YMCA

I've been known to discuss religion in inappropriate places, but there is something to be said for a group of West Indian guys arguing in the locker room of the Dodge YMCA on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn screaming at each other about evolution versus creationism.

While the locker rooms at that particular Y are pleasant enough, they really aren't that conducive to theological discussion. "There ain't no way I come from no monkey," one gentleman exclaimed. Hmm, judging by your speech, I beg to differ. There's a case for evolution right there. Would God have created people like him?

I do enjoy the Y though. It bridges the gap between the gentrifiers and the non-gentrifiers. I share the basketball court with people I have nothing in common with, except for the fact that I like basketball. In any other situation, these urban youths would probably frighten me. If I saw them on the street at night, I would cross to the other side and hide my watch, but at the Y, we help each other out, retrieving errant basketballs for each other and moving out of each other's way when shooting. It doesn't matter if they live in the projects and are failing history, we are doing the exact same thing at the exact same time in the exact same place. Isn't that remarkable? Do they, too, find it remarkable?

They may have exemplary basketball-playing skills, but I have to say, for a 5'8" white dude, I'm a goddamn good shooter. I can drain it from all points of the court. Top of the key, baseline, three-point range, you name it. I think some of these guys must be pretty surprised by the fact that I can probably shoot better than they can. I can't, however, jump all that well. I can dribble and screen and box out, but when it comes to actually playing with these guys, I'm not that great. The reason being is that they don't pass whitey the fucking ball. They have no idea that I can fake left, dribble right and put the ball in the basket with a hook shot because they won't give me a goddamn chance. Maybe we're not that similar after all.

I like being a member of the Y because the money goes to a good cause and I'd rather see these kids shooting hoops than robbing yuppies on the street, but PASS ME THE FUCKING BALL ONCE IN A WHILE. After all, I'm paying for your broke ass to have access to an indoor basketball court where you're not gonna get hassled by the police or Reggie, the neighborhood crack dealer. I'll go and join New York Sports Clubs and my money will just go to some corporation.

I know I can't get above the rim and I'm not gonna try, but just give a chance to score a few points during our lousy three on three half court pick up game.

And I don't want to hear your religious beliefs whilst changing in the locker room. Save that discussion for the sauna.

In Treatment

Every week I go to an office, sit down on a sofa and talk for 50 minutes. It's called therapy. I love therapy because it gives me the opportunity to say whatever the hell I want and the other person has to listen.

That's why people resort to therapy. When everyone else stops listening, you can actually pay someone to do so. I can go on and on about the Evangelical right and how irritating limousine liberals are and why I prefer Gerolsteiner to Perrier.

She has to listen. She can't hang up the phone. She can't move to the other side of the bar. She can't go talk to other people. I have her where I want her for nearly an hour and since I'm paying, she cannot leave. She has to listen.

I used to have a psychologist that would say things like, "Well, that is strange," when I said something a little off the wall. He was a great therapist and a pretty cool guy. He had the most soothing voice and pleasant demeanor. I wish he had a practice in the city. Now I am stuck finding people in my insurance network that are geographically convenient to the 11231 zip code.

The main issue I have with therapists that I have visited is that they often find me so amusing that it's difficult to keep a straight face. My current therapist actually said that "it might not work out" because she can't help herself from laughing. Good. I like making people's jobs difficult.

I started blathering on about these goddamn trust-fund hipsters and she stopped me by telling me that it was not really a good use of my time or money. Here are just a few topics that I should avoid discussing while I'm on the clock.

• The fact that I am really pleased with my sneakers.
• The fact that I have been thinking a lot about industry as of late, and while I recognize that industry exists, I'm not really sure how the whole thing works.
• My dreams about Ted Danson.
• The notion that I may never be able to afford a Wolf range and a Miele dishwasher.
• My hatred for visible air conditioning units in new construction condominiums.
• My need to categorize people into two distinct groups: gentry or non-gentry.
• How upset I get when I don't receive a proper greeting sometimes when I run into acquaintances on the street.
• How depressing places are that are considered to be the "fastest growing" anything.
• What I should talk about if I ever get through to the Howard Stern Show.
• My contempt for people that are not articulate.
• How I sometimes use the word "quaint" to describe things that certainly not quaint.
• Neil Young's arrogance and refusal to fully commit to CSN.
• The fact that Chinese takeout places always put duck sauce and soy sauce in the bag, but you always have to ask for mustard.
• How I wish I had some black friends.
• What the hell that friend of Oprah's, Gail, is contributing to society.

These are topics that I should just keep bottled in and not waste during my precious therapy minutes.

I am leaving for Texas in the morning, so I'll see ya'll on Monday.

The Needle And The Damage Done

For some reason as of late, I have become obsessed with drug culture - heroin to be specific.

