If you drive down the Storrow 500 (*1) and make your way down Boylston Street past the the Philip Johnson bunker walls of the new(er) public library annex (*2), you'll eventually find yourself near the Theater District where there are approximately two jiggle joints to choose from. If you are like us, the fancy jiggle joint on the left will be deemed too high-falutin' and the two-star-on-Yelp lower-budget version on the right will be where you plan to spend a portion of the evening that comprises the bachelor party. Maybe those two-star-on-Yelp reviews will help you decide. Perhaps at least one of these reviews praised the "weathered, broken down look" of some of the venue's independent contractors (*3).
Up until this point in my life I had been able to avoid such activities, but once you sign on to participate in a bachelor's revelry, there is the potential to stain any unblemished record. The funny thing is that I'm not totally convinced anyone actually wanted to go to said place, but this event being what it was, it was an inescapable component of the festivities.
[Switch to "intuitive" second-person present tense to express condescending sense of "immersive" storytelling] Once you pay your ten-dollar cover — "Not too bad," you think, hoping the rest of the outing will be relatively painless — you file in to a room that is far too crowded for the number of dumb-struck stares. In general, naked women make men docile.
"Move in! Move in!" the friendly bouncers tell you. "There is plenty of room in the back!"
A very skinny tattooed independent contractor is up on the stage behind the bar flexing certain ass muscles. It's a lot like Cirque du Soliel, except these performers are specialists, and there is no trapeze or net.
"Keep moving!"
You get to the back of the room and settle into a spot away from the line to the restroom and directly in front of the cubicle area where private dances are taking place.
"If you're not waiting for the bathroom, you have to keep this wall clear — move in!"
Goober asks you if you want a beer and you nod yes, handing him a $20 bill.
He returns with two bottles of Molson Canadian, and returns you your $20.
"They were $10 each, so I just put it on my card," he tells you.
"Ten dollars for a Molson Canadian?" you say in disbelief. "That's like a 1000 percent markup." And then you suddenly snap out of this dopey second-person present tense convention, not only because it sounds ridiculous but also because after spending $10 for a bottle of Molson Canadian, you are fully invested in what is taking place.
This particular place didn't quite have the feel of an airport in the way a place like Las Vegas feels like an airport. Maybe it was more like a bus station, or at least an all-male bus station — older guys, younger guys, guys who didn't look like they were old enough to get in — all sorts of guys. That's not to say there weren't females in attendance who weren't independent contractors but it was easy to miss them among the various contractors circulating around the room.
It's fair to say that one thing that I have a problem with in general is artifice. As much as I want to play along, ultimately it's hard for me to feel good about enjoying stuff like professional wrestling, Jersey Shore plot points or David Sedaris This American Life features; as entertaining as they are, in the back of your mind you know they're not real. That's why it was so goofy to listen to the independent contractors "flirt" with the patrons; the glassy-eyed "Ooh, I'm just a girl" thing wasn't remotely fetching, much much less titillating.
But I'm told by people who have read Diablo Cody's memoir that the women get this: They know who is there for real and who is just tagging along; who are the bachelors and other the legitimate customers and who is just gawking at both. And indeed, the flirty independent contractors quickly moved on to other paying customers.
We're watching an independent contractor finishing up on the stage and admiring the way she deftly rakes up the dollar bills thrown at or near her when another one comes out carrying a spray bottle and a cleaning wipe of some sort; she starts seductively cleaning the pole while she chews gum. This is a good thing, I tell those around me, recounting a story I heard from a New Haven-area health worker about a mysterious outbreak of some gnarly STD that was eventually traced back to a single pole.
As soon as I start relating this anecdote I realize it's not the right thing to do; for all I know, the guys I'm with might want to enjoy the venue and not be forced to consider the bacteriological environment of a dancing pole. It's too late. I'm laughing remembering the story. Groans are elicited. The song ends and another independent contractor descends the staircase to the stage, repeating the pole cleaning exercise. This time it's more matter of fact; she doesn't include the preparation in her routine.
