We’re social creatures. It’s instinctive; we’re primates, pack animals, tribal. We needed each other to live, so natural selection rewarded our ancestors who forged meaningful bonds, not merely based on blood or genes but commonalities of all stripes. An article from the early days of cracked.com sums it up with a lovely moniker: the monkeysphere.…
NOTE: This post was originally published on The Good Men Project on November 13, 2016 under the title, “Middle Age Lust and the Liberal Confessional.” As that title implies, the article acknowledges the existence of sex. Three decades after we ran the gauntlet of junior high together, my oldest friends are scattered across the globe,…
Last week, I did drinks and a show with DD, an friend from undergrad. 20 years since we hung out. 20 years of grad studies, calamities, marriage, kids, divorce, novels published and plays produced, and now we’re here—reminiscing, flirting, joking, eager to erase the decades of uncomfortable maturity. After I dropped her at home, she…
With Japan now firmly in my rear-view mirror, I feel some self-applied pressure to present a bunch of poorly-informed conclusions about the ancient, infinitely nuanced land through which I just stampeded. It turns out rear-view mirrors aren’t a very good tool for detailed analysis, especially when one is driving forward. Summing up Japan after 10…
Love is not friendship. Love is a dive, deep and delirious, but it can’t be that forever, or you’ll drown. You find equilibrium instead, coming up for air, sinking and bobbing—fulfilling and transformative, but often exhausting. Friendship can be tiring, too, but not from the deep dive. You meet them on the beach, on level…
On the train to the Osaka Dome, Jevon warned us that Japanese baseball tends to be a more conservative game—more cautious teamwork and mutual support, less grandstanding. “That’s fine,” I said, “I wouldn’t know the difference anyway.” I’d been to maybe two previous games in my entire life, and honestly they felt pretty prudent, especially…
Wherein our hero goes a-gambling on Japanese TV. Midday. Hot and muggy in Osaka. Sweaty and sore from shopping, freshly full of ramen noodles, we weave past the throng to Dotonbori, which Jevon calls “the Blade Runner bridge” because some of the towering billboards nearby briefly appeared in that film. We pause to get our…
Soon, alarmingly soon, I’m going to Japan for the first time. I have my passport, thank Ganesha, and I have enough new podcasts on my phone to while away the intercontinental flight, but otherwise I’m bleakly unprepared. I’m heading into foreign territory with no language skills and hardly any currency. Worst of all, I’m armed…
