Tag: social commentary

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Old lions

Parenting’s hard

Before I went out with RE Mike, I picked up the kid from school and he wasn’t his usual indefatigably happy self because of his black eye.

Him: Some of the kids were making fun of me. (sadly) They called me hamburger face. I didn’t like that. I asked them to stop but they didn’t. (sighs)
Me: You can’t control what other kids do or say, but you can control how you react to these things. Do you know their names?
Him: No.
Me: People that you don’t know that are mean shouldn’t matter to you. Don’t care so much about people and things that don’t matter. Now, go play.
Her: (woman overhearing my conversation after he ran off) That was really good advice.
Me: Thanks. Parenting’s hard, isn’t it?
Her (nodding) So hard.

If you don’t have a kid, it’s difficult to explain how much it wears on a parent to have a sad kid; and this kid is rarely sad.

But when he is, I’m bummed all day.

While I was out with RE Mike, I mentioned the fact that I studied weapons fighting for just about as long as we’ve known each other.

He was totally shocked because I never once mentioned it.

It’s funny, people think that because I have a blog, my life’s an open book. In many ways, it is. But I also keep a lotta secrets.

There’s so much of my life I’ve not told you and I don’t think you’d believe if I told you anywho.

After all, some secrets are (quite) good and some are (quite) bad, but all are special things.

The next morning, he texted me the following – the link is to Scenic Fights:

Anywho, after I picked the boy up late from RE Mike’s pad, we took the long walk to the west side to grab the train home.

Him: I’m scared.
Me: Why?
Him: It’s so dark and people are so loud.
Me: It’s fine, you’re with me and I won’t let anything or anyone hurt you.
Him: You’re not scared?
Me: Everyone’s scared sometimes. But I’m not right now. Because these people are all like sheep, or – at most – like wolves, and papa’s neither.
Him: What are you then?
Me: (laughing) Uncle Pac thinks papa’s an old lion. That sounds about right. And lions – even old ones – aren’t afraid of sheep or wolves.

Although, to be fair, I’m like a weird old lion…

Location: West 77th and Columbus on a conference call trying to sound cavalier
Mood: parental
Music: devil’s on my shoulder stirring up trouble (Spotify)
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Precisely the opposite

Weapons are force multipliers

For those of you that have been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed a recurring theme, which is, What does it mean to be human?

It seems like a silly question but we’re all essentially imperfect; physically, mentally, and emotionally, we’re all lacking in something that makes us fully realized human beings.

On that note, I had an interesting exchange with a young visitor at the gym the other day.

Him: I never knew that there was such a thing like knife and stick fighting, I just thought people picked these things up and used them.
Me: All fighting is skill-based. Some require more skill than others. The argument against weapons fighting is that it’s unnatural, because we’re not always armed, and I think that’s precisely the opposite of reality.
Him: What do you mean?
Me: It’s empty-hand fighting that’s unnatural; the nature of being human is that we use tools.

Imagine you’re alone in your home and you hear a noise in your living room. Do you just saunter out to check things out or do you grab a bat, stick, or lamp first?

Or, google any uprising and lemme know how many unarmed people you see? Or any mob action, including the January 6th riot – how many people are completely unarmed?

The nature of human violence is that we want something – anything – in our hands, in times of stress. Because we all instinctively know that weapons are force multipliers.

Fighting someone without any type of weapon is unnatural, precisely the opposite of what most people think.

And that’s why I think everyone should have some weapons training.

Here’s the kicker: If you’re unarmed, you don’t get to decide if you’re in a weapons fight or not. Only the armed person gets to decide that.

On a somewhat related point, we had to cancel the children’s classes at our gym because the kid’s coach we were using got an offer we couldn’t match.

So, I signed up the boy to the local gym around me.

I’m probably a bit biased but…man, he’s so damn cute, I can’t stand it.

This is in addition to alla his other afterschool activities like swimming. He’s the lime green blur in the photo below.

Trying to get into the new rhythm of the school year. One unexpectedly sad thing I realized was that every year for the past three years is that I’m the only emergency contact for him.

I had someone as a second contact when he was pre-4K but that was a long time ago.

It’s annoying, these little heartaches that randomly crop up.

