Publishing, Prison, Pardon, President

If there is one thing I know well, it is nepotism. I have a PHD on the subject and if anyone needs further education, I could easily host a class or twelve. I have been studying it since a very young age, as most experts do, and now that I have kids I have been gifted with an entirely new perspective. After being on the receiving end of nepotism for the past 34 years, I now get to dish out some of my own. Ever since this topic became headline news with Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter, I am getting calls from CNN, Fox, many a high profile Substack, and many other outlets to divulge the secrets of this ancient concept of treating your own kids or family better than anyone else’s kids or family. In lieu of discussing this issue on those major platforms, I have decided to take the time to write about it here, for my whopping (and awesome) 163 subscribers.

The reason I know nepotism so well is that I work for a company my parents started and own.

Me, walking into the office.

I have worked there since I graduated college in 2012 (fine, 2013, I fucked up a couple classes on my way to the top, so what?). Before you start unsubscribing like mad because you now know I am mommy and daddy’s little helper, let me tell you a story.

The story occurs in the year 2014. I am sitting at my desk, viciously hungover on a Wednesday after attending Bar Anticipation’s (Bar A, to the cultured) Beat The Clock night in Belmar, NJ. Beat The Clock occurs every Tuesday between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It is a race to drunkenness and debauchery. Beers start at 25 cents (at least in my day) and go up a quarter every hour. Granted the beers are in small cups, that doesn’t change the fact that by 10 PM you could drink about 100 of those small cups for the steep price of $20 and find yourself holding a one-way ticket to Black Out City. I often attended Beat The Clock night on Tuesdays. By often, I mean I did not miss a Beat The Clock Night in my 20’s. Like clockwork (pun intended), I was pretty much incapable of working on Wednesday’s.

It just so happens that this Wednesday in particular was my yearly review. I wasn’t worried. I’d faked my way hungover before and I could fake my way again. And what was my dad gonna do, fire me? Ha! Nepotism for the win, baby!

But here’s what happened…

My dad was in his office, working. I was in my cubicle, staring blankly at my computer screen trying to figure out how not to puke all over my keyboard.

Also me, walking into the office.

My dad yelled from his office, “Hey, Alex!”

I started to shake, and it wasn’t solely because of the copious amounts of shitty beer I drank the night before. It was time for the review.

He continued, “We don’t need to meet.”

Relief washed over my dejected body.

Then he said, “Because you know you’re not getting a raise right? You’re lucky I haven’t fired you yet. But we’ll see next year.”

And that was that. No eye contact. No big speech. Just a shout from his office to my cubicle. The yearly meeting was over in all of five seconds and I had a year to figure out if I wanted to put my dad in a position to fire me or not. It took me a few more years of getting no raise (and my dad having a massive heart surgery - This Father's Day - Fake A Heart Attack) to finally grow the fuck up and earn my keep. So although my father did not fire me when I deserved to be fired (nepotism, baby!) he also allowed me some grace to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be.

I would like to think that all fathers can balance this line of caring for their kids while also pushing them to be better, but that is definitely not the case. I look at my two little girls and realize I am half the man my father is. I would probably lie, cheat, and steal for them. Those two little girls could blink at me with wet eyes and a pout and the next thing you know daddy is robbing a bank to buy a horse. For now, I have no morals when it comes to them.

As much as I learned from my father in dealing with me at work, I learned even more after watching the movie Blow with him. What I learned was that my dad has always held two hard and fast rules. He said he would not help me if I was a drug dealer or if I was a murderer (unlike George Jung’s dad). Anything else was fair game, but those two crossed his moral line in the sand. He would not be going to jail for me, ever. Now that I have kids I think my dad’s rules were pretty good. No matter how much pouting or tears well up in my daughters’ eyes, if they are in fact drug dealers or murderers, I might have to let them deal with it themselves and just chalk it up to bad parenting. I can’t speak for my wife. She would no doubt launder money and hide the bodies for our daughters – she is Sicilian after all. But I think I will also live by my dad’s rules in those two cases.

Which brings us to the topic de jour...

