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Hell or Hangover

Saturday

April 18th, 2015

10:03 AM

I emerge from chrysalis with no wings to spread, just a dry mouth and a body temp of the sun. Leaning on an elbow, I assess the situation. The room is vaguely familiar but it definitely isn’t mine.

For one, it is clean.

For two, it smells fantastic.

That’s what’s familiar.

It smells like Kristen’s room. Very Sexy For Her, a scent by Victoria’s Secret, accosts every inch of throw pillow, drape, and couch cushion. I might not be a fragrance expert but whoever named that concoction was right on the money. It may be difficult to tease out this new relationship with the smell of Kristen everywhere. The same part of the brain that handles smells also manages emotions. There was little to no emotion involved on my end with Kristen. Admitting that makes me feel like a pig but isn’t that what all of us twenty-something-year-olds want? Sex for the kicks. No strings attached. Never too thirsty. You learn these things in your first class with Professor Lou.

I leave Marissa wrapped in the covers and head to the bathroom. Either the mirror is distorted or Marissa lives in a funhouse. Don’t blame the mirror, kid, you’ve seen this before. You’ve prepared for this, you puffy bastard. My face has doubled in size overnight. The bags holding up my eyes seem fragile, as if they were filled with beer.

Submerging my face into a sink full of cold water barely registers. It should reduce the swelling if nothing else. The once glorious waves of powder-induced thoughts now fade away before they begin. There is one errant thought that escapes through the fog. On any normal morning, with any other bed partner, I would groan on in my head about how sleeping with someone is overrated. Not the sex, of course, the actual sleeping. A cocoon of sweat, heat, and hair is brutal enough as is but when your first instinct is to flee, it becomes oppressive. This time I feel different. There is no overflowing dread.

Drying my face I notice the smell hasn’t skipped the hand towels. I’m still surprised I can smell anything after last night’s antics. There’s an odd feeling, the way the towel hangs from the rack with three little pom poms dangling from its edge, that I’ve been here before.

When I walk out, someone who looks a lot like Kristen is sitting up on the bed, checking her phone. My mind is so mangled it’s hard to process what is going on. What would have normally taken two seconds to figure out takes me a whopping ten. I leap back into the bathroom. I shut the door and turn on the lights and there it is, plain as day. Kristen’s bathroom in Kristen’s apartment.

“Lou?” I hear my name being called by whatever being that’s out there.

I turn the light off.

Where the mirror should be there’s only a black abyss. I have never been so frightened in my life. I have no idea how I got here. I say Bloody Mary three times. I start to see red writing on the mirror. It’s dripping. It says run. Which I do.

“Lou, what the fuck?”

“Hey…Kristen.”

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yea, why wouldn’t I be?”

This is not a drill. I walk towards Kristen with short steps wondering when the evil spirit is going to attack. I cover my dangling cock, a natural instinct for a naked man in the presence of what must be a demon. I stand on the opposite side of the bed, never breaking eye contact, and start feeling around for my phone. Kristen is naked herself but even her dime sized nipples don’t distract me. The phone is nowhere in the sheets and the ghost of Kristen present has this look on her face like she’s the scared one.

“Why are you being weird?” she asks.

“Hungover,” I say.

“What are you feeling around for?”

“Nothing? What do you mean?”

“Your phones on the charger. I plugged it in for you last night. You were pretty fucked up. How much did you drink?”

My phone is lying peacefully on her nightstand, charging, just like this spirit said. Aisle may have a point about Kristen. The blond apparition I’ve been sharing a makeshift womb with all night has no idea she’s passed an updated version of the door test. Another Professor Lou insight – if you leave your phone off the charger and she plugs it in for you in the middle of the night, you may have tripped on one of the three good ones. If not…you dump her, and you dump her, fast. Advice co-opted from A Bronx Tale should always be followed. This time it has fallen on deaf and drunk ears.

“Too much…clearly,” I say.

10:10 AM

I think about taking my phone and making a run for it, sans clothes. Running around naked in New York City might be frowned upon but not unheard of…

But I don’t.

It’s not the lack of clothes that make me stay but the confused look on Kristen’s face.

10:11 AM

I start to get dressed.

“You’re leaving already?” she asks.

She reaches out and touches my leg. Then moves her hand up a bit, and a bit more, until she has a handful of me.

Having a heart is all about action in the tiny moments that make or break your conscience. If my heart says no, my body should follow. It almost does. My hands push her away, my legs squirm, but one part of me does not follow suit. The part with the one-track mind. Going along with this farce infers there is more to this relationship than just sex. If only there was some magical spirit that would allow a cock to deflate in this type of an emergency. This (gasp!) is not the case. The billion years of cock evolution that got my genes to this point take over.

The room is dimly lit through cracks from a shaded window. Ghosts in the white sheets move, solemnly, slowly, rocking up and down like white waves. The whole thing is methodical. I feel like I’m taking stage direction. Put hand here. Slap ass now. Pump. Pump. Pump. It’s passionless. Our breath heats the room to a hellish degree. There is no hope for a finish. There is no hope here.

We stop. She walks to the bathroom. A woman doesn’t like it when you can’t finish. It means there is something defunct with them. In this case, that is not true. Kristen is a shining example of everything a man should want in a sex partner. It’s not you, it’s me, rings hollow but true.

Sitting gingerly on the bed, I take in the silence. A few moments alone, a few lifetimes alone, could cure me. I check my fully charged phone.

Aisle: Where’d Lou go?

VanNeece: Typical Lou ditch. Sick friend.

Aisle: We’re going to Finale if you want to meet us there.

I’d like to clear my good name in the group chat but it is clear, short of a burning building with me inside, I cannot seem to muster up a single care.

I look for a text or a call from Kristen last night, but our latest text conversation has been deleted and there are no calls in the log. What the fuck happened?

Last night is commonly referred to as a blackout–where space, time, and light melt into one incoherent, dark blob. You start at one place, the lights go out, and you end up somewhere else. These time travels are getting old.

Instead of planning my exit, I lie in bed, eyes closed. Distorted images of Marissa pass over a black canvas. Her long eyelashes flutter like crows, freckles spin, her hand in mine crushes into a thousand pieces.

I scroll to the M’s in my contact list, hoping, but to no avail. What is usually second nature to drunk me, acquiring a number, has mysteriously been evaded. Though drunk me deserves a good scolding, maybe a few spanks on the ass, I go with the guilt trip. I am extremely disappointed…no, not…not angry…just…disappointed.

With this tremendous opportunity wasted I close my eyes again. The momentary silence is mesmerizing. No cars, no sirens, no talking. A mini blessing bestowed upon my morning.

“What are you doing today?” I hear from the bathroom.

Why do I bother?

10:40 AM

“I had to leave ten minutes ago,” I reply.

She walks out of the bathroom in a robe, ashamed of her unsatisfactory nakedness. I feel ashamed to have made her feel that way. Her nakedness is a blessing to anyone she’ll give it to, except me.

“Can I ask you a question?” she says.

These six words, in this exact order, are the scariest in the English language. Personal questions suck, but questions from girls you used to hang out with and were just inside go far passed sucking.

“Sure,” I say.

“Did you mean what you said last night?”

What did I say?

“Depends on which part.”

“That you wanted to see me more,” she says.

“Well…we always have fun when we hangout.”

“Okay, text me later,” she says.

“I will.”

I won’t.

A sock is missing somewhere as I put my shoes on. I’ll have to leave it behind – this isn’t the fucking Marines.

10:52 AM

The PATH train is empty on the ride back to Hoboken and my eyes stare, unfocused and blank, at the empty seat in front of me. Click, click, click. My brain only responds to sounds. No clear thoughts are coming in. No thoughts at all. Just metal, people, metal people, flying by. I vaguely remember a request from Kimberly to check the state of her apartment due to her early flight, but I am too far gone for that. The PATH just keeps on clicking.

10:53 AM

Somehow, in my catatonic state, I remember how it started six months ago. Kristen was 99% perfect. Almost there, but not quite. I don’t even blame her for what happened. I should have been prepared for the other shoe to drop. When you are a single man your mind has the tendency to treat women like stocks. A market defines value and the dating market is no different. Some women are bears, both metaphorically and physically, and you short the shit out of them. I was bullish on Kristen. The bob. The bum. The boobs. The fun. All worth dumping your dating capital in. The dating market is always volatile. One day you’re infatuated, the next the stock plummets.

I would consider Kristen, in stock terms, to be a crash. Most crashes are precipitated by a speculative bubble and that’s what we were creating, twice a week, every week, for 10 weeks. It started too good to be true, as most bubbles do, then burst into a billion pieces with one sentence.

But before the burst, the beginning…

We met at McSwiggan’s, my favorite bar. It’s a dirty Irish pub that lives up to its name. It’s dark, dingy, and you can get lost in there if you aren’t careful. To this day I don’t know if sunlight has ever entered the place. Blinds shut, TVs on, drinks poured over and over and over. It is a place of wonder and magic.

It was a Tuesday of all nights. The worst night of the week. I had a particularly rough day at the office where I was forced to take part in not one but two whole meetings. You can’t imagine the horror. The only way to forget such a day is to park the car in the garage and head straight to the bar. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

I started off with a perfectly poured Guinness that had enough head to drown in and a neat Redbreast in lieu of my normal Jameson shot. I was feeling quite uppity after the two drinks. My pinky was out on the next round. High class drinks for a high class broad. With pinky extended I turned in my barstool to take a lap around the bar and by the grace of God, my finger wound up in the ear of a short young lady. I had inadvertently wet willy-ed the poor girl and I expected to have a drink thrown at me. I wondered if a pinky in the ear was considered sexual assault but even in my wildest porn searches I have yet to see the earhole used as an orifice. This rationale all happened in an instant. Before I could ask for forgiveness, the girl stuck her pointer finger in her mouth, wiggled it around to accumulate as much saliva as possible, and stuck the entire digit into my left ear.

I couldn’t have been more enamored with a meet-cute in my life. If I was a regular man with regular feelings I would have dreamed of telling our kids the story. For weeks it felt like this was an actual possibility. I felt the same spark, the same flood of life enter me like I had ten years prior. The ash of Arianna grew like a phoenix in the form of Kristen. A flying blonde bird. For a moment I thought I could finally put the ghost of Arianna to bed. She was no longer needed as a cornerstone in my brain. She had been replaced with a more mature version. An equally wild spirit that could hold a job. The spark was lit and the embers were stoked for eight weeks. Eight glorious weeks.

It had been the first time in years that Arianna failed to make it into my dreams. She no longer held a stranglehold on my subconscious. It was as if I was in some glorious detox. No tremens, no hurt, no pain, just utter release. It was all so easy, which should have set off alarm bells up and down the halls of my mind. Easy come, easy go, in the falsetto of Freddie Mercury should have been playing at full volume in my head. But Kristen played the dating game exquisitely. She was perfect in every way up until the tenth week.

First and foremost, she applied no pressure. This is absolutely crucial to the success of any modern relationship. If a man feels pressure early (or at all) the man will immediately run. Kristen knew this and acted accordingly. The first few weeks of text exchanges went something like this.

Kristen: Me and my friends are going out to “place x”…if you and your boys aren’t doing anything come meet us.

Me: Done and done.

There are a few glaring pluses to such an exchange, others more subtle. Professor Lou has an uncanny ability to sift through the details.

1. “If you aren’t doing anything.”

This verbiage immediately relieves the tension of any would-be relationship. It says she is not expecting anything from me. This is good. Expectations should always be at the lowest level when talking to a man-child.

2. “Me and my friends”

That is a line in the sand that makes it clear this is not a date. Phew. I don’t do dates. They are pressure-filled narcissistic tropes that distract from the question at hand – are we going to have sex tonight? I refuse to pay for sex. What else is a date if not upscale prostitution? As much as a woman wants to be independent she will always expect a man to pay. Never, ever forget this, fellas. If you agree to a date it is your wallet on the hook.

3. “You and your boys”

Now this, this is just diabolical. She knows exactly what she is doing here. If I can tell my boys that a girl I want to see has hot friends it kills two birds with one stone. The first bird is that I do not have to ditch my friends to hang out with this girl. It means that the myriad of shit I will get for abandoning them is avoided. The second bird is that the girl I want to see has transformed into the “cool girl.” She is now the girl who not only looks after my physical needs but the physical needs of my nearest and dearest. It cannot be overstated that a girl who attempts to get my friends laid is a keeper. That is of course until that tenth fucking week.

On the nights it was only us we started at a bar. This was non-negotiable. Start at a bar, on barstools, mixed in with a ton of other people on barstools. Never, and I mean never, sit at a high-top table. High-top table equals date and we were not dating. Only fucking. Only having fun.

Another plus about Kristen was her knowledge of the bedroom. The first night at McSwiggan’s we made out in a corner and she tugged on my junk for all of five seconds before abruptly leaving. In the midst of her junk grabbing, she slid my phone out of my pocket and put her number in with the eggplant emoji next to her name. It was just the right amount of teasing that can make a man kiss a woman’s feet for the rest of her life.

When we finally did fuck she did not disappoint. Her little body contorted into such extreme positions I thought she would snap. She never did. She was pliable and plowable in every way imaginable. Most importantly she knew how to take control. I admit this may be a kink of mine, but when a woman is on top she drives me mad. I’m not for being tied up and ball gagged but a woman who is willing to push you onto the couch and have her way with you is something so fantastic it is hard to find the words. Maybe this little pleasure of mine is an ego trip. This might sound nuts but men want to be wanted too. For every sick-fuck rapist getting jacked up on control there are nine guys who just want a woman to want them. You can call it an ego trip or an ego boost but women want the same fucking thing. We’re all just animals here. If I learned anything in SOC 2200 – Working Women, it’s that men and women aren’t so different.

Until they are.

Ten weeks. Eight of them perfect.

Then came week nine. It started like the previous eight. I texted Kristen on a Tuesday, our day now, and received a stunning response.

Me: Hey there, where are we going tonight? I can come to you this time.

Kristen: Hmm…

Me: Just let me know.

Kristen: How about we stay in and I cook dinner?

I gasped at my phone. A night in. Dinner. It was all too much too fast. I felt betrayed. Especially after offering to come to her neck of the woods. I was trapped and she knew it. I felt taken advantage of. There really was no way out of the date and not the fucking. I thought of all the blatant lies I could muster. I’m sick, my family dog died (we don’t have a dog), my sister was in a car accident (she doesn’t own a car), but I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger. I acquiesced.

Me: Uh, yea sure, what time?

Kristen: Come over after work. Like 6-7?

Six-seven? In an instant I felt older than a retirement home. Six-seven at a bar…fine. Six-seven for a home-cooked meal is…old. Old, old, old, old, old.

Me: I’ll be there.

And just like that the pressure was dialed up ten degrees. There’s that analogy of turning the heat up on a frog in water so minutely that they don’t know until it’s too late. Most men are that frog. They don’t even realize they are in a relationship until it’s too late. Not me. Professor Lou knew exactly what was happening and began to plot his escape. In the meantime, I didn’t know what to wear.

What is a date night in? Do I dress up? Throw on a blazer? Or was it a comfy night in? Do I wear pajamas? I couldn’t tell what was worse for our relationship but either way I was on edge. Pajamas could mean we are too comfortable with each other. A blazer means not comfortable enough. This is what I hate about dating. The nerve of it all. The balls it has to make me second guess every decision instead of just having fun. If there is one thing dating is not, it is fun.

The trek to New York City was an internal battle. Every stop the PATH train made I mapped my escape. The train would stop, doors would open, and I could see a hole in the crowd only a pro running back could see. My vision of the defense was clear. Cut past the old lady with a cane, follow the block of two small children holding on to their father’s hands, use the woman with a shopping cart as my pulling guard, hop over the bum and…touchdown! Instead, I just stood there holding on to a bar as the doors closed. Five stops. Five opportunities to flee and I let each one go. Only an act of God or a suicidal maniac that decided today was the day to end it on the tracks could save me. Neither obliged.

I decided on jeans and a sweatshirt. Jeans to dress it up, sweatshirt to dress it down. Underneath the sweatshirt I had a collared polo shirt, just in case I was walking into a candlelit apartment and Kristen was wearing a dress.

She was actually wearing the exact same attire I had decided on. Jeans and a sweatshirt. It got me to thinking again, maybe she really was a keeper. She clearly was having the same inside freakout I was. Her makeup was lightly applied. No lipstick, a touch of blush, the eye paint was not showy or overdone.

“Thanks for doing this. I couldn’t handle another vicious Wednesday hangover. I have this important meeting tomorrow,” she said.

“Of course. I like staying in,” I lied.

“Do you like Italian food?”

“Love,” I said.

“Good, cause I ordered enough to feed a small village.”

My sigh of relief was almost audible. If she had cooked a meal for me that would have been cause for concern. Cooking for someone takes time, patience, effort, and love. The latter of which I wanted to avoid. We shared a delicious bottle of wine. I may be an unhinged maniac, but if a woman invites you to her house and offers dinner the least you can do is bring the booze.

When it came down to the question, the real question, the only question – are we fucking – I was concerned when she mentioned there would be none. She was on her period. That didn’t stop her from blowing my brains out. Everything about this woman screamed perfect.

But when it was time for me to leave she did the unthinkable.

“Why don’t you stay tonight.”

There is no question mark there. That’s because it wasn’t a question, it was a threat.

“Don’t you have an important meeting tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yea but you can sleep here…if you want.”

This was actual betrayal. I had done everything she asked. I had come over to her apartment, I had donned my date-ish attire, I had eaten her food, I had brought the wine, I had received a biblical blowjob but this…this was too far.

If you want.

She had thrown the ball into my court with no thoughts of my feelings or concerns. She knew what this question would do to us. She knew this meant either we were in a relationship or we weren’t. She knew we were at the pinnacle; she wanted it and I…I caved. I always cave.

“Of course, I want to,” I said.

I stayed over. I woke up to the morning breath and the breakfast and I watched her get ready and she kissed me goodbye and I felt old and I felt that we were in a relationship. It all happened so fast. So hauntingly fast.

Those ninth week texts transformed completely from the first eight weeks. That was the biggest turn-off of them all. It was like the Kristen I once knew got mounted by an evil succubus.

The texts were filled with solo plans like dinner on a Wednesday (literally the next day), a museum on a Friday night (what in the living fuck), a night in together again the following Tuesday. It was like a switch had flipped in her head. She went from being the cool girl to the annoying girlfriend in the time it took me to say “Of course, I want to.” I succumbed to each text out of a sense of guilt, not a sense of wanting. Each date was surprisingly fun but the cloud above the whole week hung close overhead. The cloud was the messy future. The future of dating, of meeting parents, of marriage, of mortgages, of kids, of life.

The moment of truth happened on a Sunday, the first day of the tenth week. Brunch. She wanted to do fucking brunch. I gagged when I read the text. I’m not much for hollandaise sauce or poached eggs or bellinis or anything involving brunch. Especially on a Sunday. Sundays are a personal day reserved for nursing hangovers and staring at my phone for untold hours. But there I found myself in khakis and a button-down shirt pretending to be a boyfriend. I despised myself. I couldn’t tell if she knew how put off I was by the whole experience. She should’ve guessed after my fourth Bloody Mary that I was doing anything to numb the pain. She even tried, and failed, to stop me from smoking a cigarette. Who was this person?

She couldn’t have noticed I was in anguish because she suggested we take a walk in the park after I paid our $180 bill. I wanted to cry but agreed. We sat on a bench and she took a selfie of us. My fake smile was strong. Hers was a genuine sharing of that perfect set of teeth. Then she said what she said and the facades came crumbling down as if a bomb had hit us. The speculative bubble popped. There was a run on the bank. Done. Caput.

“Can I post this?” she asked.

“What?”

“Can I post this picture on Instagram?”

“No,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“What? Are you embarrassed of us?” she asked.

“No, just don’t.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to put a picture up with the guy I’m dating?”

“We aren’t dating.”

“Then what was this last week?” she asked.

The conversation continued like this for an hour until I finally lost my cool. Parents and kids and old ladies were staring at us. They could never understand. Social media makes things official and we were far from official. The guts on this woman. The balls. The gall. We were just fuck buddies. Just good friends that banged twice a week, every week, for ten weeks until we didn’t.

12:07 PM

When my eyes crack open after an hour nap to see a fresh VanNeece glide a rolled-up bill across the windowsill, I feel I must join in. My choice to do this line and go to brunch is as much of a choice as breathing. It’s called FOMO. Fear of missing out. I’m riddled with the disease. It’s in every orifice and pore and organ and bone of my body. No amount of chemo or radiation could get rid of it. Holistic medicine would be useless. I’ve heard even lobotomies are ineffective.

How VanNeece got into my apartment I’ll never know. This is one of the many reasons why you should live in an apartment building with a doorman. Not only do they guard against marauding investment bankers, but if you happen to take a lady home, the pheromones that are kicked up when a door is held open by a man in a Sharper uniform is worth the extra thou on rent. Instead, I live on the fourth floor of a walk up that consists of three rooms: the bedroom, the bathroom, and the everything-else room. I cannot afford the extra thou.

The intruder does drive a hard bargain, though. He deserves every Wall Street dollar he earns. A line, a beer, and a shower are all it takes to push the effects of last night off at least another twelve hours. Rejuvenated and dressed, I plop my ass on my bed, spin my legs over and out the window like a gymnast on a horse. This is what is considered a workout now in my mid-twenties.

It’s a clear day, with a slight, fresh breeze blowing through my wet hair. I welcome the chill as my body temperature has possibly reached fever. The small, rusted fire escape is like the bottom of a large bird cage, swaying and shaking with even the slightest movements. There must be some type of code violation here, but who would I complain to? My landlord is a mystery.

Though my life is in danger with every step, I climb all the way to the roof. I have a view that photographers would kill for. Directly across the Hudson, Empire State Building and Freedom Tower in my periphery. The bright lights that held such promise last night now look like cardboard cutouts. It’s one big, fake mirage that reminds me of Marissa. I’ve looked through the M’s in my phone five times this morning and can’t tell if it’s me or the coke doing the searching.

The step with which I stub my cigarette out produces a loud bang. Much too loud to have come from my foot and the splayed butt underneath it. A quick scan of the terrace reveals nothing until the sound comes again, like a gong, beckoning me forth. I walk towards the skylight on the far end of the roof and peek in.

Brown hair. Yellow sundress. A face I cannot quite make out.

I wonder if I’m seeing things.

“You ready Lou?” VanNeece yells.

I walk towards the feeble ladder at the edge of the roof.

“Be down in a minute,” I reply.

Back to the skylight, peeking in once more, and nothing. No one.

The scene is all too similar to last night. One moment she’s there and the next…poof! Lou the professor and Marissa the magician – a match made for a carnival.

An urge to cannonball through the window rushes over me. I’ll make it, scratch-less. Just a couple steps back and one, two, three…jump…tuck the knees…hold the shins…crash land next to a stupefied, and smitten, Marissa…grab her neck…kiss her. Professor Lou, at your service, milady.

But that’s just the drugs talking. And, like last night, I hear my father’s voice over the substance’s obnoxiously loud presence. I proposed to your mother in seven days. When you know, you know. I try to ignore it, but it only gets louder. I imagine what Professor Lou would say if I told him that I think I’m in…love? I’m not sure what it is. Infatuation at the very least. There is something in my brain that is tugging me towards this woman. The target is set. Whether the aim is true is another matter. A timer begins to tick in my head.

Instead of swan diving through the window, I walk back down the fire escape.

“What are you doing up there?” VanNeece asks.

“Nothing. This stuff is good. Let me get another one.”

“Yeah, it’s from a new guy. Hurry.”

“A new guy?”

We do another one. My teeth are numb as if they have been cut from their roots.

It’s as if last night never ended. Like my night’s sleep was just a comma, a short stop before the run-on sentence of my life continues rambling on. There are heavy, fist-like, thumps in my chest, aches in my extremities – a heart attack or just the consequences of last night. There is no time to fiddle with explanations. The show must go on.

1:01 PM

Washington Street looks different in the daylight. A colorful mix of old and young in their spring regalia. The sun’s energy has infected the populace. The air is imbued with life again. The temperature has tiptoed above a measly fifty-two. It’s as if the dry, cracked, cold earth of winter has been drawn over with lip balm. The difference between the Washington Street from last night and now is alarming. Last night, on our trek to the PATH train, it seemed as if the only places that existed in this miniature city were bars – sucking people in and spitting them out, worse for wear. Now families line the sidewalks. Children hold onto their parents’ hands while skipping across the streets. Roving hordes of fresh moms push carriages, with infants sleeping peacefully or screaming as if the world were ending. Small boutiques, barber shops, and bakeries are all filled with a bubbling sect of Hobokenites, thawed out enough to smile.

“There’s Carey,” VanNeece says, pointing to a table on an outside patio. “And Aisle.”

Carey Bresnahan sits with legs crossed. Aisle holds his chin up with a fist. Are his legs crossed too? These poses ooze gossip. These two have gotten used to waiting for VanNeece and I over the years. Punctuality isn’t our strong suit.

Carey has been a staple in our lives since the fourth grade. This group – VanNeece, Aisle, Carey, and myself – have attended the same grade school, middle school, and high school. Somehow, we all ended up here after college. Hoboken, New Jersey. Staying friends with the same group of people for such a long time is quite the phenomenon. The only person missing to round out our unit is Brian McAndle.

We sit down, order drinks, and I mistakenly choose the man-mosa. A horrible concoction of orange juice, vodka, and Blue Moon beer all in one large glass. My taste buds are reasonably shot so it is not the taste I’m after, it is the result. There really are no other options. This life chose me, albeit through countless bad decisions, so I plod through my shitty cocktail, thinking about a gin and tonic on a balmy night in Spain with Marissa, all while trying to stay in conversation without puking on Carey, who sits across from me. I must find Marissa and this brunch is doing nothing to further that goal.

“How was your sister’s party?” she asks the table.

“Fun,” I say.

“It was horrible,” VanNeece chirps.

“It sucked,” Aisle says.

“Aright, aright, aright. Enough. It sucked. That’s why I left,” I say.

“Same,” Aisle and VanNeece say almost in unison.

“Where’d you guys go?” Carey asks them.

“We went to a club,” Aisle continues. “I don’t know where Louisa went. He just left.”

“Another Irish exit huh?” Carey asks. She looks at me, unsurprised by my previous night’s antics.

“I met a girl,” I say.

“What do you mean you met a girl?” Carey asks, genuinely confused. “I’ve heard I went back with a girl, I fucked a girl, I took a girl back to my place, I hooked up with a girl, I banged a girl…I have never heard I met a girl. What happened?”

“I just met a girl. Nothing to read into.”

Carey often takes an interest in my life. Hers has become mundane. She has been in a relationship for five years now and I personally could not imagine such a boring fate. Part of her inquisitions must be our difference in life choices. One can be envious of a life lived on the edge or one can feel bad, obligated to help in any way possible. If I were on the proverbial fence, I’d say Carey leans towards lawn number two. Or maybe she just enjoys the gossip. I assume a relationship can get quite stale while waiting on a ring. A ring that is supposed to satisfy you. A ring that will end all sadness in the world. A ring that injects sweetness back into a soured relationship.

“Really, nothing crazy,” I implore. “We were at this random bar and she disappeared out of thin air. One minute she was there and the next, nothing.”

I try and picture the night but only pockets of black spots appear, as if I were staring into the sun.

“Then…I ended up at Kristen’s,” I say.

The table laughs.

“Would you like another man-mosa, sir?”

The waiter stands over me like the grim reaper.

“Sure.”

“What was she like?” Carey pushes.

Carey’s eyes are big, and wide with curiosity, but they drop at the edges like a sad spaniel. Her cheeks are nonexistent. The skin and bone are one. Her nose, a pointed Roman, is something she has campaigned to change since high school. She has never gone through with it. By itself it would not be a beautiful nose but on her it is dignified. She sips on a bellini under the shadow of a derby hat. A scarf sits on her shoulders like the Pope’s. All that is missing is a ring to kiss.

“Same old Kristen I guess? She wants to start hanging out again.”

“Oh god,” Aisle rolls his eyes, “you idiot. Are you going to start hanging out with her again? Run her down the same road as last time. Build her up…let her down?”

“Really? Buttercup? Whyyy do you build me up?” I begin to sing.

“Build me up,” VanNeece echoes.

“Buttercup baby just to let me down.”

“Let me down.”

“Not Kristen! Not Kristen you morons. I don’t care about Kristen. The other girl. What was she like?” Carey breaks up the band.

“Oh, Marissa.”

“Marissa, huh?”

“Yes…Marissa. She’s Spanish.”

“Spanish. Sticking with your own kind, eh? Slick move.”

I wouldn’t expect Carey to understand the cultural differences between all the Spanish-speaking peoples. She can barely grasp the fact that I am anything but white. Even after a home cooked meal by my mother it didn’t register that we had anything but tacos and burritos. We had neither. The difference between a Cuban and a Spaniard is more in tune with the difference between a person from New Jersey and Alabama. I think her brain would melt if I tried to explain the inner workings of the different diasporas of Hispanic communities. Dominicans hate Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans hate Dominicans right back. Venezuelans and Colombians have their moments. Mexico and El Salvador are at each other’s necks. Everyone hates Cubans. Cubans hate Argentinians. There are more rivalries in the Hispanic community than SEC football.

“If she looks anything like your mom, you’re in business,” she continues.

“She’s a different type of Spanish. Spain, Spanish,” I reply to no one in particular.

Though I’ve squandered most of the good looks my mother has given me there’s still a small hope that I can reverse the damage at some later stage. Aisle smirks at me. We became friends in fourth grade too, bonding over our shared gift and curse of having good-looking moms.

This conversation only exacerbates my longing for bed. Last night’s disappointment is gaining on me like a hungry lion and I am just a bleeding, injured gazelle.

1:47 PM

But I don’t hightail it to bed. I have a girl to look for. I attempt to gather clues from the previous night and only come up with a yellow sun dress and a pair of arresting green eyes.

“Soooo…thoughts on Brian and Jen?” Carey switches the subject.

Until now, I had erased all memory of the news that Aisle dropped on me at the pregame last night. The fact that Brian and Jen are now Facebook official may be the true reason for my leglessness on the PATH train into the city. What else is there to do when receiving such painful information than to drink your thoughts away?

Unfortunately for this table, mine have come back with a vengeance.

“Fuck her,” I reply, no hesitation.

“Hot take, Lou. Tell us how ya’ really feel,” VanNeece says.

His cologne wafts off him as he turns his chair.

“How does he not see it? Does the poor bastard have eyes? Or ears? A nose? I can smell that girl from a mile away. Physically and metaphorically. We all know she’s doing something on the side. We’ve all been to her place of ‘business’ a few too many times, right? We’ve told him it’s not the best look. We’re all reliable sources considering we leave our houses and see what’s going on. Has he been back to High Noon since he met her? Or is ignorance now bliss? Put some blinders on like a race pony and pretend the place doesn’t exist or that his girl doesn’t work there? That’s what makes me more mad than anything,” I say.

“Madder,” Aisle corrects.

I rip him limb from limb with my eyes and continue.

“It’s not even that he’s with her or that she makes him look like a fool. The fact that he doesn’t leave his house is infuriating. He won’t even answer a text or a phone call unless he has a built-in excuse for why he can’t come. Here, look at this,” I say.

Texts don’t lie.

Me: Yo tryna go grab a beer?

Me: Any plans tonight?

“Those were two texts from last week. No response. Then I tell him about my sister’s party and…”

Me: Dude. Answer me. My sister’s having a going away party Friday. We’re gonna pregame at my apartment then go over there. Come.

Brian: Ahhhh…that sounds fun. I wish I could make it. I’m going to my parent’s house Friday though.

