[785] The Good, The Bad, and The Pissy

I've got two wildly different things I want to talk about, but they occupy the same head, and I don't think there's any way to really combine them. I'm going to just start writing one of them and either break off and make a new blog, or somehow discover a way they might work together. We'll see.

I'm starting to simulate what I think will happen when I get back in “it.” It, in this explanation, is that mode of being that goes hard, obsesses, believes, and exhaustively explores some avenue that's taken interest. I felt myself so confused as to what to do with myself after work today, I ended up falling asleep. I can feel my psyche shifting into needing an overwhelming topic, or shutting down from the energy zapping the circuits. Nothing else seems “right” or “appropriate,” but to progress through the things I got a taste of the other day. Clean more, build more, work more.

I think a lot about having money. I already have money, not huge amounts, but a means of acquiring it where I'm no more than a month or 2 away from being “even” or generally better off than even most first-worlders. I think about all the money I watch on talk-shows. Rich people are just like us! After a while, they just want to have game nights, and raise kids, and while they'll talk more nonchalantly about the amount and types of vacations, deeper animal desires and instincts will start to reign. “Competitive” won't be an overbearing character flaw, or a niche interest can get to work masquerading as a humanitarian exercise.

When I have money, I'll want the laughs. I'll want to keep powering through movies and shows and being fairly culturally “plugged in.” I'll want to improve on my musical knowledge. I'll want to entertain. It occurred to me that when I actually believed I could “help” something, it seemed as good a reason as any to exhaust myself in service to the mere chance I could provide. I don't know how much of my languishing belief in that is due to this 2 or so year waiting period, but the “burden” feels less imperative. I want something profitable and successful drawing off the wisdom of a thousand failures tomorrow, but I've got more of a “pace of life” attitude about it. No matter what, I'm still going to work, and I still need to refine the home base. What sense would it make to start ignoring the foundation after you've been beaten into respecting what it takes to set it up?

It's interesting me to watch the priority shift. I'll proclaim how “anti-aesthetic” I am in service to getting the job done, but I'll take my naked insulation and barn over a trailer any day. The yellowing foam insulation is keeping the bugs out, and can be trimmed any time. The mud caked onto literally everything is an immensely satisfying power-wash away from clean. While I think it'd be dumb to go into debt for the things on my Amazon wishlist, they are there for various reasons. Few hundred dollars at a time? Spend the next two weeks playing with new toys until the coffers fill back up. Consistent ongoing tune-ups and oil changes? Why, it's the responsible thing to do! Ten dollar event insurance? No sense in risking losing out.

It's feeling more and more like a craving. I can feel my chest pulling me towards my spot. I can feel myself walking lighter and smiling quicker. I'm not a person who habitually looks for a problem, and when one of the biggest ones starts to lift, it's like, now what? What do I do with my improved mood? When did I start to bother mingling? Who am I going to risk sharing what I'm doing with? It's something I cherish about drive or compulsion. You know where it's pushing you if you're willing to pay attention. I can ask every question, but I'll know I'm where I need to be when I snap into the moment and just go, “yeah.” Enough of those bred the romance I had for college friendships, so I'll be better next time, but the feeling is no-less desirable.

Let's break off and flip the script entirely. The next blog is about pee tapes.

I watched the docu-series on R. Kelly. I notice a familiar pattern in documentaries. First, there's an obvious “bad guy.” R. Kelly the child rapist is about as dark as you can get without drifting into an exposé on murderers. What most people can comfortably and loudly proclaim is that R. Kelly has a problem, and it's wrong to take advantage of the naivety of youth. One profession after another testifies to his controlling nature, his charisma, and his undeniable music genius that millions find compelling. The regrets are for ever having introduced someone to him, being seduced by the money or perks, or knowing full well what was wrong and how they were complicit.

