Photo credit: The Washington Post

I live right by Zuccotti Park where the protesters have set up camp, and I’ve lived in the area since it was called Liberty Plaza—which may at first seem like a more fitting appellation but seeing as John Zuccotti made $1.2M for napping during an annual board meeting in 2008, maybe its current name isn’t irrelevant.  To be fair, I don’t actually know if he napped, I just assume that because he was 72 years old.  To be even more fair, I don’t actually know if he bothered attending the meeting, he may have voted in absentia.  Given what I know about septuagenarians, however, I will stand by my assumption that whether or not he was in attendance, John Zuccotti was somewhere napping.

I’m sure he’s a very nice man.

We just got started and I’m already off course.  That supercilious English bitch on my GPS exasperatedly tells me she’s recalculating, like she’s so much smarter than I am, which I guess she is so I’m changing the voice options. Slut. But as long as I’m way out here, I want to say something about the dirty hippies that people are saying comprise the majority of protesters.  Others say they are being misrepresented by the media, and that most of the protesters are your average, disfranchised, college-educated American. To this small, endearing voice of impassioned wisdom, I say: actually, they are mostly dirty hippies. The average Americans you’re seeing are the reporters covering the story.

Which is not to say that dirty hippies don’t have something valuable to contribute. And maybe some of them started out more hippie than dirty, but a month of living in a tent pushed them over.  Maybe they were already dirty, but the act of carrying a cardboard sign transformed their image from pointlessly filthy to a hippie with a mission.

The Aw-strine accented voice on my GPS tells me we’re on the fair dinkum pass, she’ll be right, reckons we’ll be out of the woopwoop in seven donkey’s years.  I’m as certain about what that means as I am about what the protesters want. They carry so many signs, and 99% of them make them sound like whiny potheads on an angry trip—like your brother-in-law, the one who’s been sleeping on your couch the past eleven weeks and who never offers to pay for the groceries he blithely consumes and shares with his cat. If you were to make some gentle suggestions about his life choices, you’re sure to get some unfocused but extensive belligerence roughly directed at you.

But when it comes to the 1 remaining %, I’m on your side. Probably. Maybe not. Honestly, it’s hard to tell.

I get that it’s hard for the protesters to fight an enemy they can’t identify. I mean, this is an industry that calls itself Wall Street, when basically the only investment bank that still resides there is German (and we can all rest assured Deutsche Bank is paying taxes—big, juicy, European ones). This is an industry that specializes in investing money but charges large fees to pay themselves salaries because they can’t make enough money through investing money. It would be like selling eggs, but you can’t produce enough eggs, so you ask to be paid in chickens in return for an egg when any honest farmer would be eating eggs from his own damn chickens. This is an industry, to paraphrase Buffett, where men travel in limos to take advice from brokers who ride the subway. So much of Wall Street is really fucked up and arbitrary.

And then there’s all that math, which can be confusing. Wall Street has a huge advantage in a country that still debates the factual basis of evolution. We’re not that bright. Numbers are amazingly tractable to obfuscation and Wall Street exploits them to its full advantage. Sometimes, they even just make them up! Based on no fundamental truth at all! But we don’t notice, because it’s hard to tell when they do that.

There’s also no check or balance to them. The obvious assumption is that the government is watching them. But the government turns out to be peopled by those who worked on Wall Street, because apparently all that math and fuckery takes an insider to understand. So Obama, who as Commander-in-Chief needs to have expertise in politics and human rights law and oil pricing and environmental carcinogens and how not to piss off the Chinese and the Torah decides to delegate, of all things, this. So he’s like, “anyone who understands this shit, raise your hands.” And the only people who raised their hands worked on Wall Street. And then it occurred to him to talk to other people, like Congressmen, to whom he said “find out if this shit is legal” and since they didn’t really know, they went and asked “does anyone know if this shit is legal?” And the only people who raised their hands worked on Wall Street and they said, why, yes, yup, it sure was legal, yessir. And even if it were all legit and above-board, the way everyone went about it was just weird and wrong and did nothing to make the process more transparent, and in a bucket already filled with dumb they added their own interminable supply of stupid.

No one comes out well here, by the way. One group of people probably did illegal and/or immoral things. These illegal and/or immoral things led to another group of people, who were by parts unlucky, unaware, victims of an underfunded public education system that made them bad at math—even maybe irresponsible! Or maybe completely innocent and undeserving!—but all in a legal way, to lose jobs and savings and security and opportunities. And a third group of people, who pledged to work in the second group of people’s interest, got gun-shy about doing anything because the first group is, in fact, essential to ensuring that the third group keep their jobs—not only/necessarily because they are being paid off, but because all three groups are more interdependent and fungible than people think. The first group is the aorta, and the second group is the heart and needs the aorta operated on, and the third group doesn’t have a medical degree.

The third group may very well be right that if they attempt surgery they’ll fuck it up and kill the patient. So, it recommends diet and exercise, hoping the issue will go away. It probably won’t, by the way. We really do need it operated on. We need the aorta to work. It shouldn’t be removed, it shouldn’t be ignored, it should be made to work. To anyone on either side who thinks that the heart can survive without it or vice-versa, I suggest you reconsider.

The GPS just rattled something off in Spanish; I’m assuming it said we’re close to our destination. So, okay, it’s all very confusing and a real, honest, legitimate clusterfuck. Maybe that’s why none of these protesters can explain what they want in an effective manner. “We’re the 99%”? Really? Is that a threat? Besides, to call themselves the 99% is a little disingenuous, as the working poor raise an eyebrow at being included in a statistic they were pointedly left out of before.  As far as they are concerned, there is still a large gap separating them and the middle class.

But they need the middle class.  If you’re not in the 1%, you need the middle class.  The existence of a healthy middle class suggests that there is fluidity between the strata. It means there is a pathway from the bottom to the top.  It is the sign of a thriving capitalistic democracy—not everyone is rich, but everyone contributes and has a say. A large, succulent middle class is where small businesses come from, where competition thrives, where innovation is born.  Even a vast majority of those we’d consider rich would benefit from this socioeconomic lubrication; it opens up the top to them, it validates their ambitions. The problem is, where there is a hill to climb up there is a slope to slide down.  And if you have a lot to lose, you’d rather seize the system and press pause on all this bustling interchange.

This country doesn’t appreciate its middle class.  The average American sees his place in the middle class as a temporary layover to the day he wins the lottery.  He’s so concerned about protecting those imaginary winnings he’ll even vote against his present self-interest.  We take the middle class for granted.  There are other countries that work hard to ensure the life of the middle class is pleasant and livable—they offer health benefits and work week limits and free colleges and day care and good bakeries.  Not us; if you can’t provide these things for yourself, you don’t deserve them.  We hate the middle class.  Liberals think they’re fundamentalist bourgeois, conservatives think they’re unionized wangs, everyone thinks they’re underachieving yokels. We abhor the middle class.

