This Is Not the Life I Ordered - What's Art Got to Do with It? Is Art Basel Just Another Douchefest?

 In old Society with a capital S, people used to stay inside all night if they weren't invited to the party of the year. The neurosis was that, by being seen elsewhere you were acknowledgedly uninvited. It doesn't quite make sense to me, because the only people who would see you are the other uninvited and those invited would not be able to corroborate your presence at the party if you, say, needed an alibi. But, alas, it made people feel better.

There's a similar anxiety about living in New York and not going to Art Basel in Miami every winter. Art Basel is like Fashion Week, Oscar night, the New York Film Festival, and Burning Man all in one weekend. It is the mecca of the cognoscenti, the high holidays of the demimonde. So if you don't go, you may as well not even leave the house. Yes, even if you're a thousand miles north.

 

But here I am, if not leaving the house, talking outside of it. I didn't go to Art Basel this year.  Or last. That's because Art Basel is not about art or promoting artists anymore. It's about being Kim Kardashian. It's about being up all night partying in someone's room at Soho House. It's about showing others you were there on IG. It's about anything but art, unless you consider the art of self-promotion.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Panic in Detroit

Being back in New York is bittersweet. I miss home (metro Detroit) and all of the familiar comforts of hometown friends, family, and places. I got to see my mom for the first time since the lockdown (because of where I live combined with her health and age, we didn't want to chance it), I got to see so many old friends. I ran into people I haven't seen for decades, some of them in the most unexpected places. I ate at all my favorite restaurants, I brought Better Made potato chips back to NYC. I drove past the house I grew up in. HOWEVER. There is one thing I do. Not. Miss.

CARS!

I have never been a car person and was nearly wiped off the planet for the few years I did drive by hitting a deer once, spinning out on ice more than once, wrecking my wheel alignment in a Burger King drive-thru cement divider and not realizing it until I was spinning around on I-275 and had to actually jump out of the car to save my life (despite nearly being killed for that dubious decision), and just being nervous as hell behind the wheel most of the time. But thanks to the legalization of the crack cocaine passing for marijuana these days (!!!), the roads have never felt more dangerous. I don't know about elsewhere, but where I am from, people are driving like raving lunatics on the highways and the roads and I live in terror for my friends and family in metro Detroit.

One particular night in an Uber on construction-riddled 696 West late at night, I can only describe what I experienced in that car as turbulence. The roads closed off were being fixed and the ones traveled were bumpy and bifurcated by cracks. So, you would think that metro Detroit drivers would be driving cautiously, right? Especially in notoriously cop-patrolling and affluent Oakland County. Well...Hell no! People were FLYING in the only two working lanes, weaving in and out between other cars, blowing weed smoke, texting, and going about 120 mph in 80 mph zones. People were driving like there was a natural disaster chasing us all. But, disastrous as it felt, it was totally unnatural. No doubt, many or all of these speed demons were drunk, high, or just generally douchebaggy, as few seemed to care about death, DUIs, totaling their cars, and forget about anyone else's life. I was terrified. The real turbulence I experienced on the flight there did not scare me nearly as much as that trip. Luckily, my Uber driver was kind enough to get the hell off of that highways at my request and take one of the Mile Roads (this is a Detroit thing, folks) to my destination.

So I ask my metro Detroit homies: Am I overreacting? Because I haven't driven a car in decades and most Ubers and taxis I'm in here don't have many venues where you can go that fast. (Although, they do try it!) But all the anxiety of subway lunatics went out of my head on that trip (and the very, very, very slow ride back that I requested from the super understanding other Uber driver) as I bulleted across town to an event I worried might actually cost me my life.

Be careful on the roads, folks. (And if you like the garbage that passes for weed today, please smoke that shit if you are blessed enough to get your ass home. Damn!)

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Some of My Best Friends Are...

Some years ago I wrote something that caused a bit of a dumpster fire here and I promised myself that I would never post another word about it. No, I'm not discussing my semi-recent romantic catastrophes. I'm talking about the recent events that have ignited the tinderbox that we know as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

The event from a few years back wasn't because of anything that I said. Rather, I wrote a heartfelt post about how complicated and literally biblically tragic the whole situation is. Well, people from different parts of my life went to war in the comments section. I had to unfriend two people for making comments that some people perceived to be antisemitic. Two friends who are relatives of one another got into a knock down-fall out read on the thread and I don't know if they sit next to one another on Passover dinner to this day. And even I got unfriended for being a friend of someone who said something rude.