I was frustrated watching the show. I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that each person professing their pain was looking for their own kind of redemption. It's almost too easy to point to the Big Problem of R. Kelly's sexual exploits. It's going to a wake or funeral knowing it's not really about the dead person, but the living's ability to process or cope. It's a memorial to reflect on what the music means to you or what kind of spell he put you under, skipping right along past what your responsibility to it might actually be. At least with the actual dead, they won't be watching to keep you honest.

That's to say, no one was offering how their experience was going to make them better. No one recalled what they “might” have done to improve upon their concerns. No one offered a proactive sentiment or where they've taken their lessons after coming out the other side. There is no real understanding of the nature of that complicitness, and instead of parsing it, in an important sense, we pick the big easy and “powerful” targets to scapegoat. I think it's the normal generalized human tendency because complicated psychological trauma is just that.

Let me be clear as well, I don't excuse R. Kelly for “preferring younger women.” I don't deny the power and consequences of manipulation. I know teenager brains aren't developed. I know the fucked up situations I put myself in when I was younger that I would totally have appreciated more guidance through or received leeway on. Nothing I say in this blog is supposed to be the kind of devil's advocate for exploiting children, if you're so inclined to fuck about with deliberate mis-reading.

The task is to take from specific examples, and draw out the larger ethos or implication. Isn't it weird that pee fetishes or stories seem to come from the top? Why is Trump embroiled in his own? Where do you go when you have everything besides return to a kind of filth? You'd probably reflexively say you could just enjoy and vibe with the good you have and the opportunities presented, but then I think you're living in the kind of fantasy world where our minds don't attack us when we're happy, or pick our most secure periods to feel anxious.

I couldn't help but hear faint echoes of the dialogue surrounding me and the party dynamics in college. I've not been accused of pedophilia, but I have been of rape. How did that conversation go? Well, it mostly didn't, but my power was brought up. The implicit guilt I should feel because I knew what I was doing. What for years might've been written off as a kind of alcoholic and immature culture immediately became my problematic behavior. And certainly, let's not forget that we're supposed to, without examination or doubt, believe all women regardless, because it's time to wildly swing the culture war in the other direction, civilian casualties a mere rounding error.

I don't think I've ever denied my awareness of my power. I wouldn't be foolish enough to think the sway of fame and fortune wouldn't capture nearly everyone. But I always return to the moment. It's in the moment you discover what your responsibility is. It's in the moment you seize power. It doesn't help the conversation or the capacity to take on more responsibility when “problems” remain as distinctly abstract as a series of damnations all alluding to horrible feelings. It's not enough.

They say it starts small. First he made girls who were susceptible to him call him “daddy.” Then he'd control who they could talk to. Then he'd keep them in his house. He'd beat and degrade. Every day, every hour, and every minute of that process was a moment. Each of those moments absolved and absorbed by fear and every complicated psychological description of the consequences of fear. Here maybe we start to begin picking at what “our” cultural responsibility is to young girls, or young black girls, or youth. What we may or may not find entertaining I think is mute before you have that discussion.

What is R. Kelly afraid of? Consequences? Eh, maybe, but he pretty reflexively pisses in the face of the idea of those, and then proceeds to make a million dollars in doing so. What am I afraid of? It's certainly not bringing up rape accusations and comparing myself to R. Kelly. I want to have the conversation about what we're going to bring into the moment moving forward. I want to discuss the ardent feelings and insistence I believe is earnestly felt if misplaced. I could spend hours dancing around political ways to explain myself or write off the situation in a series of crass doubled-down horrible jokes (or do both), but neither would speak to the conversation I have with myself regarding my behavior. R. Kelly has fans who “believe” in him. How should we regard that belief? To the degree it's a blind fervent love, little to none. I can apparently party and have sex with a fair amount of people, be excessively open about it, and still have my motives regarded as predatory and forceful, to me, as ardently believed by any fan of popular hashtag-moments might. So then what's my responsibility?