At some point Goober says something about the televisions positioned around the bar. They're tuned to a local newscast, which means that the five-day outlook is playing while one of the independent contractors dances on stage. It's strange to see. We hope that a national tragedy doesn't take place because it would be really embarrassing to have to say for years and years where you were when the New York City Police Department brought down a commercial airliner over the most densely populated city in the country.
The other thing that occurs to you while you try hard not to care about what's going on is just how terrible the music is. Just once I'd like to see a DJ disrupt the mood by playing something entirely inappropriate. Say, Fugazi's "Suggestion":
Why can't I walk down a street free of suggestion?
Is my body the only trait in the eyes of men?
I've got some skin
You want to look in
Anyway, so yeah, the night is rolling along on the dull pitted wheels of an abducted shopping cart when something actually unexpected happens. The next independent contractor gets on the stage. She's a little different than the others — not skinny, not blond, not foreign and not exotic looking — and her top clothing item thing is rolled down to cover her gut. Sort of like an extra in a Dennis Lehane adaptation. She eventually starts writhing around, exposing her undercarriage to the crowd assembled in front of her when suddenly she pops up, picking something off the stage and admonishing the crowd with it while the music continued playing:
Which of you threw this quarter?! Who threw a quarter at my cunt?!
I have to admit that I didn't hear the "Who threw a quarter at my cunt?" line, but someone else said he heard her say that. I definitely saw her berating the crowd for pelting her with spare change.
There lays no reward in what you discover
You spent yourself watching me suffer
Suffer you words, suffer your eyes, suffer your hands
Suffer your interpretation of what it is to be a man
It was a magical, unscripted moment. Worth the price of admission. Almost worth the $10 Molson Canadian.
She does nothing to deserve it
He looks at her cause he wants to observe it
We sit back like they taught us
We keep quiet like they taught us
He just wants he wants to prove it
She does nothing to remove it
We don't want anyone to mind us
So we play the roles that they assigned us
So then there's the "back room" — not the "champagne room," which is accessed via an elevator next to the restroom, but rather the place where the $25 lap dances are taking place, in a sort of cubicle with a five-foot wall. The wall over which you, if you're being nosy, can watch the independent contractors writhe around on the laps of the clientele. There are several "signs" — 8 1/2 by 11 inch printouts, actually — that expressly forbid contact and touching, but like someone said the women said, "The bouncers don't really pay attention." So there's a line of dudes waiting to be groped by the right independent contractor. And this is exactly the line between abused women on drugs taking their clothes off for money but still somewhat kitschy and abused women on drugs taking their clothes off for money and doing gross shit to emotionally stunted dudes. Yikes. I think I'd rather focus on that lady on the stage and the butthole she's flashing to the crowd.
And just when you start to become really tired of the "folksy" present tense — the one that sometimes lapses into second-person — and sentences that begin with conjunctions, you start to come to terms with the idea that these places are just a fact of life. Like the lottery. Or Andy Rooney. Or artificial plants at a health clinic. Or a mid-1980s Chrysler. In other words, some sort of quasi-public resource that you assume someone else uses that must have some sort of redeeming value. And then you start to ponder it and think, "Well, maybe the state squeezing those who can least afford it is kind of immoral, and maybe Andy Rooney should probably be forced to retire, and artificial plants just make everyone sad and besides which, the Reliant K didn't have that much of an impact, and look at where Chrysler is nowadays anyways." And then it's just kind of obvious that you can't betray what you really feel.
Which is to say, at some point it comes out that this is the first time I've ever been in a strip club. The bachelor apologizes but I won't let him; I'm happy to squander my unblemished record for him; he's one of the few people I would do this for — everything sounding obviously disingenuous no matter how hard I tried, but like I said, once you're on board, you're along for the ride.
