Cheap Actually

For the past five years, I have not owned a car.

There is no way of telling this fact to a person without inspiring some sort of association – good or bad. 

“You must really care about the environment.” 

“You must be a hardcore biker.” 

“You must have, like, eight DUI’s.”

I heard that last one on a first date. And like anyone falsely accused, I denied it nine too many times – only making my guilt seem that much more plausible.

For the record, I have never had a DUI. Never. I swear!

There’s no way around the associations people make when you tell them you don’t own a car. It’s particularly American to define a person by the consumer products he or she owns. But even when someone compliments me, I can’t help but feel like a fraud. I get uneasy when someone tells me how awesome they think it is that I am fighting against America’s love affair with cars, doing right by the environment. I mean, trees are cool, but I don’t feel like I’m doing anything revolutionary by walking my groceries home.

I just ride the bus. No big deal.

“Oh how ‘Rosa Parks’ of you!”

“I thought only poor people rode the bus?”

“That sucks”

See?

* * *

I really love this bad-ass Georgia O’Keeffe quote, where she says in the most perfectly blunt way that men are all missing the point of her art by associating it with traditional notions of femininity:

“I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flowers you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see – and I don’t.”¹

This is how I feel anytime someone makes any statement about me not owning a car.  I just don't see anything out of the ordinary about it.  However, unlike O’Keeffe who had personal meaning behind her flowers and made a lasting impression on the world, I don’t have any important reason for being a full-time pedestrian.   I just walk a lot.  

The main reason I don’t own a car is because I was really poor at the time. When a guy ran into my car with his van and totaled it, I figured it would be smart to use the insurance money to pay down my student loans.  I'm no hero.  I'm not a bum.  I'm just cheap, actually.

* * *

It seems counterproductive to argue that I don’t care about not owning a car by writing a blog post about not owning a car.  By putting a spotlight on how much I don't care about this issue, I'm putting a spotlight on how much I care about this issue.  And we all know by now that social media is just an outlet for our own vanity anyway. 

Every article I've read about how our social media personas are nothing like our real-life personas exudes such an air of superiority and condensation it just reveals complex on top of complex.  I don’t need some smug blogger to tell me the real reason why I’m posting instagram pictures of my fancy dinner on facebook – I know damn well why I’m posting those pictures. I’m smug as shit about it and I want other people to know!

And I’d bet a dollar (fuck, I’d bet two dollars) that everyone who has ever written about the “truth” behind social media has posted something for the sake of their ego at some point.

FACT: those authors were stroking their own egos when they wrote the damn piece – telling us how super smart they were to see past the superficiality of it all.

Two dollars, please.

FACT: I’m stroking my own ego right now by telling you about those authors telling us about the superficiality of it all. 

Complex 

on top of complex

on top of complex

We’re not all journalists. We’re human beings. We want the world to think we’re cool, interesting people worthy of love and friendship – and sometimes that takes a little creativity - a stretch of the truth here and there.  But when I write these blog posts, I hope you know that I am trying to be sincere, fuck-words and all.  I would call these posts “investigative reports into my psyche” if I didn’t think that phrase sounded ridiculous.  So believe me when I say that not having a car for the past five years has never really bothered me.

And believe me when I say that when my mom signs the title to her old car over to me on Sunday, I am not going to feel like myself.

1 Joan Didion, The White Album

I Read the Whole Wikipedia Article On 'Masculinity' and Some Hemingway Quotes, So I'm Basically an Expert on the Subject

The title of this post is a quote.  I told my friend Liza that after a number of revelations I had this week, I was off on an intellectual pursuit to discover more about a trait that I had, up until this week, always had ambivalence toward.  Her response was another revelation.

"You're a guy.  Shouldn't just know what masculinity is?"

It made complete sense.  As a guy, shouldn't I have some a priori access to masculinity?  Wasn't I born with the instincts?  Shouldn't grunting, scratching, picking, jerking off, and lumber-jacking all come naturally without a scholarly run to the Lakewood Public Library?