On a much happier note, while I was there at the gym signing the kid up for his new class, this young man – very excitedly – waved to me:

Him: I’m so sorry, but are you Logan Lo?
Me: (laughing) Yes! Do you watch Scenic Fights?
Him: YES! I’m a subscriber! This is so cool!
Me: For me too!

I’m a solid D-list celebrity at this point, now.

Eh, I’ll take it.

Location: out in the village with RE Mike
Mood: concerned
Music: I can’t do this again, do this again (Spotify)
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Only one me

Getting it right

Years ago, I had a young blonde in my apartment and we ordered some food. We’re actually still FB friends, which I find sweet, but that’s neither here nor there.

In any case, I gave her the only bowl and utensils I had and I used the plastic stuff the food came with.

Her: Wait, you only have one bowl?
Me: (shrugging) I only have one me.

It was because my ex took everything else and I hadn’t yet gotten around to replacing it all yet.

Fast forward some 14 years later and I’m watching Hawkeye with someone else and we get to this scene:

Me: I said almost that exact same thing years ago!
Her: Really? No…
Me: It’s true. And I have receipts. But, I’ll show them to you some other time.

In some ways, that’s why it’s so odd for me to be a single father – I always either had someone in my life as a romantic partner or I was completely alone.

I never, ever – in a million years – imagined I’d be raising a kid all by my lonesome. It’s that whole imposter syndrome thing.

I’ve had some jaw-dropping success in my life as well as some truly shocking failures.

I hope – more than anything – that I get this one thing right, and it’s part of the former.

Editors note: In that entry above (and here), I’d just come back from Baltimore and my ex, whom I lived with, moved out while I was away and took everything – the bed, the utensils, all the plates and cups…AND the shower curtain.

I still remember sitting in my completely empty apartment and wondering if this was the lowest point of my life.

God, I was so young and dumb back then. I had no idea how much more down life could go.

She left me the couch, the TV, the microwave, a spatula, one cup, one plate, and a handful of random takeout items.

Took a video of it and posted it on a site that long since disappeared – and so did all my videos.

Shame, it was a hilarious video. That whole moment, in hindsight, was hilarious.

I had no idea how much more down life could go before rock-bottom.

Man, still can’t believe she didn’t leave me the shower curtain…

I get a lotta flak for this blog and I often toy with the idea of just stopping. That’s part of why I took a week off not that long ago.

On the one hand, I do wonder who, if anyone, read this. But then something like that Hawkeye scene happens and I’m glad I have it.

Or someone writes me something heartfelt and sweet, like Suz did recently, or someone from my gym class surprises me and tells me that she’s a reader.

Her: Logan, your last blog entry was so good. I thought I was going to cry.
Me: Wait, you read my blog?
Her: (shrugging) Yeah. You write so well.
Me: Oh man, thanks. I was just thinking about stopping…
Her: Don’t. It’s honest. It’s so honest. People like the honesty.

So, I continue to put things out into the aether, and hope that someone gets something from it besides just me.

Location: yesterday, downtown, telling a pretty girl to aim for my head
Mood: so busy
Music: I’m getting older with every memory I make (Spotify)
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Cascading consequences

Schadenfreude

Me: You’re not thinking of the cascading consequences.
Her: What are they?
Me: Let’s say you meet someone today. You chat, etc. You meet up in, say, September. Figure like six months of casual dating and you two lock it down, it’s now March 2023. You’re 35 then. You guys date for two years before you decide you’re right for each other, it’s now 2025, and you’re 37. You get engaged for a year, you’re now 38. You want to be a young married couple for a year without kids, making you 39. Then you decide you wants kids and try. Figure the first year isn’t great, and then you get pregnant, you’re now 41 with a kid. That’s even assuming the guy wants a kid in the first place.
Her: Well, now I’m stressed out even more!
Me: Sorry. All I’m saying is that you obviously still love him and he loves you. Just have him join my gym and that COVID weight will come right off. 15 pounds isn’t the end of the world.
Her: You just like him because he’s rich.
Me: See – I think of the cascading consequences. Have him join the gym. Shame he doesn’t have a sister.

Trump’s in alla this legal trouble right now, least of which is because of the FBI raid on his house.

I think most people would say that he’s in a quandary of his own making, and that’s true, but not in the way most people think.

