Please Enjoy #25
A Change Is Gonna Come
Hey everyone. Nice to see you again.
Standing in a cafe in Paris, I was filled with panic. I looked at the barista and spinelessly mumbled “Uhhhhh… English?”. She tried to keep her eyes from rolling out of her head and said “Yes, English.” I ordered the first thing I could imagine someone would order. A cappuccino with oat milk. It felt right. Or at least, I didn’t feel entirely foolish saying the words.
After one cancelled direct flight, one missed layover flight in Frankfurt because of a long line at customs (the myth of German efficiency was shattered there), one vegan schnitzel sandwich that tasted a little like armpits and one angel in a skirt suit from Air France that got us onto a packed flight, we finally landed in Paris. I was exhausted. I hadn’t had any caffeine since JFK and still had my midflight melatonin coursing through my bloodstream. I needed energy, stat.
I’m ashamed of how little I’ve traveled internationally. There’s been many self-imposed roadblocks that have stymied my ability to see the world. No money; lack of confidence that I could figure it out without money; dead end jobs with no time off; relationships that I believed kept me tethered to one place. My deepest jealousies are of my friends who’ve hitchhiked and regular hiked and trainhopped all over the world on a meager budget. I’ve never had the chance to be Down and Out in Paris and London. I thought I’d spend my life Barely Getting By in Brooklyn and Queens.
Wistfulness is not an emotion I love feeling but I am filled with it when I think about the time I realized an old friend and I were in Melbourne, Australia at the same time and decided to meet up for some exploring. I was there visiting my girlfriend at the time (on her dime) on a very planned three week vacation from the sole office job I’ve ever had. He was there visiting friends but in a much looser and more chaotic way. Running into him always feels like seeing the Tasmanian Devil wearing a denim jacket with a backpatch. I envy the way he travels (and sees) the world so freely. We hiked the wrong way up a huge incline into the middle of a forest that had been ravaged by fires and skinny dipped in a reservoir before we meandered through a suburb and ate ice cream bars on our way back to the tram.
For him, it felt like a normal day of activities but I’ve spent my entire life so inhibited and upright that it sticks out so deeply among a sea of days I feel like I’ve wasted. I feel great shame that I am unable to loosen up and traverse through days untethered. Instead, I must abide by some schedule I have decided is unable to be altered. I would love to spend days just seeing what happens but unfortunately for me, and everyone around me, that makes me so anxious that my entire body feels like a rubber band pulled as tightly as possible, ready to snap with one small change.
I’ve seen a great deal of the United States but the majesty of the Waffle House in Dayton, Ohio doesn’t fill me with the same emotion as the first time I walked along Princes Street and saw Edinburgh Castle. A feeling that was followed immediately by devouring my first of many vegan Burger King Long Chicken Sandwiches. A moment in my life I will never forget: seeing a building older than the country I live in and then immediately eating the most modern and genetically modified food that was available to me. I was once again riding the line between high and low. I felt like John Waters. I was ecstatic
.Almost all of my international travel has been in the English-speaking world. My three years of middle school French 20 years ago did not prepare me to drop directly into a country where my native language is not primarily spoken and I was feeling uneasy about communication. I would later find out that if you spoke French so poorly in an attempt to seem cultured and local, every single person would immediately start speaking to you in English so I had nothing to worry about.
Walking around Grange Aux Belles trying to find a can of Monster Energy was a challenge. I am not so deluded that I think every city will have New York-style corner stores (I will not be wading into bodega discourse) but I thought a major city should have a place to conveniently pop in and grab some sort of mass-produced ultra-processed poison to lift my spirits. I took a few blind turns until I grew weary of searching for something that may or may not exist and decided to turn around and head back empty handed.
One block before returning to the apartment, I noticed a bustling coffee shop that said VEGAN CAFE in big bold letters on the overhang. That sparked something inside of me. I have been disgusted by coffee for years. I once drank a mouthful of what I thought was iced tea from my friend’s refrigerator. It ended up being a carafe of iced drip coffee. I ran out of the screen door into the backyard to spit it out while shouting “It tastes like bitter sticks.” But that day, I was in a new place so maybe I was a new person.
Over the past few years, I’ve half-heartedly been trying to enjoy coffee. My friends would offer me sips of their cold brew. Disgusting. I tried to order lattes ranging from unsweetened with almond milk to something called a Campfire Latte featuring maple syrup and smoked sea salt. Much too far. That’s like trying to start enjoying music with free jazz. I was grasping at straws hoping something would take.