Never again, I said.

I grew up in an historically predominately Jewish community outside of Detroit, Michigan, that was changing from Jewish to black -- and quickly -- and a lot of my lifelong friends are Jewish. This extended into my college years, in which I joined a fraternity that was about 90% Jewish. Following this, I cultivated some semblance of a career in media, which has a strong presence from this community as well. And I am very protective of my Jewish friends. It's not a "some of my best friends are..." kind of thing. It's an "almost all of my best and oldest friends are...." kind of thing. So I correct people in other areas of my life when they say things that they may or may not realize are ignorant or downright antisemitic and acknowledge the high holidays because I have had the fortune of being invited to many religious ceremonies and dinners by my friends.

The values in this community -- education, philanthropy, the arts, self-deprecating humor -- are very much in line with my own. When I was a child, I often wished I were Jewish myself.

Personally, I will never understand antisemitism. There's no way to say why without basically insulting the hell out of everyone who isn't Jewish. I think they're an incredible group of people and their history is as tragic as it is almost magical when considering the astonishing achievements of so many Jewish people. And, yes, I understand not liking some groups. My own, particularly, can be challenging to love. But that's another conversation. What I also don't understand is why -- no matter how you feel about the Middle-East's most enduring conflict -- it is seemingly only worth a shrug to some people that innocent civilians are being shot without warning in numbers reaching the hundreds, women and children are being raped, kidnapped and killed, and none of these people have any influence over the decisions made by the state of Israel. These are just everyday people. Beautiful, young, talented people living their lives just like you did today if you made it home to read this. They happen to be Jewish and happen to live in a place embroiled in a seemingly unresolvable conflict. But they are just like you and I. And yet the only people who seem to be upset enough to speak sympathetically on this horrific tragedy in large numbers on social media, this unthinkable act against mankind, are the Jewish brethren of these victims.

Another reason I don't speak here on the Israel/Palestine conflict is because I'm not informed enough. I do probably read and know more than the average non-Jewish or Arabic person, though. And I ask my friends challenging questions about it. And one thing I do know is that it's not as simple as a lot of the people here on FB want to make it every time there's an event in that region, as in, "These people came in and put the inhabitants of an already established place in an enclosure and they tortured them for decades and then now act like victims when there's retaliation." That seems to be the running narrative from a lot of people, particularly the liberal woke crowd. And, unfortunately, optically it's very valid -- if you want to think in black and white, or in the big block letters you find scattered on nursery school floors.

For the nuanced thinker, however, this crisis bleeds infinitely more pus from a deeply infected moral and social quandary: Two groups of humans have a religious identity fundamentally rooted in the same place and yet are at odds with one another on historical, ethical, and existential terms. No outside president is ever going to resolve this Solomon-like crisis because both sides believe what cannot and should not be shared is their own. Both. Sides.

That's fucked up.

But fucked up as it may be, no side is entitled to terrorize innocent civilians to make a point or mark their grievance. If you think Israel is committing apartheid or there's a stink of white supremacy at the root of this and dark-skinned person subversion going on here because your history is largely informed by American history or anti-black racism, I implore you to investigate this further. This is not our story over there. Aligning yourself with a darker people because they look more like you is the same thing you are accusing anyone who is a white supremacist of doing.

