This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Blacks Be Blackin'

One of the ways in which many folks in some marginalized groups manifest unconscious self-loathing is by being far crueler to members of their own group than they ever would to members of that cohort they perceive as their oppressor.

Imitation of the oppressor is, in my opinion, one of the most consistent features of Black American culture. It's the ultimate paradox: In no other circumstances do members of this community come together more loyally, fiercely, and consistently than when a member of this group is slighted, abused, or killed by the so-called oppressor. Yet, in the daily lives of this community and among one another exclusively, Black Americans are, in my opinion, the least compassionate and considerate, the most mistrustful, envious -- and envy provoking -- and combative human beings among one another than any other community in the world.

Just an observation that a recent experience has forced me to finally accept (after millions of others like it). I'd love to feel wrong about this and I'd love to know we aren't alone, but I don't think so.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- This One's on the House

 People need to stop shaming drinkers. People drink for many reasons. For some, it's to manage emotional pain. Others, to facilitate creativity. Not every drinker is a messy, belligerent asshole who drives shitfaced or beats their partner. Some people just like to be a little tipsy, and there's nothing wrong with that.

We've elevated sex workers from prostitutes, trans men and women from "transv#stites" or "cross-dressers," we've legalized marijuana (after which we have seen a curious uptick in serious mental health episodes like psychosis and homicidal mania in our major cities since this "harmless" drug became legal), and managing drug addictions like crystal meth, heroin, and crack is now referred to as "harm reduction." And even psychotherapy is embracing psychedelic drugs as a panacea for afflictions like ADHD, PTSD, and OCD.

But a drunk is still a drunk. And I don't get that.

As a depressive personality who drinks, I sometimes overshoot the mark and it makes my symptoms worse. But most of the time it's really helpful to have a few beers when I'm feeling anxious, down, or need a burst of creative inspiration. Or when someone wants to call me to be their therapist -- believe it or not, I'm a lot of people's therapist -- it's almost imperative I have a beer for the ride.

But many of these same "patients" of mine will attribute every single thing in my own life that goes wrong to the fact that I drink beer. My roof could fall in because a North Korean drone fell on it and some people I know will say, "Well, were you drinking?"

I drink. Daily. Which I love to do, am proud to do, and am not going to stop doing. Sometimes I'm more sensitive, sadder, and/or more loquacious after one too many. Other times I'm funnier, smarter, and you're better looking when I do it. So stop complaining.

Everybody has their thing. Stop shaming people for what's not yours. Or just leave them the fuck alone. Cheers.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- They Call It Starbucks for a Reason

 I'm not a luxury coffee drinker, but I did feel like sitting in a coffee shop recently instead of reading alone at home. The pandemic lockdown cured my compulsion to "go somewhere" every day and especially night, but I still like the occasional people-watching communal vibe of cafe culture while I'm reading. So while I was downtown -- should we even still call it that? 😅-- I went to Starbucks in the West Village, the one on Seventh near 12th Street that has all the delicious looking croissant and focaccia sandwiches and everyone literally looks like a million bucks. Now, I hadn't been to a Starbucks in years (other than to drain my bladder), probably since the pandemic, but I was prepared to pay an extra dollar or two for a small coffee that came with a little amusement and stolen glances by and at other gay men. So I ordered a "tall" coffee, their smallest cup, black, no sugar.

"$4.60."

Huh? There was no way I was paying more than it costs for a single stuffed to the rafters chicken taco at Chipotle for a cup of drained beans. So I cheaped out and went to a nearby bodega and ordered one for $1.75 and sat on a bench and enjoyed the brisk autumn wind and parade of attractive rich people and micro-celebrities that always look so well put together cavorting or sitting on the stoops in the ridiculously gorgeous and twisting streets of the West Village.

What I'm wondering now is, is that just that location (and those like it) with those anabolic prices (and pretty food) or has Starbucks really gotten to the point of charging nearly five bucks for about 10 oz of black coffee. I'm going to check out the location at Lenox and 125th near where I live up here in Harlem and find out if the coffee chain is really this committed to living up to its name.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered --Reactions to the Second Coming

We are smarter than they are. We are better looking than they are. We are more well-traveled and culturally multilingual. We are more empathetic and interesting and open-minded and flexible and curious than they are. And, frankly, we don’t need a president. Because we are more self- sufficient than they are and have more cultural currency than anyone, anywhere, presidents included, in the world.

So let them have their president. We’re the Americans that make this country relevant, interesting, fun, exciting, and the most culturally influential place on Earth.

So let’s let them keep doing the grunt work and worshiping their leader. Let them keep toiling beneath us in the wooden provinces of their own minds and elsewhere as they elect the Trumps of now and forever. And we will keep dancing, loving, creating, inventing, learning, thinking, growing, and changing the world in a few of the most powerful and dynamic cities and enclaves on the planet by just being our marginalized, ahead-of-our times selves.

Being the majority is not our thing. The best are always the few.

___________________________________

Even her concession speech is presidential. So much grace, charm, and eloquence.