And now the middle class is coming out of this self-loathing. It’s occurring to us that we’ll never be rich, not like this.  All that stuff that happened in the last few years, even more—the frontal lobe may have forgotten WorldCom, Enron and Tyco, the dot-com bubble, the S&L scandal, but they’re imprinted in the sulky depths of our reptile brain—slashed into the rickety trust that was built between the haves and have-nots. How is it that these shitheads get to pull our collective dick every time they make a mistake?  And how is it that we have to pay their bail?  They never shared the wealth when they had it, why is it my asshole that gets raw and sore when they lose it? Every! Single! Fucking! Time!

Maybe we sense we’re being frozen out of being even middle class so we’re finally driven to protect it.  Maybe we could lead good lives in the middle class, if only there were certain systemic reinforcements put in place that would ensure its sustainability. Maybe if we were given the vast majority of the nation’s wealth, we would “create jobs,” too—us and a flock of masturbating ducks, because wealth begets economic activity like economic activity begets a big fucking DUH. Maybe the rich aren’t so special and we didn’t deserve their contempt after all. Maybe we’re starting to think that if there is a class of Americans who should be provided greater protection and preferential treatment, it’s the middle class.  Maybe this is what Occupy Wall Street is calling for, maybe this is why their message is so diffuse—it’s a motion for a concept of society, a model of civilization, which is more complex and difficult than can be expressed on a poster board held by a dirty hippie.

When I was a kid sometimes my older brother and his friends would make me feel left out. My response was often to launch from a running start, land on one of their backs like a monkey, and windmill my arms to batter my fists against their heads in a violent bid for attention. My brother would then calmly pluck me off, avoid making eye contact, toss me out of the room and close the door in my face. This is exactly how it is recommended you should handle a deranged monkey. For my part, in retrospect, my behavior seems an unlikely way to win anyone over. I didn’t get what I wanted, which was to be included. But, as I stood on the other side of the door, stomping my feet and screaming until birds flew into power lines on purpose, everyone knew, for what it was worth, that the monkey was mad.

The voice on the GPS is in that neutral, God-Bless-American accent of the Mid-Atlantic and syndicated sitcoms. It’s telling me that we’re very, very far from our destination. But at least we’re pointed in the right direction and, with some guidance, we might even make it there.

The first workday after a long weekend tends to find me pretty ornery, and seeing as how I’m getting it as good as I’m giving today I’m concluding that I’m not alone.  On this blog I’ve been veering wildly between the pedantic, the sentimental and the ridiculous (all the while rooted firmly in the dumb and bitchy) and my preaching ass is tie.  Yurd.  Given that ridiculous is the least exhausting of the three, we’ll order another plate of that.  So I want to lead the lemmings to a safe haven.  A happy place.  And take a short think nap.

Heaven, according to the sound stage used for every Hollywood depiction of it, is a destination made of large wisps of dry ice.  People, even men, wear long white dresses and everyone but God whisper-speaks like they’re in a library.  Citizens smile placidly, stoned on the rapture of goodness, and float around delicately, as if afraid of breaking something.  Heaven’s fancy and sounds like harp music.  Heaven is the lobby of the St. Regis.

Everyone knows that’s bullshit.  If heaven is worth getting into, which is to say if it’s worth the time I didn’t spit in that jackhole’s Pinkberry after he cut in line, then it has to be more interesting than a mid-market accounting firm’s conference room.  Blue sky as vast as eternity.  Bright sunshine gleaming off frizz-free hair.  Rolling hills carpeted with fresh, bugless grass.  A rainbow stretching overhead, with a Pegasus galloping on the violet bridge.  Puppies wagging their tails and reaching their wet noses towards your extended hand.  You reach down to pick one up and it’s as soft as a microfiber dishtowel, warm as if it were resting on a stove.  You tell it how cute it is, and it thanks you in English.  Then it tells you how smart and good-looking you are.  The Pegasus offers you a ride.  You hop on and exchange pleasantries in mid-air with a very funny duck who makes you laugh so hard you snort.  Then after you land you skip off to find that all of heaven is a trampoline, and you bounce around gymnastically, waving to Virgil and doing a double somersault over Gandhi.

Envision, if you will, this heaven.  It’s nice, yes?  The people are very nice there, yes.  The soundtrack is just to your liking, yes.  No more school, no more work, no more leaky faucets, no more bills, no.  Ice cream for breakfast, yes.  Crowded subways, no.

It looks beautiful.  It sounds wonderful.  It smells…like bacon.

Every time the soft breeze carries the aroma to you, it slithers around your body like a boa constrictor and tickles your nostrils with its tail.  Salivating, you follow the source to a tall, handsome tree.   You approach its trunk.  You recognize the smoky, delectable scent it’s emitting.  You lick the bark and shudder in delight.  Bacon.  You look up into the canopy and see little fruits dangling from the branches.  You pluck one and unfurl it—a hot, sizzling strip of bacon.  But it’s too crispy for you, so you pluck another one at a different point of maturation—it’s perfectly cooked, just enough fat and chew.  You look around you.  More bacon trees.  You’re in a grove of bacon trees.  Bacon grows on trees in heaven!  Even vegans can eat bacon in heaven!  Bacon’s super kosher in heaven!

You get into a conversation with one of these trees (everyone and everything in heaven speaks English, but increasingly more Spanish), and it tells you on Earth they used to be pigs.  But what with the wallowing in mud, dining on slop, being looked upon with disdain and slaughtered for their meat, they decided on a change once they came over to the other side.  Who needs it, right?  Right, you say, plucking another rasher of bacon.  Eat all you want! invites the pig-tree.  The pig-trees are so nice in heaven.

As are the tomato, lettuce and toast plants.  Very nice. Very generous.  And delicious.

So with the salty, savory taste of bacon meat mocking your mind’s tongue, I will now count backwards from ten.  When I reach one, you will wake from this heavenly reverie.  Ten.  Nine.  Eight…

You know what, stay there.  Have some more bacon.  Take advantage of it now, just in case you do end up spitting in someone’s Pinkberry.  I’ll wake you tomorrow, what’s one more day to a long weekend.

You know that joke, when you’re allowed passage into two characters’ minds, and the thought balloon of the smarter is filled with schematics, big words, complex ideas and light bulbs all afire?  And then they zoom in on the dimmer of the two, his eyes focused on a far-away dreamscape, his tongue hanging gently from the corner of his mouth, and all you get is a blank screen accompanied by the jingle of an ice cream truck?  Well, we all have our moments of both, I think.  And I also think we’ve earned a break after the last few blog entries.

When the Judgmentor casts a dreamy, closed-for-business look, it usually means the right hemisphere is serenading the left with this:

Overture

Curtain, lights

This is it

We’ll hit the heights

And oh what heights we’ll hit

On with the show, this is it!

