Wednesdays With Wooderson

Crushing On the Wrong Life

2011-12-19T12:15:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I can boil all the problems with my fragile spirit to one
problem. I am constantly reminded of all the things I cannot have.

No, I don't think nature has it out for me. I can easily dismiss
these things she parades in front of me every day. It's like being
allergic to trees, then blaming nature for prancing those beautiful
elms outside my patio window. Sometimes the world is just there,
including the disappointments. And we have to learn to just deal. We
actually choose whether those things squat in our brains like "Occupy
Frontal Lobe" or skip away into the ether.

But it's not that easy. Some people like me simply have a crush on
life. There's this thing that's patently impossible, and yet you
think about it all day, it pains you that it can't work out, you go to
sleep, you wake up, and you do it all over again.

Yeah, in high school that was harmless when you're thinking about the
clerk at the video store. But when you have a crush on all of these
aspects of a life that aren't yours -- a career, friends, a woman, a
car, a social life -- it is a constant cycle from morning to night of
bitterness and self-defeat. More than a crush on life, it's a crush
on the me I want to be. But if it doesn't exist, it's simply a harsh
self assessment that never ventures too far below the surface of
conscious thought. It laces itself into every elevator conversation.
It cloys to every passing interaction. Throughout each day it's a
halo around good things and bad things alike. It dominates me by not
existing.

You can't have it.

A healthy person goes one of two ways. After an assessment, he
decides "well, actually I can," and works to get it. Fuck you, person
who said I couldn't have it. Or the healthy person assesses that he
really can't have it, and after some processing of disappointment...
moves on. The healthy person finds alternatives. Either an
alternative that fills the void of the thing he can't have, or
something completely different that makes him not even notice the
absence of the thing he can't have.

If the health person can't get the Xbox for Christmas, he either gets
the cheaper Wii, or he takes up kickboxing at the gym. But one way or
another he moves on.

Unhealthy people can't do that. They press their noses against the
window in a daily visit to see the Red Rider crank action bee-bee gun
their parents said they simply can't have. And this is why bitterness
sinks in. Fate is the unbudging parent here. And the unhealthy
person lashes out at Fate for not giving him what he wants. He
bargains and negotiates with Fate, and he truly thinks it will work.

But it doesn't work of course. Because Fate doesn't fucking exist.

And this is one of the reasons why I hate girls that are "kind of
hot." Not beautiful girls. Not hot girls. Not pretty girls. Kind
of hot girls... they make life miserable for everyone.

Kind of hot girls fall somewhere north of pretty and south of hot.
And that's where their evil is generated. They think they're better
than what they are, and they hate that the world doesn't treat them
that way. They think they should date the guys who go for hot girls.
But they can't. They're not hot. They're "kinda hot." So these guys
talk to them and flirt with them. Maybe "last call" them, or drunk
dial them. Maybe they date them for a while, but eventually realize
that even though they're kinda hot, they are bitter and dismissive and
catty. These girls spend all of their time resenting guys they should
be dating because they can't understand why they can't attract someone
better. They roll their eyes alot. They tear other girls down alot.
They're just plain mean. Beautiful girls don't do that. Truly hot
girls don't do that. They treat ugly guys like a kid getting an
autograph at a ball game. A pat on the head, now go back to your mom.
Kinda hot girls treat guys like Christian Bale getting his shopping
interrupted at Whole Food.

But that's the power of crushing on the impossible. It makes you a
crappy human being in one way or another. So I am going to make a
list. A list of the things that I can't control, and we'll see if
this serves as some sort of exorcism for me.

I don't like my job.
I suck at relationships.
No one in my family helps with my grandparents.
I still get dirty looks from my ex-girlfriend.
I stink at basketball.
My friends don't have time for me.
People don't treat me the way I want to be treated.
People don't think of me the way I want to be thought of.
People dictate their relationships with me.
People who get close to me end up hating me.
Life feels pretty empty right now.

For each of these has an Xbox. Each of these has a Red Rider bee-bee
gun attached to it. Something that I want that I'm just not supposed
to have. And if I can somehow find an alternative -- something
different that will fill the void, but something that I'm actually
supposed to have... different friends, different job, hobbies,
interests, things that actually nurture the soul rather than sedating
it -- then maybe I can stop being this person I don't want to be. Mad
at the world. Screaming at Fate. Because Fate doesn't fucking exist.

Clan of the Cave Bear

2011-12-18T21:25:00.001-05:00

I remember years ago, nights like this would make me so happy. I just had a meal of ribeye steak, homemade creamed spinach and mashed potatoes. Sipped on a whiskey sour... or three. And I'm watching preseason basketball (instead of a bitch-ass football team that will go unnamed).

There's a little chill in the air. I'm sitting on the couch in b-ball shorts and a "stay-dry" shirt. Toes are a little cool, but even that feels nice. Not thinking about work. Not stressing about much of anything. It should all be good, and five or six years ago it might have been. But now it all feels... off.

I've written in this space before that our parents ruin us by telling us there's always something better. Their generation raised us by telling us we can be whatever we want, we can do whatever we dream. And it's gotten worse in succeeding generations. Generation Y was taught that there's no such thing as losing. And the current generation is being taught that people should be rested for teasing you. I grew up a fat kid -- you know what my response was to people teasing me? Hating them. It worked just fine.

But our parents seriously screwed us up. We can't be whatever we want. Anything isn't possible without certain sacrifices. And sometimes there really isn't something better. Sometimes it just is what it is.

And that's not to say people should settle. My philosophy has always been this -- decide what you want, and if what you can have isn't what you want, decide how important it is to you. And how much it costs.

That philosophy has had its ups and downs for me. Adam Carrolla has a funny bit on how show called "Rich White Guy Problems." Like he went on a rant about the remote that's supposed to control the sound system in his whole house and also his lights never works. I'm sure the dude who's stretching a truck driver's salary to make sure his kids can ride the bus to school every week can sympathize. Thing is, that guy can sip a beer with his neighbor on a Friday night and think it's the best thing in the world. There are a ton of 20-something girls living in the West Village of New York who would think there's really something better to be doing.

It's like being sick. The morning you wake up without a fever, you feel great -- even though you're still sick. Meanwhile the healthy person who hasn't had his coffee thinks he feels like ass. It's all a matter of perspective.

I don't have debt. I have a great job. I'm healthy. I should be farting rose petals. But my perspective is fucked up. What's different than six years ago?

I think back then, I had become burnt out by life. I dealt with crappy people for a long time. I'd had the goodness of life beat out of me. I'd write drunken posts on Saturday nights where I was happy to be cooking for myself and mixing my own drinks and watching crappy TV. I had been scared by all the disgusting people in the world all gnawing on me, so I had effectively moved into an emotional cave. And it worked. I hadn't been in a relationship in five years at that point. I had cool conversations through my blog and other friends I made online. I realized sex was just something that was going to come to me at the will of a female community I did not understand. It was going to be crazy girls, girls with massively low self esteem, or girls who simply didn't know me well enough yet to realize they didn't like me.

And I wasn't necessarily happy in that life. But I didn't mind life.

Now I mind life. And it's because I expect more out of life. It always happens when I get a glimpse of what could be. Back in 2005, a co-worker introduced me to this beautiful girl who for some reason was interested in me. It made no sense. We went on three dates, and I was like the guy in 500 Days of Summer, skipping down the street to Hall & Oates songs. Then she decided she like another guy she was seeing more. She was upfront about it -- she told me about him before our first date. But it was like taking little Arnold up to the penthouse for a night, and then Mr. Drummond saying, "Okay, you have to go back to the foster home now."

These days, I feel like I go to the penthouse every day for an hour before being sent back to the foster home. And I'm too old to feel like that. 38 year-olds should feel fairly in control of their lives -- particularly the things that they want. By that, I mean you wrap your brain around the things you want and determine what you need to do to get them. And you develop a maturity around the things you know you can't have. You don't pine like a 15 year-old. Adults who pine like 15 year-olds are bitches. I'm sorry -- I have no tolerance for it.

But suddenly I'm that guy. I worry about shit I never worried about before. Not being good enough. Being used for attention. Being taken for granted. Being dismissed. Worrying that the people I like don't like me as much. Having people choose other things over me. We could debate whether any of these worries are founded or not. But that doesn't matter.

Essentially I've become a fucking pussy. And I hate it. I'm too old for this.

By 38, if people want to be a part of your life, they are. You're not constantly confused by it. By 38, the people in your life, their actions match their words. Or you're mature enough to move on.

However unhealthy, I prefer the cave. I prefer not feeling anything. I prefer the world going on around me. It's clear to me that the world of socializing, parties, lunches, barhopping, dinners with friends, laughing conversations, cooking for people, hanging together -- it simply wasn't my lot in life. It's just like I wasn't meant to play in the NBA or star in a Broadway musical. How can I be bitter about that? I can't. I need to learn how to accept it.

The hard part is that for whatever reason, people make me think I'm meant for these things. I can't comprehend it. Maybe they're being nice. Maybe they feel sorry for the poor cave-dweller. I don't know. But it does damage. It's an hour in the penthouse.

And I don't feel sorry for myself. For Christ's sake, they just flashed a feature on the Rutger's football player who was paralyzed during a game and is just learning how to walk. I wonder how I got here, yeah. I don't understand it. But I don't expect the world to weep for me, no matter how much weeping I do for myself. Especially when -- for me at least -- the answer is rather simple. I was happy in the cave until people came with torches and food saying, "What the hell are you doing here? There's a whole world out there!" And they thought they were helping. But that world isn't for me. I don't know how to navigate it. I don't know how to sustain it. It speaks a different language than I do. And at the end of every day, I sit around wondering why I don't fit in. Why I feel like that world is spitting me out.

I don't want to wonder why the socializing the parties, the lunches, the barhopping, the dinners with friends, the laughing conversations, the cooking for people, the hanging together don't work for me. They leave me empty. They don't happen naturally. They sometimes feel like obligations. They sometimes feel like charity. They happen so free and easy with others, and come so uncomfortably with me. I don't want to worry about it anymore.

I build routine in my life so that I don't have to worry about things. And my cave... that's just another routine.

Acronyms for the Acrimony

2011-12-09T12:07:00.001-05:00

Culture is all about texture. I've watched enough "Chopped" to know the judges will axe your Michelle-Bernstein-apprenticed ass if your dish doesn't have enough crunch to counter-balance the silkiness of a truly excellent sauce.

It's with this attitude that I have no problem admitting to watching professional wrestling. Don't judge me! I don't even offer perfectly true details to flesh out the admission -- it's not "must-see" programming for me... I'm more of a "watcher" than a "fan"... I fast-forward through entire sections. No. Why do I need to throw out these defensive sounding things when I am rather proud of the fact. Yes, I'm above the age of 13, my teeth aren't rotted from crytal meth, I'm well-educated, and I have slept with a girl... a looong time ago. None of that makes a difference. Wrestling isn't an ugly girl, and I'm not trying to tell my freinds, "But I was drunk, dude!"

My life has texture. I watch "Breaking Bad" and I watch wrestling. I watch "Burn Notice" and I watch UFC. I eat an occasional Wendy's burger, and buy an occasional prime grass-fed ribeye. Soemtimes I'll buy a bottle of Maker's, and sometimes a sixpack of Coors Light.

Anyway, I bring this all up to reference a particular chant that has been cracking me up. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) recently returned to the WWE and quickly wrapped the fans around his finger. He told a fellow wrestler that he was going to put "boots to asses." In the succeeding weeks, even when the Rock didn't appear, whenever that wrestler appeared, the fans would chant and clap, "Boots to Ass-es (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap) boots to ass-es (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)."

Yes, I'm 12.

I thought about this today when I encountered some annoying people at work. I walked away from the encounter happily chanting this to myself.

But the truth is, ass much as we all want to put boots to the asses of jackholes we meet or work with, sometimes it's not violence that gives us catharsis. Sometimes we want people to get a life. Sometimes we want them to find a clue. And we aren't the only ones. We know our colleagues feel the same way. But how do we communicate the hate without getting in trouble at work.

Acronyms for Acrimony.

Take all your hateful phrases and boil them down to acronyms you all can use -- and no one else can understand. Here are a few I'd really like to use at my job:

BTA

"Boots to asses" as described above. You're an asshole. You need to be beaten with a baton covered in that ranch dressing they use in the Taco Bell Baja Burrito.