See, he and the other GOPers have always needed a boogeyman to rail against and they picked Hillary and Biden to play that role.

For her part, Hillary was supposed to have mishandled classified information/documents. So, when Trump was president in 2018, he signed into law a bill that made mishandling and keeping classified information a felony.

I suspect he did this to have the chance to actually “lock her up,” without fully thinking of the cascading consequences of his actions, knowing that he was a sloppy and relatively stupid man.

Check that, knowing himself, he didn’t even fully think of the direct consequences of his actions.

Add this action to McCarthy refusing to have GOP members on the Jan6th committee and we see a group of people that barely consider the direct consequences of their actions, let alone the cascading ones.

It’s with more than a little schadenfreude that I sit back and watch alla this unfold.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving fella.

Location: in front of a portfolio of work. What have I done?
Mood: busy
Music: Relax, relax, relapse, it’s a new day (Spotify)
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Memorto Mori

Remember that you have to die

One of the three books I feel everyone should read is The Godfather. The movies are great, but the book is worlds better because both the Godfather and Michael are good men in the books but monsters in the films.

Michael essentially agrees to run a mafia family in The Godfather to keep his own (real) family safe. But in The Godfather II film, he seems to forget why he agreed to run the mafia family – something he hated, originally – in the first place and ended up losing his wife and killing both his brother-in-law and his own brother for “the Family.”

He killed his real family for his fake family.

The tragedy of the Godfather films is that Michael forgot why he was there in the first place.

I’m telling you all this because I told someone from my past that I forgot that I loved her, which is why I was so awful to her.

Granted, there was a lotta craziness in my life when I met her, but it’s not very comforting to her or me.

The question she had, though, was obvious: “How is that possible? How do you forget you love someone?”

I ask myself that all the time.

And my answer is just like Michael did with Kay and Fredo. Just like men and women do when they cheat – emotionally or physically – on their spouse.

On normal days, people forget important – crazy important – things all the time. People forget to pick up their kids, forget to show up for some super important meeting, etc.

They forget what they really wanted in the first place, mistaking the noise for signal.

People even forget – all the time – that they’re going to die. That’s why the saying, memorto mori even exists. People forget to make the most of their time because we’re all not here long. But we forget that.

Everybody knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.

For her, she forgot that I was everything she had hoped her whole life for a date with a guy that she forgot she loved (not me, it’s complicated) who ended up marrying someone else.

And I forgot that I loved her, which, itself, is the most ridiculous thing ever.

Cancer and awful luck notwithstanding, I suppose we all live the lives we earn for ourselves.

Location: learning about officiating weddings in NJ
Mood: resigned
Music: you didn’t notice (Spotify)
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The boy and the dragonfly

On my Street

My buddy Wall-E helps out a ton at the gym with various maintenance tasks that are beyond abilities of Chad or myself – either due to skill, time, or both.

One thing we’ve been meaning to do for a while is to replace several of the lightbulbs in the gym because the ceilings are pretty high up.

After one Saturday class, I gave Wall-E my keys to the gym so he could stop by before class one morning and swap out alla the light bulbs for us.

So, I handed them to him and then headed home. Turns out that I gave him my house keys and not the keys to the gym.

I called both him and Chad to apologize for the mix-up – after I managed to get back into my pad.

Me: Dude, I’m an idiot – I just swapped my house and gym keys yesterday and forgot I did that. I’m so, so, so sorry about that.
Him: Hey lucky enough I’m on the upper west side right now.
Me: WTF?
Him: In fact I think I’m in front of your apt.

 There are approximately 8,000 miles of streets in NYC – or enough to go from NYC to LA, back to LA, and back to NYC again. And outta all those streets, he was on the same street as my apartment.

In fact, he was literally across the street.

Me: Jesus Christ, what are the chances?!

I once told Alison that we were darned, not dammed. That turned out not to be true.

However, in this instance, it was. Because while I messed up the keys, he ended up across the street from me, but…

Me: Did you manage to change the lights?
Him: They didn’t fit.
Me: Dammit!

In another weird coincidence, at the end of the year, the kid had to pick one animal/insect/fish/something to study and I suggested the dragonfly.

Him: Why?
Me: They’re the greatest hunters on the planet.
Him: Cool!

And so, he picked that and wrote an entire report on it plus made the cool little sculpture you see above.