And Bugs and Daffy sashay off Stage Left, pumping their hats and spinning their canes, the first vaudeville show I ever caught and it makes my heart glow to this day.  Then the pig pokes his head through a bulls-eye and tells me to go home.  At which point I replay the entire thing.

I hope that in old age, if my mind decides to call it quits and retire early, this is what it will put on constant replay for me before it locks the door behind it.  Maybe leave a little kibble and water.  But may it forever be Saturday morning in my head.

Looney Tunes, however, is a little cerebral for every day wear.  The bulk of the transmission rotation I’d guess would come from the 80s.  It was in its own way a golden age of commercial animation, at least to those of us high on Fruity Pebbles and whole milk.  While this list is in no way exhaustive, here are a few honorable contenders:

The Smurfs: The absolute and definitive anchor show to the entire Western animation canon.  This cartoon is probably the source of political awakening for all liberals of a certain age—naively utopian, shamelessly socialist, undeniably anti-commercialization, and questionably homosexual.  Generation X need look no further for the source of their embitterment than the expectations set up by these miniature blue trolls.  Incidentally, if you can’t place why every time you frolic in a field of wildflowers the suite to Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt plays in your head, look no further.

The Snorks: Underwater Smurfs with pieces of calamari attached to their heads, the Snorks have failed to achieve the kind of renown enjoyed by their mushroom-dwelling cousins though it ran for a good number of years.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that it was, in my recollection, aired at ungodly hours too early for even our Saturday morning-specific circadian rhythms to catch.  Or perhaps it could only survive in a pre-Little Mermaid world, before Disney came along and crushed any underwater scene not involving a singing Jamaican crab.

Gummi Bears: Speaking of Disney, whoever were writing their theme songs at the time were fucking KILLING IT.  Jesus H. Christ, they were catchy.  I mean, it’s a niche market, right, but if you’re the best of the best in your niche, you’re like the dung beetle, eating what no one else wants to but doing a damn fine job serving the greater good.  There has not been a single day in the past 20 plus years that I could not recite every word of that song.  As for the cartoon, it had a patriarchal head of the family, a cooking grandma, some annoying kids who were either into food, fashion or violence, and they were all loyal to a legacy steeped in spirituality and populated with myriads of ancestors and kin.  Basically, they were Italians.

DuckTales: If you didn’t immediately launch a “woo-ooh” after reading that, then you are probably an android.

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: These last couple are on the periphery of the 80s and my legitimate cartoon-viewing years, but were well-crafted enough to hold the attention of a maturing mind.  This rendition of the Hundred Acre Woods was something close to paranormal—a self-contained world that honored, without exception, the laws extant therein.  Finely detailed and beautifully rendered, it recalls something Walter Scott said about Jane Austen: That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Clearly the voices were intended to function as dog whistle to the sensitive ears of the youths.  They captivated their audience with their sound net for many decades prior to the 80s, but this is when they hit TV and they hit it hard.  They introduced the Chipettes, for one, who were genetically improved versions of the Chipmunks, if only for managing to wear something other than turtleneck dresses. While that stage-dad David Seville always seemed one antic away from beating on his kids, you couldn’t help but look affectionately upon one of TV’s first inter-species families.

The Transformers: There were a lot of classic 80s cartoons that were really out of my realm of interest but I watched them because there were boys around who bogarted the remote control.  This was one of them.  Like a white man trying to flag down his waiter at a Chinese restaurant, I never could get any of the characters straight because they all looked alike to me.

He-Man and She-Ra: He-Man was a mimbo of the most mind-numbing proportions, and while She-Ra was an obvious improvement in character development, neither of them could hold a candle to that cranky bitch Skeletor.  His motives were unclear but his cheekbones could cut glass.  In terms of iconographic shelf-life, Skeletor will live on far past those other two bowls of vanilla pudding.

Robotech: Does anyone else remember this trippy-ass shit?  This was another forced viewing by dint of having an older brother, but this one really caught me by the metaphorical balls.  I remember nothing about it.  I don’t remember characters, I don’t remember plotlines, I don’t remember any of the music—but I remember how goddamn addictive it was and how my soul would die a little if I had to miss an episode due to soccer practice or church.  It was my first exposure to soap opera—complete with sexual tension, betrayal, violence and honor.  It is probably responsible for making a young girl grow up too fast.  But as a Japanese anime import, it’s unlikely I would understand any of it even today.

Now I don’t know about you, but that made me feel much better.  I’m looking forward to doing the 90s.  But for now: cue orchestra glissando.  Prompt bulls-eye rings.  Enter Porky.  And that’s all folks.

Noun credit: Dennis.

So I was watching the local news the other day when a reporter was polling passersby on their views on legalizing gay marriage in New York.  And one woman said she was against it, because it was “unnatural” and that her take was really “a religious thing.”  And she said all this with a smile, as if what she was saying wasn’t one of the worst things you could ever utter with your mouth.

To me, gay equality is a question with an obvious answer.  It’s a non-issue.  It’s so self-evident it drives me fucking bonkers to have to discuss it.  There are real problems in the world, people—real, complicated issues that demand our attention.  And you’re making me sit here and argue with you over whether the Earth is round.  It’s excruciating.

FINE, GAWD, I get it, it’s not about me.  So, ok, here’s my contribution.  Gay marriage should be legal.  It should never have been illegal.  Can we go back to working on world peace now?

No, I didn’t think so.  Look, I know you’ve heard this before, but why do you care?  Why bother caring?  I don’t care.  I don’t care that you and your wife are having missionary sex (you with your secretary, she with the pool boy).  I think you make the world a little bit worse, and make the gender divide a little harder to traverse, but I’m not proposing a Federal Fidelity Amendment to the Constitution or a Defense of Loyalty Act.  I figure that 1) this is between you two, so in return for not legislating whom you sleep with I trust you will not legislate whom I sleep with (i.e., my microwavable hot water bottle stuffed into a teddy bear) and 2) you’re not costing me anything, so when I do sleep, I sleep well.  If you were born that way—which I have reason to believe is true—I don’t care.  If it was a choice—nope, still don’t care.

It’s not like by legalizing gay marriage I’m going to force you into one.  If you’re a dude and the idea of making out with another dude grosses you out, don’t do it.  And if it makes your sweaty parts tingle, go at it.  But—and this goes for all of you—close the fucking door, don’t do it on my couch, and take a shower after.

Really, this is no biggie.

Ah, but the other side has decided to challenge this confidence; they’ll play their hand with a little more finesse.  Sure, I’ll humor you, bring it.  Now I see your entire cavalry take one step back, leaving a lone representative standing before me.  At first I’m a little afraid you put Bill O’Reilly out there, in which case my short tenure as activist is done.  I’m sorry, but I have my limits.  I will not engage battle with a logic-averse yammer engine.

But no, it’s no one from Fox News.  It is a well-dressed man.  And he has kind eyes and an agreeable, soft-spoken manner.  He seems decent, reasonable.   Let’s call him Jon.  Jon disagrees with me.

