To know that you need help; to accept it as undeniable fact—That Which Must Be Acted Upon—and then, To Actually Act Thereon—that, my friends, that is not for the timid. And apparently, I’m timid. For twenty years, I haven’t gone to therapy. If you’d asked me whether I had an aversion to it, I’d have said no. (That is, after I commented on how presumptuous it was for you to pose such a question.) My first experience with a therapist seemed to have gone well enough. And yet, I’ve never really cared to see one again, despite the good it might have done me in some of those rough patches.
There may be more to it than mere timidity; more likely, it can be attributed to a behavioral tendency of mine so frustrating as to bear personification, Lazy Optimism. He advocates whatever course of action promises the least thereof. How? By waging a subtly nagging propaganda campaign against the more upstanding citizens of my brain, who really should have learned by now to listen more critically to his often tortured justifications for couchlock. “No reason to get up, now. Watch more Supernanny. Life’ll take care of itself.” He assures me every time—right up to the day of deadline—that this blog entry will write itself in an hour. (God, is he fucking wrong. I labor over these things, people.) If but the barest wisps of logic cling to his murmurings, I’ll hear him out. He only need pander to the right hopes. He’s blathered on for over a decade about how it won’t be long before I’m “noticed” waiting tables, and about how taking an acting class—something proactive that could actually benefit me–would be too limiting, too much of a time commitment.
There is certainly something to be said for lying around like a wastoid. And there has been positive upshot from his reign of torpor: Supernanny actually influenced my parenting for the better. Plus, Laz-Op (his rapper name) and I (T-Slope, if you’re wondering) have had good times. Haven’t we? Truthfully, I don’t quite recall them. They’ve all merged to become this genial wash of time too passively spent for me to even recognize as having passed. At my age, being able to remember what I do day-to-day shouldn’t be an alarmingly precious event. I need to tie the fleeting ticks of the clock to specific, unique events so as to elevate their chance of surviving the relentless purge of my stores of memory. That takes effort, a notion situated at the pole ideologically opposite to ol’ Laz-Op. So I’ve taken my time about it, but I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I need to kill him dead.

I don’t remember personal details about my first therapist. I want to say her name was Karen, but I had a crush on a Karen at the time; I might be simply recalling saying the name a lot in that room. I’ll call her Karen anyway. Karen had naturally curly black hair and sometimes she sat with her leg tucked beneath her other thigh. It was at once endearingly informal and disturbingly unprofessional. I don’t have specific memories of anything I said, though that might be because of the sheer volume—Karen hung back, let me talk myself out of my own corners. My last session came when I realized that for several consecutive appointments I had been scraping the yogurt container to make her earn my mom’s buck. I ran out of material.
The issues that led me to undertaking analysis were real, but not flashy enough to merit, say, an afterschool special. Mom had noticed my lethargy, my defeatist attitude, and the sudden deprioritization of my social life, and figured (rightly) that I might need outside help. Fortunately, I was self-aware enough that I instantly agreed to go, and it seemed to work for me. I guess you could say I was a therapy success story.
Or maybe not. Ideally, one should walk out of therapy armed with the language necessary to overcome the same problem by oneself should it arise again in the future. Of course, I was seventeen then, and not cerebrally equipped to fathom the sticky nexus of the two concepts “future” and “consequences”. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve learned my lessons now. If there’s a difference between teen Todd’s rut and that I’m in now, it’s which lube oils the gears of my internal procrastinator: today it’s the web, then it was Nintendo. A generation passes by, and I’m back perpetrating the same dismal behavior. Only this time, its patheticness is compounded by the fact that I now have a clearer idea of the negative effects of that rut. Perhaps Lazy Optimism isn’t just a character trait. Maybe he’s actually me. Oh my god! Fight Club!
I simply have to accept that I need help from someone, and I suck suck SUCK at that. Is it the youngest sibling in me, continually striving to prove to myself that I’m capable of functioning independently? Well, going it alone isn’t necessarily a bad idea. I didn’t invite anybody else to contribute on my last album, preferring to serve as my own rhythm section despite not having training or substantial experience on bass or drums. I justified it at the time on financial and creative grounds: as the songs were to be largely improvised while on the clock, collaboration would have slowed things down, and I couldn’t afford to squander precious studio hours explaining what I heard in my brain to someone else. Is that just a long-winded paraphrase of “I don’t trust anyone to help me”? Sure. And creatively, that was just what I needed.
Now, if only I could act so decisively where my emotions are concerned.