Which brings me to what I am coming to realize just writing about those qualities: The USA is not about these things. Grace, charm, eloquence, along with refinement, intellectual curiosity, and aestheticism, are values some of us carry individually, or in certain cultural subsets, but this isn't the U.S.'s jam. These traits are far more influential in other, more subdued and older countries. Ours, quite simply, is either too young or is not situated to ever be one of those places. This is a country of power, strength, global influence and military reach, and -- crucially -- economic prowess. Those of us who value the subtleties, the little dignities and elegances, the poetry and charm of character and progressive enlightenment, we are the outliers here.

This is why we travel so much more than other Americans. Why many of us are not living in or have lived outside the regions where we were born.

We can't lose what we've never had. We can maintain those qualities individually and independently of our national ethos. But it was never really about the finer things here in this country. The USA has never been about character. And in the hands of the President Elect and his cohort of conquerors and hyper-capitalists, don't expect it to get much more character-driven any time soon. In fact, I think we are about to see a USA more ruthless and brutalist than ever before. And that's one superlative this next president would probably agree with.

_____________________________________

Bl*ck Male Trump voters: "We don't like being told we're supposed to vote Democratic. We have our own minds."

Trump: "Then stop being manipulated by the left and vote for me instead, even though I wouldn't have rented to your grandparents 50 years ago and I describe African nations as sh*thole countries and, with your vote, I'm poised to defeat the first viable female presidential candidate in U.S. history who looks, talks and laughs like your mother, your aunt, your grandmother, and your baby mama. "

So the bl*ck male Trump voters decided to finally at this particular moment in time stop being manipulated and doing what they were told to do.... by being shamelessly manipulated and doing what they were told they were supposed to do.

#GoFigure 🤯🤷🏾‍♂️🤦🏽🙆🏾‍♂️

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - The "Intervert"

 MADE-UP WORD OF THE DAY:

Intervert: Someone who is shy and remote around those who are not like themselves and wildly social around those one finds relatable.

I just thought of this word (and there may be one that already exists for this definition that I just don't know, so feel free to share it if you do) when I received one of the biggest compliments I've gotten in a while -- maybe ever -- when I discovered that someone described me (to someone else) as a "conversationalist." I've never thought of myself that way, obvious as it now seems to me, especially because I can be very garrulous in some situations and around some people and inordinately shy in and around others.


One thing I cannot do is smalltalk. My brain is not capable of having a conversation about bullshit. (If you don't know me well and just ask me what's up, I will probably just smile and shrug while I try to think of a passable response and suddenly fear I appear boring.) Meanwhile, I'm too pretentiously highbrow (and unapologetically so) to discuss gossip or celebrities or anything I think is basic, common, or small. (Tomorrow will be a very prolific exception to this rule, FYI 😆) Yet, it's hard to expect witty repartee and meaningful discourse or even just a good laugh from everyone you know. (Honestly, today it's just hard period. Even in NYC. Being clever just doesn't seem relevant anymore.)

I think part of being an "intervert" is feeling socially insecure and superior at the same time. Any other interverts out there that I know?

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - The Life of the Party Needs to Breathe

 So much being written about the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz/Dana Bash CNN interview not delivering anything new or not being particularly revelatory. Well, here's my opinion: I think post-Obama historical/Trump circus era, people have forgotten something. That politics is not entertainment. At its most scintillating, the world is in the throes of chaos, revolution, or corrosive division. At its most banal, we're on the right track. 25 years ago we were dealing with the cultural apoplexy over the president getting a BJ from a starstruck intern. Today, that would last slightly longer in the news than Trump's ear bandage.

And, ironically, as much as the GOP loves to say that the MSM coddles liberals and Democrats, it is precisely these messengers that are bemoaning the Harris-Walz/Bash sit-down's lack of headline-generating material. And even when she admitted that her stance on fracking changed -- and how many politicians are courageous enough to even admit they changed their mind about anything, like, ever? -- it made her look like a flip-flopper. When she didn't depart from what many consider to be Biden's mandate on issues it made her look to some columnists as a puppet running on "more of the same." And bringing her second-in-command even made people say she didn't look secure enough. Funny how WOC and liberal feminists are either coming off too strong and emasculating or, when they bring along their male cohort, suddenly they're "not ready" to go it alone.

She's either the uber-progressive Queen Mother of the legislative Squad (read any conservative news outlet) or she's too centrist to ever be truly decisive about anything, a second Biden term in a DEI gift bag (actual uber-progressives). Meanwhile, the MSM, which was her BFF last week, is so intent not to seem liberal leaning that they'll try to pin her to the wall on the most incendiary threat to her campaign, and I don't mean her laugh: God forbid she actually says anything off-script about the Middle East's never ending crises. Even married to who she's married to, if she said anything even slightly equivocal about the State of Israel she'd be GOTCHA'd out of an entire demographic of registered Democrats.

