Her name was Nora.

Our best dates happened in a strip club, because then I could confuse my environmental arousal for enjoying her company. She was surrounded at all times by startlingly unattractive dudes, who worshipped her in a desperate, creepy way. She was a gamer girl.

I don’t remember how we met, exactly—at the orgy, Jordan, my submissive, who I’d picked up largely out of a desire to get back into the BDSM that I wasn’t getting in my relationship with Jos—

(bleh. Everything needs explanations. TODO: reformat my erotic memoirs into a wiki; pre-reading for this document: Maturity and Grace, Gorilla Sexual Politics)

We Met At A Party

I had a submissive named Jordan, who thought I was the bees knees, even though I wouldn’t fuck them. Jordan encouraged me to take them—nonbinary pronouns—to the local BDSM community’s play party. I’d been interested in attending for some time now, and had no real objection to letting Jordan coast off of my overall High Status Look. This would broker an introduction to a new community, which was bound to have at least one person I wanted to fuck, right?1

“I suppose we could,” I drawled, in my most masculine way. “What exactly goes on at a play party, anyway?”

Turns out, a play party is like a zero-calorie orgy; you can spank each other and be naked, but no one is penetrating anyone else. Don’t bring condoms, you’ll just get your hopes up.

It was hosted in some kind of hotel basement, a dimly lit space hastily converted into a kink-zone. The whole social environs felt like a low-budget anime con, from the little booths to the costumes to the ambient Awesome Metalcore Music to the random Weezer-lookalike with a literal pocket protector who wandered through gawking.

We walked around for a while, definitely neither of us nervous haha, listening to whip-cracks and melodramatic howls of hot-wax-induced anguish, watching people do piercing play with each other, feeling vaguely uncomfortable when the fat old white Leather Daddy called his black girlfriend his slave...

“Oh hey!” said a voice. “Are you new?”

Nora and Sam:

Nora was quite tall, huge tots, and wore high heels because fuck it why not commit.

Sam was an I-shit-you-not hobbit. Incredibly hairy dude, little glasses, super short. He actually was the person who behaved the most conscientiously in all of this, including me, so props to him for that.

“Oh hiiiii,” said Jordan, nearly tail-wagging with enthusiasm to flaunt me. “I don’t know if y’all have met...”

I shook hands with everyone, did some flirtatious eye-fucking with Nora, and for some inexplicable-to-me-now reason, I decided to nonchalantly rest my arm on Sam’s head. Like I was casually leaning against a railing or something. It was, uh, quite the power move.

He didn’t comment. He is the kind one.

“Well,” said Nora, actually breathless with arousal after she saw how unfathomably douchey I had been to her boyfriend, “Sam and I are doing a scene in a few minutes, would you like to watch?”

Sure.

So. Jordan and I attended, ready to politely clap or appreciatively masturbate or whatever it is that one does at these things. Sam led Nora over to one of the booths, shoo’d the other people out of it, and after a quick one-two sanitary wipedown of the bondage gear, Nora was sitting on a Sybian.

A Sybian is like a saddle, except it has a hella strong vibrator built in, and you can’t squirm away. Nora was, for additional kink points, blindfolded, cuffed, and tied to the floor such that she double-extra couldn’t squirm away. Sam, caring fellow that he was, was making out with her and remote-controlling the Sybian.

She writhed appreciatively and did a lot of gasps. I watched Sam pinch her nipples and kiss her and edge her with the machine. It was pretty good.

It made me want to build my own sex machine.

I built my own sex machine.

At its heart, it was a Sawzall. We took the blade out, of course, and all it took then was a custom weld to attach some metal to some other metal and mount a dildo on it.

It looked like a blender with a dildo-broom sticking out of it. I gave it a gratuitously large footprint so that it couldn’t tip. I hid the dildo so no one would figure out what I was building in the garage.

I spent like $500 on this thing, but honestly, this was the period in my life I was most careless about money.2

I was giddy with bitcoin cash, such that I also dropped a couple grand on giant electromagnets with the vision that I could make MAGNET GLOVES.3

Once Clatterballs was finally finished, I took it over to Jordan’s house.

“Eeeee!” squealed Jordan.

“Yep,” I said, with an indulgent smirk. My depression and loneliness made it so that interacting with Jordan was cost-benefitted, even though their house kinda smelled like animal urine. “It’s ready.”

We had discussed, with Nora, the possibility of a threesome, and she’d expressed an openness to it previously. More than openness, actually, she’d technically sexually assaulted me in pursuit of This Dick. I had claimed relationship boundaries, saying that my main relationship prevented me from letting her touch my penis. She took that glumly, but perked up once Jordan and I mentioned that we might want to use a sex machine on her in a threesome.

We called her over to negotiate the scene.

This was actually a pretty fun part. Nora sat down on the couch, facing Jordan and I. I wore a suit, because why not, and Jordan took notes, to get that 1950’s secretary vibe going.

It had a whole job interview feel to it, which...the power exchange was noticed and appreciated.

“So we’re going to go through this checklist here,” I said, in tones of calm authority, “and you’re going to tell me anything that sounds like a fun idea to you. Good?”

“Yeah,” Nora said, faintly blushing and smiling and looking at her knees.

“Spanking,” I recited.

“Yes,” she said.

“Slapping,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Jordan eating you out.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Bending you over and fingering you.”

“Absolutely.”

“Hair pulling.”

“Yes.”

“Electrostim.”

“Please.”

“Putting my fingers in your mouth.”

“Yeah.”

“Being fucked by our sex machine.”

“One hundred percent.”

“Cutting your clothes off with a knife.”

She hesitated. Then, quieter, “...fuck yes.”

Clatterballs: The little engine that...good effort, champ.

We had it all arranged.

In full formalwear, Jordan and I drove to the BDSM meetup to pick up Nora.

Sam was there. He knew what was happening. In front of a crowd of mildly interested kinksters, he unbuckled her collar, and kissed her, and I buckled a different collar on her. It had a whole ritual feel to it.

It was aight.

We drove and got sushi together, and both Nora and Jordan were dressed so over-the-top tits-out that the staff kept trying to hurry us out. I was sprawling, ordering those tempura fried oreos and more sake, if you could, because inconveniencing everyone around you is another way to demonstrate dominance.

Nora was watching me with dilated doe-eyes the whole time, of course.

Eventually we left and returned to Jordan’s house. I sat Nora downstairs on the couch, and took Jordan upstairs for a quick last-minute check.

We ran into the fuck-chamber and closed the door.

“Okay,” I said, breathless. “Are we good?”

“I think so,” said Jordan. “We have condoms for the toys, spare batteries for the vibrator, Clatterballs is behind the curtain, plugged in and ready, we’ve got the electrostim stuff...I think we’re good.”

“Good, good,” I said. As usual, my prep was more to do with getting myself into the correct headspace, emotionally, and becoming an avatar of masculine dominance. “Do we have stagehand signals? Like, I’ll make this gesture, and you’ll bring more lube.”

Jordan nodded. We quickly worked out a blinkercode. Lube, Fuck, Yes, No, Next, Problem.

“Okay then.” I lowered my voice. “Go downstairs,” I said softly, “and blindfold Nora.”

Jordan quivered. This was a scene for them, too. They left.

I waited in the fuck-space alone. I let out a quiet sigh.

I never know why I do things.

The stairs creaked as Nora and Jordan bumbled up them blindfolded. I could hear the two giggling, as Jordan carefully tried not to make Nora bump into anything and Nora tried to be patient despite Jordan’s not-perfect skill at guiding a blindfolded person.

They stepped inside. Following my script, I poured myself a whiskey, with lots of ice so that the glass would clink as I moved it around.

I moved it around. Nora’s ears perked up.

“Kneel,” I ordered.

Nora knelt.

Jordan and I walked around her, touching her, surprising her, fingertips brushing over sensitive areas, neck, beneath the corner of the jaw, cleavage, back of the hairline. She giggled, in nervous excitement and now a little bit of thrilled fear.

With a sound of steel-on-steel, I drew the knife.

I let her feel the tip of it, as I slid it under the strap of her dress. With a single, easy motion, I cut the fabric, and it became an off-the-shoulder dress.

I didn’t want to only make two cuts, though. The game would be over too quick. I slid my hand between the fabric and her skin, so I could cut it down the side, slicing, slicing, leaving her more and more exposed to the cool air and Jordan’s hands.

Nora was trembling, but that wasn’t anything special at this point.

With a final decisive rip, I tore the dress away. She stepped out of it—still wearing her giant heels—and stood semi-proudly in her underwear. With a lusty snarl, I shoved her onto the bed. She screamed, then, irritatingly loud, so I put a hand over her mouth.

“Quiet,” I growled into her ear. “Be a good girl.” She nodded fearfully.

With some combination of kissing, edged metal, gloved hands, and hair pulling, we got her naked.

Jordan was descending down Nora’s belly, kissing a trail down towards her pubes, when,

Nora: “Um...nuh-uh.”

Me: “Hm?”

Nora: “No thanks.”

Nora: “I...don’t...really...want Jordan to go down on me.”

