Seems like it’s another strange, awkward day this September 24th, Wednesday. Have a small cigar for lunch while Mike presents his side of things regarding his new Paramore, which is not coming this weekend due to something that has come up. The new Paramore is blowing up on Facebook so much so that someone posted that he’s posting too much, to which Mike responded that it was racist. I saw it and I said I don’t think it’s racist. I thought it was rude and disrespectful.
Mike stated that the guy complaining has no black friends, and I almost mentioned that neither does Paramore, how he does not have white friends. It’s made me reluctant to request his friendship, and I did withdraw my request the other day just because it’s taking so long and I don’t really care. Plus, I’m looking at dropping out of social media for a period of time for such yet to be determined.
And though things ended on the physical side between Mike and me, it’s still a twist of the knife somewhat to hear of his infatuation with this guy from the other side of the country. I mentioned earlier that I did look him up, and I saw a missed as this and the listing as that and doing this and being that.
I found that that didn’t add up, but then again, you look at my social media info, it really doesn’t add u,p but I wasn’t putting stuff up there to meet guys I was putting stuff up to be funny as people lower their age online I added 30 years to mine so I am 93 years old on the social media.
Mike, being Mike, is oblivious to how I might be feeling. He called us up last night. It was a schedule posted for his job for October, which only had two dates of work listed, and he was freaking out, which in turn freaked me out, thinking that I’m going to have to help him look for another job again.
Turns out it was a computer glitch, and he’s working more than 2 days. He really loves me and Bill and feels comfortable enough to call when things like that happen. But like people are sometimes available when you need them, and sometimes they are not available he’s really not available when needed.
So Yancey came in today, and it was okay the one has to look at him carefully and try to figure out what’s going on in his head. There were a few issues that he had with the condition of the desk, which was not clean enough for his white gloves, and he promptly did some dusting. He reminded me that there are some apps and routines that I should do with regard to visitors.
It really shouldn’t be my job to do it, it should be the host and their requirements, but we know how that will turn out, so it falls to me.
I really don’t like autumn.
I sit at my desk listening to Elton John, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. It’s 50 years old. I remember getting it a week or so before it was officially released, from my brother Frank, and I played it incessantly. I recall one time fighting with my brother Brian as I was listening to the album on a close and play GE record player. He caused the table to shift, and the record player was on, causing the album to scratch and causing me much despair.
Of course, he had to replace it. I remember my brother Frank giving me a CD, I guess in 2005 when it came out, and I was remarkably psyched, and he might have thought I was putting him on, but I was actually blown away.
I played the CD and much to my surprise I knew every note and nuance that I heard, even though I hadn’t played the record and at least 30 years. It truly is a classic, the ending of the Elton John band of the ’70s with Elton and Dee and Nigel and Davey, and Ray with Bernie, was the last gasp for that crew. Elton kicked Dee and Nigel out of the band. The reasons are still unclear; I would love to know, and I probably never will.
The Google Gemini rewrite as a James Baldwin essay
It is another day in the world, this Wednesday, September 24th, a day like so many others, full of its own peculiar brand of strain and sorrow. One sits, as one so often does, in a quiet moment, a small cigar for company, and listens to the familiar, yet ever-startling, discord of human relations.
My friend, Mike, a man one has known and been close to, speaks of a new infatuation—a “Paramore.” The term itself carries a certain kind of modern, weightless gravity. This Paramore, a man from the other side of the country, has a burgeoning online presence, a furious and relentless self-proclamation on social media. It has reached a point where another person, a stranger, cried out in protest that it was “too much.” This simple complaint, a weary observation on the sheer volume of existence today, was met with a swift and terrible accusation: “racist.”
And there it is, the word. The ghost in the American machine. We are so quick to reach for it now, a blade drawn in the dark, whether it fits the crime or not. I saw the exchange and knew, with a certainty that can only come from a long, bitter study of the human heart, that it was not racism. It was rudeness. It was disrespect. It was a man, tired of being bombarded, lashing out at an annoyance.
Mike, in his defense, declared that this other man had no Black friends. The absurdity of it caught in my throat. I wanted to say, “And what of your Paramore? He has no white friends, either.” It is a curious, sad spectacle. We use friendship as a currency, a shield against our own narrowness. It is a game of numbers, not of soul. And in that moment, I found myself withdrawing my own request for his friendship. Not out of anger, but out of a profound weariness. One is so tired of the games, of the masks, of the endless, digital masquerade.
The infatuation itself is a curious and painful thing to witness. It is a twist of the knife, to see him so consumed by this distant figure, a man with a flimsy online life, a mis-this and a so-and-so. One knows, with the cruel precision of memory, how easily these projections fall apart. I, too, have presented a version of myself to the world—a man of 93, for God’s sake—not out of a desire to deceive, but out of a kind of weary humor. A rebellion against the terrible earnestness of it all.
Mike, in his way, is a mirror. His anxieties, his terrors, they are so raw and immediate. He called last night, panicking about a work schedule with only two days on it. It turned out to be a computer glitch. But in that moment of his fear, I felt my own anxiety rise, the familiar dread of having to help him navigate the treacherous waters of existence, of being called upon, and knowing that when one needs him, he will not be there. We are only available when we are available, and the cruel irony of that is a thing to be reckoned with.
Today, Yancey came. One must watch him carefully, a man with his own silent storms. He found the desk not clean enough for his “white gloves”—a phrase that carries its own heavy weight of expectation and judgment. He reminded me of apps, of routines, of the meticulous labor of making things clean for others. It is not my job, of course. It is the job of the host. But the burden, as it always does, falls to me.
I find myself listening to Elton John, *Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy*. It is fifty years old, this record, and it brings me back to a time of my own innocence, of a GE record player, and a fierce, brotherly quarrel over a scratch on a vinyl. I remember every note, every nuance, even after thirty years. The music is a kind of anchor, a thing that does not change in a world that shifts and slides under our feet. It is the last gasp of a certain era, a certain band, a kind of beauty that, once gone, is gone forever. I wonder why Elton kicked Dee and Nigel out, and I know I will never know. And that, too, is a kind of sadness.
This day is full of disappointment. I see it in the political landscape, a man swinging a knife at the compensation for victims, and I see it in the small, personal tragedies of a social media post and a ruined album. I sit with a small cigar, a mini cigar, and I remember a blue Panasonic cassette player, a gift, and the promise of recording. I remember being so close to shaking Gerald Ford’s hand, and then not. My vote, in the end, was a protest against the hand I could not touch.
Yet, a thought comes. A song. “She Loves You.” The Beatles. The simplest, most direct of messages. And in the thinking of it, my spirit is lightened. For a moment. It is enough. We must take what we can. The small happinesses. The fleeting moments. For they are all we have.