More importantly, I wish more people could appreciate that when human beings kill or terrorize others because of who they are, it sets an unsustainable and universally immoral precedent for how the rest of us should expect to be treated or resolve conflicts. We don't all have to like one another, but we do have to tolerate each other. This massacre is not just a Jewish tragedy. It is a human tragedy. If you're human, you should be angry. And if you're not angry, you shouldn't be human

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Notes on Quiet Time

 Being idle used to make me so antsy. When I didn't have enough assignments to keep me busy or enough companionship to keep me entertained, I used to interpret this as boredom and loneliness. I used to wonder why that gig went to another writer or how come I don't have a big, catty gaggle of friends who look just like me to talk ad nauseam about absolutely nothing significant with like almost everyone else on the planet. Now I've learned when things quiet down, that this is actually what peace is. Sure, I love the adrenalin of a tight deadline, the sense of importance and value in being busy. I love long talks with old friends and the buzzy bonhomie of that increasingly rarefied thing called good company. But there are so many ways I've been hurt jammin' on a last-minute project that didn't get enough gratitude or from finding a duplicitous Judas in my tribe. And being at home alone with no obligations and no one to kick it with nearly broke me during the pandemic lockdown, and I'm a confirmed loner. But now, as hard as it can be sometimes to sit still until the next assignment comes along or the next friend is in town, I've learned to appreciate these moments where I'm not being burnt or hurt. I have a very high stimulation threshold -- I get bored extremely easily; and I don't have a lot to say to most people -- I'm one part deadly-serious and another part, sadly, probably the funniest person I know -- so even when I'm in the social mix of things I'm still hardly ever fully present. There's probably a disorder in the DSM that I'm describing right now that I just haven't been diagnosed with yet.😅 Either way, at this superannuated point my life, I've learned to appreciate the quiet times. You don't have to drink them away, you don't have to fuck randos them away, you don't have to shop them away. Because, eventually, they will go away and you'll find yourself somewhere doing something or someone you don't feel like doing and wishing nothing more than that you were at home in your pajamas in the middle of the day reading your favorite mystery writer's latest and eating potato chips all alone.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Whining and Dining: Some Thoughts on Eating Out

 Dinner in New York doesn't have a vibe anymore. I don't give two fucks about a mixologist's latest concoction or a Yelp review. I miss walking into places like Lucky Strike and Cafe Noir and Le Singe Vert and Le Deux Gamin and B Bar and Da Silvano (RIP to all of these magical places) and feeling just this incredible buzz and energy. There was a jolt to walking in someplace once. It felt sexual and artistic and international and intriguing. The music was loud, the people were pretty, you could feel the energy of someone famous inside before you even saw who it was. When you walked in the room everyone glanced up to see who just walked in. It was exciting. And usually the food was pretty good. Nothing gives that really anymore. You walk in somewhere and everyone's looking at their phones.

_________________

Wine. It's not that it tastes bad, it's that oenophiles make it seem like these varietals have all these "notes" and "nuances" and it all just tastes mostly the same and not even worthy of really discussing, at least to me. Or maybe I have a peasant's palate. And the amount of money people will part with for it...I just don't get it. Many years ago, when I was a server at one of the hoity doity little boutique restaurants where I would toil for my supper, we would have these wine tastings every week or so. They'd ask us to sip the different bottles we were pushing as specials, describe the "notes" we tasted, and then spit it out in a cup. As if anybody in the weeds with 6 tables full of psychotic rich people has time for describing all of that shit. But that's another conversation. Back to the wine tasting, not only was I not spitting anything out before my shift, but every Cab was a Cab, every Pinot was just another Pinot to me, and so on. I didn't play the game. Well, one day at one of these ridiculous meetings, one of my co-workers said -- and I have no idea if she was trolling or not -- "I'm getting notes of freshly opened Xerox machine paper." And I almost choked. Yet, the somme took her seriously. I'm pretty sure I quit shortly afterwards. I could never last in any of these places for longer than a few months to get me out of whatever financial hole a freelance lapse found me in. Cheers!

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This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Pride, Schmide

