Attempting to navigate the world with all its insolent depredations
The beach has been groomed, swept clean by enormous machines that move through the predawn firmament, collecting the flotsam and jetsam the tides have presented as an offering, along with whatever bits of trash the seagulls and tourists have left behind. Random popsicle sticks and clam shells, loose cigarette butts and seaweed, all sifted through fine mesh screens, leaving behind strangely mechanical lines of the cleanest sand you’ve ever seen. Like one of those Zen gardens of perfectly raked sediment.
I’ve been all over the world, to some pretty exotic locations, and New Jersey boasts the nicest beaches I’ve ever experienced. You might find prettier water, exotic palm trees, and crazy wildlife, but you do not have nicer beaches. I promise you this.
Today, I have chosen a beach as far away from the crowds as is reasonably possible, a street in the upper teens on Seven Mile Island, with a long trail from the head to the beach that makes getting here just a bit more difficult. We exit the trail to reveal a beach nearly devoid of people, the waves lining up in sets, and set our chairs up away from anyone else, an open vista with nothing but possibilities. I am in heaven.
This is what I have been dreaming about. It’s the reason why I put up with the chaos of the morning, the insanity of the sandwich shop, the mayhem of distracted drivers on vacation, the sheer entitlement of pedestrians who assume you will immediately stop should they wander into the road for no apparent reason. I did the work, endured the seven levels of hell to get here, and ready to enjoy the day. Just give me a second.
I lay down on a towel to get a little sun on my back, and picked up my head thirty minutes later to find myself surrounded on all sides. What the actual fuck? How quickly I can go from quiet reflection to annoyed hostility with the introduction of people. I had been listening to the sound of the waves pounding the shores when I was disturbed by moronic voices speaking with increasing volume and clarity about absolute bullshit.
Talk about resounding cymbals, signifying nothing. This is why guns are a bad idea and why you might not want to sell swords and spears at seaside farm markets. You have to imagine this is what goes through the minds of wild animals. We should definitely kill these things. I wouldn’t eat them if I were you, as they don’t appear to be healthy, but let’s destroy them and move on from this place and never return.
What was initially three small pods of people soon formed into a single organism that threatened to swallow us whole. I was forced to put in noise-canceling headphones and listen to music lest I begin to rant like a schizophrenic with Tourette’s, plainly expressing my displeasure in a fit of maniacal rage, spinning out and frightening the children.
If I thought this would work, without being arrested and held for psychiatric evaluation, I would do it in a heartbeat. Try it at least. I would lose my shit, entirely, not looking anyone in the eye, expressing my rage in a stage whisper impossible to ignore. I would make them move camp. I think I could do it. Certainly worth a shot.
My capacity for rage frightens me at times, but there has to be some release from this hellscape, some outlet that is not so self-destructive. Nearly my entire career has been in service of the rich and privileged. I know them like a cult I once willingly belonged to, and sometimes had a hand in leading. I find no basis for pride over this, but feel as though accepting the reality is a step in the right direction.
All my best curse words have become problematic. I didn’t invent these words. They were handed down to me. Unfortunately, most of the good ones have politically incorrect histories of brutal oppression I have no interest in perpetuating. But come on. Give me something. I need an element of gross vulgarity to express the rage I feel about the world at large, especially when it comes to the richest of them, the ones who drive the entire economy of this seaside peninsula.
These are the wealthy cunts, young and old, who vex me in ways that are hard to resolve with my moral philosophy of empathetic tolerance. They make me want to barbecue kittens and torture the Amish into accepting zippers.
I used to have a couple of business partners who would complain that my staff was afraid of me. The irony of this is that the founder was a sociopath and an inveterate habitual liar who managed with a really disturbing mix of terror and affection. He liked to talk about the company like it was a family, which was true, only far more dysfunctional than he ever dreamed. Once you heard his childhood stories, you understood.
I have never been much of a yeller at work, certainly not with those who worked under me. I was never mean or intentionally cruel. The worst you could accuse me of was indifference. I was never a big back-patter. My praise was selective and infrequent but authentic. If I applauded your work, you knew I meant it. I wasn’t walking around sucking everyone’s dick instead of giving them a raise.
The way I saw it, my staff wanted my approval and spent time discussing amongst themselves what it was I would want. Being on the road as much as I was, this was critical because it meant I could be there even when I wasn’t. I was never a micromanager and expected everyone to do their job without any prodding from me. Having everyone ask themselves, “What would David do?” was a valuable tool.
I think a healthy fear of your superior is a meaningful power dynamic. I’m not talking about terror but respect. This is part of what is missing in business and family life these days, if you ask me, although I’m afraid I’m in the minority on this front. With women, mere disapproval might be enough, but with young men, you need a threat of violence. It doesn’t even need to be realistic. Just the idea that it could escalate and get away from you.
The actor Bob Odenkirk was talking with some bemusement about his capacity for rage and his uncanny ability to go from zero to apoplectic in the blink of an eye. It was something his father did, and he hadn’t understood that either.
“My father had it,” Odenkirk says, “and I have it, and I don’t consider it a good thing in real life. What’s good about it in acting is that it’s a lack of barriers, emotion barriers, an ability to fly back and forth between these intense feelings, which you can see as valuable, but I have to tell you, I walk around and I’ll be having like a good day, and suddenly out of the blue I’m like ‘What the fuck?! You motherfucker!’ It will be over some little thing, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Really?’”
When I was younger, my father had a temper. I don’t think it was in keeping with who he was, or at least who he wanted to be, so he made a real effort to squash it. I remember flashes of it when we were small. It was enough to make us fear him, but not be terrified of him, which I think is a part of parenting that is often dismissed today, and I think society is suffering because of it.
I heard a comedian talk about his father and how even though he’d never laid a hand on any of his children, they were all afraid he might one day surely kill them. As a parent himself now, he couldn’t figure out how his father had managed this, so he asked him about it. How had he managed it?
“The trick is,” his father explained, “You have to lose it occasionally. You need to lose it, and everyone needs to see you lose it. You need to throw a coffee table through the front window, just so they know you’re capable of it. Then you don’t have to do much else.”
Suddenly, the guy remembered an instance from his childhood when his father had come home from work and found bikes lying in the driveway, something that was strictly forbidden. His father calmly walked into the house and proceeded to kick in all the bedroom doors, destroying them in the process, explaining along the way that this was what would happen should they continue to leave bikes in the driveway.
What the kids didn’t know was that he had been planning to replace all the bedroom doors, but had decided to take advantage of the situation and create a memorable teaching moment. They never left their bikes in a driveway again, and everyone got new bedroom doors. Problem solved.
On the beach today was a baby seagull following an adult gull, presumably its mother, begging for food. The adult gull was wandering around the beach, looking for Cool Ranch Doritos, and trying to ignore the plaintive wailing of the youngster who walked a few steps behind, its head lowered, its beak open, calling out repeatedly. Occasionally, the baby would get in front of the mother, clearly asking for something, and the mother would turn and look away. I’ve seen this move a thousand times. Just pretend your kid isn’t making a scene in public while you stand there looking good.
This is enough to trigger any parent into anxiety-inducing waves of panic. Kids will suck the fucking life right out of you, I don’t care whose they are. What was painfully clear to me was that this was a young parent who had never been taught to throw a coffee table through a plate glass window, and it showed. I know better than to get involved in other families’ domestic disputes; otherwise, I would have happily smacked the young bird, just as a learning experience. Go find your own goddamn snacks.
These gulls today.
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