I blinked at her. She was still blindfolded, which was for the best. Jordan and I shared an expression.

Are you for real

We specifically asked about this

Good Christ

...show must go on

“Of course,” I say, reassuringly, dropping most of the Dominance from my tone and switching into something more convivial. “We don’t...actually want you to do anything you don’t want.”

Nora: “…I don’t want electrostim stuff either.”

Jordan and I share a look, because okay, but.

“Sorry,” says Nora, perhaps reading into our silence.

“Oh, you have nothing to apologize for,” I say soothingly, making exasperated eye contact with Jordan. “We really only want you to do things you’re comfortable with.”

So we flip her onto all fours on the bed, and I start fingering her, because what the fuck else am I supposed to do now. Jordan gets demoted from muffdiver to sex-caddy, handing me lube and slapping Nora’s ass with perhaps a trace of resentment, and I make that nonsensical stream of grunting sex patter that makes sense when you’re denying someone an orgasm.

“Unf. You like that? You like that...three fingers deep inside you. Look at you, twitching, so horny you’re...mm, yeah. I like the look. Helpless, aching to—oh, were you close? Shame I ruined it. You poor thing. We’re so cruel to you...when you’re so, mm, so very...close...”

All of this is delivered into her ear as a breathy whisper while I also choke her and bite her, so, whatever.

Eventually, we edge her so close to orgasm that we’re legitimately concerned about the noises she’s making. The neighbors have put up with a lot of Jordan’s shit already.

Next? Jordan signs at me.

Yes, I sign.

“Are you ready?” I breathe at Nora. She perks up like a dog hearing a can opener.

We position her so that she’s bent over the bed. Clatterballs—my brainchild, my sweet boy—will be able to ram her super hard and deep, which is, I think, how he deserves to lose his virginity.

“Prepare yourself,” I intone, as Jordan wheels Clatterballs into place. I experimentally reach down and feel Nora’s cunt. It is dripping.

“Heh. But you’re already pretty fucking prepared, aren’t you?”

She makes a tiny noise of trepidatious submission. It is pretty cute.

We align Clatterballs member with Nora’s snatch.

“Now I should tell you,” I drawl, “that I picked this dildo to resemble my cock.”

Jordan begins twitching the dial. The machine is warming up, making whirring grinding sounds like a tool when you push the button only partially. Nora is nigh whimpering with excitement and fear and lusty need.

Slowly, experimentally, like a baby deer taking its first steps, Clatterballs docks with Nora’s cervix. She lets out a whine and then a sound like whuff, that startled exhale-pain-lust-grunt that women make when you overpenetrate them.

I nod to Jordan, to pull back, turn up the dial, and let Clatterballs stroke. But Jordan is frowning. Something is off.

I am squinting at Clatterballs. The rail that the dildo is mounted on is wiggling, loose with useless lateral momentum. Maybe Nora’s cunt muscles are squeezing hard—or maybe my boy CB is just having trouble aiming on his first time. I reach back to provide a steadying hand, and nod to Jordan, to adjust the dial.

Jordan turns it up.

Clatterballs begins to stroke, grinding into her and hittin’ it slow and deep.

It takes all of fifteen seconds for it to break.

It falls apart like a goddamn cartoon, with struts and bolts landing soundlessly onto the carpet. Jordan and I are staring at each other. My face is a 😨 of dismay. Jordan is rictus-grinning at me in mute horror.

I stare at Clatterballs wordlessly. Oh my god, I built a two-pump chump.

I motion to Jordan in our sign language:

Fuck, I sign. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jordan doubles over, laughter not quite audible over the ongoing busted-ass hum of the machine. Nora is still on all fours, waiting to be pounded, a little confused at how the fucking has stopped.

I leap to my feet, tear open Clatterballs, and pull out the functional heart of this machine—the Sawzall. With dildo still attached.

“You’ve done well so far,” I intone, “and NOW, I’ll use setting TWO on you!”

The lowest setting on a sawzall is way way too fast to have inside you. Most of Clatterballs complexity was based around trying to reduce the speed and the rest was trying to smooth out the stroke. Without either, I was forced to try to manually approximate a pleasant stroke speed by feathering the trigger.

The Sawzall’s lowest setting fucks at 2,600 strokes per minute.

That’s pretty close to yours, right?

Nora lets out a primal cry as the machine fucks her approximately three times faster than a human possibly could. I extend my open palm and Jordan slaps a vibrator into it like a skilled surgical assistant, and I mash that vibrator against Nora’s clit and hope that all the edging paid off.

It did. Ye gods, it did.

She comes like an exorcism, seizing and bucking. She’s so loud I stuff my hand into her mouth, because the alternative is the neighbors coming around to investigate us murdering livestock. Her legs go weak, and I collapse with her onto the bed, as her orgasmic clench-spasms launch the slippery dildo out onto the floor.

Jordan hops into bed with us. We take off Nora’s blindfold. She is nervous and trembling again.

“Did...?” Nora asks, a bare whisper.

I share a glance with Jordan. “What?”

“Did I do good?” asks Nora, and she sounds on the verge of tears.

Jordan and I tackleglomp her furiously, and cuddle her, and pet her hair, and I provide the next stage of my optimized sex experience, the warmth and connection and Intimacy. I play the curmudgeon and let them talk me into watching the Little Mermaid as aftercare, and it is not a very good movie but I do like that all three of us are cuddling naked in bed together, and I do like that we’ve hidden most of the sex toys but some of them are still strewn about the room, slick with her juices.

Little Mermaid ends. It really is not a very good movie.

Denoument

I drive Nora home. We smile and pat each other in the car. I am waiting for her to leave. She is waiting for me to say I will call her.

I will not call her.

She gets out of the car and kisses me goodnight. She will go report this encounter to her boyfriend Sam, who, I assume, was at home, biting his nails and masturbating in some combination of arousal and extreme stress.

He will, day after tomorrow, invite me to get pizza so that we can talk about how I can treat Nora best as a new poly partner. He is insecure about she and I beginning to date, but is trying to do his best despite that. He talks to me about aftercare, and poly, and open communication, and New Relationship Energy.

It is hard for me to tell him I don’t really care to see her again, but I say it.

I see the combination of relief and insult in his eyes. There is no balm I can provide for that, not really, because his read on the situation is entirely right; I have no interest in his girlfriend as anything other than an eager girl to help me test my sex machine and have another threesome. Oof; he was worried about losing her to me, and I consider her so far beneath me I won’t even fuck her.

I do shamefacedly apologize for using him as an armrest. That was fucked up. I should do less drugs, or maybe different drugs.

I don’t know what happened to these people. I wonder whether they’re still together. On the rare occasions that I see Sam, I try to be kind to him.

When I see Nora, I am careful to be merely polite. I don’t want to start that shit again.

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The way that the show Love Island works is, you select a cadre of hot dumbasses and put them in a televised ape cage and force them to play gorilla sexual politics.

I didn’t want to like Love Island. It’s a reality show! And I’m supposed to be upper middle class! But it’s such relentlessly Orwellian game design.

The central conceit of Love Island is that everyone is on the show “to find love”. Attendees must find a partner and “be a couple”, which is underspecified but includes sleeping in the same bed. Sometimes they fuck.

Because of how the cage stage is designed, everyone is visible to everyone else at all times in a camera panopticon wired for sound. And, if you don’t “find love”, you will be eliminated. Which is to say, everyone here is forced to pretend—at all times—that they’re playing a dating show, while they’re actually playing Survivor.

No one is allowed to acknowledge this brutality. They’re being recorded at all times. There are night vision cameras in the bedroom. (One bedroom, singular, that they all share). Everyone is up in everyone else’s business because there is no privacy. There is nothing to do other than trying to fuck each other, and gossip about who’s trying to fuck whom. The only thing that matters is securing the highest status mate, and literally everything you do is the talk of the town the instant you do it. Any gaffe will follow you forever.

We have recreated the natural environment. It is the lowest common denominator. It is so compelling to my ape brain.

The producers of the show will sometimes break up couples by fiat, which naturally launches free radicals which then destabilize other couples.

Imagine being the guy who—even though everyone knows there’s a gameshow gun pointed at you off-camera—needs to plausibly signal, both to his prospective mate and for external consumption, “look, although we’re both aware of the systemic pressures here, my romantic interest in you isn’t due to the gun aimed at us off-camera. But rather, in this environment of sleep-deprivation and deliberately maximized emotional brutality, I am…falling in love with you.

And although I also said this to the previous three women, this time I mean it.”

God, what a difficult lift. Luckily, it’s not important that they believe you, only that they feel it look sufficiently believable to an outside observer. Because you’re in Hunger Games, and so your popularity with the audience will determine whether you live.

And then after that nonsense has mostly stabilized, they send you to Succubus House, where a cadre of totally unconnected hot dumbasses win lots of money and get to join the show if they fuck you.

🥰

I feel like the culture is ready for erotic reality television.

2.

So I’m buying a castle in Japan to use it for porn.

There are many abandoned properties in Japan which are for sale for $1. This castle costs significantly more than that, and, has a lot of roof damage, and has sat decrepit and vandalized for a while,

But, it’s still a castle! We can fill this thing with cameras for panopticon surveillance, and enact our erotic reality television, vision.

