Spencer Lund

Woke up and started reading the paper as I made my way to get a...

Fri, 25 May 2012 11:47:24 -0400

Woke up and started reading the paper as I made my way to get a cup of coffee. It was an actual paper I could hold in my hands and play with, if I felt so inclined. The news was as dismal as the overcast sky.

I read about Etan Patz’s killer, Pedro Hernandez, finally getting arrested after 33 years at large; I read the first couple graphs about China’s outpout slowing and how that may have ripple effects in other economy’s because China is a big fish in the pond now and increased globalization means we’re all interdependent on one another, so one country’s crisis of confidence can infect everyone. Sort of like how “Spain’s Bank transfers reflect broader fears.”

The last thing I read before getting back to my place, was the Times Picayune’s front page story, also featured in the New York Times, about how the NOR paper is scaling back its print paper in the continuing upheaval at major metropolitan newspapers in the digital age.

It was stark, Joe, so I was in a foul mood and ready to get all fuckin’ grim with the blogging today.

Then I caught Dan’s post on Twitter about Irish Rugby star, Brian O’Driscoll, visiting a small girl in the hospital with the Heineken Cup. Everything was OK again b/c the picture was exactly what I needed to see.

Happy Friday y’all.

Let this post dissolve on your tongue. Go ahead and hit a pipe,...

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:32:26 -0400

Let this post dissolve on your tongue.

Go ahead and hit a pipe, drain a shot, toot a rail, gobble some caps, swallow the sugar cube and electrocute yourself on the Miller High Life sign in your room. Dance alone on the subway platform until fellow passengers head away as fast as they can. Your surroundings may be curt, but you’re alert and lucid in your numbness. The crescendo of the train pulls you back and then you’re gone again; drifting ethereal-like above the plane of consciousness, but without the elixir of the masses. The waves undulate in your body as your toes lose feeling and your arms hang motionless and slack. The attack of the dopamine might mean you’re cloudy, but that’s just what they want you to think. You’re actually channeling all of history into the oily hand smudge on the window above the advertisement for T.J. Steelritter’s Optometry. The doctor’s nose juts out at you and you loll your head to the side to avoid it’s pointy truculence. A girl opposite you giggles, you’re not sure at what. A homeless man asleep down the way, rustles in his stupor, and his left arm hangs down to the floor. The scene outside the window is a verdurous rush of opaque greens and browns in a roughly hewn collage of transcendentalism. An aversion to self-reliant tunnel-vision overcomes you and you’re talking a mile a minute to no one. Everyone moves down the train towards the homeless man smelling faintly of buttery Popeyes Chicken and urine. You jolt back to reality and feel it’s warm embrace in the pit of your fluttering stomach. Memories of high school sporting events take on a twisted edge of blurred line markers and opiate induced dry heaving. The goalie rushes in on you in a crested wave of shins and gloves amid a cacophony of grunts. The ball squirts out then recedes back into a troubadour’s snakish grin above an acoustic guitar. You are awake and present and also drifting through time. A first kiss, the closet of your sister’s friend with hanging dresses obscuring your vision and a buxom girl stridently helping you with a bra strap; then she offers her bosom as a sort of Oedipal present. You’re back in the cradle, endlessly rocking as the train swerves below the East River; the locomotion churning like Gatsby’s opulent car. Dangling jewels flood your periphery as a bohemian white girl saunters through the turnstile and onto the train. The celestial railway wasn’t supposed to have hipsters, but Heaven sometimes smells like patchouli. Or is it hell? You can’t be sure except that you feel warm and safe, which seems more like purgatorio. A nothingness settles next to you. You ask it whether Camus and Sartre play cards and dance together. Nothingness replies “that’s an absurd question,” and so you ponder the daffodils in the brim of Nothingness’ fedora. The Tyger tattoo on your back is scratching at your shoulder. It’s a tame scratching, but it becomes itchy, and you catch a reflection of yourself in the train’s window that reminds you of The Dubliners. Someone dies in their sleep, and your insomnia continues, unabated by the vestiges of dreams of dreams; the only inception the high-tide of drugs over decades. You can’t remember drugs ever feeling as good as the first time you benched your weight without assistance. The train stops and the conductor murmurs something that sounds like “Faded is this high.” The “landscape listens” and “shadows hold their breath.” You only get one chance at a righteous death. “For Whom (the Bell Tolls) the proles grouse.” It tolls for those whom call the “funhouse” home.

A conversation with a stranger on the streets of Brooklyn

Fri, 04 May 2012 18:40:00 -0400

Tatted Up Dude (TUD): Gesturing to my cig "Yo, you got another one of those?"
Me: "Sure."
TUD: "Yo, thanks man. It's been a long weekend."
Me: "It's Friday."
TUD: "It is? Damn."
TUD: "I have amnesia."
Me: Pause, "Well at least you remember you have amnesia."
TUD: "Yeah, I woke up in Bellvue.
Me: ...
TUD: "I think I have a case against them."
Me: Crossing the street to get a bagel, flash a thumbs-up "Good luck."
TUD: Yelling, "Thanks, and thanks for the smoke."

