The Same Thing, But Different

A Thank-You to Kevin Smith

I’ve been planning to write this post since the day I started the blog. But I wasn’t ready then.

Some essays you can crank out in an afternoon; others you circle for years, waiting until you’re honest enough to write them. This one is that kind.

I’ve written about grief, love, friendship, memory—all the big things—but this one’s about voice. Not the polished voice that knows what it’s doing now, but the rough, profane, caffeine-fueled voice that first decided to tell the truth.

When people ask about my influences, they expect me to say Joyce or Didion—maybe Ellis or Salinger. But the writer who gave me permission to exist wasn’t in a novel. He was behind a counter in Leonardo, New Jersey.

Kevin Smith didn’t just influence me—he inspired me.

I wish I could say I got Clerks instantly. I didn’t. An actress friend told me, “You have to see this movie,” and I watched it—sort of confused why everyone was raving. I liked the Star Wars bit and I laughed at the “37!” joke, but the black-and-white, the shaky framing, the DIY roughness pulled me out of it. Kevin himself still jokes about how amateur the film looks. I didn’t yet understand that the roughness was the point.

Then I watched Mallrats (on VHS, no less), and that was it—I was in. Suddenly Kevin Smith clicked for me. I went back to Clerks and saw what everyone else saw from the beginning: a grainy little masterpiece that filmed my generation’s confession before we even knew what we were confessing. It made failure look cinematic. It made everyday conversation feel sacred. It made profanity sound like poetry.

(And if I’m honest, Clerks II is actually my favorite of the bunch.)

So I always knew I’d return to him—not to analyze, but to thank. Because every time I’ve written about frustration, friendship, or faith gone sideways, I can hear the Jersey counter in the background.

Make It Yourself

Clerks taught me that you could turn boredom into art. That meaning didn’t have to be grand or philosophical—it could come out of two guys complaining about their customers between cigarette breaks. It was the first time I saw cynicism treated as a form of sincerity.

And that changed everything.

The Wake of Expectations didn’t come from trying to imitate Clerks; it came from something Kevin said—or maybe didn’t. I swear I heard him say, “If you don’t see your world reflected in art, make it yourself.” I’ve looked for that quote everywhere and can’t find it. He’s definitely said things like it, and it’s absolutely a sentiment he shares, even if those exact words never left his mouth. So even if it’s a one-man Mandela Effect, it doesn’t matter. It was true the moment I heard (or imagined) it.

That line was the push. Kevin made movies about his friends, his neighborhood, his conversations. I wrote Wake because no one else was ever going to capture my version of that world.

The Same Ache, Different Setting

Clerks begins with Dante being called into work—pulled into responsibility he didn’t ask for.
The Wake of Expectations begins with Calvin’s family winning the lottery—handed a kind of privilege he never earned.

Very different circumstances, and yet both beginnings push their protagonists into lives that feel misaligned with who they believe they’re supposed to be.

Dante complains because he’s overworked and underpaid.
Calvin complains because even privilege can’t clear a path toward the life he actually wants.

They’re both stuck behind a counter of sorts, but the counters are built from different materials.
Dante’s is laminate and glass.
Calvin’s is mahogany and guilt.

Dante’s exhaustion is working-class—the kind that comes from grinding just to stay afloat.
Calvin’s exhaustion is existential—the kind that comes from being told to work his backup plan because the people who love him don’t believe he’ll succeed at the thing he’s meant for.

Dante lacks a dream he can picture. He just knows his current life isn’t it.
(Although, maybe it is and he just doesn’t recognize it—because not everyone’s girlfriend brings them lasagna at work, right?)

Calvin lacks permission to chase the dream he already knows.
(Or maybe he just lacks the courage—because why should anyone else believe in him if he doesn’t believe in himself, right?)

And if that makes Calvin sound less sympathetic—well, maybe he is. His frustration is elective. He’s privileged enough to have options, aware enough to resent them, and conflicted enough to feel trapped despite them. That’s what makes him interesting: he’s living the kind of life most people think they want, and still senses he’s in the wrong one.

Different Counters, Same Shift

That’s also why I’ve always thought of The Wake of Expectations as the same story told from another rung of Maslow’s hierarchy. Dante operates at the base: safety, belonging, love. Calvin starts at the top: esteem, self-actualization, meaning.

Dante’s question is, “Why do I have to be here?”

Calvin’s is, “Why isn’t this enough?”

Both questions come from a sense of being pulled off-course, but the tone is different. Dante’s frustration is weary and immediate. Calvin’s is quieter and more painful—the frustration of someone hedging his bets in a way that feels responsible, even though it quietly sabotages the dream that could only possibly work if he went all in.

Dante wants out of the job he has. Calvin wants to avoid the future job that’s been set aside as his safety net.

If Dante’s story ends with a shrug, Calvin’s begins with that quiet, internal crack—the moment you realize your dream isn’t being discouraged outright, just gently buried under layers of practicality. And that was the first sign I was doing the same thing Kevin did—telling the story of someone who’s stuck, but for entirely different reasons.

The Long Gratitude

If I was even a halfway decent writer in the beginning, it wasn’t because I grew up worshipping novelists. It was because I had a good education. I liked The Great Gatsby. I appreciated Shakespeare. I understood language enough to know when something felt true on the page.

But I didn’t have a favorite author. I didn’t start writing because of books. I wasn’t trying to emulate anyone.

I found Salinger, Bukowski, and Palahniuk along the way—long after I’d already started writing The Wake of Expectations. Cosmo was the one who handed me their work and said, “Here, you might like these guys.” And he was right. They didn’t inspire me to write, but they gave me permission to say things in a certain way—with more honesty, more bite, more vulnerability than I’d let myself use before.

But my real influences weren’t novelists at all. They were movies, TV, comics—storytellers who shaped how my generation talked and listened and admitted things out loud. Kevin Smith most of all. He was the first person who made me believe that ordinary life, spoken honestly, was enough.

He made art that didn’t wait for permission.
He made failure funny and friendship holy.
And he made me believe that talking about meaninglessness could mean something.

So thank you, Kevin.

You showed me that truth can wear a hoodie and curse a lot.
You proved that profanity and profundity can share the same sentence.
You turned your corner of New Jersey into mythology, and you made the rest of us believe our corners mattered too.

I just took your lesson to another counter—one stocked not with cigarettes and coffee, but with expectations. And from there, I started telling my own version of the same story.

The same thing.
But different.

Javier

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