(And it’s in a crummy location! Which would matter if we were doing anything other than shooting erotic reality television.)

Imagine, if you will, a live-in, competitive fuck-game, televised for viewer entertainment.1

The culture is ready. It’s time.

“Yeah.” grunted Terolf. “Yeah.”

He was naked as fuck and twice as horny. He had a boner. She touched his abs. He had Six of them, arranged in the traditional ab configuration on his stomach region where abs go.

And then Jenny rubbed her meat curtains.

“Oh yeah,” Terolf grunted. “Keep doing that.”

He had a boner. He had ten boners. Motherfucker had like forty goddamned dicks.

He ripped off his shirt. Buttons scattered across the grassy knoll. Not her grassy knoll. She’d gotten that mowed. The grassy knoll that was underneath them where they were, on a hill outside. It was night.

“Jenny,” grunted Terolf. “You’re beautiful as a flower. A flower that I’m about to put my dick in.”

He thrust (forward).

“Oh God,” Jenny exclaimed religiously.​

The two of them canoodled beneath a twinkling canopy of twinkling stars. It was a romantic atmosphere, if you’re into that sort of thing.

“Oh, Terolf,” she breathed, which was a pretty normal thing for humans to do. “Where’s your cock?”

​It was inside her. She knew this.

​“Inside you,” grunted Terolf, when prompted about the location of his cock (inside her).

Time passed. Maybe minutes. Definitely not hours because then it would be daytime and it wasn’t. ​The moon hung in the sky like a big fucking moon.

Jenny looked distracted. Her eyes were like a maze, and Terolf, her Hercules, was trapped and lost within them trying to find and defeat the Minotaur of her mind.

“Jenny”, grunted Terolf. Though her expression was flat like the earth he was ready to make her his entire world.

But Jenny was distracted. She never thought she’d let Terolf inside her heart, let alone her wetter vestibules. They often say “there comes a time in every man’s life,” but this time, it was a woman’s life that a time came in.

“Terolf,” she cried out at last, and her voice hit him like a plane to a tower. She said: “Never once did I love you,” that was the second plane.

“What?” grunted Terolf, naked, with his genitals firmly stuck inside of hers. But Jenny suppressed her feelings for him, of which naturally it was romance.

Terolf began to cry sadly.  Tears are shining in his eyes like depressed raindrops on a stormy day (it is still night.) Tears begin drooling down his cheeks.

Jenny stood up. “This was a mistake,” she said, and though her voice was as silky as silken tofu her words were as firm as extra firm tofu.

​Normally Terolf was as happy as the next guy to have an erection—meaning very happy—but right now it was an issue.

“Will I ever see you again?” grunted Terolf.

​“No,” she said, and her words shot into his heart like bullets from the gun her mouth was like.

Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bonged the clock.  Midnight.

“Goodbye, Terolf,” said Jenny.

“Goodbye,” grunted Terolf.

What’s the point of a quinceañera

We do these social transitions to announce to everyone [I am no longer X; I am Y]

We used to have one of these about sex

“I have fucked; I’m a woman/man now”

(There’s tons of media about sex as phase-change)

In modern secular life, it’s less significant

And the current Adulthood phase change is marked by coming out,

taking agency over your own self-definition. Not necessarily as gay, but,

“Hey Parents: your vision of me as X is wrong; I am Y.”

or indeed “Hey Society:…”

I experienced one of those

When I became a CEO of a real company for the first time

I noticed that people were treating me differently.

(Women, yeah, but that was expected)

Men too—you’re not an Adult until you’re taking actions in the real world

There’s a sense in which that’s when you start playing the game for real

CEOs will not take you seriously unless you are the CEO

You are the Responsible Party and your job is no longer “convince your boss you did a good job” but rather the bald no-excuses completion of the necessary work, in reality

And if it goes badly there is no one to cry to and no one to blame

I mean, you can blame your subordinates if you want, but

it’s You who was on the hook and who is the public punching bag and who receives the glory and the shame

you cannot via wordcel symbol-manipulation produce a real steam locomotive.

it is you who will be crucified.

So, downstream of this

I have, actually, found most CEOs to be alive in ways that most people aren’t—

(obviously there’s some selection bias here)

—but I have found them, most of the time, to be adults

(and obviously cracked and insane in other different ways.)

Because it is you who will have the Oppenheimer moment if you fuck up

It should be someone wiser doing this, some Great Man, who’s truly considered the morality and the opening of the genie-bottle, who’s ready to stand upright before god and say Yes, I chose this, and it was right.

your employees will protest, I vas only followink orders

and the media will ignore how “Elon” is not “Tesla”, so it’s your name is on the articles

you are playing for real, and there are stakes.

and it is perhaps the first time I was Alive.

Now, nothing had prepared me for it

it is dangerous to have your head above the rest of the wheat

you invite the sickle.

(Because the higher your status, the more people gain status by bringing you down.

Status is zero sum!

and there are entire communities based on their hate for celebrities

because even though small-town-douchebag Frank is a way less ethical person

there is no heterodox positional status good to be attained via sneering at Frank.)

So,

working for other people is usually a bad idea,

it’s safer!, sort of.

in that your company’s attack surface and your own attack surface are disjoint.

but this is a gray and mediocre existence

why not just choose serfdom?

don’t you want to know what you’re capable of?

aren’t you tired of waiting for your real life to start

To determine my gift list, I just look at who I’ve texted with in the past week, and resolve that anyone not in there is probably not really my friend.

Then, I open up my gift list (which is a note on my phone which I’ve been populating all year long or sometimes for many years long, in which literally any time anyone mentions offhandedly a thing that they want, I find a way to discreetly append that to my list so that I can, with a posture of wickedness and glee, fantasize about what a good present this is and how happy I’m going to make them.

Who’s my gift list:

1

2

3? nah fuck her

4

5

6 (wait she’d hate receiving a christmas present actually)

7

8 maybe

9

10

do i even like anyone else

11

12 maybe

13 maybe

14 people?

15? but something small so it’s not weird

Okay, let’s go through this process thinking in public so as to reveal my process.

15’s pre-existing gift list is:

Authentic boar-tooth tattooist in Japan; Tom of Finland art; Polygenic for his kids.

He doesn’t have any kids yet and ordering a $50k IVF therapy isn’t small enough. Similarly I don’t think I can find him an authentic Japanese tattooist who uses boar teeth. Some Tom of Finlands it is!

Tom of Finland is a pretty pornographic comic celebrating gay culture. It was, apparently, a whole cultural moment.

So I should try to find him some old Tom of Finland art. It’d be weird if I bought him an authentic print (those are like $3k - $30k) so I should probably try to find some scribble from the artist, a bar napkin with a man’s ass drawn on it, or something.

Ok after searching and also using some AI tools which weren’t fast or very good and then I disregarded them I found an old Tom of Finland VHS tape that he and the boys might get a kick out of watching together. (They’re straight). He’s probably my coolest friend? Not in terms of who I like best or who is most famous or who is the best dresser but he might be the best male dresser but rather cool in terms of like

@lubalinMy #synthwave #cover of "Just The Two Of Us" #perfectloop #justthetwoofus #retrofuture #cyberpunk #remix #voice #musicproducer #drivingmusic

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So he and the boys (no one gayer than a bunch of straight dudes) would *love* watching an hour of authentic retro gay porn on VHS.

Great, ordered. Gift accomplished. Merry Christmas. Now to do 14 more.

“Only a very few folk ever do anything interesting with their lives […] and I suspect you will not be among them; for although you are ambitious, you have no ambition.”

“Job hunting is a process of putting forward the storebought parts of yourself that you respect the least”

“The kind of outfit […] where a person with a bit of money walked into a store, insecure, pointed to a mannequin, and bought the outfit the mannequin was wearing.”

(One day I want to attempt the writing trickshot of never directly saying what I’m pointing at, and instead only gesturing to the edges of the hypermeme in the hopes that you glimpse the pattern. I did this for the opening of Twenty-Seven Years At Macy’s; perhaps when I am old and bereft of fucks to give, I will make it My Whole Thing. )

1.

There’s an entire class of people who are competitive and desire prestige. They are usually smart and scholastically accomplished; driven, you might say. These folks are always hardworking, and sometimes drift towards medicine (if they have a desire to help people) or drift towards law (if they are moved by the beauty of civics), or finance (if they watched Wall Street at the wrong age). Like a mule pulling a plow, somehow their desire to Accomplish and Be Yourself has gotten yoked to these very standard societally-acceptable presentations.

But who on earth, if thinking from first principles, would decide to be a doctor or a lawyer or a Finance Douche? Who would choose that shape for themselves? No, these bundled positions are handed to you as package deals; storebought.

(Consider modern political parties. The positions they hold are somewhat insane and inconsistent. Why would we expect animal rights and fetus rights to be on opposite sides? Yet via path-dependent historical shenanigans, we find ourselves here, with strange hodgepodge coalitions that, if we were allowed to pick our precise political issues a la carte, almost no one would actually want.)