It seemed so, but as I've reflected on my past, I've come up with a bastardized geometric proof explaining why something so instinctual should seem so foreign to me.  Here's the quick and dirty:

Part One: The Roots of My Hatred Towards Masculinity:

• I was a nerdly child.  Awkward looking (skin discoloration and a gangly mass of limbs).  Disliked sports.  Often bullied
• Every bully seemed to me at the time to be the result of unchecked male aggression.  To be masculine therefore, was to be a dick-weed bully
• I wanted nothing to do with bullies.  Therefore, I wanted nothing to do with maleness

Part Two: Having Done Away With Masculinity, I Still Needed a Way to Get Girls To Like Me:

• I have been infatuated with one woman or another since grade one
• Unable to woo girls with masculinity, and feeling that my awkwardness would keep any woman from genuinely liking me, I needed something else
• I found that when I accentuated my sense of humor and my warm instincts, women would feel comfortable around me and want to be around me, though very rarely with any romantic inclinations

This leads us all the way up to this week.  

This lifestyle of being a charming, funny, non-threatening guy (apparently not so humble...) has led me to developing wonderful friendships.  I've also very in touch and comfortable with my odder, more bizarre side.  I grew up idolizing male figures that weren't very masculine, but still extremely intriguing.    The genderless sexuality of David Bowie.  The aggressive tenderness of Billy Corgan.  The odd maneuverings of David Byrne.  I loved these men because they were strong, interesting men who also seemed ambivalent to masculinity.  This is why, in my humble opinion, The Beatles will always be better than the Rolling Stones.

This way of showing myself to the world, this comfort with myself, has also made a lot of people think I'm gay -- much like most of my idols.  This has never been a source of shame in my life, but it does make dating women hard.  

I was explaining to Sam, one my best friends, that a New Crush had recently told me she would rather be friends.  I told Sam that the way I respond to these situations -- my method for actually becoming friends with my crushes -- is to ask them about who they are interested in.  Some women find it extremely bizarre that you would want to talk to them about this, being that, you know, I just asked them out.   But if I am going to be your friend, I am going to gossip with you about who you like.  Fact.  

To be perfectly honest, IT SUCKS HUGE FUCKING BONERS at first.  I really don't want to talk to New Crush about who she would rather be with than me.  I don't have an iron ego - I would without a doubt hate this other guy instinctively.  But I know that over time, after repeatedly talking about their other crushes and my other crushes, it becomes less a shot to the ego and more like a talk with my sister.  I want my friends to be happy.  I want them to find love.  And eventually, when my ex-crushes tell me they've found someone amazing, it genuinely makes me extremely fucking happy.  This is currently the case with another one of my best friends, who just so happens to be an ex-crush.

What Sam told me then was one of the revelations that led up to this whole post.  She said that talking to women about other guys they like, well, it isn't very masculine.

And she is 100% right on the money.  There is a masculine instinct that I am shutting down for the sake of trying to be New Crush's friend.  I am also shutting down any chance of a romantic relationship with New Crush.  I don't really know whether this is a bad thing.  If she really doesn't want to date me, then I am doing what I can to ensure we stay friends.  If I like someone, I'm not going to stop hanging out with them because they don't want to suck my dick.  It makes no sense why social beings would be so quick to disengage.  People have so much to offer besides blow jobs.  Seriously.

But facts are facts.  In this instance and in numerous others, I am denying a part of myself.  I am ashamed of a part of myself.  A part of me still really hates anything masculine.  And, you know, being a guy, I have a lot of masculine traits.  I have always been proud of being so comfortable with the bizarre, funny, entertaining, non-masculine side of me - thinking I'm some how more evolved because of this - that I've been able to push down, repress, hate another big part of who I am.