Notably, when you do something criminal, the suggestion is that you go to jail. We, of course, don't live in a world where punishments ever remotely match crimes, and usually the accused's most ferocious defenders have more than one skeleton that resembles what's on trial. I don't think it wise to serve unjust sentences, nor do I think a lack of conviction erases implications. My method is to keep talking and keep asking. I likely won't be conducting myself with the same age-group of drunk crowds the rest of my life. Do you apologize? I was told it would be the height of a bad idea to reach out. And then I'm apologizing for hurting her, or for a rape I don't believe I committed? Moreover, I do believe, easily, that I tore her vagina and probably missed a cue to slow down or when to start back up. I've managed to accidentally make girls bleed with us perfectly sober, let alone drunk enough to think a quickie on the side of a house party was tactful.

That “compulsion” or “force” that points you at what needs to be dealt with is playing out with #metoo and Black Lives Matter, and the general consequences of concentrated wealth and power. That's the underlying conversation and psychological battlefield. Knowing what you know now, what happens if you have a daughter who'd ever be willing to call someone daddy? Knowing what you know now, how often should you use alcohol for anything beyond a polite buzz or to share in a sense of camaraderie? How easy is it to rail against the likes of R. Kelly or reel at the idea of getting pissed on, verses the Olympic task of addressing child brides more broadly, or our complicated biology and aberrant sexual preferences?

What if we took a step even further? What if we discovered in ourselves the filth and the worst thoughts? What if we couldn't pass the depravity onto someone else's example and had to take responsibility to act in spite of it? What if we had to remind ourselves every day, “But for the grace of God go I?” What if you're always going to love I Believe I Can Fly no matter how many 14 year olds you watch R. Kelly pee on or have sex with? What if you never allow yourself to forgive what your under-developed brain considered a good idea and “always/never” your understanding of yourself and past into a depression spiral? When do you recognize and take the moment for all that it is, and not just the single feeling or person you can point to and judge?

I'm in a job where, to be effective you're forced to, at the very least, pretend that everything is okay. Interestingly enough, for me, in an important sense, it is. I can calmly ask you about accusations that you sexually molested your child. I'm not there with an agenda to catch you. If I can I certainly will and will nail your ass to the wall, but it's a story first. There are significantly more examples of spiteful ex-spouses, resentful sister-in-laws, and crotchety grandma's calling us with crazy stories than there are violent drug-addled child molesters looking to hurt everyone around them and tear things down. There are a lot of problems out there, and there's an infinite sea of grey that no institution, nor really any individual than the person suffering, can do much about. The story of either of our responsibility to their situation is the eternal cultural question.

Are there easy takeaways? Don't be complicit might be one. I'm not going to ignore a hypodermic needle I see in your house or pretend it's cleaner than it is. I'm not going to attempt to unduly punish you or speak as harshly of you as you attempt to provoke me to. I know you're broken. I know you can't pronounce “denial” before you get around to discussing what it is you're denying. I know that method works insofar as you're not the one rehashing dramatic instances in your life from slightly modified angles over years. I know it's hard to accept that achieving a remote peace of mind is even possible. I know you'll feel guilty of something regardless.

That's how I read people. I get bored to tears hearing the same catch-phrases and cultural virtue signaling. You can state what you blame on someone and follow it up with your course of action or responsibility. You can build within yourself, and future relationships, the bullwork for combating what you see wrong with how power manifests or the indignity and intransigence of those you wish to see take more responsibility. But you can tell most of the story in how they respond. Do they want more or less? Do they entertain or dismiss? Do they cry and shut down, or spit and choke out as close to an approximation of what they're feeling and thinking in spite of themselves?

::breathe::

But let's bring it over to “forgiveness.” I feel like forgiveness is a pat-on-your-back sort of thing. They say you'll never really process or move on until you forgive. But if things are all coming from you. If it's about how you morph reality and how you understand it or can cope, then ultimately you're forgiving yourself. No matter what somebody has done, you have to forgive yourself your anger, forgive yourself your angst, forgive yourself the depression and the pain and the lashing out or whatever the fuck else.