Photo

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:02:16 -0400

Trust

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:58:00 -0400

Trust

I think there are a lot of people that want to read Byron out loud because it’s easier to...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:06:00 -0400

I think there are a lot of people that want to read Byron out loud because it’s easier to understand that way, but the popular consensus is zzzzz, so I stopped asking if I could read it out loud, and everyone went back on their phones.

I can’t remember the last time someone told me about the earth-shattering orgasm they had the night before. This used to happen on a semi-weekly basis growing up. Now, they’re all innoculated against Fratire, and conversations about “the little guy in the boat” are considered crass.

I’m pretty sure empirical data has served Thomas Sowell well, but it’s also pretty hard to ignore the look of disgust on the police-officers countenance as they’re walking West from 3rd Ave on 122nd St.

As long as you’re self-referential enough, you’ll get the pageviews.

ee cummings didn’t know html code.

The line everyone remembers from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock isn’t “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.” It’s “And how should I begin?” and they’re asking it after they’ve graduated from a top tier school on the East Coast, and they’re $30,000 in debt.

No one gives a shit who made The Lamb, but we’re always wondering who “dared frame thy fearful symmetry” of The Tyger; that strikes me as one-sided, but understandable considering the lopsided disparity in wealth among the citizens of the world.

If the Fisher King of lore is any indication, John Wayne Bobbit’s porn career shouldn’t have come as a surprise, and Jack Barnes’ fishing was really just the self-actualization of Sting’s Tantra principles. Plus, Barnes seemed more virile than Nick Carraway and so Tobey Maguire was a good choice.

If Emerson had been reincarnated as an OWS protestor, he’d get ostracized from the group for rhetoric that sounded too mellifluous.

Thoreau strikes me as someone that wouldn’t shy away from a fist-fight, but would probably lose, and wouldn’t take the beat-down well i.e. his confidence would crumble as a result.

More people should reference Henry James when talking about the Wire television program.

More people should reference Graham Greene when talking about the Generation Kill television program.

NBC’s Thursday night television line-up is a lot like The Metaphysical Club, with Oliver Wendal Holmes as Parks and Rec and William James as Community. I guess Charles Pierce could be The Office, but most likely, Whitney would take his spot.

The Wife of Bath would have laughed a lot at AND with Jezebel, but would have not been a contributor.

Amory Blaine would have been an incredible blogger for New York Magazine, but Maxwell Perkins would have talked him out of it because the position was beneath him as a Princeton grad.

Stop Playing the Lottery [this has nothing to do with Rochesterian, Shirley Jackon, and her seminal short story]

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:31:00 -0400

Every morning when I trudge towards the bodega for coffee and smokes, I hope this is the day where no one will be buying lottery tickets. My longing for this isn’t a reaction to the line that forms featuring geriatric white ladies, middle-aged Dominican men, 20-somethings in skinny jeans, and every other demographic imaginable in my small Brooklyn neighborhood. No, it’s that as these people recite their lists of numbers, letters, and instructions to the Middle-Eastern man behind the counter with the confidence or casualness of a lifer, or the timidity of the oh, what the hell sect, and I feel so freakin’ sorry for them.

Watching this daily interchange is totally, epically, resoundingly, depressingly, inexorable. They will never win. Ever. And they will also never stop playing.

It’s like watching people pray day after day, but also watching those prayers falling on the increasingly Helen Keller existence of whatever all-knowing entity people choose to worship (false idol is redundant), as their prayers go unanswered.

I gather at least some of these people actually believe this is a sound investment. Like the person holding a Greek bond, or buying opium in a brown paper-bag from someone off the street; it’s dumb, and after the first time, there’s no excuse to repeat the mistake. Yet a larger than usual percentage of people actually think this might be the day they win the lottery and continue to think so for their entire lives. Just like a cherished place in heaven might come during the Mayan rapture of Kirk Cameron’s wet dreams (And OF COURSE Kirk Cameron has wet dreams), maybe this person in front of me at the bodega will win the Mega Millions. Cameron’s odds are better than the person in line.

The comparison is equal parts religious and like rooting for a perpetually losing sports team. You root, or play the lotto, because hey, you never know? Except in sports, or even in religion there’s at least a chance. Not so in the Lottery. The chances are so slim, they’re not even worth mentioning (except as a hyperlink). So why do people still play the lottery?

I don’t know.