RTS

"Remove the stick." Seriously. Get the fucking stick out of your ass. You're the person who closes your office door because people are having a conversation in the hallway. You walk past people without saying hello because you have sooo much on your mind. You don't know any of the songs or music people are talking about because you're "just not into that kind of stuff." And worse, you assume everyone is like you. I hope you get scarred in a grease fire.

RNI

"Really Not Important." You're really not that important. You walk fast everywhere. You stand around so stressed at the printer. You tell everyone you're daily schedule -- even people you don't work with. Any time you leave your office, you tell someone, "If anyone's looking for me..." We're not. No one is. I swear to you no one is. The next time someone is looking for you, it will be the first time. And it will be the hitman I hired to break your knee caps. You are the reason I will never run a company. Because my first policy will be that any time you mention your boyfriend, your husband, your wedding, your weekend plans, your kids, or the projects your working on to someone who doesn't give a shit, you will be beaten with a car antenna. And if I see a book with a wedding dress, a kid in a crib, or products from a home business, I will set it on fire and dance around it until you start crying and call your mother in the Hamptons saying, "I don't like my boss! He's too... ethnic!"

TSL

"Too Stupid to Live." The worst thing that ever happened was that we created an industrial world that is too safe. Why? Because back in the day, stupid people died. They got eaten by animals. They fell into the cotton gin. They associated with the wrong women in saloons, and days later parts of them started falling off. Those things don't happen now. And stupid people grow to full adulthood. And because their dad was somebody, or they have a nice smile, or they're mildly good-looking, they end up having jobs just like ours. Only they have the brain power of a waffle. The other day, a woman outside my office was trying to figure out if she was going to the right room for a meeting. There was only one meeting on her calendar for that time. It was sent by the right person. But the meeting didn't have a "subject." she stood debating with herself whether she should go back to her desk and call the person to confirm. Mind you, the meeting started two minutes ago, and the conference room was down the hall.

How about walking in, looking around, and seeing if it's the right meeting? Instead of standing outside my door asking everyone around you what they think you should do? I really want to take every dollar more than me that you make, put them into one of those tubes that blows them around with you inside, and then slowly fill it up with water. Toilet water. Toilet water from the set of "Mike & Molly." Right after craft services set out a spread of Taco Bell Baja Burritos.

I need help thinking of more. Communicate the Hate!

What More Can I Say?

2011-12-08T12:24:00.001-05:00

"What More Can I Say?" by Jay-Z is the new top song on my playlist, continuing my streak of getting into songs eight years late. But the title sums up my mood as of late. Life happens. What can you do about it? What more can you say to change things that you have no control of?

The hardest thing for people to learn is that talking does nothing to change the dynamic of personal relationships.

This flies against decades of conditioning. Tell me how you feel. Let's talk it out. Don't give me the silent treatment. Don't run from your problems... stay here and we'll figure it out together.

A steaming pile of post-Tijuana-water-drinking, rat-infested-Taco-Bell-take-out-eating horse shit.

When problems occur, people in relationships communicate to accomplish one of two things. I'm telling you something you did or do that either I don't like or made me feel bad. Or I'm telling you how I feel, how I'm dealing with it, or what I need from you.

Ultimately both of those scenarios come down to one word. Change. I'm asking the person to change something. Stop doing that. Say that differently. Do that more. Do that differently. Or I'm communicating that I need to change something about myself. But do you know how rarely people change? I mean truly change? The north side of NEVER.

I've written in this space before that people only really change as a result of dramatic events. Trauma, tragedy, loss. Life-altering occurrences are called "life-altering occurrences" for a reason. They cause a person to re-evaluate how he's doing things. They provide the impetus for change. We're not talking about becoming a vegan or switching from Irish whiskey to bourbon. Lifestyle is SO different than personality. I can experiment going off of red meat for a week and discover this wonderful world of fish stews and sushi and vegetable wraps that I never knew I would like. An asshole doesn't decide to be nice for a week and say, "Hey.... this isn't half bad."

Lifestyle is a change of clothes. Personality is etched in your face and body like tattoos. It can change, but it takes some serious laser treatment for it to happen.

Bottom line, a fight is not traumatic enough to make someone change. What happens when to people "talk it out" is that one person realizes (if you're lucky) the effect of their actions on the other. And then they reflect (if you're lucky) and possibly figure out why they act that way. And (God willing) they determine whether they consciously act that way, or if it just reflex -- something that they didn't even realize they did.

Here's where the complicated part comes in. And mind you, only Sir Edmund Hillary has gotten this far. Everyone fights. 30% of that "everyone" ends up talking it out. 15% reach the reflection stage. 8% try to figure out why they act that way. 2% honestly assess whether it's conscious or not. And half of a percent reach the top of Everest -- this complicated part. With not even a sherpa to help with the equipment.

Think about that. One out of 200 people in relationships (by my crude and pessimistic estimation) reach the point of even deciding whether or not they want to change something. Why are we in relationships again?? Seriously.

The complicated part. I have to decide whether or not I want to change this thing that has caused us to fight. Mind you, even if the person decides that "yes" they want to change this thing, they have to have the ability to change it. Two factors here. Desire and ability. Do you want to put Vegas odd on this one? They wouldn't put it on the board.

Why do think "I just thought he could change" is one of the biggest cliches in the history of romantic breakup story-telling. Writers can't even use it anymore. And there are 200 reasons for this. I won't go into them all, but some of them are patently obvious. We just conveniently forget them because baby-boomer parent upbringing wants us to believe talking can fix everything.

What's easier, ending the fight or commiting to change? Seriously folks. Bad fights last a couple of days at most. Some of the things people need to change in order to solve the problem are things they've been doing their entire lives. Even a well-intentioned person who tries to change will fail most of the time. And the bad-intentioned person changes just to shut the person up. But it sticks for an even shorter period of time.

Why can't she change instead? This one is varies from fair to selfish. A person will always wonder why the other person doesn't develop tougher skin, or not get so worked up about these things, or understand why I need to do this on weekends. Why do I have to be the person to change? And even for the well-intentioned person, this will lead to resentment.

Change versus being single. No one wants to break up. But when arguments keep happening, and in the end a person is faced with changing something about himself to make it work, the thought creeps in. Is being single so bad? If I have to change to make it work? Girls don't run into this as much because being single is anathema to them. So they wait until they have a relief pitcher identified before this thought even pops into their heads. Joking aside, if losing the person would really hurt you, you change. And why? Because it would fall into the category of trauma, tragedy, loss.

It's just the way I am. This one is complicated. Primarily because it's impossible to know whether it's true or not. There's a fine line between "this is the way I am... I don't even realize I do it" and "it's just what I really really really REALLY want to do." And most people treat those things interchangeably. Mostly because humans are inherently "me-first." That's not a criticism, it's just nature. The changes that people make when they decide to enter a relationship are based on self-sacrifice. But self-sacrifice always has a line that doesn't get crossed, despite what Bruno Mars says. And it ultimately is up to the person what falls on the "screw you" side of the sacrifice line. It could be a night out with the girls, cursing when I get mad, visiting your mom on weekends, or answering my calls when you're at work. So how do you determine when the person is full of shit? The difference between when they're saying "it's just the way I am" and when they have a conscious choice, but they -- without malice -- say "this is just what I want to do"? You can't. It's why people fight about the same things over and over and over again. Because from the outsiders view, we think the person has a choice. And they either won't admit it or they truly believe they can't change.

Why are they always concentrating on the bad things? This one has merit. But it's the bad things that need addressing. How often have we come back to a McDonald's to tell them that we enjoyed the McRib very much? But if the fries container is only half-full, we come back to the counter, dammit. The truth is, people express the joy of being with each other fairly regularly. The instances just aren't that memorable. Not like the typically tortuous conversations about why you're making me miserable.

Think about the times you've changed a personality thing about yourself. Lost friends. Lost a loved one. Lost a job. Went broke. Personal tragedy. Health problems. These are the things that spur us. "Our relationship would go better if you did this..." doesn't make the cut. And that's why relationships fail at a 98% clip. don't ask for my research. It all comes from the accounting firm of Schadenfraude, Bitter & Smug.

Table Scraps

2011-11-30T19:11:00.001-05:00

When I was ten years old, I had tickets to a Yankee game for the second time in the same summer. The first time, my mom's co-worker decided she wanted to take me to a day game. We even went early and watched batting practice. The lady didn't know me from Mike Pagliarulo. But I guess my mom told enough stories about her nerdy son that the lady decided to get me away from Transformer re-runs for an afternoon.

The second time, my sister's best friend got four tickets from somewhere. My mom had no interest in going. But my dad agreed to take us. My parents had been divorced for five or six years at that point. Dad kind of came and went in terms of visiting. But these days, he would drop by on his way home from work a couple of times a week. Mom didn't like him in the house, so we would usually come out front and sit in the yard and talk to him. He mostly talked to my sister -- it was easier to talk to a 13 year-old than a 10 year-old. And I think they enjoyed talking about movies and music and TV shows. While I was either going to talk about school, "G.I. Joe," or Star Wars.

So this particular day, me, my sis and her friend are all waiting in the front yard waiting for my dad to show up. He pulled up in his little white hatchback. We're practically jumping up and down with excitement. He walks over cautiously like, "What's going on?" The game. Holy crap! He totally forgot. He's thinking. It should be okay. He has to make a quick phone call, but we should be able to go.

He goes into the house, and we all load up into the car. I'm ten, so I have shotgun. We're talking about the game. My sister and her friend are teasing me. I turn around way too quickly to tell them to shut up, and BAM! My arm hits the rearview mirror, and it falls off. Right down into the gear shift. I've never been comfortable in my body. When I was thirteen, I was acting out a scene from The Karate Kid in a movie lobby, I swung my arm and knocked a dude's popcorn all over the ground. "If you weren't a little kid," he said. "I would kick your ass right now." I love the Bronx. Just two weeks ago, I was acting out the Jim Schwartz/Jim Harbaugh altercation for a co-worker, and slammed my elbow into the window of my boss's office. That's all to say, I'm used to situations like this.

But not with my dad. I wasn't afraid of him. Just afraid of him not liking me. He gets back to the car, sees the broken mirror, and asks me what the hell I was doing. He looks at it for a few minutes, not making eye contact with me. He finds krazy glue in the glove compartment, and has me hold one piece while he tries to fasten the other. I'm pretty meek at this point, even for a fat little nerdboy who'd never kissed a girl. He fastens it...wait... wait.... wait... it falls off. Nobody is talking. He sits there looking at it with his hand over his mouth. Finally, we go without it. 80% of the drive was on the highway, which really really sucked for the prospect of me not being the goat of the evening. Dad's driving. He's using the side mirror most of the time. Others he's looking over his right should. No one is talking. Except one time he tells me to be quiet (he has to concentrate). Only I wasn't talking. He also told me to be still.

I don't remember anything about the game. I don't remember the drive home. All I remember is dropping my sister's friend at her house. Because my dad cracked a joke. And I exhaled. I still didn't talk. I just finally relaxed.

If someone asked me to sum up my feelings about my dad when I was a kid, that story would do it. Because this was the time when I came to terms with our relationship -- what it had become. We had taken quite a trip over the years. From him obviously missing me and having me over for overnights. To realizing our differences and trying to relate. To the natural inertia of him preferring talking to my sister over this kid with whom he had nothing in common. By the day of the rearview mirror, it was the worst of all relationship dynamics. I spent more time wondering if I would get to see him than appreciating the time we spent together.

Read that again, and tell me if it sounds familiar. It's the worst relationship any of us have ever had. The "Table Scraps" relationship. The one where you're constantly preoccupied with when you're going to get anything at all. When you do, it's the most amazing thing you've ever had. But every encounter seems like it's over in a flash. And in the end, you "come down" from it like a crash. It's this euphoria that switches way to harshly and suddenly into missing. Then to questioning why it has to be this way.

Sometimes you beat yourself up for being needy or weak or clingy. If you're like me, you question why there isn't more in your life to occupy your mind.

And then the clock starts. The next text. The next email. The next drop by. The next call. It eventually comes. But did you have to text, call, email or drop by first? Probably. You usually do. It becomes this history inevitably becomes a valuation. Unavoidably. Three days go by without a word, so you finally text. You hear something back, but you can't help wondering... if I hadn't reached out, would three have become five? Seven?

The hardest thing to do in any relationship is avoiding projecting your own priorities onto someone else. Everyone prioritizes things differently, and you can't expect someone to perfectly match yours. The best you can do is talk to the person to understand their priorities and adjust your expectations accordingly. But things are not that cut and dry in the "Table Scraps" relationship. Human beings are relatively smart. Typically if you tell a person how something is going to be, and things unfold that way, the person may not necessarily be happy. But they knew what they were getting.