Michelle Obama warned us not to be Petty Davis and pick on every missed opportunity or errant quote. But in a world where the public is more like an audience at a concert these days than an informed constituency of concerned citizens, we should remember the secret to a good DJ set imparted by someone whose name I can't remember: "You can't play one hot song after the next over and over. You have to have crescendos and lows and flatline moments to make the highs higher. Otherwise you just wear the crowd out." So let's think of the CNN interview as a good time to go to the bathroom or go order another round. But these columnists and many of us need to stop expecting every news morsel on Harris to be a DNC moment.

Right now, Harris is the life of the party. Can we let her catch her breath?

She can't win with some of these folks. But she better win for the rest of us.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - The Race Problem: A Redux

We see them on the trains, we see them on the news, we see them screaming to random passerby or to no one at all on the streets, from Harlem to Soho, from the Chelsea Piers to FDR. We read about random shootings on usually quiet tree-lined Harlem and bustling Bronx streets. About unprovoked stabbings in the subway stations, places unavoidable to most New Yorkers who just need to get to work and home safely, but whose hearts race nearly every time some disheveled, mumbling, or just downright menacing looking darker-skinned person enters the train or walks between train cars or blasts their music systems seemingly begging for provocation. And this is all a relief compared to the ones who suddenly blurt angry, homophobic, antisemitic, or other xenophobic, homicidal vitriol.

If you live in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc., all of these scenarios are perfectly transferrable.

Meanwhile, on the scary NYC subway commutes, we New Yorkers try to remain calm: keep reading our book, not exchanging eye contact with wherever the (always racially identifiable) voice is coming from -- and that's if we're hopefully not seated the ones seated in front or next to them. And, more often than not, we make it to our destination, relieved that it wasn't us this time. Knowing surely, however, that it will be or was someone else.

Sometimes a change of trains or a complete abandonment of the subway to walk the rest of the trip is the most anxiety-proof solution. But you can't escape the thoughts that intrude on your brain.

Yes, there is that question, that unavoidable trap: "Why are they all always blk?" If you are not blk yourself, this question can elicit guilt, and then relief that you have blk friends who are nothing like this and you have even dated or hooked up with some POC and you absolutely love the Obamas so, whew, you are not racist (liberal) or confirm suspicions that racism, unfortunately, might be horrible but valid, like how animals eat each other in the jungles and some small children get leukemia (moderate). If you're one of the those who can block out these intrusive thoughts -- or reckonings of conscience -- because it's not your problem (conservative-ish) or it invokes the ethos of Kipling's profoundly racist poem,"W$%te Man's Burden," (very conservative), then this leads to a more intricately probing question. What a racist must thing can only seem obvious. But what, I want to know, do other blk people think about this? This situation where, even as I write this, I cannot spell the actual word that I'm referencing for fear of being suspended from this venue.

I don't understand why more blk people -- liberals in particular -- simply refuse to speak publicly about the preponderance of violent crime in literally every major city where we live in large numbers without framing it in the context of whataboutism (i.e. "Well, what about slavery/Jim Crow?" "Well, other groups do it too, what about the Mafia?" etc.). The silence is a deafening endorsement at the least, an indicator of indifference at worst.

This is something I think about a lot because I find it deeply frustrating because you shouldn't have to feel like Candace Owens or Tim Scott or, worst of all, Clarence Thomas, to wish your community was something you could be proud of beyond contributions to music and sports and merely surviving adversity, something all communities have endured.

I'm tired of the embarrassment and shame and disgust with the way we are portrayed -- and, largely, accurately. It spills into the lives of people who are trying to get good jobs and network and live a life above suspicion or presumed pathology or defectiveness.

Many may call this self-loathing. Only those who think their ethnic designation is the essence of their whole person or some substantial quantity of it would think so. And I'm fine with that. I know I love who I am. But I don't like seeing the news every single day and seeing someone that looks like me committing unspeakable acts of violence because they are either insane, drugged out, living in some kind of gang warfare parallel universe, or just downright not quite fully human. How long are we going to allow racism to seem like a perfectly valid and reasonable response to what is happening in our cities by, almost exclusively, members of one racial designation? Find me another rationale and I'll happily take it. But I don't see one coming.

It's overdue for blk people to get ahead of this because our survival may depend on it. You see, our present inoculation from a full-on race war by coddling, sympathetic liberal yts and the refreshing achievements of a certain talented fraction of the community will eventually expire if the balance of blk influence keeps tilting toward depravity. And if we continue to allow our public figures not to speak on BOTH sides of the race problem -- which sounds SO quaint, but remains, however ornamentally coded (DEI is the current incarnation), a race problem -- we are going to find the great majority of us left in a much colder place than before we were before given the chance to prove them wrong.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - The Contest for the White House in 2024: A Clear Case of Good vs. Evil