And then that becomes a double-edge sword, because your capacity to forgive yourself can develop the kind of pathologies that protect a lot of shitty behavior, or give others the tools to understand you in a “forgiving framework,” even when some shit doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Remember, it's God that forgives all sins. So how convenient little god-complexes present a holier-than-thou posture about their hypocrisy and hatred. It becomes forgiven when they give up thinking about it or were too dumb or afraid to process the devil at the wheel.

I don't like a great deal of things that have been implicated about me and my life. I don't like that I had to pay a ticket for passing a school bus I did not intend, nor really believe, I actually passed turning. I don't feel like a proud “bad boy” for being overtly sexual and finding myself on some proverbial opposite side of the ring regarding the progression of women's rights or the severity of men's shitty behavior towards them. I don't beg for the pain and drama nor try to deny when it's a palpable force in how someone's life feels like it's being conducted. I don't want to be ignored for my railings against too-good “problems” and the weather to then dare believe we should be dismissing the complicated psychology or circumstances of teenagers who are stardom-adjacent or 20-somethings and party hook-ups. You have to be willing to accept it and work with it all. Not accept things as “perfectly right” or “correct” or “inevitable,” but accept there's layers that work to depersonalize and reassign the nature of how we're going to relate to each other.

You have to remain responsible to the moment, not what you presume to believe yourself capable of in the future. You have to examine the past, because it's manifest in what you're feeling and how you're behaving right now. I'm not begging to be around people who prefer to think of me as a rapist. I don't feel guilty when a catchy song comes on from someone we all know about. If you do, turn it off. And if you feel bad and don't, unpack what “complicity” means to you. Put little weights on the scales about how good, or nothing, you feel against the idea of kids getting peed on. Or don't, and keep skipping from monster to monster to blame. I think at some level we know we deserve what that strategy is giving us.

[350] Bad Title For A Bad Blog

I wish it didn't, but age matters. Not the mere fact of the number, but the total amount of experiences that have rounded out your character. As a lover of house parties, I'm still aware that a scene where the median age is 20 is not really where I'm trying to be. You just get people who are at different places. They want to force conversation or, much like a child, say “hi” even when they don't know or care who it's to. It's not the same thing as nodding to a person you walk past at the park, it's like a cry out for acknowledgment. It's...unsettling.

It's worse when you go into a setting where everyone is supposed to “fend for themselves.” Sure, I can strike up a few random conversations. But it's with 20 year olds. When you tell me that you're into reading about human rights and are going into journalism to report on said issues, when I reference Nelson Mandela and apartheid, particularly now, that shouldn't confuse you. It's not their fault, but it's hard not to hear the superficiality a million miles away.

My problem is having a sense of feeling “above it all” even before I got into it. When offered a shot of Kamchatka, I laugh at your paltry disposition. I remember the first time I drank that shit as a shot. Not coincidentally, it was the last time I drank that shit as a shot. Fitting in isn't worth a hard fought lesson like that. I just go back to, how can kids who are spending $800 a month to live in, frankly shit, apartments, not afford better than horribly cliched and terrible alcohols? Technically, I don't have a job, but I find that common decency does not allow for Hamms to even enter my house.

It's kind of fun to talk like a pretentious rich person. I think it has more to do with how you conceive of yourself than you do other people. Like, it's painful to drink shitty alcohol. I wake up in pain and regretting my life. It's not uppity to acknowledge that message. It'd be great to be like an ambassador, and when they rudely assume you'll go out and buy alcohol for them, maybe there's a moment where they sincerely look at you and hope they can trust you not to undermine their stomachs. But they never do and that's why they pay the "fuck you" tax.

I think my biggest problem is trying to relate. I can't think of a time when I was gung ho about fucking my night up and getting incredibly drunk before 11:30. I can't recall being a “dumb freshman” who pounded whatever was put in front of me and was desperately telling people how cool they were so they wouldn't overly judge my dance moves on the fledgling floor. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy to have missed that boat. It's just, I feel even more judgmental being even a couple years older and a few degrees removed from seeing people do it at any party I've thrown in the last few years.