It’s certainly similar to my devotion to the Buffalo Bulls or my grandmother’s devotion to a Catholic God, and the immortality of Jesus Christ, but at least those delusions have a slim chance of coming through. Religion isn’t all that far-fetched because an omnipotent being and ensuing dogma has never been empirically confirmed OR denied. Not so with the lottery. It’s a hope-based initiative that has nothing to do with hope. It’s a habit, and a habit that’s as detrimental as cigarettes, and robs us of the very money we’re trying to win. At least with my smokes, I know I’m gonna get the contentment of nicotine after a long night. With the lottery, it’s just a daily disappointment. There’s no hope, not really. A cycle of despair in front of me at the bodega every morning.

If you play the lotto every week, you really have no right to castigate anyone that’s religious or addicted to drugs or a fan of the Buffalo Bills. Lottery players are worse off than all those people. With religion, sports, or narcotics at least people are getting something. In order: spiritual fulfillment; wasting away of your corporeal body while your mental realm is unobstructed by the harshness of reality; crushing failure while on the precipice of glory.

But, if you play the lottery, you ain’t winning shit.

This might have been a subconscious post about the Buffalo Bills, even with Mario Williams, setting me up for some disappointment in the fall of 2012, but maybe not. With sports or even religion, at least you have a “maybe not.”

I can write about the Buffalo Bills’ Super Bowl hopes with more confidence than someone claiming they have a chance at winning the lottery. That’s all I really needed to write about the lottery, but I’ve already written the top part.

Even after quitting the hooch, the crazy remains There was a time when I lived in DC both...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:04:48 -0500

Even after quitting the hooch, the crazy remains

There was a time when I lived in DC both during—and for a couple years after—college, where I used to touch the opposite wall in the subway. I’d jump down when the train was a couple minutes away, hurdle the “death rail,” and touch the opposite wall then casually stroll back. This was something I did with alarming frequency usually after a few bourbons in Adams Morgan or coming from some Northeast bar where they’d kicked me out. My friends were alternately amused and terrified. My girlfriend, smartly, realized I was not someone you spend the rest of your life with.

At the time, it could be written off as an ancillary effect of alcoholism, and more than a little narcissism. The problem, which few knew about, was I did this even when no one was around. It could be a deserted station, and—alone with my numbed brain—I’d hop down and go through my routine without an audience. I didn’t realize this was abnormal, I just thought it was exhilarating.

After quitting the booze over the last 418 days, I thought little moments, like my subway rail excursions, would disappear. I thought the urge to commit such an egregiously dangerous act, would subside, and I’d be alone with my thoughts as a normal, functioning adult.

It didn’t.

Today, with the proper musical accompaniment and a cup of coffee, I trudged through the Union Square station and arrived at the 6 train heading uptown. A mother, with a small child in a stroller, was busy coaxing the infant to indulge in a graham cracker. A 20-something girl was checking her make-up. A young man was scrolling through his iPod. I wanted to jump. I didn’t, but the urge was so overwhelming I had to climb the stairs and separate myself from the pull of the risk.

I’m not sure it’s a release of adrenaline or a dopamine inbalance where I’m constantly flooded with chemicals at the very thought of risk. I simply don’t know, but it still shows up from time to time, like this morning.

Whether it’s riding on a motorcycle going 100 on Route 1 along the Pacific; or jumping out of a plane in February; or jumping the train rails at Union Square; or an oncoming mini-speedball of coke and hash; or a mouthy fan at the bar itching to mix it up; or a dilapidated bathroom fuck session, I still get that weird rush. But it’s never so strong as when the stakes are final. The threat of slamming into a train and ending any corporeal thoughts excites me. And I don’t know why.

It’s not as simple as being an adrenalin junkie or an alchie or some deranged chemical imbalance passed down from a family with a history of mental estrangement, it’s something else. Something unnamed. Something to do with living, and not just writing about living.

Whatever moment leads to this heightened awareness and increased need to move and do, isn’t related to anything concrete. It’s more nuanced even then a feeling. It just happens before I know it’s happening, and all of a sudden I need to do something.

Jump a track, fuck, fight whatever, as long as it satiates this unnamed explosion of need and want.

You’d think this sort of behavior would have been quelled in some moment of self-awareness around my 3rd or 4th month of sobriety, but it never happened. If anything, these moments took on a clarity that’s terrifying because I know it’s unrelated to any substance I’ve taken.

It’s not a ticking time bomb because I have no subconscious or conscious desire to die, it’s just something I have to fight. The pull of a dark bar and a single malt neat with a game on, isn’t half as strong as this urge to simply dive into something.

Maybe when i’m older it will leave, but from all indications it’s here to stay. If you see me on a subway track near you, don’t freak out. It’s just something that happens. There is nothing so irrational as a rational human being willingly putting themselves at risk for no other reason than the risk.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a train to catch.

One of the more underrated things about an overrated city is the subway system in New York. Yes,...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:51:07 -0500

One of the more underrated things about an overrated city is the

subway system in New York. Yes, even writing a sentence about New York feels fatigued, but the subway is both the most New York thing about New York—insofar as it represents the city’s rushed and wedged commuters flailing about—and also a pretty jolting stimulant. Which is what New York is supposed to be, or at least attempts to be—I think.