“And he left the group chat! Are we that awful to talk to?” I ask.

Out of breath but confident in my case to the jury I feel a tweet coming.

Girlfriends sound fun.

1:50 PM – April 18th – 2015

Sent.

On opposite day.

1:51 PM – April 18th – 2015

Sent.

“She really isn’t that bad,” I hear from above.

“Shut up Aisle,” I say.

“Seriously. The few times we’ve hung out with her and Brian it’s been fun. She’s always happy and knows the best bars. And she doesn’t strip, she bartends. She has your dream job and you still do not approve. The disrespect to her and her profession is appalling!”

Aisle smiles. His smarmy mug infuriates me.

“Aisle. Let me spell it out for you in plain chapter English. If your girlfriend knows all the best bars, it means she’s spending way too much time at bars. How does that not get through your peanut-sized brain?”

He clearly needs to re-take Lou 101.

“But you spend all your time at bars…what’s the difference?”

Aisle’s small frame conjures a mixture of contempt and sympathy. The transition frames he’s wearing are stuck in a gray middle phase. He makes a great point but I can’t let my fight for Brian end there. I will use every piece of propaganda at my disposal. I will lie, cheat, and steal to get my friend back. By any means necessary.

“Aisle, my son, haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘you’ll never meet your wife at a bar’?”

“No.”

Neither have I, I’m making this up on the fly.

“Well, Aisle, you’ll never meet your wife at a bar. And I’ll even do you one better. You’ll never meet your wife at a strip club bar. The longest lasting relationship that has come out of High Noon is someone leaving with herpes. God forbid my friend gets herpes. God forbid…” I trail off.

1:58 PM

Around me is an amphitheater of confusion. A shadowy phalanx of people in the foreground of a blaring sun. “All rise,” an ultimate judge has commanded, what is the verdict.

“Are you going to finish that?”

“Let’s go.”

“C’mon Lou what are you doing?”

Half a beer sits warm in front of me as my eyes adjust to life. I haven’t fainted, I just haven’t been here. I’m overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Marissa’s on Instagram. Where do I even begin? In the time it takes to slug down the dregs, the group is already walking down Washington Street.

We pass a few tempting specials on the way to Green Rock: five-dollar beers until 6 pm, 7 dollar well drinks until 5 pm, a pitcher for ten bucks. These specials would be highway robbery anywhere else. Green Rock is not known for its Saturday specials unless you count the number of females that end up attending. I’m surprised it is not advertised. You’d have to be a mute or a mutant to not end up in conversation with a halfway decent looking girl here.

But women, like all great things, require sacrifice. They are like living gods, but instead of the bull’s head or slaves’ hearts of yesteryear, you end up sacrificing…

“The fuckin’ Gamos. Someone already spilled onna’ fucking Gamos,” VanNeece says.

Ferragamo’s. Fine Italian leather shoes that VanNeece knew not to wear here.

“Remind me to stop frequenting this dump,” he adds.

VanNeece sacrifices another pair of designer shoes but I, on the other hand, seem to be sacrificing my sanity. I feel like I’ve ingested déjà vu. I’ve been here before but everyone in the bar has a ghost-like quality.

After sliding sideways through a slim front bar, already packed with eager drinkers, we make it to a square, open, back bar. Our unit stands around, waiting for someone to make the first move. I even see Carey cover her yawning mouth with a hand. The next decision can be insidiously costly or propel the day onward. I find that it has come down to me to make the decision.

Professor Lou walks up to the podium:

Men…

Women…

Students…

Soldiers.

Times like these come twice a week if you’re employed. The infrequency shall not dilute the importance.

For five days this week they have beaten you down. From nine to five, for forty hours, they have captured your soul and used it for their own greed. Even VanNeece, who enjoys work, would feel the intimacies of his soul being crushed daily if he had one.

But what is forty hours to a lifetime?

Hoo-ra!

My comrades, what is forty hours to a lifetime!?

Hoo-raaaaa!

Men…

Women…

Soldiers.

By the grace of the gods, we are bestowed with this holiest of days. This day shall not be taken lightly, or for granted, and through this day the gods shall speak through us. We, this day drinking crew, are at the precipice of something great and momentous.

No man can be a good day drinker who is not honest in his dealings: so pay your tabs and tip your bartenders and above all else drink your drinks! I believe, if nothing has been neglected, we, the day drinkers, can outlive and outshine our tyrannical bosses and managers! We shall drink in the clubs and we shall drink in the bars. We shall take shots, sip beers, and drink mixaronis. And…in God’s good time…the day drinkers, with all of their power and might, will step forth to the rescue and liberation of this great city.

Though half this speech is plagiarized and all of it is done in my head, it’s how I feel when I place our first drink order.

2:16 PM

“Ten pickle-back shots.”

“There are only four of us,” Aisle says, uninspired.

I hand my card to the bartender.

“Open or close it?”

This question comes as a surprise in the same way a deer is surprised that a car, again, is barreling down on him. Although the subject matter is a tad less serious than a Hamlet soliloquy, it still begs the question: to close or not to close?

The Professor’s pros and cons to closing one’s tab are very complex. But the answer is self-evident.

“Keep it open.”

This was never really a choice. What is an all-day drinking performance without a little skin in the game?

After taking three of the ten shots ordered I tug on VanNeece’s sleeve, almost unable to speak. He understands my nonverbal cue and slyly hands over the goods to reboot.

For every ten suspect bathrooms there is always one grand version. In New York this ratio is far smaller, because in the 70s and 80s the owners partook with the patrons. Green Rock’s main bathroom is as susceptible to intruders as they come. There are three urinals and one stall with a broken hinge. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. But, if you continue past the men’s on your right and women’s on your left and push further into a dark hallway, further than you thought safe or possible, there is the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel. Metaphorical only because there is no light, just a small iron door. Opening it reveals a haven equipped with a metal toilet, mirror, and sliding lock. The walls are brick and the cold emanates through the cracks. A refreshing change from the hot bodies packing into the bar like sausages. A restart and reboot.

After exiting my cave feeling a little more Cro-Magnon than usual, I somehow slip my way into a serious conversation about the New York Yankees with a random group of known associates. This group is dressed on the fratty side. Each has a pair of faded jeans, a backwards dad hat, and a Patagonia vest, though it is obvious they have never climbed higher than a few mansion floors. The only thing distinguishing one from the other is a different patterned button down and shade of boat shoe.

I view this group with equal parts reverence and disdain. It was a group of these exact types that introduced me to the joys of hard partying in the first place. It took me half a semester to remove the shackles of pressure to attain a 4.0 GPA. Though I never joined a frat, I did graduate with a middling 3.0, a bachelor’s in software engineering, and a master’s in alcoholism. I wonder if they hate themselves as much as I hate me.

3:01 PM

Half the reason I started smoking cigarettes was to avoid monotony. A bar can become mundane if you end up talking to the wrong crowd and those frat boys were boring me to tears.

The muffled sound of people and music from inside the bar sounds like covering your ears in the shower. Clusters of young men and women roam the streets. We are far from the uppity shops and families of four. The shuffle of wedges on gravel, the echoed clack of high-heeled shoes – these palpable sounds of promise fill my damaged ears. It’s a welcome change in scenery.

“Are you almost done with that?” Aisle asks, covering his nose with his shirt.

I raise my eyebrows.

“I hate smoke,” he says.

“Then why’d you come out here?” I ask.

“That girl from the other night texted me.”

I lean in to look at his phone but a pack of females walk by us into the bar. One in particular catches my attention. A tight dress, heels, and eye contact. I stub my cigarette out and follow them in. The text goes unread.

The music feels louder upon re-entry and the bar more packed than when I left it. The dancing has also escalated. Sweaty couples grind to the four on the floor with little regard for onlookers.

It doesn’t take long for the girl in the tight dress to take center stage. She dances with no one, gyrating her ass like a witch hovering over a cauldron. Twerking, the kids call it, but the word barely does the motion justice. It’s nothing like a twitch or jerk but a mesmerizing incantation.

She’s quickly surrounded by a herd of wild men, as drawn to the spell as I am. They silently bark and howl. Still, she dances, beautifully unfazed. Then the woman on the dancefloor is Marissa. Either Marissa really is endowed with superpowers, or my brain is melting. Marissa grabs my hand and pulls me to the dancefloor. This time some light grinding ensues with a little PDA I am not even ashamed of. No Guaguancò. No temptation. Just action. The yellow dress. The brown hair. It’s all there between my hands. Solid and real for a moment. Then it melts like memory. Marissa fades. The yellow dress and brown hair disintegrate into the floor of the bar. The girl is still twerking all alone. With no one, for everyone.

The music thumps, my heart pounds with it, and I am stuck, drunk, alive, and numb.

4:13 PM

On my fourth cigarette break I am seeing two cigarettes below my nose. No amount of the white stuff can get me back on the right track but damn if I haven’t tried. Mid puff I take a peek down Hudson Street. I see two yellow sundresses, two sets of brown hair. Two reasons I need to wrangle the crew out of this bar and follow that dress. The rational thought that Marissa would not be wearing the same dress two days in a row doesn’t reach my frontal cortex. She is here, in my neck of the woods, and I will track her down. She would probably say that sentence was creepy. It was creepy. But I am a man on a mission.

I stumble back into the bar and corral the crew. Informing them I have closed my tab is a sure-fire way to get their feet out the door. The bar is still hammering out ear-shattering top forty hits and the dancefloor is filled, but this is no time to stay. I have a girl to find.

“Where are we going?” Carey asks.

“I saw her take a right down Newark Street. I think there’s a tequila bar down that way,” I say.

“Who?” she asks, confused.

“Come on, let’s go,” I urge.

We walk down a block and take a right towards the water. No signs of a dress, so we all shuffle into the Tequila & Taco’s joint. From what I can remember, Marissa enjoyed tacos.

The vibe is quieter here and our raucous voices turn heads. It might be too early for some to be belligerent but not our group. Things were just starting to heat up and I reopen my tab for five tequila shots. Even with the salt and lime this shot goes down like acid.

I feign an excuse to go to the bathroom and take a look around the place. It is a squat room with low ceilings and bright Mexican colors splashed on the walls. Frida Kahlo’s painted eyebrow is resting above a table of ten. There’s a margarita pitcher in the middle, a smorgasbord of tacos around the edges, but no Marissa. The people at the table look at me as if I was shaking a change cup in their face.

The next two booths seem to be dates. Though these random people haven’t heeded my warnings on the pitfalls of dating, I walk past each one and turn back to see the hidden person on the opposite side of the booth. No Marissa. Thank god. If she were on a date I might collapse. I finally make it to the bathroom with nothing better to do than hit the little bag of white wonder. Maybe a little more will light the way. Maybe a little more will reveal Marissa. Maybe a little more…

It would be easy to shit on streaming platforms but I won’t do that because if you just rewound time to 30 or 40 years ago and told people then that, at some point in the future, they could watch any movie or show with the click of a button they would sign up for it in a heartbeat. Take oversaturation out of the equation for a second and just realize we live in the best era for personal entertainment, period. You know what I watched the other day? The African Queen. Would I have ever seen this movie without being able to type in Humphrey Bogart and have a plethora of options in his oeuvre to choose from? Surely not. I would have never gone searching for this movie. I would never have paid for the DVD. And yet, I was able to watch a classic movie easier than making popcorn. We are lucky. Infinitely. And the more streaming platforms the better. To get an entire catalog of movies for the very small price of $10 a month is a privilege. Anyone who says otherwise is a spoiled brat.

But…a big hairy but…

Aren’t movies and television shows enough for these greedy cunts?

I know the nature of business. Growth is good. We all benefit from this growth. But at some point someone has to put their foot down and leave something, ONE thing, just the way it is. If any sport deserves that, it’s baseball. America’s past time. A sport in which change is not only discouraged but actively frowned upon. Just look at the talking head reactions to the Dominican national team. You would think the players were fucking the announcers’ mothers rather than just flipping their bat a little too high and lollygagging around the bases. It took the MLB seven years to implement the ABS (automated ball-strike challenge system). Most people are pumped about the ability to challenge balls and strikes this year but there are still many holding on to the old ways of doing it - trusting a shoddy ump’s eye. At least we’ll never get another Angel Hernandez.

Some sports on streaming services have excelled. For example, football does not lose any of its luster on Amazon Prime or Netflix. That’s because football is a national sport. I could sit down and watch an NFL game with no rooting interest in either team and still enjoy it. But baseball is different. Much different. With 162 games a year, baseball is regional. You watch your team, week in and week out, without watching a single other team play besides highlights. There are enough games with your own team throughout the year that any more baseball isn’t necessary. With that regionality comes comfort. You are comfortable with your announcer, your manager, your team, and YOUR broadcast. It’s a comfort that can hardly be explained. As a Yankee fan, I hear those horns, and the angelic voice of Michael Kay, and I feel like I am at home no matter where I am watching the game from.

Watching this just made me tear up.

I’ve noticed this problem with playoff baseball, but at least I expect that when the Yankees make it to the playoffs, I’ll be listening to the likes of ratfucks like John Smoltz or my archnemesis Bob Costas. But opening day? The first game of the season? The tone setter? Blasphemy. Starting off the season with random announcers (even if one of them is CC Sabathia, a legendary Yankee) is just wrong.

I can remember last year’s opening day against the Brewers like it was yesterday. Game time – 3:05 PM. Leave work - 2:45 PM. Get home. Pour a Ranch Water. Grab a handful of sunflower seeds. Melt into couch like a D.A.R.E. commercial. The windows were open. The sun was out. I put on the YES Network and saw familiar faces I hadn’t seen in five months. Michael Kay. Meredith Marakovits. David Cone. Paul O’Neill. It felt like getting under a nice warm blanket after being left out in the cold. A reminder that better weather was on its way, and I’d get the privilege to watch 161 more Yankee games with my people on the television screen.

Now this year I’ve already stayed up past my bedtime to watch the New York Yankees opening day because they are playing on the West Coast and, what’s even worse than losing my beauty sleep, is my people are nowhere to be found. It’s not freezing outside, yet I feel a chill deep inside my bones. I should be excited, instead I’m depressed. The rest of this post will be me letting my frustrations out, shitting on the Netflix broadcast wherever I see fit. I am sure there will be plenty. I don’t think this will turn into a Sorondo length post but who knows. I mean, how bad can Netflix fuck up a baseball game? I guess we’ll see. Catch you guys on the other side.

Go Yankees…

1 – Watching Bert Kreischer introduce the MLB season is something I should like. I’m a fan of a jolly funny drunk. But fuck man, this is bad. You don’t get pumped up for a baseball game. You get dialed in. You relax. You sip and enjoy. If basketball was a cigarette, baseball is a cigar. No one asked for a WWE style introduction to the season. Unless the benches clear, there will be no brawl during tonight’s 9 innings. This isn’t the type of sport where you “make some noise” for its entirety. Bert yelling in my ear to start the season did not move the needle.

2 – Speaking of basketball, why are we announcing the players as if it were? I don’t need to hear Lean Back by Fat Joe on repeat while 11 players plus the manager get introduced. The music gets old by player three. And those poor people dancing on top of cars for the entire introduction. I mean really? Dancers on cars for the opening of the baseball season? I’d laugh if I wasn’t crying. This is why Netflix, a streaming platform for shows and movies, should not get into sports. This isn’t a “show”. No one cares about all the antics. The sport IS the show.

3 - That seaman can sing his ass off but of all things to skimp on, why skimp on the national anthem singer? You got 30 dancers on top of random vehicles to introduce the players and then a no-name anthem singer? Now I’m just confused.

4 – The pre-game camera work is atrocious. I feel like this kid.

Maybe Netflix thinks that the cinematography for sports is the same as the cinematography for movies, but these spinning cameras are doing nothing but making me seasick. We’re not reshooting 1917 here. Give me the normal, steady camera angles for the love of god.

5 – I’m not shocked that every commercial is for a Netflix show with some beverage ads sprinkled in. Why else would you buy opening day from the MLB for millions of dollars? But nothing beats the YES commercials. Everyone watching their own networks probably has a similar feeling. I miss the random local car dealership commercials, or O O O O Reilly’s Autoparts, or even the random New York personal injury lawyer who you know is into some shady shit but you love him anyway. And wait, they’re remaking Man on Fire into a Netflix television series? Go FUCK yourselves Netflix.

3 – Logan Webb looks like Landry from Friday Night Lights.

4 – I’d rather watch every baseball game on Netflix than Giancarlo Stanton running the bases (I’m shocked he just scored from second for the first run of the Yankees season - I didn’t think that was possible).

5 – Of all the things that Netflix took from the sports networks, the in-game interview should have been last on the list. No matter who the interview is with, it is rarely entertaining. Splitting the screen is bad enough, but hearing a player talk mid game is just not something I’m interested in. And to pick Jazz? Wild move. I know what they were going for here. Let’s get this crazy dude to say some crazy shit we can clip for the socials. Thankfully he didn’t say some crazy shit. He’s a crazy dude, but he’s our crazy dude. He must be protected at all costs.

6 – Bert Kreischer in a kayak in McCovey’s Cove drinking beers even though he’s been ordered not to drink by his cardiologist is funny.

7 – Austin Wells has more swag now – the Dominicans clearly rubbed off on him.

8 – Four innings through and I don’t HATE the announcers. I don’t LIKE the announcers either. But at least I don’t hate them. The majority of non-YES announcers despise the Yankees so you have to tip your cap to Netflix for including an ex-Yankee to balance it out. CC Sabathia started off a little shaky, but he has settled in and I could see him being a long term voice over baseball games (if he doesn’t end up as the Yankees manager one day).

9 – Netflix missed the first ever ABS challenge. Your only job was to film this historic moment, and you failed your job. Incredible.

10 – The fact that I have my laptop open, writing this, instead of just relaxing and watching the game is annoying the hell out of me. I blame Netflix. If this game were on YES as God intended, I wouldn’t be performing this masochistic exercise. I hate myself. I hate Netflix.

11 – How much did Hal Steinbrenner get paid to let this game go to Netflix? With the lack of moves made this offseason and all of Hal’s talk about the Yankees being a business first and foremost, you would think the extra couple mil in cash could have went to some free agents. Hal…us Yankees fans are done with just making the playoffs. The Yankees brand is all about winning. If they don’t win championships, it’s bad for business. Worse than not balancing the books. If the Yankees don’t win the World Series the value of the Yankees decreases. It’s as simple as that.

12 - Barry Bonds is the Mike Tyson of baseball. Mainly because of his voice. And holy shit did he just drop a bomb…George Steinbrenner called Barry Bonds, tried giving him the biggest contract in history only if he signed by 2 PM that day, and Barry hung up the phone. This little nugget just made the entire broadcast ALMOST worth it. Barry would’ve probably doubled his home run count in Yankee Stadium. Damn I miss George.

13 - The Yankees are up 7-0 with no homeruns. If they do hit a homerun and I hear something other than a Michael Kay “See ya!” I’ll probably crawl into a fetal position and die.

14 - Jameis Winston has taken this broadcast from an F to a D-. This man is pure entertainment. Any time he is on any screen I put down all distractions and listen in. Touchdowns and picks all over the place.

14 - Thank you to the New York Yankees for showing they can score without hitting homeruns AND not making me crawl into a fetal position and dying. 11 PM is WAY past my bed time. Goodnight.

15 - Netflix is a fucking joke.

P.S. - After the game I went upstairs and fell asleep to the sweet sounds of…an episode of Seinfeld.

If you haven’t read Part 1 - you’ll find it here.

If you’re reading this on your phone, computer, or tablet, and you are losing your mind due to the significant amount of brain rot that occurs when doing so - hit up thegreatreader.com and send this bitch to your Kindle or print it out.

If you liked Part 1, and if you enjoy Part 2…buy the novel already! Hell or Hangover

8:30 PM

Aisle just so happens to be waiting for the bathroom. He stares at me as we walk out. I don’t know if he’s waiting for an explanation or trying to pretend that his puppylike ears weren’t perked or his guilting eyes weren’t burning a hole through the door. He disapproves of our filthy habits.

“Having fun Aisle?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

He brushes past me into the bathroom. The squeak of his jacket has the opposite of his desired effect. It’s almost impossible to hold back laughter.

“Fuck’s his problem?” VanNeece asks.

I shrug my shoulders.

We creep our way back to a corner of the loft, minds high and ready and focused on nothing at all. It would be best, at this point, to evade all conversation with people who are not on the same level. I don’t foresee us staying much longer and the sooner we leave the sooner the night can actually begin.

As we wait for Aisle, my phone vibrates.

Kristen: You like my snap?

Through all this activity I had almost forgot about the wonders of Kristen’s earlier gift. I can feel my hard on press against my thigh as if to remind me who’s in control here.

Me: My god woman.

Kristen: You like?

Me: Love.

Kristen: I’m actually in Hoboken and thought of you.

Me: I’m in the City.

Kristen: I’ll be back later. Am I going to see you?

Me: The odds have increased tremendously.

Kristen: Lol, that’s what I thought.

Me: Let me know when you’re back.

Kristen: Yes sir.

Aisle’s earlier outburst now seems unwarranted. How bad can I be to deserve such a gift? I let the guilt wash away, knowing in the morning it will return with a vengeance.

8:43 PM

I return to the party from the deep, dark recesses of Kristen World and realize my little unit has made a grave mistake. We are in conversation with none other than Christian Antelunes de Miguel. This is one of my sister’s employees who I hate to like. Or is it like to hate? I can’t tell the difference anymore.

“Cabo was pretty good pero, Puerto Escondido is the place to be,” Christian is in the middle of saying. “If you like surfing that is.”

“When did you start surfing?” Aisle asks while VanNeece chews on his own tongue.

“On a piece of wood, in Cuba, when I was seven,” Christian says.

“On a piece of wood, huh?” I ask.

“Si. It is actually better for learning pero you hab no…”

I have to stop listening. His accent, the Spanglish, the stories of adventure – I’ve seen it all and heard it all on his Instagram. He is one of those Insta-egos who take selfie videos that start with ‘Hey guys’ as if he is talking to a legion of fans just desperately waiting on their phones for another Christian post. He’s got about 100,000 followers and I am unfortunately one of them. I’ve never liked a post out of spite.

What he does for my sister is unknown. Is he an influencer? Does he travel the world purchasing stuff for Kim? I have no idea. In order to get him to stop talking about himself I dial up a few tequila shots from a flask I brought. I pour the piss warm liquid into red cups and pass them out like a doctor doling out medicine.

We take the shots and Christian kisses his teeth long enough to stop talking. Aisle’s face looks like it’s getting sucked in by his nose. VanNeece and I weather the storm with no hint at how awful the drink actually is. They don’t call yip a performance enhancer for nothing.

“Man, that is some sheet tequila,” Christian says.

He fakes a loogie on the floor.

“I bet if you pour that sheet on a Cadillac, it’ll look like a Honda in twenty-four hours. Man, I bet if you pour that sheet on a-a-a como se dice caniche, aaaa a poodle at dinner it’ll look like a sphynx cat by morning,” Christian says, laughing.

I laugh too. He’s got a point. My stomach is in choppy waters and it’s possible that this “sheet tequila” is doing a number on my enamel. I try and focus my attention on Christian himself. He’s got long hair that begins to curl at his shoulders. His cheek bones are a direct line from ear to chin, his top three buttons undone revealing hard pecs and perfectly manicured chest hair. He looks like he should be on the front cover of a shitty romance novel. In other words, he’s everything a woman wants.

“Jyou got anything better than this, my friend?” he asks.

“I think I can find something,” I say.

Though Christian is probably asking for some sniffles, I’ll do just about anything in order to avoid another story. It’s not that I’m bitter or anything. It’s just that every time I see a post of Christian in some far-off land like a Dumas-ian hero I lose a little piece of my soul, of which I don’t have much left.

I swear…I’m not bitter.

9:01 PM

My sights are now set on Kimberly’s liquor cabinet. It has yet to be ravaged, which is not all that shocking.

If there is any real reason to be rich, then Johnnie Walker Blue is that reason. The bottle is hiding in the back of the cabinet, but my sharp, bloodshot, eyes spot the gold. After pouring myself a hefty glass, I offer it to any takers. There are plenty of employees willing to take the whiskey with a vigor they didn’t display for the warm vodka. None of their conversations hold me for longer than a sip except for one lesbian couple.

From what I can tell, these two head up the kiln department. No surprise there. The more petite of the two takes the fine liquid down in one gulp and puts her glass out for seconds.

“Finally, some good shit.”

I oblige and offer her counterpart a glass as well.

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t drink,” she replies.

The small voice that comes out in no way matches the stiffness of her handshake. The sides of her head are shaved, her arms are covered in black ink, and her forearm strength leaves my hand cramped.

“Well, what do you do then?” I ask.

“Depends on what you got,” the sweet voice says.

Next thing I know, the lesbians and I are nose deep in dashes of white lines. I make a mental note to give these two high praise if my sister happens to ask but, as we exit the bathroom together, Kimberly’s disappointed face tells me that my recommendations won’t do them any good.

“What are you three up to?” she asks.

“Oh, nothing sis.” I wrap my hand around her shoulder, leading her away from her soon-to-be-ex-employees. “You enjoying the party?”

“I guess. Where’d you get that?” She points to Johnnie. “That’s Creag’s. You might not want to finish the whole thing. And don’t get too drunk, please. You need to make sure my apartment is presentable in the morning. My flight’s at 6 AM. You promised.”

The bottle is halfway empty. Enough for me to put it away and avoid Creag McCullough’s wrath. Creag makes my sister look small, which is no easy feat. If I remember correctly, on a drunken night in this very loft, his beard was measured to be bigger than my head.

“Yea, sure. Not too drunk. Clean the apartment. Right. How is Creag anyway? I haven’t seen him in months.”

“In the beginning it was easy. Almost refreshing. I had all this time for me, for my business. But the apartment doesn’t even smell like him anymore…”

Kimberly’s eyes begin to deceive her normally stoic nature. I can tell she’s been hitting the sauce tonight and I’m devilishly proud. A heart to heart is impending and inevitable. To her point, the apartment currently smells like alcohol and sweat.

“Well, that’s why you’re going out there, right? You guys can finally have some one-on-one time. How much longer is this job he’s working on anyway? I thought he would be back by summer.”

“That’s the problem. The job is being extended.”

“Extended as in…”

“It’s going to take another six months to a year,” she says.

“Ah.”

The things we do for love. Well, not we. But others.

She is holding it together, but a ball of emotion is unraveling behind her placid blue eyes. In my comatose state, a spasm of feeling even slaps at my tear ducts. An architect and a furniture designer. A match made in design heaven. Unfortunately, there are a couple hitches in this perfect gait. This job Creag has been on is in London, his ancestral home. Kimberly’s company is here, her newfound home. She’s taking a three-month long visit to keep the hope alive.

“Of course, I’m excited to see him. I just hope this isn’t his way of trying to convince me to move there. I don’t want to give him any false hope. I’m a city girl. A New York City girl,” Kimberly says.

“We were raised in the suburbs,” I reply.

“Fuck off.”

She laughs and punches me in the shoulder. I am sure it will leave a bruise.

“I’m a city girl now,” she continues. “You know I’ve lived in this place almost half as long as I lived at Mom and Dad’s?”

“Which makes you only a quarter full of shit,” I say.

She doesn’t laugh.

“I just don’t want to give him any false hope,” she says.

Her eyes start to water. She wipes away a stray tear and her finger gets caught pushing back a sweaty bang. I grab her head, pull it down on my shoulder, and squeeze, attempting to cut off any leftover circulation of tears I can’t handle.

“Don’t worry about all of that Kim. Just go and enjoy your time with the man you love. Who knows, maybe you’ll like London. Maybe you’ll hate it. But remember, it could always be worse. You could be stuck in an office for 40 hours a week like me.”

Usually, comparing my miserable existence to Kim’s brings a smile to her face. Knowing she’s the successful sibling stacks the chips neatly on her shoulder. But this time her eyes don’t light up in vain delight; they stay swollen with held back tears and follow me as I walk outside for a smoke.

9:16 PM

A film has built at the back of my tongue. This is due to the irresistible urge of puffing down back-to-back cigarettes. The wooden planks underfoot along with an Adirondack chair and a lantern hanging from the wall almost lull me into kicking my shoes off, but the sounds don’t match. Crashing waves are replaced by the weak and incessant beeps of horns. Wind rattles the high locked fence at the bottom of the set of stairs.

“Who has a deck in Manhattan?” I ask the cosmos.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

For a second, I wonder if the sky has heard me; that God, in her Spanish accent, has answered my deep and philosophical question of deck necessity in Manhattan. In wonderment, I gaze up at the smog that has answered my prayers.

“What’s the purpose?” I ask. “Kim has beach chairs for Christ’s…I mean…for damn sakes. Who needs to lay out in Chelsea?”

“Definitely not Jesus,” the cosmos says.

Tracking the voice of the universe to ground level, I discover there is another smog admirer in my midst. Her back is toward me, head tilted toward the heavens, and I watch her dark brown hair move back and forth, skimming the straps of her sundress. Back and forth, forth and back; the wind is more confounded than me, having trouble choosing which way is more beautiful. My eyes follow the dress straps down, like two yellow brick roads leading me to the promised land. But her dress is waving too. There’s no body in sight, no ass to gawk at, no legs to mention. She’s enmeshed in a flowing yellow. Her dress and her hair are a moving synchronization, a flow state with the breeze, the shots, the yip.

“Hello?” she asks, still looking up.

After what must be minutes of spectating and simultaneously slobbering over the brown filter of cigarette number three, I remember to speak.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” I ask, popping in a piece of gum.

“‘Hello, Clarice’ would have made a better first impression,” she says. “Are you going to ask me if I want some candy next?”

She’s still gazing at the sky. Sounding like a speculative serial killer hasn’t scared her off.

“Sky,” she continues. “Why are you so creepy?”

“I’m not always this creepy,” I say.

She turns towards me. The confusion on her face makes it obvious that she was expecting a man in a strait jacket and a hockey mask.

“Just sometimes?” she asks.

Her lightly tanned skin lies under smattered freckles. They run from cheek to nose to cheek like a Jackson Pollock. Her eyes are the piercing green of an apple. She seems foreign, not in country but in time. Mary Magdalene and La Madonna in one. She does know of Jesus’ whereabouts after all.

I send up a silent prayer that the curtains match the drapes, which sounds odd in this asexual tone. I pray that the outside matches the inside. I’ve been tricked there before.

“It’s weather dependent,” I finally say.

“It depends on the weather?”

“Well…yeah. It happens every winter. My social skills get frozen up. It takes a while for them to thaw out. I’d say I’m melted down to here.”

I place my hand at my neck.

“What did it?”

“The alcohol,” I say.

Her laugh bursts from her as if even she hadn’t expected it. Her teeth shine between dark lips.

“I needed to get some air after whatever it was you poured in there,” she says.

“Ah! Warm vodka. My specialty. I can make you another if you want?”

“I’d rather jump into the river.”

“You think that was bad? You haven’t tried anything yet. Red Bull Vodka, Jägerbombs, Long Island Iced Tea, pick your poison,” I say.

She puts her finger in her mouth and pretends to gag, inducing a smorgasbord of disgusting thoughts. One in particular involves tossing her on top of the garbage cans at the bottom of the steps, bringing an entirely new and disastrous meaning to the term dirty thoughts. As my mind races away into its deviant abyss, she smiles, and all the pornographic images fade in comparison to reality.

“You would like what we drink where I am from,” she says.

“Where’s that?”

“I was born in New York but raised in Barcelona. So that makes me a triple citizen.”

“I only counted two there.”

“American. Spanish. Catalan.”