Imagine the bisexual woman who would, indeed, like to try fucking ladies, but she doesn’t really know how to go about doing that and besides there are all these nice men flinging themselves at her and there might be complicated societal opinions if she draws society’s attention in drifting from “straight woman” to “bisexual woman”. And so she just, never does it.

If you try to query within within yourself and ask “what do I want” you will often find a big vague Meh. And then, suspiciously tardy, you may notice your brain shoving out a few suggestions; “uh, a big house, millions of dollars, the respect and love of my peers—”.

Those are not your real desires.

I respect the fetishist. At least they’re honestly looking at what they want, and not flinching away when they find it.

2.

A case of True Love redeems a person, because when you want someone with one hundred percent of yourself then you will find all of your inner psychological parts aligning like iron filings in a magnetic field and moving without effort towards whatever path you honestly believe is your best bet.

In the process of seeking that path you will take stock of who you are and whether that is who you should be. You will refactor your life and find yourself doing things right because they have gone from something you “Should” do to something which is instrumentally important to your real goals and this will burn you clean because the love is totalizing and brooks no profligacy.

And a case of True Curiosity in which a person really wants to know the real and actual answer can force a person to discard the delusions which that they have on some level identified and shift from a sort of low-effort signaling game of trying not to get fired or trying to signal caring or otherwise trying to try; into a state of wanting something specific out of this world and thereby making the actual attempt.

So do I think that locating and following a True Desire is quite purifying for the soul and it actually doesn’t matter that much what the object of your desire IS because the act of truly truly wanting and seeking will carve you clean, will bare your actual self, the elephant from the marble. People become who they are meant to be by following their desires no matter where they lead.

But you must not fall prey to parasites of manufactured desire.

3.

This is the age of parasites.

Our bodies contain numerous anti-parasite mechanisms which, in the modern absence of parasites, occasionally go berserk in an autoimmune way. One of the solutions is eating dirt.

In that vein, I wish I could eat dirt to stop having such friendly feelings towards Dr. Pepper.

Look at this. I am a goddamn monkey who did not evolve to deal with this shit. A single modern nacho-blasted Dorito contains more flavor than the medieval peasant would experience in their entire life. Corporations occupy slots in our Dunbar rings. There were no fae to tempt us with gardens of violent delight so we invented them ourselves.

Parasociality. Humanist branding. Relentlessly optimized twitter dunks. Meme wars. Gamification of debt. Onlyfans for writers. Politics is the mind-killer. Wokeness. Signaling. Asian parents.

Our motivation circuits are operating in the most hostile environment of competitive superstimuli ever to exist, and so it is hard to want something when you are being relentlessly bombarded by suggestions of things to want and subtle or not so subtle intimations of what you (a good person) Should want. And we cannot fall back on the animal desires in their purity because those too are corrupted by fast food and soft beds and photorealistic virtual reality gangbang porn.

So I am afraid I must ask you to introspect.

Look within yourself and really squint at your desires. To live is to want. If you can find your actual desires then you will find you have positive goals in addition to the negative. You are a leaning tower of wants, pockmarked like caves upon your surface.

I will be gentler here. Discovering what you want might hurt badly. It will hurt, if what you find is that there’s a strong yearning desire within you which will never be fulfilled. It would be a dark world, that. You may have to learn to actually usefully clear your grief. You may have been hiding it from yourself for a long time via a fan-dance of rationalizations such that you need a precise anti-koan to hit you just right.

Because the alternative is to never live. To live *is* to want. Buddhism is wrong. We’re all adults here, we can admit this. Buddhism is a cheat code for avoiding suffering in this world by preemptively surrendering to whatever happens. There are other ways to be.

I am asking you to seethe and suffer. You will come to learn the contours of your own desire. You do not, in the end, want a shiny car. There are realer things you want, really. You will dig deep through the many layers of basic ape drives and the many layers of commercial parasite load and the layers of societal expectations and parental pressure and in the end only you will remain.

Have courage.

This does not have to be a grim, teeth-gritted process. Simply follow the gradient of what you want, casting aside the pale, two-dimensional shadows of desire placed within you by advertising. Have courage. Parts of you know how to do this. You are still in there.

The alternative to finding your true wants and acting on them is to die a gray and timid soul never knowing victory or defeat. Have courage. You have to live your fantasies, or else you won’t have lived them.

Look inside, and listen! Do not round off your desires too swiftly! Do not be afraid of what you might find. That is who you are! That is who you are.

Anyway, this is the feeling I get when I sit down to raise a finger of Well Actually towards Tomás’ Rubber Souls post; it’s rare that I see someone already close enough to my insane 7th-dimensional timecube position that I can enjoy the strange and novel experience of having a political opinion.

As I understand it, the central claim of the piece is that because human status tracking has been hard-coded into us via evolution;

and, because status is zero sum;

then, in a glorious post-material-scarcity transmortal utopia;

the eudemonic solution to the scarcity of status is to create a complementary shadow species for humanity, who either don’t have internality, or who enjoy being low-ranked such that they can receive our abuse and status-pushdowns with equanimity or delight.

(I do actually agree we should do this.)

In a glorious transhuman future in which all are free to live as they desire, we need not concern ourselves with the age-old question of “but who shall be society’s little bitch?”; we can all of us reap the rewards of a new and golden Omelas, now with vegan-friendly imitation suffering child. If we aren’t electing to self-modify out of our evolutionary origins, let us instead choose to maximize our satisfaction of those values.

However, I think that a focus on enabling consequence-free condescension will gradually shape us towards cruelty and leave us not-very-fun-to-hang-out-with.

Humans may swiftly find it unfulfilling to interact with one another, if the absence of constant genuflection becomes akin to pain. Why go speak with another human being, which would be at best a meeting of great leaders, when one could instead be eternally entertained by supplicants and torture dolls?

Taken to its conclusion, this would render existence into a single-player-game, which seems sad.

Therefore, Grovelers should aim to engineer prosocial behavior, and not let their Principal become too monstrous.

There are many types of power fantasy. Looking at the breadth of fantasies explored in anime, we see a few different common culprits. Yes, sometimes we (the royal, species-level We) want to stomp down those who dared to doubt us. Yes, sometimes we want to nihilistically Westworld an orgy of violence through morally acceptable targets.

But we see, additionally, a fantasy of being powerful enough to afford kindness. One of the purposes of Slack is to afford a moral code. Represented in media, I argue, we see the desire depicted again and again: “I will just be kind to everyone, and that will work out well for me.”

So let us build our grovelers to engender gentility.

A boot stomping on a smiling masochistic rubber face forever, seems like moral hazard for someone who might one day want to resume interacting with humans. Unless each person is sharded into a private universe to solipsistically share with their court of charmingly pathetic servitors1, it seems that we likely don’t want to hypertrophy each person’s cruelty and ability to sneer.

Anyway cool post bro, I agree with you more about this really specific improbable far-future target than any two politicians have ever agreed on anything, and also, I hope that living with your court of abusable toys doesn’t make you unpleasant to chill with.

And then I said “ok well it seems like the default outcome is that we continue to have kinda boring hangouts for the next six months, and then break up after we get kinda resentful of one another.”

And she was like “yeah.”

And I was like “we could just try breaking up now to gauge how it feels and see whether we have a sudden moment of clarity or wistful sadness or whatever.”

And she was like “whoa, people can do that?”

And I was like “let’s! Ok, when I clap my hands, we’re broken up.”

And then I clapped my hands

And then we hung out for a while and later I was like “ok, do you want to get back together”

And she was like “nnnnnot really”

And I was like “cool! Good thing we checked”

And she was like “wait can breakups really be this chill?”

And I was like “idk, is something going to make it unchill?”

And then we sort of looked at each other for a while but in a chill way

And then I left.

There was a study on this, you know1. People’s reported pain versus reported pleasure, from losses and gains. Many people won’t, actually, choose to flip a fair coin that pays out $150 on heads and -$100 on tails, even though any quant trader would tell you to flip that coin until the idiot offering this deal runs out of money.

Across various peoples’ reports, it looks like people feel losses at two and a half times the sharpness of gains. And this makes sense, from the standpoint of evolution trying to motivate us. A content creature isn’t going out and striving for more; not seeking out more opportunities or higher social status or a better mate or more nourishing food.

But there’s an unfortunate consequence to that adaptation, from our point of view. It means that while our happiness scale goes up to 10, our misery scale goes down to -25.

That’s pretty rough.

(Indeed some BDSM practitioners euphemistically refer to pain as “intense sensation”, and include it as a means of reaching higher highs than are otherwise attainable. And, more mundanely, many people like spicy food.

It means that to evoke really really strong emotion in someone, as strong as they can possibly feel, it can’t be positive-valence. The scale just doesn’t go that high.