The original tagline for readingground was “unique perspectives on the seemingly mundane”, which I always thought hard about before I sat down at my computer for my articles. That tagline no longer explicitly serves as our guiding principle, but I’ve come to miss it as regards my own contributions. For a while now, I’ve felt that my perspective, while necessarily unique, could no longer be identified as originating from a “seemingly mundane” place. I recently found myself digging up my past articles for readingground, and felt mild alarm at the progression in my subject matter over time. I’ve gotten more and more confessional, more purgative. Certainly this entry is the most overtly so. Over the last year or so, despite the noblest of intentions, I’ve become a blogger. How has this come to pass?
Last year, after much discussion with Michele, I flirted with the idea of therapy, going so far as to get a name from a friend and calling to see about insurance. Then Michele’s friend, M., offered to help for free. He’s a life coach in Chicago, so it had to be done by phone, but the price was certainly right. Our conversations went well enough. His particular talent lies in stating the obvious to you when it’s obvious to everyone else but you, and expressing it so matter-of-factly that your feelings can’t really get hurt. I only called him two or three times, though. Ultimately, it felt weird that I knew him, and I caught myself self-censoring. It might have helped had I chosen to address that with him, but I reasoned that for good or ill, I would have probably ended up doing it again down the road. So, I told him I didn’t think I had much to say anymore. He told me to call any time, and I haven’t done so. Again, for good or ill.
Shortly after that began the period of self-examination that altered my approach to this, my only regularly scheduled writing. And thus, this column became my out, my ersatz therapist. I suddenly needed to know why I am who I am, and have systematically tackled different aspects of my personality, thinking that by so doing, I would change where I needed to. I tried to go it alone, and it’s not working.
Which brings me to the present. I have to try something else, put myself in someone else’s hands. I’ve run out of material again, only this time it’s with you, readingground, officially my second (or third) therapist. I’m hoping that in giving my mind a time and space that it knows will be dedicated to spring cleaning, I will reinvigorate my appreciation for the mundane.
If not, this is my last column for the foreseeable future.

They were both Confucians
the rest of the house
Quite the contrary
remarkably cold weather
the pool of potential

I had to see

We now began
a new social compact
me and my two men
textual study, properly pursued
the kitchen and a comfortable fire

between our thighs

we talk about diversity
the highly context-sensitive nature
of human existence
the people of this house
which men ought to die

This was a warm day

I should be gratuitously wanton
ignore the many
fling to the very swine
This calls for
a highly qualified teacher

However, in real life

having no inducement to
the evil itself
they perceived their mistake
what might happen
full-fledged disagreement

a large detachment

a really safe environment
It is important

By the end,

so much regret
I stayed at home
like an obvious fact
harsh winter conditions

classroom experiences for all

*composed entirely with phrases stolen from Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Phillip J. Ivanhoe), Ordinary Courage (Joseph Plumb Martin), and Higher Education and the Color Line (ed. Orfield, Marin, Horn).

Garlicky Tomato Sauce

1 (28-ounce) can of San Marzano whole tomatoes in juice (not in purée; preferably San Marzano), chopped
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and halved lengthwise and any green sprouts from center discarded
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/8 teaspoon hot red-pepper flakes
pinch of fennel seeds
hand full of fresh basil, chopped

Cook garlic in oil in a small heavy pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until golden, 3 to 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, red-pepper flakes, fennel, and 1/2 teaspoon salt and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, 1 hour. Season with salt and pepper.

we might not really be the first artists to move across the bridge…
but don’t tell us that.
we’re young, smart, well-read, and thin.
we all just paid a quarter million dollars for a degree that’s made us unemployable.
we walk your dogs, mix your drinks, and make your coffee.
and dammit, they opened an ikea in Red Hook for us.
this just isn’t our fault.