Jon isn’t hateful.  Jon doesn’t vilify gays.  He is religious, but he defers to God on judging fellow men.  He has gay friends and he knows that the stereotypes are unfair.  His gay friends are devoted to each other and yearn for legitimacy and protection under the law.  And he thinks they deserve every right but marriage.  He is not opposed to equal treatment of gay partnerships–that, he concurs, is a human right.  But not gay marriage.  And I, finding such half-assery hollow if not slightly sinister, don’t accept.  The concept of marriage, he tells me, is in itself institutional.  Marriage has existed since ancient times, but today’s idea of marriage, American marriage, marriage as an institution–one that is monogamous, one that determines kinship, one that is officiated, one that is a sacrament, one that is romantic as opposed to transactional–was originated by the divine laws governing our founding fathers and mothers. When those laws introduced marriage, the introduction necessarily came with a definition.  And the definition integrated this clause: that it was between man and woman, before God.

Basically, though Jon is too nice to say so, they—straight God people—came up with the institution.  It’s theirs.  Why would anyone else even want it?  It’s just weird, like if Jews wanted to appropriate Christmas.  They are not keeping gays out, Jon says, as much as they are trying to contain the institution.  An institution that they created, they defined and that they honor. They invite others to partake, but it has to be by their rules.

Meanwhile, I tell Jon that by withholding marriage, you withhold legitimacy even when you grant its rights.  Both marriage and Christmas have already been appropriated by a secular society.  You can’t commandeer the concept of marriage and dictate the rules when it is already so deeply ensconced in the public domain.  Jon shakes his head and says what I’m calling marriage and Christmas aren’t really.  Without rancor, I tell him he will have to reassess his definitions in the light of progress.  Without rancor, he tells me that that undermines the point of tradition and religion.  I tell him his logic has been used as an excuse to oppress the weak; he says mine has been used as an excuse to discard time-tested wisdom.  I look at him and see the violence of Nazism; he looks at me and sees the violence of the French Revolution.  I call him Tyranny; he calls me Chaos.

And then there’s the Church.  Jon says: you may say you support separation of Church and State, but what will happen is that the State will—has already!—become involved in the Church’s management of this affair.  For once this becomes legal in the courts, the Church will be called to defend itself in the future against discrimination on this issue.  It will open the doors to challenging us on adoption, polygamy, religious liberty.  Church and State reside in the same ecosystem and you will pollute our waters and we will have to deal with it.  You cannot expect us to stand idly by when we fundamentally disagree with the direction this will lead us.  And I nod and say: You’re right.  That’s going to suck.  But let’s face it, things have been going downhill for you guys since the Reformation.

Jon looks disappointed in me, then turns to leave but I’m not sure why; maybe because I was flippant, maybe because he’s a Protestant.  So I run after him and insist on buying him a cup of coffee, a fancy one, with foam and caramel swirls, because though I am thoroughly unsympathetic to his argument I probably proved his point by dismissing his concerns.  Which are, I have to admit, not entirely bullshit.  Not if you associate virtue with customs, tradition, faithful allegiance and community.  Can we agree that those things aren’t entirely bullshit?  But neither is my stance that the economic, psychological and social impact of differential treatment to minority groups is destabilizing to a democracy.  And you can’t keep marriage to yourself without practicing differential treatment.  Church and State do reside in the same ecosystem, and prejudice pollutes all of our waters—whether secular or religious.  Inclusion is a precondition to democracy, and, for that matter, devotion.  Jon doesn’t disagree.

So we sit, drinking coffee, agreeing on the merits but disagreeing on the greater evil.  We believe that by both defending our sides nobly, we will find a resolution and do honor to the process.  Neither of us will change our minds, but we both feel that a compromise with the other party could be tolerated; we’ve developed trust in each other’s intentions.  We toast to civil discourse despite the fact that we’re currently at an impasse.

This country has found itself at many impasses, but this is the kind that doesn’t kill your mothereffing soul.  This impasse is where things get foggy for some people who usually associate with the left or right–it’s where a liberal like Obama finds himself when he says his view on this issue is still “evolving” (if you accept that at face value).  It’s where a conservative like New York State Senator Roy McDonald is compelled to say: “You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.”  It’s an upside-down, topsy-turvy, confusing place, this impasse.  But it’s also where this nation will find its salvation as an open society–it’s where the best answers will come for our hardest questions.  It’s where answers will come without designating winners and losers, without festering resentment.  It’s where answers will come with more acceptance, less rage, more faith, EVEN WHEN one thinks the answer is so.  BLOODY.  OBVIOUS.

Luckily for me, this impasse is a very skinny little space, delineated by fuzzy lines, and no one can find it much less make room.  Luckily for me, our simplistic, retarded, dim-witted national confabulation hasn’t presented a Jon, it’s presented Fox News, a loss to whom would be unacceptable.  Luckily for me, the arguments against gay marriage have been along the lines of “it’s unnatural” and “it’s a religious thing”—so foolish and hateful that there really is only one side to choose.  Luckily for me, the discourse has been anything but civil and I don’t have to bother with understanding and nuance.  So when gay marriage happens—and it will, whether now or later, in New York and across the entire nation—I will buy myself a cup of coffee, mourn Jon, and celebrate alone with an unrestricted conscience.

This topic seems relevant, today.  Today, around 2000 miles away from where I sit, many foodies are congregating in the Rockies at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.  They are searing and tasting and quaffing.  Because foodies don’t just cook, eat and drink, that’s beneath them.  Somewhere out there, little mountain foodies are feeling very important, disconnected from the rest of us.

I take food seriously.  I take the preparation of food even more seriously.  Once I was bonding with someone over being disgusting, gluttonous food sluts (that’s a bullet point on my resume) when I discovered that his idea of cooking was to buy fresh ravioli and assemble it together with some prepared sauce.  Like waiting out bad sex, I smiled mechanically, maybe even made some perfunctory “mmm!” noises, but silently felt betrayed—I had formed what turned out to be an entirely fraudulent connection with him.  I would consider that meal the affected, tweed-jacketed older brother of Kraft Easy Mac.  I’ll eat it, and probably have seconds, but that is because 1) it would be free, 2) I am deeply appreciative of any meal that someone else makes where I don’t end up doing the dishes, and 3) please refer to the third bullet point on my resume.

This betrayal has happened to me often.  I ate indifferent cafeteria food in school (betrayed by Education!), I ate untold numbers of burritos at work (betrayed by Corporate America!), I ate frankenfood protein bars when I was busy (betrayed by Time!), and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I learned to cook.  The betrayals stopped and the enlightenment began.  Through cooking, I learned about the world—its networks and chains, its synergies and yields.  I learned about animals and plants and weather.  I learned about health and history.  I learned about people, which is largely why I find food so wonderful—because it can create connections, because these connections form families, because these families structure society.