To be honest, I'm not even thinking about policy issues right now. I know that sounds ridiculous, lazy even, but if the choice between two truly decent, nice, and relatable, highly intelligent people and two Disney-villiain level freaks is really splitting this country 50/50, then we have a major ethical culture chasm in this country. Yes, the GOP have a major point about the border; about violent crime in our major cities; about disintegrating family values. Liberals really do need a better solution for these issues that doesn't try to justify unjustifiably aberrant behavior on centuries-old beefs that go back to the colonies. But where are the Mitt Romneys and Liz Cheneys and George Bushes (father or son) of that political party? These were/are decent people, respectable conservative voices in very recent history. Where did they go? Now we have two cartoonishly evil people (and a whole chorus of equally despicable weirdos on their ass-kissing end of the legislative branch) who are a couple of red county majority votes away, essentially, in about four or five states, from winning this election. People who basically invented the word "freedoms" but who literally rolled back women's reproductive autonomy a whole half century. People who call themselves patriots but who can't bring themselves to condemn the nutjobs who terrorized our Capitol Building. People who will invoke the Constitution to get out of a parking ticket but who unabashedly denied a sitting president a SCOTUS nomination -- only to imbalance the court to the right in the next administration. All led by a living embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins who rants on X/Twitter like a grounded pre-adolescent little monster about every imaginable perceived slight. Whose ear, in case anyone forgot, was supposedly grazed by a bullet or shrapnel or broken plexiglass in an assassination attempt but healed faster than a skinned knee on a five-year old. But we don't need to go there.

(And, neither did they.)

I don't know what the other half of this country sees or hears when they see Kamala Harris but I see my mother and my aunts and all the black women I've known all of my life growing up in my mother's hair salon. I've seen Kamala when she is about to "read" someone in countless black women, I hear in her laugh (the "cackle") the sound of a cacophony of bliss and familiarity when in a room filled with black women, one of them says something that's "right on time," i.e. witty or clever and nails the point or the moment in the soulful way that only women of color can. And when she, as Vance puts it, "changes her voice to appeal to whatever audience is in front of her," I hear my own mother who could and still can code-switch from an "East-Side" black girl from Detroit to an upper-middle class PTA mom in the time it takes to turn around and answer the phone. Harris, I believe, is savvy enough to know who she is familiar to and to whom, in kind, she seems exotic, strange, or disingenuous. So she smartly picked someone who looks to those people like a familiar figure in their communities: the hometown football coach, the Social Studies teacher, the rural, red-state dad.

I don't know who a blustery, bouffant, rouge-wearing con man and his Maybe It's Maybelline sidekick look familiar to, but if you're someone reading this and these are "your people", do you mind helping me understand what on Earth it is that you don't find utterly terrifying about a Trump/Vance presidency? Asking for a LOT of friends.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Happy 30th to Stereolab's Mars Audiac Quintet album

Bought this amazing album on my first big boy trip to NYC all alone in 1994. I discovered Stereolab while looking at clothes at Agnes b. in Soho. Asked somebody who worked there what the song, band, and album were and went straight to Kim's afterwards and bought the CD. (How was I that cool and didn't even know it? Did I know it? Maybe. I also discovered Yo La Tengo on the same trip and bought one of their albums while shopping at What Goes Around Comes Around on West Broadway before it was as expensive as Hermes and Gucci.)

Downtown was sooooooo alive and sexy. Great sounds, great looking people. There was a very European and generally international edge to Soho, the Village, and Tribeca that's gone now. In particular, a cafe on Seventh Ave in the Village called Raphael's that had a loft-like spread, gauze curtains billowing in the wind, a Moroccan vibe that was an actual vibe and not a self-consciously branded attempt at evoking the unevokable, and a gorgeous waiter that looked like a mixture of every ethnicity in the world before that was a thing. He was just beautiful, tall, sample sized, and otherworldly. The kind of model that only existed in the 80s and 90s...I went there every day just to see him.

All those magazines I'd grown up reading. This is where it all came to life.

Strangely, it would take me another year to get into the nightlife scene. So every night after eating at mostly Italian restaurants (my favorite food), walking until I got myself lost, shopping at bookstores, record stores, and thrift stores, browsing art galleries and high-end boutiques, and cafe-ing my way through all the edgy south of 14th neighborhoods, I would go back to my hotel just off Washington Square park and...just go to bed. I remember the lady at the front desk would say, "Aren't you going to go paint the town red?" And I just laughed at her. I was 21 but I was kind of afraid of clubs. I drank but I didn't *drink* drink then. I had just left my frat boy life and was segueing into the world of clubland with no GPS or BFF. So for a year I just kind of lived inside myself.

But by my next trip, only a year later in the summer of '95, this boy was at Twilo, Sound Factory, Tunnel, Bowery Bar, working out at David Barton, and staying at the Hotel Chelsea! And while I still loved my alt and indie rock, house music had taken over the soundtrack of my life and would continue to for a good decade. Electronic music like Sterolab made it only a bridge across the way.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1061695952031180&set=pcb.8105618089495174

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1061695888697853&set=pcb.8105618089495174

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - The Last Word on The Last Supper vs. The Feast of the Gods at the 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony

If the artist (or someone else) has to explain (not interpret or explicate but explain, as in "this is the right interpretation and this is the wrong one") the work then it has failed. Regardless of however much one is or isn't fluent in classical studies or Greek mythology or fine art or Rupaul's Drag Race, the point of the work was lost and that's the artist's fault, not the fault of the audience.