In a "Table Scraps" relationship, typically the words and the actions don't quite match. The person says how important you are. The person says they have plans for you. The person talks with an intensity that conveys how important you are. They explain all the elements affecting the texting, the calling the visits. And if you're a reasonable person... you understand. You repeat these things in your head. I'm important. We have plans coming up. I can feel how much I mean to her.

The first time days go by... you understand. You wish it were different, but... you understand.

The next time days go by... you understand. But you start to analyze. You do the thing you shouldn't do. You put yourself in the other person's shoes -- but with your own priorities. You think about your busy times, and how many times you could squeeze in some time to say hi. You apply your own formula to someone else's life, which never works.

The next time days go by... you don't understand. Last time, they knew you were frustrated. You're important, we have plans, you mean so much to me. And this is when things change. You begin to spend more time wondering when you will spend time with the person than appreciating and thinking about the good times you spend together.

The funny thing is that the other person in the "Table Scraps" relationship generally feels hurt by these conversations. They have incredible pressure on their lives and their time. And when they do get to spend time with you, they give you their everything.

All of this is true. "Table Scrappers" aren't bad people. If you think back to all of the people -- and most of us have more than one -- you've had this dynamic with, most of them are some of the coolest or some of the most fun people you've ever known. Because odds are these people are the life of the party. Or they're extremely giving. Or they always doing something. Or some combination of these things. They don't necessarily realize it -- but they are always giving their everything to someone. Or something.

And all that means is that when I got my piece of everything, maybe it was simply... my turn.

I got what was left over.

The other thing "Table Scrappers" don't realize -- when you finally make time for someone, that someone might evaluate what got a turn before me. It's like when you tell your boss you finally got to something you were supposed to do... even though it's late. The boss is going to ask what those things were. And with this relationships, it's almost a guarantee that there were times when there was a choice. They don't think there was, because they were busy. And that part you understand.

But there's a part that starts as acceptance, and slowly degrades to begrudging acceptance, and travels a long road to resentment.

Yes, sometimes when you reach out, they don't have time to talk. Or they worked hard that day and needed to crash. Or they were in the middle of something they couldn't pull themselves out of.

But you're there whenever that person wants. You're there when they drop by. You answer when they text. You're there whenever they want to call. And eventually you want to reassert some control over your life. You don't want to be available. You want to be busy. You want to be unavailable.

The problem with table scraps is that they are the remnants of a really good meal. If table scraps where the last remaining dust of pork rinds, we'd simply choose something else. But the people that end up in these relationships make the time you spend together spectacular. They want to sink into you. It's intense. You're the star. As good as their intentions are, this is unfair. For three reasons:

First, it makes separation harder. Second, they misunderstand spending time together -- thinking they can't give you any time unless they can devote it to you totally.

The third reason should be the "Table Scraps" credo. I'd rather have a plate of McDonald's than a fork-ful of ribeye steak. But the "Table Scrappers" take that decision out of our hands.

Humans are masters of deductive reasoning. If we see an end result, we try to find the sequence of events that led up to that end. And when we get table scraps, we try to piece together the why. And with the hundreds of thousands of individual moments that are packed into two or three days, and an individual decision available for each moment, the why doesn't always jive with "you're important... we have plans... you mean alot to me."

The Community of Problems

2011-11-29T11:35:00.001-05:00

We go to alot of dark places as human beings. The interesting thing is that those dark places usually have kernel of truth. Unless you're a serial killer. Or a Republican. It's like when you have a toothache. You feel like everything is wrong. It obviously isn't. It's just once small nerve among millions (billions?) in your body. But nothing is right with the world.

How is that any different than a "life" ache? One of those funky little things that co-opts my mood on any given Tuesday. The thing that I can't quite find the words to describe to my... wait... I don't have any friends :) The thing that sounds silly when I try to describe what set it off. "Well, let's see. This guy didn't agree with my foul call at basketball last night and..." Really? No bullshit?

And just like you feel like a little kid or a weakling for complaining too much about a toothache, there's a certain shame in admitting to even the people you trust that life is getting to you. That there are a collection of problems that are SO much more lightweight than the job market and bills and putting food in the cupboard (YES, it goes in the cupboard before it goes on the table, bitches. And yes, I'm under 55 and just used the word "cupboard").

But it's the collection of these issues... the community of problems that twirls us into a tailspin. Like germs multiplying in our bloodstream, a swarm of bees, or the Jonas Brothers, it's the way the problems work together and each play their individuals roles that sap your spirit and have you curled up singing Cat Stevens on a pile of laundry on a Friday night. Actually I think "Pile of Laundry on a Friday Night" is the title of a Cat Stevens song. I might be thinking of Van Morrison. ("Hey brown-eyed girl, stop that moondance and do my pile of laundry... on Friday Night!")

Like last night, my Jonas Brother Attack looked something like this...

Hit in the head hard at basketball.

Lost a game.

Knee felt tight.

Feeling overweight.

Got pushed in the chest.

Cursed out the dude who pushed me.

Lost another game.

Got pushed in back and tripped.

Refused help getting up from dude who tripped me.

Cursed out some dude telling me to act like a man.

Lost another game.

Walked home hating basketball.

Wishing I was in better shape.

Wishing my knee was healthy.

Feeling like I got bullied.

Thinking I get bullied in alot of places.

Thinking about my job.

Hating the people at my job.

Thinking there really isn't a job I want to do.

Thinking how hard it would be to pack up and leave.

Thinking I have now one to talk to about all of this.

Thinking about taking my grandmother to the doctor.

Wishing I had the mental energy to handle all this.

Wanting to go on a two year pub crawl across the country

That was all within about a two-hour period. While Nick Jonas was nibbling on my self-worth, Coby Jonas (I'm making these names up... I have no idea what the Jonas Brothers' names are) was speed-bagging my outlook for the future. This only works within the crazy framework of the human psyche. How do I know? Let's break it down. I went from being frustrated with a basketball game to thinking I hate playing basketball to thinking I let other people run my life to thinking I want to be Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

The difference between the human psyche and the real world is the difference between "Jonas" and "The Hardy Boy Mysteries." Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy are not. It's obvious that they are not, just as a basketball game and my outlook on life aren't related to each other. But once you get into the murky area of the human psyche, they become Miles and Mason Jonas -- indistinguishable from each other (and of confusing sexual orientation).

I have quoted a book several times on my blog by a psychology professor named Martin Seligman -- but it bears repeating. He says that people most often suffer from depression because they fall into a pattern of believing their problems to be permanent, pervasive and personal. That is the problems will never go away -- I have no control over them. There are problems in every facet of my life -- or the big problems affect every part of my life. And they are all my fault, due to something about me, ingrained in me that I can't change. Just re-reading that... Jesus, I don't even know what the problems are, and I'm depressed.

Attacking any one of those things brings a Obi-Wan-like image of Andy Dufresne into my head. When problems are permanent, pervasive and personal, you have no choice but to sit back and get pelted by life -- like the small monkey in the monkey cage getting dung flicked at him. But if any one of those things is not the case... you have hope.

I've argued before, the best medicine for just about anything that troubles the human soul is agency. Human nature is not passive. I see it on the streets of New York City every day. A mass of people standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. If there is the tiniest gap in the traffic, a 60 year-old woman goes dashing across the street. She's got places to be. Eight seconds later, the light changes and the rest of us walk across like Manhattan's best facsimile of human beings. But Granny had agency. And I laugh that she risked getting hit by a car for eight seconds. But as much as her risk-reward capabilities can be questioned, in a purely analytical sense she gained something by doing something.

Gain something by doing something. It's human nature. A bug is biting you, you slap at it. Something stinks in your house, you go rummaging around until you find it. You're neighbor is too loud, you pound on the wall. So it makes sense that when people are depressed, it's because they honestly believe that nothing they do will make a difference. They've lost the sense of their own agency. But they can do something. If my problems aren't permanent, I can ride them out until something changes. If my problems aren't pervasive, I can concentrate on the part of my life that bring me joy until the crap-part gets better. Or I can cut it out of my life completely and still be happy. If my problems aren't personal, I can trust that the outside forces pulling me down might just be bad luck. And I can change them. Or again, cut them out.

I know the agency word might piss off the Ron Pauls of the world... so let's piss them off further. If agency is the belief that you can do something, the other part is actually doing something. Let's call that "administration." We can have all the control in the world, but if we aren't inspired to get off our asses and change our own behaviors, nothing will change. Trust me, this is a lecture to myself. I have to remind myself of these things every day. Agency and Administration. Closer than Gil and Barry Jonas will ever me.

Piece of Pie

2011-05-27T15:49:00.001-04:00

It's staring me down

Wearing a crown of apathy

I'm standing around

Dressed like a clown

Don't know my name

You know where to find me

--"Piece of Pie," Stone Temple Pilots

Sometimes I think reading lyrics is like looking at a Rorschach test. Your interpretation of the lyrics is more a reflection of you than what the lyrics actually meant. Like R. Kelly would see this judgmental guy apathetically staring at him... for peeing on someone. O.J. Simpson would read it as "I've been your clown all these years, and that's how you see me. But none of you really cared until I committed a double-murd... wait, what?"

Apathy is one of my favorite words, because it takes the seemingly mundane feeling of "not caring" and hot wires it to a Hummers car battery. It gives it the power, the divisiveness, the vileness that "not caring" often deserves.

The nerd boy's coda from Star Wars, the warning to Luke Skywalker to conquer fear, says, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the Dark Side."

Well in my opinion "not caring" leads to "Not Caring," which leads to "I don't CARE!" which leads to "I really don't give a flying fuck!!!"

Let's explore these:

not caring = which toppings we get on the pizza

Not Caring = I'm sorry your husband's in the hospital, do you know my DVR didn't record the Grammy's last night!

I don't CARE = Okay, you're swamped today, but I'm not cutting my lunch hour short

I really don't give a flying fuck! = I've got more important things to do than listen to this bullshit today

And the next step is apathy, which equals Kitty Genovese. You know, the lady that was brutally killed over the course of an hour while people in an apartment building turned up their TVs and shut their windows to drown out her screams. Apathy is the worst shit out there. And it starts with the simplest of activities:

Prioritization

And in a non-work setting, prioritization is a slimmest breadth away from selfishness. It's like churning milk to make ice cream -- one minute too long, and you've got butter. Well, when we prioritize in our personal lives, there's always the danger that our priorities build a glass house that leaves someone else and their priorities on the outside.

So how does something as innocent as prioritization slip into this thing that I called horrible and vile. Mainly, it's because apathy is horrible and vile in its effects, not necessarily in it's actions. The kid who commits suicide because no one at school bothered to learn his name? If someone observed those kids, they were doing nothing more than going to games after school, going to parties on weekends, laughing on the bus. Those kids are genuinely surprised when they find out that kid felt left out. At some point, their priorities didn't leave room to get to know some weird kid. Who likes me? Am I wearing the right thing? I have to get good grades? Am I going to make the team? All of those things came before the kid.

And that's fine. We all do it. But there's a difference between getting to the phone too late to answer it, and actively ignoring the ring. And that's when priorities become embattled, human nature forces a little bit of selfishness. And without the slightest bit of malice, battle lines are drawn between what I want, enjoy, need, plan, or have time to do one one side -- and everything else on the other.

And part of me thinks that all of this is part of the aggression of human beings I spoke about in a previous post. Manifest Destiny was a weird theory early Americans used regarding Westward Expansion. These people back then believed it was God's Will that the U.S. would occupy all of the North American continent. It was kind of the colonistic version of "Nature abhors a vacuum." Except in this case, the continent wasn't empty, we were killing people and claiming their land as ours. But my point is this -- I think people fill their lives with whatever it is they have at hand. And for anything to squeeze in, it has to squeeze in by force. And typical force is emotion, hormones, or need.

So the person's life is filled to the brim with family and friends and work. There's no room for anything else. Examples of force would be reuniting with an old friend (emotions) falling in like with someone (hormones), moving back home to save money (need). Absent those "forces," the person would not willingly make room in their life. They wouldn't necessarily reject those things. They'd simply prioritize other things over them. Or not have time for them. The people who say "I don't have time to date" don't have the emotional or hormonal factors forcing them to.

In a nutshell, that's why I don't have friends. There a) aren't qualities innate in me that force people's hands, and b) I'm not aggressive enough to inject myself into people's lives.

