The Unified Theory of Post-Modern Friendship

So I collect friends like I collect shoes. I have a few special pairs I’ll wear forever.  I pledge fealty to them and keep them going until they can’t stand it anymore.  The same is true for friends. I make them for life.  Distance and time may separate us, but I’m proud to say I have two types of friends: those I’ve known for a lifetime, and those I will know for a lifetime.  If one doesn’t fit into either of those two categories, then I’m sorry, but he’ll be nothing more than part of the backdrop of my life.

Luckily, things like email and Facebook are helpful in this regard.  These digital tools have helped me to stay connected with my beloved friends, and I must confess, it has also helped me expand their numbers.

Copley Hall, Georgetown University

Take for example Thomas, whom I quickly fell in with our first year at Georgetown.  Friendships formed deep in the dark bowels of an antebellum dormitory are hard to quantify or describe, but he and I, and a couple others, drew closely together like a tight, wet knot.  In the end, we marched drunkenly side by side up muddy hills in that final Senior Week, feeling like we’d all been in the same platoon in Vietnam.

The last time I saw Thomas was probably 20 years ago in Buffalo.  I had come from Honolulu and he from New York City, to stand next to our other bestie while he took his marriage vows.  We were there moments after Larry had his “talk” with his Eisenhower-era dad, who offered a few terse words before the whole shebang fired off:  

“Tonight’s the big night , Son.  Be gentle.”

Thomas and I looked at each other with bemusement so familiar …

Anyway, right, the digital age.  So we email on a semi-annual basis, and these messages serve as a more substantive exchange than those we enjoy every few weeks on Facebook.  Here’s a lengthy one that is, I think, emblematic of men just like us, who have followed this path to forty-something OnceWereBachelorhood.   It is mostly unexpurgated.

Three of Us at a Wedding, Plus Backdrop

TO: BEN

FROM: THOMAS

Totally random question that a) I should know about because it’s my field or b) I should have asked you about a long time ago, but do you remember this dude from Gtown, pretty sure his name was Ben Wallace — he was more my friend (for a brief time and never that close) around Village B time; he also lived in Village B with this totally wild crew who basically destroyed their apartment and lived like animals, with broken whiskey bottles on the floor, etc. — one of the dudes he lived with was like a [something infamous] and general problem child but was [vaguely well connected]; the other was some French dude who used to lie around naked in bed with this weird chick when I was over visiting. 

Anyway what I remember of Ben was that he had kind of dark ratty hair, a decent amount of it, and he was quiet and kind of writerly/literary, or maybe just an English major; he was from DC; and maybe that’s about it. We hung out for a small bit and then drifted apart I guess.

Anyway, do you think/would you recognize him from this shot/bio? All the details fit, I think, but it’s hard to gauge because he looks so “normal,” for lack of a better word, and without the big hair it’s hard to judge:

http://www.benjaminwallace.net/bio.html

Hope all is well with you. I’m at the tail end of closing/shipping/putting out Sine Qua Non’s million-page September issue. Insane. I’m handling 37 stories over 125 pages. Psycho. Kid #2 on the way, supposedly due August 4, don’t know whether boy or girl. . . Kid #1, Funicular, now 2.5 and he/she sings early Stone Roses singles by himself/herself, unprompted. Good times. . . 

All best//T

-- 

THOMAS BUTTS (a pseudonym)

Senior Editor

SINE QUA NON FASHION MAG (a pseudo-title, for perhaps the flagship of its kind)

1 FANCY STREET

13th floor

New York, NY 10036

TO:  THOMAS
FROM: BEN

Dude.  

One day I was driving and half-listening to NPR.  I tuned into the middle of an interview; they were talking about this ancient bottle of collectible wine that supposedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson.  Sounded interesting so I perked up and paid attention.  Turns out they were interviewing the author of a book focusing on that particular bottle.  THE BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR.  I made a mental note to get it used on Amazon because the curious subject sounded engrossing in an esoteric but entertaining way, and because the author sounded engaging and intelligent.  At the end of the interview, they ID’d the author as Ben Wallace.