Well, we stepped outta our pad last week and right on the sidewalk of our street a huge – and I mean HUGE – dragonfly settled directly in front of the kid.

The last time I saw a dragonfly in NYC was also in front of my building, but way back in October of 2008.

That week, Alison called me her boyfriend for the first time and I was on cloud nine.

Haven’t been on cloud nine in ages. Or anyone’s boyfriend for that matter.

But, at least the kid doesn’t need much to be on cloud nine.

Him: IT’S A REAL DRAGONFLY!!
Me: (laughing) Yes, yes it is, kid.

Thought of a song that mentioned dragonflies and that got me going down a rabbit-hole of memories. Bad ones.

Plus, Mouse’s family is dealing with a litany of serious medical issues with her family – she wrote about it on IG so I don’t think I’m giving away any confidences away – which is also reminding me of things, for better or worse.

She’s a super tough chick and refuses any support, especially from me, but she’s helped me and the kid so much in the past that I’m trying to find a way to return the favour, somehow.

Her: It’s fine. I’m in admin mode.
Me: They’re lucky to have you.

Location: earlier tonight, around the way ordering the zero-sugar black raspberry cocktail while trying to look interested
Mood: complex and fulla zero-sugar black raspberry cocktails
Music: They had a pet dragonfly (Spotify)
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Still speaking Martian, Pt 2

Lovely imposter syndrome

It was Rain’s birthday recently, so if you see him, wish him a good one?

Years ago, he told me about this comedy skit where there’s this guy that has a speech impediment where he can only speak in a sarcastic voice, which makes his life totally miserable and lonely.

Rain told me about it and then I told you about it.

Finally found it, if you’re interested.

It’s not like I didn’t want to have friends.

I just talked like a weird 49-year-old Chinese-American man with a Queens accent…when I was 13. That was my speech impediment.

Met a pretty girl once in 7th Grade. Told her she looked lovely. And she and her friends called me a weirdo and worse.

As an aside, I say lovely all the goddamn time now.

In junior high, the closest I had to friends were a girl named Julia and a guy named Phil. I’ll tell you about them someday but, not for a while because I wasn’t exactly kind to them.

And the reason was because I started making friends here and there.

I did this by reading books like How to Win Friends and Influence People and Think and Grow Rich.

Books are really amazing things. But I digress.

By the time I got to high school, I (kinda) started figuring out how to talk like everyone else. I always had a Queens accent but used words like lovely and idiosyncratic all the time – studying for the SATs didn’t help matters.

In many ways, I always felt the weight of imposter syndrome – as if someone people would figure out that I was super mechanical at being social.

Step 1: Introduce yourself by looking someone in the eye.
Step 2: Shake their hand.
Step 3: Repeat their name.
Step 4: Smile.

And so on.

Yet, for the most part, people didn’t figure out that I was a ghost in a machine, pretending to be human.

The girl I called “lovely” was named Stella.

She wrote in my junior high school yearbook that I shoulda asked her to the JHS prom. She went with a guy named Edwin instead. It was junior high school where I slimed down and started dressing better.

It was also then I learned that if you look good, people will talk to you, even if you talk like a weird 49-year-old Chinese-American man with a thick Queens accent.

Hence my being unkind to Julia and Phil. That is one of the earliest of my 10,000 regrets.

A much smaller regret was that, for years afterward, I wished that (a) I didn’t tell Stella she was “lovely,” and (b) I asked her out to the JHS prom.

Didn’t realize that I was speaking Martian while everyone else was speaking English.

I wanted desperately to be understood, like that guy in the video above, but I didn’t know how.

I’m bringing alla this up because the two arguments I had recently have been on my mind.

Both were with people that mattered to me in some way and in both, I couldn’t make myself understood. And I suppose the same was true in reverse.

35 years after Stella, they were speaking English and I was speaking Martian. Or vice versa.

One ended with me being told to leave in the rain, the other, being told to get out at a desolate intersection after midnight.

Everything I said was construed in the worst possible way and there was no way I could make myself understood.

I always say that we’re the prisoners of our 14-year-old selves. In both arguments, I felt like I was telling Stella she was lovely and all she heard was that I was weird.

Every so often, we feel the weight of the chains we forge for ourselves as kids.

I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. 