This is what has led me to Hemingway quotes and wikipedia articles on the subject.  I am trying to find a form of masculinity that I can be comfortable with.  Masculinity, I'm finding, for the most part is a product of your environment.  There's nothing innate about looking like the guys from the Jersey Shore (still relevant?)  and it seems to me that the commercialized male persona is really just attractive to people who are insecure with their sexuality.  If a man isn't 100% sure if he's straight or fears that his buddies will make fun of him for doing anything that might make him seem a little bit gay, he'll do and say and wear whatever he has to so that no one would ever mistake him for being gay.  And that is some horrible shit right there.  That is why Axe and Ed Hardy are in existence.  Do you understand how horrible this is?  [Side note: it would be really incredible if insecure straight guys and insecure, still-in-the-closet gay guys could get together and talk about how much being insecure about themselves sucks, and how they should both open up and be more accepting of who they are.  However, in the world we live in today, it's usually the first insecure group harassing the second insecure group to the point of suicide]

I have been finding success in looking at figures from my life that I always thought embodied maleness and were comfortable in their maleness while still being a respectable human being (ie not treating people, especially women and nerdly boys, like shit).  Think of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (and remember that this character was invented by a woman -- Harper Lee).  In my own life, I have my brother Ethan and my Uncle Will.  As I get older, my father more and more fits into this category.  Even though he never exhibited any of the horrible male characteristics I've mentioned so far, a father is the ultimate masculine authority in every boys life.  Because of this, and other unfortunate and unfair reasons that we both had a part in, I hated him for a long time.  It's not something I'm proud of and I thank God-Buddah-Whoever that it's no longer the case.

As I've looked to these role models of masculinity, and thought about what it is about them that makes me respect them so much, I've discovered that it really has nothing to do with masculinity at all.  They're all just good people who are comfortable with who they are.  They have no shame in their maleness, but only because they don't allow their male instincts to get in the way of loving and respecting others.  They don't need to disrespect women, the LGBT community, or fuck [with] others to feel in control, to feel needed, or to feel some purpose in life.  

My masculinity isn't going to turn me into a bully.  I need to recognize that.  I need to be comfortable with that.  I need to stop assuming women will want nothing to do with me if I'm not their pseudo-gay best friend.  I need to stop assuming I'm unattractive to everyone.  I don't need to be funny to be liked.  As long as I stay honest to myself, keep treating others with respect, and never touch an Ed Hardy t-shirt so long as I live, I think I'll be okay.       

The American Alliance of Single Mothers, Acai Berry Producers and Ugandan Hand Models FUCKING SHIT BRICKS Over This One Simple Trick

I always hope that the ads I always see on Facebook that promise miracle weight loss, pimple reduction, and scantily-clad Christian singles will take you to a page that just says, "Go to the gym, you big silly" before a million pop-up ads eat your computer.

I have always been a skinny little thing, which I took as God's way of saying "sorry for everything else, but at least you don't need to go to the gym??"  I thought I could sit around and eat Golden Grahams, Golden Crisp, Cookie Crisp, Waffle Crisp, Cocoa Krispies, Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles, and Fruit Loops until my stomach bled and bask in the glory that is not having to go to the gym.  The path to happiness was slathered in high fructose corn syrup.

It wasn't until my first and (thankfully) only break down during law school that I realized that the gym isn't necessarily a place where you go to lose weight and self-esteem, but can be a force against the general malaise I usually feel during school, winter months, and late-night internet sessions.

When my motivation for going to the gym came from knowing that it would make me feel better, as opposed to mere vanity, I started going regularly.

Another nice thing about the gym is that it gives you plenty of time to think.  Here are some of the thoughts that go through my head on a typical day at the Lakewood YMCA:

1.) I've been going to the gym for a few years now, but I still feel like this every time I go:

2.) Though if I'm having a good day, I feel like this:

3.) Motivation doesn't come easy all the time.  I find that ex-girlfriends and women who never call me back are basically infinite pools of inspiration.