When you release your work for public consumption, you don't get to decide how it's digested. Blackface minstrel shows in the early 20th century in America, to use one example, might have been an homage, one could argue, to the animatedness and musicality of Bl@ck American culture. But that's not how it was received and that's not how it will be remembered, at least so far.

If I were the artistic director of the opening ceremony and my inspiration was Dionysus and the Feast of the Gods, I would have been very careful to make that abundantly clear and distinct from any resemblance to a drag version of the Last Supper UNLESS I wanted this controversy to ensue to rile people up and get noticed. The two works are not similar. But one is far more iconic. And while the Olympics are obviously Greek in origin, the ceremony should be a distinctly French performance, and imbued with French cultural references. So with France being a largely Catholic country, it makes perfect sense that people would see the tableau as a reference to Da Vinci's Last Supper. That's a perfectly legitimate interpretation.

So artistic director Thomas Jolly either wanted to stir up some kind of mixed message so that he could clap back and make people feel ignorant or he just didn't see how his own work could be misconstrued, which would mean he failed at his job. I'm not entirely sure this wasn't some form of trolling on his part and that he isn't having his own Dionysian bacchanal celebrating the backlash to all of this as we speak.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- The Healthy Wear a Crown

 The healthy wear a crown that only the sick can see.

A Yemeni doctor acquaintance of mine shared this resonantly profound Arabic proverb with me a few years ago, and boy is it true.

The last two months have been some of the scariest in my life. Short version: I had an "event" in my vision that my doctor thought was a TIA, which is a transient ischemic attack, also known as a fucking mini-stroke. Yes, you read that correctly. So I've spent the last two months taking a zillion tests, each one further confirming that I'm healthy but not quite checking all boxes, until I finally took the two most important ones yesterday and found out that I have no artery blockages in my head and neck and there is no residue from a stroke or stroke-like incident.

So I'm in the clear.

Oddly, the night that I had this "event" -- whatever it was -- was the night I graduated with my Master of Science in Publishing from Pace University. In the months and weeks prior to this event, I had been extremely stressed out trying to get it all done, all while working a gig as an AI editor at Google, which was as awful as it sounds, and also applying for another Master's program at NYU. I was in the gym every day, I was drinking too much to wind down at night, and I was completely overwhelmed. My blood pressure got so high I had to start taking medication for it and testing my BP at home (which always raised my BP so I have stopped doing that).

On the night I officially graduated, I was leaving a graduation party and had just walked out of the subway. As I turned on my street, I realized that the leaves had grown on the trees and I had missed them budding. I wondered, "When did the leaves come out on all the trees?" and just as I was admiring the nature I had been too busy to notice over the last few weeks, about 1/5 of my vision in both eyes went black, as if a curtain had been pulled over it. It only lasted a few seconds but it was really eerie.

The next day I Googled it and didn't like what I read so I emailed my doctor, the deeply patient and beautiful soul that is Dr. Jordan Coleman, and he contacted me immediately and told me what a TIA is -- and what the implications of this were.

It made sense that I would have something happen to me, in retrospect. I was burning it on both ends. So for the last two months I have been scared shitless that I had a mini-stroke, which is usually a precursor for a major one. Every day I woke up basically surprised I woke up. I dreamt of having a stroke many nights. The word "stroke" seemed to show up in everything I read or on every other ad or commercial. I started wondering what would be said of me in the Facebook RIPs. I spent a lot of time thinking about that.

I also spent a lot of time changing my lifestyle. I already work out lifting weights almost daily, but I rarely do any cardio beyond running errands around NYC on foot and the occasional jog through Central Park. And I mostly eat well. But, as those who know me know, I am a 51 year old man who loves potato chips, beer, and Marlboro Lights. Yes, I smoke. I love to smoke when I am drinking beer. And I love drinking beer.

So I started taking 10am cardio classes at my gym, ditched the smokes and the beer, and eliminated almost all traces of sodium from my diet for a month. I was irritable, angry, and bored out of my fucking mind. But I was alive. Even if I didn't feel like this was much of a life worth living. I realized that everything I liked was off limits. And yet, every day I saw people on the street who were strung out, smoking all kinds of things, or carrying an obese body and wondered how in the hell I of all people ended up having to worry about a goddamn stroke. I was angry at myself a little bit for having certain indulgences and angry at life in general for seeming to go by so quickly. How the fuck was I in my 50s taking blood pressure medication and worrying about dropping dead? I'm built like a brick shit house, I just banged some gorgeous 30 year old guy three times in a row, and I just graduated Magna Cum Laude from my Master's program. How could I possibly be this old???

The healthy wear a crown, indeed. I walked around for weeks in a sober, high-anxiety daze looking at other people who were happy and enjoying their summer and I was envious. I thought, on one of my zillion hospital visits over the last two months, how many times I'd passed Mt. Sinai and NYU Langone hospitals and never gave them a passing thought and now I was there for something it seemed like once a week.