The world doesn't react well to people who wait for people to like them. Your expected to reach out and grab your friends, and that's something that doesn't really work for me. I wrote a post that I never published where I lambasted the people who call me friend for being phonies. I believe the section was called "Don't Piss on My Head and Say It's Raining." Here's a clip:

You can call me friend all you want. Do you grab me for lunch? Do you call me when you're going for coffee? Do you check in with me to say "what's up" or do I have to do it? Have you ever initiated something to hang out? Have you ever invited me anywhere?

I had a work "friend" who I talked to A LOT. One morning, she runs into me in the lobby and chit chats. Another muckity-muck comes walking in, and she literally turns and starts walking toward him while I'm in mid-sentence.

And I love the animation I see sometimes with people who call me a friend. They talk to me like they're in a dentist's chair. And someone else comes in and they act like he's fucking David Cassidy circa 1977. Guess what? That's allowed. Just have the courtesy to let me know that you're just killing time with me.

So bottom line, if you just need me to keep you entertained during boring times when a) your real friends, and b) cool people you'd rather hang out with aren't around, then call me an acquaintance and then I get to decide how much energy to put into a worthless endeavor. But just be honest.

The friend that I have had the longest -- running on 23 years -- has had at least three friendships since I've known him that he's described as "special." I've seen every one. It's this effusive, emotive, almost giddy connection. And it's weird to sit with someone you've known for 10, 15, 20 years and have them tell you about trips and stories and all these special times. To actually see a person's face light up. I remember when this buddy was in college. He showed me pictures of times when other friends visited him and parties, drinking, all sorts of craziness.

I visited him... and I helped his friend move. Seriously.

So I'm not going to be like the woman who says, "I date crappy guys. None of them are affectionate." If it keeps happening, at some point, it's either you or your judgment. So it may be my half of the friend equation that sucks. But either way, it sucks. Is it my fault or my "friends" fault that I broke up with my girlfriend four months ago, and not a single one of them asks me about it? Is it my fault or my "friends" fault that if I don't reach out to them, I don't talk to them for days? I keep hearing assurances otherwise, but facts are facts.

And I'm so freaking tired of being this person who can't get out of the rut of being down because I feel every single day that people aren't choosing me. And it's human nature to simply say, "If you aren't choosing me, FUCK ALL OF YOU."

And people who aren't in this situation will never understand the conflict of hating people for not choosing you while hoping they will change their mind. They won't understand that you can't survive with any sense of self-esteem unless you force yourself to disrespect everyone around you, because if you don't, it means they're right and you're not worthy to be their friend.

I wrote another part of the post I didn't publish, and it kind of unites the two ideas I have been exploring here. The section was called "Look Below the Surface." Here's a clip:

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that part of the reason I don't have more friends is because I expect too much. And here's a perfect example. I expect people who care about me to know that I'm fucked up. No, not like a girl expects her boyfriend to know she's sad before she tells him. I just expect people to put things in context. And my context is that:

-One person in the entire world loves me

-I have been repeatedly abandoned and or used by people I had no choice but to trust

-I went through a period (age 10 to 17) where neither friends nor family wanted to spend time with me

-Spending time with family only meant fights, discoveries of things I did NOT want to know (like crime and drugs)

All this shit made me rely on myself. I remember when I was 14 and 15, my happiest time was taking a 40 minute bus ride to a comic book shop in New Rochelle. They would save comics in a file for me, so I only had to go once a month. I would save my money, buy my comics, and get a turkey hero and a soda from a deli. And then I would lie on the living room floor (which was coincidentally my bed at the time) and read for hours. My favorite childhood memories hands down was that one day a month. Too many friends could take me or leave me any given day depending on if there was something more fun to do. More on this in a second.

My point is this... if you have a friend who is divorced, was on drugs, was abused... any of those things, you curb what you say around that person. You condition yourself to treat them a little differently than other friends. You look below the surface. Yes, Doug is perfectly happy today. But below the surface, he has memories shooting up. I won't say anything about how I think all addicts are just weak.

So why don't people seem to act that way with me. Even the people who know that I grew up poor with two addict parents and barely anyone to count on. That I was left alone for days at a time. That even when I wasn't alone, I wasn't the kid everyone wanted to talk to. I grew up thinking I wasn't worth shit except the brain I had in my head, and what it would do for me someday. So how is it that now, the people that purport to be my friends tell me that I think I'm hot shit. Or that I love myself. Is the fact that I'm trying to hold it together every day fooling people into thinking I'm conceited or arrogant? I really don't get it. I don't think it's really that hard. But I guess it is.

People honestly don't realize I'm holding it together. Barely. Every day. And I can't tell whether I'm a hell of an actor, or if it's apathy. In a part of that post I won't copy over, I said that I honestly don't care if I wake up tomorrow. And I've felt that way for over 12 years. If someone told me today at 4 p.m. that I would go to sleep tonight and not wake up, I would have no reaction whatsoever. There's just not enough here. There isn't the grist of value put forth from others that tells me to keep this shit going. That this is why I'm here.

And maybe I'm just tuned differently. Maybe I see things that other people don't. That people turn on you on a dime after you get close to them. And maybe I have been conditioned not to count on people because in a moment they will take that thing away that you counted on. I grew up counting on people for food. And they left me hungry for days. I counted on people for safety. And one night she made me hide a gun for someone. I counted on people for caring. And they ignored me for years. I counted on them for security. And she stole Christmas money from me. I counted on them for shelter, and I slept on the living room floor for years. I counted on them for self-worth, and even the best of them treated me as an afterthought.

So in the end, I don't count on things that I can't put my hands on. Odds are I'll be disappointed.

Universal Slap

2011-05-10T13:07:00.001-04:00

Seventeen years ago (wait... what??) Jules from Pulp Fiction introduced us heathens to the verse from the Book of Ezekiel, quoting God's intention to "... strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers."

But really. How much striking, vengeance and anger do we see that we could truly say was in the cause of justice? Missing children, war, terrorism, murder. An average person need only pay attention to know that horrible things go unanswered on a minute by minute basis. There's a reason a concept like heaven exists -- and that it plays such prominent role in the New Testament of the Christian bible versus the Old Testament.

The Old Testament was about "closing." So sayeth Glengarry Glenross chapter 5, verse 17. The history of the Old Testament was taking people of disparate faiths and getting on the same ship (excuse the reference, Noah). And to sell them on that, they needed to know immediate benefit. Believe in Him, and He'll save you from the flood. Believe in Him, and you'll be taken to the Land of Milk and Honey. Don't believe in him, and some pretty bad things will happen, (see Locusts, Plague of; Salt, Pillar of).

But when the New Testament rolls around, all the rewards seem somehow harder to put your fingers on. Suddenly, you're following His rules for the prizes "in the next life." Sure, you get some free bread on the hillside when you thought you had none. And the wine is flowing at the wedding when you thought you'd run out. That ain't exactly freedom from hundreds of years of slavery. There's nothing wrong with that. The message is different. You're not following the commandments because something good will happen for you next week. It's because it's what you're supposed to do -- and if you do, everything will turn out good in the end... and maybe forever.

That's why the New Testament is kind of like the "re-up" sale. We already got you, we just wanna lock you in for a few more years. But the problem with this sale is that it takes more faith. And the text admits this. You're not being good because a pack of wolves will carry you away in the night for straying. You're being good because that's what you would want others to do in return. And if everyone does it, then just mayb we can all live somewhat happy now, and truly happy for eternity. That would be nice.

But also totally unrealistic. So in the real world, you have some people trying, some people actively pissing on the principle, and the vast majority really not caring much either way. The thing about the Golden Rule -- a close derivative of a verse referenced in the Sermon on the Mount -- is that it plays off of the social structure in which it's user resides. The Golden Rule is beautiful when someone applies it to people in general. But when you start to draw sharper and sharper lines between "us" and "them," you fight tooth and nail for the well-being of those inside the circle -- sometimes at the expense of those outside the circle. It warps your sense of cosmic justice. Everyone thinks it's fine to "do unto the people I care about." Which is fine. But they also reap the benefits from the people who are doing unto a wider circle.

All that is to say, there is no immediate reward. And there is no immediate punishment. It used to be you could believe in the Cosmic Smite. The Sword of Damacles. The Rain of Fiery Vengeance. What happened to all that? The world is rejoicing the gunshots of a Special Forces team. I would have much rather seen Osama's skin melting into molten goop like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And how about Charlie Manson getting attacked by a shower of flesh-eating frogs -- dropping from this six-foot cloud that followed only him around? Can't we get COSMIC justice.

But this burns me on a deeper level. I want to see people get theirs for the smallest smites they perform on a daily basis without even thinking twice. People need to be punished for being DICKS. Think about it. Do you think your asshole co-worker will ever stop talking behind your back about the crappy job you're doing? Because she might not go to heaven someday?? No. She needs to be smited.

In better days -- well, maybe not better for me... I am black after all -- people who acted like douches got punched in the mouth. People who acted disrespectfully got slapped. But people are fearless and brazen these days because there is no fear. There are no repercussions for being an asshole. And since slapping these people myself would make them the victim (instead of me), why can't there be a Universal Slap?

Shakespeare foretold of the Universal Slap in Sonnet LXXII:

That temperament in me thou hast enjoined

Which mimicks having all God's grace purloined

In fonder days mine patience won the day

But on this morn thou hast chasened that away

Thine voice much like two swords in dangerous dance

Doth pierce mine brain and leave nothing to chance

I concentrate mine will to not be crass

But seven ways to Sunday, thou art an ass

I wish thou were consumed in nature's maw

But short of that, I'd punch you in the jaw

For where such times I put up with thine crap

I pray the heavens hear mine pliant plea

And once they see thou art a flaming "C"

Fate sets thy face ablaze with karma's slap

I totally buy into this. And bear with me. I think you will to. God, in all his graciousness, should simply build a "SLAP" into nature. When you do some utterly, totally asshole move, the wind wells up around you and "SLAP!" Right across the face. We can make this fair, people. If you get more change than you were supposed to at the supermarket and don't say anything? You might get a litle slap. Joe Pesci to Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.

You nudge an old lady to get into the subway? You might get a Nic Cage in Moonstruck for that one.

You talk down to someone and make them feel bad? Show no regard to someone's feelings? Walk all over someone just because you can? Act a little snotty and demeaning? How about Sonny giving Connie's husband Carlo multiple backhands in The Godfather?

And the beauty of it is that there would be a frequent flyer program. With every six or seven slaps, you get one free. And not one right after the other. You'd get the one for what you did, and then in the tradition of the "How I Met Your Mother" slap-bet, you'd have to live in fear for when the second one would come.

If there is good in the universe, this will happen.

Conspicuous by Your Absinth

2011-05-04T11:22:00.001-04:00

It astounds me that the alcohol hookup has traveled to such a dark place in America's psyche. There is a justifiable classification for time when the combination of alcohol and sex is a crime and should be treated as such. I unfortunately grew up at a time when crimes like this were at the forefront, and learned such lessons during my first year in college as, "It doesn't matter if she says 'yes.' If she's drunk when she agrees, it's still a crime!"

Well okay. I will now set my dick on fire.

So I spent the majority of my college years gauging whether or not I was going to get some, and switching her off to cranberry juice if it seemed I had a shot. Wait, I was a nerd in college -- all I had was cranberry juice.

Think about the way college kids socialize. Every buzzed encounter with a girl was a potential Lifetime Original Movie. And they did their job. They scared a whole generation of kids straight. Except the generation that came after me snapped back in the other direction. These kids really don't give a shit. I saw it when I visited my college campus not five years after I graduated. My girlfriend at the time described the different combinations in which her group of friends had hooked up. And, yes -- it was possible that the nerd was blinded to what happened on my campus during my years. But I don't think that all the Lisa Loebs in three layers of turtleneck were having "key parties" like these kids were. I went to school with Winona Ryder in flannel and Doc Martens. She was going to school with Britney wearing jeans with the waistline just below a faint line of stubble.

Yeah, I curse my generation for making the hook up such a mark of shame. Every TV movie was about the guy who didn't call back, the guy who got you drunk, the one night stand that turned into unwanted parenthood. Between Magic Johnson, Planned Parenthood, Cameron Crowe and Tipper Gore, I had no shot of getting laid. But somehow in the intervening years, hooking up changed from "What happened to meeeeeeeee?" to "Giiiiirl, what did you do?"