Comic by Brad Neely

4.) Better than ex-lovers though are the attractive people who are invariably at the gym.  Now please, I don't ogle every beautiful woman that passes me by.  That would be rude.  No, I fall in love with them in the Ted Mosby fashion.  Yes, this is much less creepy.

OMG!  I never noticed how little of a fuck Robin gives with this look!  She's basically saying "creeeeeeep" with her eyes

5.) Planks.  I hate planks.  It requires the least amount of movement - none - and still sucks than most anything else.  I have to pretend I'm one of those angsty witch-teens from The Craft and tell myself I'm "light as a feather, stiff as a board."

6.) I'm pretty sure Tom Selleck's great-grandfather goes to the Lakewood YMCA.  He is bad-ass and he is not to be fucked with.

And damnit if he isn't in better shape than me

7.) However, this douche-mongrel is also always there.  I try not to let his tribal tattoos intimidate me.   He is at the gym for the wrong reasons.  I am not there to look like him, but to feel better about myself.  So put the heavy weights back, Jonathan and return to the bouncy green ball of wussiness.

Another Brad Neely Comic

8.) It's okay to be a hipster and go to the gym.  In fact, you'll be the first hipster there!  +500 hipster points!

9.) Putting Dairy Queen right next to the YMCA was the biggest flim-flam whoopsie-doodle of the century.  It's just evil.  I have to ride past it on my way home and deny my inner child:

 Sorry kid, next time

10.) Once I pass the Last Temptation of Dairy Queen, I am always amazed at how great I feel after going to the gym.  Great like Paul Rudd and Ryan Gosling had a child and I am that child and now they're trying to cope with the hard, cold truth that their child has finally surpassed both of them in terms of good looks and when their own repressed fears of mortality are about to surface, I come back from the gym and they're all like:

"Woah"

"Damnit he looks good"

That feeling is what gets me through the winter.  It gets me through bouts of depression, stress, and anxiety.  It got me through three break-ups, six finals, and the bar exam.  

And I'm slightly less gangly.  

Lucky Charms, thou art a false prophet. 

TLC and Other Things I Like To Sing On My Bike

"Mom, it's not that you're funny... it's just that your life is funny."  -My sister to my Mom.

Today I rode my bike through playhouse square and didn't realize there was a film crew shooting a scene of the street until I noticed a camera right in front of me.  A camera right in front of me while I was singing Creep by TLC.

And I died.  It was too funny.

Later on the bike ride, the Tyga classic, Rack City, comes on the radio.  When the protagonist of the song, presumably at a strip club in the titular city, says "Rack City, bitch.  Rack Rack City, bitch. Ten ten tens twenty and a fifty, bitch," my slight-OCD side is comforted to note that he gave exactly $100 to this woman.  You can call her a bitch all you want, Tyga, but she just got $100 of your money in less than 4 seconds

Bike riding gives you a lot of time to think about such things.

On the rest of the ride home I thought more about these two songs.  TLC's song, a 90's R&B gold-standard about a woman cheating on her boyfriend once she suspects that he's cheating on her -- not out of spite or jealousy, but simply because she wants the attention -- is actually pretty insightful stuff when you think about it.

One of the best things we get out of relationships with anyone is attention.  Our need for attention is really underrated, probably because we think it's better to be autonomous or we don't want to come off as too needy.  We like thinking we can just be awesome people all by ourselves.  Think Indiana Jones or Kanye West.  They think they're pretty awesome, and a lot of other people do too, but do any of us really want to be friends with either of them?  Does Kanye West text his pals on Sunday to see how their weekend was?  Does Indiana Jones ever asks his friends out to brunch?  Probably not.

And Tyga wants just as much attention too, even though he may try to come off as a bad-ass, he just wants us to think he's a bad-ass so we'll give him that attention.   You can keep throwing those hundreds, Tyga, if you want to get you noticed.  It'll work, but it won't be cheap.