“Forgive me but, I don’t get it,” I admit.

“Barcelona is technically Spain but also part of Catalonia,” she says.

“I may have just gone cross eyed.”

“Poor American,” she laughs. “Catalonia is its own nationality.”

“Like Texas?” I ask.

“Like Texas,” she confirms.

I guide her back to the topic of drinks. Something relatable.

“Gin and tonics. Everyone drinks big gin and tonics,” she says. “And wine. We have some of the best wine that no one talks about but trust me, it is good. Rioja, Tempranillos, Garnacha…”

As she talks, her eyes come alive from their deep sockets. Her arms flail and her lips move with no effort. Her freckles dance.

“What’s Barcelona like?” I ask. “I’ve never been but my mother talks about it like it’s heaven on earth.”

“She’s been there?”

“Lived there for a little while. She was on the Exile Express. Havana to Spain, Spain to Union City,” I say.

“So jyou are Cuban?” she asks, loosening her accent.

“Half,” I say.

“And half gringo?” she laughs.

“Si…is it that noticeable?”

“¿Por qué no has estado en España?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Oh no,” she says. “Don’t tell me you can’t speak Spanish…”

I shake my head. My face feels like it’s been slathered with hot sauce. The embarrassment of never taking my mother’s maiden tongue seriously has finally caught up with me. Hours, weeks, months, even years of learning would have been worth it to speak to this woman.

“Aye, no problema. I don’t mind English. It’s better for writing than speaking though.”

“You write?” I ask.

“Poquito,” she says, pinching her pointer and thumb.

“A little bit?”

“See! You’re getting it already.”

We laugh. Then pause.

“Want to get out of here?” I blurt.

“With you?”

I look around like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

“And go where?” she asks.

“Anywhere they serve gin.”

She smiles and glances inside.

I’ve secretly been waiting for the other shoe to drop since being hypnotized by the cobra-like movements of her hair and dress. Assuming she is single is nothing short of blasphemy. God forgive us sinners, now and at the hour of our death – which could come at any moment to my poor, pounding, heart.

Beautiful women are not the same species as me.

9:20 PM – April 17th ^– 2015

Sent.

“Huh, did you say something?” I ask.

“Beautiful women are the same species as you,” she says.

“Wait, what?”

“I said, phones and cigarettes are bad for you.”

Who knew a side effect of cocaine was faulty eardrums.

9:48 PM

Half an hour later our conversation is still stuck on the ill effects of cell phones, not cigarettes.

“Cigarettes aren’t that bad for you,” she says.

I find these words as encouraging as her speech on the wonders of Spain’s alcohol selection.

“The surgeon general says otherwise, but please enlighten me,” I say.

“Well, compared to your phone, the cigarette is almost nothing. That ball of energy in your pocket shooting whatever it shoots right into the place you don’t want anything shot and can’t be stubbed out,” she says.

She looks down at my junk as if she has x-ray vision. A terrifying thought even if I’m semi-erect already. Regardless of how committed I am to her cause, I take my phone from my side pocket and place it in the back.

“And those thumbs,” she continues. “Those poor thumbs. If there was any way to invest in orthopedics on the stock market I would do it.”

I note the possible investment while rubbing the base of my thumb.

“But the neck. The neck is the worst. Imagine your head is a bowling ball in the palm of your hand, slowly moving forward. That is what your poor little neck is trying to hold up every time you look down. Now imagine this with two bowling balls.”

She points to my head and the curled mess of hair on top of it.

This woman is cutting me to the core. I’m a creepy, two-headed freak who can’t speak Spanish. There is little reason for me to be alive and she definitely doesn’t want to leave here with the likes of me. But for some reason I can’t wipe the dumb smile off my face every time she speaks.

“And don’t get me started with how those things screw with our heads.”

“You mean from the radiation?” I ask.

“No, our minds. We sit and scroll for hours pretending we are doing something. We get lost in video after video of nothing and the worst part is that it tricks us into thinking we are actually being productive. Think about Twitter for instance. You take fifteen minutes writing a thought that goes into nowhere and just disappears. No one cares.”

“No one cares until you become famous and they want to use it against you,” I say.

“Exactly!” she laughs. “And then there’s Instagram. I actually feel bad for men who have Instagram.”

“Please, give me your sympathies. It is a rough life I’m living.”

“I’m serious,” she continues. “You have pictures of millions of hot women on your phone. Back in the day you’d have to buy a magazine or watch a movie to get a glimpse of such hotness. Or, you’d have to do something even crazier…talk to a real living girl that you find attractive. The horror!”

“Preach,” I say. I almost get on my knees and bow.

“It makes every man turn into a little fanboy,” she says.

I’m glad I didn’t bow.

“Liking pictures of girls you’ve never met,” she continues. “Gawking at women who are photoshopped, thinking that you have a chance with not one but all of them. And meanwhile there are girls out there, real girls, who a real man would kill for and her knight in shining armor has his eyes glazed over looking at the Kardashians.”

“I’d rather look at you then anyone on this thing,” I say. I chuck my phone over the banister into the pile of garbage bags.

“That’s how a woman wants to be talked to.”

I smile, lighting a cigarette. “Want one?” I ask.

“No, those are bad for you.”

We laugh again.

“But I do like the smell,” she says.

A lass after me own heart. I start down the stairs to retrieve my device.

“Don’t,” she says.

“What?”

“If you leave it there, I’ll leave with you,” she says.

“If I leave my phone in that pile of trash you’ll leave with me?”

“Was I not clear?” she asks.

“Done and done,” I say, laughing.

“I’m not joking. Leave it right there in the garbage. All night.”

I don’t know if I’m fascinated or terrified.

“I’m Lou by the way.”

“Marissa.”

Her hand is light and warm. Skin soft as a double L. That much Spanish I do know. Bella.

9:55 PM

“Marissa! There you are.”

A woman’s voice surprises us from the bottom of the stairs.

“I can’t bring you anywhere. You’re always disappearing. It’s my job to keep you safe in such a big bad city. You did it for me in Spain, now I’m returning the favor. Where have you been?”

The voice comes from a girl I can barely register as a human being. In Marissa’s light, everything else fails recognition.

“I’ve been out here. How is the party?” Marissa asks.

“Dead. I think Kim is asleep, and half her staff are arguing about the mayor. This guy Christian and I have been talking. We’re going out, do you want to come with us?”

Marissa turns to me: an odd mix of air and earth-like mist. A yellow, freckled mirage. She mouths to me the words leave it and smirks.

Plan A.

10:02 PM

I hold the door open for Marissa as we enter our first bar on Professor Lou’s New York City bar tour. Shame on me, I know.

“Why thank yjou,” she says, an errant j slipping into her y.

As the four of us take seats at an Irish Pub I order four Irish Car Bombs. Marissa looks at me like I have twelve heads, which would mean I now have ten more than she already thinks I have.

“What the hell is this?” she asks.

She’s looking at the shot of Jameson and Baileys the color of old milk and a half-filled pint glass of Guinness.

“You drop the shot in and then chug the whole thing. You have to do it fast or the Baileys will curdle,” I say.

“Curdle? What do you mean curdle?”

“Just chug it.”

She takes the entire concoction down in two seconds. As I’m still chugging, she’s wiping her upper lip with a napkin.

“I’m impressed and emasculated all at once,” I admit.

“That’s not so bad actually. Definitely better than your warm vodka at the party. My choice next.”

She orders four gin and tonics and I am thankful.

“They are like a mint for the stomach,” she says.

Her taste is impeccable. The drink feels like it’s cooling my insides. I lean over to check on Christian and the friend. I haven’t had a chance to ask her name and don’t foresee any effort being made on that front. Christian is telling a story, his accent and pecs out in full force. If I had my druthers, I would have chosen any other person on planet earth to accompany me on this double date. I run the very real risk of becoming the boring guy next to a person with two last names. Aisle or VanNeece would have been nice, but I have no idea where they are. I don’t care either. I try and think of something to say, anything to make me seem interesting, and come up empty.

“What do you want from life?” Marissa asks me.

An abrupt question. One I hadn’t really pondered in my twenty-five years on this planet. What do I want from life?

“Another gin,” I say. “You?”

She laughs. It’s an honest laugh though I can’t tell if it is at me or with me.

“When you were on the deck talking to God I noticed that you meant it. Pero, you don’t act like you mean anything that you do. In my country they would call you a jester,” she says.

“That’s what I’m here for…the laughs,” I say.

I hand her another gin, though she hasn’t finished her first, and her fingers touch my hand with the glass. For a moment she stares into my eyes, piercing through the twenty odd drinks I’ve built up around myself in defense. In any other situation I would lean in and kiss the girl, but I don’t move a muscle. What do I want from life? A frightening thought.

“I want serious,” she says.

“Okay, I’ll be serious. Let me think.”

“No, from life. That’s what I want. If you take everything serious, even fun, then you don’t miss anything.”

“You’re funny though.”

“I take joking dead serious.”

She picks up a knife and points it at me with a murderous stare. But she can’t hold it in and starts cracking up.

10:23 PM

On second thought, what I want from life is for Christian to cut the shit. On our walk to the next bar, he is droning on about his latest trip to Mexico again. “Puerto Escondido, a small little beach town that offers the biggest waves on the West Coast.” No one cares, bud. Except the two ladies are yucking it up. Marissa’s holding on to my arm as we walk and watching her laugh at another man’s stories makes me want to kill someone. Not her of course. Her laugh makes my stomach quiver. The way her neck gets taut and her mouth opens wide and her freckles spread and reach for her ears. I’d like to be the man that makes her laugh like this.

At Christian’s suggestion, we stop at a little taqueria the size of my apartment. I want to say fuck this place, but it does look cool. The shittier the wallpaper, the better the food and drink. Lou’s bar tour has turned into the Christian self-fellating show and somehow, I must get this train back on the track.

Christian runs off an order of drinks and tacos in Spanish but when the waiter asks him for a card to hold, Christian’s arms have taken the form of a T-Rex. My sister must pay a shit wage. I wonder if the Instagram version of Christian is just an illusion. He turns around to tap his pockets as if his wallet has grown legs and walked away. The evil part of me wants to leave him out to dry. I get giddy waiting for him to come up with an excuse. Even better would be to watch his card get declined. I am not ashamed to say I’ll do anything to make myself look better to Marissa. I wait a half a second and then realize I don’t want to taint this night. I can hear my father’s voice in my head, which never happens while I’m drinking. It says something along the lines of never doing something you will regret in the morning. I’ve already broken that rule fifty times tonight, but I stop the counter before it hits fifty-one and hand my card to the waiter. There’s another line from my father that pops into my booze-laden head. I try to ignore it but can’t. I proposed to your mother in seven days.

“Why are you paying?” Marissa whispers to me. “You paid at the last place.”

“It’s okay. I like paying.”

“I’ll pay at the next stop.”

“Absolutely not,” I say.

She throws me a sincere smile. “What do you do?” she asks.

“Nothing important.”

“No, I want to know, really.”

“You’re not gonna like this,” I warn her.

“A drug dealer?” she asks.

“Nope.”

“Wall Street?”

“Next.”

“A sex trafficker?”

“If I was only so lucky. But no.”

“Hmmmm…” she ponders.

“It’s worse than all of those combined,” I say.

“An arms dealer?”

“Close. I market phone apps.”

She feigns horror.

“How could you do such a thing?”

“It’s a family business. My dad is a partner and I guess I was born to warp the minds of our youth. But it pays enough to handle this sixty-seven dollar bill at this lovely little taqueria, so I’d say corrupting the world with our phone apps is officially worth it.”

“What kind of apps?” she asks.

“Let me see your phone, I’ll show you.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“You…what?”

“I have a phone, but when I go out with friends I don’t bring it,” she says.

“I must admit, I’m shocked.”

“What’s shocking?”

“Now were both phoneless,” I say.

“What could go wrong?” she asks.

She smiles, then takes a little nip of her Mexican beer.

The word regal has never entered my mind but there it is, pasted on the inside of my forehead in neon lights. The marquee underneath reads “and intriguing.” Don’t fuck this up Lou.

11:13 PM

Somehow we’ve found ourselves in a place with a dancefloor but it feels like we are in an unfinished basement. The piping is visible above and there are little mounds of insulation spray that looks like mold. It feels like drinking in a war zone.

Another round of gin and tonics fuel our corner of the bar that shall remain nameless. No, seriously, the bar’s name is Nameless. Ironic isn’t it? I couldn’t be angrier that this is a place now associated with my bar tour, but Marissa’s friend was adamant that it was good.

Christian is off the deep end and has, for all intents and purposes, ditched his own date and is now drunkenly focused on mine. I don’t begrudge him. Marissa is not only drop dead gorgeous, she’s also fucking hilarious. She’s been stealing little glances over Christian’s hunched shoulder at me, winking, which keeps me off of suicide watch. It’s as if she’s entertaining this conversation to get in my head, which only intrigues me more.

Long ago, Professor Lou learned not to show any jealousy. It was around the time those eyes and bangs in the window at the liquor store were attached to a real person. So instead of grabbing Cristian by the arm and escorting him from the premises, I sit next to the friend who still, like this bar, remains nameless. The laidback tactic has always worked for me and, it seems now, is especially working with Christian so intent on embarrassing himself. My talent for hiding my inebriation levels will only increase my standing in Marissa’s eyes. The drunker he gets, the better I look. But somehow this thought doesn’t cure my dejected position. The friend and I sit on our stools, drinking our drinks, with nothing to say to one another. The bartenders wear overalls. So ironic.

Christian finally loses steam and has to go to the bathroom, thankfully leaving Marissa alone. The two had been speaking in Spanish and their staccato conversation felt like a rambling nightmare. Not learning my mother’s native tongue has really come full circle. Christian sneaks behind me and whispers in my ear. “You got any sheet left?”

“What shit?”

“The fucking jyip man. I know jyou hab it.”

The man’s eyes are crossed and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth like an overheated cow. Do I really need him yapping like a chihuahua sped up with a bump of blow?

“Here,” I oblige.

Anything to get him to leave.

A shady high five ensues, which is so obvious it hurts. This maneuver has yet to fail my compadres and I. For half the night, the half with Marissa, I completely forgot about the drug that was keeping me going. Turns out good conversation with a woman is more powerful than any narcotic on the market. And there are always her eyes, those freckles, that could keep a narcoleptic alert.

“Having fun?” Marissa asks.

“Not so much. Your friend isn’t as fun as you are,” I say.

“Poor Lou,” she pinches my cheek like a mother. “Pobrecito.”

“If I knew what that meant I would probably be offended.”

“It means ‘you poor thing,’” she says.

“Is that what I look like?”

“Well, that speech you made at your sister’s was poor. And the vodka was worse. And that girl who looked like she was made out of balloons was the worst of all. But to top it off you let me take a, como se dice, ear bashing from your friend.”

“Ear beating,” I laugh.

“Si, un ear beating,” she pretends to smash her ears. “But you do know how to run a good bar tour. I don’t know if you’re poor or awful, but you are fun. But maybe you’re something else or could be. Yo no sé.”

“Like what?” I ask.

A house song with a Spanish guitar and an off beat blasts from the speakers, exciting Marissa out of her examination of me. The song has the same rhythm of something my mother would listen to in the house, dancing by herself, while her husband sat in a recliner nodding his head off beat. Life with a gringo. Marissa grabs my hand and pulls me to the dancefloor.

She starts the dance by pushing me out to a safe distance, moving her hips, sundress swaying, feet close together, hands rising above her bare shoulders. She moves closer, inch by tortured inch, until her ass just barely brushes against my belt buckle then backs away with a devilish smile. Her eyes lit with a flirtatious joy. I’m not sure what this dance is or how to even keep the beat, but I try to mimic her moves. Dance apart, creep into one another, barely touch, move away. Each turn we take gets closer, quicker, the distance and time between touches becoming smaller and smaller. Every time we make contact I am afraid she is going to feel what can only be described as a polite boner poking her in the back. Is it not okay to show your appreciation for a woman you find attractive? I am too enamored with the sensualness of this ritual to answer that question.

As she works her way around me and then closer and closer and slower and slower I am filled with a rushing urge of need. I grab her hips, slide my hands down her thighs, as her ass gyrates on my belt buckle. If I was sober there’s a chance I wouldn’t have lasted even this long.

She turns around, wrapping her hands around my neck, and I have this Cro-Magnon like urge to carry her back to my cave those social science classes were supposed to have helped me crawl out of. But what did they teach me? By this point I would have had to ask one hundred questions of permission. Can I put my hand there? Is it okay if I smell the sweat dripping down your neck? Does it hurt when I grip your thigh like that?

Ignoring any and all rules, I lean in for a kiss. She cranes her neck as far back as it will go, like Neo dodging a bullet, to avoid my lips. She moves a dangling errant wet curl away from my forehead and pats my head like a little boy. I find the whole thing endearing if not the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. At the change of the song, she leads my dejected body through the dead sea of people.

We sit down at the bar alone. Christian and the friend are still out on the dancefloor. In an attempt to avoid Marissa’s eyes, I watch them, baffled. Their dancing looks like two people humping with clothes on. It’s got a hint of soft-core porn without the smooth jazz. Filthy hip-hop lyrics scream from the speakers. Ya little stupid ass bitch, I ain’t fuckin with you!

For all of Christian’s bodily charm, the long hair, the delts, the jaw line, he moves like a big horny gorilla. His penis is probably the same size as that particular ape’s, which is the only proper explanation for his absurd Instagram persona. His dancing is anything but sexual, almost robotic, an agony of the body only. No soul.

“So jyou know Guaguancó?” she asks.

I turn to Marissa, still embarrassed, but her eyes are filled with green delight.

“No, what’s that?” I ask.

“The dancing we were doing. Not exactly, but close. It’s called Guaguancó. It’s a type of Cuban rumba. You’re telling me you don’t know Spanish or Guaguancó? Ay, dios mìo,” she laughs, smacking her forehead.

I start to gulp what must be my twelfth gin and tonic, trying to wipe away any and all memory of this night, when she presses my arm down, takes my drink, places it on the bar, and grabs my head. She puts her nose to mine. She stays there, our eyes staring into one another, her breath of gin and mint and heat soaking into my upper lip, noses just barely touching. There is something in that point of contact. Some urge deep inside to stay there yet go forward, to kiss the girl without touching lips.

She finally backs away.

“You see? That’s Guaguancó. Getting closer and closer. Teasing and taunting. Building it up. Delaying pleasure.”

Christian disturbs the moment by smacking me on the back while sliding the crackling bag back into my pocket. This trick is far less sketchy. No eye contact or an obvious exchange of goods but there is always anxious hesitation; did the bag make it into the pocket?

I’m not sure if it’s the exhaustion of the dance, the thirty plus drinks I’ve had or the denied kiss but I’m starting to feel a little woozy. I can consciously say I am in the middle of a gray out, where the night starts to come in and out of focus. There is only one remedy for this and that’s to hit the little bag that’s hopefully made it into my pocket.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I announce out of my reverie. “I’ll be right back.”

“Hurry,” she says. “I want to dance more.”

I saddle up in a stall and check for the bag. It all hits me. The drinking. The yip. The noise. Marissa. I close my eyes and the black sways up and down like the ocean at night. It’s almost impossible to focus on one of the broken white tiles behind the toilet. The only way to power through this is another bump, which I find shaking at the end of my key.

This time it does nothing.

The alcohol has won this cat and mouse game.

Images of the stall begin to flash in and out in real time.

The sounds of flushing toilet stutter.

I take out my phone, which looks like three at the moment. I’m sorry this relationship has started off with a lie, Marissa. Please forgive me. I couldn’t just leave it there all alone in the trash. Me and this phone have been through so much together. What if I needed it? What if there was an emergency? What if I thought of something funny to tweet?

Hello?

11:44 PM – April 17th ^– 2015

Sent.

And then there I am, in the mirror. I’m washing my hands but can’t feel the water. My hair is out of control and my eyes look like two glazed donuts. I think the me in the mirror says ‘help’ but I haven’t moved my mouth. Blackout is impending. It’s fight or flight, buddy. Fight or flight.

For quite a while I’ve been put off by the idea of sharing my book via a Substack post. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but I’ve always thought that reading long form fiction is done best with a physical book. Using an E-Reader is a ways down the list of enjoyable ways to read, but it is still preferable to reading on a phone, computer, or tablet. But ever since , that beautiful son of a bitch, took an idea and ran with it, that idea being the ability to send Substack posts to your Kindle or, if you’re a glutton for punishment with a sick kink for killing trees, to print them out (this is me), I’ve opened to the idea of releasing the opening chapters in three parts over the next couple weeks.

So, I introduce to you, thegreatreader.com. An easy way to send long form posts (or any posts for that matter) from your favorite Substack directly to your Kindle via a Chrome Extension. If you’d like to get a preview of my book Hell or Hangover right on the phone or computer, continue reading here. But if you, like me, desire a better reading experience, kick back, relax, pour yourself a drink, and send this bitch to your Kindle (or print it out, you sick fuck!).

I hope you enjoy it.

Then buy it.

Hell or Hangover

By

Alex Muka

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2025 by Alex Muka

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: alexandermuka@gmail.com

First edition printed in 2025 by:

OME OMY Publishing L.L.C.

Red Bank, NJ

Cover design by

ISBN 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X (ebook)

www.hellorhangover.com

In your love,

Tara

Friday

April 17th, 2015

7:19 PM

Every night starts the same. The pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking starts. It makes stepping off the PATH train from Hoboken into New York City more difficult than it should be, but it’s hard to blame my current state on booze alone.

It began in the liquor store on Washington Ave. As I procured the refreshments my legs turned to jelly, or maybe it is natural to duck when you see a phantom in the store’s window. There were the same eyes from ten years prior, brown and chaotic and shaded by dark bangs, then floor. As I stood back up, Arianna, or her doppelganger, had disappeared. I struggled to grasp if what I saw was real or imagined. It was either a ghost from the past or another hallucination, a side-effect of partying for a decade.

My current predicament, the way my lower half feels part elephant and my vision seems to have been set behind an off-kilter gray sheet, could also be blamed on the difference in height New York City maintains over my beloved Hoboken. A quick look up could leave me as dizzy as a tourist. But I am not looking up. The buildings around me are a peripheral blur; a side note to the phone in my hand. It’s become a daily chore trying to translate my rambling thoughts into 140 characters.

What to tweet, what to tweet?

My Twitter profile picture shows a twenty-three-year-old male, white enough to have a couple beers, drive, and not worry about acquiring my first DUI, yet Latino enough to have a curly mess of brown hair and an even tan. You can’t tell from the picture that I can dance the bachata or cook rabo de toro or that now, two years after this picture was taken, my curls are beginning to thin. Distinguished would be a nice way of putting it. Fun doesn’t come without consequences. At the preposterous age of twenty-five, I’m an old man in this game. But what I lack in youth I make up for in dedication.

What to tweet, what to tweet?

I could go with my thoughts on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Maybe my take on the gender pay gap. I could even enlighten my audience with a small diatribe on the current state of the flailing American empire. But the people don’t want that. My followers don’t care and neither do I. Give the three hundred loyalists what they want Lou.

I can’t help but laugh. Graduating college was supposed to have magically matured me. I took enough social science classes to have crawled from my cave. If the exhilaration of SOC 2200 – Working Women didn’t get the engines revving on the quest to grow up then nothing would. This was all supposed to end after shutting that last blue book. Looking back on it, college was the perennial pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking started.

What to tweet, what to tweet?

I wonder what hates me more after college…my liver, my wallet, or my parents.

7:20 PM – April 17th – 2015

Sent.

“Lou, c’mon!”

I know this voice is Kyle Aisle’s. It’s got that whiny tinge to it, like a child begging for his mom. He knows as much as I do that being late to my sister’s party will end in an earful at best.

I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to orient myself. I’ve been here before. Hopelessly drunk and in the moment. I wonder, for a second, if this night will be just like every other night. The noise, the talking, the noise, the bathroom, the yip, the shot, another shot, the talking, the noise, the drink, the bathroom, the yip, the shot, the drink, another drink…a desperate march.

There’s got to be a reason to stop this charade. I just haven’t found her yet.

Shit, Freudian slip.

I just haven’t found it yet.

7:21 PM

My legs begin to remember their purpose walking west down 31^st. I’m flanked by my two compatriots, Kyle Aisle and Chris VanNeece, who I’ve dragged to my sister’s going away party under false pretenses. This party will surely suck, there’s no doubt, which is why I’ve decided to withhold such information from their pretty little heads.

“So, like I was saying, we went to the bar for a couple of drinks first and then I took her out to dinner. We were talking all night, no awkward silences or anything, which for me is a rarity. She’s the receptionist at the veterinarian I go to for my mom’s dog, remember?” Kyle asks.

I have no idea what he’s talking about. I still can’t get past his outfit. I’ve told him time and again you have a 60% chance of getting laid if you dress in joggers, a hoodie, and some sneakers, but he insists on going with the 70s album cover look. A pleather jacket, baggy jeans, and boots are a sure-fire way to scare any suitors away.

“Sure Aisle, keep going,” I say.

“I asked her if her day was ‘ruff’. She loved it,” he says.

My legs were heavy but now I’m floating, as if gravity shut off or the world stopped spinning on its axis. Learning Santa isn’t real was less disappointing than hearing this garbage fall out of Aisle’s mouth. Ruff? Fucking ruff? He seems unfazed.

“Jesus bro,” VanNeece says.

VanNeece’s caterpillar eyebrows touch at the center in concern. He’s got so many facial follicles it’s hard to tell if he’s made of skin or hair. Forgive his father’s half-German ancestry, VanNeece is actually a good Italian boy. Even with the Reich-ish last name, VanNeece has the accent of a gumba. It’s as if Tony Soprano has been squeezed into chinos one size too small and is stating my sentiments exactly.

“Never mind,” Aisle says.

“C’mon bro, just finish the story,” VanNeece says.

“No, never mind.”

Kyle’s got the pout of a giraffe. He wants us to care. It’s hard enough to care about myself and now I’m supposed to care about Kyle too? The same Kyle that doesn’t heed my warnings. The same Kyle that doesn’t take my advice. Kyle, poor Kyle.

“Just finish the story,” I say, glancing at my phone.

An email notification pops up from my boss, something about a new phone app being released on Monday. All employees are to promote said app on every social media platform throughout the weekend. I ignore it. Even if the email was life or death and had been sent on Wednesday at noon it would have been just as easily ignored. At work I skirt by, collect my middling paycheck, and try not to get in anyone’s way. The key to my professional success as a phone app marketer is keeping a low profile and being the son of a silent partner. Nepotism sounds like a form of government in a struggling Asian country but it is thriving right here in the Garden State.

“Alright, fine,” Aisle continues. “I walked her back to her apartment, which is far. All the way down by the movie theatre on 14^th Street. I’m figuring, if she made me walk that far she’s obviously going to let me up…”

Aisle pauses for dramatic effect. My phone vibrates again. I look down at a notification.

1 Snapchat from Kristen Birdock.

A recent ex.

Odd.

“And…” I say, barely listening.

“She lets me up! Then we start making out on her bed and I start kissing her ears and she loves it. She’s making this little moaning sound like ahhuu, ahuuuhaah.”

“That sounds like crying, Aisle,” I say.

“So, I unbutton her pants and start playing with her a little and she starts to get really, really wet and then…”

“Aright, we get it. Spare us and get to the point. You’re no Anaïs Nin,” I say.

“Who’s Anaïs Nin?” VanNeece asks.

“Just finish the story,” I say.

“So, we’re about to have sex and she…she starts to cry…” Aisle says.

“Jesus bro,” VanNeece contributes to the conversation again.

“See. I knew it,” I say.

“She said she just broke up with her boyfriend. That she missed him. She made a compelling argument. Even I shed a little tear,” Aisle says.

“You actually cried with her?” I ask.

Aisle’s pause leads me to believe the veracity of his statement.

“Jesus bro,” VanNeece repeats.

“Why does this shit always happen to me? I can’t catch a break,” Aisle whines.

“Aisle, let me see this girl,” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Pull her up on Instagram,” I insist.

“I don’t have Instagram. I’ll look her up on Facebook.”

“And you ask me why this always happens to you? A girl can smell that kind of technological desperation the minute you pick her up,” I say.

I’ve broken this down for Kyle thousands of times. Half the battle with women these days is finding out who they are before you even strike up a conversation and Professor Lou is here to illuminate the way.

First, the obvious: is she hot? If she looks good in her pictures hopefully she’ll look good in real life. This isn’t always the case. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a photoshopped picture is worth a thousand questions. With filters, fillers, jaw-line makeup, and the surgery now available to women, it is almost impossible to tease out the real from the fake. It’s not their fault. It’s the nature of the medium.

Second, does she have a boyfriend? Most girls that do have a boyfriend incessantly post pictures with them. It’s easy to spot the taken from the single. People think this is a bad thing; they’re sick of having relationships shoved in their faces at all times. They’re wrong. The girls that you have absolutely no chance with are the girls that hardly post pictures at all. These girls aren’t looking for any social reassurance. Their confidence is doing just fine and that does nothing for me. It’s the ones that need to prove their relationship online that will crash and burn. The key here is to catch one of these girls between boyfriends. The rebound. The breakup back board. If Aisle had paid attention he would have known that there is a Goldilocks zone. Not too soon and not too late post breakup. It’s actually easy to know when to swoop in, bringing me to my third, final, and most important piece of advice…

Has she posted any emotional quotes in the last month? If any girl has posted the, “If you love someone let them go. If they return they were always yours. If they don’t they never were” quote, or other recycled trash then you know the girl needs a helping hand. There’s no reason to confuse morality with results here, just read the signs. Open your myopic eyes. Women are always begging you to pay attention, this is your chance.

You can call me an animal. A misogynist. A misinformed maniac. Say what you want. But this is how it works. You don’t go into a test without studying, do you? You don’t make a speech without practicing it, right? It’s called preparation. Why waste all this valuable information people are so intent on throwing at you? Luck is where hard work meets opportunity.

7:27 PM

A cab would have been the preferred option, but we somehow make it through the tourist traps of mid-town into Chelsea on foot. The streets become progressively greener. Vendors vanish. Foot traffic thins. The feint hint of river muck begins to overpower the smell of Sabrett. Though it’s tough to know where I’m going while viewing a Snapchat, the disappearing I <3 NY signs in my periphery mean I’m headed in the right direction.

The video starts out facing a bathroom stall. There’s a dick etched into the door with the words suck it in vulgar black sharpie. Maybe I really did screw her over, I wonder, until the camera flips, showing Kristen Birdock sitting on a toilet with her tits out and a hand over her nether region. She giggles. The words “miss me?” slide across the screen. Subtle.

Though I’m tempted to screenshot the last two seconds, I follow the unwritten Snapchat rules. Unless it’s your girlfriend, you cannot screenshot nudes. Chivalry is clearly alive and kicking. Just like that, with my pearls clutched and mouth agape, the video disappears.

“I don’t think she has a Facebook,” Aisle finally says.

“Huh?” I say, staring at my phone.

“What’s so interesting down there?” Aisle asks.

“What? Nothing. What were you saying?” I ask.

“No, what’s so important?”

“Uh, Kristen sent me a Snap,” I say.

“What?!” Aisle yelps.

“Hea we go again,” VanNeece says, rolling his eyes.

“What?” I feign ignorance. “It was very low-key. Nothing to see here.”

I shoot off a wink at Aisle that will surely make his head explode.

7:31 PM

A block later Aisle looks constipated. He pushes his hands through his slicked back blonde hair, sucking in a breath. His eyes search the ground as if he’s lost an earring. An earring is all he’s missing with the outfit he’s gone with tonight. But lightning does finally strike that thick skull of his.