And today I got the results from yesterday's head and neck MRA that I'm actually really healthy and whatever happened was probably just some strange visual fluke. I'm a little leery, but overall relieved that it wasn't my bullet this time. *Gulp*

Thank you to the few people I shared this with, especially my dear friend Jordan Coleman. You are the best doctor in the world and I am so dearly grateful for your friendship. Also, thank you to Amy Opperer Brode Josh Daitch and Erica Dennison Daitch and Ryan Kaluzny and Jennifer Tisdale Kaluzny and Naftali Goldsmith and LaShonda Steele Allen for letting me vent and, at times, completely freak out.

Now my summer has just begun.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Here Comes the Mirror Man

 Mistrust of the U.S. government is now equally equally embedded, if not founded (whether rationally or irrationally or viscerally or somewhere in between)), on both sides of the political spectrum. And when I say mistrust, I mean psycho paranoid lover mistrust. Literally, people think our government will fake school shootings, terrorist attacks, fake elections and presidential assassination attempts, sacrifice civilians, and in some cases kill presidents, presidential candidates, and influential entertainment icons. How long this has been going on, I don't know. But for me, it reaches back to "grassy knoll" speculation after the assassination of JFK over 60 years ago. (Or maybe a year earlier, with Marilyn.)

Today, we have the "bloody ear" or "rally sniper" conspiracy theories, or however this latest incident will be remembered by history.

I must admit that, with some shame, I am guilty too. Because I am partly struggling -- okay, make that REALLY struggling -- to believe in the most recent of these events, the attempt on President Trump's life. This assassination narrative, frankly, stinks a bit to me. I've read about an ear plug, about someone in the audience clapping too early, about the fact that they couldn't even make the assassin a conservative, even though that is usually demographic in these lone-wolf scenarios. But what really gave me pause when I watched the video is Trump's reaction. He was so quick to be heroic that he forgot to appear shocked. The fist pumping, the "Fight, fight, fight..." When Trump ran in 2016 there was a scare at one of his rallies and he ducked the hell down and had to be whisked away, looking totally shocked and frozen at the time. This Trump seemed not to be surprised at all. He got back up when his detail corralled around him and he immediately reveled in the applause and his resplendent new martyrdom. If this was staged, what a huge risk to take with Trump, who has absolutely no empathy, no capacity for subtlety, and no ability to lie convincingly. So as far as his acting skills go, this was actually pretty damn good.

And then I feel like a hypocrite because I've spent a decade castigating conservatives for their hyperbole and paranoia and bottomless cynicism when it comes to "mainstream media," "the liberal agenda," "globalism," and "crisis actors." Now my mind has gone into Alex Jones-land and I want to kick myself because I can't stop wondering if I'm just really that biased...or if living in the world's most powerful country is to live morally lubricated by privilege in the most nefarious empire the world has ever seen. And in these events, we citizens on both sides of the political and all checkpoints on the cultural spectrum get glimpses into what we're really dealing with: A divided and conquered electorate of quasi-placated (mostly) well-fed, over-medicated, terminally indebted, globally isolated, highly entertained, and faux-controversially distracted and racially and culturally bifurcated fools.

I don't know who said that the smartest thing the devil ever did was convince the world he doesn't exist. But the smartest thing the U.S. government ever did was create two parties with a steadily decreasing Venn space between them and an electorate that mutually despises one another, even as it becomes increasingly obvious that we are mirroring each other.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Racial Discrimination's New Gig: Meta-Irony

 This is absolutely infuriating.

I'm not someone who rails against gentrification on racial grounds (I love how integrated Harlem is now, personally -- I don't love what has happened to Chelsea and the East and West Village and LES, but these are taste issues) but this is outrageous. A young college grad's family member who is a consistently working Hollywood actor tries to help the young grad get an apartment in Harlem to start his life out in NYC and the landlord rejects the application, even though the guarantor is a multi-millionaire, multi-property owner, on the basis that his work is "inconsistent," even after offering to pay an entire year of rent upfront?

What kills me in situations like these -- and I have encountered my share professionally, socially, and otherwise -- is that no matter how affluent or well-positioned you are in life, being black is always an impediment, an obstacle. And the irony is, any time we get any type of advantage (often created to block discriminatory practices) it is perceived that we have a leg up on everything over everybody. In particular, the recent ruling that Suits actor Wendall Pierce (who recently starred on Broadway in the latest incarnation of Death of a Salesman) talks about in the Twitter video link below my commentary makes laws and practices aimed at promoting black-owned business as a way of getting around discriminatory practices that persist in areas like property ownership, bank loans, and other means of upward mobility, are being shot down in our conservative high court(s) on the basis that they discriminate on the basis of race, i.e. by promoting black prosperity in ways that only semantically discriminate against whites. One really would have to willfully obscure their interpretation of American history to see it that way and yet this is what passes today for strict constructionism.