Would all this change if I was the President of the United States of America? The answer is simple…yes. Of course it fucking would. I am a moral midget and I know if I got a whiff of Presidential power for even a single minute I would take bribe money, make my family rich, pardon my daughters even if they were on death row for mass murder or turned into Griselda Blanco, and sign about 12 future book deals with a publisher before leaving office. I don’t blame Joe Biden pardoning his son. The majority of people, Republican or Democrat, would do the same fucking thing if they were handed the power to do so. If anyone is saying they wouldn’t, they are liars (or they don’t have kids). Hunter Biden is not a drug dealer or a murderer. Yes, he is a nut job. Yes, he is someone I’d probably love to party with. But if he hasn’t crossed my father’s moral line in the sand then he hasn’t crossed mine either.

The ONLY issue I have with pardoning Hunter Biden is that I am currently dreaming of a day where Hunter Biden writes a novel. That’s right. Fuck his paintings, I need him to write a book.

I thought he was snorting the paint here for a second and so did you.

Here’s why…

1 – Most of the publishing industry is fucking boring. If I have to read another contemporary novel about how bad white people are or how awful America is I might off myself. Thank God there are people like

Amran Gowani

and

Andrew Boryga

getting published to keep me from throwing myself off a bridge. There have been countless think pieces on the subject of where the publishing industry is today by people who know way more than I do about the subject. There have been pieces on the fact that young males are not being represented in the market, the fact that there are no new exiting debut authors, the fact that every book seems to be about the same things, the fact that most books are poorly written yet still published. Even in my own hunt for an agent I’ve gotten the feedback multiple times that my main character would not be good in this “cultural climate”. The mere thought that there is such a thing as sensitivity readers makes my skin crawl. For those who don’t know what a sensitivity reader is – it is someone that reads a book and figures out if the book is going to offend anyone. There is nothing more sacrilegious than someone reading a piece of literature with an eye out for parts of a book that might trigger a microaggression. What a crock of shit. The minute sensitivity readers were introduced we should have burnt the entire institution to the ground. The whole point of literature is so that people can experience emotion through fake characters, so they can feel connected or ashamed (or, if it’s a good character, both) at people who are not real, so they can feel mad or angry or sad or happy through characters on a page. I can’t think of a better way to light a fire under the publishing regime then sending in a cracked out Hunter Biden with a novel filled with hookers, money laundering, and drugs all under the umbrella of daddy the fucking President! It will be the perfect antidote to soft men writing about soft shit. And once Hunter Biden breaks down the barrier, the rest of us “insensitive” writers will flood the gates.

Hunter Biden, our hero.

2 – Most writers are boring right now. In my head, writers used to be rock stars. Maybe that’s just because I’m a nerd and thought literary figures were rock stars, but c’mon. Hemingway, Bukowski, Didion, Ellis, McInerny, Tartt, Hunter S. Thompson. These people not only wrote amazing books, they were also cool fucking people who experienced the fullness of life – the good and the bad. Granted the aforementioned Gowani and Boryga are probably the coolest people I’ve ever talked to, the majority of writers are just boring as fuck. Half the books published by men these days aren’t actually written about real men, they are written about “men” publishers think they want to read about, as

Alex Perez

has written on consistently (and amazingly). I don’t need any more cookie cutter authors. I don’t need Sally Rooney opining about communism. I need Sally Rooney to do a line of blow and make a scene at a cocktail party. Talk about marketing - I’d buy all of her books if she showed up in the tabloids looking like a picture taken off Hunter Biden’s laptop.

3 – Most book covers are boring. When I walk into Barnes and Noble with my daughter every Sunday (she goes for the Starbucks cake pops, I go for the books) it’s like staring at lines and lines of the same thing. A woman on the cover, oversized glasses on her face, and pastel colors. That’s it. That’s every book you see when you walk into a Barnes and Nobles. There are some really awesome graphic designers out there like

Nathaniel Roy

who are making cool and interesting covers, but the majority of the books being pushed are just the same old drivel. Maybe Hunter can write this novel and then spruce up the best seller table with some of his own shitty artwork on the cover. At the very least it would break up the monotony.

Now, when will Hunter Biden find the time to write this book?

In jail.

Lock him up!

P.S. – Thank you to

Adam Pearson

for the inspiration for this piece.

P.P.S – You all know you would read the Hunter Biden novel.

P.P.P.S. – Thanks for not firing me, dad!