By this point the spare change independent contractor has planted herself on a stool at the bar next to a regular, who is starting to seem a little put off by her constant complaining about the clientele. The television station has been showing one of those forgotten films they air late on Saturday nights. And although it's only 1:25 and there is probably time for at least six or seven more lap dances, the bachelor decides he's done with the whole thing. Oh, and of course none of us are drunk.
We leave the place and join the rest of the world wandering around Boston's Theater District. There are many young women holding their high heels in their hands, trying to hail a cab. When they walk around with heels on they just look awkward, like strange dinosaurs. At least one of us is completely sober, so we don't have to figure out how to get back home.
We blame her for being there
But we are all here
We're all . . . guilty
After we drop off the first two guys the bachelor turns to those of us left and says something along the lines of how he's more convinced than ever that he's ready to get married. And that's when several of us clap for him and yell, "Mission Accomplished!"
Oh, and did you realize Molson Canadian is brewed by Coors?
Now it all makes sense.
*1 The guys we were with had read Infinite Jest this past summer; although I have read The Broom of the System, I have a rule about books over 1,000 pages.
*2 See above; library architectural history noted here.
*3 Just think how silly it would be if these were endnotes and not footnotes.
So we're cruising through the Williamsburg iteration of the Brooklyn Flea and I'm all, "this is cool, this is right, this is a bunch of people just like myself feeling great about browsing for old bottles because, well, old bottles just look cool and if there's nothing else people like myself feel great about, it's browsing in Brooklyn for old bottles" when, all of the sudden, we turn the corner down at the end of one of the many aisles at the Brooklyn Flea and notice the food offerings up at the back of the gravel parcel — the gravel that slows down strollers and folks in uncooperative footwear — and there it is, abutting the brand new buildings up there on the Williamsburg waterfront, a table selling mayonnaise.
It's not just any mayonnaise, no — and, to be sure, had the price/ounce ratio not been so clearly posted on the placard at the front of the table, I probably wouldn't have even noticed it, but it was there, and since I did notice, I made a point of turning to Jen and commenting, out loud, at least to her anyway, that five dollars for four ounces of mayonnaise, even "decadent" mayonnaise, seemed awfully expensive.
"You should write about this," Jen said.
"Why, so you don't have to hear me complain about it for the next half hour?"
OK, so here goes: Five dollars for four ounces of mayonnaise, even "decadent" mayonnaise, seems awfully expensive.
Unless I'm wrong, one tablespoon equals half an ounce. One tablespoon is what many recipes recommend you put on a sandwich that involves the condiment. So given that, this five dollar jar of mayonnaise will provide you with eight servings of condiment — or 62.5 cents a serving of mayonnaise. I don't think it's just me — that's a pretty steep price to pay for condiment, right?
And what is mayonnaise anyway? Alton Brown tells me that it's just an egg yolks, salt, dry mustard, sugar, lemon juice, white wine vinegar and safflower or corn oil. Even if we're using farm-fresh organic free-range eggs, Himalayan salt, whatever dry mustard, some top-notch sugar, Meyer lemon juice, whatever super-awesome white wine vinegar exists and the finest safflower or corn oil you can find at the Costco, I can't believe that artisanal mayonnaise producers aren't making cash hand over fucking fist.
Clearly, everyone here is wasting their time on old bottles when they should be spending their time on condiments.
If I were to rewrite The Graduate, it might sound like this:
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you — just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: "Condiments."
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in condiments. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.
Look, all I saw was the sign. And God help me if I Google "Brooklyn Flea Mayonnaise" because I'm not sure I will appreciate what I will find at the end of that search.
Soemtimes you wonder whether all the things that first attracted you to New York have finally been obliterated by all the things that make you really sick of New York.
I've never not voted, but this year I came very close. I changed my mind when a helpful man robocalling on behalf of one party or other explained that "the stakes have never been higher" in this election. I know, it's crazy, but the stakes just get higher and higher and higher.