I'm getting sick and tired of all these self-righteous risk takers who have "tried every drug except for crack and heroin." What the fuck kind of experimentation is that? Heroin the drug to use and abuse. You just ain't cool unless you've used it. I find these fucking deadbeat potheads and coke-fiends to be nothing more than frauds. Oh, so you tried LSD and E? Big fucking deal. I took too many Xanaxes one night once and an Ambien through my nose.

At least respect the drugs for what they are and when pressed, say, "Well I've been meaning to get around to trying that." Lou Reed would even respect that answer.

Unfortunately, since the Giuliani administration, this city has seen an enormous drop in active needle-using drug addicts. When Dinkins was in office, the crack epidemic peaked in New York City and there 250,000 active needle-using heroin junkies roaming around the city. This was before there were condos on Stanton and Orchard selling for $2.4 million. Ah those must have been the days. I was holed up in my cushy house in a lily-white New Jersey exurb missing out on all the fun. All the injecting, the nodding off, the withdrawals...I missed it. Where is it now? When was the last time you encountered a real junkie in this city? I see them very infrequently and when I do, I smile, thinking of a bygone era - a simpler time without iPods and iPhones and Blackberries.

People weren't as hung up on the latest fashions and how their stock portfolios are doing. And they weren't pretending to save the world either. They had one goal in life - to get their fix. No other worries. To see a complete list of things I personally would no longer worry about if I were to become a junkie, please refer to my August 16, 2007 entry.* http://gentryornot.blogspot.com/2007/08/methadonia.html

I would love to try it out. I get needles stuck in me constantly for medical purposes, why not recreationally? I had a few needles in me today during chemotherapy and I didn't really mind it all that much. If I could possibly keep my port in my chest that was installed for chemo to shoot dope into, it might be a wise decision so my veins will hold up. When I inquired about it to my oncology nurse, she stated that she wouldn't recommend doing that because it causes infection and irrevokable damage, but what does she know? They're giving me POISON every time I step foot in there. Heroin can't be that much different.**

Plus, I would be the coolest guy in my group of friends just for trying it. Half these guys haven't even snorted anything yet. Dorks.

*This was my second Gentry or Not post.
**Perhaps another viewing of Requiem For A Dream would change my mind.

V Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all my female readers (if there are any). This year I am spending it alone with a bottle of Barolo watching HGTV's House Hunters, a riveting portrait of how people go through the home-buying process in places like the suburbs of Wichita and Cleveland. The host is this smoking hot Asian broad who would have her own cooking show if she had bigger cans. I still have very dirty thoughts about her.

But I'm not really alone - I got a woman, much like Ray Charles must have had, that's good to me. I also have the bus driver dude from this morning.

I entered the bus behind a female African-American senior citizen with a cane and the bus driver wished her a happy Valentine's Day. I inserted my Metrocard and got no such wish. Thoughts ran through my mind that he may have been acting out of racism and still feeling oppressed by the white man and did not feel the need to acknowledge me.

I turned around and said, "What about me?" He laughed and wished me a happy Valentine's Day and we all had a nice laugh. I seem to bond with certain bus drivers. Others, not so much.

Something In The Air

It all started when I was walking down Hudson Street in Manhattan around 7:00 this evening after an all-day meeting and business dinner to retrieve my car when I began to feel something strange. Like something just wasn't right. It was a gloomy night, unseasonably warm, but gloomy nonetheless in the aftermath of yesterday's snow and sleet and today's earlier downpours.

It just felt bleak in an indescribable way. Then I approached the parking lot that my car had been resting in for the past 10 hours. It was closed. Locked up, no one answering the phone. Fuck me; nothing ever goes right. Since when did parking lots close? Then I realized that I left all my keys with the attendant leaving me no way to get into my apartment.

I wandered around the chain-link fence for a while irritated as hell when I saw a hole just big enough for me to climb through to see if my car was unlocked and possibly contained keys. Instead of jumping through and risking a night in New York County Jail, I crossed the street towards the entry of the Holland Tunnel and asked a police officer if it would be okay if I broke into the parking lot and tried to break into my own car. I explained my predicament and after a suspicious glare, he said, "Go for it." There I was standing near the entrance of the Holland Tunnel asking a police officer for permission to break into a closed parking lot.

So I went through but found my doors locked and no keys in sight and walked to the the Spring Street C train heading downtown. The subway ride was normal enough, but when I got out at Jay Street in Brooklyn, the ominous feeling was back. I walked toward the bus stop and waited for the B61 with an intense urge to relieve my bladder. Finally the bus arrived and I entered and sat near the most gentrified passengers I could find. A black mother, most likely a resident of the Red Hook Houses, and her two little boys sat behind me. D'Shawn* was misbehaving himself and beating up his little brother. They, too, wanted to sit near the gentry.