“She sent you a nude? A fucking nude?” he finally yells.

“I am not at liberty to discuss private Snapchats between one consenting adult and another, Aisle. Now please, continue your story.”

“I just don’t get it,” Aisle can’t stop himself. “How the hell do you find these girls? After all the shit you did to her she still wants you?”

“What shit did I do to her?” I ask.

“C’mon! The girl wanted to wife you. That little ball of perfection wanted to be with you. Didn’t she make you dinner every night for an entire month?”

“Two times a week…10 weeks. And only one dinner,” I correct him.

“What?”

“Forget it,” I say.

“If you don’t want to wife her then I don’t know up from down,” Aisle says.

“Aisle, let me break this down for you. On the surface Kristen might seem perfect. On the outside everything goes according to plan. She’s short with a set of legs that look good from skirt to legging, a tight yet protruding ass, and tits that are deceivingly large. She even pulls off a bob. Only true beauties can pull off a bob. So far so good, no?”

Aisle nods. Even VanNeece’s eyes widen and his head begins to shake up and down.

“Once you go one layer deep it all falls apart,” I say.

“How? She’s cool, she goes out to the bar with us, she holds her drinks. Shit she even buys us drinks sometimes,” Aisle says.

“Fair. Two layers deep then. You guys don’t see everything else. You don’t get handed the phone to take a thousand pics for the ‘gram. You don’t watch her brain melt when it comes to writing a caption. You weren’t there for brunch that day. I had to end it. I had no choice.”

“Aint that every girl?” VanNeece asks.

“That’s right, and another reason why I’m not wifing anyone up.”

Aisle’s thinking again and it looks like it hurts. “You’re twenty-five. Your parents got married when your dad was twenty. They’re the happiest couple I’ve ever seen,” he finally says.

“That’s called an enigma, Aisle.”

My parents are an enigma. I am constantly reminded of their seven-day “courting.” By the end of one week my dad was on bended knee asking my mother to marry him with a ring-pop. This breaks all of Professor Lou’s rules and should be considered a dangerous outlier. Looking at a dataset and making policy from one little dot out in no man’s land is something a true Professor would never do.

“And besides,” I continue, “my mom’s the shit. You think there are any women out there as cool as her? Highly doubtful.”

“This is true. But don’t sell ya’ dad short,” VanNeece chirps.

My eyes roll back near my occipitalis. My dad has a soft spot for VanNeece for the simple reason that he gives a fuck about his job. He thinks I can learn a thing or two from a semi-successful investment banker. I could tell my pops how VanNeece has taught me how to properly snort drugs. That’s a thing or two, I guess.

“Let’s get back to the subject, Lou,” Aisle says. “I’m talking about you and Kristen.”

“There is no subject, Aisle. I’m not wife-ing anyone until I’m at least thirty,” I say.

“Right, when all the good ones are gone. Good plan,” he says.

It sounds good to me.

7:42 PM

The entrance to my sister’s low-rise building is like a maze designed by Kevin McAllister. Avoid the hand-sculpted planters. Duck under the potted banana tree. Miss the cacti set like mouse traps. Make it through the forest and into the loft.

The pregame is supposed to lead to the game but the jungle that greeted us at the door has now turned desert. Though I didn’t expect much, a party shouldn’t sound like a movie theatre. Half the attendees are hued in blue light, necks bent, phones in hand, glazed over eyes. Leonard Cohen leaks out of the speakers. VanNeece and Aisle look at me as if I were Judas. I avoid eye contact. This “party” resembles a funeral.

What’s scarier than my friends’ disappointment is my sister making a beeline for us as soon as we walk in. If it came out one day that she is the product of my mother’s affair with a large Viking, it would surprise no one. It would be even less surprising if she were, at the bare minimum, adopted. If my mother indeed had Kimberly, I cringe to imagine the pain her pregnancy caused. Not because of the lack of resemblance, but because it’s possible Kimberly was taller than my mother at the time of her birth. Long, blonde, and built like a Norse goddess are probably terms you will never hear associated with the woman who gave Kimberly life. My mother is a short woman with dark features born on the island of Cuba. Alas, baby pictures in our mom’s palms have surfaced from a time in which photoshop was not possible.

“Why are you late? You killed the vibes,” my sister says.

VanNeece yawns while Aisle stares at her with his mouth open.

“There aren’t really any vibes to kill sis,” I say.

“That’s why I told you to come early. Do what you do already!” she says.

Without hesitation, and the faint but all too real prospect of getting beaten up by my big sister, we each man our stations. VanNeece heads toward the iPhone connected to the speakers, prepping anything other than the nap-inducing playlist they’ve got on. Aisle ravages the place for shot glasses and plastic cups. My job is to get everyone’s attention, which shouldn’t be too hard. The problem with this “party” is that all of my sister’s friends are actually her co-workers.

Kimberly started her business two years after graduating college; two years into the trap they call the “real world.” That high-speed car you can see coming from miles away. The options are pretty simple: you can step out of the way nice and early, you can lunge out of the way just in time, or you can get mushed by it.

I’m currently in the mushed phase.

My sister took option number two. If it wasn’t for me she might not be so lucky. Her lunge happened when she decided to visit me at college one weekend, long ago. It was a move of desperation. She was a devout disapprover of my shenanigans, but she was fresh off a nasty breakup. I missed the early Friday morning pick up from the train station due to aforementioned shenanigans and she ended up meeting an old man who taught her how to make a simple chair out of wood. Kimberly is lucky like that. Things don’t simply fall in her lap, but leap towards it. I didn’t see her all weekend, or the subsequent six months, even though we technically lived in the same town. She left with a skill and an idea for a business. I left with a degree and a drinking habit.

That story becomes an anecdote of grand proportions as I walk around her loft. If ever you must live on an island packed with over 9 million souls mashed together into some post-Darwinian hell hole, this is the way to do it – in a loft decorated by the now semi-Instafamous Kimberly Kennedy.

The ceiling is far, far away, aloof to the action below. Tillandsia, peace lilies, and money plants of all different ethnicities, shapes, and sizes pour oxygen into the already airy room. It is like walking into a casino pumped hourly with fresh air but replacing the smell of stale cigarette with soil.

The décor has a warming effect on the room. There is the red oak coffee table made from a tree that fell in the backyard of our childhood home, made by Kim Kennedy. It is surrounded by a group of hand-knitted cushions and pillows like a Bedouin gold mine, knitted by Kim Kennedy. Wheel-crafted pots with Mexican blue patterns hold succulents and ferns with dead ends, made by Kim Kennedy. Uncomfortable, yet beautiful, one-off chairs are scattered around haphazardly to the naked eye, though knowing Kim I am sure everything down to the leaf has its aesthetic purpose. There is even a house phone…yes, a candlestick house phone lined with smooth balsa wood and a rotary dial. It actually works, too. I tested it out one night making random prank calls into the wire-connected microphone.

The true masterpiece is the bookcase covering the entirety of the wall opposite the open kitchen. A work in progress for years, each section is a slightly different color wood filled with juxtaposing colored book sleeves.

“This isn’t a library,” she told me once. “I can organize my books any way I feel like it. The colors speak to me more than those dead men anyway.”

This is where Kim and I diverge in opinion. I am slightly colorblind and would rather read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love for the fifth time than blankly stare at a Picasso in an attempt to pull meaning from it. This may make me uncultured. I do not argue this point. But I can still appreciate the beauty of the ivy intertwining between shelves of unread 19^th century classics as if the entire case and its contents were breathing.

It isn’t until I see the newest addition, a rolling ladder, that my infantile joy takes over. Attempting to resist the urge is futile. The momentum of my run and jump propels me and the ladder to the far edge of the masterpiece. The ladder abruptly runs out of track and plants me face first at the bottom of a set of stairs, just a little more disoriented than I already am.

Hoping no one saw my little tumble, I turn to the kitchen. The few glances my way are more out of fear than judgement.

“Who is that feral boy?” I hear in a hushed tone.

This job is going to be harder than I thought.

My phone vibrates.

Kristen: Hi

7:50 PM

Now this, this is more confusing than the Snapchat. At least I understood that video’s message loud and clear. It’s not the word that is confusing me, it’s the meaning behind it. It doesn’t get more open ended than ‘hi’, especially when we haven’t spoken in months. But that still begs the question, how do I respond?

I decide to do some more digging to see if I can get closer to the truth of what this “hi” is all about. Kristen’s Instagram is a plethora of feminine propaganda but damn if she doesn’t look good. There are pictures of her doing that back leg kick in different low-cut dresses, iced coffee selfies, hoodies by a fire, and two or three with that squat pose where one leg is straight and the other is tucked under her ass. If I didn’t know any better I would agree with Aisle’s assessment that this girl is wife material. But I do know better.

Knowing does little to quell my curiosity though. Her place is in Murray Hell, I mean Hill. Cab distance from my sister’s. A hop, skip, and jump from a Plan C…Plan B, let alone Plan A, has eluded me thus far.

7:51 PM

The new Drake wakes me out of my perusal, blasting at a decibel that has the makings of a good time. Thank God. That’s my cue to get the party’s attention.

“Everyone…”

My voice is cut short by a whisper in my ear.

“Hey…”

Two mounds of fake flesh pressed into a tank top grab my eyes before they can make out the mystery whisperer. These two melons are easily discernable. A birthmark on top of the left breast might as well be a bullseye.

“Bridget. How are you?” I ask.

When I look up her small black eyes are overshadowed by matted-on mascara. Her eyelashes resemble dreadlocks. I’m sure those are fake too but, to each their own. It’s hard to focus on lash when there is so much boob.

“Could be better. This party is boring. Nothing like those college parties your sister let you come to. I can’t believe I almost took advantage of such a good young boy. How much do you miss me?” she asks.

A memory flashes before my eyes. Bridget, a couch, those large breasts out in the wild, and then my sister and her ex. Yelling, fighting, a push, a shove, my fist landing on the douchebag’s chin, my hard on turning into a piece of cooked spaghetti. Nowhere near al dente.

“I miss college…and you, of course,” I say.

“I think I’m going to Finale later if you want to come. I know the promoter there,” she says.

“Hmm, when are you going?”

“Well, it doesn’t really get good until two, so probably three.”

I’ve taken a peek at Bridget’s Instagram before and I am starting to connect the dots. Bridget has turned into a bit of a bottle rat. By a “bit of,” I mean she’s the Master Splinter of bottle rats. The bottle rat is a new species, one evolved from the powder room ladies of the late 1940s. They see themselves as the new Café Society but without the mystique and elegance. The main habitat of this animal is the club, and the club only. We are very lucky to see one so outside of her element. Usually, bottle rats hunt in packs, swarming to the hottest and loudest club. Words like “DJ” and “Bottle Service” are pheromonal to these creatures, attracting different subspecies from far and wide. These subspecies range from The Un-Fuckables (sexus habere nihil) all the way to the Two Steppers (duo gradus). My sister hiring Bridget to run her social media was probably her smartest decision to date.

As a professor of debauchery, I do get quite pedantic in my observations. Going to a club with Bridget would mean running into all sorts of creatures. But it is something to do if nothing else presents itself.

“I’m down,” I’m shocked to hear myself say. “Later, of course.”

Knowing my penis was responsible for that answer, I try and stay focused on Bridget’s head. The voodoo trickery of her breasts in my face has made a potential late-night Plan B disaster. Plan A still eludes me.

7:55 PM

“Everyone!” I start over. “Let’s take a shot for my sister here and wish her good luck on her trip to London. It’s been a long road, as you all know. And, really, you’re welcome. None of this would have happened if I had just picked my sister up from the train on time. So, cheers to you, and cheers to me. The best of friends, we’ll never be. And if we ever disagree, fuck you, and cheers to me.”

The shot glasses are already aligned on the table thanks to my trusty sidekicks. Hesitant hands reach out one by one and take the shots which I regrettably find out contain warm vodka. Even I can’t hold in a shudder as I give my sidekicks a look of disgust.

As bad as the vodka is, it seems to be working as the party lubricant and, coupled with VanNeece’s playlist of new hip-hop, we seem to have this AARP group ready to shake out the cobwebs.

8:21 PM

I take another shot by myself and receive a skeptical look from a couple in the corner wearing matching sweaters. I pour two extras, which their wine glasses are quickly switched out for. All this entertaining makes me fiendish.

I try and force eye contact with VanNeece, who somehow has gotten himself into a heated debate with one of Kimberly’s employees. There is a vein popping out of his neck and his hands are flailing and the poor employee looks like he’s about to cry. Somehow I am able to pull a Jedi mind trick, or VanNeece is over the argument, and as he looks at me, I lightly tap my nose like a baseball manager throwing up signs to steal second. He nods. We head to the bathroom.

VanNeece deftly crafts two landing strips of white powder on the bathroom sink. He hands me a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill as we look at each other in the mirror and laugh. His smile is somehow soothing. This? It’s just a phase, it says.

The bill is in my left nostril. It smells clean. If I didn’t know any better I would assume Wall Street prints the bills right there. It’s also possible that VanNeece and his Wall Street friends have an ironing board at the office for cash only.

The white line disappears into my nose as the bill moves across the sink. The yip freezes at first, then burns, like running cold hands under hot water. My brain frosts and thaws out within seconds. Breathing deep, I snort in one more time to clear my nose, nullifying the ten plus drinks I’ve consumed so far. This is the power of the powder.

“This fuckin’ guy out there was lecturin’ me about capitalism. Said I was something like Hitler fa’ working at an investment bank,” VanNeece says. “Maybe this’ll calm me down.”

He taps out another bump on the webbing of his thumb and the little mound rockets up his nose.

“Doubtful,” I say.

I could agree with the employee and call my friend a selfish, money-hungry sycophant, but is a man who shares his prosperity with my party-pipe really a selfish, money-hungry sycophant? How dare I even think such filth about such a generous human. A comrade in this same crusade.

“What are we doing here anyway?” he asks.

“We won’t stay all night. I just have to see my sister off. She’s going to live with her boyfriend in England for a few months.”

“But she’ll be back?”

“Yea,” I say.

“Then what’s the fuckin point of a party?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“Anyway, how about that Bridget chick?” he asks me.

He lays out another two lines. I don’t object. My body needs more more more now now now always always always.

“Smokin’ right?” I reply.

“Yeah,” VanNeece says. “I was talking to her before that freak got in my ear. She wants us to go to Finale later. I know the promoter. He could probably hook us up with a table for only like $250 each. Which isn’t too bad considering. We’ll leave here at like 12 and get there before it gets too packed. We’ll definitely get a table.”

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror.

“What?” VanNeece asks.

“I said, I’m down.”

“We’ll definitely get a table,” he repeats.

His jaws are clenched, making ripples in the sides of his cheeks. He hands me an extra bag for safekeeping. That wondrous powder has a way of solving all problems. In this particular case it’s helped me come up with a diabolical plan. A plan that will go down in the record books. A plan that they will write novels about. I text Kristen back.

Me: Hi

Even I am shocked at the subtle genius of such a text back.

VanNeece and I run a nose check before walking out, tilting our heads back and checking to see if there are any white bats in the cave. Drugs aren’t so bad as long as no one knows you’re on them.

I wrote this a while ago for a Writing Battle competition where you get dealt a set of cards with the genre, subject, and action that needs to happen in the story, a word count (1,000 for this one), and three days to complete it. This was my submission. I forget what the cards were…but I remember there needed to be a shovel in it. One of the anonymous judges called me racist for this story due to the use of Spanglish. I stopped doing the competitions.

“You’ve survived 634 attempts on your life Mr. Castro. What do you attribute this to? Luck, wit, providence?”

Fidel Castro puffed on his cigar. The thickness of the brown wrapped tobacco made his fingers seem frail. He had lost the physical vitality of the character I had grown up seeing in pictures and on television. The man who launched into hour long speeches, hung out of invading Jeep’s, threw opening pitches at baseball games, was now just a jaundice bird under a heavy blanket. There I was, thinking I’d be interviewing the great Castro, but it felt more like an afternoon conversation with my grandfather.

“Jyou know,” he said in broken English. “I ang a bery lucky man. I hab outlasted eleben Presidentes de Estados Unidos and mucho asesinatos intentos. I gib all glory to mi cocinero.”

“Your cook?” I asked.

“Si, claro. Without her I would be un dead man.”

Behind him was the cook. She was hard at work over a cast iron cauldron that rested over a small fire. I watched as she mashed the contents inside, tasting the brown liquid with the tip of her pinky, adding different colored spices with a small garden shovel from a myriad of plastic bowls on the grass around her. She wore no shoes and her dress, which was more of a smock, was all white. Her hair was wrapped in a white scarf. She couldn’t have been older than twenty and she was stunning to watch.

“She looks very young to have saved you from all those assassination attempts, Mr. Castro.”

His mouth moved into a smirk around the cigar.

“Ella es un alma vieja,” he said. “Un old soul.”

We sat under a large mamay tree. The smoke from his cigar sputtered out with less vigor than drool. When he breathed there was a small hiss from his lungs that could only be attributed to the twenty plus cigars he smoked per day for a lifetime. He had offered me one and it now sat lifeless in my fingers. I was nervous to ask him for a relight.

“What is she cooking now?” I asked.

“Ropa Vieja. Jyou know ropa vieja?”

“No, I don’t know that I do.”

“Slow cooked flank steak en un sauce de tomato. Olibs, onyons, peppers. Es el sabor de Cuba. Ropa es clothes, vieja es old. Old clothes.”

Embarrassment crept up my throat. I was still wondering why I was conducting this interview with the famous dictator. I knew little Spanish, less about Cuba, and couldn’t name a single dish at a Cuban restaurant. But it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Something you don’t say no to. When you’re working at a random newspaper in New Jersey and you’re the only Cuban (1/4^th to be exact) employee and Fidel Castro decides to award your paper one last interview, you take it.

“¿Cuando esta la cena?” he yelled, trying to turn around in his seat to project his voice to the cook.

“Quince minutos mas,” she replied.

He turned back towards me in his chair.

“Yjou were saying?”

“We were talking about the many assas-”

I don’t know if my mouth had stopped working, or my mind had been wiped, but I could not continue my question as I watched the cook dig with her garden shovel into a pit of dirt. She looked like a dog shoveling back piles of brown between her legs. She dug and dug until she hit what I could only imagine was China. She took a small heaping of the darkest earth I’d ever seen, walked to the cauldron, and placed it in as if it were pepper.

“What is she doing?” I asked.

The smirk on Castro’s face turned into a grin and then a chuckle.

“Do yjou know what an Iyanifa is?”

Now that I’d heard of. A Santeria priestess. I nodded my head.

“This woman has many talents my friend. She es un chef, un lover, y un Iyanifa. And she has kept me alibe for all these years.”

“So, the dirt is…”

“Yo no se. Pero I don’t ask questions I do not want to know the answers. Jyou understand?”

He chuckled and puffed again on his cigar, this time blowing out a plume of smoke that washed over the table between us. I took a sip of the drink the cook had brought to us and wondered what was in it. Dirt? Insects? A sacrificed animal?

“Jyou know why I ang always at odds with el Estados Unidos?”

It’s a question I should have been interested in as a journalist. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the cook. She was now using the butt of the garden shovel to mash what looked like a small dry chicken bone. She slid the mashed bone into the cauldron, whispered words with her eyes closed, and then slit her hand. I got up from my chair as she gripped her wrist. Blood dropped into the cauldron. I checked my pockets for anything to stop the bleeding as I ran over. Then she whispered more words and I thought, for a split second, that she had turned old. Her hair was wispy and grey, there were patches of bare skull, and her skin drooped. It retracted just as quickly. The skin reformed tight to her bones. Her mane of hair flowed a vibrant brown.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Claro que si. What do jyou mean?” she asked.

She was chopping garlic with a knife. There was no cut on her hand or garden shovel in site.

I felt heat and smoke at the back of my neck.

“Her blood is for my protection,” Fidel said “Your blood is for her.”

The cook’s knife had glided through my throat like butter and as my chin dropped to my chest, I watched my own blood flow into the cauldron.

“Viva la revoluciòn,” were the last words I heard.

Random people will come up to you and tell you these are the days. They will look at your children, aged one and four, and tell you to cherish every moment. They will do it in public, they will do it private, they will do it while your kid screams bloody murder on the streets of New York covered in snow. You will look at them as if they have five heads, a hydra of misinformation, because you are in it and you don’t understand what is so special about your child violently refusing to wear a jacket in 30-degree weather. You have been walking for an hour attempting to get to Rockefeller Center and you can’t feel your fingers or your toes, and your kids have had enough of the day in the city. They liked the hotel. They liked to watch the falling snow from the warmth of a king size bed. Now they are over it. And so are you. But these are the days…

What brought you to this moment was a little shindig in the Lower East Side courtesy of . It is your first time being published in a magazine. Your wife knew there was no way out of this one. You were going and the only question was how you would get there. Would you drive? Maybe, though that would hinder your persona as the guy who likes to have a few pops. Would you take a train? You could, but you would have to take a train from Red Bank to Penn Station and then from there take a subway to the Lower East Side, and then do the entire charade back to good ol’ New Jersey. A solid two hours both ways. And then there is the little trouble of snow in the forecast. There is supposed to be a lot of it starting around midnight. What to do, what to do?

“How about we spend the night in the city?” your wife asks. “It will be perfect. The girls can wake up in the morning to a snow-covered New York City and you can keep up your cool-guy-drunk persona to people you have never met before except through dm’s on Substack you fucking loser.”

What a woman you married. She gets you. She sees right down to who you really are. She understands you at the atomic level. You love this woman with all your heart.

So you book a hotel room, a very expensive hotel room at that, because your wife will not be slumming it at a Motel 6 in a neighborhood with a high murder rate while taking care of two children as you go play act your little dream of being a writer in the big city. She also refuses to go to any hotels that are not exquisitely decorated for Christmas.

“If we’re going to the city in December,” she says, “we are going to do it right goddamnit.” Luckily, you have points to soften the blow to your bank account.

The madness of getting the girls packed up and out of the house is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. You will always forget something. As long as you don’t forget a child or your wallet it doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. You’ve been watching Home Alone with your daughters in a whole new light since having kids. You understand now that this movie is not fantastical. It’s hard to keep track of two kids in the house let alone the McAlister’s five on their way to Paris. Now add on cousins, aunts, and uncles? Forget it. Kevin getting left behind was just a matter of course.

In a weird cosmic irony, you watched Home Alone 2 with your daughter just the night before. She has been begging to go to New York City ever since watching it the first time. She detests Marv, finds him terrifying, but likes Harry. This is how you know you raised your kid right and in New Jersey. Your four-year-old intuitively knows that Joe Pesci is a real one.

Somehow you succeed in your mission of getting everyone in the car by 5 PM. You even packed everything in one suitcase, which is a feat for your wife. Even if it’s for one night and one day in New York City, your wife needs choices. She could wear a sweatshirt and jeans and be the most beautiful woman in the world, but boy do you cherish watching her get dolled up. Sure, you’ll be late to an event or two in your lifetime, but it’s worth it. One piece of advice you could give to any man is to let your woman enjoy getting ready. Even if she acts like The Grinch getting ready to go to the Holiday Whobilation, she’s partly doing it for you.

She wants to look good in your eyes. She wants to be seen by other women, of course, but she wants your eyes to bulge and your heart to pound when she walks out of that bathroom. So let her pack the bag to the brim. Let her pack an extra three pairs of shoes if she needs it. Ten dresses? Who cares. So what if you have to carry an extra bag or five on most vacations? Your wife will at least look hot whilst you look like Cindy Lou Who.

In the car your four-year-old has the excitement of a puppy. She loves hotels. She’s always loved hotels. Watching Home Alone 2 didn’t help. You know your bank account will have a problem with this one. She likes dresses and makeup too. She is your beautiful first born and if your wife doesn’t make you go bankrupt, this one surely will.

Your second born is a lunatic who is napping. A nap at this hour, from this child, will surely ruin your wife’s night because this one is simply recharging the psycho batteries to deploy them on your hotel room when she wakes up. She will surely hurt herself and break something of value in the hotel room. You’ve already come to terms with the fact that you will not be getting your security deposit back because this little one is along for the trip.

The Holland Tunnel is mesmerizing to your girls. They cannot comprehend that you are underwater but the lights, THE LIGHTS, are magical. Pair that with Christmas music and it’s like they have been transported into a dream of their wildest making. Meanwhile you are having war-like flashbacks of your days living in Hoboken, riding through this tunnel in the back seat of a cab seeing 12 lanes and way over tipping the driver while profusely thanking him for getting your drunk ass home in one piece.

“Just wait until we get into the city,” your wife says. “Now that’s lights.”

Once out of the tunnel, between ooo’s and aaa’s at the glory of the city, there is one incessant question, if we’re in the city…why aren’t we there yet? Your four-year-old asks at least five times during the circle post tunnel.

“Three miles girls,” you say.

Those three miles will take about 30 minutes to venture through. You leave that part out.

The check-in is tame, though you do get a few nasty looks from what must be members of the fan club. You don’t give a fuck whether people want kids or not but don’t look at the future of the entire world as if they are merely loud inconveniences. You, yes you, were a piece of shit child once and someone put up with you. They might have even loved you. The horror! Since having children, you have now started judging every person on earth based on how big they smile when they see your children (or if they smile at all). This will go on for as long as they are young and adorable. You don’t expect anyone to smile at them when they are asshole teenagers.

Mixed in with the utter contempt from New York’s snobbiest looking visitors were a few smiles and laughs as your oldest daughter begged to ride your piece of luggage like a horse. One woman told you, unsolicited, for the first time on this trip, that she wished her kids were that old again. That it was the best time of her life. That these are the days. You nodded, smiled, then chased after the one year old who was about to rip a page out of a very expensive looking coffee table book.

Within thirty minutes you are on the road. Kids are safe. Wife is safe. They’ve ordered room service burgers, chicken fingers, and fries that will cost you an arm and a leg and they have all changed into pajamas and put on Home Alone 2 again and you wish, for a moment, that you could just stay in with them. A party can’t beat this even if it is your first time being published, even if you are going to be chatting with a bunch of writers, even if got his ass here from Louisiana. You still think, for a very small, fleeting moment, that you would rather just stay in bed with your wife and kids on a cold December night in a New York City hotel.

Oh please…

Don’t fool the readers.

You were chomping at the bit to get out of there. A party. A literary party. With your name under your words in a printed magazine! You couldn’t fucking wait to hit the liquor store to procure a bottle of gin you planned on taking to the dome. You couldn’t wait to hobnob with people you’ve never met before. You couldn’t wait to see your friend and editor Adam Pearson. You couldn’t wait to ear beat some unsuspecting victims about your own book. You wanted out of that hotel the minute you checked in.

So please…

Don’t fool the readers.

You hold the bottle of gin like it’s the baby Jesus in the cab ride to the gallery. It’s very important you crack this open right away because you’re nothing without a drink or two in you. You think about cracking it open right then and there, in the cab, and taking a swig, but your better angel narrowly wins that battle. You can wait the two seconds it will take for the bartender to open it up and pour you a drink.

And that is all it takes. Two seconds. You walk in to the Space LES Art Gallery and go directly up to the bar without saying hello to anyone that is already at the party, place the gin bottle and tonic waters on the table, and ask for one without even introducing yourself. Good thing has manners and asks you your name. You tell her and then she pours you a drink and then you both start fawning over , the novel and the man, upset that he will not be attending due to unforeseen circumstances.

While chugging sipping your drink you receive a big and gracious hug from the man of the hour, the man who has made your dream of seeing your name in print come true - himself. You’ve never met before, but you feel like you have known this kindred spirit for a long time. You started following him after his review of Bright Lights Big City, one of your favorite novels ever and a big reason why you started writing, and you have been watching his trajectory ever since. You’re not a homosexual but you can appreciate his flowing locks and chiseled jaw, and you know that if he keeps at this writing thing he will eventually have a throng of female fans. You are also a wee bit upset that he went on a lengthy and well documented binge the past two months abroad and is on an alcohol hiatus. He sips on a N/A beer, something you would make fun of anyone else for doing. But not him. Not tonight. He then mentions in passing you will be reading your piece out loud tonight. You become a bit nervous. You play it off as best you can. There aren’t that many people here, you tell yourself. Everything will be fine. Then you remember the night is young and the event is sold out.

You don’t know what you were expecting in quality for the physical magazine but it turns out she’s a glossy little minx. Not thick, but heavy. High quality shit. You feel lucky to be the first person to test the QR code, purchasing a few copies for yourself and your wife and for anyone who walks into your house going forward.

“Read my mind-blowing, generation defining, white rice recipe piece to enter,” you think.

You are then introduced to who just recently reviewed your novel and you want to give him a big hug and kiss for liking your book but instead you talk shit about the Blue Jays to him. What better way to thank someone? Brandon is very soft spoken but for some reason you can tell he’s seen some shit. You find out later this is exactly the case. Biker gangs, boonies, brothers – he’s got stories for days from that great country up north. You wouldn’t expect anything less from someone who gets up at three, three, AM to write, blowing your 4 AM and ’s 5 AM out of the water. You make ask him to read your piece in the magazine to see if it’s read out loud at a party worthy. He says it’s not bad. You’ll take it.

Even though, again, you are not a homosexual, you fall in love with a man. Lillian is great and all, you love her writing and her wit on Substack and in person, but have you met her husband? Sheesh. He’s an ex-United States Marine, who also originates from Canada, and he has so many interesting stories you are jealous of Lillian’s proximity to such a person. If he asked, politely of course, you would ditch the party and leave with him to hear more stories about how he and his family grew up off the grid. They had a well for water. They didn’t own a TV. They used candlelight. You ask, if the zombie apocalypse were to begin, if he would take you and your family in and bring you all to this cold Utopia he speaks of. He says yes. Your man crush grows.

Adam Pearson waltzes into the party like he belongs here. Though he hails from Louisiana, has a southern accent he denies, and has only been to New York one other time, he just looks like he is meant to live in the city. If he used his face as his own Substack profile picture the tension in the room would be high. He is the true chronicler, the real documenter of what can only be called a budding in-person Substack scene. You know he will surely write a piece about tonight’s events which makes you want to say something really offensive, in lieu of something interesting, to be included.

You haven’t seen him since his last trip to the city and you’ve missed your conversations like Nathan Algren and Katsumoto.

You will not commit seppuku on him tonight, but you will try and get him as drunk as humanly possible like you always do. If this writing thing doesn’t work out, you will have to find a way to get paid to coax people to enjoy too many drinks. You have a special knack for it.

You return to the bar for your third refill, and you realize this party is packed, young, vibrant, and Sudana has poured almost your entire bottle of gin out to undeserving guests. You beg her to save some for you, you will need all the fortifications imaginable if you are to read out loud to a packed crowd, and she graciously obliges. You have a grudging admiration for the people who tapped your bottle. Between vodka, whiskey, and beer, they chose wisely. Gin is an underappreciated beverage that deserves the respect it had in yester year.

Mingling is easy now that you are well on your way to being drunk. You and Adam scan the room, getting into random conversation with random people, some who have never even heard of Substack, some who are well known on Substack, some who make you crack the fuck up in person and on Substack (). This is the hallmark of a good party, literary or otherwise. This isn’t a circle jerk. It’s real.

Two legends of Substack, and , walk in like kings fresh from a separate conquest. Or like a comedic duo ala Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. They both, along with Adam, tell you you only look Dominican when you are wearing your New York Yankees hat. You take this as a compliment.