 Okay, so here's my take on Pride. For me, Pride is one of those great ideas like Black Lives Matter that is executed so poorly as to defeat the purpose of its own existence. Because all I see around this annual bacchanal is one big, tired circuit party. The ontz ontz music, the drugs, the cult-like homogeneity...I will never understand what it is about the circuit scene that is so seductive and how it came to be the most emblematic cultural mainstay in the urban gay male experience. It's like this cult or tribe that kidnaps the vulnerable, fragile, beautiful, socially and romantically neglected young and then destroys them with the Faustian promise that they have finally found a home, a family. A community. Then again, I didn't experience feeling like an outsider before I entered this world. At least, not because I knew I craved man butt. Somewhere around 19 I got over the fear of that and just waited for the right time and right guy to do it. It wasn't easy, but I attributed my uniqueness to other things, mostly: to being an artist among future doctors and lawyers and bankers or being the only chip in the cookie, so to speak, in my social network, and an alien around other black folks when my presence around my own culture was required. I always felt a little more clever and worldly than most people around me for living in so many spaces that didn't Venn or intersect or, rather, because I was the Venn or intersection. I moved among the hets with ease, convincing myself I was one until I was just downright bored and horny enough to throw that away and get into the scene. But I never liked the scene. The meanness, the cattiness, the way sex was either thrown at your face or ruthlessly withheld, the obsession with hotness when I had for so long been trying to perfect coolness. In the gay scene, I didn't feel I belonged. I still don't. I just wanted a dude. To this day, I don't really care for much more from it and nearly 30 years after first stepping into a gay bar, I've watched little good come out of that world and a lot get eaten alive by it. I wish we'd worry more about how our culture eats its own young than what corporate sponsor wants to pander to this community's increasingly bottomless need for mainstream acceptance. That said, I didn't necessarily earn being gay so I can't say I'm proud to be. And as the culture becomes increasingly "queer" and gender obfuscating and obsessed with drag queens, I don't even know if I am as gay as I am simply same-sex loving. But I wouldn't trade it because I very much like who I am. And I don't need Bud Light or Target or a parade or being tweaked out and dancing shirtless in a tribal sea of identically insecure people to reinforce that and neither should anyone else.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- On Tyre Nichols and the Phenomenon of Police Brutality and Black on Black Male Authority

 I don't know what kinds of qualifications are required for one to become a police officer, but of those for whom it does not come naturally, there should be a training course in compassion. I post a lot about police brutality because I think it is a unique form of violence. Inherent in the kind of public service police officers hold should be a community's trust. When a community cannot trust the people who are armed and licensed to protect them, there is a fundamental breakdown in the level of civilization in that community's social contract. Lately, here in New York City, I've been relieved to see the presence of police officers on the streets and subways -- but that doesn't mean I fully trust them. Rather, it's a matter of the worst of several evils: I'm much more afraid of the unmedicated psychotics and the thugs with a chip on their shoulder than I am of New York's so-called finest. And, of course, not all police officers are bad people. Some are very good people. But too many are either not intelligent or compassionate (or both) enough to hold their positions. Whenever I ask myself how we got here, I often come back to the same question: What kind of person would want to become a police officer? Someone who feels a natural sense of authority and courage and a desire to protect others? Someone with a sadistic streak and a bloodthirst to have license to kill someone or kill a particular group of people? Someone once bullied who now wants an opportunity to intimidate others? Someone who didn't perform well in school and saw this career as the most reliable and available route to a lifetime of employment and security? Someone who grew up in a family of other police officers and who never really considered the gravity of this responsibility and simply followed a family's professional legacy? As evidenced by the recent murder of Tyre Nichols, the phenomenon of police brutality transcends racism. And yet, racism often transcends itself in a kind of circular irony. I doubt very seriously that these five police officers would have brutally murdered a white man who committed the same perceived offense. I have no evidence to back that up. But too often I've observed the way black people, men in particular, in positions of authority pounce on the opportunity to exert dominance over other black men in an imitation of their own perceived oppressor. Compounding this, too many black men grow up in households without a male figure and don't know how to respond to the threat of another male authority figure. It is simply never learned. To me, this is very significant. In my opinion, this is why there is the instinct to run away, to resist arrest: it's an instinct. I have no evidence to back up any of these suggestions, but I've been a black male for almost half a century, if that counts for anything. Fortunately, despite being profiled more than once, I have never had the kind of police encounter that came anywhere near violence. You have to know how to talk to the police when you are a black man, whether you are in the wrong or the right, or some ambiguous space in between, and I am blessed having been raised in a family that includes one judge and three police officers. So I've always walked away from these incidents unharmed. Whatever the case, there needs to be a serious conversation about all of these issues before another Tyre Nichols is crying for their mother while being murdered in the street by those hired to protect him.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Are Hookup Apps Causing ED?