Not liking coffee doesn’t square with my personality of being elitist and judgmental. Traits that have no basis in reality. I’ve just decided to feel superior to people with no real proof if it’s true or not. How could I mock people for being unsophisticated while I walk around sipping on a yellow and black striped can of C4 brand Frozen Bombsicle flavor energy drink? The amount of caffeine I seem to require has taken me from the tier of the enjoyer to so much that it elicits shock and awe whenever I reveal the milligrams I’m dosing myself with at this point. There is no natural source that is concentrated enough for me. And for what? I need to induce heart palpitations so I can look at my phone better?
My first cappuccino was good enough for me to be open to trying it again. Within a few weeks, I’m sliding down the slippery slope of coffee enjoyment. I’m checking out different coffee shops. I have preferred baristas. I’m meeting up with friends for a quick cup. I am learning to hold strong against the siren song of the pastry case most days. I’m having quick and fun conversations with employees and patrons, which feels incredible. The repartee at the kind of places you usually purchase an energy drink is a bit dull. I’ve basically kicked my dependency on Monster and the like. That tiny paper cup has freed me from the shackles of public neon tall can consumption.
For years, I couldn’t fathom a world in which I would be a regular coffee drinker. Now I’m sending my friends opinions on the darkness of the roast at the coffee shop. I’m taking my headphones out and chatting with the baristas about the Knicks or their t-shirts. I’m walking around with my friends, gesturing with an espresso drink in my hand saying things like “You guys NEED to try dipping a cookie into coffee. It’s incredible.” and “You know they don’t tip in Paris since they actually make a living wage there but I was told a polite conversation with your server is considered the tip.”
Finally enjoying something that the majority of people love fills you with an almost childlike wonder. I’m taking every chance I can get to bring up my new lifestyle with people the same way a kid will interrupt a family meal to inform everyone of a new fact about lizards or who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. I don’t think I invented the centuries old notion of the coffee shop as a community hub or the combination of coffee and pastry but if I was so incorrect about who I am in regards to coffee, what else am I wrong about? What other long-held beliefs would crumble with a tiny nudge?
Previously, I had shunned all hot liquids from my life. I would tell people “I just don’t *do* hot liquids.” Tea, coffee, hot cocoa, broths and soups were all off the table. In my mind, they were in the same category as meat or dog food. They didn’t register as something I ingest. I didn’t even consider them food for a guy like me. And who’s to say what “a guy like me” even means. But with my recent sojourn into the world of fitness and the internal consequences of trying to max out my consumption of plant-based proteins, I started drinking a cup of hot water in the mornings to aid with digestion. Another habit cribbed from the elderly Chinese population. The benefits of hot liquids have been shown to me in real time but they must have a purpose beyond pure enjoyment.
Self-imposed rules are incredibly comfortable for me. I love to push back against what I deem to be unfair protocol imposed by others but when I’m both the warden and the prisoner, I’m incredibly strict. Once the rules are set into place, I seem to have left no wiggle room for myself. I’ve sentenced myself to living in an emotional version of The Box from Cool Hand Luke
.Finding out about straight edge when I was 13 felt like I finally knew how I should live my life. Realizing I didn’t have to partake in activities that didn’t suit me and I could feel pride in that abstinence was eye-opening to me. Veganism felt like the only moral way to live in such a way that I don’t even have a good argument for it other than “As a good person, how could you not do it?”. It’s the morally correct diet.
The further down the list of guidelines we get, the more arbitrary they become. I don’t believe in God because I decided I didn’t when I was in middle school. I spent years as a staunch atheist. I still don’t believe in God and have no use for an organized religion in my life but as I’ve lived a longer life, I have started to understand the use of it in a practical sense. People need a place to gather and something to tether their worldview to. If Catholicism was good enough for a woman as kind, smart and thoughtful as my grandmother, it can’t be wholly unnecessary.
I’ve employed some self-limiting beliefs around so many things that did not matter in the name of “being punk”. I used a subculture based on breaking down societal norms and thought patterns to build up internal guardrails. I thought working out and physical fitness was “not punk”. In my head it fed into a form of masculinity I had no interest in, prized an archaic beauty standard over uniqueness or intelligence and rewarded the naturally fit. To me, that had no place in the world I was a part of.