The party, like all parties, is a string of vignettes. Little scenes. Small conversations. You wish you could remember them all but you’ve drunk enough to kill a small horse and writing about the night accurately is Adam’s job. The joy of the night comes crashing down when the reading is about to begin. You run to the bar to get another gin, not knowing you have polished the remainder of the bottle off. You grab a cold Coors Light, something you weren’t expecting at such a hip party in such a hip city. You respect the hell out of it. Cold over craft any day of the week. You know Pearson is somewhere fuming they don’t have any real beer, so you grab an extra to force down his southern gullet.

When begins reading her very funny Post Nut Clarity on the J Train you are laughing at her words and laughing because you are nervous as hell. Do you have to go next? How do you follow this? You start formulating something witty to say as she wraps up.

As a man with two daughters, I condone nothing of what was just read.

Fellas in the room, if you want to be the exact opposite of the men in that last piece, follow this White Rice Recipe I’m about to read.

Relief washes over you when Marigold declares there will be no more readings. This man clearly understands how a party works but you would’ve loved this information an hour ago.

The relief turns to sadness because the party is over. Sudana does you one last solid by bringing a bottle of vodka to you with about a shot left and asks if you want it. You take one last swig before saying bye to everyone.

Yes, you must say bye to everyone. Even though others have plans for an after party, even though you could go all night, even though drinking into the wee hours is something you were built for…you must say bye. You have a wife and two kids waiting in a hotel room for you. Turns out you are not the cool-drunk guy anymore.

You float through the hotel lobby as if you are Benicio Del Toro getting arrested. You have three copies of a magazine with your words printed inside. Underneath those words is your name. It is surreal. And, above all, you are coming home to your wife and kids in room 205. You’re drunk too. Dance, you lucky bitch. Dance.

When you open the door you realize, much too late, that you smell like a gin distillery. Your wife, who has graciously stayed awake for your triumphant return, asks how many drinks you’ve had and you double down on your Benicio Del Toro.

She laughs in your face, says yea right, and wants to hear all about your night but the girls are fast asleep, and your voice is booming when you’re sober and deafening when you are drunk. You try to whisper as best you can but you wake up both of your daughters at least once in the next hour as you and your wife look over the beautiful magazine that has your name in it. You both laugh quietly, hug quietly, kiss quietly, are proud quietly, and your two daughters sleep quietly. It is a perfect moment except for one small issue; you know your hangover is going to be a real kick in the teeth in the morning and you have a lot of walking to do...in the snow.

Day 2

Your wife tries to let you sleep in knowing you will be needed in top form all day. Sleeping in is about 7:30 AM at home and about 6:45 AM in a hotel room where there is no way to ignore the child sleeping in between you. But the early wake up is worth the wonder in your children’s eyes when they open the curtains to a fresh white layer of snow on the New York City streets with more falling.

“I can’t believe it daddy! Wearing my pajamas inside out really worked!” your oldest says.

“Dadaaaaaa, no!” your youngest musters up.

No means snow.

At one point in your life breakfast in bed sounded like the peak of relaxation. Now it is pure chaos, and you feel bad for any hotel worker who is charged with cleaning your room. There is syrup on the pillow, eggs under the covers, a pile of breakfast potatoes on the duvet, and, somehow, a wad of butter in your glass of water that you desperately need right now. Your mouth is sandpaper. Your throat is hotter than a furnace. Your head feels like it’s being squeezed by a juicer. Even flipping through the pages of Magazine Non Grata and showing your kids your name in print can’t cure what you’ve done. But these are the days…

Check out time comes too soon. You’d like another day in watching movies, being doted on by room service, laying under the covers and rotting your hangover away. None of that is in the cards. You have quite the day planned. You will labor through the tundra of New York to show your kids the magic of a big Christmas tree, a big toy store, a big church. You will give them a day they will never forget, you say to yourself. It doesn’t occur to you that you don’t remember anything from your childhood before the age of seven.

You never saw kids until you had them. You mean this literally. There was not one time you noticed a mother walking with her child or a father throwing his in the air. You did not acknowledge them out in public and very rarely encountered them in private. Now, you cannot unsee them. When you’re at the grocery store you laugh at one sitting in the shopping cart trying to put a raisin up his nose. When you’re at the gas station you notice one drawing with the condensation on her window. When someone is struggling in public with an unruly youngin’, you laugh and try to ease their worry – we’ve all been there.

As you push a two seat stroller through the slushy sidewalks of New York City you notice many a child and many a stranger notice yours. Yours are very cute, all bundled up in jackets, gloves, and hats that constantly fall over their eyes. But the façade begins to crumble fifteen minutes into your walk to St. Patrick’s Cathedral when your oldest says she’s hot.

It’s 30 degrees out. She’s not hot. But she wants her jacket off anyway. Which only leads to the younger daughter following suit, trying to rip her own jacket off. You were going to stop in and check out St. Patrick’s but this little scene has turned both of your children into menaces you’d rather not present to the Lord. There is crying. There is glove throwing. There is hat tossing. You haven’t even gotten to the tree yet. It’s not even noon.

You finally make it to the tree and your oldest is cold now. This back and forth will go on for the remainder of the trip but the younger one has eschewed her jacket for good and refuses to put it on, even when her cheeks are blood red and her hands are purple. This is not child abuse, you tell yourself. It’s meltdown prevention.

But the hour it took to get to the tree finally hits paydirt. Both girls are in awe of the tree for…about five seconds until they move on.

“I want hot chocolate,” the oldest begs.

“Eat,” the younger one shouts.

There is a line the size of an Amazonian anaconda that even JLO and Ice Cube couldn’t survive for a hot chocolate shop. Your wife goes to wait in line and leaves you with the two starving and irritated little shits girls. You try and entertain them the best you can. You show them how to scrape untouched snow off a bush and eat it. Your wife would kill you if she knew you were letting them eat snow off a bush in the city but you’ll do anything to calm them down. It works for all of ten minutes when the complaints ramp back up.

“Where’s mommy?” the oldest whines.

“Mo-meeee,” the youngest chimes in.

“She’s getting hot chocolate,” you say.

“How long?” the oldest asks.

“Soon,” you say.

Who the FUCK knows you think.

Another meltdown is imminent.

But pigeons save you just like they saved Kevin McAllister. Two come right up to the stroller and start making funny sounds, pecking away at the plethora of garbage at your feet. They’re beautiful, which is odd. One has a purple velvety coat and the other looks like an Appaloosa. Your kids get a kick out of these pigeons more than anything the city has had to offer thus far. You think this is a metaphor for something. That all the man made things in this world are far less entertaining than what’s simply there.

An old man notices how much fun your daughters are having watching the pigeons and reminds you that this is the best age. It all goes by so fast. Don’t blink or it’s gone. You’re living the dream. These are the days…

What he doesn’t realize is that he’s scared the pigeons away and now both of your daughters are crying.

These are the days…

Your wife comes back empty-handed. The hot chocolate place doesn’t open for another half hour. You whip out snacks you’ve packed to hopefully quell the revolt your daughters are about to stage. These snacks give you five minutes of peace as you walk to your next stop, which is anywhere warm and anywhere they serve hot chocolate.

Thirty minutes later you finally find a coffee shop that has seats and heat and a bathroom. The simplest things in life will give you and your children more joy than a 100 foot tall Christmas tree. Your daughters are finally thawed out and happy and are dancing around the coffee shop to top 40 hits as if they own the place. You’ve ordered the hot chocolates and cookies and anything else that will make them forget that we have to trek another two miles to meet up with your mother-in-law, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew.

Your wife did her best to plan this day out so that we might get some assistance from her mom and sister while trudging through snowy city streets. Your niece and nephew are older and do not need the type of supervision your kids require. But it doesn’t work out like that. Nothing ever works as planned when you have children under the age of five.

You finally get a minute to relax at a rooftop brunch place you would never go to if you were in charge of the plans. Fru fru drinks, loud music, a tab that will surely eclipse $500. But it’s relaxing because when Ma (your mother-in-law) is around your kids want nothing to do with you. Grandparents are key to saving any sanity you have left as a parent.

You’re not sure how you survived the day as a family without her. Your watch says you’ve walked twelve thousand steps. It’s still 30 degrees outside. Your hands and your feet are still not thawed out. Your cheeks feel like someone has taken a cheese grater to them. But for the first time today you have a minute to sit and relax. It lasts about an hour because you are in charge of walking all the way back to where you parked your car, paying the astronomical fee, and driving back to pick up your family. No one stops you sans kids to remind you that these are the days.

But something magical happens when you get your girls in the car and start driving towards the Lincoln tunnel. There can be no other word for it besides magic. It must be something other worldly. Because as you and your wife start to talk about the day you don’t mention one awful thing. You don’t even remember one awful thing. And there was a plethora. There were meltdowns and tears and fits and cold and hot and walking and walking and walking and more meltdowns and tears and fits and if you looked at the day’s details you would think it was an abject failure. But that’s not what you remember. You remember your girls eyes light up when they got a side cup of marshmallows to go with her hot chocolate. You remember how excited the four year old was when her inside out pajamas actually worked to make it snow. You remember your youngest attempting forward rolls in bed between you and your wife. You remember all the good stuff.

As you make your way out of the tunnel and on to the New Jersey Turnpike your youngest daughter is already passed out. Your eldest’s eyes are slowly closing, she’s yawning, her eyes are as red as her cheeks. But before they close for good, before that sweet silence envelopes the car, she yells…

“Kevin! We forgot Kevin!” and starts cracking up.

You and your wife can’t remember the last time you laughed that hard.

These are the days.

…there was one last resort, to bet on myself.

The agent/editor above was technically correct in their assessment. I sent out over 100 queries and only three people requested the full manuscript and only one of those three talked to me after that. There was only one agent, Christopher Schelling, who had any constructive criticism after reading the entire manuscript. I found him through the great . Christopher is the man. I’ll send him everything I ever write, and I encourage you to send him your work when he is accepting submissions. We bonded over being assholes.

There was also the small press Picket Fire, run by John F. Duffy, who read the entire manuscript and made himself available for calls and emails to discuss where I could take the book even though he would not be publishing it. I’m forever grateful.

Both guys did not do the send me 10 pages and synopsis nonsense. They wanted to see if the book, in its entirety, was worth staking their reputation (and bank accounts) on. People like Christopher and John are few and far between in the publishing industry. These are the types of people who will make publishing a better place.

It would have been easy to let this book I poured ten years of work into slide into the abyss because it was clear, the mainstream publishing industry wanted nothing to do with it. Was it the characters’ voice? Was it the fact that the character was a straight white (ish) male? Was it the character talking how a straight man actually talks? Was it the fact that I am a straight white (ish) male?

Or…

Was my book bad? Did I not have the skill to write a book worth publishing?

These are all valid questions. There was a short amount of time when the first half of that series of questions made me seethe with cynicism. Yes, the system was out to get me. Yes, my genius was being wasted by cookie cutter agents and publishing houses. Yes, the entire book publishing business should be burnt to the ground. That time didn’t last long. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again no matter how corny it makes me look – I am an optimist. I believe in the future. I believe in people. But most importantly, I believed in my book.

Though I wrote the book alone every morning from 4-7 AM, for years, a good book isn’t birthed completely alone. If you haven’t read the book yet, below are the acknowledgments at the end of Hell or Hangover.

When you’ve worked on your first book for 10+ years you are bound to have run into some help. First and foremost, I’d like to thank all the authors who made me fall in love with reading and subsequently writing. Though I must have been pretty naïve to think I could do what these giants of literature have done, without them this book wouldn’t be possible. To list them would make this book run another hundred pages, but I am forever indebted.

I’ve written and rewritten this book in your hands a hundred times. Every time I wrote or rewrote a part is because something or someone pushed me in that direction. The novel really took its final form after attending the Curtis Brown Creative -Edit & Pitch Your Novel course. I’d like to first thank all the other students attending that class. When you’ve written a book like mine and you’re the only male in a class of nine women, you might think you’re going to be laughed or shamed out of the class. These women did neither. I still talk to them and they have been nothing but encouraging in my quest to get this book published.

Laura Pearson, the teacher of the class, changed the way I thought about my novel and ultimately helped me set a clear vision of what this book was trying to be. On top of that, she tried her best to help me get an agent. I am grateful for all her work and care.

As for actual editors, the two that helped me get this book over the finish line are and . I am eternally grateful that they saw my vision and helped me get there. Vanessa deftly cut the book from its once bloated state to what it is now. Without Adam Pearson, and his aggravating questions, I might not have understood the layers (both physical and philosophical) that my book was working towards. Again, I am grateful. Without Substack I wouldn’t have met either of them. Long live Substack.

The behind the scenes to get a book to its final stage is crazy and I could go on and on with people to thank but the people I really want to acknowledge are my friends and family. If you think I could’ve written this book without the best group of friends then you are sadly mistaken. You don’t get characters like Lou or Aisle or VanNeece if you haven’t been surrounded by characters your entire life. Smitty, Pecs, Dinks, Kev, Eddie, Dan, Ryan, Rob, Tom, Brandli, Spill, Brandon, Jetter - without our banter I could never have become a writer. You’ve sharpened my pen by giving me shit and taking it in return. If this novel made you laugh, you can thank these guys. That’s why I started writing. That’s why I continue to write. To get a laugh from the boys. Love you guys.

To Nana – You’ll probably never read this book but thank you for leaving the Dominican Republic, not knowing a stitch of English, and creating a life for your family. And, of course, thank you for teaching me how to cook.

To Grandmom – I learned more about life and love and forgiveness from listening to you than reading any books. But then again, you self-published one yourself and there is more wisdom in that small, wonderful book than in any literature I’ve read before or after. You really were An Uncommon Everyday Woman.

To Popop - Thanks for handing down your gene of stubbornness. Without it, this book would have died on the vine.

Mom. Dad. If you’ve gotten this far, I apologize. I couldn’t have asked for better parents. Not only have you employed me, but you’ve also been nothing but supportive of me following my own dream. Luckily this book is self-published, so if it affects business, we can always cease and desist. I could never thank you enough, but hopefully one day this book will generate a couple hundred bucks and I can take you both out to dinner.

Tara. My Tara. I know I scared you half to death when I asked you to read this book. You figured the drunk moron you were falling for was about to ruin it by asking you to read something truly awful and you’d get The Ick. Luckily, you believed in it from the first sentence. You’ve sacrificed more than any other person to help me follow my dreams. From watching the kids for a weekend while I go pitch this book (only to be rejected), to putting the kids down many nights alone while you let me edit, to keeping the kids occupied if they happen to wake up before 7 AM (my writing time is 4-7 AM). Without you this book has (and had) a completely different ending. Without you no happiness in my life is possible. Without a woman that a man looks up to, and wants to be better for, he is nothing. I could write another novel right here but all I am going to say is thank you for our two beautiful daughters. I still can’t believe we get to be mom and dad together. I hope I’ve written a book they can read some day (when they are MUCH older) and be equally embarrassed and proud that their dad wrote it. I love you three girls more than you’ll ever know. Everything would be pointless without you.

P.S. – to the 100+ literary agents that rejected me, from the way bottom of my heart, thank you. This self-published book you hold in your hands is going to do better than any debut writer you currently have on your roster. Your rejections only made me more confident.

That last part was me trying to speak things into existence. I don’t know how well certain debut books are selling and I don’t necessarily care to do the work to find out. Hell or Hangover has sold a few hundred copies in the first 6 months. Nothing to brag about, but that’s a few hundred more copies than I would’ve sold if I had shelved it. I still believe the book will find a wider audience. I still believe the book is a hilarious look at millennial life. I still believe in the book, regardless of how many copies it sells.

The point of this post is to just say thank you. To anyone who has read the book, to anyone who bought the book, to anyone who believes in me and my writing. To for giving me the spark to self-publish. To for being the first self-published author I read and loved. To for his willingness to answer any questions I had about writing and publishing from day one and for writing one of my favorite books of all time Victim (and a killer blurb). To , for being a fellow self-published author of the book Why Teach? and, cough cough, teaching me what the Bechdel test is (and a killer blurb). To , for writing my favorite self-published novel ever written (and a killer blurb). To for the sickest book cover ever! To all the people who have written reviews or interviewed me about the book, . Thank you.

The second half of this year was a weird one. I’ve posted significantly less and took a few months off serious writing in general. It turns out publishing a book takes more energy out of you than actually writing one. I never thought I’d be someone to take any time off but the adrenaline dump after a ten year sprint is no joke. The beauty of the platform you’re reading this on is that there are so many inspiring writers shoved in your face everyday you can’t stay down for long. There is more to do, more to write. I feel lucky to be a small part of what’s going on here. I’m excited for 2026, to post more, to finish up a novel, to begin another. And anyone still reading this, I’m excited that you’ve stuck it out with me.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

And if you haven’t purchased a copy of Hell or Hangover and want to prove me right to all those agents and publishers out there…now’s the time.

Hell or Hangover

Order here, or here, or here, or here, or anywhere books are sold!

I can vividly remember my first concussion. Well, kind of, because it was the opposite of vivid. During my freshman year of high school football, while playing cornerback, I shed a receiver’s half-ass block and drove up field towards a running back who just received a toss. For those who don’t know what that means, I ran fast at man with ball who also ran fast. Like all smart, undersized corners (I had not hit a growth spurt yet), I dove at the running back’s knees. You can’t run without your knees. I made the tackle in the backfield, receiving one of those knees to the temple, and got up ready to celebrate. It was a solid knock, but I was fine. I looked up at the once blue sky and only saw gray. The players with the darker gray jerseys came up and hugged me, the players with the lighter gray jerseys sulked back into their huddle. I was confused. Where did our green jerseys and the opposing team’s white jerseys go? Color did not return to my life until the end of the game.

It was an odd sensation going completely color blind. I’ve always been color challenged – not being able to see the subtle differences between blue and purple or brown and green – but only seeing in shades of gray and black should have scared the shit out of me. If this didn’t happen mid-ballgame I would have shit my pants and called an ambulance. But it did happen during a football game of which my entire self-worth was tied to, so I didn’t tell a soul. I played the rest of the game understanding lighter gray bad, darker gray good. Caveman like. We won the game and that’s all that mattered to me at the time.

This was probably one of many concussions I’ve had in my football career that went unreported. Toughness is a key attribute for any football player worth his salt, and I had my fair share. Shit, I had enough to walk on to the D1AA football squad at Monmouth University. This, fortunately or unfortunately, is where I would receive my final concussion that would send me on a path to writing.

Before my last unreported concussion and end of my football career, I enjoyed reading but never considered writing for a second. I hadn’t so much as written a single word of fiction before the age of 20 unless you count writing prompts in elementary school. About a month after quitting football and having significantly more time on my hands, I started reading more than ever. I’m a slow reader but the books started to pile up. All of Hemingway, all of Bukowski, all of the other old dirty white men went down the hatch and, at the end of about a 6-month period of devouring as many books as I could, I decided to try writing. For about a week or two I tried to write short stuff, which read like hot garbage, and then, out of nowhere, the words came to me. Something clicked and everything became clear. An entire story, with an entire voice, spread like wildfire in my mind. I saw it all so vividly. It came to me the same way color left me that day on the football field. Suddenly. All at once. Knee to the dome.

Every night starts the same. The pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking starts.

Since then, the spout in my brain that connects words to page has flowed. I couldn’t turn it off if I tried. I wouldn’t want to. Full stories come to me in an instant. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes with my eyes wide open. Sometimes in a second, sometimes over hours. I have no idea why. But the spout was nonexistent before that final concussion. It’s possible that once my football career ended, I was simply bored and that boredom turned me to the pen. But it’s also possible, and well-studied, that brain injuries can affect creativity.

This phenomenon is well documented, and two cases fascinate me.

The first time I heard about brain injuries affecting creativity was listening to Chuck Palahniuk on Joe Rogan. Talk about being an Alpha fucking Male, huh? That’s right, I listened to this podcast while at the gym, bro. Get over it.

The entire podcast was captivating. The way Palahniuk attacks writing is very interesting and he seems like a certified psychopath nice guy. But the most illuminating part of the podcast was when the two go down the rabbit hole of brain injuries. The tangent kicks off with a conversation about two comedians, Roseanne Barr and Sam Kinison, who had reportedly been hit in the head at some point in their life and were completely changed post injury. Roseanne Barr, at the age of 16, was a good girl, proficient in math, perfect grades, until she was hit by a car while walking. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and was institutionalized. She (obviously) survived but began acting erratically post institutionalization. She went on to become the legendary crazy Ambient loving comic we know today. Joe then goes on to talk about a book written by Bill Kinison, Sam Kinison’s brother, called Brother Sam. In the book Bill outlines “Kinison one” and “Kinson two”. At a very young age Kinson was hit by a car. Before the accident he was a docile kid but after, he could not be contained. Shit, just listen to Kinison preaching (yes, he was a preacher before becoming a comedian) and you might actually be converted.

They go on to talk about some telltale signs of a person who has suffered a brain injury. They can become narcissistic, violent, impulsive, reckless. Some of these things sound like perfect ingredients for a writer, or just a description of a writer. If you expect people to read your words at all, ding-ding, you’re a narcissist. If you sit down to write something that has popped in your head out of thin air, ding-ding, you are probably impulsive too. Reckless? How about self-publishing or publishing anything at all. A writer is clearly not thinking about consequences when they hit send on their latest post. Luckily, I’ve not become violent yet, but three out of four ain’t bad.

The podcast makes a quick left turn into toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by a parasite in cat shit. The infection has a weird effect on rats. It rewires the rat’s brain to not feel fear when they see/smell/hear a cat. It actually attracts them to the smell of cat piss. There is a similar effect on the human brain when testing positive for toxoplasmosis. Fear becomes minimal. Impulsiveness increases. Erratic behavior abounds. Sounds like a brain injury. I’ve never had a cat, I am allergic, so this can be ruled out in my case unless at some point in college I drank too much and passed out in a litter box. (This didn’t happen, I swear.)

Speaking of drinking too much, another classic in brain injured behavior is the proclivity to imbibe in substances. Many people who have had brain injuries tend to get hooked on some legal or illicit drug at some point. Whether this is some way to become even keel, sort of like a crutch for the brain, or whether it’s the erratic, reckless, irreverent behavior that comes with injuries to the brain, is unknown. Hemmingway boxed. Hemmingway was involved in not one, but two plain crashes. Hemmingway drank heavily. Was it the chicken or the egg?

A few minutes later in the podcast, Palahniuk reveals something he had never talked about before - his own brain injury. One day he was leaving the gym in Portland. It was a Friday night, and he needed to hit the ATM post pump sesh. Alpha. After the stop he was walking home and was subsequently jumped and beaten by a bunch of teenagers. Beta. The teenagers were yelling out numbers. 100 points. 200 points. 500 points. It was a sick game teenagers played at the time where they received “points” for hitting an unsuspecting victim in certain areas, as if they were playing a video game. It’s kind of funny, if it weren’t so fucking awful. The teenagers beat the living shit out of him, breaking his jaw.

Before the beat down Palahniuk says, “I was a fantastically shitty, cowardly writer.”

After the beating Palahniuk says, “I started writing really good stuff. I was writing off the charts stuff. I’m not saying go outside and beat your head against a concrete wall, but it was night and day.”

Palahniuk won’t say it, but I will.

Do it.

Kidding…but seriously.

Not to weigh in on the MFA debate but the last thing Palahniuk says is, “I think every MFA program should include boxing, or at least one good headshot.”

I vote to run this new MFA/boxing program. I’d sign up for that shit immediately.

Another example of this is Liam Gallagher, the lead singer of Oasis. I’m a fan of theirs since they got back together. I am NOT an OG. I am a bandwagon Oasis guy. Their first album came out when I was four. At the age of ten I got swept up by Country Grammar and had no time for rock n’ roll. But I got hooked after going down a treacherous yet hilarious rabbit hole of Noel and Liam interviews, documentaries, and listening to songs other than Wonderwall. I now understand the reunion hype. They fuck.

Pre Oasis, Liam Gallagher was a hard drinking footballer. Not the same kind of football I played, but soccer. He was an athlete with no fucks in the world given about music, unlike his older brother Noel. Then the magical beatdown occurs. He’s out at a pub (at the ripe age of 15) and gets hit on the head with a hammer by some blokes who were afraid to go fisticuffs. He woke up in the hospital with stitches in his head. The way he describes it is that a couple weeks later he started listening to music. Not just music from the outside world, but music in his head. Before the head injury all he cared about was fucking around, drinking, smoking, and playing football but suddenly he hears Like a Virgin by Madonna and thinks…“That’s a chune man”. Next thing you know, he’s the lead singer in a band.

Rogan goes on to say in the podcast with Palahniuk that the problem with head injuries is that they are hit or miss (literally). Some people become geniuses and others are never the same in all the negative ways. He’s seen it up close. He’s been in and around martial arts his entire life. He understands that some people go onto become great writers or comedians or artists and others die on the streets, either drugged out or schizophrenic or both. And of course, the last thing Joe says on this topic is that he would let his kids fight because if you are a properly trained in martial arts you can avoid a lot of damage, but one thing he would NEVER let his kids do is play football…

Perfect!

My hero growing up was a guy named Brandon Hoyte. You probably have never heard the name unless you are from Central New Jersey (yes, there is such a thing) or an insane Notre Dame football fan. I happen to be both.

Brandon Hoyte was an ALL-STAR football player at Sayreville high school. He played quarterback and linebacker, which is an insane feat, and went on to win a ton of awards as a high school athlete. He received a full scholarship to Notre Dame University to play linebacker and ultimately became a captain on a stacked 2005 team.

But the football accolades pale in comparison to his life outside of football. He held a high GPA in both high school and college. He wrote poetry. He was a Jehovah’s Witness. Don’t hold that last bit against him because he was one of those very few Christians who actually practiced what he preached.

In a piece titled, A Man For All Seasons, Katie Stuhldreher writes, “Most poets can’t hit a quarterback hard enough to separate his shoulder. Most Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t attend Catholic universities. Most college football players don’t have time to work three jobs, maintain a high grade-point average, and engage in volunteer work. Irish fifth-year senior linebacker and co-captain Brandon Hoyte is not most people. In fact, he is the exception to almost every rule.”

Brandon Hoyte was something special.

Hoyte was born in Trinidad, moved to Harlem at the age of three, then moved to Brooklyn, and finally ended up in New Jersey, which is where I got to meet him.

My best friend Sean’s uncle, Coach Pat, was a football coach at Sayreville high school when Brandon Hoyte played. A couple of years later he was a coach for our Jr. Pee Wee team along with Sean’s dad. I was close to Coach Pat and to Sean and to Big Sean and spent a lot of time with their family. On special occasions Coach Pat would bring Brandon around to family gatherings or even to training sessions. The first time I realized I would not be going pro in any sport was the day Brandon Hoyte played tag with an entire team of 14-year-olds in a 20 foot by 20 foot square room and none of us could touch him. But what I remember most is Brandon always talking about using your head instead of your body. How important school was and how important watching film was to becoming a great football player. He constantly talked about how football was a sport about brains and not just brawn. When he talked his voice was soft. He was kind. He was this jacked dude, captain of the Notre Dame football team, an absolute beast on the football field, and yet off the field he seemed gentle. He wrote poetry for fucks sake! He was a real-life hero. A north star any young boy could point to on how to live a good life.

It came as an immediate shock when I heard the news that Brandon had been arrested. What could this man have possibly done to get arrested? Be TOO nice? Be TOO kind? He must have sat in on a protest or something for a great cause and got rounded up. But no. The shock turned to something different. Something incomprehensible. Something I still can’t put into words. It was worse than devastation. It was like an unshakeable pillar that held up my entire world view horizontally cracked. Brandon, after playing in the NFL for a couple years and going on to a successful career outside of football, had cracked. Something in his brain stopped working. He became manic and depressed, showed schizophrenic tendencies, and had been living on the streets. The arrest came when an interaction between a police officer and a homeless Brandon went awry. At least that’s what I was told. I don’t know the entire truth. I don’t know if I could stomach the entire truth.

Regardless of what happened, and where Brandon is now, it’s clear to anyone what occurred. Too many hits to the head had caught up with him. A once thriving brain with an impeccable moral compass matched with creativity and insane work ethic had faltered. It just stopped working. There’s no other rational explanation except that the game that Brandon loved betrayed him. It’s fucking heartbreaking.

Another hero of mine is my best friend Dr. Kevin Pecca. Kevin was a hockey stand out at Red Bank Catholic in New Jersey and went on to play in college. Hockey, if you didn’t know, is just as contact filled as football with even less head protection. If you’ve never been to a live hockey game, I highly recommend you do. You’ve never seen speed and mayhem in a sporting event until you’ve watched a hockey player fly on ice and throw his body into another person’s up close. It’s like a fucking car crash.

Kevin, unfortunately, had a bunch of real, diagnosed concussions throughout his career. The ones where the pupils in your eyes stay dilated and you puke and you are forced to take time away from the game to let your head heal. These took a toll and ultimately forced Kevin to stop playing collegiate hockey. But the worst part came next…

The symptoms never went away. Kevin felt depressed. He had blurred vision, as if he were walking around in a fog all day. He couldn’t concentrate. He got debilitating headaches. His joints hurt. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The Kevin Pecca I know is the exact opposite of an anxious person, yet he was filled with a deep anxiety all the time. The scariest part of all of this is that outwardly Kevin looked like himself, but inside he was falling apart.

What seems like something not so terrible, but in retrospect was, is that Kevin couldn’t really hang out with the boys for a long time. He couldn’t go out for a couple beers and watch the game. Every time he drank the symptoms took over tenfold. Our entire friend group’s MO around the time this happened to Kevin was partying. I remember one time Kevin decided to be the DD one night because he couldn’t handle any alcohol. How did I reward him? Puking all over his dashboard 1 minute from home. Sorry pal!

Kevin goes into full detail of what happened to him. I tear up every time I listen to this. Kevin is one of the best people I know and one of my best friends and even I didn’t know how deep his pain was.

Luckily for Kevin, after years of searching for a solution, when doctors told him he would either have to live on painkillers or just deal with the pain the rest of his life, after he considered ending it because he couldn’t take it anymore, he found Upper Cervical Chiropracting. It saved his life. It also changed his life because he is now an Upper Cervical Chiropractor himself, making sure that no one feels the way he felt after his head injuries. This type of luck is rare.

Life is a game of tradeoffs.

Before I started playing football, I was afraid of everything. Roller Coasters. Girls. Halloween. Etc… I’m still kinda scared of Halloween and I’m definitely scared of my wife (she’s Sicilian). This fearful behavior was beaten out of me, partly due to confidence in being good at something, partly possibly probably maybe due to head injury after head injury after head injury. It’s not the ones that make you lose color that do the damage, it’s all the mini ones you shake off that add up. Not all boys start like this. Some are born fearless. Some are born with that IT factor. Some are born as if they came out of the womb with head trauma. Narcissistic, violent, impulsive, reckless, fearless.

If I had to do it all over, the same exact way, I would. I’m lucky…for now. Maybe the writing ability was always there. Maybe it came from a few thousand knocks on the head. Maybe one day I’ll be drooling a different tune. But, for now, I’ll try to take care of my brain the best I can and try to harness it creatively. Maybe I’ll put down the bottle. Maybe my proclivity to drink is a way to combat what is surely a deteriorating brain. Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones. Who knows. The brain is a fickle beast. It’s also insanely durable. I guess you could say the same about consciousness in general. Fickle and durable. The human condition. Are we all just firing synapses and neurons? What is the soul? These questions are unanswerable, especially when you’ve seen the good and the bad of how a faulty brain can change a person. There is a fine line everywhere you look just waiting to be crossed. You can ditch the writing class and bash your head against a wall but beware – madness lurks around the corner.

P.S. - Don’t ditch the writing class.

Here’s what the great and powerful had to say about the book…

Simple and to the point.