 Why are there so many ED commercials for young men these days? There's an argument for it being less shame attached to it in today's more sexually open culture. But I also think there's a more concrete reason: hookup apps. The pressure to perform, or performance anxiety, seems much more likely, if not inevitable, if you know going into an experience that the entire purpose is sex, as opposed to a hopeful end to a date or meeting at a bar or dinner party. or spontaneous encounter. When you go out with someone you meet the way you might order food from seamless, there's little if any sexual tension and way more anxiety: Am I as hot as I am in my photos? Do they think I might be taller? What if they're not as hot? What if they're too hot and I get intimidated? I'll admit that there have been more times than I'd like to say in which I met Mr. Perfect online but found myself unable to perform because the guy either never spoke; expected me to get hard the second I walked in and found him bent over the couch; thought the fact that he was an 11 on a scale of 1-10 made having a personality unnecessary; or because I could sense the person was on drugs and that someone else's seminal fluid was already up there and not even dry yet. Of course, psychological and even physical ED can happen to any man at any age, just like any other affliction or illness. But I don't think the prevalence of these remedies is indicative of anomaly. Rather, I think this is happening because people don't know how to flirt or establish sexual tension anymore, which makes sexual intimacy less... sexy. It's like popcorn without butter or french fries without salt. I can recall one particular incident in which I was at the gym in Hell's Kitchen and my Grindr was on and, I admit, it was a rainy Saturday afternoon and I was in the mood for a SNACK. Not a meal, not the best cuisine I've ever tasted, just a little summin' summ'in. Well, of course, I get hit up by one of the hottest guys in Manhattan, a guy who I've met before because he is a friend of someone I know from my hometown, and who always acted like he could barely mumble a hello or look me in the eye whenever I ran into him and his friend. I figured he was out of my league anyway so it really didn't bother me. But he was pursuing the hell out of me on this app. Well, I needed a haircut that day. I was hungover from the night before. I didn't want to hook up with the hottest guy in Manhattan, I wanted to hook up with someone that was just good enough to stop my brain from bumping into my balls. I wanted a 6.5 or 7, not an 11 on a scale of 10. And it was pouring down rain, which meant I'd be soaken wet, having forgotten my umbrella. Mr. Beautiful lived two blocks from my gym and because Grindr tells you how far away you are from the person you're communicating with (in feet or miles), I couldn't get out of the situation. Yes, I wanted him. But I just didn't feel hot enough for him that day. He offered to Uber me when I said I didn't have an umbrella. He practically begged. I looked at my photos and then at my reflection in the gym's mirror. Do I even look like the guy he thinks I am? Why is he so aggressive when in person he barely acknowledged me, and in situations where I looked my best? Either way, I fell for it, mostly because I'm a people-pleaser. And as I walked toward his building I knew it was going to be a disaster. I was soaking wet. I had an afro-hawk that had started growing out on the parts that were supposed to be shaved close. And black hair, say what you want about it, simply does not look good wet. So I go to the address he sent me and it's one of those extremely expensive doorman buildings on a big-name street next door to the headquarters of one of the biggest media juggernauts in the world. I didn't expect that part. So I go in there and get on the elevator and get to the door and he opens it and Mr. PLEASE COME OVER is as silent as a mute. Can barely kiss. I make a joke about being soaken wet and he doesn't laugh. "This guy," I tell myself, "just needs some dick. So just give it to him." Of course, he's drop-dead gorgeous. His body is flawless. I couldn't have conjured a better pile of flesh if I were God myself. His ass was one of the most beautiful congealed mounds of mass I've ever seen. And he was another brother! Which, for whatever reason, is rare for me. Black men simply don't respond to me as much as others do online or in person. He was perfect. He even wanted it in my favorite position, which is sometimes not the preferred position of choice, especially by Hell's Kitchen circuit queen types, which was the only downside to his resume besides, well, seeming to have a void where is personality should be. Oh, and of course, the large, nearly wall-sized print of his older white husband and him on the beach at what appeared to be their wedding hovered over the bedpost. That didn't exactly get me in the mood. Anyway, point of the story is...nothing happened. Nada. Could. Not. Do. It. No little stirrings, no false starts even. At one point I thought the ignition was going to turn and I tried to get it in as fast as possible, but that wasn't working for him and made me look like an amateur. After 10 minutes of trying different things -- still, he was mute -- I told him I was "going through some things" and apologized. He nodded silently and went back to his phone -- back on the app and to find a 'real' man, apparently -- and I quickly put my clothes back on and rushed out the door. I told him I'd be in touch and maybe we could try again. He nodded. I bolted. The walk home was the male equivalent of the walk of shame -- when you didn't get any. Because you couldn't get it up. I was in my 40s, I told myself. Maybe it's time for Viagra? I considered calling two urologist friends of mine but decided that they would only tell me what made me feel better and blame it on the Grindr lifestyle and how unfit that is for real intimacy. But I needed to know. And I knew exactly what I would do: I would call my 'regular,' a sweet med school resident from overseas who lived up near me in Harlem and who would have seen me every day if I wanted to. This dude always offered me a drink when I came over, asked me to stay longer, and never ran out of things to talk about. He was... a perfect 6. And he was going to be my little guinea pig. Well, apparently I'm not impotent. The stallion burst out of the barn in that dude and when it was over he went to the bathroom and announced, in his sweet foreign accent, "Wow! You were extra hard today!"