I’m imagining receiving the best news possible—I’m not quite sure what it is—

“Exciting news! A cure for aging and cancer both was just invented. Furthermore, it turns out that this miracle cure was inspired by one of your late-night internet comments that you totally forgot about, but which the scientific team felt was “super insightful” so they listed you as an author on the paper and cut you in for the royalties. Here’s a check for seven billion dollars, and, you’ve become a universally beloved celebrity overnight. This helicopter on your lawn is here to take you to an awards ceremony in which all of your favorite celebrities and bloggers specifically congratulate you on that totally cool and brilliant thing you once thought, which is, naturally, going to be indefinitely enshrined in several history books and art museums. Also, all of this is voluntary and if any part of it sounds like a hassle, you can decline and instead retire to the private luxury island that a group of the actually cool philanthropic billionaires set aside, for when someone finally had the overall Best Idea.

I feel like the stunned elation of all that would still, still, be less emotionally intense than hearing a drunk driver killed your daughter.

It makes sense, evolution-wise. A happy organism isn’t one that feels compelled to go out and do shit. A happy organism is content, and has no striving. No, evolution favors a perpetually dissatisfied organism, one which is always just a little bit annoyed with how things are, always looking for ways to improve its situation. Better food better sex better life.

Sucks to be designed by something that doesn’t care if you’re happy. Or, that’s understating the problem; we were designed by something that does care if we’re happy, and is mildly opposed.

(This essay is something like my unauthorized sequel to Personhood: A Game For Two Or More Players. I really loved that essay.)

“You” is what we call the current leader-figure; one spokesperson with significant-but-limited understanding of and control over their constituency. There’s an important adult skill of learning to interpret the will of your own psychological body politic with granularity. “You” are not the king of your brain; you’re an elected official who holds steering power only inasmuch as you can fulfill the needs of your voters.

(It’s only sort of true that Vladamir Putin “is” Russia, or Microsoft “is” its employees.)

What’s the platonic ideal of a politician, here? Not some weasel enriching their cronies, but someone representing the will of the people and working to their benefit, making good long-term decisions even when the will of the people is short-sighted, petty, stupid, and incoherent.

If you don’t want someone else trying to seize the wheel, you need to keep an eye on satisfying your constituency.

Voting Blocs

Let’s take a look at some example inner turmoil.

Perhaps you’re monogamous with your partner, and a tempting sexy stranger wants to go on a date with you. Opportunistic factions within you will speak up. Your internal Congress vote might look something like,

The Nay Faction:

• 22: It would make my partner sad (empathy)

• 15: I might face judgment and societal repercussions (status)

• 9: My current partner makes me happier overall (pragmatism)

• 8: I often profess that cheating is wrong and bad (consistency, which is reputation, which is status)

• 5: I also actually feel that cheating is wrong and bad (ethics)

• 4: And, meh, I’d have to leave the house (lazy)

  
  versus

The Aye Faction:

• 9: They’re hot (sex)

• 9: This person is perceived as high-status and I might be cooler for screwing them (status)

• 5: Hooking up with this person would sustain my self-narrative of a cool sex-positive person (propaganda for internal consumption)

• 5: I feel very charmed by this person (complex, depends a lot on your internal makeup)

• 4: Is my life boring now? I don’t want to be A Boring Person (propaganda for internal consumption)

• 3: Plus, my partner did that annoying thing yesterday (spite, which is reputation, which is status)

In this case, the motion fails. But there are a lot of dissenters within you, so your outward presentation displays some interesting microexpressions, and perhaps what your mouth or body says ends up being a compromise position for the body politic. Let’s go on a walk. Let’s keep talking. And maybe we’ll hedge with just a little sex.

I see people being confused, thrashing over decisions, saying, I just don’t know what I want. But that’s an invalid sentence construction, homie. There is no “I”. You are a constituency. Or technically “you” are the ephemeral gestalt figurehead of your constituency and you may find your mandate changing without notice, depending on whether you really understand what the forces inside you are responding to, or whether it’s important to them that you not. Sometimes the representative’s ignorance of the constituency’s true wants is a desirable feature of their tenure, because humans aren’t great liars and so it’s strategic to airgap your self-knowledge.

When you’re struggling with a decision or thrashing about with “I don’t know what I want,” that’s what a constitutional crisis feels like from the inside. You’re experiencing gridlock between different internal voting blocs (status-seeking, laziness, ethics, pragmatism, etc.). The conscious “you” is a politician who needs to understand and negotiate between these competing interests, rather than pretending they don’t exist or that you’re somehow above them.

Status and Self-Deception

Let’s say you are offered a boring job at a prestigious company. Do you want it?

The Aye Faction:

• 12: People might think more highly of me if I worked for this cool company (status)

• 8: It seems easy (laziness)

• 3: It would genuinely do good in the world (altruism)

The Nay Faction:

• -8: It seems boring (self-actualization)

• -5: It doesn’t pay enough (money)

• -4: I don’t want to be seen as a boring person with this boring job (status)
  

Now, status is a whole tangled mess that it takes some practice to think clearly about. There are levels upon levels of strategy here, and shifting metagames, and this is also the motivation for like half of what humans do.

(It’s trashy to visibly seek status. So you can’t acknowledge this as the reason without risking status slapdown. (Unless you can, because you’re already above the status cutoff where people will parse you as a fearless truthteller—based instead of cringe. (Though, different people will personally rank you at different levels depending on how they feel you relate to them in their own status hierarchy, which can cause all kinds of strange behaviors such as them loudly denouncing you if they feel like they would gain status by shorting your status by being visibly unimpressed.)) However, most people on some level know that you want status, and so depending on how much they feel they lose status by you gaining it, they may go along with your polite fiction, or not. (Status is zero-sum.))

It’s important not to deceive yourself about why you’re doing things. My cached phrase for this is, “have you accepted the evil within you?” Though I think, with one girlfriend, I said that one a bit too much, and gave her the impression that I was cheerfully going along with that evil. No, evolution gave you a frontal cortex for a reason—you can, occasionally, elect to choose something besides the equilibrium of maximum internal quiescence. You can sometimes resist your incentives and indeed, society would like you to do so.

(When you complain to someone else saying “ugh, I wish I was more motivated to do X”, that behavior is a dissident faction inside your nation seeking outside help. “Dissident” because, if the majority of the nation wanted to do The Thing, you would already be doing The Thing. But also, The Thing clearly isn’t so noxious to the rest of you that the nation wants to prevent communications about it. People almost approximately always make coherent decisions given their internal constituency, though different parts have different time horizons and pain tolerance. “Maturity” is mostly extending both.)

Failed States and Functioning Governments

So you’re a nation; what do you do with that.

In the real world, a “nation” is, more or less, a guarantee that the deals you make with this state will actually bind its body politic; the organization you’re speaking with represents the will of the people, or at least has sovereignty over them. It’s understood that if you’re talking to the King of Thailand, he doesn’t literally represent the will of all persons of Thailand, yet he does have the power to make deals which bind the people of Thailand. If he can’t do that, then in what sense is he king, and why are you talking to him? He’s a sad puppet who thinks he’s king.

(We all know people like this.)

I think acknowledging you’re not going to start out as a coherent entity makes you more effective. The people who seem most “together”, to me, are usually the ones who’ve gotten good at owning their weird internal special interest groups.

This looks a lot like actual governance. You listen to your constituencies, even the ruthless and sociopathic ones we all inherited via evolution. You broker deals between the factions. You override majority opinion occasionally, when you know better. If you’re skilled and lucky, you eventually even build some self-trust, so you’ll let you do it again.

1.

We did the math out of fun curiosity. There were 120 attendees paying $15k apiece, and the four counselors were each being paid a very impressive $100k/year, so that meant the owner was getting -

“Wait, that can’t be right. He’s pocketing $1.4M?”

We’d thought that the Six-Figure, $100k job the teachers had landed was cushy; it was something we were striving for. The best of the cohort would be invited to do it. We could land that role, if we were the best and brightest and we worked hard and got lucky.

We had neglected to look up.

2.

In 2016, I put $100,000 into index funds. My friend put $100,000 in a bank.

My $100,000 turned into $392,800.

Because of inflation, his $100,000 turned into $74,000.

The only difference is that it just…didn’t occur to him, to move the money out of a bank. No one told him he needed to.

3.

You go to college to “get a good job”, which means, “to become useful to someone”.

A person who pays you to do something, is doing so because your fee is less valuable than what they gain.

(Duh)

4.

Your college degree paid off, and you got a really cool job at a startup! You’re getting paid $150,000, plus benefits!

Your company raises fifty million dollars, at a four hundred million dollar valuation! Wow! Let’s have a company party.

(After two dilutive fundraising rounds and accounting for all employee stock options, your boss owns 50% of the company.)

5.

You research a company and think it’s ahead of its time. You think it’s going to do well, so you want to invest in it. You’ve scraped together $2,000 and want to put in a check.

“Are you an accredited investor?” asks the government.

“What?” you ask.

“Only accredited investors are allowed to invest in small companies.”

You pause. “How do I become an accredited investor?”

“You have to be a millionaire,” explains the government.

“The fuck?”

6.

“The Virginian Cavaliers had an obsession with liberty, but needless to say it was not exactly a sort of liberty of which the ACLU would approve. I once heard someone argue against libertarians like so: even if the government did not infringe on liberties, we would still be unfree for other reasons. If we had to work, we would be subject to the whim of bosses. If we were poor, we would not be “free” to purchase most of the things we want. In any case, we are “oppressed” by disease, famine, and many other things besides government that prevent us from implementing our ideal existence.

