Bullshit

FRIENDS, many of you know that I’m married, and not to just any person, but to The Duchess, a formidable woman who can bench press me and whose mastery of Retail Science is unparalleled. What she sees in me will forever be a mystery, and I am a lucky man to have her. That doesn’t mean being married to The Duchess is all gravy, though; there’s a cost. A bitter cost largely measured out in hours spent following her around various stores while she shops.

England Expects that Every Man Will Do His Duty

Why The Duchess wants me there when she shops is another mystery, frankly, as I am a sullen and unenthusiastic shopper, and also quite ignorant of the ways of fashion. I can only assume that the strange and unexpected affection she has for me overpowers her common sense, leading me to accompanying her to places where one is expected to understand the difference between boot cut things and skinny things, places where more than seven colors are acknowledged to exist.

My role when accompanying The Duchess on these trips is mainly to follow her around. There is an art to this.

The art largely involves maintaining a suitably aloof and bemused expression—note, bemused, not amused, as the former implies I am a willing participant in this madness while the latter implies that I will be severely beaten by an unamused wife when I get home—and endurance. You have to be in good shape when you follow The Duchess around, because it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And there are no complimentary cocktails or snacks, usually. Although, sometimes, in particularly ritzy stores.

This can, but does not have to, also involve striking poses as you stand around attempting to look like this is totally how you always intended to spend this particular afternoon, as if decades ago you pulled out your Book of Intentions and penned in that day for ‘following my beloved around like a vagrant who hopes to get a dollar from her just to go away.’ There are a lot of mirrors in these shops, and I find myself to be very attractive, and so adopting the poses I imagine Very Attractive Men of Mystery use in their daily lives makes me feel like maybe I’m generating buzz among the shop employees, maybe they’re going into the back and chatting about this really cool man of mystery who’s entered the store standing like a superhero, possibly intending to purchase every item in the place with his credit card that’s so advanced it’s not black or platinum but rather invisible.

The Chores

Once you’ve got the art side of shopping with the Duchess down cold, there are some basic duties that come with the position:

1. Picking up The Duchess’ things. The Duchess, in an excess of excitement, often drops whatever she is carrying and/or wearing as she rushes to the sales rack, and it is my sacred duty to pick up her jacket, sweater, wallet, keys, shoes, and anything else that has exploded off of her in a burst of kinetic shopping energy.

2. Making Small Talk. The shop staff will be barely tolerated and acknowledged by The Duchess, who knows more about their products than they do. As she races about, I form a sad fellowship with these people and make conversation to reassure them that despite being completely ignored by my wife, they do in fact exist.

3. Paying. This is not because I am a man, or because I have all the money. In fact, The Duchess outearns me by a significant amount. But The Duchess has little time for the details of shopping, and once she has decided on, say, a rust-orange turtleneck, size medium, marked 40% off with an additional 25% off coupon applied, she is off to the next shop, leaving me to fumble out the credit card and make more awkward conversation with the staff.

Like I said: Not all gravy. This line of work isn’t for everyone—especially the posing.

One of the few pleasures of growing old, in my crusty opinion, is the clarity you get about yourself and the space you occupy on the saint—asshole spectrum. I lean heavily towards asshole, and while I’m not proud of it I’m at least aware, and if I choose not to do anything about it, it’s on me. How do I know I’m kind of a prick? Well, it’s always been there: the self-centeredness, the cruel snark, the emotional laziness. As I age the signs simply become more overt.

For example, I’m engaged in a multi-year experiment to see how long it takes you to be removed from people’s holiday cards lists.

Lump of Coal, Here I Come

When I was a young man, I put a lot of effort into my holiday cards as part of my I AM AN ADULT DAMMIT charm offensive. I drew doodles, I hand-wrote poems, I made those things sing, baby. Of course, it wasn’t because I loved everyone on my list so damn much. I wanted everyone to be impressed and tell me how awesome my holiday cards were.