The bus didn't move for about 10 minutes and I realized there were ambulances, police cars and fire trucks blocking the intersection. Meanwhile my urge to urinate is increasing and my need for a Xanax is getting more intense.

Finally the bus moved along its merry way and I exited at the intersection of Columbia Street and Carroll Street and walked into the bar that my roommate works at. (D'Shawn and his brother had to be separated from each other by this point in the ride.) Yes! She was there and gave me keys. The patrons in the bar seemed very rough looking and unkempt, swilling cans of PBR and High Life from buckets and downing shots of Jameson. If rednecks existed in Brooklyn, these people would be as close as it gets.

She offered me a drink but I looked around and decided that I needed to get the fuck out of there. I used the water closet, drank a cup of water and took the keys and started walking to my apartment.

I felt an overwhelming sense of vulnerability the entire walk home (a total of about 11 blocks). Along Van Brunt Street, there was an unusual amount of police activity, but I still didn't feel safe. I seldom feel threatened even in the sketchiest locations, often feeling invincible, but tonight I felt uncomfortable in my own neighborhood. Red Hook in and of itself is a pretty ominous place to be even on sunny afternoons. Tonight, the feeling was unbearable. It got me thinking my first visit to this odd little waterfront enclave. It was a rainy night in the autumn of 2005 and I was in the comfort of my old Passat and driving through thinking to myself, "How the fuck could anyone live here?" and "How the fuck do I get back to Park Slope?"

Tonight, just like that rainy September evening nearly three years ago, I didn't feel safe until I entered my apartment. In fact, I still don't.


*Yes, I did hear her call him D'Shawn - I'm not stereotyping.

Maybe I'll tell you how I really feel.

Unfortunately I had to attend a wake last night for my boss, a man I liked very much.

All wakes are pretty much the same and there are always a handful of people that defy social mores and wear inappropriate attire like jeans. How fucking disrespectful is that? If someone pulled that shit at a wake of someone very close to me, I would have them removed from the premises and told to come back with a decent pair of pants on and a shirt that (at the very least) has a collar and buttons.

And these people are not children; they're adults who should know right from wrong at this point. Who the fuck raised them? A pack of wolves? It's not only insulting to the deceased but it is also insulting to the family and everybody else involved. I painstakingly picked out the outfit I was wearing (charcoal slacks, a gray tweed blazer, a navy blue sweater vest, a blue oxford shirt and a paisley tie). Even the socks matched.

If you are going to show up at a wake, a funeral, a wedding or any other event that is to be taken seriously in jeans, stay the fuck home. You are embarrassing yourself and everyone around you.

It's tantamount to defecating on the casket in my opinion. I shutter to think of what other social norms these people are blatantly ignoring. Are they sleeping with their sisters? Are they eating their cats? How far do they take it? And no one is ever going to tell them that it was inappropriate for them to be wearing jeans. No one in mourning says to that distant cousin, "Thank you so much for coming to my father's funeral, but would it have killed you dress a little nicer than you do when you go bowling?"

Funeral parlors should have dress codes. In fact, there should be dress codes everywhere. I'm pretty old-fashioned and conservative when it comes to the way people dress. I like wearing jeans just as much as everyone else, but only when it's appropriate.

There is absolutely no excuse to show up to a wake in jeans and sneakers. I don't care if you don't own any pants. Go to Target and buy a pair for $14.99. You don't have to spend a fortune to look presentable. It's just common sense and common courtesy.

I'm liked, but not "well-liked."

Often I wonder what people think of me when they meet me. I am a tad complex. I can be unfailingly polite and charming one day and abrasive and offensive the next.

Last night I went to friend's birthday party in Hoboken and immediately started ranting to two people I had never met before about evangelical Christians and how disturbing it is that there are between 50 and 80 million (!) evangelists living in America. I then proceeded to discuss televangelists and mega-churches that are becoming ever-so-ubiquitous in the red states. Meanwhile the two people (victims) I chose to speak to had no interest whatsoever in anything that I had to say and the two friends I arrived with went to the other side of the room. The couple I was lecturing had no idea what Christian fundamentalism was all about in the first place, yet I continued to rant about it until they eventually moved in to the living room, leaving me alone at the kitchen counter with a tray of lukewarm cocktail franks, a bottle of Smirnoff Vanilla and no one to talk to.

Apparently, religion is one of those taboo subjects that we're not supposed to discuss. However, I do not give a rat's ass whether people want to listen to my rants about how money hungry these mega-churches are and the fact that they accept credit cards, have ATM machines on premises along with Starbucks coffee establishments. A little different from the Catholic church I grew up with.