A chill went up and down my neck, because I remembered the following:

Many years ago, you had a brief man-crush on a fellow named Ben Wallace, or at least that’s what Larry and I thought.  Maybe Don, too, but as with everything Don, that’s hazy.  You would come home and tell us about this guy who was intelligent and engaging and living what I subsequently learned was what could be described as a BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY lifestyle.  Much alcohol, debauchery, and hateful characters whom one would years later regret being associated with.  One of them, I knew through my friend, Laura, as a John Belushi-type.  Anyway, this Ben, like you, was nurturing some nascent literary tendencies. I think I remember meeting him somewhere, probably that bookstore/bar/coffeeshop that was enjoying some of-the-moment cachet.  Dylan’s I think it was called.  You both smoked Camel Uns, I think.  Possibly weeks later, Larry came home saying that Ben had begun researching a book he wanted to write about vampires and was turning up at Lauinger Library with all kinds of requests.

Your man-crush, as with many of your misadventures of the time, inexplicably faded, never to be acted upon.

So I found the book and paid $ 0.99 plus $3.99 shipping on Amazon Used*, eventually turned my full attention to it, and concluded that I was right, the author was engaging and intelligent and had written an engrossing, esoteric piece.  It was a great read.  And that he in fact was the fellow you had a man-crush on, many years ago.

I never highlighted this discovery with you because I figured that you, being a New York man of letters of sorts, would already know.  Guess I was wrong.

[Take care].

*Incidentally, I just picked up GOJIRO used for a similar bargain basement price, after being swept up in the giant lizard craze of summer 2014, remembering that in your first year at some publishing house, you had shared an excerpt with me.  I can’t be bothered to read it, but it’s nice to have on my shelf, a remembrance of 1990.

I also just finished EMINENT HIPSTERS by Mr. Donald Fagen, a loose collection of his writing.  Again, the low low price being the common feature of this footnote.  He sounds like an asshole.  Be careful not to meet your heroes.

TO: BEN
FROM: THOMAS

The whole thing is kind of nuts — I’ve seen his byline (off and on ... he’s been getting some good play lately at New York mag) for years now but never had the a-HA! moment until yesterday. (In fairness, it’s a somewhat generic name for a NYC writer, and there’s another more famous one named Ben Wallace-Wells throwing me off the scent.)

Your recollections are quite exact — more detailed than mine. I’ll cop to the man-crush and the literary vibe, and a big yes on the roommates, and the strange abandonment of friendship. (For no particular reason; I think we enjoyed each other’s company fair enough but we never really found like THAT THING that we were both obsessed with, or bonded over, or some such. And/or we weren’t secure enough in our literary man-crushes to be all “Hey — do you love William Blake and want to pattern your life on his work? Me too!") Don’t remember the meeting at Dylan’s (though I do remember the hot-spot-of-the-moment vibe of that place). I think I’ll look him up — though my initial note to him is bound to be quite awkward (“Remember some weird dude from Village A that you hung around with for like 5 minutes in 1987 and then never really saw again? Well it’s me!"

Anyways. . . GOJIRO! Yes. I remember everything about that book being kind of cool, though even I never read the damn thing. Have since become friendly with the writer, who’s a very cool cat. 

And Fagen’s book: It’s been on my maybe-I-buy-this-next list for a while now; frankly the only thing holding me back is what I have heard or read from reviews about the whole bummer/bitter vibe of the whole thing. Or maybe it’s just part of the whole thing. Though I think I do understand his frustration (I think I read some excerpt about his opinions of the crowds at his recent shows, and having seen he and Becker a couple years back at the Beacon Theater here, I second that emotion — I didn’t think the crowd would be filled with eminent hipsters per se, but I also didn’t think it would be filled with beefy men from Long Island in suits from 1982 with their wives dolled up like they’re seeing Frank Sinatra at the Sands in 1963.

That said, F@CK IT!!! If I judged bands solely based on the attire, demeanor and hipness (with minus points for the dark side of the hip coin, douchebaggery), I would have precious few bands to listen to. I’ve already doubled down over the weekend and downloaded lossless audio files of the entire Steely Dan discography, the better to nerd out on their particular genius of artistry, virtuosity, and production. Long live the Dan — though I may skip that book.

Rock//T

"Oh no, Mr. Tate, he can't shoot!"

I can't believe that this blog -- about fathers, fatherhood, and especially now, for me, fathering alone -- has never ever considered Atticus Finch.  A widowed man who is a calm influence, letting his kids kick up a joyful, curious swirl around him.  A man who instructs not by lecture but by example.  A man who blesses his children with both his involvement as well as his absence.  A man whose character is revealed before his children's eyes over three summers in Maycomb, Alabama.