The old cliché is that they're just kids. They'll get better. They'll learn. See, but they won't. That's what bugs me. I've known plenty of super seniors who are willing to shake your hand and pat you on the back because you brought Hamms to a party. That's just bad research which I can't respect. Maybe you have a stupid tongue who likes that shit, okay, hard to blame you for genetics, but it's truly hard to classify it as beer based on their own labeling of alcohol content.

Maybe I should stick to kind of dumb “kids and their stupid party”-esc blogs for while. I haven't done anything of merit in a minute, so this is what I get at the forefront of my mind. I'm sorry if you thought it as stupid as I kind of do.

[337] On Being Drunk

I like being drunk. Let me tell you why.

Drunk affords opportunities. For me, it makes me feel like a kid. Let me elaborate. When I'm sober, things are “meh.” They happen. You feel good or bad about something, I hear about it, all I can do is go, yep, that in fact happened, let's see if you'll do something smart to follow. I beat into the ground terms like “relative sociopath” for this reason. I will likely never find the amount of words to describe just how little a shit I care about most things. Like, it's probably problematic because it presents a giant empathy-devoid wall between me and most of how people operate. It will likely be a theme I run with in future blogs. Just get it now, it matters.

But it all changes with alcohol! It's lighter. It's the kind of feeling laden honesty that you expect from a “normal human being.” I feel like a kid again. It's valid when I tell you you're cute. My “hatred” stems from a more real place. Things matter. All that I'm concerned with is that you understand what's brewing in my gut because god dammit, IT'S BREWING IN MY GUT!

And I like this. I like it a lot! I don't want to get bogged down in pretext in games and odd agendas with marginally stated goals. It's important to me to have some kind of beacon, in whatever form it takes shape, and express the sort of “ground floor” of where I'm coming from. A person with this many ideas of manipulating and carrying on with reckless abandon to many kinds consequences treats this level of pure base expression as a drug.

The thing that will forever continue to kill me is the reactions from other people. It's easy to use the language of someone with a problem without being a stupid fuck with a problem. Not many seem to understand this. I have no genuine urge to drink just because I see other people doing it. I know full well how to have a pretty insane amount of fun without drinking. It's just not the same. It's so infinitely selfish. The one and a half times I might be able to get drunk a month usually translate into a blog haha. Not even speaking remotely to the kinds of fun we used to have at my old house.

It just feels like an opportunity. As long as I'm able to think myself left or right, I'm not going to be able to act “fundamentally.” And it's everything I want to see in people as well. If you black out and turn violent, I think that's an important thing to know about yourself. I don't like the idea of being afraid of yourself. If I manage to not remember something, it's usually some heartfelt diatribe about how much fun I'm having with who's ever in the room. I'm not scared to do or say something stupid because it seems as if there's a fairly clear line between “who you are” and “what the fuck alcohol had to do with your personality.” I think people are general pussies when it comes to playing this game.

I don't think being drunk invalidates a position. When you feel something at your peak earnest, how you got there is frankly irrelevant to me. There always seems to be this underlying world that people are afraid to access. It's the only world I care about. I'd rather try to relate at that level and have everything go to shit than pretend like I care about anything else. And this is what I'm after in other people.

I don't mind feeling. I don't think it's bad or wrong or in and of itself a bad thing. And being a few beers in, just before I'm racist or sexist for no reason, it's like a reminder of how normal people behave. I get to just be someone who's experiencing instead of dictating. I want you to say that thing you'd never say. I want you to contemplate why you fell face first down that level of stairs. For me, it unlocks a kind of potential and perspective that I cherish. I think at the very least it can provoke a level of introspection that being a whiny “intellectual” can't afford you.

It can be fun. It can be an opportunity. I don't want to spend my time justifying that which seems simple and obvious.

There's a whole "why can't you just be/feel/think yada yada while your're sober" discussion that if I had the right answers to I would have already written about so preempt something or go fuck yourself ;).