At least TLC is honest about our need for attention and honest with the understanding that sometimes to get that attention, we sink to really low levels.  T-Boz is pretty explicit.  She loves her man, won't leave him, but god damn it, if he's not going to pay her any attention, she's going to get that attention somewhere else.  So she creeps and she'd prefer us to keep it on the down low.

Imagine how fast someone would go crazy if they were the only person on earth.  Or, if you have time, watch Castaway, starring Tom Hanks.  If left all to our lonesome, we'd make a friend out of something, just so we could have someone else around.  We wouldn't take a volleyball and make a sex-doll out of it, we'd make a lil' buddy.

Though we're told we're not supposed to judge ourselves against other people, it's actually kind of necessary -- to an extent.  Constantly believing that we need to keep up with the Jones's in order to be successful isn't healthy.  But we have to get our idea of what a successful life is from somewhere.  If I was the only person left on earth, how would I know if I'm living my life right?  There is no right or wrong and no success when you're the only person left.

I know, right?

So I look to my friends and family.  I look to people who I admire, who I think are doing it right and try to be like that.  If it feels right to me and I feel like it's having a positive impact on my life and the people around me, I keep doing it.  If it feels wrong or it's pissing my friends off, I stop.

Honestly, I think this is what everyone is doing naturally all the time.  The problem comes in when we get an idea in our heads of what life should be like from some unrealistic source -- like television, the internet, or Tyga songs.  When we have an unrealistic idea of what life should be like, an idea that doesn't really provide us with what we need to be stable, we start to feel ashamed of all the little quirks and problems we have that are seen as bizarre or wrong by that unrealistic standard.

Imagine growing up gay in a conservative community that considers homosexuality immoral.  In order to fit in, you have to deny your strongest feelings.  I can't imagine how hard it is to be told that your love for another human being is wrong.  It's one of the most un-human things imaginable.  Taking away a person's ability to love while living is nearly the same as death.  At least Romeo and Juliet thought so.

But when we can laugh at the silly little things that we do -- the things that might not be seen as cool, or manly, or feminine, or whatever -- we at least can be comfortable with being human.  And when other people can laugh with us at those little things, or better yet, say "I DO THAT SHIT ALLLLLL THE TIME!" it's the best kind of attention we can get.  It's the kind of attention that turns something that we once thought was weird into something human.  It turns something we thought separated us from the rest of humanity into something that connects us with it.

So I love Creep.... yeah, just keep it on the down low, cuz no one is supposed to know.

No, better yet, let the whole damn world know.

Don't Settle Down With Barbie, Settle Down With a Human Being

Every once in a while, I can be a real fucking guy.  Not a Fabio-esque, beefy Adonis fucking guy.  Like some sort of pleasure beast.  But a douche bag bro fucking guy.

And what did I do?  Nothing.  I had a bad thought.  As agnostic as I am, I still have a little bit of that Catholic guilt bred into me that won't let a bad thought go.  And what was that thought?  Did I feel the urge to kill?  Did I think about eating McDonalds?  No.

I thought of a woman as an object (dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUN!).

Now this may not seem like such a bad thought, being that you can't really live in America without seeing an advertisement for boobs at least a million times a day (I'm sure the ads aren't trying to sell boobs, but that's what it freakin' looks like).

Women are objectified everywhere.  The Plain Dealer had a story about the death of two elderly folks today and the paper described them as Mr. Such-and-Such and his wife, Mrs. Such-and-Such.  Again, that may not surprise anyone, but it's basically like saying here's a picture of this guy and his car.

His thing.  His property.

It's not so much the objectification of woman that bothers me -- I think men can be objectified just as well -- it's when culture takes the further step of classifying women as property.  A thing that can be owned.