Who knew that one day hipsters would have their…oops, i mean, our…own wikipedia?
I’m usually pretty desperate to save myself from being called a hipster. To me, meeting the “hipster” team requires very specific characteristics: ironic t-shirts, an apartment off the first 5 stops of the L or J trains, at least 20 different pairs of chuck taylors, sleeping in a “sleep loft” (read: hole carved in the ceiling), having a fixed-gear bike, wearing anything by American Apparel, worshipping Thom Yorke, and being able to paint or otherwise make art in your apartment building which is also occupied exclusively by other hipsters. I prefer moccasins to chuck taylors of late (only after a doctor told me after four straight years of wearing them that I can’t actually tell anybody I don’t know why my feet hurt), i have never and hopefully will never live off the L train, my current landlord does not have earlocks, i do not own a high-waisted skirt OR red lipstick, and I have never been to barcade (that I can remember, anyway). I am terrible at riding a bike, and I still don’t get what the big deal is with Radiohead after having seen them in concert back in 1996; furthermore, I refuse to wear American Apparel because I believe sweatshop labor is way more American than kiddie-porn advertising, and anyway American Apparel doesn’t make Lacoste. Done and done. But (appallingly, I know), nobody asked me what a hipster is, and according to several somewhat official websites I probably am one.

The Brooklyn Public Library’s website refers to hipsters as “the latest ‘immigrants” of Williamsburg, among many other parts of Brooklyn.” “Immigrants” is actually in quotes on their website. Time magazine has a more hilarious (I’ll call it “suburban”) perspective on hipsters. In a July 29 article, they say “Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They’re the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you’ve never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.” Cowboy hats? Let’s consult today’s official geyser of instant misinformation.

Wikipedia says:

“In the 1990s and 2000s [the term “hipster”] was used in various, sometimes contradictory ways, often to describe types of young, recently-settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock, independent film, magazines such as Vice, and Clash, and websites like Pitchfork Media…Hipsters are considered apathetic, pretentious, and self-entitled by other, often marginalized sectors of society they live amongst, including previous generations of bohemian and/or “counter-culture” artists and thinkers as well as poor neighborhoods of color.”

It seems to me there are two types of hipsters: hipsters by choice and hipsters by necessity. The hipsters by choice are the ones who scramble to join the booming counterculture (a move which I’ve always found vaguely amusing); they race to find L or J-train apartments, move towards Chuck Taylors and Vans like moths to a fake-retro flame, only admit to listening to music on vinyl (but they have music on their iPhones), and pretend to be only casually aware of their lifestyle, i.e. “Yeah, I guess, cool, whatever, yeah living here is whatever, it’s a pretty cool scene I guess, there are cool peeps and a chill vibe.” (This is confusing primarily because I thought “peeps” was something that tried to happen like several years ago). Those who have somehow become aware that in their hastiness to be part of a countercultural moment, they’ve made themselves look like trendy suckers sometimes try and save their faces with stammerings about how really they moved here because rent’s cheap and it will give them more time to make art, which is what they’re so busy doing it’s completely distracted them from the fact that they’re edging closer and closer to getting their picture posted on “Look at this Fucking Hipster” or being mistaken for an extra in a Bright Eyes video. The people that have usually said this to me a) always have pot, which is pretty expensive in the city, b) always have cigarettes, which are now ten dollars a pack, c) never cook for themselves, but constantly have to tame their trash cans overflowing with takeout containers, and d) live in a neighborhood where a place to sleep cost $1000 a month. So they must forgive me for believing that they actually enjoy being hipsters because cheap apartments have always existed all over the city limits, and Goya rice and beans are still like $1.29 and not hard to cook.

I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a moment of such hipsterdom that was almost its own screenplay. One sunny, unseasonably warm spring morning I set off on a jaunt to Williamsburg to visit my friend, whom we’ll call T., to borrow a book, catch up, and probably smoke a little pot. T. lives in the center of it all; off the Bedford L in an apartment that is also a Noodle Factory.

“Not Ramen noodles,” T. says to me the first time I visit him there, nearly a year ago, “Some other kind. I dunno what kind. I’ve never had them.”

“Who eats them?” I asked. He shrugs.

“I really don’t know,” he laughs.