Now, I'm not going to pretend why many people don't like and fear certain demographics of black Americans and don't want them around their neighborhoods and property. The reputation for declining property value, crime, blight -- these are elements of the black lower class that cannot be denied. And I can see why people don't like durag wearing thugs, bonnet brigades of baby mamas, loud-mouthed lace-front Lolitas, mumbling ne'ver do well corner store choruses of chronic smoking, jive talking losers, and all manner of ghetto types of folks. And let's not even get into the epidemic of downright lunatics that have smoked or toked themselves into homicidal madness that roam freely in our major cities attacking all kinds of people for absolutely no reason and seem impervious to incarceration. I don't know why there seem to be more people like this than ever and I have no qualms about saying that I abhor these kinds of people and would happily support their complete annihilation or at least sterilization in the interest of social advancement or the rest of us black Americans who are forced to answer for them by self-consciously demonstrating that we are *not* them. I hate these people. But when we are educated, well-spoken, upwardly mobile members of society and we get treated this way, nothing makes me angrier. It's just so fucking unfair and, while it's nice to know I'm not the only person that occasionally bumps up against these issues even in post-Obama America, it's just so unfair. People should be allowed liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as someone wrote on a certain document. Imagine all the young black college grads who don't have a Hollywood uncle. Now, I have been in a lot of apartments belonging to young non-POC in this city for a very long time and there is no way that these tenants were put under the same scrutiny as this actor and his family member and myself and God knows how many other people. And, in Harlem, no less.

See his interview with CNN"s Abby Phillips here: https://x.com/abbydphillip/status/1798194641902469385

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Why Just Being Hot Is Not Sexy

Why do I keep hearing so many hot guys in New York say there are no tops?

This is something I've been thinking about for a very long time.

I don't know who needs to hear this (actually, like everyone who says this, yes I do), but being hot is not enough. And being sexy is not about looks. It's about energy and vibe, intelligence and attitude and sensitivity. I remember when John Legend was voted People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive a few years ago and people were dragging him because they didn't think he was sexy enough for the honor. But what they really meant was that he wasn't "hot" enough. Because no one who makes music like John Legend can possibly not be sexy. He is absolutely sexy. (And very cute.) That's when I realized it: people under, say, late-thirties, don't know the difference between being hot and being sexy. The don't know that they're not the same.

Being both hot and sexy used to seem pretty common. Models and young actors weren't just intriguing and gorgeous in the past but interesting and wild. Bars and clubs full of sexy people also had interesting conversations and witty repartee. The art of flirting was real. The boldness of approaching someone out of your league made your confidence not "sus" (as it would today), but it added at least two attractiveness points to whatever you looked like.

Today, being hot and being sexy seem more mutually exclusive than anything. Because what a lot of really attractive/hot/gorgeous people (or people who just have such a gorgeous ass that no one seems to notice what their face even looks like -- because, today, the ass is the new face) don't seem to pick up on nowadays is that being extremely good looking is not enough to make you sexy. It just makes you look sexuUAL. Being sexY is hotter than how great your face or ass could ever look -- and if you have both, you're the ideal. But, unlike when I was in my 20s and early 30s and people in New York City were equally gorgeous, sexy, and cool (forget cool -- that's asking way too much today. As one friend pointed out so well recently, "Hot guys aren't cool."), nowadays everyone is so fixated on how hot they look that they forgot to work on the personality. I've met some people who seemed to have a void where a personality should be and thought that a top hookup should just walk in ready to go like a car that doesn't need an ignition switch but instead motorizes at will. (I honestly think some women have a better idea of how a man's penis operates than most bottoms.) And would it kill you to be hot, sexy, and nice? Nice on a really good looking person is really sexy. And I don't just mean nice to the person you're interested in, but nice in general. Nice is sexy.

Just thought I'd give some people out there complaining that there no tops in NYC a little heads up on why it seems that way. I get PMs from gorgeous men here that are way out of my league and after I finish wondering why they don't have people tripping over each other to date them, I go to their socials and all I see are selfies. Same pretty, smizy, puckered lipped facial expression, same pouty, poked out ass. Not much said other than how many guys aren't coming at them the right way or aren't offering them enough gifts or travel expenses or don't want to be friends after being rejected (if you don't want to be solicited, then don't show your body all over your socials! Duh!) Well, news flash: it's not that there are not tops. We're here. But no one's doing psychological military training over your ass. We want to be worshipped too. Yeah, your ass is fine as hell, but you already know that. Tell me how sexy you think I am. Tell me how I make you feel. You 10s might be getting the likes on social media, but the the 5s, 6s and 7s are getting laid because they're nice fucking people.

So be nice, pretties. It's hot. And not only does it last longer than your looks, but it makes us last longer too.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - A Tale of Two Hookups

 A TALE OF TWO HOOKUPS - TODAY IN TMI FROM BRANDON'S DATING LIFE (from a Facebook post)

Yesterday I was greedy. I went on two hookups. (Honestly, this paragraph wouldn't even be necessary if most of my readers here weren't straight.)

I met the first guy on one of these apps, I can't remember which. He wasn't a stand-out looks-wise, but because most of my most bragworthy conquests usually turn out to be really messed up human beings, I've actually come to the conclusion that what I really need in my life isn't a 9 or a 10 but a Classic Six. And this isn't real estate talk.