The Virginians took this idea and ran with it – in the wrong direction. No, they said, we wouldn’t be free if we had to work, therefore we insist upon not working. No, we wouldn’t be free if we were limited by poverty, therefore we insist upon being extremely rich. Needless to say, this conception of freedom required first indentured servitude and later slavery to make it work, but the Virginians never claimed that the servants or slaves were free. That wasn’t the point. Freedom, like wealth, was properly distributed according to rank; nobles had as much as they wanted, the middle-class enough to get by on, and everyone else none at all. And a Virginian noble would have gone to his grave insisting that a civilization without slavery could never have citizens who were truly free.”

7.

(This is not a screed about communism)

(This is a public service announcement)

(You are DOMESTICATED and you YEARN for the YOKE)

I go to this one udon place, Marugame Udon. It’s at a college-kid intersection of “cheap” and “authentic”, and I like it there. One of the things they serve to make the udon better than just a bowl of noodles is the onsen egg, which is a slow-cooked soft-boiled egg, served in-shell for you to crack open and deposit into your noodles. It’s a silky, custard-like experience, and really elevates the starch, but.

(Cracks shell, pours egg into udon)

Me: Oh dang there’s a lot of egg left inside the shell

(Shaking it)

Me: It’s not coming out

Me: ...y’know, I’ve never tried sucking an egg?

Me: Like, this fundamental human experience, a thing our species did for a million years, sufficiently baked into our culture and language that we have expressions for “go suck an egg” and “don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs”. But now we live disconnected from nature, infantilized, alienated, such that I don’t even know this experience.

Me: Therefore, I should stick my face into this egg.

(Sticks tongue way up there. It was slimy and cool, the gelatinous flesh of the egg parting from the eggshell as I licked it off. It was almost flavorless, with a hint of mucus.)

Me: This is kind of gross.

Me: Oh and now there’s egg white on my pants

Me: This looks like jizz

Me: I hate nature

You go to work every day. It’s monotonous. You feel like you could be doing more. Or that you should be doing more? You’re only vaguely confident that you could be doing more.

You go to work every day. And so to make yourself feel like you aren’t a dead-inside boring drone, you find a hobby or something—you need to be doing something fun with your off hours, or else what are you suffering through work for?

You go to work every day. And because you do, you don’t really have time or energy to do anything else. Or maybe you got in this trap because you’re not very motivated or smart. Who can say?

You go to work every day. So you pick a hobby that’s hard to judge, because that way people can maintain the polite fiction that it matters to you, and that it’s commendable follow-your-dreams stuff if it brings you joy. And we can all ignore the fact that you wanted to be doing something meaningful for the world, something big, but you failed, because sitting down and learning was hard and maintaining resolve was hard and sacrificing other parts of your life is hard and trying to do that too many times butts you up against the brutal fact that you are the cause of your painfully mediocre life and that you’re not going to change and therefore nothing is ever going to change.

You go to work every day.

(“Seems like you’re trying to muster up some enthusiasm for a side thing so that people don’t accurately conclude that you really are this boring and dead inside!”)

She’d be a really sympathetic character if she wasn’t also really mean.

#

Mom Mom: You have a job?

Me: Nah.

Mom Mom: You need a job.

Me: I kinda don’t. Selling the company went well.

Mom Mom: You don’t wanna work? You’re lazy.

Me: I’m retired, mom mom.

Mom Mom: You’ve always been lazy. You’re the laziest white kid I know.

#

I step into her condo. I haven’t been here in ten years, and the memories come flooding back; of vacations here with the family; of a brief trip here with my girlfriend Jos.

When I was here last, as a child or maybe a teen, I was very, very bored, and I very, very thoroughly inspected the apartment. With the exception of an oxygen tank in the corner, approximately nothing has changed about this apartment in the last ten years.

The floor, walls, and ceiling are white, except in the places where the walls are mirrors. The entire condo is not less than thirty percent mirrors, I’d say—two walls in every room are mirrors; the ceiling chandelier piece is mirrors, and in one strange hallway you can shut the door and find yourself in a little mirror cube where five-out-of-six walls are mirrors. (I jacked off in there as a teen, staring directly up at my reflection on the ceiling.)

There are (fake) flowers on every table, and the tables are glass. There are glass sculptures on every surface. She has a candy bowl of fake glass candy and a glass vase of fake glass roses. It is a shockingly inhospitable place for a child, and I remember living in fear of accidentally destroying one of Mom Mom’s glass tables.

But if the apartment has a theme, it’s...eros, maybe? Bewilderingly sexual.

The statuary (for there sure is statuary) is of nude women; the portraits are of women bathing. The couch is pink. In every single room there is some icon of a naked woman, which, again, was very interesting to me when I was fourteen. There are some kind of...burlesque puppets, on the couch? I genuinely don’t know how to describe these things. The lady puppet has pillow tits that are literal pillows. (I vaguely recall motorboating this puppet as a teen.)

The perfume in the apartment (for there is perfume) makes me sneeze and makes my eyes burn.

But if I’m being honest, I do kind of like it here.

#

We are at a fancy Italian restaurant. The live music, today, is provided by a man playing keyboard and singing. As the restaurant is closing, he finishes his cover of What A Wonderful World, to some cheers and applause.

Mom Mom is dour.

Mom Mom: I don’t see how people can clap for him.

I am sitting next to Mom Mom, the two of us adjacent in the corner booth seat. We have already exhausted all of our catch-up talk. She has asked me about my career plans (none) my relationship status (recently broken-up-with) my career plans, again (“Could you be a programmer? Do you think you’d like that?”), and I am floundering with what, even, to ask her.

My usual mnemonic cheat is FORD:

Family
Occupation
Recreation
Dreams

But her list is really quite bad.

Family: Me
Occupation: Waiting for death
Recreation: TV
Dreams: Hoping that I will want some of her stuff when she dies

So I’m sort of giving her an affectionate shoulder squeeze while scrolling through my camera roll on my phone. I’m pointing out different girlfriends I’ve had.

I’m sometimes lucky with the pictures: “Hey, I’m wearing that blazer you sent me!”

I’m sometimes unlucky (as I scroll real fast past my own shirtless photos).

There’s a forty-year-old couple staring at us from across the restaurant, looking genuinely scandalized. I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone look scandalized in real life before? And it’s only then that I understand they’ve parsed us as dating, or perhaps, dating for money for the night.

I don’t change my behavior at all, because I’m going to do my familial duty to this woman if it kills me.

Mom Mom: Is that Jos?

I look down. I am indeed showing Mom Mom a picture of Jos, getting married.

Me: Yeah.

Mom Mom: The slob?

I pause. When Jos and I visited Mom Mom ten years ago, Jos lived out of a suitcase rather than using the dresser which Mom Mom provided for her. This was apparently a nuclear provocation in Mom Mom’s etiquette, and Mom Mom has been bluntly letting me know she despises Jos ever since.

Me: I wouldn’t call her that.

Mom Mom: But she was more messy than you.

Mom Mom: (Looking at photo) Oh, she’s heavy now.

The waiter returns, to drop off our bill. It is, somehow, ninety dollars; Mom Mom ordered two iced teas, a salad, a side plate of salami and cheese, and the eggplant parmigiana served over spaghetti. She only ate the salad, and a single bite of the eggplant.

I ordered the ravioli porcini; it was fine.

Mom Mom: Are you still a good eater?

Me: ...I guess?

What does that mean, and was it ever true? I wonder.

Mom Mom peels the top layer of cheese off of her eggplant.

Mom Mom: Eat it.

Mom Mom: Make room on your plate.

This is how you gave dad an eating disorder, I think.

The restaurant is closing. The waiter comes by to give us the check, again. He has printed off a second copy, and now drops it on our table.

Waiter: Oh, whoops—looks like I already brought this.

Waiter: Don’t worry, you won’t be billed twice, haha.

He leaves. I drink water.

Mom Mom calls the waiter back, as she pours a third Splenda into her iced tea.

Mom Mom: I asked for Splenda and a lemon with this, could I get the lemon?

Waiter: Oh. Sure thing.

He returns a minute later with the lemon. He glances at the check without much hope, and then at Mom Mom’s walker under the table.

Mom Mom: Thank you.

Waiter: Yeah, no problem.

The restaurant is clearing out, because they’re closed. Mom Mom reads the bill like it’s a court summons.

Mom Mom: Nine is enough.

I glance at the bill and put together that she’s talking about the tip.

Me: On ninety-three dollars?

Mom Mom: Yeah.

Mom Mom: What did he do? He just mixed a salad in front of us. He didn’t do anything.

I watch her tip $9 on a $93 tab. I help her with her walker, and wait until she’s begun the process of laboriously departing the restaurant; then I slip two twenties under the check, with a little cash poking out visible.

I’m retired; why wouldn’t I.

#

We return to her apartment. I discover that the eye-burning perfume is because she has three (3) automatic-release “air fresheners” plugged into the outlets and spraying perfume into the air. It is way, way too much for such a small space.