To understand a culture, I begin by eating what they eat.  To comprehend traditions, I study its cuisine.  To get on people’s good side, I eat what they put in front of me and rub my tummy approvingly like my life depended on it.  My wandering ass has been to many strange lands with strange customs, and when in doubt, I eat.  I came to know people in France by eating snails floating in a wild mushroom bisque (it was divine).  I came to know people in Korea by grilling sweet-marinated eel plucked hours earlier from a muddy delta (it was transcendent).  I came to know people in Peru by consuming unreasonable amounts of pristine ceviche radiant with the tang of local citrus fruits (it was glorious).  I came to know people in New England, who like to follow up a five mile morning jog with oatmeal (it…was).  Food, along with music and math, is one of our world’s universal languages.  It is, you could say, a passion of mine.

I am not, however, a foodie.

My skin crawls at the word.  I abhor what it has come to symbolize.  (Well, “abhor”…it’s a strong word, no?  But for effect, let’s say “abhor.”  I’m really more exasperated, but I’m here to judge, so we’ll pound the gavel with “abhor.”)

These people are not my people.  They, too, take food seriously, but in a different way.  These people think that food allows them to yell at cooks on television, to charge $500 for a meal, to preach and preach and preach their locavore gospel until you suddenly remember how good french fries dipped in Frosties are and make a midnight trip to the nearest Wendy’s. These people have a warped sense of the importance of food, as if our mismanagement of the food chain is somehow accountable for holy wars and dengue fever and irresponsible journalism.

We have gotten this far, after all, having for most of our evolution eaten berries and nuts.  We were grateful when they were there and didn’t give us diarrhea. And surely we ate the wildebeest raw before it occurred to us to cook it.  During the Middle Ages in the West, boiled swan on a trencher was considered sophisticated fare.  Yet here we are, alive, texting on our smartphones, putting bitches on the moon; you, me and Britney Spears, who subsists on a diet of Cheetos and still earns more than any of us who invest in organic rhubarb.  The point is, even on the most dubious of diets, man has accomplished many things.  Let’s not make food out to be something it’s not.  Foodies take food seriously, yes—but mostly because they want to be taken seriously.  They attach themselves to food in a serious way, then impose a seriousness on food that seems misplaced and artificial, so that by the transitive property they, too, are serious.

Listen to me, foodies–I get it, I’ve been there, that’s how I know.  School lunches, agribusiness, factory farming—these are important issues.  But you have to stop taking yourselves so seriously.  You have to stop being so fucking earnest.  You have to stop following Gwyneth Paltrow’s lead and thinking you know two shits about anything because you read Michael Pollan and the Dining section. Because you are talking about food; your food, your subsidized, imported, first-world food.  It’s a beautiful thing, I know.  But you can’t come at it from a place of entitlement—meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, some kid is sucking peanut butter out of an airdropped plastic packet, and she doesn’t give a shit if your dinner is free-range and grass-finished.  And, by the way, that piece of veal was prepared by some guy who just got out of jail, not by the chef you saw on Food Network, and was served to you by an out-of-work actor who contracted hepatitis from a penis piercing, and the cookbook you bought to take home with you was actually ghost-written.  Just so you know.  Enjoy your meal.

So stop being picky eaters and status whores!  If the point is here, you’re somewhere way over there.  You so missed it, it’s like it left last week and you only heard about it tomorrow. For foodies, food has become a contrivance of religious wholesomeness—I’ll eat this, I won’t eat that, I’m purer than you, better than you.  Look how superior I am, I eat wild ramps gathered by aboriginal farmers.  Seasoned with saba vinegar made by a third cousin of Mario Batali.  And finished with fleur de sel, collected by dipping berets into the Brittany coast because regular kosher salt isn’t as balanced and I would never use regular iodized salt because that’s what Top Chef told me.  I can’t with you.  You use food to justify your sanctity the way priests use sex, and I bet you’re eating pork rinds on the side the way priests…never mind.

Look, I eat ramps.  I like saba vinegar.  And, God help me, I’ve paid $25 for salt from the Guerande.  But here’s why I’m not a foodie—because I don’t like it like that.  I fucking love it!  Food makes me giggle.  Food brings family and friends.  Food parts the clouds and coddles me in sunshine.  While your clenched, joyless, over-regulated pleasure in food makes you look like Wallace farting (while Gromit contemplates suicide).  You’ve gone and depleted food of its greatest contribution to our lives: delight.

I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with the much argued-over Atlantic article that suggested there was some moral distortion innate in eating excessively and excessively well,  but there is certainly a pomposity to it.  The irony is that food doesn’t need pomposity.  Food is important, food can be artistic, food does have impact.  But food is also delightful—so let it be delightful.  Foodies, stop using food to separate yourself from others.  Start using it to connect.

Welcome to another edition of the Judgmentor Jumble!  This time we focus in on recent stories having to do with The Sex.  Because The Sex seems to be ever-present in our society, upstaging The Honorable, undermining The Truth and distorting The Relevant.  The Sex has an entourage, too, made up of The Politics, The Egocentric, and not infrequently, The Internet.  The Sex is everywhere all the time!  And luckily for me, that makes it all the easier to judge.  Let’s begin.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: This is in many ways not Arnold’s story. It’s Maria’s story. It’s Maria’s story because all the interesting elements of plot and character development reside with her. It’s not Arnold’s story because when we heard that this body builder turned movie star turned politician slept around and had an illegitimate kid no one was fucking surprised. There’s no narrative there; in the town of Not Surprised (population: all of us) one continued buffing one’s fingernails, breathing regularly, and whistling nonchalantly down the street with our hands in our pockets. But when we saw things from Maria’s perspective, our sympathies were activated. You? Slept around on me? Do you know who I am? I’m a fucking Kennedy, you disgusting, indiscriminate Wiener Schnitzel, I’m a fucking Kennedy. And not one of those tragic, inert Kennedys, either, I had a real job that I was fucking good at because I talk in complete sentences in something other people can recognize as English. Who the fuck are you? A piece of Spaetzle made of dick cheese, you think you can stick your Frankfurter anywhere you feel like? You were nothing but a Bratwurst-sucker when I first met you! I made you Governor of California! You were a vapid Hollywood Kaiserschmarren, tell me who would have taken you seriously without me standing by your ridiculous Iron Giant torso legitimizing your absurd pectorals and Bart Simpson head? And now there’s a kid? Who you probably conceived in my own house, with a trusted employee who was embedded in the most intimate aspects of my personal life? And this all comes out while I’m dealing with the death of my father, WWII veteran, public servant, intellectual giant, whose mind in his last days was so ravaged he didn’t even recognize me? If there were a nuclear option for complete humiliation, absolute invasion, total betrayal and all-consuming regret, you detonated it. You dumbass vat of Tiroler Grostl.