If you’ve read Hell or Hangover and enjoyed it please consider leaving an Amazon or Goodreads review. Onto the show…

After writing the title of this piece I feel like I am holding a tiki torch. I assure you I am not penning this in a white robe with a white pointy hat with holes cut out in the eyes. That’s because my robe is black and my hat is fitted. But I do have the same crazy conviction of one of those racist, antisemitic, replacement theory wackos after a recent experience with AI writing. But first, I have to come clean.

I am a software engineer. I work with AI software and some of that software is made in house. I am the pusher. The dope peddler. The salesman. The person who convinces a company that if they purchase our AI tools they will be more efficient and their business will be better for it. And you know what? I’m not lying.

You see, people are talking about AI all wrong. They have a couple conversations with ChatGPT and think, my God, this is the end of us (us being writers). They test out the tool by typing in a prompt for a story and get something back that actually reads like a story and think I’m toast. But this is not the way.

The real way AI is going to change our world is through the replacement of menial tasks. Most of the people who constantly babble about AI have no experience in the real business world. They don’t understand how small to large businesses actually operate. They’ve been writing all their life, all they do is read and think and regurgitate, and they’ve never actually been an employee of a small business. They do not understand that when a company gets, let’s say, an invoice from a vendor, that some human has to sit there and type that invoice into the computer. An employee has to compile the invoices, then they have to go to their computer and open up their accounting software, they select a customer from a dropdown list, select the correct payment terms, type in the products that were purchased, type in the price of said products, make sure the total in the system matches the invoice, write any notes from the invoice and on and on the task goes. This is fine for an invoice here or there but imagine a manufacturing company. They are constantly buying material that go into the products that they produce, and the invoices are endless. Simply entering invoices into the computer is a full-time job and I am sorry to say this full-time job will no longer be necessary. AI can and will do all the above tasks.

But when it comes to creative writing, I assure you, we are fucking fine. Nothing can replace the creativity of the human mind. In NO world could AI write Hell or Hangover because AI wouldn’t know the first thing about how to combine a young man’s lust, dread, anger, love, and wittiness with the search for a girl that has disappeared through the streets of Hoboken, Manhattan, to a Babalawo, and to the brink of insanity through drink and drugs with the same expertise that I can. It is just not possible. There are plenty of reasons why it is not possible. For example, AI has never done cocaine. This is not an admission of guilt (wink, wink) but it is simply stating that AI did not go through a decade of complete and utter debauchery and lived to tell the tale. AI has never felt and therefore it can never truly convey feelings. It can fake it, sure, but it can’t feel it. When you read Hell or Hangover you’ll know the character was written by a human because the character is human.

But this piece isn’t to convince you to buy and read my book (yes it is), it is to relay an experience I recently had with AI writing and to assure you, yes you, that your writing will not be replaced by AI.

Let’s begin…

My mother bought my daughter a book. The book is called [Daughter’s] Day in Dinosaur Land. I put [Daughter’s] in brackets because this is actually my daughter’s name. The entire book is geared to my kid. Her name is riddled throughout the book. And the book was “written” by a company called EpicTales.ai. The way this works is you pick a book the kid will be interested in and then you select the option to personalize it. You select the gender, they only give you two options here (gasp!), you type in the kid’s name, and then you select the kid’s hair color, eye color, etc… so the main character resembles your own kid. Then AI does the rest.

So let’s take a trip to Dinosaur Land together shall we, and see what AI has come up with…

(Anytime I use [Daughter] read with your name)

Pg. 1 - [Daughter] found a rock, shiny and round. She held it tight and then she found…

So far, so good.

Pg. 2 - [Daughter] arrives in a land, splendidly grand. Dinosaurs everywhere, roaming the sand.

Okay, AI, let me stop you there. Was the shiny and round rock magic? Were we supposed to know that simply by holding this rock we would be sent to Dinosaur Land? I am all for brevity and the old Hemmingway glacier method of writing but Jesus Christ. No backstory, no lead up, no nothing. One minute we’re holding a shiny rock and the next were surrounded by Dinosaurs. This is brutal story telling. And since when did Dinosaurs live on sand? One search using AI (haha!) and you’d know that most deserts in modern times were once lush jungles. These fuckers can’t even use their own tools to fact check themselves.

Pg. 3 - [Daughter] meets a Triceratops, with three horns. “Count them with me,” she says with glee.

Already we are out of our end rhyming pattern. The first two pages rhyme at the end and this one goes off the reservation into a new rhyming scheme. Disgusting to the eyes but even more disgusting when I am getting in a nice reading flow with the kiddo. At this point I want to close the book and start a new one. But [Daughter] urges me onward.

Pg. 4 - Stegosaurus next, plates so tall. “Let’s color,” says [Daughter], “one and all.”

What does a stegosaurus’s plates being tall have to do with coloring? All I ask in a story is to stay true to itself. Maybe this is AI’s take on magical realism, but I still can’t find the connection between a stegosaurus’s tall plates and coloring. The worst part about this page is that the words say coloring, but the picture is of a young girl holding a dripping paint brush. If you are a parent, you know there is a HUGE difference between letting your kid color with crayons and letting them paint. That difference is the mess.

Pg. 5 - Then [Daughter] hears a T-Rex’s roar. Together they roar, a mighty outpour.

This was the page that broke my brain and also made my daughter roar so loud that she woke up her baby sister. Thanks a-fucking-lot AI. But seriously, how are we going to use roar twice there? Couldn’t we have come up with something else? AI, you sound like 2 Chainz – “She got a big booty, so I call her big booty.” Now that’s poetry.

I am now going to skip ahead to some of my favorite and most disastrous pages in order to not get sued for copyright infringement by relaying the entire story here. Wouldn’t want AI up my ass claiming that they own the rights to the words they didn’t write because they are not human and don’t own the rights to the words that they stole from other people. But I digress…

Pg. 7 - A Velociraptor dashes, fast and sleek. [Daughter] claps fast, a fun game of peak.

Peak? It’s peek, you dumb ass computer. And I’m not sure when clapping or clapping fast was ever involved in playing “peek” aka peekaboo. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. If you’ve never played peekaboo with a kid then you’re probably on an FBI watchlist, which is also why you are probably reading my Substack, but I’ll explain the game. It’s simple. You put your hands over your eyes, then you remove your hands from your eyes and yell “peekaboo”. Kids eat that shit up. No clapping involved. Maybe AI meant to write a fun game of hide and seek. That would make more sense except when you are playing hide and seek the last thing you want to do is start clapping.

Pg. 10 - Parasaurolophus calls, echoing sound. [Daughter] echoes back, their voices rebound.

First of all, can we get some pronounceable dinosaurs in this bitch? For fucks sake AI, at least put in parentheses with how to say this name out loud. My daughter looks at me like the idiot I am every time I try and pronounce this dinosaur. And how does one echo back? Is this sound screamed, yelled, roared? These are questions left unanswered.

Pg. 16 - Time to leave, [Daughter] waves goodbye. “See you soon,” she says, trying not to cry.

Fuck you AI. Straight up. You’re really going to throw a line in to a bedtime story that is based off a character with my daughter’s name that she’s trying not to cry as the book comes to an end? My daughter’s eyes have now welled up with tears. She’s now trying not to cry. She’s taking the book as literal as those freaks with tiki torches take the bible (well, kind of). The only difference is she’s three. AI clearly has never been a parent because they would know that bedtime is precarious. A kid’s brain is mush by the end of the day. They are already on edge and whether they end the day crying or laughing or actually going to sleep is anyone’s guess. But thanks for forcing the issue you stupid fucking computer. Now my daughter is crying and yelling and does not want to go to bed, she wants to go back to Dinosaur Land.

The fact that my daughter enjoys this book should not dilute the message. This book sucks and I’d much rather read Shel Silverstein or Dr. Suess or Maurice Sendak or Roald Dahl (even though he was supposedly a tiki torch kind of guy) and you know what, so would my daughter. More often than not, when I ask her to pick a book out to read, she picks one written by a human. And that’s the way it should be. Writers of the world, I hope you have taken this lesson to heart. If AI can’t get a simple kids book right, how is it going to write the next Great American Novel?

P.S. – Are people really intimidated by tiki torches? Those things can’t even do what’s advertised…keep bugs away.

P.P.S – Write your best kid dino story lines here and prove you can outdo this slop.

P.P.P.S. – I am actually writing this in a black robe and fitted hat.

Here is what , the author of the great novel Why Teach?, had to say about the novel:

“The most drunken love story I’ve ever read: never has a novel of drinking, drugs and debauchery failed the Bechdel test with so much heart and good humor!”

I am thrilled that I failed this test but was able to pass most tests with flying colors in high school. It led me to writing this piece. One question remains…if Peter was fired from his teaching gig to fund a football stadium, would he still watch football? Find out what the fuck I am talking about below!

I “played” college football at Monmouth University for two years. I say “played” because I never got any burn in a real game and decided to quit after getting a concussion in a summer scrimmage. I never disclosed said concussion to trainers or coaches because…I’m a football player. That’s what football players do.1 We were given off the next day, we went out partying that night, and we drank like we had just been released from prison. I woke up the next morning and my brain felt like mashed potatoes. I said, “Why the fuck am I doing this?” and never went back.

Part of this decision chews at me to this day. I still have nightmares where I missed a meeting and was kicked off the team. There are random dreams that pop up where I stayed and played and became a star. These are both laughable, though it turned out later that season our starting weakside safety got hurt and I would’ve gotten burn all year as the nickelback had I stayed.

The journey to “playing” college ball wasn’t your typical one. My high school coach told me he was giving my name out to D3 schools and I laughed at him and decided I’d never play again instead of playing at the lowest tier of college football. I thought I was better than D3 but my high school coach had less brain cells than Forrest Gump. I attended Monmouth University, which has a D1AA football program, on a half scholarship for grades instead. The first half of my freshman year I did not play football and took to partying. My best friend ended up transferring to Monmouth to play football, he saw what I was becoming without football (a pot head) and forced me to walk on. It turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to me. (Thanks Dr. Jeremy! - RSM Sports Medicine)

My parents and I had a deal since I was young regarding college. They would pay up to half. It was one of the best parenting moves I’ve ever seen and I will use it with my own kids. It encouraged me to do well in school so that I wouldn’t be saddled with debt if I happened to earn, at the bare minimum, a half scholarship. I did earn that scholarship but because there was no money involved in the football situation at Monmouth the concussion made it easy for me to quit. If, let’s say, football was paying the other half of my tuition, I would have stuck it out to the bitter end no matter how many concussions I received to relieve my parents of paying that second half.

For those who don’t know, money plays a big role in college sports. Some of the players that were on scholarship at Monmouth weren’t as good as the kids that didn’t have money tied to them. But because those scholarship athletes were on the payroll, and the doners were the ones paying for them to be there, they occasionally got playing time over other players that might have deserved it more. This wasn’t the case at my position, but I saw it at others. It makes sense. It’s how the world works. Fair aint always the name of the game. It was my first real reality check. It probably helped me understand the publishing industry quicker than others. Money talks.

But even knowing this didn’t stop my jaw from dropping when I read an article about a high school in Buford, Georgia that spent 62 million dollars constructing a football stadium. I audibly laughed. 62 million? For a high school stadium? What the fuck is going on?

High school sports are supposed to be pure as the driven snow. The best players play because it’s about the love of the game. No money is supposed to exchange hands because there is no money to spend except on the bare minimum for shoulder pads and helmets. Even then, the helmets and pads are hand-me-downs. A one-time purchase for the next 20 years of football players.

After reading that article I almost got dragged down into negative town. What are we doing dumping boatloads of money into high school athletics? Aren’t there more important things to be spending the money on? But then I went back to the original tweet with the article and scrolled into the comments that read like a Bernie Sander’s rally.

62 million for the stadium and teachers are getting laid off?

This is Georgia after all, they can’t read books, so why spend the money on a library.

And students have to pay for lunch!

When the players get hurt, they won’t be able to afford health care.

I had to stop.

Whininess annoys me above all else.

Luckily I live in a state that LOVES football and remembered there are plenty of high schools that operate as colleges here. In New Jersey there are two top parochial high schools that dish out cash to get the best athletes in and out of state. St. Peter’s Prep and Don Bosco compete at the highest level of high school football throughout the nation. They are often ranked in the top 10 football high schools in the country. Money aint a thang for these schools (they are private, they charge tuition) and they churn out unbelievable athletes. One athlete I remember watching out of St. Peter’s was Will Hill.

Will Hill was a beast at safety and quarterback and ended up playing for the Florida Gators in college and going on to a sordid NFL career. Will Hill grew up in East Orange. East Orange is not a place that primes its young men for success. It’s got about double the rate of violent crime than NJ’s average and it has a higher overall crime rate than the rest of the country. Who knows what happens to Will Hill had St. Peter’s not come knocking with a bag of cash and a chance to play at an elite high school. He was troubled even after that (partying, drugs, suspensions at Florida University). But who knows where that attitude would have led him had he stayed in East Orange. Definitely nowhere good.

I was going to write the rest of this post as a diatribe to unintended consequences. I was going to shit on every one of those commenters and show them, as if they were children, that taking money from one place could affect the people you are taking it from. I, brilliant Alex, was going to show them the errors in their thinking - “Look at all the things you could have spent 62 million on” instead of “How many lives is this 62 million gonna change for the better?” But that would be sanctimonious. That would be annoying. And you know what? Who gives a fuck!

This is America and Americans love football. I can’t wait for this college football season to start on Saturday. I’m giddy. I’m anxious. I’m excited. I can smell it in the air. I can feel it in my bones. Football is back and wives across this great country have no idea their men are about to be stolen from them. Those people that live near Buford High are probably feeling the same thing. They CAN’T WAIT to enter that 62-million-dollar cathedral to watch their boys play. They’ll probably make that 62 million back on concessions in the first game season. That’s how much we Americans love football.

People might think of a thousand better ways to spend that money. I probably could too. But when I really think about it, there is nothing better than spending money on something people enjoy. In a world where everyone is whining about this or that – football is a beautiful constant. It’s something millions of people in this country love and enjoy. It’s a right of passage for the boys playing, it’s an escape for the people watching, and the probability that any teacher who was fired in order for this stadium to be built will still watch football this Autumn is hovering at 99%.

P.S. – Monmouth University’s football stadium cost 17 million dollars (LOL).

P.P.S. – Some of the most expensive high school stadiums are obviously in Texas with multiple in the 80-100+ million dollar range. Texas Forever.

P.P.P.S. – The last play of my football career was fucking beautiful. I was playing strong side safety, the quarterback dropped back to pass, I read his eyes looking across the field and sprinted about 30 yards to the weak side, dove, and broke up a pass. My head slammed directly into the hard turf. I was concussed. My brain turned to soup. It was worth it.

P.P.P.P.S – My guess is that NONE of those twitter commentors read ’s piece on his Substack where he goes into how Buford high school actually came up with the funds because why would anyone want their priors tested. If you’re interested check it out here!

Huddle Up

The $62 Million High School Stadium That Sparked a National Debate

When I tweeted about Buford High School in Georgia opening its new $62 million football stadium earlier this week, the reaction was polarizing…to say the least…

Read more

9 months ago · 32 likes · 2 comments · Joe Pompliano

P.P.P.P.P.S. – Look at Buford High’s fucking library! Turns out they CAN read. Flannery O’Connor is a Georgian after all.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S - Catholics vs. Convicts to start the season is going to be a DOOZY. Go Irish.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S - Sorry for using you as click bait . No teachers were fired in the making of this stadium.

Here is what the legendary had to say about the novel:

“If Jay McInerney hailed from dirty north Jersey instead of genteel New England, worked within the 2010’s digital marketing hellscape instead of old media fact-checking, and wrote with zero whiny ploys for reader sympathy, he might have come up with something akin to Hell or Hangover. But he couldn’t have matched it since Alex Muka is, at base, a much better scribbler.”

Sorry Le Way - this blurb will live on in infamy. If you haven’t purchased The Wayback Machine I highly recommend you do and, if asked, I would write an equally scathing blurb because I fucking loved this book so much. Wayback and myself are both McInerney fans which is why this is all kosher. In the spirit of McInerney and his novel Bright Lights, Big City the below piece is written in the second person. Enjoy!

With trepidation, you walk into the house. One kid is hanging off the back of the couch, feet pressed up near the top, arms holding on for dear life, head upside down, hair like a Troll doll suspended in gravity.

“Hi, Daddy,” she says, smiling at you, lunacy in her eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you don’t do that,” you hear from the other room. “This is exactly how you got that boo boo last time.”

Your wife is right but your daughter is like you. No matter how many times she gets hungover a boo boo, she doesn’t learn her lesson. You should probably get her off the back of the couch but she’s still smiling at you, hanging backwards, perfect in all her childish glory, and then she says, “Hi, Daddy” again and you can’t help but start laughing your ass off. You finally pick the three-year-old up, hold her upside down for a second or ten, flip her right side up, then kiss her cheeks until she begs you to stop.

With the same trepidation you entered your home with you turn the corner into the dining room where your wife is feeding the one-year-old. Both are covered in yogurt. Both look disheveled. One has the brightest smile on her face. Fat cheeks pinching her eyes shut, dimples the size of moon craters. The other looks like she has been taking cover fire in a WW1 trench.

How, at this particular moment, are you supposed to remind ask if you can go to Brooklyn tonight for a book reading? The balls on you for even thinking it. You should ditch your plans, stay home, help, but you’re a selfish son of a bitch. You have one single goal in mind. The same goal that’s been driving you up to the attic for 10 years to write every morning. The same goal that has kept you up countless nights. The goal, the story, that just won’t let go of you.

But how is this night in Brooklyn supposed to further that goal? This night won’t help you with your final edits. You know as good as anyone that you will not be getting up at 4 AM after a night out in Brooklyn. But still, that is what you’re thinking about. Even if you tell yourself you are going to meet up with , or to meet the great , or to see again, or to hear what all the hubbub is about concerning ’s new novel, you are going to show face because of your novel. Selfish son of a bitch, indeed.

You decide to trick yourself. You train your mind to say that you are going to be around like-minded people. You’ve lived 35 years outside of any real literary scene and now you finally have a chance to be around people who enjoy and write books. And you’ve gotten a taste. Just two nights ago you were in the Lower East Side rubbing elbows with real writers. . Pearson. Barkan. You’re an addict now. You want to be around these people. Learn from them. Talk to them. Hear what they have to say about books and life. But this is all a trick. You are going because of your book. You selfish son of a bitch.

Deep down you know all this as the words leave your lips.

“Can I still go to that thing in Brooklyn tonight?”

Your wife, with yogurt in her hair, gives you one of those looks that says your death is rapidly approaching. You deserve that look. And death by wife is as good an excuse as any for leaving Adam high and dry the one time he’s in NYC. But her face lightens. The crease between her eyes flattens. She knows how much this means to you. She wants you to be successful almost as much as you. And she knows why you’re going. She knows you’re a selfish son of a bitch and still loves you. This is why your book is dedicated to her. Because without her there is no book.

“You have to go,” she says. “But you better fucking help before you leave.”

And help you did. You played with the girls to give mommy a break, then you tried your best to get them in bed (mommy had to help a little), and you left for your trek to Brooklyn. This time, unlike the train ride to the Lower East Side two nights before saddled with two Modelo tallboys, you decided to drive. If you didn’t drive you would’ve had to leave an hour earlier to hop on a couple trains and if that was the case you’d certainly be a goner. The wife would’ve had you buried under the house in no time. Maybe you’re not so selfish after all, you tell yourself. But you are, because you are giddy the minute you hit the road enroute to a place where all your dreams will come true.

But your dream is actually hell…or a hangover? Oh god, shut up about your own book. You’re not even hungover. It’s been two days since Ross’s reading and you didn’t even drink that much. It’s hell because as you park the car you realize you’re in the midst of a few abandoned buildings in the middle of Brooklyn. You can pretend you’re cool all you want because you lived in Hoboken for a year but let’s be honest…you’re a soft suburb boy at heart. These dilapidated buildings give you the creeps. You wonder if The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research could really be located here of all places. But you check the address again and again and unfortunately…you’re in the right place.

You get to the door and there are a couple hipsters smoking clove leaf cigarettes. You ask them if this is the place for the reading and they confirm it is while judging the shit out of you. You are wearing a short sleeve button down, blue slacks, Chelsea boots, and a Yankee hat. You have more meat on your bones than the three of them combined. They are shocked that your big, dumb, jock looking ass is attending such an event. They don’t even check your ticket.

You walk up the stairs to Gasda’s studio, somehow miss the entrance, and end up on the top floor of the building where trippy music is playing and about ten people are laying on mattresses. It smells like incense. They are surely on some cocktail of psychedelics. This is your nightmare. If this is the reading you might as well hop back in your car, stop at a bar, pound a shot and a beer to clear your mind of what you just saw, and hightail it back to Jersey.

But you call Adam Pearson and he says, “Music? Mattresses? We’re out on the terrace right now. None of that shit going on here. I don’t know where you’re at,” in his southern drawl.

You walk back downstairs thanking God you didn’t use your capital with the wife for some weird Hare Krishna shit. Because let’s be honest here – if the reading was going to be on mattresses and if joining in on the ritual was going to help you and your novel you would have sat your ass down, took some of what they were having, and went along for the ride. You social climber. You ass kisser. You selfish son of a bitch.

When you arrive on the correct floor, you are relieved that there is a bar and a tender and people standing upright. A bar you can handle. You’ve been to one or two before.

You order a couple Miller Lites to Pearson’s disgust, yet you both enjoy them on the terrace bullshitting about this and that. You have no pretense when it comes to beers. Cold is your criteria. The setting helps. It’s a hot day and you can see tall buildings in the distance and you are in Brooklyn for a book reading. For half a second you forget about your book all together. You are just enjoying a beer with a friend.

You both walk back into the studio where the reading is going to take place and take seats in the middle of a conversation between Pistelli, Barkan, and Gasda about the 9/11 novel or lack thereof. They all agree that there hasn’t really been one except the one by Jay McInerny and how ends her critically acclaimed My Year of Rest and Relaxation (if you haven’t read it by now and are upset at this spoiler, I don’t know what to tell you). You want to add to the conversation that Beware of Pity by Stefan Zwig ends in the same way, with the beginning of World War 1, but you are too star struck to insert yourself in the conversation. Also, you forgot the name of the book.

You keep quiet, mainly because you are an idiot compared to these guys. You’ve been listening to Pistelli’s voice for a while now via his great Substack . You’ve learned more about the great books through him than any other person on planet Earth. No teacher in high school or college ever made you want to read Goethe before. And his real life personality matches the guy you’ve had in your earbuds for the last year. His voice is soft and measured. He’s calm. He thinks before he speaks.

So it surprises you when, in the middle of the conversation, he asks, “Why did I lug all these books here again, Gasda?”

There are six total people in the room and five of them, including me, already have Pistelli’s book (one is an ex-student of his) and he’s brought a ton of copies for sale. He didn’t want to, he admits, but Gasda assures him there will be more people. It’s funny to you, and noted by the group, that after all the talk about male readers and male writers that the six people in the room are all men. White men!

“Except you,” Pearson blurts out.

The room looks at you, confused. Hispanic? Dominican? Cuban? Yea right, white boy! You’ve gotten this all your life and you still get a perverse joy when this information is revealed. Maybe this is a good time to mention your book. The character in your book resembles you. Half white – half Hispanic. But you don’t say shit. You are failing your mission.

After you get up, go grab a couple more beers for yourself and Pearson, you realize that even more men are rolling in. Sure, there are a couple ladies, but the ratio is probably 3:1. So much for the long-lost literary man. Ray Carver is somewhere smiling down on the event. After you hand Pearson his beer he slides into conversation with Pistelli, someone that matches his highbrow-ness, and you head to the terrace for some air.

Out on the terrace you run into Gasda. He is on a flip phone, coordinating something, finger pressing his teeth, look of concern on his face. The man is clearly busy. With all the books, plays, and Substack writing he clearly has a full plate. When he hangs up you thank him for the event and ask him about the space, about coordinating events, about his book (that you’ve just bought). He answers all your questions with a hint of worry in his voice, like he is paying attention to you while trying to spin fifteen plates in his head. But when you start talking about sports he seems relieved. This was something you did not expect. On the surface Gasda is your typical Brooklenite. The de-facto leader of Dimes Square. If you were to judge a book by its cover you would assume that he hated sports. That he found them to be cheap entertainment. He is a playwright and a novelist and has no time for frivolous activities such as athletics. You would have been wrong. By the end of the conversation Gasda is recruiting you to play in his touch football league that runs every Sunday. You would love to, but driving from Jersey to Brooklyn every weekend to play football would surely end in divorce or a torn ACL. You still have not brought up your book.

You head back in for the reading and Pearson does your dirty work for you. He tells a couple people about your book and you finally have an excuse to talk about it. People seem interested but you can’t tell if it’s because you are standing right in front of them, half a foot taller, 60 pounds heavier, or if it’s genuine interest. You guess you’ll find out when the book is released but it’s good that the entire trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. You’ve done what you set out to do. Get your name out there. Talk yourself up. But as people fill up the room and the readings start you finally come to the realization that none of this is about you. Each reader pulls you in in their own way and you feel equally awed, self-conscious, and competitive all at once. During Gasda’s reading you did in fact lean over to Pearson and ask if yours was better than his. You don’t know what depths of hell this question gurgled up from, but you had to know.

Post readings you asked each author to sign your copy of their book. They each did with a smile. You will be stealing Pistelli’s way of signing books going forward. You feel lucky to have a signed copy of his beast Major Arcana. Gasda signs The Sleepers not to Alex, but to Anthony. You wonder if he thinks you are a certain Anthony who just recently panned his book. If he does think this, you wonder why he was nice to you at all. Then you wonder how you would react to someone panning your book and then you finally understand why Hemmingway bullied Max Eastman. You’re probably less concerned with your manhood than Hemmingway but it would still be hard to resist the urge to smack someone in the head after shitting on your book. But then again, you would be happy with any review at this point. And you remember how Gasda deals with good reviews and pans. He eats it up, feeds it into the machine, and for weeks on end everyone is talking about his book. This is the way. There is no such thing as bad publicity for us novelists.

Barkan’s signature and note in your copy of Glass Century is your most prized possession of the night. You would like to tell the world what he wrote, but you’ll keep it close to your chest. It’s too good to just reveal it on Substack. It will only live on in your copy. But you will reveal here that it has to do with the Mets and Yankees.

You give Pearson one last hug before leaving. That’s right, a big old man hug. He has the same look as the first night you said you were leaving – like you had just kicked his cat. You remind him that you got the wife and kids at home and…again…he is shocked. You wonder if he has confused your main character with you. Drinking and drugging all night is a young and single man’s game, something you are neither of anymore. You’re going to miss your talks with Pearson. You are brothers in this writing thing now.

On your drive home you were struck with mixed feelings. Wanting to be a great writer. Wanting to be better than other writers. Embarrassed that you actually want this. Conflicted with how you will feel about shamelessly marketing your own book in the future. You know books are a business, a tough one, but they’re also deeply personal. Each one of the readers that got up and read their book were putting their hearts on the table. Sure they want you to buy their book but they also want you to like it. They put just as many hours in that you have on your book. Possibly more. They care just as much about their work as you care about your own. They want to be better than the next guy too. You are happy you came to this conclusion because you were worried. You don’t want to be the selfish son of a bitch you thought you were. Or maybe you still are that selfish son of a bitch, but not only that. The book game is a mind fuck. But you’re happy to be in the game.

There’s no way you missed the first link but if you did - here it is again. Shameless plug for the win. This is my Substack after all. Hell or Hangover out now!!!!!!!!

My debut novel Hell or Hangover will be released this week now that the clowns at Amazon have gotten back from Bezos’s wedding and finally approved it for publication. Here’s what the man, the myth, the legend had to say about it:

"Hell or Hangover reads like coke-snorting early Bret Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski had a wild night in the city with some crazy Cuban cousins, dabbled in Santería, and woke up hungover in suburban New Jersey. Alex Muka has written a voice-driven banger about a young man spiraling through shots of booze, lust, and existential angst in search of something real. It’s a romance, a reckoning, and a raucous coming-of-age novel full of guts, grime, and poetry. A bold debut from a writer with serious chops and a worldview all his own."
—Andrew Boryga, author of Victim

I couldn’t have said it better myself…which is why I’m forever grateful he agreed to read it.

Pre-order the e-book here - it will be available July 4th - or order the paperback which can get to you in two days if you’re a on that Amazon Prime teat.

Every night starts the same. The pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking starts.

These are the opening lines of my novel Hell or Hangover and also the same thing I thought on my train ride into New York City. You didn’t think I would attend my first reading dead sober did you? So there I sat, tall boy of Modelo wrapped in a brown paper bag on my lap, wondering what the hell I was doing riding the train into New York City to attend ’s Glass Century book launch event.

I’d never been to a book launch event. Never heard a published novelist read from their book in public. I’ve never so much as met another person in real life who read an entire book of fiction. I love my friends dearly, wouldn’t trade them for the world, but the extent of their reading stops at the days betting lines. I’ve always thought of this as a gift. I’d never been exposed to literary terms like Romanticism, Realism, Post-Modernism, Surrealism, so when I write, I am part writing something I would like to read and part writing for a group of numbskulls who might never read what I’m writing. This gives my writing a kind of everyman quality, I tell myself. I am the new Ray, I tell myself. But when I sat on that train, fortifying myself with booze, I had never felt more like a fraud.

I guess you could blame this entire thing on Ross in the first place. If Ross had never written his piece about literary men (or lack thereof) titled From Misogyny to No Man’s Land, and I never DM’ed him telling him I loved it and that I was pitching my own novel, and him actually responding with interest in my book, and then him saying “give it another six months and if it doesn’t work out, do it yourself”, I wouldn’t have been pre-gaming by myself on NJ Transit. I also wouldn’t be self-publishing my own novel. What I probably would have been doing instead of attending his book launch event was sending out a new batch of queries to agents that would inevitably get rejected, becoming more and more bitter by the day, assuming I was clearly a genius and these agents were part of the Literary Industrial Complex, and throwing my hat in the ring of think pieces on just why WHITE HETERO MALES JUST ARENT GETTING PUBLISHED. Considering I have no publishing experience, have no idea how the publishing industry actually works, my piece would just be another one of those bitter, whinny, smug-ass diatribes that crop up every other day on this lovely website. So thank God Ross answered my DM. Thank God he sent me some self-published novels to read. Thank God the small amount of bitterness I had that my novel wasn’t getting accepted disappeared when I decided to publish it myself. But the fact that I was publishing the book myself, that my words would be out there, that Ross told me if I sent the book to him he’d have someone review it for his new publication The Metropolitan Review, caused me to crack open a second Modelo tallboy in pure terror.

I watched the stops go by on the North Jersey Coast Line. Middletown, Aberdeen-Matawan, South Amboy, Perth Amboy, Woodbridge, Rahway. Rahway always gives me the creeps. There’s a prison in Rahway. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (of Bob Dylan and Denzel Washington fame) and Chuck “The Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner (of Rocky fame) both did their time at that lovely house of horrors. So did a friend. So I chugged about half a tallboy and decided to text , a fellow Substacker who I would be meeting up with, to clear my mind of ever being locked behind bars.

Me: Where you at?

Adam Highbrow: No idea, trying to figure out this damn subway.

Me: Oh boy. Just get an Uber.

Adam Highbrow: No, I want the full New York experience.

Me: Watching someone drop trou and shit on the floor of an underground train isn’t really an experience you want.

Adam Highbrow: Okay, an Uber is too expensive.

Me: Didn’t I just venmo you a couple hundred for editing my book?

Adam Highbrow: Yea, and you still owe me a couple hundred.