There is nothing like battling the 6 train crowd at 7:15 on a weekday or a 2:00 AM Saturday morning L train heading to Canarsie as the pleading, concubine of last call. It’s an agoraphobe’s nightmare where the phrase “teeming humanity” seems like an understatement. The body odor alone at 6:23 PM on a Thursday will make anyone familiar with the aroma wrinkle their nose with remembrance.

Or the homeless person that’s been napping since they got on in Cony Island. Their plume of forgotten egg sandwiches can send many a hungover bruh bro straight to the train gap for a quick retch.

Then, there are the good nights. You’re heading home after a particularly numbing day of computer things and phone calls and 20 minute meetings that make your skin scratchy, and you catch the eye of someone on the train just as a piece of music from your headphones crashes into your ears as you smile at this enchanting stranger haloed by the tune.

Or you’re going somewhere: a party in the UWS domicile of a kid you knew from high school, and you’re 20 minutes removed from drinking and snorting some molly. So your head lolls at an angle and a sly smile creeps out from behind the city transit mask and your body is charged by the people out; really out for a night of drinking, smoking, dancing, chattering, flirting, fucking, tooting, puking and grasping at the idea of New York we read about before we move here.

There’s a song on your iPod or iPhone that can sway with the clattering train and your ears pop under the East River as you briefly think about all the corpses that have been dumped directly above you; you wonder at the engineering marvel of the train tunnel where workers were able to pour enough concrete to stem the pressure crashing all around them—and now you.

The same pressure of New York, the New York of no jobs, and passive occupations and active incarcerations. The pressure to simply keep that roof above your head. Unyielding and clautraphobic, the pressure is ubiquitous with the city and the trains. Most can’t handle that pressure without a few tips of the bourbon, or toots of the yey or tokes from the battie.

We’re all drug users in New York City. Just look at the person next to you on the subway.

I almost died this morning

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:29:38 -0500

The corner of Humboldt and Metropolitan Ave in East Williamsburg almost turned into the scene of my death this morning. I was listening to Robyn, and wearing sunglasses, so when I made the turn to cross Metropolitan, I didn’t see the incoming truck until it was almost too late.

“Until it was almost too late” could have been any number of sentient beings that have a brush with “cruel” death. The distance between that truck and my vulnerable body, the “distance on the look of death” doesn’t flash anything (like childhood snapshots mingled with teenage fantasies), or bring one’s life into sharper focus; it’s merely an almost end. An ellipses of consequences I’ll ponder until I forget.

The “almost” moments once drove me to consume bourbon at 11 AM on a Monday morning. Now I’m just left with a feeling we all get at some point: it’s pointless, this fleeting thing called life.

If I had died this morning, I would have left: roughly 5-10 friends in hysterics; one upset lady; one set of parents numb from grief; a twin sister alone with an aging family; a set of sentences untethered to anything resembling completion; a life, barely flickering towards a largely uncaring world.

I almost died this morning, and absolutely nothing of import would have changed. Once you figure out that humble point about your insigficant gait upon the world, then you’re truly free.

In other words, nobody gives a shit. You’re dead. Try and enjoy whatever the hell happens then.

We’re not Whitney Houston, and I’ve already turned down “the hard stuff,” so the end won’t happen with a pipe and rock, but it will come—hopefully later rather than sooner. The point driven home this morning during my “almost death,” is “when” doesn’t matter so much as the inexorable almost’s that dot one’s brief moments of corporeal existence.

The fire flickered in Plato’s cave as that truck came chugging by and the exhuast plumed in my face; for a moment there weren’t any shadows on the wall. All was nothingness. I’m cool with that: I’ve looked that Tyger down, and the Sheep was just as alone in the end.

The truck didn’t miss God; Now shut up, and get off the curb. Looking both ways isn’t necessary.

These two simple gifts are reason enough to love someone. And I...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:51:00 -0500

These two simple gifts are reason enough to love someone. And I do. Thank you very much.

I never understood why Adrenalin Junkies confused, or worse, terrified the people more apt to...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:12:25 -0500

I never understood why Adrenalin Junkies confused, or worse, terrified the people more apt to “playing it safe.” Every time I’ve seen someone squirm as a person does some BASE jumping, skydiving or bungey jumping—most likely this squirming happened while we were watching said activities on the television—I can’t grasp their fear for this stranger.

Certain individuals subscribe to Wallace Steven’s edict that “Death is the mother of beauty,” and as such they’re likely to take that line to its inevitable extreme: playing with death to augment a life littered with banal activies.

You wake up, brush your teeth, shower, go to work, eat, work, go home, eat again, brush your teeth, and maybe read a book or go work out, then fall back asleep. If you’re lucky, maybe you’re doing the sex to someone you’re in love with in the middle of this every day routine. But then, you still rinse, and repeat.