Then, today I decided to call 311 to inquire about whether muni-meters function on Sundays. I know that regular parking meters are suspended on Sundays, but was not sure about the muni-meters. It turns out that muni-meters are free on Sundays as well. I chose to tell the 311 representative that she was the most articulate 311 person I had ever spoken with. Then I started to discuss the fact that the reason that we do not have to pay for metered spaces on Sundays is for the sake of religious worship and asked if I should pay for the meter anyway due to the fact that I was not going to a place of worship. Then I asked if she thought that the Jews felt slighted on their Sabbath because parking meters certainly do appy between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday. Her response: "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?"

If these calls are really being recorded for quality assurance purposes, someone must have had a good chuckle over that one indeed.

Happy Ash Wednesday!

What a week we are having. First, the Giants won the Superbowl in the unlikeliest manner and Eli Manning, who we all thought would be searching through Craigslist job postings by mid-season, was the Superbowl MVP and now gets to ride around in a Cadillac Escalade Hybrid that Michael Strahan would probably prefer.

Then there was Super Tuesday. Did you vote? I didn't get a chance to due to my chemo and improv, but it didn't matter because my candidate, Hillary, won New York anyway. Yesterday also marked the eve of then Lenten season. Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, whatever you want to call it. I participated in none of those festivities, because a.) I felt like shit and 2.) I'm not really an observant Catholic these days.

I gave up on the whole Catholicism thing in college, at a Jesuit institution no less, when I decided that I was tired of being a slave to the papacy. So, to fit in, I used to stick my finger in my ashtray and print a cross on my forehead with my finger. No one knew the difference and the priests approved when I ran into them that day.

Let's face it, we are all, in some way, slaves to something. Alcoholics are slaves to the drink, junkies are slaves to the drug, workaholics are slaves to the job and Catholics are slaves to the Pope.

The thing that gets me about Lent is how ridiculous the rules are. Meat is not to be eaten on Ash Wednesday or on any Friday during Lent. Why? We are supposed to sacrifice. However, fish is perfectly acceptable. The last time I checked, tuna steaks at the Fairway were $18.99 a pound and ground beef was $3.99 a pound. And I sure as hell would rather have the former. This means that according to the Pope, it is perfectly acceptable to gorge yourself on lobster and jumbo shrimp on Fridays, but consumption of a simple hot dog is grounds for eternal damnation. The Pope did, however, make an amendment allowing the Irish to eat corned beef if St. Patrick's Day happened to fall on a Friday. What the fuck kind of hypocrisy is that?

I think the rule should be: You can't eat anything that you like on Fridays during Lent. You must eat plain porridge, the kind that is served in orphanages in England. If you happen to like porridge, you must pick a different food that you are averse to such as cauliflower. No fish, no pizza, no pasta, no rice, no bread, no fruit. Nothing that you like. If I were the Pope, I would implement that rule instead of the no meat on Friday. It's terribly dated and does not apply to today's prices at butchers and fish markets. In the olden days, Catholics were prohibited from eating meat on all Fridays throughout the year, then they changed it to just Lent.

So, this Friday when choosing between a turkey sandwich and a tuna sandwich for lunch, just remember, that the bible says nothing of this! This is a man-made rule, one that will be obsolete during the next Papal administration.

Cat's In The Cradle

The first time I realized that my father was a little strange was when we got our cat, Misty, and he said, "Maybe one of these days, we'll take Misty out for a ride so she can see a little bit of the countryside."

I was about five at the time and I was in his study when he proposed this idea and I remember thinking to myself that it was a strange thing to say. I was dumbfounded and just said "That's a great idea, dad," something I still do to this day when he says something off-kilter like that. Just like when he wanted to buy a little villa in Tuscany a few years ago and when he had the idea to invest in some Roy Rogers franchises. Most recently, he said that maybe he'd get a little fishing pole and learn how to fish in the artificial lake in his gated Florida community.* "Just for fun," he said. I just can't see that happening. But I said "That's a great idea, dad," just as I had 20 years prior and as I will continue to do throughout my life. No one's feelings need to be hurt.

We did, in fact, try to take our beautiful Calico out for a ride and she urinated on the seat of his brand new navy blue 1988 Audi 5000 before we even left the house and that was the end of that. I guess she didn't want to go.

Misty lived to the ripe old age of 19, but never got to see the bucolic countryside of New Jersey besides what was outside the windows she perched herself on in our home. (We had some nice views.) We did take her to our shore house during the summers, but the Garden State Parkway didn't provide for the lush scenery that she had been promised. (Maybe the Pine Barrens were enough for her.)

She had her own ocean views from the window sills upstairs in the shore house, but she hated it down there due to a lack of square footage and luxurious surroundings she had grown accustomed to in our regular house. It was a simple Cape Cod style house with modest "beachy" furnishings.

Someday when I get a cat of my own, I'll try to take her for a ride to see the more urban areas so she can get a taste of diversity. I'll just make sure that we bring someone else's car.

*This may not sound so strange to you, but if you know my father, trust me you would raise your eyebrows at the sight of him trying to fish.