Higher than they were in 2008. Higher than they were in 2006. Higher than even 2004!
Maybe not higher than in 2000, though — I remember a lot of people who felt comfortable throwing votes away; in the interest of equal time for differing points of view, I'll include that link, but I still don't see how you can look at 97,000 votes and believe that 543 of those people wouldn't have voted for Gore . . . good to see that Nader supporters continue to double down ten years after the fact.
Speaking of Palm Beach County, we finally — finally! — got updated voting machines in New York City. This happening only — only! — eight years after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. I knew this day would come — I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.
I had a hard time caring about this election. True, it never matters how I vote — which is true for nearly every election I've voted in in this state — but in past elections there was at least the thrill of the big clunky old school voting machine, with the cool chunk-chunk lever and the little twisty knobs. You know which ones:
The "new" "more accurate" ballots took all that fun away, and gave me flashbacks of those twice-yearly standardized tests they'd give us in school — those dopey exams that until Bush were mostly used by real estate agents to prove that you're buying in a "good" school district. It only took about ten grades, but eventually it sunk in that it really really really didn't matter how well you did on the tests, so I stopped reading the questions at all: No Child Left Behind, indeed! (I changed my tune when my own student teaching coincided with one of the statewide standardized testing days: "You guys should care because they'll look at these exams and think that you're all uneducable and then your diploma will be worth even less!" I still think the best thing to do is to make those exams part of a student's grade, but I guess that's "teaching to the test," which is a whole other issue . . .)
Which is to say, when I saw that bubble sheet to fill in, I subconsciously reverted to my high school senior self and treated the thing as another useless standardized exam.
Fortunately, all of the parties had these neat logos next to their names, which certainly helped my decision process:
Stars — hey, I like stars! Oh, and the Statue of Liberty's torch — cool, too! Some sort of odd sunflower . . . sunflowers!
Maybe I'm not the most orthodox voter. I think local elections are more important than Presidential elections, for example. This doesn't bode well when it comes to voting in New York City, since there are very few meaningful general elections at the local level.
My current best bad reason to vote is based on how a candidate will look on one of those American Experience shows they produce for PBS — Lyndon Johnson? You had me at "tragic figure"!
I also have "rules" about how I vote, which get refined and supplemented every election cycle. First rule: Never trust anyone who is running for office, because running for office is an inherently weird thing to do, and those who end up running for public office tend to be the type of person that you wouldn't want to have over for dinner, much less give money to or reserve any amount of mental space for. You can argue exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions. I question anyone who has the "desire" to be a "public servant," and even if those who run for public office start from a point of "serving the public" in their own minds, at the very least I think it's important to make it clear — for myself — that they're doing it for weird hubris-related reasons. That's not to say that they aren't decent people, or they don't legitimately believe that they're doing the right thing, or that they can't make "tough decisions" but rather that there's something that is driving them that most of us don't have.
OK, so now that that's out of the way, here's my second rule: Given that running for office is an inherently weird thing to do, only trust people who have been in office. I refer to this as my Jed Bartlet rule, because I know from watching several seasons of West Wing that being President is one of the most difficult jobs on the planet, and only those who have been the President know just how difficult it is to be President. Circular logic, I understand, but it makes sense for Presidential elections when there are two bad options and one is running for reelection. This doesn't apply to non-executive positions, and for some reason I don't connect it to local executive offices — I just don't see congestion pricing as important an issue as Qumari terrorism.
In 2008 I started to develop an idea about Senators versus Representatives. Over time I began to have a deeper appreciation for Representatives. For one, a Representative is much more interesting than a Senator because Representatives have a much harder job actually "representing" geographically compact constituencies. Senators, on the other hand, get to grandstand on Meet The Press. And then somehow they have more cachet, and get to run for President. John Edwards was the worst example of this, and he often comes to mind when I think of the biggest problems with people who run for office. A friend thinks that instead of fighting the idea of the aristocratic, disengaged Senator we should actually own it and give them the ceremonial power to only appear on Sunday morning political shows. I think he has a point.