[300] Let's Throw A Party

I was recently asked why I’m so into the “partying thing” and I found myself scraping the surface of what throwing a party means to me. I can’t recall how much I’ve written on the topic of parties specifically, so given that it was the focus of my house, is intimately tied to my conception of reality, and is likely to mean a million different things to a million different people, I think it’s perfect for my 300^th blog.

Partying to me is a perfect opportunity for planned spontaneity. Left to its own devices, spontaneity could arise as a car crash, or worse, something like stubbing your toe on an AIDS needle under the corner of your hardwood armoire. In a party setting, you set the conditions, but it’s up to the imagination and will of the players to sort themselves out. Someone’s comment sparks a waterfall of sarcasm and laughter. A beer pong champions reign can be the height of anticipation and woe as the struggle to dominate battles the odds and will. The smallest of victories; a perfectly poured shot, a fire that didn’t catch something important, the stripper move not landing you on your head, all can be celebrated as if they in some small way are helping to cure cancer.

It’s a giant perspective shift, if you let it. When you watch children, or retarded people, or animals (don’t worry, none of them can read) playing the same movie over and over or seeing yourself in the mirror or even wallowing in your own filth is amazing. Until someone tells you about germs, and being self-conscious, and other options do you get the sense that what you once loved is no longer fulfilling or okay. Of course you need more intellectual stimulation, and not to be covered in shit as you grow up, and it’s not just grown-ups being mean and robbing you of your childhood. That’s poverty’s job. But any time your perspective shifts, something’s lost and something’s gained.

Well, as I’ve harped about before, as you get older, and yes I’m talking about you because I’m forever an overgrown man-child, your perspective shifts. Maybe your body can’t eat or drink like it did when you were a teenager. Maybe the idea of puking on your couch at 4 in the morning while your friends play Mario Kart on what’s practically your dead body just doesn’t sound appealing. Here I would argue that it’s not an either or. I’m still trying to get all of my old friends to get freshmen around and let all the bad stuff happen to them. My conception of party can comfortably fit younger people’s embarrassing stories and awkward trying-to-hard behaviors as part of my memories.

I like the idea of social lubricants. I like the idea of a drunken mind speaking a sober heart. While I think it’s less prevalent in my social circle to be behind a ton of walls, I think the exact opposite about the world at large. I don’t want to hear about how much you love your boyfriend, I want to hear, “I loooove my boyfriend, but” and actually get somewhere. Tequila will get you there; and your shirt on the floor, and your pants on the stove. I think alcohol can be celebrated as a root of psychological inquiry. Not to mention what it’s done for rape; because who wants to remember that.

Every time I think of a party, I view it as a celebration of the time I’m spending with friends. We get to color in what it means to have reached the peak. You’ve got people who care, understand you, are willing to talk and share in your bad decisions that night. Surely, we’ve all been angry drunk or sad drunk, but no one is really looking for those consistently unless they have a problem. Those are the types that can’t appreciate what it means to party and instead, in a stark parallel to sobriety, exhibit the psychological hell of not being in control. As a doctor, I want an early warning system or an excuse to ask “are you okay?”

Perhaps most importantly for me is the chance to exhibit the balancing act in my head. I am drawn to the Yin Yang symbol after all. I love the idea of being someone who can down a fifth and still handle business. I love the idea of knowing the perfect cocktail of rum, Steak N Shake, and Pepto Bismal it takes to get up at 9 and make sure I catch that phone call from the planning department. I want to tear down the wall between responsible and irresponsible, at least as far as popular opinion is concerned; be a responsible rascal.

The style of the party might change, but the amount of fun doesn’t have to. The child-like enthusiasm is sacred if only because so many people believe that once it’s lost you can never get it back. I’ve never had more fun than when I was creating movie moments with my friends. It’s why I set the stage. Right now, I think a lot of stages are filled with uncertainty and bills and instead of trying to think of something new or create a world that marginalizes “problems,” a lot of people are going to get swallowed up whole. Maybe you’ll get all sorts of fun and games out of your families down the line, you saps, but god forbid you waste your 20-something liver. The world is your Banzai room.