Me: Fair. Take the subway.

I had never seen Adam before. Only heard his CLEARLY southern voice over a Zoom call where he lied and said his computer didn’t have a camera. What’d you buy that thing in the 90’s bud? I was getting to the point where I was seriously considering self-publishing and wanted someone, in particular a male-millennial, to take a crack at it. Adam begrudgingly obliged. He is a high brow man of letters, or at least his online persona led me to believe he was. I warned him that my novel was no Faust, no Faulkner, and definitely not something would ever add to his curriculum. It was quite shocking when he read the book in a couple days, liked it, and decided to help me tune it up. So much for being highbrow. Regardless, he will remain in my contact list as Adam Highbrow forever.

I was not only looking forward to meeting Adam but also the elusive and mysterious . He is now saved in my contact list as Le Wayback and even though I know his full name, I will never call him by it. He is Le Way to me and always will be. Along with the two Modelo tall boys I decided to bring my copy of his book The Wayback Machine. I had asked him if it was weird to bring a copy for him to sign and was told that is not weird at all. Shit, if someone asked me that question I’d probably shed a tear that my writing was worth my signature.

When I first read The Wayback Machine I almost shed a tear myself. This was the type of book that made me love books in the first place. A grungy story about a fuckup fresh out of jail, the early 2000’s rock scene, hysteria, drugs, alcohol, a shit ton of heart – right up my alley. But the book’s content and the Substack persona of Wayback did make me wonder what type of character I would be meeting. Would I walk into the bar we were supposed to meet at and find it empty except for a man in the corner wearing a fedora and a trench coat? This man and I would make eye contact, he’d say, “You looking for Le Way?” and I’d say, “Yes,” and he’d say “Right this…le…way…” and then lead me down a cellar, through doors and hallways to Le Way’s Lair, where a man that looks like Mads Mikkelsen sits behind a desk, drink in hand, smoking a cigarette. He’d stare at me, head tilted, finally smile and say, “So you liked my book?”

This, in fact, is exactly what happened.

Kidding.

Wayback Machine aka Daniel Falatko was sitting at the bar, sipping on what I believe was a gin and tonic. He looked nothing like Mads Mikkelsen. He looked more like a skater version of Sam Rockwell. His voice is softer than what I’d imagined, friendlier too. I guess most people can confuse a writer with their characters. Instead of fanboying out we immediately slipped into conversation about , about our favorite writers here, about where we were born and raised over a couple of shots and beers. I was trying to fortify myself further, trying to gain as much liquid confidence as possible before heading to the reading. I bought the drinks. This was THE Wayback Machine for fucks sake.

Most of all we laughed about his diss tracks. He admitted the only people he felt okay about dissing, except one (you can guess which one that is), were people that he actually loved that failed his expectations of them. This is exactly what his novel is about at the roots. Someone who believed in something only to get the rug pulled out from under them. This is something that clearly drives Wayback’s life, because as we walked towards the reading through the streets of the Lower East Side, he would point out to me places that used to be drug dealing dens, or money launderers, or even places where sex was sold. They’d all been turned into fancy tapas bars or high-end clothing stores. The rug, indeed, was pulled right out from under him.

We entered P&T Knitwear, where the reading was to be held, right past a building where a woman used to sell the best weed out of a laundromat, and showed our e-tickets to the girl behind the desk. I had bought two tickets, one for me and one for the wife – both included books with the package. The wife couldn’t make it. The life of a parent trying to find a baby sitter is almost as bad as me trying to find an agent. Hundreds of rejections to watch our little girls on a Tuesday night. So instead of having a nice night out with my significant other, I held two hard cover copies of Glass Century and tried to make a bee line for the bar. It occurred to me that it would be tough to hold a beer while also holding two books so I turned to Wayback and asked if he wanted one. I had already pre-ordered Ross’s book so now I was strapped with three total copies. I thought of it as an investment. If Ross turns out to be the next Edith Wharton a couple decades from now those three first editions will be worth a pretty penny. Unfortunately for my future bank account, Wayback did want a copy and accepted my gift. We will only know how much that gift was worth in the distant future.

If the jury is still out on whether Ross is the next great New York novelist, it’s been decided that he is the Gertrude Stein of Substack. He is the one gambling on new writers through his publication The Metropolitan Review. He is the one reviewing self-published books like The Wayback Machine. He is the one taking chances that no one else seems to have the balls to take. So, when I finally saw him in person, enroute to the bar, I was kind of shocked. He wore a blazer and tie, slacks, dress shoes. He was deep in conversation with someone, I assumed talking about one of three things – the literary landscape, politics, or the Yankees. I have to admit, he looked baked. High as a kite. His eyes were half shut. Maybe he was just bored from the conversation or he’d imbibed as much as I did before entering the bookshop. I’d be much more than baked if I had to read from my own book in front of a hundred or so people.

Before getting to the bar a large oaf stood out among the rest. He looked like Isaiah Hartenstein only shorter in height and a bit larger in girth. I don’t know why, but I knew this was Adam Pearson and went up and hugged the big bastard. He introduced me to his girlfriend, Chelsea, who was very nice and very not interested in the whole charade of the book launch. It was endearing. I immediately liked her.

We all finally made it to the bar, I bought a round, drank mine too quickly in conversation, and went back for another without them. Okay, another two. The problem with me and drinking in public is that I don’t know what to do with my hands. So the hand inadvertently goes up to the mouth, the drink gets drunk, and the drink magically disappears. On the second trip to the bar I found Ross unusually alone and introduced myself. I was wearing a Yankee hat not only because I didn’t shave my head but because why not suck up to the boss?

“Nice to finally meet you. And nice hat,” he said.

It worked.

In the same way Chelsea was not interested in the reading in an aloof way, Wayback was not interested because he’d seen this and done it before. Only, according to him, to much less fanfare. If it made my stomach churn thinking about reading in front of hundreds I almost threw up thinking of reading in front of two.

The reading was great, so was the Q&A, and at some point in the middle of one or the other the infamous conversation in Adam Pearson’s piece If I Should Return To Society about this same night occurred. This is the only factual part of his account. You’re telling me it doesn’t look like this guy is receiving a blowjob from on high? Geyad damn.

After the Q&A was over we went up to get our books signed. Well, Wayback and Adam did. I gave another piece of my kid’s college fund to Adam as he had forgot his copy of Glass Century all the way back home in Louisiana. So just like that, my two copies turned to none (except for the one at home) and now my kids won’t be able to attend college. Thanks guys.

Regardless, we all went up and shook Ross’s hand, congratulated him, and they got their copies signed. I ended up in conversation with Ross’s mother as Wayback and Adam, both published or reviewed in The Metropolitan Review, actually had something of value to talk to Ross about. Ross’s mom is a fucking character. It doesn’t get more Brooklyn than Ross’s mom. Strong accent, no fucks given attitude, small but can still kick your ass. She reminds me of my mother in law. She probably uses made up Brooklyn words and phrases that no one else in America knows what they mean. I can imagine her looking at her son and saying, “He thinks who the hell is.” If any characters in Glass Century resemble the short yet energetic and loud woman laughing with me in that bookstore, Ross will have a serious hit on his hands.

I was also lucky enough to run into who is just as lovely in person as she is online. She is a small, unintimidating figure yet I found myself nervous when I saw her. She smiled at me and gave me a hug. If Ross isn’t the Gertrude Stein of the Stack then Vanessa surely is. She has also edited my novel and if she’s as prescient about my book (she liked it) as she is about the latest New York City Mayoral Democratic Primary, then I am in luck.

Wayback and I left and headed back to the bar we were at earlier. This bar, he told me, was one of the haunts the main character in his novel, Nathan, used to hit up before the gentrifying hordes took over. Adam and Chelsea had to go try Katz’s Deli. I didn’t blame them but I questioned how late one can stay up when they are filled with a sandwich the size of one’s head. At the bar, I finally popped the question, and Wayback signed my copy of his book. I will cherish it forever. Adam and Chelsea returned an hour later, wobbling from all the food, and we kept drinking and talking and laughing. It is good to meet people you’ve talked to online in real life. Not IRL. In real life. Spell it out. Don’t let the internet fuck your brain too much. Alas, it was time for me to go. I have a wife and kids for chrisake. When I said I was leaving Adam looked at me like I had killed his cat. Chelsea punched Adam in the shoulder and yelled, “Can’t you see he’s a family man!?” But all I could think of was the opening lines to Bright Lights Big City.

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time in the morning.

Unfortunately for my wife, I am that kind of guy. I could have stayed and drank and laughed until the wee hours. But times have changed. 10 PM for a dad might as well be 3 AM. I wondered how I would swing going out again in just two nights to the reading was putting on in Brooklyn. Gasda, Barkan, and Pistelli in one room. Appointment television. (Substack IRL part 2 will be out next week) But you don’t just get to go out as a parent. You pay for it in one way or another. And two nights in the same week? Forget it. Rent would be due. I had to get my ass home.

At Penn Station I bought one last road soda. Why the hell not, right? Modelo tall boy please. The train ride back was long and arduous and when I passed Rahway I didn’t even think about the prison. I was drunk and happy and finally, not nervous at all.

If you didn’t preorder my debut novel Hell or Hangover before reading this - do it now.

Here’s a quick synopsis.

Lou Kennedy wants out. Though he doesn’t admit this to anyone, and barely admits it to himself, there has to be a reason to stop the debauchery of his current life, he just hasn’t found it yet. That is until a drunken night out in New York City leads him to Marissa, the girl who just might inspire him to clean up his act. She’s a Spanish spark unlike any woman he’s ever met. But there’s a problem. At some point late in the night Lou’s bad habits get the better of him. He blacks out and wakes up in his ex-girlfriend’s bed with no recollection of how he got there and no evidence Marissa ever existed. No phone number. No photos. After furious online searching he can’t even find an Instagram handle.

Desperate, irrational, and questioning if the Marissa he met is real, Lou seeks out his mother’s Babalawo who says he has five days to find Marissa or he will lose her forever. In a bibulous jaunt through the streets of Hoboken and Manhattan, where family, friends, addiction, old flames, the spiritual, and the superstitious all play a part in hunting down the beautiful apparition that just might change Lou’s life forever, he faces a choice - find Marissa or succumb to a life of depravity, enroute to the brink of insanity.

This, my friends, is a first. According to the dictionary wisdom is the ability to use knowledge and experience to make sound judgements. You’d think hangover number 5,000 would be considered both knowledge and experience to cut the drink. You’d think agent rejection number 155 would be considered both knowledge and experience to let my book die. You’d think baby number one would be considered both knowledge and experience to avoid number two. Wisdom, clearly, is not my forte.

Yet the other day I felt wisdom welling up inside me. True, unabashed, wisdom. It all started with a harmless pizza order for the office. Three pies - one plain, one chicken parm, one pepperoni. When the pies arrived I grabbed two slices, scarfed them down, and headed into my office for a three-hour meeting. After the soul-sucking concluded, I came out hungry. I needed a third slice. This is usually not wise. A third slice is nap inducing at this old age. But I was adamant. As I lifted each box, I found that all the pizza was gone.

“Damn, you guys ate all that?” I asked the Gen Z’ers now crowding up our office.

“No, there’s some left over,” one said.

“I think two pepperoni,” another shouted.

One employee kept his mouth shut but he shot me a side eye glance coupled with a squirely smile. Keep in mind I am the boss’s son. There is an unearned fear employees have of me every time I speak. As much as I try to just be a normal employee it is impossible for them not to look at me as someone who could ruin their life. It’s sad. I am not that person. But it does have its advantages.

“Is there any more pizza left?” I asked the silent employee.

“Um, I packed two slices up for dinner,” he said.

“What? For dinner? Didn’t you just eat it for lunch?” I said, laughing. Inside I was fuming. The company paid for the pizza and you’re wrapping up the leftovers? Fucking Gen Z, amiright!?

“I hate cooking,” he said. “This is so much easier.”

“Hate cooking?” I asked, pulling up a seat next to him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m so tired after a long day. Cooking is so much work. It’s a waste of time. It takes an hour to make something that I could have just ordered. I’d rather be playing video games,” he said.

I was flabbergasted. I’d never heard such defeated language out of another human’s mouth. In one instant all the goodness in life was sucked into a vacuum of doom and gloom. Cooking, a waste of time, video games? It was all too much. Instead of pulling this youngin’ aside and sharing my wisdom with him, I went the ribbing route. I poked fun at him a little bit, he poked fun back, the office donned him a new nickname (Chef), then I went in my office, closed the door, and cried.

I’ve never really worried about the younger generation. Maybe this is naive or maybe after having two kids of my own I automatically have some stake in the future. I assume every generation looks on their predecessors and successors and sees stupidity, but I am not confident enough in my own assertions, nor cocky enough about my own life choices, to assume the older or the younger generation have it right or wrong. I’m just surviving here.

But this…this made me lose hope for the youngsters. Forget their cell phone addled brains, their lack of work ethic, their inherent whininess, giving up cooking was a bridge too far. And to replace such an act with video games? Hopelessness set in.

The reason for my despair is that cooking holds a special place in my heart for several reasons.

First, the physical act. Is there anything better, after a day of work staring at a computer, than a semi-mindless task? There should be something called chopping therapy. Taking an onion, cutting it in half, peeling off the skin, smelling the pungent sweetness only an onion can produce, making a slice into the width of one side, getting a little sting in your eyes, then slicing thin lines in the top, and then finally dicing it is so therapeutic it should be used by shrinks the world over. Just get a bunch of anxiety-ridden Gen Z’ers in a room who think they have ADD, ADHD, and depression and instead of doping them up with the latest drugs, have them chop a few fucking zucchinis and watch their worries float away.

Or how about this…give them about twenty garlic bulbs and have them frustratingly smash, peel, and chop a hundred cloves. Their hands will be sticky, there will be garlic sheaths everywhere, but at least they will have completed something with their hands. We can even add another dimension. Put a glass of wine and a cigarette in front of each of these poor souls. After they have cut the garlic (which has probably taken them hours) reward them. There are studies that show the combination of wine, cigarettes, and garlic can drastically increase your testosterone levels (these studies were done by me). Just THINKING of that combination - the smells on my hands, the first sip, the first puff - are making my pants a little tight if you know what I mean. At the end of their work, cigarette and wine in hand, looking like Serge Gainsbourg, these Gen Z’ers existential dread will dissipate and they will have become real human beings. I can admit that cigarettes and wine are probably not good for your overall health but I assure you that combination is better than whatever chemical cocktail their physicians have currently got them on. Chopping therapy will imbue these children with a purpose. Purpose has more health benefits than a measly glass of wine and cigarette can negate.

As these youngsters begin to prepare a meal they will realize, if they haven’t gone full Kendall Jenner, that they are doing something worthwhile. Something real. Something that involves actual work. They might even realize, if they are as wise as me, that they want to do this again on their own and not in chop therapy class. This is where problems may arise. I can relate this to writing.

It’s not easy coming up with a plot for a book, or writing the first sentence, or writing a million sentences after that, and then going back and making sure all the words fit in the right places, and then doing that again and again and again. But it’s this act that makes the end product all the more special. Yet, we live in an age where people actually believe typing a prompt into an AI generator like “write me a short story about a man, while cooking a meal for his family, begins to ponder how scared shitless he is that the world is too much and too frightening to be raising a family,” means you actually created the story the AI spits out. (I’ll actually write this story one day). Like ’s latest piece (The Novelist in the Age of AI) highlights perfectly, soon we may not know if what we are reading was made by a human or a bot. This will never happen in the case of food. Of course you can order in, but there is no mistaking whether you made that meal or not. Of course you can google a recipe. Of course you can subscribe to one of those pre-packaged ingredient companies that set you up, step by step, but you still have to PHYSICALLY cook it. If there ever comes a day when a robot can cook an edible meal out of plastic, when soul food is replaced by soulless food, I pray I am long dead before then.

The best part about making a meal is that my mind tends to wander while I’m doing it. It looks out the window, it semi-focuses on the task at hand, it thinks about the day, sometimes it doesn’t think at all, but ultimately, it all comes back to who I am cooking this meal for. These Gen Z’ers desperately need to get out of their own selfish heads and this act, no doubt, will do it for them. As you cut the ingredients, then sauté them, then start timing which things go in which pot when, then raise or reduce the temperatures as needed, you begin to lose yourself. You are no longer you. You are worriless. You are just cooking. And then the real magic happens. One of your daughters or your wife breaks the spell and yells from the other room, “Is it ready yet? It smells so good.”

Cooking is inherently about bringing people together. God damnit that sounds corny but sometimes corny is true. There are no worthy human gatherings without food and every memory I have as a child revolves around it. I can’t remember any Substack note or Instagram post I’ve scrolled by in the last hour but I can remember my sister’s 3^rd birthday where there was a huge pig roasting with an apple in its mouth like it was yesterday. Cooking requires you to put the phone down. To concentrate. To be around people you love sans devices.

But besides the memories and the gatherings, the real reason I love to cook is that it’s tied me to my roots. For all intents and purposes, I am a white boy. My skin is white, I was raised in the suburbs around a bunch of whites, and if I happened to be walking down the street at Columbia University no doubt the students would think there goes another entitled white male again. But the reality is more complex than skin color (the horror, I know!) My grandmother was born in the Dominican Republic. My sperm doner grandfather, who I never met, is Cuban. I am a half cast. But maybe because of my skin and where I was raised I never truly got indoctrinated into Hispanic culture. I can’t speak Spanish, I can barely dance bachata, and I certainly don’t know how to properly smack a domino. The only way I’ve ever connected with my Hispanic side is through food. Eating and cooking it. My grandmother taught me. My grandmother still teaches me. My mother’s step-dad, her defacto father, was a Cuban restaurant owner. Tragically, I never got to meet him either, but he taught my grandmother how to cook all the Cuban dishes and in turn, she taught me. So cooking has become the one thing I have that connects my gringo ass to my family history.

Lechon. Pernil. Empanadas. Ropa vieja. Cuban sandwiches. Tostone. Maduro. Sancocho. I’m so white I don’t even know how to get accent marks over some of the vowels that require them in that list. But I can cook each one of these dishes and many more. Cooking and eating Hispanic food is what I know and what I love and every time I do I thank my grandmother and the Caribbean.

So, after I cried in my office, and thought about these things, I came out of the office a new man.

The employee said, “You can have those two slices if you want, I’ll just order something else for dinner.”

I replied, “You can take them. I’m cooking tonight and I want to be hungry.”

How’s that for wisdom?

P.S. – Shoutout to for the title inspo. Go order Why Teach? Now.

P.P.S. – Go cook this recipe tonight for your family. It’s easy as shit. ALWAYS USE THIGHS INSTEAD OF BREASTS. Thank me later.

Half Baked Harvest You Bastahds (Gangsta Grillz voice)

P.P.P.S – If you like cooking or food or wine or half casts or cigarettes…Hell or Hangover…out now!

The building is called Bell Works now but it was originally made as a research center for Bell Labs. For those of you who don’t recognize the name Bell, it was once the leader in telecommunications throughout the country. For one hundred years they dominated the telephone game until they were broken up by anti-trust laws in the 80’s and were subsequently gobbled up by AT&T. The building went unused for many years until it was bought by a local developer and turned into a mini town. There is office space for rent, restaurants, laser tag, a gym, and a ballet studio sprinkled throughout. Even creepier is the fact that they built a miniature neighborhood around the building. Identical town homes litter the outskirts and one can only imagine, when driving up the ¾ mile entrance, that the people living there must be severed for deciding to live there.

The whole vibe of the place really does match the show and they clearly made the right decision shooting it here. If you haven’t seen Severance I highly recommend you do. It’s a fantastic show. Well acted and well written with a spooky vibe that doesn’t leave you once the show ends. On top of that, the theme of the show really speaks to our current moment of what working feels like. How many times a day have you thought about how much you hate your job? That you feel like a rat in a cage? That you wish you were doing anything other than sitting in front of a computer from 9-5?

This particular note by hit me in my plums. (I’ve just started reading his novel Cubafruit and really love it. Also, read his Vollmann piece at – worth every minute of the 45 min estimated read time).

I thought about this note just yesterday when I walked out of the office to a balmy 75 and almost started to weep knowing I was inside for the majority of a perfect day. We’ve all been there and the Severance showrunners came up with an ingenious idea: what if there was a medical procedure to turn off your brain the minute you walked into work? What if you didn’t remember a single thing from your work day? What if the person that was working didn’t remember a single thing of your outside life? And what if that medical procedure was made by a massive, freaky, all-knowing company who was using your work hours for nefarious purposes?

Sever Shiver me timbers, that makes for good television!

(I have no idea if I’m using that pirate term right, but let’s just go with it).

Now, as I mentioned, I’ve actually worked in this building. I’ve been to the depths of the severed floor. I’ve seen this hell up close and personal and you know what? It’s actually not so bad. The reason it isn’t so bad is for the reason I was working there.

My wife has held a long time job as a Veterinary Technician. It’s a pretty thankless job. She gets beat up all day by different dogs and cats, comes home with scratches up and down her arms, her back hurts, her neck hurts, all for the low price of $25 an hour. But hey, she loves it and I love to see her happy. Which is why it killed me to watch her give up the job to take care of our two beautiful daughters. She’s made a sacrifice for our family that I could never repay. But my wife’s not a complainer and instead of letting the boredom takeover she decided to start a little business.

The business is called PeanutBoards (www.peanutboards.com). In all of her spare time (around 5 minutes a day) she designed a children’s toy to help our daughter learn how to spell. It’s a wooden letter board with a slide out chalk board. Our daughters love it. Other kids love it. So she decided to take the product to market. (If you like any of my writing and want to show it – go buy a board for a kid please!)

If you’ve ever started a small business you know how tough it is. Not only do you have to create a sellable product, find financial backing, manage expenses, etc… but once you have said product you have to get the word out and pray for sales. The best way my wife decided to do this was to start going to fairs, local events, and vendor shows to show off what she’d built. As a loving husband (and forced at gun point) I decided to tag along to the these events and help her with anything she needed. Turns out, just like at my real job, I am the salesman pushing product while my wife just sits back and collects her cash like a Don.

One of these events just so happened to be held at Bell Works. When we drove down that long entrance my asshole puckered like a fish’s mouth. I felt that the minute I entered I would suddenly have my memory wiped. I felt the hands of Big Brother at my neck. I felt the ghost of Lenin looking down on me. But instead, what I found inside, was hundreds of people who had put hard work into making stuff that they could sell. There were guys who made wooden cutting boards, women who made jewelry, a couple who did dog training, even a woman who self published a set of children’s books. This place that looked like it was made to breed robots was filled with the exact opposite. It was awesome. It was America. At least the part of America everyone is still trying to hold on to. Local people, local businesses. The American dream.

What I learned was that even in a place that is the epitome of corporate hell there are still people out there trying to make a living off something small, off something simple, off something they built with their own brain and hands. And finally, it reminded me of self-publishing. It reminded me how authors can now get their very good work out there with no backing from an agent or a publisher. The last two novels I’ve read, Why Teach? by & The Wayback Machine by - (aka Daniel Falatko), are both self published and fan-fucking-tastic. I highly recommend them. They are novels that could have easily been published by the Big 5. But instead these guys have done all the work themselves, put their nuts on the table, and hopefully will reap the rewards they deserve, much like the people selling their stuff at Bell Works.

Now enough praise for them - this reminds me to remind you that I’ll be self-publishing my novel Hell or Hangover this July. When it comes out, buy it. Buy the other two novels I mentioned too. Buy a PeanutBoard. Support people who are doing shit on their own. Get off the corporate teat so that not everyone has to be severed to be happy.

P.S. - I am going to keep screaming this from the rooftops - Mr. Milchick fucking ATE in that marching band scene.

The day after Christmas the wife and I went to a comedy show. The headliner was Joey Diaz, a notoriously raunchy comic from New Jersey, preceded by two opening acts. The show was originally sold out at the Count Basie Theatre but luckily I know someone on the charity board who can acquire tickets that are being held for board members (thanks Mom!) Little did I know the tickets that were held were FRONT ROW tickets. If I had known such a thing I would have politely declined.

Why? Because the last thing you want to do at a comedy show is sit front row. You are a sitting duck for any good comic and if there is something off or wrong or noticeable about you it will be called out to an audience who will then surely laugh at your expense. Alas, my mother shelled out money for the tickets, I bought them from her, and off me and the wife went.

As a balding individual I figured, at the very least, one of the three comics would take a swing at my lack of hair follicles. A bald head is a bullseye for easy jokes. I personally like my sparkling dome. When haircuts started creeping into the $30 range I was thankful that my hair decided to give up and fall lifeless into the shower drain. Though I’ve saved a ton of money, and think I look just fine sans hair, it still stings a bit when I see pictures of my younger self with what can only be described as a wafro (white afro).

To compound the bullseye that is a shaved head, I now shave my face. This is a new phenomenon. If it was up to me I’d keep a short beard or at the very least stubble. But it is not up to me. I didn’t shave my face for the show or for Christmas that just passed but for reasons that are near and dear to my heart. For reasons bigger than my own vanity. I now shave my face for my wife and daughters.

You see, Mr. Steinbrenner, the way my facial hair grows is out first. Eventually it falls down but for at least a two-week period the hair on my face shoots outward, sticking anyone in its vicinity like a porcupine. And for that two-week period my wife and kids hate kissing me. They would rather just give daddy one of those ass out hugs in order to not get their faces punctured by my spikey hair. During these periods, when I ask my three-year-old daughter for a kiss, she still gives it to me but winces in pain upon contact. During these periods, when I ask my wife for a kiss, she flat out says no. During these periods, when I try and kiss my one-year-old, she leans her head so far back she almost does a gainer out of my arms. It’s a travesty really. You know what I do instead? I shave every week. Why? Because I want to kiss my wife and kids, looks be damned.

So, Mr. Steinbrenner, I shaved my face and head the day before Christmas because I wanted to kiss my children on Christmas morning. I wanted the ability to stick my nose and lips so far into their cheeks it left a dent. I wanted my daughter to be so excited for the new bike Santa got the credit for that she couldn’t help but kiss ME on the cheek without wincing in pain. I wanted my wife to snuggle her face into mine while drinking coffee and watching the kids tear through their presents. It was all worth it Mr. Steinbrenner, until I attended that comedy show.

You can’t imagine the things these comics said about me. The opener took one look at me and said, “Jesus Christ, we got a cancer patient here in the front row. Give him a round of applause!” The second opener took one look at my wife, made a comment about how hot she was, and then said “She’s not only hot, she’s nice too. Look, she’s got a make-a-wish kid with her!” I sat there, I laughed, I took it on the chin because the reason I shave my face and head are bigger than me.

I don’t want to get all philosophical here Mr. Steinbrenner, but just hear me out for a second. Sports have always been about something bigger than the individual. They are a conduit to experience the breadth of human emotion. Sports are a way to make something serious out of a game, to play out a drama or a comedy in real time with no script. Sports may not be serious on the face but peel back a couple layers and you have the seriousness of the human condition playing out in real time. Winners. Losers. Joy. Heartbreak. It’s all right there once you get past the fact that these are just “grown men playing a kid’s game.” Sports are a way to get at something deeper and if they are not taken seriously there is no point in playing them.

For years your Yankees have taken playing the game of baseball seriously. Part of that reason is that you and your father have chosen to run the organization seriously. The shaving policy you recently threw out the window was one way of displaying that seriousness. I understand that times have changed, that grown men have realized they look like ugly shrews without facial hair, but that is no reason to have stopped the policy. If the shaving policy resembles the military then that is a good thing. War is a serious matter and it would look pretty ridiculous if our warriors weren’t all dressed in the same clothes with the same shaved faces. Sports is not war, I understand that, but it still should be taken seriously. A team should look the same in order to move in the same direction. The reason they should look the same is not some stupid rule. More than anything it shows that no one is above the team. It shows that grown men are willing to sacrifice something to be a part of it. I’ve sacrificed my facial hair to be a part of my family and been ridiculed in public for it. I think guys making millions of dollars a year can do the same to be a part of the New York Yankees.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Steinbrenner. If you need any help with policy decisions going forward, I know a guy…

P.S. – Dreadlocks should have always been allowed. Dreads rule.

P.P.S. – I know I sound like a boomer but I was born in 1990, I swear.

P.P.P.S. – Gleyber looks like an idiot with a beard.

P.P.P.P.S. – I haven’t stopped thinking about the conversation between George Steinbrenner and Lou Pinella at the Yankees facility in Fort Lauderdale. Lou mentioned to George that Jesus wore a beard and long hair, so why couldn’t he? George Steinbrenner looked out at a pond behind the facility and said to Lou, “Walk across that pond and you can have a beard and long hair.”

P.P.P.P.P.S. – Joey Diaz and his openers were fucking hilarious.

First and foremost, your parents have baggage that you are forced to pick up. In my case that baggage was becoming a Philadelphia Eagle fan. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Wrong. Growing up the Eagles sucked for a long time. It was tough being an Eagles fan living in Giant Country. Not only did you have to watch your team suck year in and year out, but you had to hear it from the surrounding Giants fans. Just take a look at the three most formative years of my football fandom.

It was putrid being an Eagles fan for a long time and there is a reason Eagles fans have gotten a bad rap over the years. When your franchise was, until recently, one of the 13 teams that had never won a Super Bowl, you tend to get frustrated and if Santa Clause or opposing fans have to eat the brunt of that frustration then so be it. It didn’t help that during the 97’-99’ seasons was when I learned how to lose my mind about sports via my father. We would sit down to watch the game, he would lose his mind at another loss, my mother would try to calm him down, and I’d be stuck watching another blowout loss all alone. I do not wonder why I am a psychotic football fan. It’s been handed down to me. It’s baggage I will have to carry.

The Eagles franchise has since turned it around. Since meeting my wife the Eagles have won two Super Bowls. I cherish her for how she cares for our kids, I’m lucky that she’s hot as shit, but I love her because she is good luck to my Birds. I feel less guilty that I am raising two Eagles fans now that we have a winning franchise. I am not sure how I would feel if I was brainwashing them to enjoy watching the same 97’-99’ teams. I am sure there is shit I am putting on my kids that they will have to deal with someday, but being an Eagles fan is not one of them.

Now the second mind blowing insight about my parents is in regards to their wedding. They’ve explained their two weddings to me before but now that I am a married man (and parent) myself, I am astonished at both of them. The first was an elopement in Margate after four months of dating. If my daughters told me they got eloped after four months of dating some little shit I would have to buy a gun, find the boy, and force an annulment so quick his head would spin. That shit aint’ happening on this Daddy’s watch. But the elopement is less crazy than their second wedding because…hold your breath…their second wedding was hosted on SUPER BOWL FUCKING SUNDAY.

That’s right, my parents were THOSE people. It’s unjustifiable. It’s insane. It’s pure selfishness to the nth degree. When they first told me this little nugget I didn’t think anything of it. Who cares if your wedding was on the same day as the Super Bowl? Keep in mind this was when I didn’t have to worry if the Eagles would be in it. Of course they wouldn’t. But now, after Superbowl LIX, I can’t look at my parents the same.

Why?

Well…I had an event I had to attend this year at 5:30 PM on Super Bowl Sunday.

I’d like to state here loud and clear, before I go in, that I love my family. I would do anything for them. I will sacrifice life and limb for anyone I am related to. This includes the family that I’ve adopted by getting married. Anything they need I will try and provide. But after the Eagles beat the Redskins Commanders to win the NFC Championship and I realized that my nieces Sweet 16 dinner was scheduled for 5:30 PM on Super Bowl Sunday, there was a moment of pure terror. What would I do? My beloved Birds were scheduled to play in the biggest game of the year at 6:30 PM and I would be where? At a Sweet 16? There’s just no way.