T., unlike most of my friends and I, majored in something somewhat useful in college, and is a bit of an entrepreneur. He and some friends have a bike messenging service. There is a hole in T’s bedroom that looks into the factory. We spy on a room full of men shouting at each other, red-faced, in Chinese. I wonder where the noodles end up if the “poor” kids living in the back of the factory have never even bought them. I wonder if they go out to neighborhoods like Brownsville or Jamaica where there has to be a cheap alternative to Ramen, and that’s how the red-faced shouting Chinese men make their living. I realize that I myself only buy Ramen noodles. I’ve never had another kind. Which is silly of me, because ultimately cardboard noodles probably taste the same in a different color wrapper.

“Let’s go watch T.V.” T. says. I agree. Their living room is hipster perfection; just the right combination of furniture found on the street, furniture left behind by the previous tenants, and Ikea’s finest balsa wood and paper lantern adornments, completed by an obscenely old-looking record player/turntable/boom box right next to an obnoxiously large flat-screen LCD TV. As T. rolls a joint, one of his roommates, whom we’ll call G. purely for ironic purposes, stumbles out into the living room. Notorious B.I.G.’s “Who Shot Ya” blares from his iTunes.

“Maaaaaaaannnnn,” he says to T. and the room in particular, “I partied so crazy last night man…shit was off da hoooookkkk! And then these bitches showed up…”

To be clear, this kid looks like he graduated from Dalton Prep or Friends Seminary. Sort of. He’s wearing madras pants that have been splattered, I’m sure purely by accident, with some paint and another tar-like substance, a mismatched-on-purpose T-shirt from some midwestern Phys Ed program, and large silver skull, dollar sign, or crown rings on practically every finger. T. listens patiently to his friends’ tales of bitches and coke, apparently following a rap gig (??) of his at a local cafe “you know, underground type of spot, no big deal, it’s whatever.” T. seems almost embarrassed to be amused in front of me. G. presents himself on the couch. He’s now in the joint rotation. Goody. “Yeah man,” G. muses, “I know I gotta work late but this girl last night gave me her digits and said she be at dis club tonight…and you know how a playa gotta do…”

“Where are you from again?” I ask him.

“Jersey Shore,” he says.

It’s all I can do at this point to keep both eyebrows level. My left one tends to shoot skyward in the presence of either a) bullshit or b) a really easy joke that’s just set itself up. I’m from Philadelphia. My hometown is responsible for (most recently) The Roots, Jedi Mind Tricks, Freeway, Eve, Jill Scott,Will Smith and Boyz II Men (you’re welcome). Someone using a thickly urban accent to tell me how the hip-hop game is whilst repping the Jersey Shore is about as effective as someone from Chattanooga saying they know how it “be” to come up hard in Baltimore. T. gets a whiff of this and tries to shut G. up.

“Yo G., man,” he says. “Shut your stoned mouth. I’m trying to watch this interesting documentary here.” G. is quiet for a bit. We learn about Corey Booker, the mayor of Newark, who’s a pretty interesting guy. The topic of moving comes up. The boys have two other roommates, or maybe three, we’re not sure, and the door revolves a lot. The lease is up in the summer, and T. is leaving the city.

“Psssssh,” G. says, shaking his life-weary head in exasperation, “I dunno if I can afford to keep livin in dis hood, man.”

T. nods. “Bushwick would be cool” he says, “Like someplace deeper in off the J maybe…”
“Yeah,” G. gets excited now, “That’s close to the studio!” They nod. Momentarily, it’s settled. “Yo,” G. says, “Dis girl told me at the gig last night that that hater–remember–the kid I was telling you about?”

“Oh yeah!” T. says. G. pauses. He explains that someone at his last show shouted offensive remarks about his music and suggested he was a poser of sorts. Astonishing.

“Anyway,” G. says, “He wrote about it on Myspace! He, like, put out a myspace thing that was like, this kid’s a fag, his music sucks.” He smiles.

“That’s rough…” I offer. I really don’t know what to say and am still involved in Corey Booker, who at this point is having some tough times in Newark. He insists on living in public housing during his entire mayoral campaign.

“Pssssh,” G. says, “It’s whateva…I dunno…I figure if he’s gonna waste energy hatin’ on me–even if he’s sayin’, like, I dunno, hatin’–at least he’s spending energy on me. At least people are like talking about my music. It’s kinda–whatever.”