Except when I looked at pictures of Youth of Today, Henry Rollins, the Bad Brains or any group of shirtless, testosterone-fueled men with veiny biceps jumping in unison on stage. That’s who I thought looked the coolest but I couldn’t make the connection between them and me. I desired to be fit through some sort of osmosis so I could chalk it up to the genetic lottery instead of admitting that how I wish my body looked. Now I’m in the midst of an 18 week workout program called “Hoss Anabolic” and have become too cognizant of the MyFitnessPal app on my phone.
For years, I eschewed any music that didn’t fit into the small scope of what I considered “for me”. This was an arbitrary classification of whatever I was into at that moment and some records I liked but hadn’t ditched in an effort to distance myself from whoever I was at the time I was listening to them. Embarrassingly enough, I don’t believe I listened to a full Bob Dylan album until the year 2023. If it wasn’t two-man powerviolence or fervently straight edge hardcore or bands with riffs so rudimentary that you’d think they were written as a parody of the idea of music, I was not interested. For so long, I boxed myself out of the music of the great American songwriter because he didn’t know who Discharge was
.As independent of a thinker I believe myself to be, my worldview has been molded by circumstance as much as anything else. How different would I be if I wasn’t born into a fairly liberal, white, working-class family from the Northeast? Where would I be if I hadn’t fallen ass-backwards into most of the good things that have ever happened to me? How fat and drunk would I be if I went to barber school in Albany, NY in 2009 instead of refusing to have my parents cosign a loan for me because I wanted to Do It Myself?
The idea of marriage rarely, if ever, occurred to me. Around the same time that I decided I was an atheist, I decided I would buck the traditions of marriage and children. I was different. Marriage was a way for men to own women as property and a way to tie you down. Why would I need the government to be involved in my romantic relationship? Why would I need to sign a document to prove I loved someone? Why wouldn’t my pediatrician recommend me for a vasectomy once I turned 18 but still hadn’t gotten a new primary care physician?
As I’ve spent more time in actual relationships, my staunch opposition to marriage has softened. It may be more logical than romantic but if I’m with someone I love deeply and can’t see myself living without, why would I let that slip away because I made a decision that I was morally opposed to marriage before I had even had sex? Bringing logic and reason into the idea of love make me feel like a Big Tech CEO trying to figure out the ROI on human interaction but if the choices are:
lose the greatest thing a person could ever receive (true love and understanding)
or
do the thing that billions of people have done and is almost instantaneously reversible if you decide you no longer want to be a part of it
the choice is pretty clear to me.
In Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky writes:
“It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.”
While The Underground Man is supposed to be a loathsome and miserable protagonist, I saw a lot of my younger self in those pages. Underneath the rage and pride, there was the internal struggle between how he thought and who he felt he should be. The Id and the Ego.
I’ve spent most of my life scared. Scared of feelings and situations that make me uncomfortable. Scared of new situations or relationships that I’m not in complete control of. Scared of being seen as weak, stupid or ineffectual. I thought I could cover that up with judgmental and curmudgeonly behavior. Like The Underground Man, I thought it made me seem discerning and intelligent. Hoping that lashing out at people would be seen as the result of being so smart I couldn’t understand where people were coming from and not emotional instability. My unflinching stances would be a sign of intelligence and moral uprightness and not a fear that those morals may crumble with some introspection.
Life is complex. Too much moral rigidity and you stagnate. Not enough moral rigidity and you’re a coward who stands for nothing. Nuance is not sexy. The ability to see things from multiple perspectives is a curse. It’s easy to hold on to your first thought and never change. True power comes through self-reflection and deep internal inventory. I’m not done with mine yet. But at least I enjoy a cup of coffee now.
The author enjoying the French delicacy Scoubidou
Some things I’ve been into lately
Lots of biking Youtube channels (Genosack, Calling In Sick Magazine, Gary’s Projects, Two Good Wheels, Heirloom Cycles +more)
Not wearing headphones as much as I can
The Office Of War Information at Pioneer Works and a fully deep fried veggie burger at Brooklyn Ice House afterwards
Harold and Maude
10:04 by Ben Lerner
MetroNorth’s on-train bike storage
Shorts
I started reading this while watching Scooby-Doo and became so engrossed in your writing, I actually turned the TV off.
what a great read, as always 👏🏻