This is where I sat, waiting for the library to open.

In the end, the question really is, how much do we want to be understood and how much do we want to understand someone else.

These days, for me, most people aren’t worth the effort. I’d rather just be with my (e)books again.

But some people are worth the effort, even if you realize it too late.

Spoke to one of the women that helped me survive 2017 recently.

It wasn’t – at all – what you would call a “good” talk.

But she also didn’t tell me to go fuck myself, so I suppose that’s a net positive.

Location: West 79th Street, giving the boy a hug and telling him I’d see him soon
Mood: mute
Music: you do not need to speak (Spotify)
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The hard nos and the quiet moments

It’s only the quiet moments that matter

Her: And you?
Me: Twice, I think.
Her: What happened?
Me: The first girl wanted to stay, but couldn’t. I wanted her to stay, too. But wishes are just that.
Her: Oh. (later) And the second?
Me: She wanted to go, so she left.
Her: Did you want her to stay?
Me: (shrugging) She didn’t, so it doesn’t matter. People are who they truly are in their quiet moments. It’s only the quiet moments that actually matter. Because we’re made in our sleep and by our lonely.

The older I get, the less willing I am to deal with other people’s nonsense.

But, I’m finding out that this is pretty much the same across the board.

As I mentioned in my last entry, my friends usually hit me up to either discuss dating in general – men and women – or ask me to help them out with their profiles and/or messages.

One friend I find particularly hilarious. He literally has a spreadsheet of hard nos that he goes through with each and every one of the people that he finds remotely interesting.

Here are just a sampling of his Hard Nos

      1. Any of these pictures in the profile:
        • Most pics are them doing outdoorsy stuff and/or traveling
        • Pics of them golfing or scuba diving
        • Large tattoos
        • Pics of them with dog(s)
        • Pics with ONLY dog(s) and no humans.
        • Expensive looking lifestyle like in a private jet
        • Not smiling in any pic
        • Pics where they’re in the middle of eating something such as a large turkey leg or huge sandwich (I don’t have this problem, at all)
        • At a gun range, aiming / shooting a gun or a rifle
        • Only ONE photo and it’s of them wearing a face mask
        • More than one photo of JUST scenery or some landscape
        • More than one photo where must ask “which one is her?”
        • Photos where they are deep sea fishing and holding up a large fish they caught
        • Large set of photos where she is either not identifiable (back to camera, taken from far away so they’re tiny, etc) or not even in the photo
        • Photos of them kicking some guy’s ass in martial arts class (I definitely don’t have a problem with this)
        • Pics where they are on a motorcycle (obvs not a stopper for me)
        • Photos are only shoulders & above—none below
        • There is only one photo and it makes no sense
      2. Christians
      3. Beach lovers
      4. Golfers
      5. Attorneys (I think I may exclusively date lawyers in the future, frankly)
      6. Anyone that puts down their Myers Brigg and the third letter is a T – logic, versus F

And I thought I was picky!

My buddy says that he goes on far fewer dates but, the ones he actually goes on, he feels are more likely to last.

I think I’m the same way in that general concept. I get a lotta applications, but I send out only a handful of acceptance letters.

As for me, I have my own particularities but one clear red flag for me is when someone brings up how much they hate their ex or someone in their lives because I find that it’s usually the exact opposite of what they say.

Her: You have a lot of secrets.
Me: Yes. Because I’m very good at keeping them.
Her: Like you keep me a secret?
Me: Only because you asked. And I do as instructed.

Location: earlier tonight, in the rain just outside Union Square
Mood: content
Music: I started over again (Spotify)
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Cyrano de Low and the Siege of Melos

Yo-Yo, the Philosopher

Back before I met Alison, I recall writing emails to women on behalf of my friends, or – at the very least – editing them.

Now, with everyone texting these days, I find myself being asked by friends to respond to messages from women. It’s all pretty amusing for me, gotta say.

I was trying to explain to one friend that communication isn’t just what you say but what the listener/reader hears.

To further drive the point home, I told him something that I tell my friends alla time but also gave him two versions of the same concept: The first is by Thucydides during the Seige of Melos and the second by a kid called Yo-Yo in my junior high school.

 

On a related note, a young woman in my gym is going back to college – an ivy league – and wondering what she should pick as her major if she wants to go to law school.