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Fizer Is in Trouble

 Poignant subplot of E5 of Fleishman Is in Trouble in which Libby was struggling to break the glass ceiling at the mens magazine where she'd been working for 15 years and the implied sexism there. This provoked me to Google Taffy Brodessor-Akner, the author of the book and writer of the show, where I discovered she worked for GQ before writing her book. The interesting thing for me watching this episode was that I could see how hard it must have been for a woman at a magazine like GQ -- because as hard as it was for her to climb the ladder there as a woman, it was equally impossible for me to even get in as a black man, and I guess what you would call today a 'straight-presenting' black man. Because in the 90s and early 2000s, the only black men at Conde Nast, which owns GQ, were very flamboyantly and ostensibly gay men -- and there were only three or four of them. Of course, today you can't pass what passes for a magazine display without seeing black faces on all the covers and seeing names like Darnell and Kaneesha in the bylines. At an age where almost no one buys print magazines anymore, suddenly not only is black culture sellable, but black editorial talent is viable. At nearly 50 and as far away from the cultural pulse today as I once lived and breathed at the center of it, and often even ahead of it, I don't see myself trying to find my way back in there. Just an interesting observation watching this episode because, while I at one time 20-25 years ago would have given almost anything for Libby the character's job, I can see how the hierarchy of discrimination works as a function of cultural ownership.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Hearing Voices: My Podcast Dilemma

One of the things that kind of surprises and even disappoints me a little bit about myself is that I don't like podcasts. Even though I love information and opinions, my default connection to news and ideas is still reading. However, almost everyone I know whose opinion I care about has over the last few years asked me if I listen to this or that podcast and I always say no. I've tried to follow a few, but after a while the sound of some people's voices start to grate my nerves and overpower the content itself. The chirpers and uptickers and throat-clearers and nasal voices are obviously annoying, but the most intolerable voices to me belong to people who know they have really nice voices. These folks will kill you with their handsome baritones, chrystalline Stepford pitches, and perfectly enunciated 's' sounds. (Full disclosure: I'm one of these people myself.) And while there are people on television who have similar quirks, the visual media has a way of balancing these kinds of sensory experiences. Audio media, on the other hand, is meant to be be heard while you're walking, shopping, driving, cooking, etc., so radio and podcast productions have a lot of voice resonance. I'm also just very sensitive to noise in my own space. Unless I'm drinking or hosting company, I don't play music. I don't keep the television streaming for mindless background noise. (Yet, I need noise like rainfall and ASMR vids to fall asleep.) Either way, today I feel like the guy at the party 20 years ago who doesn't read the Times or the glossies. The bore. So since podcasts are the way people share and build ideas with each other today, I'm asking everyone who likes them to share their top five podcasts with me. I don't want to become someone who is getting older and lives in an echo chamber of one. And because I'm really resistant when it comes to technology --I'm a lover of many things paper, so I'm always the last on the "new" boat -- that's a real risk. So in with the new. Thanks in advance.