Are you kidding me?

T., almost as if he can read my thoughts, takes this opportunity to give G. something else to look at or talk about as quickly as possible. “Oh dude,” he says to G., picking up an envenlope on the table, “This came for you. It looks like it’s from your parents.” G. jumps up and holds the envelope high up towards the overhead light. He grins and starts to cackle victoriously.

“More money from Mooooooooommmm!” he squeals with delight and runs into the other room.

That is one type of hipster.

Then, there are the hipsters by necessity. These are the hipsters who are living in Brooklyn because if they could afford it, they’d still live in Manhattan, and would literally rather live in Connecticut than Queens. These hipsters used to live in the East Village “but then it got, like, completely gentrified” and they chose an apartment that, on purpose, was NOT off the L train. These are the people who will tell anyone from outside the city limits that “Brooklyn is the new Manhattan.” These are also the Brooklynites who actually think it’s ok to say things like “I’m going to BoCoCa” instead of “I’m going to Boerum Hill/Cobble Hill/Carrol Gardens.” Most importantly, these hipsters by neccessity are the ones who whine about how “the gentrification’s polluting Brooklyn.” Although their pasty asses live in neighborhoods where five years ago they wouldn’t leave with their wallets or all their teeth, hipsters by necessity believe that they aren’t the problem.
I’m definitely one of these people. A hipster by neccessity. I don’t think that “BoCoCa” is ok, but you know what I mean: if I have to categorize, which I do, because language is full of pesky fucking binaries, I’d be a hipster by necessity. Although I’m grateful that my beautiful neighborhood close to Bed-Stuy is gentrified enough to be a safe place for me to come home to at midnight, I’m heartbroken by the nasty beige condo buildings I’m seeing go up around the corner and up the block. I’d love to stay in my current apartment for three or so more years, but I’ve already vowed to myself that the second a Whole Foods or Starbucks pops up on my street, I’m out. This is not to say I don’t shop at Whole Foods occasionally. I just don’t want one in my neighborhood. Too much riff-raff, if you ask me.

One night I go out with my gay boyfriend, H. We’ve both lived in various parts of Brooklyn for about a year and a half but have yet to really sample the gay boy bars the borough had to offer us–we’d lived two subway stops from Caddyshack before the health club closed/re-opened it, and since he smoked menthols, I smoked lights, and they had a smoking deck where you could take your beer, we got lazy. Our very favorite spot used to be Rush, in Chelsea. We went there before it got rave reviews from everybody, we knew a few of the club queens by real name. We grew accustomed to the lifestyle that revolved around hearing the new Beyonce track while we pulled $5 Hypnotiq shots in test tubes out of the Ed Hardy briefs of 19-year-old shot boys. But sadly, Rush got popular, we got too old and rickety to put up with crowds, we both got boyfriends and therefore a curfew before last call, and simply put we couldn’t afford to club in Manhattan anymore. H. called me after work to report back on some very careful research he had done about all the hip gay spots in Williamsburg. “They better not be ‘hip’ like you said Metropolitan is,” I warn him, “‘cause that place sucks.”

“True story,” H. replies, “true story.”

We always wind up at Metropolitan when we’re not quite drunk enough to be ok with heading home, but have just about given up on trying to find a good bar. H. says it’s a gay bar but I think I’ve maybe seen 2 gay people there that weren’t in my crew. And in that neighborhood, it’s impossible to tell gay apart from awesomely androgynous anyway.

“We’re going to a place called Sugarland,” H. gushes, “I read all about it in Time Out New York. They say that’s where all the hottest kids are partying right now, and I read about the deejay–L., I think you’ll love it, it’s like real hip-hop they say.” I’m sold. It’s tough for me to find a good hip-hop club in the city where I feel ok taking myself and my friends. Reason number one, I don’t consider anything over $5 a decent cover. I don’t drink much, so I’m willing to pay cover at all because I’ll only have a beer or two, but that automatically eliminates many possibilities. Reason number two: part of the byproduct of being young, white, not broke, and living in Brooklyn, is that we live in neighborhoods, but we don’t have neighbors. Not like the people who lived there before we moved in do. A club in Williamsburg with good hip-hop has the potential to be like a glorified version of my favorite type of party, the trashy fundraiser party.