Been telling her that, if that’s the case, she should really consider philosophy and read more from people like Thucydides – although, admittedly, he’s more of a historian than straight philosopher.

I actually never took any philosophy classes as an undergrad and it’s a regret of mine.

As for my own dating life, I saw the Acrobat and the Counselor recently, which is always entertaining, conversation-wise and otherwise.

Me: (noticing her ordering an open drink) Aren’t you concerned about roofies?
Her: With you? No. Not even sure I’d object. No wait, I would. I’d want to be awake for that.
Me: Noted.

The Counselor was actually in my area doing a cold sauna, for people with inflammation (everyone has inflammation to varying degrees).

The concept is to step into a super cold – negative 140 degrees Celsius – room and just be there for three minutes.

She was part ice cube when I met up with her.

Her: It was so cold, Logan!
Me: (laughing) I can imagine.

We ended up going to the Dublin House, which I’ve actually never been to, despite it being only a few blocks south of me and one of the oldest bars in NYC with a really cool neon sign that was recently rehabed.

Me: You should take advantage of me while you can. These looks won’t last forever.
Her: (shrugging) I figure that if you were going to fall apart, it would have happened already.

The Dublin House was cool but without air conditioning so we went to another of my usual bars around the way.

This one had both air conditioning and candy all over the place. Unfortunately, I’m dieting for a couple of things coming up so I ended up trying to hand the candy to other people so I wouldn’t be tempted.

We’ve both been so busy that we’ve not actually seen each other in a while so we ended up chatting most of the evening.

Her: My last boyfriend was closer in age to my dad than me.
Me: No kidding. What was the age difference?
Her: (thinking) 15 years?
Me: Wait, that’s the difference between us.
Her: Oh! You’re right. I forget.

Location: sitting in front of a 14TB external USB drive at 5400RPM and an 8TB external USB drive at 7200RPM with a USB-C hub and wondering if I should shuck both, and then swap the internals.
Mood: super tired
Music: Fell in love with a girl who’s a few years younger (Spotify)
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Just-ever-so-slightly

Controlling the effects

Saw my mom and sis this past weekend. They were happy to see us, I think.

The cat, less so…

Also saw the surgeon, his brother, and their families this past weekend at another dinner party.

Surgeon’s wife: You really should ask out French Dancer. Except, she’s really young.
Me: Yeah, really young. I’m busy enough as it is, anywho.
Her: Oh! What’s the latest?
Me: Where to begin?

A couple that I didn’t know was there and the wife commented that I was probably 34 vis-a-vis something else entirely.

Me: Well, you get a hug for that.
Her: Wait, how old are you?
Me: Almost 50.
Her: How is that possible?!
Me: (shrugging) Same as everyone else: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For 49 years.

I often marvel at how many really good souls I’ve met in my life.

While my luck – broadly speaking – is of the stripe most people don’t want, in that small regard, I consider myself lucky.

On a related point, there were about five women that I met after Alison died. They all had a hand in helping me pull myself outta my crazy and depression, to varying degrees.

Unfortunately, I was probably the worst version of myself so it’s no surprise that none of them are really on speaking terms with me. I get that.

It’s one of my 10,000 regrets.

On that point, Lviv rang me today. After everything that went down between us, I’m touched that she still finds the time to check in on me.

I told her, honestly, that I was grateful.

Me: Before you left, you said, very simply, “Love shouldn’t be this hard,” [about a messy situationship I was in]. I appreciate that and you. Thanks for that.
Her: Aww it’s good to hear, I just want you to be happy.

She didn’t realize what a profound effect her throwaway line had on me. In fact, it’s probably the main reason everything in my life has been so different – and better – these past several months.

Of course, she’s part of my possible pasts. I wonder what woulda happened between us if things were different.

I wonder about so many things that were just-ever-so-slightly outside of my control.

Boy: Why’s he so mean?
Me: I dunno, kid. Here’s the thing, though: You can’t control other people and how they treat you. But you can control how you let things affect you. Pretty soon, you won’t care. So, you can start not caring right now.
Him: OK. I’ll try.

Location: earlier today, chatting up a tall singer named Izzy in a park
Mood: hopeful
Music: I’m out of my mind but I’m feeling just fine (Spotify)
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