But Only As a Tourist

Ironically, one of the surest signs of aging is having trouble opening child-proof caps on medications. Fortunately, I am no longer on any medication now unless we are counting Bourbon. Come to think of it, I’m not even on Bourbon. Is it hot today or is it just me?

During the pandemic I became the opposite of a social drinker. I have retained only the loneliness, and now I am a solitary non-drinker at least a few days a week. This has been a relatively easy transition for me. Allow me to elaborate.

The day my employer announced we would be returning to the office I realized two things. First, there was no way I was going to be able to get up at zero-dark-thirty to get to the office early enough to get the hell out of there at a reasonable time to get home in time to have cocktails before dinner and still get to bed at a reasonable hour to get up, etc.

Second, the cost of gasoline, even before it shot up with this war in Europe, would require me to offset expenses elsewhere and the thought of downgrading the quality of my booze, well, that was just tantamount to drinking out of a paper bag on a bus bench. Since that seems to be the place my employer has been recruiting many of my coworkers from, I knew I wouldn’t want to associate with myself if I were to sink that low. Bad enough to associate myself with those coworkers.

I am joking of course. I still drink more alcohol regularly than I ought to. I can’t afford it economically or for my health, and so I have cut down, but I have also resorted with vodka to buying a cheaper brand. I guess I have more in common with my coworkers than I like to admit.

Does the job drive us to drink or does drink drive us to the job? Regardless, never drink and drive. That’s not who we are, even if we aren’t strictly speaking friends outside of work.

Identity is a funny thing, and it is central to making changes in behavior. Most meaningful change if not all only occurs because we cease to be in our own minds that kind of person who does that sort of thing.

For instance, I stopped biting my fingernails not because I started smoking cigars, another habit I did in fact give up abruptly for health reasons, but because I did not want to be the kind of person with ugly bitten-down bloody fingers.

It seems ridiculous to me now how long it took and the fact I was still able to get women to go out with me all through those years when I was prone to bite my nails particularly when I read books.

Ironically, the first time I got my nails manicured the woman I was dating at the time actually saw this as being less than manly. She was undoubtedly one of the more intellectually challenged women I have dated. Very good looking but not the sharpest toaster in the kitchen even if smoking – say, is it hot today, or is it just me?

I remain the kind of person who reads books but I have stopped biting my nails. I have stopped dating women, however, because I found one woman who was better than all the others and loved me for who she thought I was and seems to love me still, despite having found out who I really am. At least I hope so.

That’s another example of how identity is central to habits and associations. Who we believe we are determines the kind of people we want to associate with. I heard a likely apocryphal story, likely made up and propagated by the man himself, about Elon Musk. When he didn’t have any money he used to fly first class because he wanted to associate with people who flew first class and by doing so become like those people.

I think we can all agree that story is nonsense. Elon Musk never had no money in his life. From the time he was just an unfortunate fantasy in his even creepier ridiculously wealthy father’s dirty small mind, little Elon was already rolling in the means to first class airplane seats. In fact, I think we can go even further and say for the Musk family, flying first class on a commercial plane is slumming.

I should start telling people the reason I only fly on chartered planes is because I want to set myself up to feel like a man who owns his own plane. Stop me please before I start threatening to buy Twitter or a better brand of vodka.

But the story, lie that it likely is, has something of the truth to it. Come to think of it, I have also heard this same bullshit about Trump, flying first class when he was a struggling multimillionaire son of a multimillionaire (also very creepy) father. Maybe that’s the common factor. Creeps of a feather lie together?

But the truth remains that identity and who we believe we are is what makes it easy or difficult to start or stop certain habits. In the 1980’s the typical cocaine addict was a high roller, a hedge fund guy or a big-time corporate lawyer.

Even the paraphernalia was glamorous, a gold coke spoon or you found folks using rolled hundred dollar bills to get the powder deep into the sinuses the way the true cocaine connoisseurs loved it. The ambiance of doing blow was a whole heady high class thing as revealed at the time in TV, film, and the secret sex videos of the rich and famous.

At some point, however, all that glamor went out the window. Crack had a lot to do with it. I don’t really know and so I’m just making this up as I go along. Cocaine and speed of any kind was never my thing. I mean I did go through a coffee phase, coffee, a meal in itself, but that is hardly the same thing.