Obviously human beings are hardwired to find routines in order to deal with the avalanche of things we can’t control (this is why some people have such a hard time on airplanes—its placing control of one’s life in another’s hands). I get this side of “playing it safe,” and I even often subscribe to it myself, but some people simply can’t live that way.

These Adrenalin Junkies are hardwired to only feel real joy when faced with the the ultimate punishment: sloughing off this mortal coil. It’s a natural extension of Steven’s line. Death makes everything in life more beautiful. The yin and yang complimenting each other; you’re only truly alive inside when they’re risking life itself in some dangerous stunt. After overcoming the risk and surviving, everything else is simply a waiting period until the next time you face what may be the final chapter in your life.

When some people take drugs to numb themselves against the awful routine of life, they’re not much different from these Adrenaline Junkies. Both sects of people aren’t content with the prearranged trivialities most of us place such an importance on. They’re combating a routine that’s safe, but also claustrophobic.

I don’t think there’s a “right way to live,” but combining the routines and extremes seems like a good place to start. Too much of one or the other and you’re liable to grow unhappy or dead.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go jump off my 5 story roof with a parachute before getting back to work :)

“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:01:00 -0500

“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien”

-John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” 11-14.

Route 1 along the Pacific Ocean hearkens back to the vestiges of adventurers and madmen that dared to explore beyond what was known to European, African and Asiatic nation-states. It’s not that Columbus or Spanish Conquistadors discovered the pastoral wonder and ironic, arid practicality of the soil along the Pacific coast, but you can’t help but wonder about an omnipotent being where there is so much beauty and power stemming from a landmass nestled behind various precipices and bluffs buttressing the Sea. The adventurers stared into the abyss of the unknown, and set sail.

It’s like Dr. T.J Eckleburg is peaking at you from beyond the horizon as you make your way through the cavernous mountains, sprawling farms and apathetic livestock of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Carmel, Monterrey and Big Sur. It’s a place that is both contemporary and antiquated; the land appears untrammeled by the humanity that’s forsaken Mother Earth during its manifest destiny, but also resigned to our presence with concrete hugging the cliffs.

Prehistoric Pangaea curves outlining the coast where a lone roadway now rests remind us of our insignificance as a species, while also stridently fighting to matter. Some probably view Route 1 as simply a road to traverse on their way to some destination, but when Apollonian horses gallop towards the rim of our ken, we can exhale and breath in our existence commingled with the sea air.

Talking to my fictional kid about booze

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:32:40 -0500

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”-Henry David Thoreau

Dear kid I may or may not have at some point in my life (for now, condoms are a must),

First off, congrats on being created! The amount of drugs I’ve gobbled in my adolescence means your very existence is a small gift from, well lets not get into the God discussion quite yet.

I love you little man or woman, but I may have passed on a genetic trait that predisposes you to dangerously manic behavior that manifests itself under the influence of alcohol. That’s not to mean you can’t drink, but you’ll have a preternatural affinity with “the sauce,” and that can lead to some problems.

As such, there are some steps you can take to combat alcohol’s effects in your every day life. First, don’t drink a ton of alcohol during your development. This will adversely affect your biological maturation, but more importantly, your idea of self-worth will be tied to the effects of alcohol.

When you’re discovering who you are, during puberty and the time after, alcohol can sometimes be a crutch used to navigate the often tricky, and never easy, passage through high school and college. You’ll find yourself more willing to open up, and engage with strangers if you’ve had a couple bourbons.

Don’t let this fool you. You’re gonna be a gorgeous and righteous kid, and no amount of alcohol will augment that. If anything, it will only stunt your development—both psychologically and physically. So take it easy during the high school house parties. You’ll be a cool little boy or girl, and won’t need to imbibe to overcome a crushing self-loathing because me and your mom will love the shit outta you. You’ll evoke confidence in everything you do, and even if you don’t, you’ll still know we got your back no matter what.

Then again, my parents loved the shit outta me, and that wasn’t enough. It may not be enough for you, but in the end, you’ll do fine. Just remember to never lose your curiosity.

Curiosity is a funny thing. Curiosity about the world can lead you to experience some of the greatest joys life has to offer. Curiosity about the dampening effects on emotion that drugs and alcohol can produce is often a dangerous game, and I’d just as soon see you earnestly emotive, than closed off and cold because you’re stoned as fuck.

Drugs and alcohol can be excellent experiences in your life too, but they shouldn’t become your life. That’s sounds convoluted—and it is—but I’ll be there to walk you through it. In the beginning, I’ll make sure you read plenty of the Transcendentalists—including Emily Dickinson—as well as listen to a ton of Marcia Griffiths on cold, winter days. Thoreau and Emerson will teach you about self-reliance, and there’s nary a mention of creating a gravity bong from old soda bottles.

The sun is always out, even when the sky is overcast; it’s best if you remember this when you’re deep in the sludge of the world. I’ll be around the whole time, so you won’t have to figure it out alone. I didn’t.