Here is my favorite scene of revelation, as portrayed in the Oscar winning 1962 movie:



So although Harper Lee's story is widely recognized as a meditation on American race relations, for me it is also about how to be a father (and, to a lesser extent, how to be a lawyer).  As part of my Canon, I keep a First Edition Library reproduction in my office, but I never refer to it.  It is only a touchstone, but like my law partner once said, it's a story he never wanted to end.  Fathering is a work in progress, and if one can keep examples like Atticus Finch in one's sights - even when one's glasses slip every now and then - the target will be hit often enough.

The Unified Theory of Pop Music

There’s been a general lack of one of those Unified Theory posts of late. Fancy cars, movie reviews, and the occasional witty bon mot do not a good read make. I suppose this can be attributed to nothing in particular. Or it can be blamed on one specific thing.

On December 18, 2006, I had been married for four years and my son was not quite three years old. We had just taken on a new mortgage and my law firm was just getting its legs. Possibilities stretched out before me, my bachelorhood a distant and uninteresting past. Then the world came crashing down. Tower Records closed its doors worldwide, including the three locations in my town.
This doesn’t have to be an Eighties Nostalgia blog in order to highlight the importance of Tower Records. Tower was born in the Seventies. It grew through the Eighties and Nineties, during which time it saw the transition from record albums to CDs, Beta and VHS tapes to DVDs. When I first started going to the Tower on Keeaumoku Street (pictured above), disco was still a living, breathing, pulsating beast. Aside from Cheap Trick, Devo, and Cars records, I was only ever interested in the hundred or so albums in the “import” bin. Adult contemporary was a vast expanse that I never explored. At the dawn of the MTV era, “imports” disappeared as a category and the more obscure artists that interested me (which included the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Police) found their way into the general population. There was a time that the only place one could find a copy of the Clash’s Sandinista was at a genuine communist bookstore near the University. When it appeared in Tower’s stacks, I knew a new era of pop music had arrived. In the new millennium, there was little evidence that we were seeing Tower’s final years.

No matter where I lived, D.C., London, even northern Indiana, the location of the nearest Tower Records was one of the first navigation points I committed to memory. It was that important.

In 2006, Tower was unceremoniously shelved, its stock unloaded at ever-plummetting discounts. There were many items I acquired cheaply during these final weeks of liquidation before that December 18. Things I wouldn’t otherwise have bought at retail prices. AC/DC. Pink Floyd. Jack Johnson. But there were things I failed to secure only because I was waiting for prices to drop further before the axe fell, but they never fell far enough. I had my eye on them, though. The Heavy Metal movie soundtrack. The updated Criterion Collection boxset of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (I had already owned the previous edition and wouldn’t justify the repeat expense without deep discounting).


This last ditch flurry of spending at Tower was mostly afterthought, and really, for me an unfitting farewell to an establishment that I used to wander through, often for as long as time would allow. Hours? Maybe. The better part of one for sure. Stack after stack after stack? Definitely. I used to love the unscheduled stop into Tower, when I had nowhere else to be. Maybe I had an inkling that a new CD had been released and I wanted to find it and snap it up quickly, so I could immerse myself in the new music, headphones on and liner notes open. Maybe I had absolutely nothing in mind and I would just let my thumb and forefinger do the searching. That’s how I discovered the Violent Femmes back in 1984, and Pearl Jam in 1991.

The protagonist in one of the books in my canon, High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby – a man as adept at observing the immature male of the species as Britain has ever produced – finds comfort in organizing his record collection not alphabetically but autobiographically ("How did I get from Fleetwood Mac's Rumours to Howlin' Wolf in just seven moves?"). Similarly, I tell you, for example, that I bought Husker Du's Warehouse: Songs and Stories in the Tower in D.C.'s Foggy Bottom neighborhood amidst a lengthy bout of angst.

I find that my acquisition of music is slowing down and more focused. I think in general, once far away from bachelorhood, musical tastes have cemented, and that is probably the biggest cause of this narrowing. But also, when the journey of discovery is no longer tactile, across the stacks at a record store, and more often on a website like Amazon or at a brick and mortar like Best Buy (which is unabashedly set up for the Transaction, and staffed with generalists), something is lost.