This guy didn't want to have sex, he didn't ask me how big I was or disappear if I weren't swinging the Eiffel Tower between my legs. He didn't send me videos or photos of himself being pounded by some piece of trade that probably once had a parole officer. (Part of my problem is that I have a look that happens to attract a person who is in the mood for a certain type of guy who is nothing like how I am inside, but that's another rant altogether.) Rather, this guy said he wanted to meet for tea. Wow, I thought, this is either a serial killer or the nicest guy I've ever met on an app in my life! So I met him at his place after the gym yesterday and we chatted about his international background, how many foreign languages he speaks, and his classical music performing hobby. Somehow he even managed to make me less interested in myself than in what he had to say about himself. (If you know me, this is practically magic.) Then he gave me a great, non-X-rated massage for 20 minutes. He was cute, but like a puppy is cute. I wasn't attracted to him, but he was so damn nice that if he had wanted to, I would have turned on the BBC version that people expect of me on these increasingly grating and depressing apps.

It was a nice date and I left his apartment refreshed, relaxed...and determined to find an actual hot guy to remind myself that I can do better because, well, I too am a toxic asshole vampire, apparently.

So I go to the dark web of gay hookup apps known as Sniffies and a dude with a booty in two zip codes hits me up immediately. No face, just torso and butt. Immediately, I knew who this was.

Five years ago, this headless Greek sculpture (from Venezuela) and I had had a honeymoon weekend and I left in a glow of crushing infatuation and excitement for the next weekend. Until I found him on the same app we met when he wasn't returning my texts. Hurt but not destroyed, I blocked the dude, ignored him at the gym even when we were working out on machines side by side, and pretended that I didn't miss those golden globes that went from Earth size to Jupiter during the lockdown. For years, when I saw him in the gym I would somehow shut down my peripheral vision without looking away the way one does when they just know that there's a rat over there in that garbage but you have to pass it by.

But time had passed and it was late and I was tired of looking at these nasty kweens so when he said, under the photo, "Do you want to come over?" I just said yes. He asked how long. I said 20 minutes.

It wasn't the first time he'd tried to reel me back in but I usually blocked him. I don't know why this time was different. Something about Classic Six making me feel like I needed to know I could still get Penthouse Suite.

I get on the bus and he's impatient. I tell him I'm on my way. I get there. Five flights of stairs later I try to make light jokes about our past impasse. He's undressed, all gorgeous face and top-shelf bubble ass. I make my two zip codes joke. I make a joke about how climbing five flights of stairs gave him that shelf. He gives me the courtesy laugh and then puts on a porno on his massive screen. Two brothers going at each other like both were a plate of collards. I say, "Do I have to share you with these guys?" He is either not the one for witty repartee or the irony was lost in the English translation so all of my actually funny jokes have to be repeated, explained, or are just ignored.

To his credit, he did compliment me on how much bigger my physique had gotten since our last experience. I'm normally modest, so I attributed my gains to middle age finally putting some meat on my bones. But this gave me the confidence to wrestle back some control and ask him to turn off that ridiculous porno. Neither of those guys looked as good as even I thought I did. Plus, I thought, I'M here. And I'm in the flesh. Why would I want to see another guy's...anything? What did he need that for?

We get down to business. And the crank won't start. Surprise. I tell him I was hoping we could talk, that I'm very psychological, that I can't just walk in and pretend like blah blah blah but eventually I tell him that we have all night before I'm corrected: he has plans in an hour.

How did I allow myself to fall for this again? And why is he so sweaty? Was someone already in here? He was never tight, I remembered. There was always the sense that those luscious, jiggly, clappy cheeks were compensating for enough airspace for Air Force One. But by the time I was able to get going it was ten seconds of the most regretful bliss I had had in a long time. I got ready to leave and asked for his number. I had blocked it before.

"We don't need to go on that stupid app to find each other," I said, leaving him what I though was a witty olive branch text. He got ready to get in the shower to meet his friends, visiting from out of town.

I get home and get a text from him.

"Huh? Who is this?"

"E*&^^%o?"

"This is not E*&^^%o."

So E*&^^%o gave me the wrong number.

Oh well. I ignored my inner voice and I got what I deserved. But what pisses me off, what really bothers me more than anything, is that he didn't deserve what he got, which was my weakness for a body part connected to a nothing of a person.

But... this is dating today. You get your cozy, adorable date and your sick vampire nut. Some people get nada. So I guess I can't complain.

I know some people wonder why I am willing to share so much of this area of my life here in the most unflattering way. I don't know why but it's cathartic. And it's great writing exercise. But I also like having a sense of humor about disappointment or misery. It's one of my favorite things about this medium. When you feel rejected or hurt it can feel really lonely. But when you can talk about it or share it or laugh about it, it becomes insignificant, silly, a funny anecdote. I was feeling bad about this but now I can't wait to go out there and get my little feelings hurt all over again! LOL

So many people love to show how great everything is. How great looking they are, how rich they are, how fabulous their life is, their vacation is, their butt is. (!!!) Well, I kind of like being there for the person who is feeling like crap that day. So they know they aren't alone.

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1Debbie Safran