Now I am old and it takes me 1/85th of my life just to wake up in the morning, so that kind of effort is obviously impossible. As is any kind of effort at all, to be honest. On the one hand, I’ve turned into 110% Grinch, and the holiday season just irritates me in every single way to the point where I want to become a Super Villain who goes out at night to tear down holiday decorations and hand out toothbrushes at Halloween, and on the other hand holiday cards increasingly seem like Old People Facebook, a way of pretending you’re in touch with someone.

I mean, I get holiday cards from cousins I haven’t spoken to in decades. What the fuck?

So, about, jeebs, probably fifteen years ago now I stopped sending out holiday cards. And the volume of cards received dropped steadily as people got insulted or assumed I’d finally drunk myself to death, but I’m still getting a dozen every year. Which is either folks not cleaning up their mailing lists, or people vindictively trying to make me feel like a dick for not reciprocating.

Which: Respect. That’s something I would do. I picture them with Peter Capaldi’s eyes from Doctor Who when they mail the cards to me.

Joke’s on them: I’m gonna pursue this goal until I get zero holiday cards. And then I’ll have one of those Mad Men zoom out moments where I sit alone in a diner and stare at my coffee as I realize I am mortal and an asshole no matter how much I like myself.

So, just one more reason for me to accept the fact that I am not a good person, and will probably become less good as I age, until I die alone and unremarked-upon, eaten by cats and buried by disinterested city employees. Huzzah! That calls for a drink!

FRIENDS, I am not a particularly bright or capable man. Once, when attempting to earn my Cooking merit badge in the Boy Scouts, I cooked an entire package of hot dogs before realizing they were individually wrapped in plastic of some sort. Once, when driving a rental truck and helping some friends move, I engaged in a series of slow-motion maneuvers that resulted in $2,000 in damage to the truck despite the fact that I was never going more than 5 MPH. Once, when I was in 7th Grade, I was convinced by my teachers to wear ladies pantyhose for a performance in The Taming of the Shrew … and allowed myself to be filmed[1].

None of these failures, however, has ever been quite as total and complete as my attempts to learn a second language.

Mi Llamo es Gofredo

I blame my Sophomore Year Spanish teacher, who convinced me that my name in Spanish would be Gofredo. Sure, it’s a variation of Jeffrey, and yes, it is Spanish in origin. But teaching me to say Mi llamo es Gofredo! instead of just Mi nombre es Jeff set me up for failure and humiliation.

Now, I’m not a traveler. In fact, I hate travel. If I could I would live my life inside a virtual reality box, growing large and mushroom-like and never actually interacting with real, actual human beings, because real, actual human beings are awful. But I married The Duchess, who has not heard of a country she does not want to explore. Here’s a real, actual conversation:

DUCHESS: Oooh, Syria, sounds exotic! Let’s go there next year.

ME: <horrified>

So I know I am doomed to travel the world until the sweet release of death, and I am determined to do so with a modicum of class. So I have a rule. Or, more accurately, I attempt to have a rule: When I travel to another country I must at least make a sincere effort to learn the local language. So, for example, when The Duchess insisted on a trip to Italy a few years ago I made a concerted effort over the course of a few months to learn Italian. Upon arriving in Italy, I attempted to speak Italian many times, and was met with, in descending order of frequency: Amusement, irritation, complete lack of comprehension, and violence. There are basically two possible scenarios:

SCENARIO ONE:

ME: <something vaguely Italian-ish>

ITALIAN PERSON: … we speak English, yes?

SCENARIO TWO:

ME: Ciao! Mi chiamo Jeff.

THEM: <rapidly> Ah, parli italiano! È fantastico! Dimmi, come ti piace l’Italia finora? Da dove vieni in America? Inoltre, perché non indossi i pantaloni?

ME: <feigns seizure, falls down, lies very still until everyone leaves>

Since my inability to learn a foreign language hasn’t been due to a lack of effort, I can only conclude that I am dumb. Which doesn’t really surprise a very large number of people who have interacted with me during my lifetime.