The further away I get from December 18, 2006, part of the enjoyment of music is lost. The act of discovery part. Which is a damn shame because then the sharing of music part eventually also diminishes. I used to play music for my wife all the time and once, she had a friend steal my truck so she could have a new stereo installed as a Christmas gift because (a) she knew how important music was to me and (b) my old stereo was really only a radio.

I can’t share music that I’ve already shared, otherwise it becomes a crusade. That would be like a Jehovah’s Witness coming back to knock on the same door twice.

Reflecting on this I realize that, as much as I love my wife and as much as she completely dwells in my heart, I don’t believe I’ve ever made her a mix tape. High Fidelity very nearly fetishizes the mix tape. The mix tape is a proclamation. It is a love letter. It is a seduction. It is an entendre. I’ve been known to make mix tapes in my time, and they’ve always had meaning (it’s like that conversation between Jackson and Travolta in Pulp Fiction: “I’ve given lots of foot massages and every one of them meant something”).

Now, without Tower Records, I’m not sure if I can really make that mix tape for my wife with the meaning it should have.

Hip To Be Square

"I have to go return some video tapes."
- Patrick Bateman
American Psycho
1991

Back in the summer of 1991, many of you will remember the brouhaha kicked up by Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho. It's in my canon. In a sentence, the novel was about a Wall Street yuppie obsessed with serial killers, pornographic sex, and Gianni Versace. In a sentence, the brouhaha was about how most people in America didn't get it. They were repulsed by its misogynistic themes and extreme violence, and the novel's detractors vilified Ellis himself as misogynistic and extremely violent.

But here's the thing: I got it. I can't honestly say I figured out, almost 10 years before everyone else, that the novel was satirizing to the extreme the conspicuous consumption and me-first mentality of the yuppie species. But I did believe, back then, that most of its critics - ranging from the liberal lefty feminazis to the right wing moralists - would have found something to agree on with Ellis if they'd only read the book.

Fast forward ten years and an art house satirist (Mary Harron) and a Sarah Lawrence lesbian (Guinevere Turner) joined forces to commit Ellis's once-despised book to film. And thanks to them, everyone got it.

Here's my favorite scene from the movie. Patrick Bateman, the American Psycho, shows off his business card to his so-called friends, only to become bottom man in a game of oneupsmanship. Hilarious.



Following that scene, if I remember correctly, Bateman eviscerates a homeless dude.

And here's the climactic scene that clearly reveals the story's satirical DNA. Perhaps not verbatim, but it mimics perfectly Ellis's juxtaposition of dorkiness, style, and brutality. I hesitate to call it brilliant, but its pretty neat to behold.



And here's the introductory sequence, a meaningless and shallow internal monologue.



When Harron talked about her film in the commentary of the DVD I watched last night, she referred to the triumph of "surface" over "depth". I loved that. But here's my conclusion: there's no need for you to read the book or see the movie after reading this. What I've written here is all you need to know about American Psycho.

The Canon: Guidebooks for Bachelors

There are many books that help lay out the road map. These are just a few of them.

The Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach - What do I know about being preppy? Not much really, coming from Honolulu, Hawaii. Being educated at an Episcopalian prep school here made no difference, especially once I got out to the East Coast. And certainly, this book, like many of its ilk, is more tongue in cheek than anything else. But it does set standards: eat, drink, be merry, accumulate only fine things and don't discard them, make friends for life. Like any guidebook, humorous or not, some advice can be ignored. It's always best to dress properly, but pink and green is no longer the solution.

The Modern Man's Guide to Life by Various Contributors - I found this book in an Urban Outfitters store on M Street in Georgetown in 1988, and despite containing some dated material now, I'm glad I made the impulse purchase. In fact, this book, coupled with Adm. William Stearman's 1989 farewell address to his seminar class on National Security Decision Making (a subject for future entry here, for sure) certainly informed my young adult life. This book contains everything from how to skin a squirrel, how to grease a maitre'd for a prime table, metric conversion tables, you name it, it's in there. Some knowledge I still use, such as the quick recipe for pasta carbonara.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by The Brothers Iggulden - I just bought this book really, and I've only thumbed through it. Costco had stacks and stacks of them and I couldn't resist it's heft and the urgent tomato red cover. It promises afternoons with my son filled with scheming over toy soldiers, building periscopes, and classifying dead insects. We'll see if it delivers, and if not, it's out of the Canon.