But still, unless your name is Samantha and you love shoes, it is the stuff for kids. And adults look at it with public disdain and private repression. There's a certain hypocrisy to it all. Let's take a look at the list of people who disapprove of a casual, occasionally drunken bout of bumping uglies:

Parents of teenagers

Any woman over the age of 28

Unattractive married people

Any woman who has never had an orgasm

Now let's take a look at the people who have no problem with the drunken hookup:

Guys of any age

Any girl born after 1983

Any woman recently liberated from her asshole husband

It's the last one that gets me. A woman will sit in a restaurant with her friends and sneer at the 20-somethings across the bar having a ball and picking out the guy to go home with. But as soon as she splits from The Asshole and starts doing the same thing? Well... it's what she deserves. Nevermind that everyone should just take the sticks out of their asses and admit that there's nothing wrong with it to begin with.

From a social standpoint, male-female interaction has alot of factors and alot of products. The factors will take us all day to discuss. But the products generally fall into a few broad categories. Some effect on self esteem and self worth. Some effect on demeanor. Some effect on one's sense of security. And some effect on the body and the body's reactions. Different male-female interactions affect different things. If you have a lunch-time taco with a cute married guy from work, you don't expect it to affect your sense of security. But it might affect your bodily reactions and your sense of self worth. If your husband takes you out to dinner to celebrate a promotion, your sense of security? Yes. Your body and bodily reactions? I guess it depends on how much of a raise he got (Yes, I said it! I went there!)

What people do with situations that don't fit neatly into accepted social standards -- and the drunken hookup doesn't -- is they try to shoehorn the accepted social standard, like Cinderella's ugly sisters trying to fit in the wrong slipper. So accepted social standards for a woman in the post-early-90's is that body and bodily reactions HAVE to be attached to one of the other standard criteria -- especially when sex is involved. So if you had sex, your "Mr. Magorium's Creamatorium" experience better have a dab of self-worth and/or a smidgen of security with it. Staying the night to spoon? Calling the next day? Saying that he really likes you? Saying that this is something more than a hookup?80% of the time a girl doesn't even want this from the crap-ass guy she hooked up with. But if one of those things don't fit, the whole thing was wrong.

I went home with a girl one time, both buzzed, and nothing happened but a little making out. But none of the socially accepted categories would fit. She had a boyfriend, so she didn't want any security from me. And she had all the self esteem in the world, so I wasn't going to affect that. So what happens? She out of the blue accuses me of doing this all the time, starts polling our friends to find out how many of them I hooked up with (the answer was zero). But in the absence of something acceptable by society's unrealistic standards, obviously I had to have done something wrong. Mainly because, as the one feeling guilty, she was the wronged party.

So in the end, the "pariah" status of the drunken hookup owes itself to a dark period of six years in the late 80's and early 90's when casual sex became as hard as the veins in Courtney Love's forearms. And even as it occurs with more and more frequency -- owing to young people ("No... fuck you, dad!"), "Jersey Shore," and cougars (of either the SATC or MILF variety) -- there's still a mark of shame that goes along with it. Or at least, you just don't advertise it. My question is, what's the big deal. There were days where you went to the bar or the club, and you were 75% sure you were going to leave with somebody. Somebody. There were days when you and your friends had to quickly brief before sealing the deal -- because you wanted to make sure that whoever you were with hadn't been with one of your friends... recently :)

But those days are gone. And in their place is a weird world where tons of people do it, few people talk about it, and the aftermath of most experiences isn't going separate ways -- but rather show 10x more respect to your hookup than you would to an actual girlfriend. Seriously. You walk around the days after a hookup like the kid from "The Hurt Locker." And that job might be slightly more thankful.

OMG... Your Hipster Hat Just Gave Me a Seizure

2011-05-03T17:07:00.001-04:00

I don't make friends easily. In fact, it's like forging steel from the simpler elements. It takes stages and massive amounts of energy -- and typically 70% into the process, there's some irreparable flaw that makes you melt down and start over. I've considered dozens of reasons for this, ranging from me being shy to me being an asshole; from people sucking in general to people simply sucking the life out of me.

How does someone even consider this subject without "something's wrong with me" climbing to the top of the list. Even the most egomaniacal person would have this idea floating on his shoulder whispering bitter somethings in his ear. And I have alot of time to think, so this option was like the news radio 10-minute updates of hell. But humans are nothing if not resilient -- especially when bouncing back to forcefully and bitterly reprising the role of the victim. It's not me, it's you.

Where do these conflicting points of view meet?

You suck, but if I were a better person I'd be able to deal with it.

That's the answer I came up with talking to a friend the other day. And I can't seem to put a dent in it. I know my flaws. I'm impatient. I hold grudges. I hate people who put any importance in being cool, trendy, hip -- even worse if they do so and refuse to admit it. And I have no tolerance for stupid people who think they're smart (while the "just plain stupid" are perfectly fine... as 3rd Bass said in the classic 80's rap "Sons of 3rd Bass, "He is stupid, but he knows that he is stupid. And that almost makes him smart.")

Let me stress something, because it is important to the overall conversation. I despise these things. And I say "despise" much like Newman in "Seinfeld" expressing his feelings for Keith Hernandez. This is important because lots of people dislike the things I listed. Or are annoyed by them. Or prefer people who don't display those characteristics. All of those people -- who aren't me -- allow room for error. It's like a peanut allergy. Some people dislike peanut butter. That means that if your co-worker wants to enjoy a PB and J at the cafeteria table, you'll sit next to him, maybe wince once in a while when you inhale too deeply. But you're still in the picture. If you have a peanut allergy, you won't ride in the same airplane as a single peanut product.

So to me, anyone who says, "O... M... G...," with (yes!) only the letters and with the appropriate ridiculous pauses in between should have federal regulations preventing them from being on the same Boeing 727 as me. I am allergic to these people. And much as the peanut allergy person doesn't give Peter Pan another chance after the first trip to the hospital, I run from the hip, the stupid, the trendy, the insipid, the "too cool for school" like they are the Black Plague. Even if I have enjoyed good times with these folks, the die is cast. I am on one side of the Rubicon river, they are on the other, and burning mounds of salt-free Mr. Peanut are piled up at the banks between.

It seems like other people are better than me. Others give people another chance. Others compartmentalize. They are able to say, "This person does one thing that annoys me, but otherwise she's cool." Others put things in perspective. They say, "What does it matter that this person interrupts people with wrong information all the time. They're fun otherwise." I just don't have that gene.

And given the number of truly annoying people out there, I'm the lonelier for it.

People I know and like and respect come to me sometimes talking about people I can't stand. They tell me how funny the person is. Or how cool. They invite the people to lunch or to go shopping. Sometimes they end up closer to the people I can't deal with than they are to me. And that's the part that throws the whole complicated process into question. It's what tilts this precariously balanced pitch of victim toward the yaw of instigator.

You have to actively try to dislike someone. You have to take an action to reject. And rejection is one of those actions that is very different from one climate to another. You can reject a piece of food or a piece of furniture because you simply don't like it. It's going into your body or your home and assaulting your senses in a way that offends you. It usually doesn't go much deeper than that. But in the social construct, you have more choices than that. You have the option to simply not give a fuck.

Food is either in your mouth or out of your mouth. Furniture is in your living room or not. Friendships and acquaintances have so many degrees that you can have someone in your life at some level that you never really see quirks or habits that annoy the shit out of you. And that's what millions of people do every day. They find the right spot for their friends so that you don't bug the crap out of me.

And the expectation that a friend won't have any of these idiosyncracies is an unrealistic expectation. It's the equivalent of a pain-in-the-ass Gen Y girl hitting the bar scene trying to find McDreamy, McSteamy, McCreamy or whatever other TV character she vibrates to at night. Friends suck to various degrees, but they are still our friends. And the person who rejects people with flaws -- even horrifically annoying ones -- are probably doing so for a different reason.

When you reject, you are the instigator, which means, by definition, you are the one initiating the action. And in social situations, most actions are about making good things happen and protecting yourself and the people you care about by preventing bad things from happening. So in this case, is the rejection an action of defense? The too cool for school people, the hip people, the overly confident stupid people. Maybe I want to reject them before they can even get a sniff of rejecting me. And the power I never had a kid, when very few people wanted to be my friend, I have it now... in a very strange "I Am Legend" kind of way. I've always wondered why I make very few guy friends, and part of me thinks it's because bravado and confidence triggers the rejection action and reaction. Behind every hip, cool, confident layer is an added quotient of "Who needs you?" whispered at me before I even consider whether I need them. And with that, any chance is gone.

Gone before it even started.

Hero and Heroine

2010-08-26T15:52:00.001-04:00

I wrote a long time ago that many of modern society's quirks can be traced back to the gradual development of a less dangerous world. Sure, we still have predators, elements, and have-nots. But to a modern person in the first world, none of those dangers play a part in our lives to anywhere near the degree they did even 100 years ago. The violence, hunger and weather that kill people in less developed countries today used to kill people in the United States on a regular basis.

It's always amazing how a culture reacts when a key component of its "ecosystem" is removed. We don't ask the question quite the same way about the Spotted Owl. We wonder if the owl will suddenly multiply, and now suddenly the Field Mouse will face extinction. But culture? That's a human thing. And I think that was my point when I wrote my previous piece. The lack of adrenalin-fueled reactions to everyday dangers forced human beings to inject danger and competition into other parts of their lives. From spicy food to Fear Factor. From corporate league sports to Ultimate Fighting. From office politics to Gordon Gecco. Most Americans don't fight for survival anymore, so they create "survival" scenarios in everyday life.

All of this got me to thinking about "Eat, Pray, Love." Really. "Eat, Pray, Love?"

Yeah, I'm not sure why either. But let's explore this for a while. First a disclaimer. I have never read the book. And I almost certainly will not see the movie. But I think I get the gist. Woman in crisis. Woman escapes to figure out what it all means. Woman finds all sorts of things she didn't know about herself and the world. Woman becomes enthralled by something alluring and new. Woman discovers the alluring, new thing is just a bundle of new crises waiting to happen. Woman discovers strength she never knew she had -- a "hero within" so to speak -- and overcomes this new familiar crisis.

What does all of this have to do with human ecosystem and cultural changes? First let's come to some sort of agreement on the term "cultural paradigm." For the sake of this writing, let's just call it a belief or a theme that has its roots in the inner workings of our social structure, drawing from some integral part of human nature, and extending out to the visible displays of culture -- such as family structures, religion, and the creative arts. There are hundreds of these. Monogamy, patriarchy, love. They all have a basis in a concrete human characteristic or trait, which in turn led to some sort of social structure, which in turn led to some form of cultural expression.

So when I talk about a change in the "ecosystem," what do I mean? Let's take the components one by one. Human nature is the only constant here. It doesn't change, no matter what Michael Jackson says. Displays of culture? They change like the wind based on likes and dislikes, excitement and boredom. Though every once in a while we see trends that lead us to believe something broader is driving the changes. Now social structures... this is where we see Mrs. O'Leary's cow in a gas refinery.

No social structure is perfect. One of the key reasons is that it commonly comes in the form of hierarchies and roles -- and humans are never completely satisfied with either. But social structures are perfect in one way -- the ones that endure for more than a blink of an eye tend to be perfectly BALANCED. Balanced in the sense that when you take one element away, something immediately attempts to fill the void -- even if imperfectly. Just like an ecosystem. You take the natural predator of an animal away, and another formerly weaker predator that never had enough food suddenly dominates. Or the former prey multiplies and becomes dominant.

How does "Eat, Pray, Love" represent a classic case of an ecosystem change? Well, to me the answer is in the difference between heroines over the ages. From Madame Bovary to Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse to Theresa Dunn in Looking for Mr. Goodbar to any of the heroines in Waiting for Stella to Exhale Tuscan Green Tomatoes Under Fried Magnolias.

The cultural paradigm moved like so:

-Woman not free. Cognizant that there is something more. Yearning, not sure for what. Confused. Man is both hero and tyrant. Temptation and savior. Only escape is death.

-Woman not free. But strong in her world and her role. Can see what she could be. Tangible feeling of being trapped. Man is both hero and rival.

-Woman is free. This new found sense of empowerment over what she can be and do. But feels both thrill and fear of new dangers. Man is in turn pleasure and predator in this new world. The hero of the old world almost gets lost in background -- a spectator.

-Finally, woman owns her own personal sphere. But worn from confusion and negotiation of roles with man.

Cultural depictions with women at the center -- unless it's Angelina Jolie -- tend to portray the person putting it all back together. In the olden days, the damsel was in distress and the heroic male swooped in and saved her. In modern stories, the woman is in distress, and she literally swoops in and saves herself!