I unplug them. I wonder whether she’ll notice.

My eyes fall on the webcams which dad has installed in her apartment, to periodically check in on her. I note that I will probably want to wear clothes around even after she goes to sleep. I note that my father is not entirely normal either.

Mom Mom: Sleep with me in my bed tonight.

Me: No.

Mom Mom: Why not? There’s plenty of space.

Me: Nah.

Mom Mom: (Annoyed) Richard,

(Dad’s name),

Mom Mom: That side of my bed is never touched. You can sleep there.

Me: I’ll take the couch.

She looks put out. I feel vaguely guilty.

I think, would I sleep in Mom Mom’s bed tonight, if I knew that NOT doing so would kill her?

I consider.

If I knew that she needed me to sleep in that bed, or else she would die in her sleep—then I would choose the couch.

#

I am sitting with her in the morning, two chairs facing the unplugged television. The aide will be here in an hour. We are watching the clock.

I am leaving in the afternoon, and once the aide arrives, we will probably be less able to talk. And, since I don’t think I’m coming back before her funeral, there will probably be no later opportunity to talk with her, about anything.

I feel vaguely like I ought to do some kind of...exit interview? I know very little about this person, honestly.

Me: Mom Mom, tell me about your life?

Mom Mom: I was married twice. I became a travel agent at fifty. And then I did all right until I had the first fall, which broke my leg, and the second fall, which broke my other leg and my elbow. I’m a cripple now.

Me: Er, but what about your life before fifty? Like, I hear you were married a couple times?

Mom Mom: I met Irving at an adult camp when I was eighteen. We fell in and got married. I had Arlene at twenty and you three years later.

Me: Me?

Mom Mom: (distracted) Richard. Your father.

Mom Mom: Then Irving and I broke up fifteen years later, because I didn’t love him.

Mom Mom: I married Vic later that year. He had money, and he owned car dealerships.

Mom Mom: He gave me a good life, but he wasn’t a nice man. We divorced after fifteen years.

Mom Mom: Then I got my social security benefit, and when Vic passed, I got his social security benefit too, and so now I live off that.

Me: …

Family
Occupation
Recreation
Dreams

Family + Dreams?

Me: Is there anything that you’d like me to do with my future?

Mom Mom: What?

Me: Is there anything that I could do that would, uh,

Me: Make you proud of me?

Mom Mom: Oh, Richard.

She pats my leg.

Mom Mom: I’m already proud of you.

For inscrutable opaque reasons, SF can’t build a public bathroom for less than $1.7M. I want to assume this is corruption, because “corruption” is the comfortable answer that preserves my sanity. It’s so much grimmer if it isn’t corruption, actually! Imagine if the bureaucracy really is that tangled, and there’s no mafioso in the middle laughing and drinking a martini made with human tears as he pockets the embezzled million and a half. Imagine that hellworld.

For the sake of our mutual humanity, let’s do napkin math on how much it would cost to rent a hundred portapotties and deploy them by every hotspot.

(People have made a variety of tracking heatmaps for poops already, from the businesslike Code 311 Explorer to the more flavorful (Human) Wasteland)

Portapotties cost about three hundred dollars per week per toilet.

(How many visits does each toilet have in it before it needs servicing? Oh, the $300 includes weekly servicing; let’s put it on a heavier service schedule and say it’s $500 now.)

(How many toilets do we actually need?)

There’s seven thousand homeless folks in SF.

(A hundred toilets seems sparse. Let’s…quadruple that, and end up targeting one on each intersection within that grid. That grid looks like it has four hundred intersections in it, give or take. I am doing cowboy math, here; we’re allowed to be imprecise.)

Okay; four hundred toilets, $500/month/apiece; $200k/month.

(We could probably get bulk discounts if we’re The Government. Let’s not rely on those. When we try to spin this into a charitable grant proposal and/or YC startup (“Poopr”) we should assume no special treatment.)

Okay. $200k per month.

That seems honestly pretty cheap? Not entirely sure how to weigh the breakeven for “furnish one permanent bathroom to the homeless population installed for $1.7M” vs “furnish four hundred bathrooms running for eight months for $1.6M”. Especially given that The Golden Throne took two years to get installed.

(Am I missing something important in my hubris? What’s the life cycle of a permanent city public toilet? Ah, twenty years or so, because they’re usually hard-used and vandalized. Well, I could probably calculus out the breakeven point for these. It’s only rocket science.)

$1,700,000 / 20 = $85,000

$500 * 12 = $6000

……but the built building isn’t a total wash, right? It’ll somehow cut costs later.

“Ongoing maintenance budget of 3-5% of construction cost annually”

$1,700,000 * 0.03 = $51,000

(Nope, fuck it, I’m out. Why do we have toilets at all if this is what everything costs. I am confused, society is rotted and sick and calls for the purity of the flame.)

Four hundred portapotties on street corners. How might we do this.

There are regulatory issues, because of course there are. San Francisco doesn’t let you just drop off a portapotty on the sidewalk, because the sidewalk is public property.

(It also won’t let you put a portapotty on private property without permission, either)

None of these yet seem like reason to stop.

Plan A: Friendly grassroots campaign asking people in the hot zone: “Say, has anyone ever pooped on your property? Would you consent for us to put a portapotty here for a week and see whether it prevents that? Tick this box.”

Plan B: Guerilla logistics terrorist unilaterally solves SF’s pooping problem via the braindead plan of putting four hundred portapotties on street corners.

just commit crimes you coward

Let’s say you live in a tribe of three hundred people, who’ve known one another their entire lives. Status is pretty long-tail: somebody’s the village chief, a handful of people are rich or have important irreplaceable skills, most people are vaguely “normal” (albeit viciously jockeying among themselves for rank), and a couple folks are widely considered as dirt.

Imagine, then, that you suddenly jump behaviors from “lukewarm” to cock-of-the-walk. You start sending signals of tacit superiority. Your stock is up! People wonder—did something change?? Women are confused and waiting for the status-market to settle, men are threatened and wary, and someone is going to resolve this soon. They have to. Because unless you can jump hierarchies, status is zero-sum; by claiming status you devalue all other status, like you’re printing money.

Actually, I should emphasize that. Unless you can jump hierarchies, status is zero-sum.

Not everyone can have “things that not everyone can have”. Having exclusive goods, or being an exclusive good, are definitionally things that separate you from others.

So, back to your quest for caveman poontang. In the evolutionary environment, demonstrating the wrong level of respect for a person is dangerous, and, demonstrating too high a level of apparent self-regard is inviting painful correction.

So you show up flashy and taking up space amidst all these cavemen who’ve known you your whole life. They know you’re not the biggest nor the strongest nor are you a source of usefully exploitable skills. Nor have you had a history of outplaying the other monkeys and setting them against one another to end up as a perpetual consigliere, overlooked until you can take power. (Classic Putin).

Instead, everyone is briefly confused that the town clown is acting like they’re a real person who is owed attention and respect; eventually, they laugh. Now they have common knowledge that they have rejected your claim; they resolve that you are miscalibratedly overestimating your own status.

(This is what the term “cringe” means, by the way.)

And then, the men of the village kick the shit out of you because you incorrectly thought you were hot. The “status smackdown” has come.

In modernity, though, there is no coordinated gang of village men to kick the shit out of you. You can just claim more status, and people will look at you and guesstimate whether that’s true, and usually be unable to call that bluff.

But it’s hard to act that status when you don’t feel it. Your body contains evolutionary code to ensure you don’t get the shit kicked out of you by a gang of cavemen.

But you can jump ladders. You can launder status from one group, inside yourself. You can hang out with people who adore you, so as to feel good about yourself, and then show up visibly feeling good about yourself, to a new peer group.

You can be the sexiest caveman.

The lowest assistant professor at Cambridge, who’s looked down upon by all the tenured faculty, might end up with small, miserable, hidden body language, and be in the habit of making self-deprecating jokes and otherwise putting themselves down so as to earn the tolerance of their cohort.

(Mental health is mostly status, by the way.)

And then, our poor neurotic Professor is introduced to a new group by their position alone. A professor! At Cambridge! and they end up with people ready to afford them quite a lot of status—

And then our Professor fumbles it by being too timid, too apologetic. They do not wear their status well; it hangs wrong on them like a too-large coat.

If you feel bad about yourself, go hang out with people who are meaningly lower status than you and who afford you higher status, to soak their adoration and feel okay again. Then you can show up feeling confident to interact with your desired cohort. The adoration of low-status people is laundered within you, to be accepted as currency on a different status ladder.

This is a positive feedback loop for feeling good and fucking a lot.

On a second axis of this Punnett square are the people who meticulously plan everything out ahead of time, such that when they start writing, they’re basically a printer; instantiating a design file which already exists. Contrast with the other type, who are flying by the seat of their pants, bushwhacking through their own plot and discovering the twists as they go.

As these concepts were introduced to me, I learned about them with a sort of nonjudgmental neutrality. Everyone is different; kumbaya. However, this seems kind of like contrasting capitalism and communism, or trying to scale anarchy as a governmental structure. Different approaches are better-suited for different scales.