Take the idea of the "trophy wife."  The trophy wife isn't so much sought after for her ability to discuss Hegel with you, but for her attractiveness.  She is hot and will spur jealousy in others with less hot wives.  It's similar to owning a fancy-shmancy car, like the kind you don't drive.  You don't own it so you can go to the grocery store super-duper fast.  You own it to show others how awesome and powerful you are.  To show others you have the power to command such beauty.  It doesn't even matter what the thing is -- it's owned merely to one-up other people.  The thing is substantively worthless.  If the it thing is a new car, ego-centrics will buy a new car.  If it's a pet monkey, they'll buy a pet monkey.  And whenever a new it thing comes out, they'll trade that precious little monkey in for whatever comes next.

This may not seem like a BIG DEAL, but it's this kind of mentality that allows for rape and sex-trafficking.  If you can objectify the person, they aren't really a person at all, and you don't have to feel bad for treating them like sex-objects.  They are sub-human and have no thoughts or feelings.

This is where my thought comes in.  I was walking to the bus after work and saw a couple on the street.  The woman was gorgeous and tall and blonde and probably really into metaphysics if I got to know her better.  The guy was short.  His eyes were too far apart.  Probably an asshole if I got to know him.

Being 6'4", I felt that a tall woman dating a short guy was a crime against humanity, like a waste of a precious resource.  "There are so few of them!  Why him?"  I found myself jealous of this munchkin.  I wanted to date the tall woman!  It wasn't fair!  I was basically reduced to a child jealous of another kid's toy for the two seconds it took me to walk past them.  But in that time I had reduced this woman to that of a plaything.

I didn't know either of them.  They probably had a normal relationship just like any I've been in, full of awesome/miserable moments.  But for those two seconds he simply had a cool toy that I wanted.

It wasn't until I started to emphasize with these strangers that I started to feel better for having this thought.  I dated a woman that my entire family seemed to hate.  A woman a few of my close friends never liked.  But she was the first woman outside of my family that I ever loved, and not having the support of my family and friends was really freaking hard to deal with.  I'm sure that the tall lady on the street has to deal with the same thing when her friends tell her to find someone her own size.

I also dated a girl for a short period of time who was way way way way way way way way more attractive than me.  I never felt comfortable, always curious as to what she was doing with me.  I was too young to realize people dated for reasons beyond sex.  I would look at her and wonder why she hadn't traded-up yet for a better looking model.  I'm sure that the little guy on the street has to deal with the same thing when he looks up that tall woman's nose.

When we objectify others, when we see them as things to be owned and desired, we can't empathize with them.  You don't empathize with things - you just want them for how they'll make you feel.  And the older I get, the more I realize that empathy - being able to relate to others - is REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT (in a way that only bold, italics, underlined, all caps, and a curse word can emphasize).

Living in a world with just you and a bunch of objects is lonely.  You may feel powerful with your trophy spouse and fancy car, but you'll never feel like a person because you have no one there to empathize with.  No one to relate to.  No one who understands you and makes you realize you're not the only person in the world with the feelings you have.

When you open up and are honest with others, when they become your friends, you get to have the joy of sharing your life with people who know when you need a hug or a good night of karaoke to blow off some steam.   Knowing you're not alone during bad times makes them seem less bad and having people to share the awesome times with makes them so much more awesome.  It's a really simple concept, but it's easy to forget.

A committed relationship is the exact same thing, except more intimate.  Once you've opened up with someone so much that sex-as-recreation turns into italicized love, you know someone as well as you know yourself.  You know all their creepy shit and they know all your creepy shit.  And there is nothing better in this world than that.  Someone loves you for you, not because you're the hot new thing, but because you share a knowledge of each other beyond anyone else.  Being an equal with another person proves that you're not alone.  It proves that you're alive.

It proves that you're a human being.

And nothing I have ever owned has ever made me feel as alive.

So instead of talking yourself up or prettying yourself up trying to get laid, open up.  Instead of chasing after people or trying to look like a beautiful object for them, get to know them.  If someone doesn't want to sleep with you but would rather be your friend, be friends.

If they fall in love, you fall in love.