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.

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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

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.

This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Will It be the Bike or the Train? Who's My Ride or Die?

 Are there any other New Yorkers out there who seriously, no-joke, "dead-ass" wonder if they are going to die today every time they get on the subway? I have tried biking, busing, and scrapped all kinds of plans to avoid the trains over the last year or however long it's been since the new normal. This is because, outside of the daily reports of stabbings, hammerings, shootings, pushing onto tracks, and all manner of random, unprovoked savagery, I have been approached now three times by crazy people who for whatever reason find me threatening so they just walk up to me and try to provoke some kind of exchange. And I never even say a word. Often it has something to do with my "big muscles," which aren't even *that* big. (Apparently, on top of my other woes, I look like a 'roughneck' to people.) Well, I did not discuss this on Facebook for whatever reason, but about a month ago a crazy dude got on the train blasting and mumbling along to his violent rap music on one of those little canister stereo things and decided that he didn't like Dominicans and that I was Dominican (I am not) and after a long rant about "fuck them Dominicans," and some other madness, he looked at me and threatened to shoot me. I'm not joking. For nor reason. I didn't look at the dude, I didn't say anything to him, and I am not and nor do I think I look Dominican. (And even if I were, so what? What's wrong with all these crazy black racist fucks attacking people for being some other race or another?) Luckily, the train (the 1) was pulling into 66th at Lincoln Center, which is one of the most culturally dignified neighborhoods in the city, and people emptied the car and ran up to the conductor, some even faster than I did. The train stopped, police were called, I was shaking but had an appointment (with my therapist) and got on the bus at Broadway and walked into her office explaining what had just happened and apparently I was so shaken up my nose started gushing blood. For a moment, I thought I had been shot. It was crazy. The next day I went out and spent over $900 on a bike. I've ridden the thing twice. I love it in the Park or along the water, but on the streets I just feel like I traded one bullet for another. Most of these city street bikers, frankly, are entitled and crazy. How one isn't wiped out every day is beyond me. I'm more afraid of them than the cars. Which aren't much better because no one is looking at the road. All the Lyft and Uber drivers are looking at their GPS systems. Anyway, this week I'm back on the trains. So far so good. The A/C/B/D trains are roomier and people appear to be more civilized. Except the station platforms are a little scary. A lot of loiters and scary hominids just lingering about. But the ride isn't as populated with lunatics as the 2/3, which is basically a moving insane asylum. The 6 has always had the ugliest people even pre-pandemic but since the east side buses actually arrive and move on time, I tend to just bus it on that side of town. Anyway, today I need to get on the crazy train and I'm pondering my mortality the way one might before going under anesthesia for the first time. Anyone else get like this or is this just me being...me?

This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- The Local News Needs an Update

 The local news paradigm needs to be updated badly. First of all, let's chill with these weather forecasts. The weather does not need to be discussed, it just needs to be noted. And any meteorologist who does not like rain or anything other than sunny and warm weather just sounds basic AF. How do you get a degree in this meteorology and only like the same one type of weather system that any rando visiting Tampa in February would like? (Actually, how the fuck does anyone get a degree in meteorology period? Can you imagine the small talk?) Also, let's end sports. There is nothing more culturally residual of the Eisenhower era of patriarchal dominance than the fact that sports is reported on the local evening news every night. I don't know if this is a gay thing or an artist thing, but nothing bores me more than hearing a bunch of dudes blab about a sports game to no end. I grew up having to listen to my friends talk about that and having to sit with the men in the living room on holiday gatherings watching them somnambulantly grunt and mumble about touchdowns and field goals and all I saw were a bunch of bubble butts and helmets bopping around and stopping suddenly to regroup for no apparent reason and I would just check out of the room like someone who suddenly stopped understanding our spoken language. If you want to kill me, talk about sports for longer than two minutes and I will die of boredom right in front of you. I'll melt. Might even start crying. Goddamn, that shit is boring. Moving on, and this is probably a gay thing (and perhaps a son-of-a-hairdresser thing), these wiggy hairstyles on the lady anchors! Why does everyone's hair have to be so stiff? A woman with hair volume should have hair that moves. That's such a terrible look. Anyway, any news producers out there? May want to consider some of these suggestions. And lastly, stop not saying the "race" of the perp in a crime story. Saying, "the suspect was described as six feet tall and wearing a purple du-rag, a black leather jacket, and sagging pants." I mean...just say it, already. You know? Evasion only makes it more pronounced. Well that's it for me until I find something else to complain about.