Anthony Weiner: Married to an aide to Secretary Clinton, married by President Clinton, it may have been written in the stars that Weiner would have his I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman moment. And when it happened, we were expecting something really good, no?  I mean, based on the name alone, expectations were set pretty high, right?  I think we were within reason to expect something explosive, lascivious, prurient, something to call Ken Starr out of his retirement as romance novelist.  Instead, we have sexts and twitpics which feel strangely juvenile. Using a cigar as a speculum seems downright erotic compared to a two-dimensional close-up of someone’s full-rise briefs. Juvenile, unsexy, yet revealing—more revealing than Clinton, more exposing than Spitzer, more uncomfortable than Sanford using the term “soul mate”.

Because it’s awkward. Sex is not very photogenic or articulate in real life; it looks good in certain lighting, sounds interesting in context, but when you’re across the room it seems shorter, quicker, clumsier, jigglier than you thought up close. If you’re not an active participant, sex looks weird or boring or a little funny at best. Sex needs hair and makeup, maybe calf implants, to be camera-ready.  Otherwise sex grows best in the dark; like endives. Endives are grown in the dark or they get bitter. And even then endives need a little dressing.  Sex is like endives.

I’ll leave the analogy here, I believe I made my point. Weiner’s scandal comes with pictures, which basically means we see him sexing in the bleak, open daylight of reality, with no mystery cloak or porn glitter. And it’s weird, boring and a little funny. When he said he was embarrassed, it was the first time I believed anything he said.

Does being a bad husband necessarily equate to being a bad politician? No. I thought Clinton was serviceable as president. And let’s disclose this fact, because it’s germane: there is a double standard here in favor of liberals. Liberals, in general, have a platform of permissiveness when it comes to two consenting adults. Liberals are inclusive when it comes to marginalized sexual activity. Liberals admit to having sex. Conservatives, however, campaign on a platform of sexual “morality.” There’s a stricter standard they hold others to, so we hold it right back. If you deprive others of fundamental rights based on whom they sleep with or how often, you make this issue fair game. Being sexually undisciplined doesn’t make you a bad politician, but hypocrisy does.  Lying doesn’t make you a bad politician (it just makes you a politician–ba dum kshhhhh), but bigotry does.

Having said that, Weiner’s done. Get out. Go home. The truth wouldn’t have been less true if there weren’t pictures, but the fact is that those images are indelible. They reveal a truth beyond the fact that you’re a skeev; they say you’re self-centered, you assume others like what you like, you take too much pride in your looks, you’re desperate for validation. You’ve revealed your soul in way Clinton never did, and what it shows is nothing good.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: This is the saddest because it is the most serious because it was the least consensual. DSK, as he’s known to people who’ve never actually met him and are too indifferent to say his name (guilty), couldn’t have engineered a situation less in his favor. It is too rife with symbolic significance. Chief of the IMF (allegedly) assaults African hotel maid–>Rich (allegedly) rapes the poor–>Man (allegedly) violates woman–>First-world (allegedly) exploits third-world–>Entitled (allegedly) abuses underprivileged–>Leisure class (allegedly) mounts working class. It goes on and on. The details are too sordid and depressing for anyone who internalizes this sort of thing as a reflection of the state of the world—this seems like a symbol for all that we do that keeps children starving, men disfranchised and women oppressed in developing nations.

Luckily, the symbolism doesn’t stop there. The fact is, DSK—leading candidate to run one of the largest economies in the world and head an important Western state—was arrested. Not quietly taken to the side and whispered his rights at a cocktail party-arrested, but pulled off a goddamn airplane and made to march the perp walk in front of camera flashes-arrested. He was denigrated and sneered at—not in gossip circles of the rich and connected, but in front of the whole world, everywhere from  television to the New Yorker. He is ruined—not for assaulting a cosseted princess, but a humble maid whose identity is thoughtfully protected. Because every woman deserves safety from perverts, no matter their pedigree or job. And every (alleged) degenerate warrants a trial, no matter their pedigree or job.  I would bet my left nut–wait, I don’t have one–I would bet your left nut (you don’t have one?  We’ll find a left nut somewhere) that this would not have happened in West Africa or in France.  This is America doing it right, maaaaaybe save for jumping to a few conclusions.

So amidst the symbol of sadness, there is a symbol of faith—in the system, in America, and in democracy. After this post, we certainly need to see the good to wash off the sticky film that covers us for knowing too much about where certain penises decided to take up residence.  Let us shake our heads nay to the poor judgment of these individual men. But let us also nod our heads yea to having greater wisdom in the collective.

The mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and leader of the al-Qaeda network, Osama bin Laden, was killed during a raid by US commandos on a compound located in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.  The culturally sanctioned forum for any conversation between three or more people without Twitter accounts, Facebook, was afire with a passive-aggressive fight over the appropriate response on May 2, 2011.

Regularly scheduled programming was interrupted for a special report.  Facebook’s ears perked up, a small wrinkle forming between its brows.  The story was leaked to the networks, who excitedly wrung their hands while waiting for Obama to make the announcement.  Facebook cried out in surprise and triumph.  Obama read his teleprompter, his eyes shifting back and forth belying the spontaneity of his confidence.  Facebook nodded, admiring his swagger, then ran out to post pictures of flash mobs singing off-key around the White House and Ground Zero.

Facebook was elated!  Facebook was emotional!  Then Facebook went to sleep, it was late.

When Facebook woke up, it was with the repentance of a bad hangover.

Some seemed chastened and embarrassed by their initial delight.  Others who chose to remain sober the previous night decided that the outburst was unseemly and said so.  Facebook cringed.  But that’s what relief feels like!  And Facebook was just doing what it does: emote and over-share.  After all, the existence of bin Laden weighed heavier on some than others.  He besmirched good hearts with dark shadows as a symbol of whatever evil seemed most odious to them.  There are just some things that the spirit resists sharing this world with; for me, it’s the likes of the Ku Klux Klan.  For others, it was bin Laden.  We’re both just saying we don’t trust men in hoods and white robes carrying large guns.

Then Facebook discovered the fabricated Martin Luther King, Jr. quote:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

It was a conflation of someone’s editorial and the famous “violence is…a descending spiral” quote by King.  It was probably birthed over at Twitter, but Twitter makes no apologies.  Twitter has a character limit, and can’t be bothered to explain every little thing it publishes.  Twitter looked Facebook up and down, shrugged, and walked off #thisisallyoubitch.

What Facebook was trying to say, really, was embodied by a young fellow the Washington Post tripped over in the Financial District:

Ryan Beckley, a 21-year-old student at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, stood at the gates of St. Paul’s Chapel holding a sign quoting John Donne. “Any man’s death diminishes me.” He found it difficult to vilify bin Laden given the “infinite complexity” of the world, an attitude at which various passersby sneered. One called him “a moron,” and another told him to rot, and another simply said, “[Expletive] you, idiot.”