Go Along to Get Along

This all wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that I am a non-confrontational, go-along-to-get-along kind of guy. Which means that I always prefer to pretend I understand what’s happening around me even if I am alarmed and confused by events. I’ve tried being a better person, but I always fall into the same trap:

ITALIAN PERSON: <in Italian> This is not the museum. People are often confused. This is a bondage club and you will immediately be bound and gagged upon entry.

JEFF: <not understanding a word> Cool, cool. <enters house, is never seen again>

Of course, when you behave a stupidly as this because you can’t abide anyone thinking you don’t understand everything perfectly, you more or less deserve what you get.

The one upside to this is that when I meet people here in the States who struggle to make themselves understood with ESL, I am more than sympathetic. Even if your English is tortured and broken, I am impressed, because I can’t even make myself understood in a second language at all. In this way my own failings have made me an incrementally better person.

Luckily, no matter where you go you don’t need words to order booze. They just take one look at my jaundiced complexion and bloodshot eyes and direct me to the local imbibery.

[1] If this video exists, my life as I know it is over.

Friends, the Somers genetic code contains a large section devoted to hoarding. As I write this there are several ancient computers in the basement of my brother’s house, which is the house we grew up in. Those computers are old. As in, unusuably old. You know how you can sometimes take an old computer and repurpose it as a print or media server or something? These are so old you can possibly repurpose them as planters, but that’s about it. And yet my brother will not countenance throwing them away.

They aren’t even his computers.

It’s a disease. I got a bit of a cure when Hurricane Sandy destroyed half my house; after the insurance settlement and the renovation there was just a lot less stuff in the place, and I liked it, and decided I would no longer keep things like an old hard drive cooling fan from 15 years ago or a harmonica I got as a Secret Santa gift in 1997 that very likely cost less than $10. I also decided that when I decided to replace better stuff—stuff that was actually useful and had some value—I wouldn’t stuff the old things into the closet and keep them for 20 years before finally throwing them away in disgust. I would sell them, or, barring that, I’d give them away.

Or at least try to.

Like a Sucker

Friends, the Somers genetic code also contains a large section devoted to laziness. I am so prone to laziness it makes you wonder how the Somers genetic code made it this far. So, when I decide to upgrade something or make a change that leaves me with some extra stuff, the idea of trying to sell it just makes me exhausted. This is privilege, of course, but the fact remains. I’ve sold stuff on eBay and Craigslist and such, and it’s always way more work than it’s worth. So I prefer to use a site like Freecycle to just get rid of things. This way, I don’t have to worry about handling money, or haggling, or dealing with begging choosers. I just list an item and someone comes to pick it up, and I feel good about not having thrown something useful away, and maybe helping someone out. Sure, maybe the folks taking my free shit are then turning around and selling it for yuge profits, but if so, I don’t care. I didn’t have to deal with it, so I’m happy. It’s easy.

Or should be.

As it turns out, trying to give stuff away is hard work. I’ve basically had the same three scenarios happen over and over again whenever I’ve tried to give away my still useful junk:

1. The Ghost. Someone will email me and ask if the item is still available. “It is!” I respond. Then … nothing. They are never heard from again. Sometimes they actually make arrangements to come get the thing and then are never heard from again.

2. The Project. Someone will claim the item, and we begin an extended correspondence because they can only come by to pick up the item every second Wednesday during leap years, or so it seems. I get that people have jobs and other problems, but a) they know the town I live in, so if it requires 6 buses and a parachute to get to my house they probably shouldn’t claim it, and b) this usually includes at least two postponements and at least one complete no-show.

3. The Chatterbox. These folks may or may not pick up the item I’m offering, but man they are lonely. Texts and emails quickly become novels, with lengthy chapters on whatever they’re going through at the moment. What their hernia surgery has to do with the old guitar amp I’m giving away I have no idea, but I’m gonna hear about it. And hear about it.

