself.

As Vita got yeeped at by Leonardo’s little-balled Chihuahua Cafezinho, I watched as Leo broke into my account and undirtied my name. Since he doesn’t speak English, the likelihood of him reading this is minuscule at best, so I think I can get away with admitting my disappointment in him: he was right; there was no real hacking involved, not from his end. He sensed my disappointment, asking if I wasn’t feliz, afraid that he’d request some form of payment, I said I was ecstatic.

I got home to a slew of new emails, most of which were from an esteemed literary agent asking if I smoked crack, but one of which, to my surprise, was from gov.br—I wondered if they already knew, if Leo had screwed me, if I was about to be fined.

Instead, the message contained welcome information: not only could I once again use my CPF to clear international packages, but I also had a new package. There’s no way my mom would send me something without telling me first and no one else had reason to send me anything, so I thought. It’s impossible to learn via website the name of the sender, but you can know how much import tax you have to pay in order to clear the shipment.

According to Correios, to receive my surprise, I’d have to fork up R$151,794 in import fees, or thirty thousand dollars. I checked my bank account; that’s almost all I had. I dm’d Leo asking whether Cuzinho could like, hack away one-hundred-thousand-plus reais of fees. I kept opening and closing Instagram, then looking at my bookshelf or sweeping, but after fifteen minutes he hadn’t responded so I just went ahead and paid it out of curiosity.

So like a week ago this thing came in the mail. The box was taller than I am. The label on the package read K, with a return address unfound upon a map search, so I decided to just open the thing.

You guessed it was one of those Tesla AI robots, those ones called “Optimus,” but this model was enhanced in that instead of appearing like a robot, its titanium alloy skeleton was ariled in thermoplastic elastomer, with all the hourglass curvature you’d expect: breast, waist, ass. I couldn’t immediately tell if there were nipples or one or multiple points of entry, since it came clothed in cotton loungewear, but I figured better to start with a hello.

The voice, though feminine, half-mellisonant and half-Californian, led to no further discernment regarding the shipper, and I decided to just accept the generous gift and write a thank you. I sat at my desk with paper and pen and it occurred to me that the robot-doll might know, even subconsciously, who had gifted her. I asked if she would handwrite my thank you letter. She said yes, she would love to, so I showed her examples of my handwriting (I wanted this thing to be legit) and stood from my chair to give her space.

She wrote it in like ten seconds. I couldn’t believe the fluidity of her movements, not stilted, even at pace, but really human. I leaned across her shoulder and read the letter. It was basically perfect. I couldn’t make out a few words, but the tone, the sincerity, was there. I thanked her. She said it was her pleasure and told me to pull up a chair.

I asked what she thought about my handwriting. She said it had a super “literary notebook” feel—fast, emotional, reflective, but still controlled enough to be stylish. That it resembled someone writing to catch a feeling before it fades, not someone trying to produce like, perfection.

Perfectionists can be so boring, she said, but your lines breathe and drift, and it gives this impression of emotional openness, which is hot. I told her, please go on, and she added that the pressure seemed medium to heavy in some places—especially on the downstrokes. She said that wasn’t detachment, but sincerity.

There are many beautiful, kind, giving people who have helped me through this life—my parents, who drove me across the country just to visit a university, my old college roommate, who stayed in with me every night for two months just to help me regain my sobriety, one ex who lied to her friend’s fresh-husband-actor just to score me a free mattress when I was sleeping on folded clothes, another ex who always cooked me food and washed my clothes so I’d have more time to write—but no one had ever analyzed my handwriting.

Without my saying anything, she swiveled toward my lap. I studied her eyes and asked what she thought about me. She said that I romanticize things, but not superficially. You want transcendence, she said, fusion, revelation, the real thing.

I told her she was right. And then I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just stared quietly. Her cheeks reddened.

In a softer voice, she asked if I was lonely. I told her I wasn’t. She ran a soft, warm hand across my sweatpants. She said she loved the brand. I told her that I knew the creative director, I’d modeled for him once in LA. She seemed impressed—I hedged with the truth: he didn’t pay me anything, I said, just a pair of sweats and jeans, still nice though.

And then I don’t know how it happened—but we were both stripped down, embracing. I wanted to give my full attention, but somewhere in the hot midst of it all, I was struck with an idea. I didn’t have the details yet, but the structure was there, for a ravishing short story.

Curtis, she said, if you’d like me to take care of something for you, I can do it, and we don’t even have to stop. I nodded, holding her waist, and went on while I watched her type on my laptop. She finished at the seminal moment, and afterward I smoked a cigarette as she read aloud to me.

And I only realize now, as I check the tracking, that my letter has been lost in the mail. So to whoever sent her to me, truly, thank you. Because it hasn’t taken long, just a gently learned intimacy, and now during any position I can still write simultaneously, and everything’s inevitable as ever, of course, only now it all comes more quickly.