Exactly 1 Year Ago Today

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:47:46 -0500

I woke up in a New Orleans jail without any knowledge of how I got there. It was the end of my final bender before I quit drinking, and I went out the same way I’ve always imbibed: excess bordering on the mad; Rimbaud at 19 in a hash and mezcal haze in a forgotten barn, except in my case, there was no literary output or even a soupçon of intelligence.

I’m glad one of my best buddies took me to New Orleans for that final weekend of 2010. I wanted to quit drinking and getting arrested in a city like New Orleans ended up representing par for the course during a drinking career that started way to early.

In the year that’s passed, I didn’t have a single drop of alcohol, but the rest of life trudged on. I lost a job, I didn’t get two jobs where I had a tryout, and I’m still underemployed and poor. But, I’m happy.

That’s really the important thing because I’ll be able to figure out the rest of life without the four fingers of off-color brown muddling my brain. When I sipped from the low-ball glass that was a constant presence in my hands for more than a decade, I was watching life unfold through a jaundiced prism of my own making. But, NO MAS!

I hope everyone has a goddamn cocktail for me because I’m done with them. It will continue to be a crazy life, but now, I’ll remember all of it.

Happy New Years Tumblr, but don’t pour one out for me, drink that shit down and remember there’s a lot more to life than the substances we anesthetize ourselves with to forget “the suck.” Booze works for a lot of people, but not all of us. Maybe someday we won’t have to medicate ourselves so heavily in the face of all the horrible in the world.

"Feminist" is not a pejorative

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:10:00 -0500

I love boobs and sex and loathe the chaste philosophy of Stephanie Meyer’s narratives, but my sometimes piggish objectification of women as sexual objects doesn’t change the fact that if you can’t understand why a feminist perspective is important to every man, than you’re either woefully self-centered, or you’re a covert misogynist (I’ve been called, perhaps rightfully, a “passive misogynist” before).

All the #ShutUpSlut comments are shrouded under the guise of “I just want to make dudes laugh,” but they’re not helpful or even funny (most of the time). A feminist simply seeks to “advocate social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men,” so how is that a bad thing?

Jokes about feminism are fine, but every time someone neglects a woman’s perspective during the never-ending gender wars, they’re as narrow-minded as Meyer, and that’s what a feminism joke infers: Women’s opinions aren’t important. The bros that joke about feminists aren’t rabble-rousers “bruh,” they’re cloistered boys in a man’s body.

I don’t think feminism’s critical eye is unworthy even when it seeks out topics and tropes that have long since been overcome. Most people reading this live in a patriarchal society and if a woman sees sexism in something I can’t spot, I’m smarter for having heard that opinion, even when I don’t necessarily agree with it.

That’s not to say feminism hasn’t been wrong before, but it’s always worth noting what women think about a particular artist or piece of art. Oftentimes the feminism portrayed in movies or popular culture has become a buzz word for overreactions or overly emotive responses, but many times it’s more accurate than the mainstream, male-dominated opinions espoused.

I’m thinking of Tyler the Creator, and Maura’s exegesis of his song: “Suck Dick Bitches,” when I think of critical analysis that some would label feminist, as a dismissal, without realizing the hard truths are correct.

Maybe I’m lucky to have a twin sister and feminist for a mom, and if I didn’t, I never would have learned—and I did have to learn—why discounting feminist opinions was to my own detriment as much as it was to the writer or thinker I was ignoring. But whenever someone calls a woman a femiNazi or Bull Dyke or any other slang bros ham up to make other bros giggle, they’re seeking to discredit a woman’s perspective simply because she’s an outspoken woman offering her own opinion. I wince at what I used to laugh about.

Denigrating someone for being a “feminist” is not helpful, even if it’s true, and if it is true, we’re using the word wrong. As my sister told me once, “I love when people call me a feminist because I’d probably describe myself as a feminist.”

I was at a holiday party a good friend threw a couple weeks ago (Dodai throws an awesome party), and during the course of a conversation, I told a couple people my mom used to correct my friends when they called her Mrs. L__d. She kept her maiden name and so she wanted to be addressed by that name. My friends at the time initially thought my parents were divorced.

I laughed to the people at the party about how young and foolish we all were, and how women are keeping their maiden names all the time now. A guy corrected me and said, “no, they hyphenate now—your mom is still ahead of the times,” and we argued for a while because I thought it was more common these days. Then, a married couple I had talked to earlier at the party came over, and the women told me she kept her maiden name, and didn’t think it was so strange either.

I didn’t call her a feminist, but she is, and that’s a good thing.

Eventually, eventually happens

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:02:39 -0500

Eventually everyone has to clip their finger nails. Whether you’re a once-a-weeker, or just whenever you catch them on something, everyone has to cut their fingernails (except those strange and depressing figures in Guinness World Record books).