I was born a constipated gardener. Every single word on the page needed to be perfect and beautiful or else I would hate myself, and also, I had no idea what the ending would be until I got there.

The thing that no one told me about all of these different writing types is this some of them are worse. The “no plan YOLO” fanfic writer is at least actually practicing the craft; creating art they can iterate and improve on. What’s more, the fanfic writer is enjoying themselves; they don’t have the self-criticality which stops a person from continuing to produce. When you write down Pregnant!Sonic x Fluttershy and think to yourself, I am so fucking smart, that’s a nice experience. It’ll keep you coming back.

Unlike the constipated writer, who’s afraid of creating attack surface. If a single word on the page is not perfect there is no option but seppuku. They produce less, learn nothing, and so their writing ends up “not even wrong”.

Surely you see where I’m going with this. After years of really struggling with writing, I have found babble-and-prune to be both a nicer experience that also generates a nicer product.

I am asking you to shit your pants.

I am asking you to forgive yourself when the words don’t look good on the first or second or third pass. I am asking you to have patience if you look down and find yourself run-off-a-cliff, Wile E Coyote style. Keep going.

Writing while not allowed to suck is like trying to drive with the E-Brake on. Like, sure, you can, but it’s way more effort, you get way less far, it’s terrible for the system, and it doesn’t actually improve outcomes unless the outcome you really want is to stop.

Make a hallow within yourself in which the words might bloom.

(Also once you gain more self-knowledge and granularity to notice what different parts of you are feeling, there are other advantages for self-love and accepting yourself. Perhaps you will develop the courage to look within, and not flinch away from what you find.)

Try it sometime. You might be surprised at what comes out of you.

After years of being an alpha chad, of new hookups three times a week and using strangers’ bodies to masturbate, you will find that you long for a wife. A woman who you actually trust and want to rely on as a life partner; whose company you enjoy irrespective of the fucking. A woman who, if she were a dude, you would hang out with.

You have a few options here. You could find a sweet innocent young thing; go full trad and exit your fuckboy lifestyle by finding and marrying a virgin bride. Having children; moving to the suburbs. This is acceptable. This is a pretty good 8/10 ending available to you! Do not be too greedy; there really is no safety net to ensure you get a good life.

Or you could choose to use your discernment. This will involve you paying attention to your own experience — which, note, is trading off against you being very very seductive, so it’s probably not natural for you anymore. You’ll need to do it anyway. And, you’ll need to develop more conscientiousness, so the lady still wants to hang out with you even after y’all fuck, because this is a symmetrical process, and if she’s a quality woman, she’s evaluating you back.

(Every single time I’ve compromised on looks I’ve been happier for it.)

You may experience something of a sex-culture clash. In many cultures, dating is sex-as-prize; the woman evaluates you, tries to determine whether you’re worthy of her, and if you pass, you win sex and are allowed to smash. The sex-as-prize culture has something of a condemnation of women who give the prize easy, for if their trials are not rigorous, they must not value their prize very highly.

There’s a cultural failure mode, then, where someone coming from sex-as-prize culture has sex with someone from sex-as-trial culture. In other cultures — say, American polyamory — the sex is another form of audition, in which you prove yourself to the woman by being really good at sex.

A relationship with the woman is the prize.

Your ability to fuck is just another metric she grades you on. Maybe it has outsized impact in her evaluation of you at certain horny times of the month. And maybe it matters less as you age and each become less groin-activated. But you must not confuse “being a good partner” with “being a good lay” — once the woman has that skepticism in her eyes that shows up after the first two breakups and the next ten hookups, she will stop mistaking the two.

You have to grow up and actually be a good partner. There’s going to be some idiosyncratic things which are tailored for her, with specific dinners or shows or bath bombs but, like, there are certain relationship foundations which will be broadly generalizable. Listening to her. Caring about her experience. Being considerate of how your actions make her feel. Supporting her in hard things. Supporting her in hard times. Demonstrating that the two of you can rely on one another. Understanding one another enough that you can trust very deeply, and be bare-metal honest with each other, basically always.

You have to grow up and actually be a good partner.

Doug was really into the idea of a “Baby Box”, the Finnish maternity amenity. Do you know about it? The schtick is, uhhh

The Finnish baby box is a maternity package given to new parents by the Finnish government that includes a variety of baby essentials like clothes, diapers, and a mattress. The box itself is designed to function as a safe first crib for the baby and was introduced in the 1930s to help reduce a high infant mortality rate by providing a safe sleeping space and necessary supplies to all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Doug really wanted one. This is how I discovered that, in America, there was a colossal lawsuit from Big Bedding to get this cardboard classified not as a crib but rather as a Bespoke Child Suffocation Apparatus: in 2021 the USCPSG ruled that “baby boxes” were an unsafe form of bassinet and criminalized them.

This is a shame, but, my friend is having a baby. I’m not gonna NOT get this motherfucker the box. I routinely commit way more actual crimes for way dumber reasons.

So, I just needed to look up where Finnish Baby Boxes were sold. Easy! One quick google!

After several actual hours of googling, I was feeling pretty fucking Don’t Tread On Me about the government telling me I wasn’t allowed to buy a cardboard box. The only boxes still available were now specifically NOT BABY SIZED, containing overpriced designer clothing. I don’t give a shit if the kid is swaddled in Calvin Klein, the point of the Baby Box is that it’s a one size fits all field kit for everything you need to keep a baby alive for a bit. It doesn’t have to be glamorous; bringing one of these to a baby shower should be like gifting an MRE.

So. Ebay? Amazon? Etsy? Craigslist? No, get fucked.

So eventually I activate the Try Harder and use my secret dangerous forbidden technique; I look at Page Two of google results.

And eventually, I find a box! It’s on, like, the sketchy Malaysian version of Mamaway Baby Supplies. Great, I’ll just put that in my cart and —

If you show up with an American IP, the site tells you to fuck off and give up.

No problem, I have a Very Prime Notion for how I might get around that. I’m a Very Paranoid Nerd and this is not the first time I’ve found a Veiled Passage Necessary. Nothin but us Malaysian citizens here, sir.

Great, good, and I’ll just put that into my cart and—

Oh, registration? With a phone number? I guess.

Ah, no American numbers allowed. I see. The only numbers they allow are Singapore and Malaysia.

Well shucks. Guess Doug doesn’t get to be happy. Guess baby-Christmas is spoiled this year.

Motherfucker did you think I was going to stop?

I put the baby box listing into my cart. I message the vendor. She seems nice.

I tell her, “hey, I travel internationally sometimes—”

(this sentence is true because I find it a fun crime trickshot to only speak truth)

“so, could I pay you more to ship the box internationally?”

She says sure.

And that’s how I ended up spending two hundred dollars and technically committing a crime in order to buy a cardboard fucking box.

Beats me why most people don’t actually love their friends.

I quite like the creator Neil Cicierega. He did Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, Potter Puppet Pals, and also a lot of surrealist short comedy horror. One of the uploads on his channel is called “Chocolate Sauce”. It’s a basically-motionless, two-second video of a Hershey’s Strawberry syrup bottle, as he says the words “chocolate sauce”.

This is great. This breaks the surface tension. If you take yourself too seriously your writing will not flow beautifully. It will be constipated, self-conscious, writing defensively; trying to make sure that there is literally no line in there that a mean internet critic can screenshot out of context and say “HEY MORON? IS THIS YOU? IS THIS YOUR FUCKING BRAND??”

If you want to write, if you want to Be A Writer, first step is to just punch the fucking keys and don’t stop. This is why writers get drunk!

The brakes, in your head, are there to keep you from embarrassing yourself in social situations. We used to live in tribes of three hundred people and a social gaffe can follow you for your whole life.

But if you get DRUNK and ideally are also RAILING AMPHETAMINES then the words will flow with ease, will gracefully slide out of you like diarrhea. Your inoffensive social voice is the LEAST INTERESTING THING about you.

You should not be leading with the boring storebought parts of yourself that even you don’t respect.

Your TRUE VOICE is UNIQUE and DIFFERENT. Every single person sees things differently and you want to be above their threshold of interest and in the modern world it is hard to do that without being DIVISIVE so you BITE THE BULLET and, as you may have heard, EMBRACE THEIR HATRED.

God, does anybody remember that one dating graph? Where, if you want to date Goth girls, you should dress way more Goth, because although that will alienate 95% of the population, you were only a sort of bland 60% percentile fuckability to them anyway, so in order to actually make your body into a sales funnel, you should dress for the user you want and just bite the bullet that you’re losing almost all people and this is better because you reach the people you want.

Do I want to make a point about how it’s not actually that hard to write 500 words? Maybe, as a treat, one of the days I will write thirty times five hundred words; do the entire Inkhaven in a day. How hard could it be? Wildbow does it all the time.

Heh. And yet I spaced out “30” as “thirty” because I didn’t want the word processor to miss giving me a point for that one word. Old college habits, y’know? The specification-gaming runs deep.

Oh my god I got distracted. People texted me. The classic human siren’s calls of FUCKABILITY and STATUS are calling me. Time to go text people back, after an appropriate cool-kid delay.