Facebook and Ryan needn’t be embarrassed.  These sentiments, too, are valid, because I’m assuming they are not so much celebrating the life of a terrorist as attempting to mollify the hubris of the conqueror, which history has shown leads to bad endings.   The world is indeed complex and so are the men who live in it.  And people like Ryan—that is to say, people who quote John Donne and are earnest enough to spend good money on tuition for a degree in jazz and contemporary music—are people of principle.  People of principle tend to understand other people of principle.  People of principle are familiar with the rip current driving the actions of other people of principle, even while finding such actions contemptible.  Thus a moral American can find the gray area in an extremist philosophy, can account for the impact of foreign policy during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on the making of a terrorist, can calculate the effects of global disfranchisement on a region that allowed a radical movement to flourish.

And yet this same moral American may be unequivocally merciless towards a mother who beats her kids or a priest who rapes altar boys or a psychopath who tortures prostitutes.  Their motives are not as clear, you see.  Their actions are inexplicable; they were not driven by principle.  This is only to explain where the Facebooks and Ryans of the world are coming from; why they may come across as forgiving of a certain kind of evil.  It’s not due to a lack of moral compass.

It may be due to misplaced identification and an incomplete thought process, however.  Because as much as we should refrain from relishing in violence, we should also not indirectly advocate serial mass murder, which was a cause bin Laden committed himself to freely, financially and whole-heartedly.  If some people revel in the passing of a maniac, if there is some disproportionately small amount of pleasure experienced by those who have lived through massive amounts of pain, if the President of the United States chooses to call this grotesque abortion’s demise “justice”—I am not moved to correct them.

Even those who take greatest satisfaction in bin Laden’s death would rather 9/11 had never happened at all.  So would those who censure a jubilant reaction.   Facebook is better off not splitting hairs over who’s the more honorable.

If you take the arithmetic mean of our collective reaction to the death of bin Laden, you will find that we are, in fact, a conflicted nation.   And as far as I’m concerned, this is great.  This is the right response.  This conflict is healthy, this conflict is necessary, and this conflict is most compassionate to those who need it—the victims’ friends and families.  Because through solidarity and association, we are telling them it is OK to feel what they feel.  However the hell they are feeling.  An event like this is just as likely to evoke a rush of victory as sunken fury.  Peace and Tolerance were burdened by the arrogant presence of a fanatic; his death does not win them over, but after years of silence his acts of terror were delivered a decisive response.  Closure is a gift.  Yet equally valid is the latter feeling of despair; a response to the reality that this basically changes nothing.  Parents are still forever absent in New York, collateral victims are still limbless in Iraq, children are still dead the world over.  Closure is a chimera.  And if they feel some combination of every feeling under the sun, apparently so do we as a country.

One man perished.  One bad man among many.  The symbolism of that is arguable and, ultimately, personal.

March 8 is International Women’s Day, isn’t that nice?  Very generous of The Someone in charge of the Roman calendar to give us a day.  According to the CIA World Factbook, there are around 3,429,458,135 of us in the world today, which yields 0.000025 seconds for each of us if we split the day evenly.  ZOMG!  I wonder what I should do with mine?

Surely I’ll use it shopping or getting a manicure or avoiding math!  Squeeee!

Ok, ok, punch-yourselves-in-the-head it out.  I know, shhh, it’s ok now.  Let’s just resign ourselves to a post consisting exclusively of sweeping generalizations, because that’s really the only way we’ll get through this before the turn of the next decade.  Are we all on board the USS Slippery Slope?  Good, nobody move, not even to adjust a wedgie, lest we all topple overboard.

Despite the unavoidable implication that a day for women (international ones) cedes the rest of the year to everybody else (men, iguanas, candy corn, etc.), I’m not against taking a moment to remember the achievements of womanhood.  Not at all.  The fact that most of these achievements were not documented is a function of a rather unfortunate history of subjugation—but if we were to judge the leaps in human progress by only that which was chronicled and sourced, let me just testify for the record: THE JUDGMENTOR INVENTED AWESOME AND ASS-KICKING.  There, noted in the annals for all posterity to take heed.

But on the off-chance that greatness existed even without witness, that thunderous advancement was served in the quiet footnotes of history, that titanesses lived alongside titans, whether as intellectual equals or supporters that facilitated the latter’s achievements… let us take a moment (say, a day—give or take forever) to be grateful for the magnificence contributed to humanity by women, despite a long and universal custom of trying to prevent such contributions from happening.

It makes the utmost sense, for example, that in the dark, primitive days of man’s survival, the silence was broken by language as discovered by women.  If men were hunters, communicating with noise could not have worked to their advantage as they moved stealthily ever closer to their prey.  If women were gatherers, it seems only natural that their social clusters would have harvested its own social customs and practices.  This is how I imagine things went:

Woman 1: *pointing to snake in wolfberry bush*  Dur…Dur…Durrr!

Woman 2: *looks at Woman 1* Durrr?

Woman 1: Durrr!

Woman 2: *detecting urgency in Woman 1’s voice, intuiting danger, following direction of Woman 1’s finger, noticing snake in wolfberry bush and safely moving locations, nodding*  Durrr.

And henceforth snakes were known as Durrr.  And pointing meant “regard the general space in the direction indicated by the trajectory of the sightline that begins from the end of my index finger and note any item or person that is unusual or germane in the context of our current communication.”

A similar scenario may have played amongst the men, but it would have ended differently.

Man 1: *pointing to snake in tall grass* Dur…Dur…Durrr!

Man 2: *punches Man 1, gets bitten by snake, dies*

I also suspect that agriculture was discovered by women, whose environment and habits would make them receptive to the very unhurried and protracted messages of Nature.

Woman 1, year 1: picks berries from wolfberry bush

Woman 1, year 1, late in season: returns to wolfberry bush, notices decomposing wolfberry germinating on ground

Woman 1, year 2: returns to wolfberry bush, notices new, mini-wolfberry bush next to it

Woman 1, year 2, late in season: returns to wolfberry bush, notices mini-wolfberry bush dying in the shadow of bigger wolfberry bush

Woman 1, year 3, after drought: returns to wolfberry bush, notices both dead.  Comes up with the words “Son of a goddamn it.”

And after cursing the inconvenience of gathering, the Woman figures out that seeds, earth, water and sun have something to do with developing new life and more food.  And if life and food can be manipulated, people can stop wandering around the planet like idiots and farm.  Which pretty much changed, you know, everything.

Not that this really needs a male scenario, but let’s indulge ourselves for 0.000025 seconds:

Man 1, year 1: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 2: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 3: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 4: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 5: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

No, no, this is not meant to be a male-bashing session, I…oh, get over it.  After millennia upon millennia of violent oppression and sexual degradation and tyrannical conditioning, you can take thirty fucking years of women’s lib and having your feelings hurt.  It’s International Women’s Day, suck it up.