“I’m in,” I say, “I’m sold.” Ironically enough, Sugarland will be featured in a later story in this series.

We roll up at Sugarland at around 11:00. It’s a Friday night so we don’t expect it to be crazy for another hour, hour and a half or so. At this point Rush would be pleasantly crowded but not quite smell like a jock strap. The perfect time to arrive at a gay bar. We hem and haw over the $5 cover in hopes of being let in on a discount. H. sends me to flirt with the soft butch (or again, just awesomely androgynous, I really can’t say) who was collecting cover money, but it wasn’t working out. We share a cigarette before going inside. I hear a version of that song “Right Round” from the Wedding Singer blaring out of the club.

“This doesn’t sound like hip-hop to me” I say to H.

“Maybe it’s a sample!” he says, flicks the butt off of the curb, and leads me towards Butchy McDoorGirl. We shove her $5 each and go inside, waiting to see Sugarland in all its wonder.
It’s dead. I mean completely, absolutely empty.

I’m not exaggerating. We’re literally the only two people in the entire establishment except for two bartenders and a DJ. And maybe his girl or boy is up in the booth with him, I really can’t see. We survey the scene. It’s actually an awesome space.

“What do you wanna do?” H. asks me.

“I don’t know…” I said. “Maybe get a drink?” H. concurs.

“I’m sure more people will show up in like half an hour,” he says.

“We can visit!” I say. “We never get a chance to visit.” We end up staying for an hour. We have two beers. Five more people come and then leave. The bartender only charges us for one beer our second round, not both. After awhile we give up and awkwardly stumble around Williamsburg with a two-beer buzz. We end up at Metropolitan. We spend about forty-five minutes there and conclude that we need to go to Manhattan next time. H. and I do this dance on Fridays once a month. Always we end up back at Metropolitan, wishing for Rush in the old days.

One fact that’s become very, very clear to me in my travels through Brooklyn and beyond in the past four years is this: for us, Time magazine, and the rest of the world, hipsters aren’t going away. In fact, thirty or forty years from now, your children might be asking you about hipsters with the same curiosity and slight traces of admiration that you had in your voice when you asked your parents if they ever knew any hippies. Honestly, I think that some people living outside the city mistake twentysomethings for hipsters, as though they are the new yuppies. And an important difference to distinguish is that hipsters and twentysomethings are not the same thing. The essence of twentysomethings is probably nothing new or incredibly provocative unless you’re talking about the ones in New York today. By night, of course, we may indeed be little more than a pretentious, pot-smoking, pilsner-drinking, trucker-hat wearing sloppy mess. But by day we control the city. Most of us have jobs like Personal Assistant, coat check girl, caterer, bartender, Intern. We handle the food, clothing, coffee, money, mail, and sometimes children of all the real grownups who write articles for large, syndicated publications about hipsters without really knowing how they exist—or really what a hipster is. Hipsterdom is a lifestyle choice that people my age in my geographic location are faced with making; kind of like hard drugs or saving yourself until marriage. Part of living where I live right now and doing what I do is being pretty acutely aware of one’s own hipster quotient at any given time, regardless of whether you’re trying to make it bigger or smaller. Consider these stories a bit of a hipster safari, if you will: glimpses of hipster behavior in various habitats. The first stop on the safari is the most natural and populated of hipster cloisters, Williamsburg. Here, hipsters flock and mate like humpbacks in Mexico at Christmas, making it easiest and safest for outsiders to observe hipsters in their most natural of habitats.

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*Names and in some cases occupations have been changed to protect the anonymity of those hustling and bustling.

Your song lingers in my house
Stepping up the stairs
And gently closing the door
finds me in my bed
wraps its chords around me
and loves me like it was you
Sleeps in my bed
Breathes through my hair
Whispers in your sleep
Moves your fingers on my skin
finds me in my bed
wraps your strings around me
and covers me like it was you
Sings sings as you step away
Stepping down the stairs
And closing the door
finds me in my bed
wraps your things about me
and leaves me like it was you