The same could be said for “catching up on life.” You put off grocery shopping or laundry and eventually you have like 10 things to do and only enough time for 8 of them. Those things need to be done. There’s no getting around them.

Life is filled with those things you have to do, but don’t consciously think about until whatever errand or appointment you have, arrives. Check your prostate, clip your sideburns, shave your legs, clean your bathroom, dentist visit, or simply brushing your teeth every night before bed.

Like your fingernails, you’re constantly trying to get on top of whatever little “things” you have to do. Sometimes, you think ‘OK, I have nothing to do,’ but the moment you think that, something else percolates into your brain and you HAVE to do that too. You just gotta do stuff. It’s called life.

Some people bite their nails or pick at them when they’re nervous. It doesn’t matter because unless you have a serious oral fixation with your nails, they will have to be cut. Just like you’ll have to get haircut, eventually. Or you’ll have to eventually do karaoke (even when you tell everyone you’re awful). Everything comes to pass, eventually.

Even death.

Except, with the distance on the look of death, procrastinating isn’t such a bad thing.

College happened a long time ago. The not-quite-a-man sat...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:17:00 -0500

College happened a long time ago.

The not-quite-a-man sat quietly outside a UPS Store in NW Washington DC, and scribbled in a notebook. The man was pale and skinny, having acquired a nasty booze habit at 14, and another nastier habit for cigarettes a year before, he was gaunt and pale, and not even abusing cocaine or ecstasy—his preferred party drugs. Now he sat, and continued to scribble in a notebook no one would ever see.

Earlier in the afternoon, the man had played some Sonic Sum, Galapagos 4, Anticon, Freestyle Fellowship, Typical Cats and Rhymesayers while rolling a perfect Phillie blunt he had cracked himself. It was one of the few things the man took a small measure of confidence in.

He and some friends scooted off campus and enjoyed the sticky-sweet odor wafting up into the ether at a local park.

They all wore backpacks, and were slim. Some sported LRG tees and baggy jeans. Others rocked a sideways cap featuring a crate of vinyl records. Vinyl dominated the proceedings on most nights when they were weren’t in the park or out on drugs, but it wasn’t because of any retro return to the record. It happened because a couple of them DJ, and a crate is a crate is a crate, as long as you find the dope beats on Beat Nuts record. “Torturing the fader, the Tech 12 freaka.”

Some of them shyly began a cypher of varying degrees of amateurishness, but they all enjoyed the pacifying effects of simply being away from the dry campus and overbearing Resident Assistants. It had gotten so they were all on probation or about to be expelled. Such is the life of a college student. Especially these college students that sweat THC and stepped on cocaine and swear “Scotch, neat” is the only thing to order at a bar.

Then it was time for work, and the man grabbed a notebook from his room, threw on his large headphones and sauntered over to the UPS store. He scribbled some more things, then “ripped out these few ghastly pages from” the “notebook of the damned,” and said hello to his boss.

In college it was OK to dream. Not anymore.

On Keeping Things I Don't Use

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:00:00 -0500

In college, I owned a double-bed made of wood that featured a hard, flat surface which worked for my nonchalance about thread counts, or any comfort associated with a contraption for sleeping. I didn’t sleep much anyway, and when I did, it was mainly to pass out.

But with a narrow double-bed, women did not sleep over, and if they did, that meant I slept on the floor (STILL OK), or on the living room couch. Fine fine, but a lot of women (OK, a few women) complained both about my absence during sleep time and the associated back pain if you’re unused to sleeping on a hard surface.

Whenever their cries of “Spencer, how the fuck am I supposed to crash here?” rang out, I politely offered my bed and moved to the ground. This caused no small amount of chagrin among the more cuddle-prone lady friends, but I always added the retort of “My old man built that bed, I’m keeping it for as long as it stays upright.”

Then I met a lady friend that made all other lady friends insignificant, and disclaimers about my father having built the bed sounded even more ridiculous. I wanted to spend the night with her in my bed, but the narrow frame combined with our accumulated heights, led to some uncomfortable post-coital interactions.

Eventually THE lady friend came to visit my family, and after a few Sambucas, it was revealed my old man did not, in fact, build the bed. He built my bunk-bed, but the narrow double was unrelated to my father’s carpentry skills (we had a sauna he made in the basement throughout high school).

This led my lady friend to decry my, now obsolete from familial nostalgia, bed. It would be gone within a couple weeks of our having returned to DC. I bought a new bed, and we enjoyed many nights together with it’s comfortable box spring and lavishly wide Queen frame.

I also own a television set. It’s an anachronistic television set, without a built in antenna, but also without a cable box set up since I don’t have cable. The television sits in my living room attached to nothing. It just sits there, lonely as my bank account.

My grandfather on my mother’s side purchased the television set and a VCR for me before I went off to college. Shortly thereafter, he passed away. I can’t bring myself to sell it or throw it away. It’s from my grandfather.