Wait, wait, I have a father and a brother and know too many good men for that kind of prejudice, so I take a fraction of it back—the fraction that corresponds to the ratio of good men to bad.  Because I have more in common with good men than I do with bad women.  And bad women exist—in fact, all kinds of women exist.  We as a gender are more diverse by orders of magnitude than men are, I think.  Men come in primary colors, women come in every shade in between.   There are varieties of women I regard as completely different species from myself—unfortunately, some of these women, few as they are, tend to dictate disproportionately the stereotypes used to perceive the rest of us.  That tends to happen in fragmented markets, but those stereotypes are not only unfair, they’re too often untrue.

Rational, thoughtful women—with rapier intuition, refined sensitivity and invaluable problem-solving skills and finesse—are among the finest creatures this planet has produced (besides puppies).  I would rather have these women as my president, my boss, and my banker than anyone else in the world.  I would trust them to guide me in good times, lead me in bad, and be stewards for the world peace we’ve always longed for under the rule of men.  Are they too few?  Maybe.  Maybe we create a hostile environment for girls to develop into such women.  Certainly we could do a better job of keeping them safe from rape and war, encouraging their literacy, having faith in their judgment as they grow into adults.

So it is for those women—those who were, are, and will be—that I dedicate my 0.000025 seconds of International Women’s Day.  I can’t think of a better use of my time.

I’ve decided to stop fighting it.

I’ve felt this way for so long.  I’m…overcome.  At first I couldn’t find the right words for it, and then I was afraid of what you might think once I said it, but now I have to say it because holding it in any longer feels dishonest and that makes me feel incomplete and I…I…I’m just going to say it, out loud, whatever the consequence…I…

I love me.

Furthermore, I love the way I love me.

And if you’re making all kinds of masturbatory parallels in your sick twisted head, then…yes, well, all that applies.  That’s how much I love me and how goddamn good I am at it.

And as it is with all love, not everyone will get it.  They’ll be all, like, why is she so into herself?  She’s not even pretty.  Or—why her?  I do NOT see what she sees in herself.  You’d think she could do better.  Or—I’m happy for them and all?  But?  I once heard she was with someone else once, a guy?  And once a cheater, like, always a cheater, you know?  And your friends will nod gravely in agreement as you wait for this affair to come to a humiliating (for me) and satisfying (for you) end.  Though little do you know that this love reserves the right to meet someone online and elope with them three months down the road if it feels like.

But love needs no reason, and self-love is as irrational as any other.  And this self-love is a critical component to being a happy single person.  It may, in fact, be the only critical component.  There are many ways to do singlehood right, I would think—but not every way is doing it right.  Sitting in dark rooms with your eyes glazed over with soggy longing is not doing it right.  Whimpering at contented couples walking by your lonely park bench is not doing it right.  Preemptively naming unborn young and enrolling them in schools near desirable suburban subdivisions is not doing it right.  Singlehood is wasted on you.  You are the released prisoner who aches to go back to confinement—you lack something of the human spirit that your fellow parolee has, who relishes the wilds of liberty.

These wilds yield a bounty of pleasures—and you are granted a hut in the  jungle.  It’s your own damn hut, its mortgage has been paid off, and the coconuts that fall through your thatched roof are your goddamn coconuts and you’ll drink the milk straight from them before putting them back in the fridge.  You’re free to roam sans loincloth, you double dip the plantain chips, and when something’s itchy you scratch it.  You sweep on occasion for company (and make the bed for good company), but once they’re gone all bets are off.  To prevent going full-on native I do recommend regular social interaction.  Depending on your tolerance for people, this may mean friends or co-workers or itinerant toucans or high-fiving the proboscis monkey next door every other day.

Other than that, singlehood is what you make of it.  If you have in your mind’s eye an idea of what a partner would look and feel like as a material presence in your life—how s/he would support you, champion you and take care of you—you should take that vision and become that person yourself.  Be the provider and the recipient in one.  Some may resent how much work this represents, how the singleton has to be twice the person, superhuman almost.  Or some may realize that this is the path to full actualization, and that those who pair up are destined to be half-developed gimps who achieve but a fraction of their potential.

Stop hissing at me, coupled people; I am on record as being pro-marriage, so pipe the fuck down.  I get it, that’s a sore spot and I licked my finger and prodded it like a nerve-damaged proctologist.  And it hurts for different reasons, depending on where you find yourself—for some of you, I know that having someone else in your life has rather doubled your work than halved it.  Your life together works, but it works because you do the heavy lifting.  So if anyone is fully fucking actualized, it’s you, because you climbed up, count’em, TWO pyramids of Maslow’s hierarchy and did all the dishes on the way and now you’re in the second trimester of expecting a third little pyramid and I can go SUCK it.  Thus, to you I bow; you have my sincerest congratulations—and my deepest sympathies.  While your achievements are a great testament to your will and potency, they also serve to make me really, really, really smug about being single.  I will go suck it, thank you.

For others of you it hurts because you were very content feeling sorry for me up to this point where it’s starting to become clear that maybe I’m feeling sorry for you and that is all kinds of uncomfortable because if you don’t have the validation of others what the fuck do you have?  And now you think I’m such a bitch and I’m overcompensating for my pathetic, lonely life and now I think you’re such a dumbass and you’re overcompensating for your hollow, lonely life and neither of us are feeling sorry for one another but rather are threatened by each other.  We’re fighting now.

And for the rest of you it hurts because you know, despite my hyperbole, on some level I’m right.  You did leave behind good things when you found your mate.  And as much as you love your shmoopie, you miss these things.  Sure, your boo makes you a better person, or maybe just a different person, or maybe it’s hard to tell anymore.  You miss the clarity of your identity in the open air, stripped of the heavy weight of attribution and relationships.  You miss the simplicity and elegance of the you you are when you’re not them or we.  You miss the invigorating freedom and answering the calls of the wild, filled with adventure and possibility.  It’s not that your snookie-woo—I can’t—it’s not that your partner has held you back, it’s that you’re flying at a different altitude and caught a different tailwind and it wasn’t where you were before or where you thought you could be.  That’s the breaks.  And I, from my vantage point in the gorgeous wilderness, can look in through the glass at the fire in your hearth, the smoke curling from your chimney, and miss the sweetness of quiet, comfortable companionship.  That’s the breaks, too.

See, you and I aren’t fighting.  You and I are the same–but cast in different plays.  You’re Star Wars, I’m Looney Tunes, but we’re both Pez dispensers.  Yeah.

So happy Valentine’s Day to all you happy couples out there.  But a very happy Valentine’s Day to all you happy singles out there.  No one ever says it to you, and we all should—yours is a love to be celebrated and cherished.  And if you were once one and now are the other, then a happy Valentine’s Day to you and your great adventures in love.  Happy Valentine’s Day to you all, may your lives be filled with freedom and joy and exquisitely delicious chocolate truffles you buy yourself.