But I am no animal, dear reader. Sure, I love football but I love my niece more and wouldn’t have missed her Sweet 16 for the world (unless I wasn’t getting a candle, then I would’ve probably skipped it). To quell my growing concern my wife found out that we would be in a room with a bar that had multiple TV’s. This did not quell my concern. I thought of all the things that could go wrong. I wouldn’t be sitting in my seat or wearing my lucky sweats or paying close attention to every single second of the game that all clearly have an effect on the outcome of a game being played a thousand miles away from me that I am not playing in. In the end, I had no choice. You only turn 16 once.

I didn’t think things could get worse but of course, they did. I woke up around midnight the night before the big game with a 103 degree fever. I am told this is hospital level heat. I was having delirious dreams about playing safety in the Eagles Secondary and having my face on one of the Exciting Whites t-shirts that I currently have sitting in my cart, waiting to be purchased.

When I woke up in the morning I for sure thought that a 103 degree fever would leave me on the sidelines and at home watching the game all by myself. Not the worst outcome. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world even though my skin could burn someone to the touch. But my wife urged me to go to the doctors and somehow I was able to get meds, take a nap, and sweat the whole thing out before it was game time Sweet 16 time. 103 degree fever down to 98.7 in the time it takes you to watch the ridiculous pregame festivities (do we REALLY need a segment with Gordon Ramsey making a poboy?)

So not only was I recovering from a fluke illness, and not only was I headed to a Sweet 16, but I was also on antibiotics. Do you know what you’re not supposed to do on antibiotics? Drink. Now this, this was the hardest part of the entire day. I’m not always an alcoholic, but not being able to drink for the biggest sporting event starring my team was the hardest part of this whole affair. I was on edge. I couldn’t stop tapping my foot. My mind raced. I was going to have to raw dog the most consequential sporting event of the year. After the Yankees lost in the World Series and Notre Dame lost in the National Championship if the Eagles lost in the Super Bowl and I wasn’t allowed to drink my sorrows away I’m pretty sure I would’ve just called it as a sports fan.

Now for those of you who don’t know how the game turned out you can probably unsubscribe because…who the fuck doesn’t know how the Super Bowl turned out? But I will remind everyone that the Philadelphia Eagles DOMINATED the Chiefs for four quarters. Even though I walked into the dinner more nervous than my niece (who had to give 17 speeches) the game turned out exactly as I hoped. The Birds didn’t let me down because I didn’t let my niece down. And so I’ve made a promise to myself. It’s a weird promise, but a promise nonetheless. If the Philadelphia Eagles make it back to the Super Bowl I will be forced to find a Sweet 16 to crash. It will be weird, it will be creepy, but it will be necessary because that is my new good luck charm. I would like to thank my niece, wish her a happy birthday, and tell her to keep an eye out for anyone turning 16 next year when the Eagles decide to run it back.

Go Birds!

P.S. – Just kidding, that sounded very creepy. Gaba, your Uncle Alex does NOT want you to keep an eye out for Sweet 16’s.

P.P.S. – But if there happens to be a Sweet 16 on Super Bowl Sunday next year and the Eagles happen to be playing in the game…I’ll be your designated driver.

P.P.P.S. – A little novel update if interested – I am eyeing June or July as publication date and will be releasing sections here during the lead up. This book is a summer read and if you’re looking for a laugh, this will be the book for you! Stay tuned!

I know what you’re thinking. But Alex, you’re married! You write about your two daughters all the time! How could you stay at a hotel with a strip club sans wife and kids with a clear conscience? Well, let me set the stage.

By sheer generosity of good friends, on the Friday before the big game, I was given a ticket. I could probably write a novel on Devon Levesque, the guy who bought and gave me the ticket with no strings attached, but I’ll just say that he’s an insanely interesting and successful dude (did a backflip on Mt. Everest, bear-crawled a marathon, started and sold a few companies, etc…). He bought 8 tickets to the game. I was not originally part of the 8 because I bring nothing to the table. Money, mainly, is what I don’t bring to the table. Sure, I can bring some laughs, but a $4,000 ticket is about $3,900 over budget.

I’ve known Devon for a while, we are good friends, and we have a mutual best friend – Sean Smith, my Irish brother from earlier Notre Dame posts. By the grace of the Football Gods one of the original eight dropped out, I was given the 8^th ticket and a spot in one of the already booked hotel rooms. I didn’t care if I slept in a bed, on a cot, or made nice with the homeless and slept outside in front of the stadium. I had a ticket, I booked a flight, I was going.

The next day, about two hours before arriving at the airport, I come to find out that the hotels are booked for Sunday-Monday. I am to meet up with two lunatics who also have Saturday flights - Sean Smith and another friend Rob Doran – in Atlanta and we are going to wing it for a place to crash. I haven’t wung (?) anything in quite some time. You don’t wing anything when you have kids. You Your wife has everything planned out, you she prints out confirmations, you she double and triple checks everything you she can think of, and still, you she ends up missing something. But wing it? It’s been years.

In Rob’s words, we didn’t care if we slept at a fucking LaQuinta as long as we were in Atlanta, Georgia. But Rob was able to procure some information from someone he knew who used to live in Atlanta. The person recommended a few hotels in a cool area and I picked the first one on the list, booked it with Hotels Tonight for a quarter of the price (highly recommend Hotels Tonight), and didn’t think anything of it.

Fast forward about four hours and I am hammered drunk. A few airport cocktails, a few plane cocktails, and anxious nerves coursing through my veins about the game had me cross eyed by the time I touched Georgian soil. To distract myself from the general nausea I felt I had to chat up the passenger next to me, a young Notre Dame fan, and forcibly make him convince him to sign up for my Substack. Mystery passenger, I hope you’re reading this (and sorry).

When I got to Hotel Clermont it looked like the party was just beginning. Mind you, it’s 11 PM, a whole two hours past my bedtime. There are people outside smoking and drinking and the lobby gives off Chateau Marmont vibes. My first thought was this is the type of hotel that rock stars go to trash and die in. When the concierge gave me a Miller High Life with my room key I knew my intuitions were correct.

Next stop was meeting my friends at a bar called Ladybird. I’d come to find out this place was fantastic but at the time I was already pretty hammered, didn’t care about the place, and was just happy to be on solid ground surrounded by people who were fired up about the game. That fire pushed the night into the wee hours and around 2 AM we found ourselves back at our hotel. By this point, multiple groups of people on multiple occasions had told us that if we were staying at Hotel Clermont we had to go to the Hotel Clermont basement. That there was no choice in the matter. We had to see the strip club. We had to watch Blondie’s show. To say the least, we were intrigued (and closer to bed, thank God).

Now fellas – it’s at this point where you text your wife exactly where you are. She is asleep, sure, but she needs to know you are still alive when she wakes up to two kids smacking her in the face. You text your wife and say I am back at the hotel. You say there is a strip club in the basement. You say you want to go to bed. You say you miss her. You keep constant contact no matter the time of night. This is the only way. And then, when you enter the strip club after getting patted down (this is still Atlanta after all), and you understand what kind of strip club you are in fact entering, you text your wife a play by fucking play.

Me: Holy shit, there really is a club in the basement of our hotel.

Me: Holy shit, it really is a strip club.

Me: Holy shit, the strippers are all over 60.

Me: Holy shit, the strippers are all obese.

Me: Holy shit, this is the craziest place I’ve ever been to. Thanks for letting me come.

These five texts were actually sent to my wife. There was a club in the basement, it really was a strip club, all the strippers were over 60 (at the very least), at least ¾ of the strippers were over 300 lbs., and it was the craziest place I’d ever been to. Blondie was the star of the show, a woman in her 70’s, who’s specialty was crushing a beer can with her breasts. You just can’t make this stuff up.

I went to sleep convinced that Notre Dame had to win the National Championship after such a night. Clearly, I had too much to drink.

The rest of the weekend was a sprint, a blur, a smorgasbord of drinks and food and snippets of conversations. There was an anxiety around every exchange. You were talking, in the moment, but just behind the thought of the next thing you had to say, or what someone just told you, was an even bigger looming thought. What would happen during the game Monday night? Who would win? How would they win? It was the only thing that was truly on my mind.

The weekend was like a time vortex and suddenly, as if it happened in the blink of an eye, all the distractions are gone and you are in your seat, 8 rows back on the Notre Dame sideline, and LOCKED into the game. I could barely eat, could barely breathe, could barely think about anything except the plays that were happening in front of me (and the beers that were going down my gullet).For the next three hours I didn’t move. For the next three hours I didn’t so much as get up to take a piss. Three hours, give it all you got, and Notre Dame becomes National Champions.

If I could live in the first fifteen minutes of that game for the rest of my life, I would. Notre Dame gets the ball first and they put a drive together to take the life out of the raucous Ohio State fans. I will give a shoutout to the few Ohio State fans that were part of our group. Good guys, just rooting for the wrong side is all. There was some good banter and I respect good banter. And Ohio State fans travel well. I’d say the stadium was 60-40 in Ohio State’s favor. Their fans were loud, their fans were passionate, and their fans were QUIET after that first drive. 18 plays, 9 minutes and 45 seconds, 75 yards ending in a touchdown for the QB Riley Leonard. If only the game could have ended there.

The next three possessions Ohio State scored and Notre Dame was stopped. I was down bad and starting to feel the effects of the weekend. Tears were welling up behind my eyelids. If I made one wrong move, if I decided to stop believing, I’m sure I would have broken down right there and cried. But I never stopped believing and I never will stop believing. Through my belief (yes, this is how EVERY fan thinks) Notre Dame made a late comeback and for a second I thought they might actually pull it off. But, alas, it was Ohio State’s night. My belief was not enough. The stadium was a mere half mile from the hotel and instead of walking the 15 minutes back in frigid temps I decided to pay a guy $100 to ride me back on a fucking bike. Pain and misery is the life of a sports fan.

For the second time this year my team lost at the pinnacle. Yankees lose in 5. Notre Dame lose 34-23. You would think at this point I’d stop taking this so hard. These are college kids for fucks sake. They played their hearts out. Yet here I am, two weeks since the loss, and finally able to write about it. Okay, maybe that’s not 100% truthful. The reason it’s taken me so long to write about it is because hangovers in your mid 30’s after drinking for three days straight take a LONG time to get over. I think I just started feeling normal today. But I digress…

Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yet every year, like every sports fan, I get my hopes up that this will be the year my team wins the whole damn thing. At one point, on the depressing flight home, I thought…maybe I should stop doing that. Maybe I should not get my hopes up. Maybe I should be a normal person. Maybe I should watch the game as a surgical, non-caring, robot. But where’s the fucking fun in that? I put it all on the line (with my emotions, of course) and either reap the rewards or get depressed for a couple weeks. The only way to be a fan, for me, is all or nothing. It’s been nothing this year…one year it might be all. Regardless, it’s better to watch sports with some skin in the game. It’s better to do ANYTHING with some skin in the game. Otherwise, you’ll watch the world pass you by in some fake, cool, nonchalance without having cared about anything and you’ll be lesser for it. Caring is actually cool.

The craziest part about this latest loss is I have one more shot at this. I am a Philadelphia Eagles fan. Yes, my three favorite teams have all gotten to their respective championships and right now they are 0-2. If I go 0-3 this will be the most legendary run of loser sports fandom this world has ever seen. It coincides with me starting a Substack and I will have to genuinely think about shutting this whole thing down before the losses get out of hand. But once again, I believe, and I will be losing my mind on February 9^th like I have for the last two championships. This is the nature of the beast. This is the nature of caring. If you can’t be there for the losses you don’t deserve to be there for the wins.

And fuck the Chiefs, amiright?!

P.S. – I’m actually still hungover from the Natty…

P.P.S. – Posts will be ramping up again once this hangover finally leaves me in peace.

This is a new irrational fear I’ve discovered. It is probably due to age and responsibilities. When you are sick and incapacitated enough that you can’t even take care of your own children, the thought of mortality begins to set in. Luckily my wife has the immune system (and looks) of a Greek Goddess and was able to fight off any illness to take care of her three children (2 little ones and me).

I am better now. I wouldn’t wish this bug on my worst enemy. If you haven’t heard the term “shuke” before then I’ll let you intuit what the meaning is. My belief has returned. The belief that I will be okay, that I will be able to take care of my children, that I will live to see another day. Through this little harrowing experience, as well as Notre Dame’s latest win over the Georgia Bulldogs, I have been thinking about belief. What it does, how it’s formed, and what it means.

Let’s start with Notre Dame…

Three years ago Brian Kelly, that fucking scumbag rat piece of human garbage low life shit for brains assfuck, left Notre Dame for “greener” pastures. At the end of the 21’ season, before Notre Dame was passed over for the college football playoffs, Kelly decided to leave the University after a fairly successful 11 year run. 113-40 aint’ so bad a record and Notre Dame had a couple big wins in that span of time. But they never won any REALLY BIG games. Kelly felt, or rather, BELIEVED that Notre Dame could never win the big game. He felt that because Notre Dame is a school that cares about grades meant that Notre Dame couldn’t get the recruits that big schools in the SEC could. The SEC schools don’t give a flying fuck about academics which turns out to be a winning strategy when you are trying to recruit football players who have been gifted with insane talent and size but zero brain cells. Kelly believed Notre Dame could never compete at the highest levels and this belief trickled down through to his players and, ultimately, the fans. There was a period where I too believed that Notre Dame could not compete with the big boys because the sacred University would never drop it’s academic standards.

Enter coach Marcus Freeman.

First of all, this guy just exudes cool. Yes, it’s partly because he’s young and black, but also because he is a guy who has supreme confidence. He is a guy with supreme belief in himself.

And can you imagine where that belief extends to? His players. Every player on this Notre Dame team believes they can win any game. Even after losing to NIU earlier in the year this team has not stopped believing. The win against Georgia is one Notre Dame losses 100/100 times because they never believed they could beat an SEC team. That’s because their previous coach didn’t believe they could either. But Freeman believes, and through that belief, Notre Dame Football has a new outlook on the years ahead.

Looking back on my football playing days, it is now clear how much belief played a part in not only my success but every team I’ve been on’s success. (I have no idea if on’s is grammatically correct, nor do I care).

There are two examples that live rent free in my head.

The first example is of unbelief. My high school football coach, who I won’t name, was a fun guy. I liked him as a person. But a good football coach? Not at all. Our coach was more interested in us winning the off-season weightlifting competition than actually dialing up plays that would work against opponents. Every time a play call was run in from the sidelines you could almost feel the eyes roll in the huddle. He’s calling that? Now? There were times when our quarterback my senior year, Chris Chiarelli (a sophomore with a huge set of balls), would have to call a completely different play. Those plays usually worked because we believed in Chi. But our coach? We simply did not believe in him.

This all culminated in one of the worst coaching calls in high school football history.

I went to Colts Neck High School, though I grew up in Howell. Howell is a massive town in Monmouth County, New Jersey that has its kids split up into three different high schools. A few go to Freehold Township, about a quarter go to Colts Neck, and the remainder go to Howell High School. Luckily for Colts Neck’s football program, the 25% that attended were made up of pretty solid football players. Otherwise, Colts Neck most likely would have never won a football game in its existence. Colts Neck is a rich town where 45% of its inhabitants make over 200k a year. Not necessarily a recipe for creating high caliber football players.

I had grown up playing Howell football. A totally different beast. We were always good. We had a wealth of talent. We played hard, fast, and physical. Howell, along with Jackson, was a football factory growing up. The Colts Neck kids called us Howell-abamans. We were the red neck to their white collar. Granted anything less than 200k a year was red neck to these blue bloods.

The stars would align and in the first round of the playoffs my senior year, it was Colts Neck vs. Howell. It was a chance to beat the kids I grew up playing with. They were all very good. They beat us earlier in the season. They were undefeated. They ran the fucking spread offense in HIGH SCHOOL and were lead by my friend and Pop Warner quarterback Timmy Lamirande. This kid was the Johnny Manziel of New Jersey Group 4 Football. He would make defenders miss and throw dimes like you read about. We had our work cut out for us.

The game was close. It was back and forth. It came down to the fourth quarter. 27-21 Howell was up. We were driving to go up. We got down to the goal line. Fourth down. Three yards away from immortality. Three yards away from bragging rights. Three yards away from continuing our playoff run to a state championship. So what does our numb nuts coach call?

A half back toss pass.

Keep in mind our running back, who goes by the name of Ashton Jackson (how can you not be elite with that name?), is first team All-Shore. He can get us three yards. If anything, I am the backup running back and I am KNOWN for getting three yards a pop. Give me the ball and I can get you three, I promise.

Nope.

Half back toss pass from the three yard line. When that play was called in the huddle you could have seen the loss on everyone’s face. No one believed it would work. To put a cherry on top of this banana-land call, I am put in at tight end. My goal here is to run across the field towards where Ashton will be getting the toss and I should catch an easy touchdown pass. But…we are playing against kids I GREW UP PLAYING WITH! They’ve never seen my skinny ass in a three point stance in their life. I’ve never played a single down on the line in my 15 years of playing football. So what do they do? They all yell out “Muka’s in a three point stance, watch Muka, watch Muka!”

The play failed. We lost.

Now to the belief.

My best friend Sean’s dad, Big Sean, who I’ve written about here (The Fighting Irish) was the best football coach I ever had. He knows football better than anyone can know any subject. He eats, breathes, and lives football. There isn’t a scheme or play he doesn’t know. Him, and Sean’s uncle Coach Pat, were our Jr. Pee Wee coaches. To say I was given a plethora of football knowledge at a young age is an understatement.

Let’s set the stage…

We are playing Long Branch. We are down 20-0 in the first 10 minutes. Everyone is dejected. We’ve never been down like this. We were the bullies, we never got bullied. But there we were, getting the brakes beat off us. But Coach Sean and Coach Pat don’t let us get down. They methodically and meticulously call a game to get us back within striking distance. By the 4^th quarter it’s 20-15. There’s a minute left on the clock. And Coach Sean calls a half back toss pass. The SAME play our high school coach called. Keep in mind we are 10 years old. For the uninitiated, we should not be able to pull of such a play. We are too young, too slow, too stupid to pull it off. Our high school team couldn’t pull it off. But lo and behold, we believed. Coach Sean would never steer us wrong. If he called a play we know it’s going to work. And work it did.

I get the toss, drop back to pass, Sean is streaking towards the end zone. Ball perfectly placed.

Touchdown.

Belief is a wild thing.

So this whole diatribe on belief, of course, comes back to me. Maybe writers are just narcissists. I certainly am. Or, maybe, they are filled with a belief that they have something to say.

Over the past ten years I’ve written three books, but I can’t get passed this one. The one this Substack is named after. Hell or Hangover. I have to publish it. I have to get it out there. I’ve probably read it, edited it, and read it again over 200 hundred times at this point. I still like it. I still think it’s good. I still think that it represents the 2010’s more so than any other book I’ve ever read. It’s been rejected by hundreds of agents but I won’t let it die. There’s only one option left…self-publishing.

I guess, by self publishing, I am putting my taste on the line. I guess that’s what any writer does really. They think their book is good and if their taste is good, other people will agree. We’ll have to see if my taste is up to par or not. That’s for other people to decide. What I’ve decided is this book is worth getting out there whether anyone else believes it (literary agents, mainly) or not. Maybe they are right. Or maybe they are stuck in a game of trying to, you know, keep their jobs and have to really think about what publishers will actually publish so that they can get paid. I do not dislike literary agents. They should be crucial in taste making but, more importantly, they have bills and children and lives to pay for. In that regard, they are beholden to publishers who are intent on schlepping shitty books for profit. This is the nature of the game. I am deciding not to play it. I am deciding to do it myself and put my money where my mouth is because…

I believe my novel is good enough.

I’ll be posting here and everywhere I can when the book is ready. The goal is to have it published in April or May.

Fuck it.

I believe.

P.S. – Go Irish.

P.P.S. - If you are interested in the novel, here is the gist…

Lou Kennedy wants out. Though he doesn’t admit this to anyone, and barely admits it to himself, there has to be a reason to stop the debauchery of his current life, he just hasn’t found it yet. That is until a drunken night out in New York City leads him to Marissa, the girl who just might inspire him to clean up his act. She’s a Spanish spark unlike any woman he’s ever met. But there’s a problem. At some point late in the night Lou’s bad habits get the better of him. He blacks out and wakes up in his ex-girlfriend’s bed with no recollection of how he got there and no evidence Marissa ever existed. No phone number. No photos. After furious online searching he can’t even find an Instagram handle.

Desperate, irrational, and questioning if the Marissa he met is real, Lou seeks out his mother’s Babalawo (a Santeria priestess) who says he has five days to find Marissa or he will lose her forever. In a bibulous jaunt through the streets of Hoboken and Manhattan, where family, friends, addiction, old flames, the spiritual, and the superstitious all play a part in hunting down the beautiful apparition that just might change Lou’s life forever, he faces a choice - find Marissa or succumb to a life of depravity, enroute to the brink of insanity.

It’s January and your timelines are flooded with people trying to make a change in their life.

Laudable, yet nauseating.

Stick to a workout routine. Drink more water. Start taking one of those colon cleansers that Instagram models constantly plug. The list of things people will do this month and then stop are endless. But the worst is Dry January.

I will not be participating. I will never be participating. Which is why I’m sitting here sweating out a hangover. Though my brain doesn’t work too well in this state, a thought emerged from the darkness.

How can we send people to the moon but can't cure a hangover?

As the title of my Substack suggests, I am familiar with the dreaded hangover. Up until the age of twenty-five hangovers were a thing of myth. I heard adults mention them, talk about them in hushed tones, sip at their drinks in order to avoid the next day’s penalties while I drank like a fish and woke up feeling fresh as a flower. I thought it was a lie adults told to try and get you to drink less. The hangover to me was akin to Santa Claus. Then my 25^th birthday came around and the morning after the festivities I woke up crippled. Drinking hasn’t been the same since. It’s not that I stopped drinking or began drinking less, it’s that I now know the price I have to pay is between a one and three-day infirmary stint. Not only are the physical pains in my joints more severe, but my brain is fogged and it feels like I’m viewing the world from inside a fishbowl.

Hangovers are not ideal but that has never stopped me from having a good time. I have tried my fair share of hangover cures. Someone even told me that quitting smoking would help with your body’s ability to fight off the ill-effects of a long night out. I tried this once and all it did was make my night less enjoyable. I still woke up on death’s door.

So again I ask, how have we sent a person to the moon but haven't created a hangover cure? It’s a valid question for all of humanity. We are a technologically advanced species. We have sent a person to the moon, we’ve created the internet, we have devices in our pockets that can look up porn, tell us our coordinates, monitor traffic patterns, take pictures, and be used as a flashlight all in one. Yet, we have not created a cure for one of the simplest ailments the human race has experienced since 7,000 BC - the hangover.

I guess some human inventions were worth making before attacking the problem of the hangover. Spears were good. Farming was ok. The Gutenberg press was a must. But some of the shit that we come up with now, stuff that we spend our time, money, and energy creating, need to be put on the back burner. We need our best and brightest minds on the real problems at hand.

I’d like to leave you with a list of my top five inventions that should not have been made before the hangover cure. It’s not simply a list of awful inventions, but a view into how distracted we are as a people. When times get rough us humans can do amazing things. I hope this list can light a fire under the brave men and women out there that invent. Do the right thing, people. Make the hangover cure next on your to-do list.

Number 1 - The Shake Weight

If you haven’t seen the commercial where it looks like people are masturbating with a shaking dumbbell then you are one of the lucky ones. According to their website the shake weight is an oscillating dumbbell that helps you build “epic” upper body strength and bulk. The only real use I can see for the shake weight is to increase your wacks per minute. How about this…go out, get a drink, flirt with a girl, possibly have sex with her, and deal with the consequence of a hangover instead of increasing your jerk off strength via the oscillating dumbbell. As a species we drastically missed the mark here.

Number 2 – Bifocals

I wear glasses. They help me see things my eyes were not evolutionarily programmed to see. I can read a book up close just fine but seeing anything past ten yards is tough for me unless I have on a pair. It sounds like a necessary invention, but I think I’d rather have a hangover cure. What am I really getting from seeing far? It’s not like I need good vision for hunting down prey or warding off animals. We have out run our evolutionary need to see. As long as I can see the aisles in a grocery store I can feed myself. As long as my visibility is clear five feet in front of me I am good to go. So why the bifocals before a hangover cure? Warby Parker has over 3,000 styles of different glasses and I am still bed ridden after a few shots of tequila.

Number 3 – The Coffee Pod

Seriously, what are we even doing here? A plastic container for one cup of coffee? Who only drinks one fucking cup of coffee? If you can get through a day with one cup scientists need to study your body and figure out why it is you have so much natural energy. I need a pot to get the day started. A FULL pot, all 12 cups. I see that they sell pods in packs of 24, which would get me through approximately 1.23 days. Not only does the coffee pod seem useless, it clearly harms the environment. There is no doubt in my mind that porpoises across our seas are choking on K-cups at an astonishing clip. Besides, if you are hungover, one cup is definitely not going to cut it. Just make a pot of coffee like a normal person and get rid of the pod.

Number 4 – Protein Powder

If you are one of those people that have succumbed to the lie of powdered protein being a good thing then I feel bad for you. Sure, it might give you the necessary protein intake you need, but so does a steak. The sound of a protein shaker gives me goosebumps. If the future of our food is pills and powders then I hope a hangover takes me out before I see that day. There is nothing more enjoyable in this world than cooking a meal. Slapping a steak on a grill over fire is more human than anything I can think of and certainly more hardy than flavored powder. Not to mention the massive diarrhea associated with a whey-protein meal. If you are in the position to watch a meal cook over fire, drink or two in hand, do not take that for granted. You are living the dream and the only way that dream could get better is if you had something to take for the inevitable hangover you are going to get.

Number 5 – Electricity

I might get shit for this one but I truly believe a hangover cure is more important than light itself. The sun is up 14 to 19 hours a day depending on the time of year. Isn’t that enough time to get your daily chores in? Sheesh. A regular workday is 8 hours. The sun gives you an additional six hours of light on a bad day. Sure, there is the problem of heating and air conditioning your home but that’s nothing a drink can’t fix. Too cold? Warm up with a hot toddy. Too hot? Drink a few cold ones. And before you go to bed, pop this new pill made by Elon Musk to stop the hangover right in its tracks.

Honorable Mentions

1 – Religion

2 – The Atom Bomb

3 – Scuba Tanks

4 – E-Cigarettes

5 – The Automobile

#1 – A Philadelphia Eagles Helmet Clock

Christmas Eve is always held at my house. My entire family comes over for pernil (pork shoulder with the crunchy skin that causes fights for the best pieces) and empanadas and copious amounts of drink. It is the most hilarious affair you can imagine. Half of my family being Dominican, Cuba, and Puerto Rican raises the volume of the evening to concert level highs. The other half of my family is Irish and Slovakian and you would think they would be drowned out by the sheer decibel level of the Hispanic side but instead, in order to be heard, quadruple their own output and volume. It is a raucous affair and at the end, with my mother in all but tears of relief that the night is over, used to allow me and my sister the opening of one gift before going to bed. She would put the gifts we were allowed to pick from in a little pile, saving the really good ones for Christmas morning, and usually the one we picked always happened to be pajamas. But, one year, I opened up a Philadelphia Eagles Helmet clock.

I loved the gift because I love the Eagles and always dreamed of playing NFL football. So, of course, I needed batteries in it ASAP and needed the clocks to match. Little did I or my family know that the clock was pre-set to have an alarm because…who the fuck would ever think an alarm was pre-programmed? Lo and behold the alarm clock went off in my ear at 3:30 AM (because I was sleeping with it clutched in my hands). I didn’t know it was 3:30 AM, I just knew that the alarm clock went off which meant it was time to get up and see what Santa brought me. I ran through the house yelling, “It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas,” and that year woke my entire family up to open gifts at 3 fucking 30 AM. My parents being the best parents rolled with it and by 6 AM all the gifts were opened and we were all passed out on the couch, exhausted.

#2 – Country Grammar

People born in a specific era know exactly what I am talking about when I say the most memorable gift I’ve ever received was Country Grammar. But for those who don’t, I am referring to the debut album by the rapper Nelly. I remember opening the gift like it was yesterday because the absolute menace on the front cover was both shocking and exhilarating for the ten-year old suburban white boy who opened it.

You can’t imagine what opening up a beautifully wrapped CD and seeing a dude who looked as big as the St. Louis Arch with a chain and a tattoo that says Lunatic across his stomach did to my young brain. To say I was excited to hit play on this album was an understatement. I don’t think I opened up any other gifts after. I ran to my room, grabbed my CD player and headphones, and hit play.

In defense of my mother, she DID NOT know that she bought the explicit version. I think she thought that the Parental Advisory warning on the album cover meant that the curses were in fact bleeped out. I get it. That can be confusing. But when I hit play I realized very quickly that she did not get me the bleeped out version.

After the intro with Cedric The Entertainer leaving Nelly a voicemail (rollin around hea in a big body benz wit two dollars wortha gas), the first song is called St. Louie. The opening lyrics go as follows:

You can find me in St. Louay
Where the gunplay ring all day (na-na-na)
Some got jobs and some sell yay
Others just smoke and fuck all day

My jaw was somewhere near the basement. I clutched my pearls. I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing. Little sweet innocent ten-year-old Alex was introduced to rap in the most raw way possible and to say I was hooked on rap music going forward is an understatement. To me and my generation, the album is by far the best debut solo rap album ever made (2^nd – Get Rich or Die Tryin & 3^rd – College Dropout). Though many people don’t give Nelly the credit he deserves, he really made it insanely popular to use melody in the hoodest of rap. He wasn’t the first to do it, but he was for sure the most listened to. Four years before Kanye West’s College Dropout songs like Country Grammar (Hot Shit) and Ride Wit Me had people singing the craziest lyrics. When I finally played the album for my mom in the car she was both mortified and hooked and we would sing Ride Wit Me together at full volume. In the wise words of Nelly, “Who said pretty boys can’t be wild”.

To this day I know every damn lyric to every damn song on that album. My personal favorites are Utha Side, Batter Up, and the last song on the album, my favorite song ever written in any genre ever, Luven Me. If you’ve never heard the song, I highly suggest you give it a listen.

This song holds a very special place in my heart. Fast forward 15 years after first listening to it and I am on my first date with my future wife. We’re driving home from a nice dinner and talking about our favorite music. I mentioned the album Country Grammar and my wife said it was her favorite album too. I was shocked. I thought the album was forgotten about and that I was the only person who still listened to it on a regular basis.

The wife and I went on to listen to our favorite songs, knowing every word, falling more in love with every single lyric the other one knew. And then Luven Me came on. She said she thought she was the only person who knew this song back to front…but then she met me. She couldn’t believe I knew every single word. We sang every lyric, word for word, and we both screamed the part where Nelly says, “Need money? My boo will go and work the avenue, my boo will fuck you up if I ask her to!” Though I am wary if my boo would ever go work the avenue, she’ll definitely fuck you up if I ask (again, she’s Sicilian). We then went on to know every shoutout that goes on for the last minute of the song (Herky Jerk!).

From that day on we have barely spent a minute apart and now we are getting ready for Christmas morning with our two daughters. Christmas isn’t always about gifts but sometimes a gift can change the course of a person’s life. So thank you Mom (and Dad, even though he was surprised at half the gifts I ever got) and Nelly. I can’t say that without the album my wife and I wouldn’t have ended up together, but I can say that loving the album Country Grammar certainly helped.

P.S. – Merry Christmas to anyone who has read my posts this past year. Means a lot, truly. Thank you.