Of course, I’m probably being punished for my aforementioned laziness. The gods look down and see this smug asshole giving stuff away because he can’t be bothered to skim a $1 profit off of eBay, and they reach down the Stick of Karma and hit me on the head with it, and the next thing I know I’m reading a lengthy email about how the person coming to claim my left-handed smoke shifter traveled to Hoboken, Georgia by mistake.

I recently got rid of my last stereo receiver. For those of you of a certain tender age, that’s a big black box that you plugged speakers and other components—like a CD player or turntable—into and which put sound into your speakers. The past was truly a terrible place.

Getting rid of it is about more than simple technology, though. It’s just the latest example of shit I used to be obsessed about that I no longer care about at all. Whether this is personal growth or senility is an exercise for whoever’s reading this. All I know is, I used to work extra shifts at my part time jobs to be able to afford a humongous stereo system, and two decades later I just gave away my last link to that person. And, honestly, I’ll never look back, because I haven’t used that receiver for more than a few minutes at a time in years.

This has nothing to do with technology. There’s no big point, either, no sweeping generalization about people or society. I’ve just changed, and it’s weird to stand back sometimes and realize it. I can remember the first stereo I ever had, a terrible cheap thing bought from Sears (where the Somers family got all their supplies) that was combination turntable, dual cassette deck, radio, and 8-track. 8-Track. Look on my works ye mighty and wonder what in fuck.

Still, I loved it. It was a stereo. I suddenly had the ability to curate my own personal soundtrack, and I spent a good 20 years curating the hell out of it. And then, slowly, in stages, I fell in love with MP3s and Spotify and the convenience of digital music, and at the same time bought a home with shared walls and realized how hell is other people’s music. And so I lost interest in stereos. It just happened.

The Jacob deGrom Effect

When I was younger, I was seriously into baseball. As much as that makes me a cliché—ooh, white man loves baseball!—it is what it is. I used to wear a baseball cap every day. I watched lots of games. I knew stats off the top of my head.

And sometime around 15 years ago, I sort of lost interest. Then I was in denial for a while. But now? I accept it. I just don’t care much about a game I once lived and breathed.

Part of it is the way the game has changed, that’s true. The fact that Jason deGrom’s 2018 season is making him a serious contender for the Cy Young Award is just wrong. He’s an incredible pitcher. He’s very talented. He’s having a great year, technically. I wish him well and millions of dollars. But a guy on pace to win 10 games shouldn’t win the Cy Young unless he’s instrumental in getting his team to the playoffs. And as a long time Mets fan I can say that the Mets are not going to make the playoffs this year.

It’s also the focus on role players, the lack of complete games, the drugs and performance enhancements, the fact that I feel like I’ve seen everything the game can show me. It’s all me. Plenty of people still love baseball and good on them. For me, the most notable thing here is the fact that I once knew every single player in the game, and now I don’t think I can name more than a handful.

Shifting Gears

Something else I used to be obsessed with: A car. I used to feel like my legs were broken when my car was in the shop, and whenever I didn’t have a car, I would walk around and lust after cars. Today? Haven’t had a car in years, and don’t miss it. Actively regard cars as a pain in the ass I don’t need.

Again, this isn’t some statement. Many people need cars to live. Many people legit love cars and enjoy them. What’s remarkable about it, to me, is the way I’ve fundamentally changed. Because other people don’t seem to have shifted to quite the degree that I have. I don’t know what that means; it’s quite possible that it means I am a lazy or shallow individual whose interests and passions were never all that deep or powerful to begin with. It’s just remarkable to realize that Today Jeff is so fundamentally different in so many ways from 1998 Jeff that we wouldn’t recognize each other.

Of course, the other way Today Jeff and 1998 Jeff are different is the fact that 1998 Jeff thought drinking Coors Lite and Jack and Cokes was acceptable adult behavior. If I met 1998 Jeff in a bar today, I would punch him in the nose.