Nevertheless, what I relate here is true. I am sure I heard it somewhere from someone. Maybe it was Trump or Musk in first class, but the thing is at a certain point powdered coke got downgraded to the status of a street drug strictly for hookers. Even actual prostitutes didn’t want to be identified with it, likely because that would add to their problems in the sentencing phase.

If we can convince ourselves that something is just not who we are and the people we associate with it are not the kind of people we want to be caught with dead or alive, then it is relatively easy to push it away. It also helps if we can convince the judge in the sentencing phase.

You may be wondering where this is headed, and, frankly, so am I. Quo Vadis? Where are we going? Are we headed to civil war and fascism, or just one or the other? Can we skip both and just have coffee? What kind of people are we anyway? Can’t we just let creeping fascists lie?

Maybe that’s the question we should be asking ourselves. Not about creeping fascists, the other one, what kind of people we are, (or the German, Was für Menschen?), rather than where are we, who are we?

Who are we going to be? Do we have honor or fall short and come in second? I for one can’t stand the idea of being either a fascist or a civil warrior. But isn’t that latter an oxymoron?

Come to think of it, I’d prefer to be an oxy or any other kind of moron rather than get it on with the creeps who seem to believe they are the kind of folks running towards a firefight for freedom, while I’m on one of my walks around Ralphs searching for cut-rate booze.

But that’s just me. Who are you gonna believe? A guy who has troubles with child-proof caps or all the people who think it’s high time we started acting like people in all those deplorably pathetic places with mass graves still to be investigate and identities based on food and drink and what day God rested or whatever?

As an American, speaking for myself, one of the greatest things about being an American is the fact you can like all kinds of different food and drinks, from anywhere and nowhere in particular, and still be an American. You can wake up one day and say, I’m not going to drink coffee anymore, I’ll have a Red Bull and vodka with my eggs and plant-based sausage, thank you very much.

If I choose to identify as a woman after winning an Olympic gold as a male decathlete, who is going to tell me I can’t be Caitlyn from now on? Seriously, no matter what hormones and how old, Caitlyn Jenner can still kick my child-proof-cap-challenged ass any day of the week and twice on the Sabbath of your choice. God bless, this great country of ours!

So if you want me to head into the next couple of years and actually physically fight against creeping fascism, I shall go. Incidentally, I don’t usually use the grammatically correct “shall” anymore with the first person because it sounds a bit effete to me now and that’s not who I am anymore, but here it seems fitting.

I shall go reluctantly, and only as a tourist, and only as long as I get to fly first class and be seated next to someone like Caitlyn Jenner. But if I had my druthers, to show you who I really authentically am, I would prefer to convince enough of those who would be fascist creeps or fellow traveler fascists that not so deep down inside they are authentically not like that.

They do not want to live in a nation so very different from what we have now. Their ideas of how things were and ought to be again may be a pleasant thought in their grievance-filled moments of a sense of slipping entitlement, but those pleasant pathological thoughts would be an unpleasant reality.

The lies about their loss of prestige are blatantly hooey, like Musk and Trump being poor and flying first class. These folks have been suckered. They never had it so good, nor did their parents or grandparents, and if they act on the goading of the psycho demagogues they will lose everything.

I’m certain there are many wiser than I about these matters. There are those who will say it is already too late. There are too many hardcore true believers who will be delighted by Gestapo tactics while also crying out for freedom from government. They will be happy as neighbors turn against neighbors, and won’t mind losing the ability to order cheap stuff for next day delivery online.

I am sure some will declare the public has already lost interest in pro and college sports, and now looks forward to forcing everyone, and being forced themselves, to go to church again on Sundays. But I am not convinced. I believe in the power, not of positive thinking, but of habit and force of habit in connection with identity and self-indulgence.

At the end of the day, the kind of people most of us are as Americans has more to do with binging. Whether it’s binge watching, drinking, eating, what the majority of us have in common, following the more is better principle, is good old fashioned addiction. “The More Is Better Principle”: Is there anything more American than that?

Indeed, we are a principled people. And don’t get me wrong. Some are addicted to healthy things. They run triathlons or pride themselves on logging their calories every day like a lab rat. That would be me, including the drinks by the way, when I imbibe.

Yes, at the end of the day, even when it comes to worrying about divisions and civil war, we Americans go all in well before there’s anything to fear but fear – no, that’s silly! More like missing the next new episode of “Naked and Afraid XL.” Say, what day, what time is it? Oh, jeez. And I didn’t set it to record! Now that’s an authentic grievance!