So anyway, this year I developed a third rule: Being Attorney General should not confer any particular advantage for a candidate, and in fact should be seen as a demerit. This isn't because being Attorney General is not important but rather because being Attorney General is one of the easier ways to look like a "good guy" while avoiding all the downside of an executive role. Eliot Spitzer perfected this by going after all manner of low-hanging fruit as Attorney General and parlayed all that good press into a role as Governor, where he promptly ran the steamroller into the ground. Andrew Cuomo continued the pattern. In local politics, I have adapted this rule to include Public Advocate — which is actually an even worse scenario, since it's got all the "good guy" appeal without any of the work that an Attorney General has to do.
All of which is to say, this election for governor was especially difficult for me. On the one hand you have an attorney general — and a party machine that successfully convinced the incumbent not to run again (read: forced him out). On the other hand you have a rich dude with a giant ego. I kicked around a couple of ideas for how to deal with this predicament, including not voting altogether, but then I got some e-mails addressed to the bridgeandtunnelclub.com account with subject headings along the lines of "Get the Facts about Warren Redlich and Sex with Children." I took this as a brilliant ploy by political genius Roger Stone to get people to vote for Redlich. I always thought that Stone had such a nice phone voice, so I figured that this Redlich person might be a good option for governor.
The only problem was that Warren Redlich is a libertarian. I mean, libertarians are great for stuff like, I don't know, law blogs or something, but to actually think one could be governor? It's nutty!
I've actually talked to a real live libertarian once — it was a hoot! No matter how hard I tried, she refused to back down from legalizing crack, reinstituting Civil War-era commutation fees or even the abolishing the Civil Rights Act (to be fair, I can't quite remember what I grilled her about, but it was probably the ten-thousandth time she'd been asked, "No, really, even heroin?!" and her cheerfully explaining for the ten-thousandth time "Yes, even heroin!").
So I thought it all over as I leaned over my voting "booth." The idea of having a libertarian governor of New York State almost makes voting for a libertarian worth it — although I've often thought that there is a real libertarian streak in New York City, I can't think of a place less suited to libertarianism than Albany. But as far as my vote went, this could have been the least bad of the four options. It was very tempting . . .
Then there was the issue of the term limits, which I'll be honest was probably the main reason for my voting malaise. The less said about Michael Bloomberg's egregious hijacking of the democratic process back in 2008-09 the better. The best reason to vote to change term limits back to two (after voting for it twice already) was to make Bloomberg look like a big jerk.
What I didn't expect was the charter revision commission writing the question so that council members who were elected in 2009 would be "grandfathered in" under the current rule, because they were "under the impression" they would be able to serve three terms. What, that's not "fair"? How "fair" was it for the Council to vote on their own term limits in the first place? Clyde Haberman called this the "incumbent-protection provision".
I was wondering if anyone on the Council would have the balls to make this argument. I found one:
"I think it's unfair what the mayor did period and now that he got what he wanted he doesn't care about anyone else," said Councilmember Jumaane Williams, who started his first term in January. "I would be very upset if I was elected on one belief and one rule structure and that rule structure is just changed."
Ultimately, the best reason to vote for the term limits de-extension was to ensure that the Council could never again alter its own term limit rules. Frankly, I'm surprised that they could in the first place. I thought most places had rules that legislators couldn't vote for their own benefit — pay raises, for example, usually don't take effect until the following term. In fact, City Council members can give themselves a pay raise, too (as bad as they've acted these last couple of years, I actually forgot about that awesome fact). Un-fucking-believable. No, really.
So here's a new rule, sort of the reverse of the Jed Bartlet rule above: No more voting for anyone who has ever been (or ever has or has had any aspirations to be) a New York City Council member. Sorry, Charles Barron — I had so much hope for you — though rules are rules and these days that's all I have left . . .