I don’t want the TV set, and its girth makes transporting it a huge assignment. I’m not even sure it survived my move from Harlem in working order since my DVD player and VCR both broke during the move. So why do I keep it?

Aside from the American flag he was given during his burial ceremony, and a swath of pins from his time in WWII (he was a sniper who fought in the landing at Normandy, Battle of the Bulge and North Africa), I don’t own many keepsakes from my departed grandfather.

So I keep this relic of a television set, and I even feel his presence on occasion; which is something because of my strongly secular brain. The television set might be with me for the rest of my life. A humble reminder of a simpler time when there were actually television stores (my grandfather worked at one during his retirement to get out of the house).

Maybe I’m crazy, but the television set stays while everything else swirls around me with no significance. I can cuddle just fine with the lady friend, and the TV doesn’t have anything to do with it. Miss you grandpa.

The Schadenfreude Towards Happy Sober People

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:32:00 -0500

The irreconcilable confusion some people have felt towards my happiness as I avoid imbibing alcoholic beverages, is the most shocking thing about being sober. It’s not the clarity I have recalling nights at the bar; it’s not the energy I now have on weekends, or the frequency I can make it to the gym; it’s the apprehension people have when they’re in my presence and I’m enjoying myself. Especially so when they’re with me at the bar: that dingy place where alcoholics are never supposed to venture.

I fuckin’ love bars, sometimes clubs and certainly lounges (who doesn’t enjoying lounging?), but this is supposed to be where I’m at my weakest. That’s simply not the case. Sure, when I first stopped boozing, I stayed in a lot more, but I realized I’m uniquely capable of enjoying the pleasantries and hedonism that flows through the crowd at a drunken bar on a Friday or Saturday night—or at happy hour during the week.

There are a lot of alcoholics that don’t feel this way. Their friends tell them things like: “Oh, you were so much more fun when you were drinking. Here let me get you a round.” Thankfully, except in situations where they simply forgot, my friends don’t say or do this. If anything, now people have to ask themselves whether I’m fucking with them. It’s all well and good to say outlandish things when you’re wasted, but do so when you’re sober and people are going to be genuinely perturbed—unless they actually know me. Unless they’re not exhibiting schadenfreude at my happiness—as quirky as it may be.

This happiness confuses people and does so even more when I tell people I don’t go to AA; although, I have been to a meeting where everyone was very courteous and cool, and it really does help some alcoholics, it’s not my thing. There are about 1000 more words I could write about how some people don’t take your sobriety seriously unless you’re in some program, or going to meetings every couple days and going through the steps, but that’s not what this is about.

Instead I’d like to focus on those people who are secretly rooting for this whole sobriety thing to make me feel like I’m missing out on something. Why? Is it because I was always the barometer for indulgent, hedonistic and ultimately damaging behavior and no matter what someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend did during the course of a night out, at least they could fall back on the knowledge “Well, at least they’re not S_____r.”

Is it because someone had a secret wager I wouldn’t be able to make it this long without a drink of my beloved Makers Mark? Maybe people think I’m secretly judging them for their imbibing? I’m not! Far from it. In fact, I generally encourage people to drink more because it’s fun and they’re more open to the quasi-ridiculous, covertly taboo conversations that occur when you’ve been drinking. Or, they’re more willing to discuss the three most interesting subjects to talk about while at the same time also being the most frowned upon in “polite society.”

The Holy Trinity of Bar Conversation Subjects (not necessarily in this order):
Politics
Religion
Sex

I love talking about those three things. LOVE IT! That’s probably why the whole 9-5 cubicle thing wasn’t very much fun, but it’s also why I love going out to where people are drinking. People are more relaxed when alcohol is involved. So, why is it so unfathomable to comprehend that I would still feel this way too?

Do people think I’m thrusting my sobriety onto them? Not so dissimilar from judging drinkers, does being sober and happy mean I’m somehow better? FUCK NO! You’re the lucky ones drinkers! I would never, ever tell someone they’re an alcoholic. It’s something you arrive at on your own. So why are you so freakin’ annoyed at my delight in life without the bourbon goggles?

I get it, I think, but it’s hard when so many people are rooting against your enjoyment. It’s not easy to stay sober in a bar, but it’s not entirely difficult for me either. I just don’t drink. I order a lot of seltzer water, root beer, ginger ale, Redbull, Coca-Cola Classic etc. and move along to a conversation.

This is not some master plan. I did not go through steps, I did not submit myself to a higher power because there is no higher power than myself and my own free will, and my free will is telling me “Don’t drink man—you’re happier without it.” So I don’t.

Why the fuck would that decision not be encouraged? And why should anyone complicate it with their own convoluted theories on the subject. The only ones that can lecture me, and they NEVER would, are fellow alcoholics. But alchies don’t do that shit. We’ve spent too much time on the receiving end.

Now go get your drink on, and lets talk about “pegging.”