Worse than that, there's always a depiction of a guy who appears to be the breath of fresh air at just the right time. Hero, maybe? Of course not. He ends up being the new crises. Just as she was discovering that there are good things out there after Crisis #1, this dude comes in all shiny and nice, and BAM! He turns out to be Crisis #2. Let's call him "Brad," because the Brad Pitt character in Thelma and Louise was the first time I noticed this character. Folks, there's a Brad in every one of these stories. Every one.

And the cultural paradigm, the theme that's ringing through from the core of these stories is pretty clear. Women are strong enough to rely on themselves. But the depiction is interesting as well. It actually shows an ecosystem at work. Both Crisis #1 (usually at the beginning of the story or before the story takes place) and the lure of Crisis #2 show the effect of the male-female social structure when the role of the "patriarchal" male is removed. It's the familiar theme of women finding identity. In the 70's there was a revelry in it. Yes, indeed you can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. But which do you want to do? And how often? And will he still love you depending on which one you do? And what if everything you read and see says that being a woman is the "frying"? How do you feel about yourself if you just want to bring it home?

Is anyone following this?

I guess my point is that for all the empowerment we see at the end of these stories, the "shattering" of the world rings so much louder to me. The fragile ecosystem of a social structure we live in now where women are both the hero and the heroine. I feel for you guys.

Que Sera Sera

2009-07-09T16:20:00.001-04:00

I'm curious to know how many people can separate the fear of death and the fear of dying. I can. I don't fear death, but I fear dying.

I would not like to get jumped in my apartment, get hit by a car, or pass violently away in a hospital bed with some I.V. drip doing a half-assed job of keeping the pain at bay.

On the flip side, I have absolutely no issues with there being no tomorrow. Some people freak out at that idea. Whether it be a sadness over not seeing kids grow up or not fulfilling dreams of having a house or visiting Paris -- or whether it's simply not enjoying the next happy hour with friends. Some people simply enjoy major chinks of every day.

I do not.

Now, mind you -- before you go combining the powers of Google Earth and Emergency Services -- I have zero inclination to harm myself. I have never considered it for an instant. But if fate played me some Donnie Darko card and something heavy fell on my in my sleep, I wouldn't be cursing God as my cartoon spirit floated into the air. Nor would I dang the fates if by some miracle Sully Sullenberger guided it safely past me, and I got to live another day.

It's a weird place to be. I don't hate my life. And I'm not depressed. I used to be in a major funk for the better part of two years, so I know the difference. So no, I'm not huddled in the corner singing Jim Croce. Right now I'm just... apathetic.

The best analogy I could use is a steady diet of pizza. If suddenly you were sentenced -- in some Judge Dredd type of legal system -- to eating nothing but pizza for the rest of your life, your reaction would be complex. Your first thought would be, "That totally sucks!" But as you resigned yourself to the fact that you had no choice, you would muddle through for the first few days. Maybe even weeks. And when it finally got to you, it wouldn't be some sort of Jack in The Shining kind of rampage outburst. It would more likely be this steady building seething underneath. Pizza every day isn't your world falling apart. That leads to the Croce songs. Pizza every day is a slow grind. It's a daily dose of "not quite what I want."

Andit starts to seethe hotter in certain moments -- like right before dinner time when you make connections. You're not looking forward to pizza, and you can't think of a single moment when you won't be eating it. And those are the moments when you still fear dying, but death doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

Prospect and agency are two powerful forces in maintaining a healthy human psyche. What are my prospects? What will little checkpoints in my future be like? Will they be what I want? That's what creates the desire for me to wake up the next day. Sometimes it even creates a hunger -- I can't wait until (some day in the future)!

And if those prospects don't exist, if I feel in sufficient control of my life, I can change things to create those prospects.

This is all gobbledy-gook talk for one simple word. Hope. But I think "hope" has become such a watered down word that we swallow it whole without recognizing its components. We sing "high hopes," and we imitate Jesse saying "keep hope ALIVE!" But there's a logic behind it. People have goals and milestones that drive them. And when they don't have them, they try to create them.

And the logical people who realize they can't create them? Well, they make hard decisions. Sometimes life will never be what you want it to be. And you don't lash out. You don't write poetry. And you don't hurl yourself onto train tracks. You just "wash, rinse and repeat." you go through the necessary motions so you don't make it worse. And if sleep comes one night with a capital "S," it's really no big deal.

I slipped one time and told a friend that I had no idea what the big deal was with death. That I had no problem not waking up tomorrow. And she cried. That was four years ago -- and since then I have never repeated that sentiment to anyone. Her reaction still confuses me. I understand it, I just would expect it to slowly morph from sadness to "I get it" within a matter of moments. And I guess that's a sign of how I feel about this whole thing. It's like trying to describe the color blue. Either someone sees the color or they don't. And if someone came to me one day and told me the world isn't like this, it would be like someone trying to convince you that what you've been calling blue you're entire life is really called "red."

In the end, it really isn't that big of a deal. To me, it's like "The X-Files" getting canceled. If something ends that you really aren't enjoying anymore, is it really all that tragic?

So maybe there should be something called Que Sera Sera Syndrome. Because whichever way things go, I'll react with just about the same enthusiasm.

Dude...

2009-04-01T14:44:00.001-04:00

Okay... not sure why reading this made me really kinda sad. Guess I rarely see this happen for shows and actors I'm such a big fan of.

Coolest Characters I Can Think Of (TV and Movies)

2009-03-16T16:53:00.001-04:00

Jules, Pulp Fiction

Michael Westen, "Burn Notice"

DeNiro's Character, Heat (I dare anyone to pretend they knew his name)

Sawyer, "Lost"

Sandy Cohen, "The O.C."

Barney Miller, Barney Miller

Gil Grissom, "C.S.I."

Thomas Magnum, "Magnum P.I."

Quincy, "Quincy, M.E."

Colonel McQueen, "Space: Above and Beyond"

Assistant Director Skinner, "The X-Files"

Dean Winchester, "Supernatural"

Doc McCoy, The Getaway

Jack Walsh, Midnight Run

John McLane, Die Hard

Snake Eyes, "G.I. Joe" Cartoon

Bruce Lee's Character, Enter the Dragon

Stringer Bell, "The Wire"

Omar, "The Wire"

Bill McNeil, "News Radio"

Ambassador Kosh, "Babylon 5"

Mal Reynolds, "Firefly"

Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Red Foreman, "That 70's Show"

Sibling Rivalry

2009-03-12T15:46:00.001-04:00

I've made an amazing realization. I've always been confused with my pretty decrepit emotional state. It always seemed to fit with the stereotype of a middle child. Looking for a voice. Always needing a better friend than the ones I have. Only... my parents had two kids, and I'm the younger. But here's the thing...

If my parents are the babies, doesn't that make me the middle child?

Doubt

2009-03-11T10:38:00.001-04:00

I have doubts.

And I'm glad of that. I rarely speak with anything approaching 100% certainty. And the reason is simple. The world just isn't built that way.

Put concisely -- we're on this planet for 85 years. In the gillion years of the universe's existence, what have we learned to make us speak in any sort of absolutes? Even if we take in reams of knowledge from thousands of years of human learning, it's a drop in the bucket of understanding anything.

I can speak with certainty that there's a gravitational pull from the center of the Earth. And if I drop something from a height, it will accelerate at a rate of 10 miles per hour for every... I don't remember this stuff. But if I remembered, I could say it with certainty right now. But 500 years from now, who's to say some scientist won't debunk all that the same way Copernicus proved the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. Alot of people were pretty darn sure it was.

Now I believe in being single-minded. And when I'm a soldier, a hostage negotiator, a parent defending his kids, or a community organizer, I'll work really hard to flip that switch on my single-mindedness.

In the meantime, I just want to chill. I like asking questions. I like expressing doubt and having people tell me things that inform the the way I'm thinking -- either changing it or making my beliefs stronger. I think that life is a constant path of learning of more than facts and issues. But also of tendencies and contexts and effects. It's about layers. It's about ultimately disagreeing with someone or something -- while admitting that you agree on 40% of the issue.

It's tough. But it's what allows me to sleep at night. The simple knowledge that I don't have to be in charge of absolutes. It's like a simple relinquishing of control. I don't have to understand this world enough to make statements with a big bold period at the end. I just have to learn a little bit more every day and encourage the conversations that will help me.

In the Mix

2009-03-06T11:42:00.001-05:00

I was confused as hell when I first started watching the Food Network 13 or 14 years ago. These weird people on these low-rent sets kept saying all these weird things about cooking that I'd never heard before. Salt and pepper were good things. You needed to let meat rest. Mixing in a little vegetable oil raises the "smoke point" of olive oil. But my favorite was the importance of having a contrast of textures.

It seemed to be a theme with every dish. It's part of what makes a mixed salad good. Or a layer cake -- with fluffy insides and gooey frosting. Or a nice steak with a flavorful crust and silky meat.

But it's more than food. So many of the stupid, unsatisfied moments in life boil down to some unrequited desire for a contrast in textures. For a snap of a green bean in between smooth bites of sauteed onions. Or the crunch of a crouton amidst layers of juicy slices of tomato.

So what is it? Is it the laugh in the middle of a droning meeting? Is it the street food after a sensible breakfast? Or the fuzzy slippers at the end of a day in work shoes?

Is it an episode of "30 Rock" after more news about financial collapse and octuplets? A quick chat with your kids in between conference calls? Choosing not to skip "Cotton Eye Joe" when it comes up in shuffle mode... just this once?

Is it deciding to have some first-date sex in the midst of the endless search for the right one? Is it some meaningless eye-flirting with a stranger, just 'cause it feels good? Singing the theme to "Greatest American Hero" in the halls just to see how many people stop and groan?

Or maybe pausing with the people we have passing conversations with -- and finding out something we never knew about them? Or making friends with someone we never thought we'd be friends with?

I can't think of any others right now. I'm sick, a little stressed, in need of sleep, and slightly horndog. But I'm also bored as hell. And in need of a little julienned jicama in the salad of my life. Some crunch. Some change in pressure and resistance to make it apparent that I'm in motion, even if it feels like lather, rinse and repeat. And that simple change, the simple contrast is extrapolated out to constant shift between good and bad and high and low and subtle and intense and what I want and what I don't. Ride through the moments that mean nothing to me, because the ones that make me explode are a (relative) heartbeat away.

I Give Up

2009-02-26T14:27:00.001-05:00

What I'm giving up for Lent...

Being nice to people.

Smiling like I mean it.

Being ashamed about taking pictures of The Champ when I'm drunk.

Oscar Mayer Artificially-flavored Maple Bacon.

"The City" (Sorry, Whitney. You're fine as the day is long. But the show is putrid).

Trying to remember every detail of "Lost." (Like the dude on the plain is the same dude who was in jail with Saayid? I forgot Saayid was even IN freaking jail!) Somebody will tell me later on.

Trans-fats.

Resisting all the bad chicks out there who want to engage in dirty email/chat/phone calls with me... Okay, they don't really exist, but a guy can dream.

Fabric softener. Dude, I only wash undies, tees, socks and jeans. What exactly am I softening?

Avoiding looking at people like they are crazy. If you're an idiot, you're going to get a puzzled look from me. Seriously. It's time.

Conversations that go on too long.

Controlling the urge to check out tushies at work. I've mastered the quick snap back to the eyes when they turn around. I'm so proud of myself.

Big O's. I'm actually going for the Sabbatical again. I've written about this before. But this time I'm not single. So it will only apply to solo acts. I am Master of My Domain, dammit.

Resisting the urge to flirt.

Taking crap too seriously. I'm too old to be wasting the limited amount of youth I have left. Holla.

Skanky Chicks, Nasty Talk and Man-sluts

2009-02-22T17:15:00.001-05:00

Guys get criticized alot for digging skanky chicks. Or at least some quality of dress or carriage in a woman that if put together in some sort of "Justice League" of qualities would equal skank.

Because despite what criticizing girls think, a simple display of girl-crack or lacy push-up showing past the top of the halter does not a skanky-girl make. Maybe 14 or fifteen of such things all put together might warrant a "hurrumph" from the rest of the girl community. But for god's sake, can't we all enjoy a pair of "fuck me" shoes or a shirt whose buttons end three inches above the belly button without all the needless judgment.

Here's the deal. We live in a more dangerous society than we've lived in for quite a while. People are predators. Diseases are predators. Lack of education about dangerous things are predators. And excessive caution in response to these predators adds an additional layer of danger.

Add all that together, and we live in an extraordinarily repressive society dressed up in an open and progressive disguise. Some of it is absolutely necessary. But like an athlete learning to play with a knee brace, we're all getting used to how it all works.

And one of those challenges is the desire to get laid. It's treated so derisively in today's world, and that simply doesn't make sense. I've battled with "nature vs. nurture" in this space before. I've diatribed about the necessity of social mores -- even ones that work against natural instincts we're born with as animals. But I've always maintained that the natural instincts that need to be contained are the ones that counteract us all working together as a society. So you have to rank the natural instinct against the needs provided for by a social system.

Put simply, if the natural instinct isn't more important than food, shelter and safety... then fuck the natural instinct. Society is more important.

But see... the ability to procreate? That's the wild card. It's so fucking complicated. Because sexuality is one of those things that combine "activity" and "expression." And while society seems okay with the activity part, it wants to get involved pretty heavily in moderating the expression. Particularly when the expression takes the form of an activity. And is that good?

We can all think of examples of when it is. When an expressive activity can cause harm to others. That's the big one. And there are others. So where do you draw the line? I guess that's where voting comes in.

But when it's simply true expression, man do we come into conflict as a society. Whether it's painting, motion pictures, style of dress, body piercings, etc. Someone has a judgment. And typically, when a judgment needs some backing, someone cites the effect this expression is going to have on society (i.e., its crumbling into ash).

Needless to say, the girl with a piercing in her nether-regions could be a hell of a lawyer. But the moment everyone knows about the piercing, she's a bad role model to the kids out there. Or the fact that 60% of the guys I meet in the office everyday likely watch a decent amount of porn (me included). And that's just a guess, because not a single one of us has ever mentioned a word of it.

So in the end, if expression never leads to activity that affects anyone who doesn't agree with the expression, why exactly does society care. There was a time when the thong showing in the back would have had a girl burned at the stake. Things have changed a little bit. And I'd kinda freak if I had a daughter and she showed up after school like that. But where exactly do the parents come in? Women wore corsets that pumped their breast up to their chins back in the day. But the kids didn't wear them, and for one simple reason. They weren't fucking allowed. But for some reason today, kids do a whole lot of things, and parents throw their hands up and blame TV, the internet, and bad role models.

I'm just not sure how parents were able to stop kids from doing things 30 years ago, but are simply powerless now. But maybe there's a good explanation.

I'm getting way off track.

My original point was about repression. Right now, there are alot of snooty and derisive and dismissive comments and reactions to expressions of sexuality. And as a guy, certain ones annoy me the most. I like seeing girls dressed a little provocatively. I like to see a little leg. I like to see a little cleavage. I like to see something tight. And alot of times, I hear reactions like "That girl is dressed like a slut."

Well here's a quick analysis. When I'm absolutely starving, is the first thing that pops into my mind a nice greasy burger? Or is it a steaming helping of cassoulet?

It's the fucking burger.

When you're basic needs are in need, you don't think if the complicated things. You're thinking of the basics. So does Grace Kelly in an evening gown with bare shoulders send my crotch in motion. Hell yeah. But it starts with an appreciation, that moves into a smile, and a moment of soaking it all in, and then "wow... I'd really like to (insert crude guy term here) that."

Whereas, when I see Jessica Biel in a Maxim spread, I immediately insert my crude guy thing.

Women constantly wonder why guys prey over every scantily clad image -- whether live in public or in print or on screen -- but freak if the girl they're with dresses the same. Well, in all likelihood, guys aren't "hungry" when they're dating or married. We're able to take our time and appreciate the girl we're with. We're able to look at her in a freaking cardigan and jeans and still get worked up into a frenzy.

But the more antiseptic our society becomes -- the more intolerant of any sort of sexual expression -- the more hungry all of us are going to become.

And it affects women, too. There's so little "actual" sexuality in our world that we've shifted to getting it all from either mass media or suggestion. And that's why even in the workplace you see lacy bras showing, skirts that don't allow you to bend, and shoes that are usually reserved for weekends wearing a bikini and washing the car. And in every day life? Can you imagine a world where every female movie, TV or music star waits for her chance to wear silver hot pants in Maxim?

And it's for one simple reason. We've all made the concession that with the dangers of the world and the associated repression, we're going to do more imagining than doing. So we're all just helping each other out. And it's a little depressing.

But to all the ladies out there, I'm grateful for the help :)

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me Some Jack and Some Chicken

2009-02-10T17:26:00.000-05:00

In consideration of you. And in the end, that is the only thing that matters. So on to more important things. Things that require more thought than the de facto nature of matters between me and you. Things that require deliberation and study. Decisions. Mental torque.

I have song lyrics running through my head all day long. Otis singing "Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa." The Von Bondies telling me to "Come on, come on." The Pixies warning me ahead of time that "Here comes your man." And sometimes they drip from my lips like this piece of my belly disintegrated into steam and condensation, some needed release that just saved the world from my crackling explosion.

I tried to dream of you last night. But since I tried, you came to me like a saucy Latin maid who likes her pay in a certain special currency. When you sneak into my head on your own, I don't even know it's you. I just know I want to talk. And in my waking life, you're like the first 10 minutes of "Scream," when every time Drew turns around, the killer has just scurried around the corner. I have a sense of you, but couldn't describe you to a sketch artist. Some days, you voice is husky, sometimes smooth. Sometimes your hair is down your bag. Others, short enough to tuck absentmindedly behind your ears. Some days you're an obnoxious dick of a woman. Others, unassuming and shy. So more often than not, I know you by your absence. And in that way, I know that I love women, because so many individual qualities make me ache. And maybe, if brought together, they would destroy the universe as we know it. Or maybe just make me drop to m knees and sing soul music. Either way, the world would stop -- if just for me and just for a moment or for all mankind and forever.

But the probability of each seems to lessen with each passing day, and I come to grips with that more and more. Just as a kid scoring 12 points off the bench at a Division II college realizes his dream getting farther and farther. With that comes a perspective that's like the potent bits at the bottom of a batch of good stuff. It makes you wince and exhale. But when the battery shock to the nipple is done, you feel the painlessness of regular life.

What is real to me? Desire and motion and gentle pushes to some end not quite in sight. And life is made up of wrong turns here and there, and sulking by the roadside wondering why I'm not home with a bucket of chicken and an episode of "Psych." And sometimes it's a roadside tavern and a bottle of Jack and ideas of Thelma and Louise and a blaze of glory. Because when turns go wrong, they can go wrong that fast. And as many times as Harvey knows the truth, someone's not always holding the key to help us start from scratch. And we never know whether it's three turns or 200 hundred to get us back to square. And in that moment when I'm lost I want to feel anything but that. When I can't figure out how I'm done, I want to feel anything but that. And every immobilizing moment is ignoring some giant turd on my living room floor. And every swallow of Jack is numbing to my confusion. And every messy flirtation is a jolt to a racing heart and covers up some frustration.

It's a sloppy admission to come to terms with the solution that can never exist. It's like the terminal patient realizing that he has to change his own condition so that a common remedy can do the job. But it's no stranger than the lost kid having to get up and retrace his steps to get somewhere that the search party can find him.

And that sounds so much more hopeful than I truly am. Because I know the shreds my own crunching jaws leave of my own emotional state. I know the people I hurt when I meander around reaching for someone good like Edward Scissorhands. And every day, I tell myself that I just want someone to confide in. To share with. Even when there's some pulsing between my legs that confuses things. Like there's some emotional firmware that needs updating.

I genuinely can't recall my mother hugging me from the time I was eight until my high school graduation. And six months after that, she almost got me kicked out of college, so I wasn't planning many hugs after that. My dad never showed a shred of emotion except the day we moved out when I was five. And I saw him leaning against the counter in the kitchen wiping away tears. My grandmother and I have hugged more in the last 12 years than we did in the first 23. When I was a kid, she ran a house. And that meant a kiss on the cheek to start the weekend, and another when we were going home.

And I don't blame any of them. But as much as people think everything emotional springs from within, the filter that turns those emotions into action are modeled at an early age from the people around us. And everyone that says you can "decide" to be different as an adult, I'd ask to make an ice cube a different shape without either melting it or chipping big pieces of it away.

I wish I were different with people. I wish my relationships were different. I get bored with my friends, or if they're girls, we end up hooking up. And in the end, after I've destroyed any connection with people who care about me, I'm home alone with a bucket of chicken, some Jack and an episode of "Psych."

And it's all got me kind of tired.

All Is Quiet

2009-01-02T11:19:00.001-05:00

I finally made some decent Bananas Foster this week. I'm willing to bring it public now.

I've been thinking alot about blogging lately. Not sure why, since my posts have been more sporadic than a four year-old's attention span. Maybe it's that annual tradition I seem to have where I ask "Why?"

Why? Why, Georgia, why?

Sorry, I thought singing John Mayer would bring some girls screaming at my feet.

We all know there are a million types of blogs. There are the high-fallutin' varmints that talk about politics, break entertainment news or sports info. There are the diaries. There are the creative spaces for aspiring writers. There are photo blogs that help people document time and keep in contact.

For me, it's always been a combination of "thought space" -- with the added twist that I love to write. So smushing my thoughts in some sort of eloquent form never hurt. At least I tried.

The only thing is that one crucial part of writing is picking which stories are worth telling. And brain-dumping doesn't quite mesh with that ethos. So I go back and read posts, and I find rants that don't mean anything to anyone but me. And I wonder if there's anything interesting about it -- either from a "peek through the window" or simply from a "hmmm... he put that quite nicely" perspective. It's hard to tell.

I used to enjoy reading blogs so much. Getting insights into people by what they shared about themselves. Getting inspired by other people's posts. Finding myself writing about some subject I read on someone's blog.

Maybe I'm like the guy who complains about all of his post-college friends getting married and settling down. "We don't do happy hour anymore... Why don't we ever watch football on Sundays anymore..." Things change. I hate to wash everything with too broad a stroke. But sometimes things are really that simple.

And maybe that's why I don't find myself traveling back here much. The biggest clue was when I wrote, and never visited my page. That's when I truly began dumping, and not sharing. I thought it was simply me being narcissistic -- I just want to write, and I don't care what others write or what others have to say about it.

But it wasn't that. It was the fact that I wasn't getting the one thing that made me want to write more: some equivalent of someone going, "Hmmm..." The most barren times on this page have been when I'm writing into deep space, without even a Tim Burton Martian screaming "BAAHT BAAAHT!!!" back at me.

Having a blog was simply a public extension of my favorite activity -- having rambling, thought-provoking email discussions with people who enjoy the same. I kinda miss that.

And I don't know if my patience -- or my virus scan -- is strong enough for me to keep clicking "next blog" until I find that again. Maybe that's a sign.

Opportunity Cost

2008-12-29T15:29:00.001-05:00

I am never having sex again.

I haven't told Carter yet. I'm not quite sure how she's going to take it. I hope she doesn't take it personally. But dammit, it simply isn't worth it.

It's just not that good. It's not. I can rattle off 12 things off the top of my head right now that I would rather do right now than smack uglies. Here we go:

One... eat a home-cooked ribeye steak lightly glazed with something sweet and spicy.

Two... sip some Maker's Mark, slightly chilled.

Three... watch an episode of "Chuck."

Four... watch a good UFC fight. Something like J-Rock vs. War Machine.

Five... enjoy happy hour with some buddies.

Six... play basketball.

Seven... watch football.

Eight... email back and forth with good friends.

Nine... eat an old-fashioned breakfast... in a place with lost of sunlight.

Ten... take a good afternoon nap after some serious housework or working out.

Eleven... buy a round for someone.

Twelve... learn a cool new recipe watching the Food Network.

I'm not exaggerating, folks.

Someone could offer me sex or any one of the things on this list right now, and I'm 90% sure I'd take the item from my list. ow, to be fair, I just ate lunch -- so the ribeye, the breakfast and maybe the basketball might be at a disadvantage. At the same time, the nap and the Maker's Mark are looking pretty good.

Is this an absolute? I dunno. Could you throw someone with Kristin Davis's face at me and make me fold? Could you flash Kim Kardashian's junk at me, and I'd renounce my Eunuch Manifesto in seconds? Could Whitney from "The Hills" make me turn state's evidence against myself for even thinking of such a proclamation? Probably.

But I still have no doubt that once I gave in to the massive barrage of temptation, the act itself would still be a dud. So I'm just going to stop. What difference does it make? I'm a guy -- I walk around with three-quarters wood whether I'm getting any or not. I walk around relatively houndish whether I'm getting any or not. And I feel like I'm not getting as much as I should whether I'm getting any or not.

But we're talking about here is opportunity cost. I'm not Charlie Sheen, so sex isn't a transaction. At least not in it's most literal sense. There is an investment of time, emotions, niceties, effort, etc -- before and after. And my concern is what else could I be doing with all those things.

Would I spend more time on things I enjoy? Would I work out more, work on my place? Would I exert more effort at work? Would I be nicer to my relatives and my friends? Would be more available to people?

It's a busy and hungry world. There's only so much of this stuff to go around. And am I wasting too much of it because I had to answer the hormones, and now time I could have spent deciding on my career is being spent watching "Jon and Kate Plus Eight"? I have to think about this logically.

No I have to be careful here. See, abstinence can take on all the earmarks of an eating disorder. Just as the body kicks in and says, "This is what I need... NOW!" with food, and will gives over to instinct and reflex -- it can do the same with sex. And that's how guys end up blowing $500 bucks at "Club Fantasy" (where the ammonia smell is for your protection).

Hey, I've been through droughts where some chick at work punches my shoulder as a joke, and I nearly poke someone's eye out. There's a reason why there are 6 billion people on the planet -- and that reason is a little difficult to argue with. But folks, there is one answer to nature:

I'm tired.

Even when nature says we should run from danger. We run until... we're tired.

Even when nature says we should forage for food. We forage until... we're tired.

And I am just plain frakking tired. So tired, that the thing I'm working for just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

I don't think people realize how big of a role that hormonal attraction plays in making a relationship work. Just like it isn't by accident that adults find babies cute. It's nature's way of making sure we take proper care of our young.

Well think of that attraction with our partners. Think about all the cracks in the foundation that good sex or attraction in general smooths over. And no, not in the cliche way of "he's mad at me, but wait till I show him what he's missing!"

No. We're not in one of those movies about how men suck. The way I'm thinking is this. Every relationship has peaks and valleys. There are moments when everything seems right, and you almost cry because it feels so awesome. Then there are moments when you scare yourself, because you feel so sure that you're ready to have THE conversation.

Or maybe it's early on when you're still deciding about someone -- and something happens that shakes you enough to make you decide no, this isn't the one.

If it were so easy to walk away, human beings would have died off a long time ago. But nature was smart enough to make this thing that brings up together a truly textured thing. Someone's persona, image, potential and effect (on us) all play a role in making us stay or go. And the formula is different for each of us. And where one ingredient falters, another makes up for it. Or else we leave. And as base as it sounds, there are times when we are done, and the sexual aspect of our relationship gets us to weather the storm. to hang in there until something happens. Either we realize that the jackass thing he did wasn't that big a deal. Or his apology showed that the kind part of her balances out the jackass -- but we would have known unless we'd had at least a moment of pause. And wanting someone is as likely to cause a moment of pause as anything.

Something happened this weekend. And I'm still waiting for that moment of pause to kick in. It wasn't mean. It wasn't malicious. It probably wasn't even selfish. But it was something that demonstrated to me that it's possible to be in a relationship and still live within your own enclosed world. I know I do it -- but at the same time, I don't see myself as being anywhere beyond step 20 out of 100 in a relationship.

Whereas the person who did it sees us as well past that. And I wonder how she can when it's so obvious what happened this weekend demonstrated a bundle of emotions I had no idea existed.

I need something to make me pause. And right now, all I want to do is watch football.

In the Mix

2008-12-26T12:50:00.001-05:00

When I was 25, I made a mix tape. And exactly 17 minutes in "Hallelujah, Here She Comes" by U2 plays. I figured that's exactly how long it would take me to get to the "over the sweater" portion of something hot and heavy, and I wanted that song to be the soundtrack.

I only used the tape once. And I actually spent the bulk of the strumming acoustic guitar accompaniment assuring her it would all be alright. For some reason, "Winter" by Tori Amos got mixed into the first 16 minutes. Who'd have thought making out and a song about a little girl holding her father's hand skating didn't a perfect marriage make. I'll chalk it up to youth. But who could have predicted the percentage of girls out there with Daddy Issues. It's like guessing which girls on line at the DMV have a tramp stamp. Ten years ago, you'd be running 10-1 odds. Nowadays, you'd be lucky to get a pick 'em.

After the first bit of kiss turned salty, I took a break to ask if everything was okay. Three minutes later, despite her assurances, I stopped her jittery, roaming hands and said, "Let's stop for a while, sweetie." She nodded in between hyperventilating sniffs.

We didn't talk, but she cried against my chest for a while as my love-making soundtrack turned oddly ironic. She breathed one long monotone hum against my chest to "Linger" by the Cranberries. She choked broken sobs to "Lightning Crashes" by Live. And even I had to question my choice of "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, which I thought would be some triumphant post-sex cool down/cuddle song. Instead, it played background to her admission that she had no idea why she was crying.

Laughing and drying her eyes, she patted my cheek reassuringly. "You must think I'm a nutjob."

"Of course not," I lied. See, guys become jackasses when hormones are involved. We develop true feelings for women -- or at least a decent semblance of feelings -- when hormones are involved. And those feelings wash away with the evening tide when the hormones are gone. And on the flipside, we are tender and caring and nurturing when the hormones are about to be exchanged for goods and services at the coital border. But when the border cops show up to shut down the transaction, we react like Tony Montana during a deal gone bad.

The true gentlemen among us ride it out. We can hug and push tear-stained hair from your eyes while all the time thinking, "Why the hell am I with this psycho?" We can ask all the right questions about a tough day or being comfortable with her own body, all the while wondering when she's going to go home.

And even as she mistakenly kissed me back -- innocently meaning to thank me for all my compassion. But it was the equivalent of French aristocracy throwing three loaves of bread to the thousands of starving, angry citizens at the gates. My pants tented, my patience thin, and my lips doing an Owen Wilson-level performance of acting interested, I was suddenly sweaty with stress and increasingly pissed that what should have been a massive exhale of pent up sexual frustration at just this moment was turning into a drawn out session of coddling and reassurance that you ARE pretty and you ARE sexy and someday you WILL find a guy good enough... wait a minute.

And it hit me. This insecurity during sex and the issues that stem from it -- nine times out of ten it comes from some level of doubt she's feeling about being with me in the first place. Should she do it or shouldn't she? And what does doing it say about her? Well, damn. Ain't that a kick in the nuts.

She patted my cheek, and told me with gentle eyes rather than words that "You ain't getting none tonight, Scooter." She kissed me again, safe in the knowledge that my lips and my tent betrayed how much I wanted her. She breathed heavy breath with me and sucked in every delicious ounce of self-esteem from the thick want spewing out of my like car exhaust.

"You're so good," she consoled me when I was fully deflated, and I whored out my shoulder once again to her poaching brow. All the while scratching out the list in my head of songs for my next mix tape -- after I burned the current one in the nearest steel drum. Darling Nikki. Pour Some Sugar On Me. Cherry Pie.

I don't see nothing wrong... with a little bump and grind.

Lyrical Days

2008-12-26T11:25:00.001-05:00

Just a few song lyrics that have tickled my innards the last few days... Okay one's a rap lyrics -- that I'm sure I've mentioned before. But it's one that gets me every time I hear it.

One is by the Gin Blossoms. If anyone laughs these guys off as one hit wonders, go back and listen to that album. There are five songs on there that are absolutely fantastic. Okay, in the "songwriter deaths" category, it doesn't rank up there with Jeff Buckley or anything. But it would have been cool to see what that guy could have done had he not a) been kicked out of the band, and b) well... died.

"I guess I've been in love before, and once or twice been on the floor. But I've never loved no one the way that I love you."

"I feel it coming on the wind. Just like you said it. I feel it coming on the wind. And I'm gonna let it."

"I neutralize suckas. Because I'm alkaline."

"She's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever."

"I've got a match... your embrace and my collapse."

"I'll drink enough of anything to make this world look new again."

"You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do. And it's breakin' my heart in two, because I never wanna see you sad, girl."

Thanks

2008-12-24T10:51:00.001-05:00

With the time of year stretching to this sentimental season, even a hard-ass like me isn't immune. And especially since I have been prone to self-pity for long stretches of my life (though alot less in the last couple of years... YES, alot less. Please make the distinction between "confusion" and "self-pity"), it makes sense to carve out some time to think about the things for which I'm thankful.

I'm thankful that I get to use my brain every day. That wasn't the case for 11 years of my career. Are things perfect now? No. I'm a logical person dealing with logical problems in an emotional environment. It is truly frustrating at times. But better than before. Much better. Could there be more? Sure. I don't write as much as I'd like. But if I get to use two of the four things I'm good at -- logic and schmoozing. The other two -- writing and that cool move with my index finger where I... ohhh, things I'm good at with work. My bad.

This is going to sound ridiculously narcissistic -- as if having a blog to begin with isn't some form of narcissism -- but I'm thankful to be working in a place that's 85% women. Here's the deal. I've been socially awkward my entire life. And part of that comes from being a bit of a misanthrope. I don't like people. At least not de facto. I don't get excited to meet a new person and find out what's interesting about them. I usually don't even think about it -- so people think I'm unapproachable.

So throw me into a party, and I have zero ability to make small talk. I'm not being rude. I just don't have enough interest to come up with all those questions you're supposed to ask someone. On the flip side, if I'm thrown into a situation with someone and suddenly learn something interesting about them, I do all the normal things a person does. I talk to them about it, I ask them about it when I see them again. I essentially do what girls should do in the dating world -- show me why I should be interested before I start wasting time.

A while back, my boss made a weird comment to me. She was frustrated with me for some reason, and asked me to change my approach on getting something done. Because "your charm and your wit apparently aren't getting it done." Harsh. But it freaked me out for a different reason. I was startled into self assessment mode. I think of myself as smart, helpful, analytic. A good communicator. But she made it seem like I was... fluff. And that freaked me out to no end. It did for months, until a conversation with Carter a few weeks ago. I mentioned to her that someone called me a relentless flirt a while back. And I think I am -- when alcohol is involved, but not so much otherwise. She said I was -- particularly at work. She made sure to qualify it. It wasn't so much in a sexual way. She said I was really playful and attentive. I had little routines specific to certain people. I said "hi" in a unique way with each person.

I always saw that as the clown in me. I like to make people smile and laugh. But -- self-assessment again -- it seemed to be more with women than men. I guess that's natural. But the friendships I develop seem to be the same way. That could all be a product of self-esteem, and needing that validation that comes from having women smile at me on a regular basis. Who knows? It may take a lifetime (or a Lifetime Original Movie) to figure it all out. Either way, I'm thankful that I get to flirt every day.

I'm thankful for boots. I say this every year. It's almost unfair. A pair of legs I'd never look at are suddenly freaking magnetic in a pair of boots. It's winter time folks, and chingador de madre, it's New York City. I'm freaking surrounded. Seriously. It's like taking just about any awful drink and mixing it with vodka. It's like taking any piece of crap script and letting Judd Apatow direct it. It's like taking some boring veggie and adding garlic to it. Does it make it magic? No. But it makes it worth a second look.

I'm thankful for Carter and for Grandma. Two people who put up with me -- even though they really have no reason to sometimes. When I'm grumpy and frustrated. When I'm sensitive and stand-offish. When I'm riled up about sports. When I'm in a funk about something and refuse to talk at all. It's cool when people love you. It's really kind of nice.

I'm thankful I'm a guy. Seriously. There are ridiculous downsides. When I'm single, the effort to get some is a pain. But there are upsides. Guilt-free doggishness when it comes to thinking with our private parts. I own adult dvd's and have no problem who knows it. Hey, a girl can't make a joke about slapping an ass without every dude in the room getting the "How you doing?" look on his face. I can. And then of course I get the "How you doing?" look if a girl in the room laughs too hard. Yes! I love being a guy.

I'm thankful for Oscar Mayer artificially flavored maple bacon. I've lost 15 pounds since basketball season started three months ago. Oscar will be responsible for them all coming back.

I'm thankful for Leon Washington. He's the only reason I've even semi-enjoyed this football season. Thanks Leon.

I'm thankful for the girl in black jogging pants at the train this morning. She actually made me utter the words, "That's impossible." Because I simply couldn't believe that someone could have a butt that perfect. Perfectly in proportion, but sticking out enough to make you go, "whoah, where'd you come from?" It made no sense. Now if she had been wearing boots...

I'm thankful for everything I have. I'm lucky. I don't have alot. But enough to make me happy. I have less than some may have predicted. But I have way more than I should have considering all the obstacles along the way. And I am happy for that.

And big thanks to anyone who may be reading this. You're a trooper if you've made it this far :) Happy holidays!