by The End of the 00s

Something exceptional has come to an end.

This unnameable decade, this double-zero decade, this all-for-naught decade: I don’t think we will wear anything like it again.

It has to do with George Bush, and it has to do Al Gore, and I am going to rely on the image of a zipper.

As long as the Future is still the Future, it has its quiet alternatives, its right side and its left side, its either and its or. (And that is the appeal of the Future: its indeterminacy.) The Present tugs the sides together, its meshes their teeth, it fixes them into one. (And that is the appeal of the Present: its noise.) What is left behind is the Past, a tight and quiet seam, something that cannot be pulled apart anymore. (And that is the appeal of the Past: its determinacy.) Every ten years, we zip up one coat’s worth of Time, and we hang it on a rack in our memory. This coat is the ’70s; consider its fabric and its cut. This coat is the ’80s; look at its padding and its patterning. We accumulate six or nine such coats, and then we die.

So, this newest old coat, the ‘00s? It is exceptional because its zipper is broken. Oh, we can zip it up, but the teeth will not stay meshed. The left flap and right flap keep yawning apart-from about November of 2000 until about January of 2009, the two sides yawn apart-and they will always yawn apart. The right flap will always be the actual ’00s, when George Bush was President; and the left flap will always be the counterfactual ’00s, when he was not.

Let me trace the left side of the past.

Let me trace the counterfactual ‘00s.

What if we had permitted the fellow who actually won the election in 2000 to assume the presidency in 2001?

Here, in the counterfactual ’00s, is the moment during Al Gore’s first year as President when fanatics hijacked commercial jetliners and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, killing innocent thousands. And here is the moment, during his second year in office, when the Republicans blamed those attacks on the President.

Of course there was no such moment in the actual ’00s. In the actual ’00s, there was a national verdict: the Democrats and Republicans were jointly and severally liable for September 11. (And when, in a two-party system, two parties are jointly and severally liable, neither party pays the judgment.) The Democrats were liable for September 11 because they were the architects of the domestic security apparatus that failed to detect and thwart the plot; but the Democrats were not liable because they were not in office the day it happened. The Republicans were liable for September 11th because they were in office the day it happened; but the Republicans were not liable because they were not yet the architects of our domestic security apparatus. That was in the actual ‘00s.

In the counterfactual ’00s, there would have been no national sharing-of-the-blame. In the counterfactual ’00s, there would have been no Republican cant about how “No one could have foreseen September 11th,” there would have been no Republican demands for deference to presidential prerogatives in times of war, no Republican sympathy at all for a leader attempting to master an unprecedented crisis.

Al Gore would have given a wise speech on September 20th, calling perhaps for limited war and perhaps for limited energy use-and none of his proposals would have been passed Congress-and eventually the Republican Party, with an orgy of sanctimony, with a sermon of fire, would have put an end to Al Gore. The Republicans would have said the failures of September 11 were specifically “Democrat failures.” The Republicans would have pointed out that only one party could possible be to blame for not having foreseen the foreseeable. The Republicans would have increased their majority in both halves of Congress in November 2002, and in the spring of 2003 they would have begun hearings to impeach Al Gore, and horrible Joe Lieberman would have spent every morning in the vice-presidential residence praying-and for God only knows what. John McCain would have won the presidency in 2004 and 2008. And in December of counterfactual 2009, everyone would be talking about the presidential ambitions of Vice President Jeb Bush.

And so the fabric of the years holds together.

And so the coat always fits on its hanger.

Even if we can imagine how time might have run differently, even if we can trace the counterfactual ’00s with our finger, we cannot un-imagine the ideologues and ignoramuses with whom we share our elections, we cannot un-imagine their egomania and their might. We can see the other side of the zipper; we cannot un-see the color of the coat. No matter how you squint at it, America stays hideous.

Rudolph Delson is the Awl’s correspondent for Vice-Presidential issues.

by The End of the 00s

Has this been the decade of Super Squats? Well, let’s look at the evidence.

Speaking from a historical and calendrical perspective, one must admit that Super Squats were not invented in this past decade. Hardly! Variations on the secret Super Squat routine have been around since old Coney Island strongmen were squatting with tires on truck axles. Or that could have been old time hillbilly strongmen from down South. The point is that the basic idea of Super Squats has been around quite a few decades now. But, like many things that are “old,” they had fallen out of fashion unnecessarily.

What is fitness these days? To most people, “fitness” is doing light curls on a Nautilus machine wearing a spandex leotard and hanging upside down in an aerial trapeze class at an expensive gym, trying to catch a glimpse of John Mayer’s balls. But it wasn’t always this way. Oh no! The old timers discovered what the real key to awesome fitness is: the squat. That’s right, the squat. Say it again: “the squat.”

Once that was discovered, all that was left was to make the squat Super. This was done by doing the squat 20 times straight. Here is the Super Squats secret, which I am about to relay to you, as it was relayed to me by Randall J. Strossen, Ph.D., in his classic book, “Super Squats:”

“One set of 20-rep squats, a couple of other basic exercises, plenty of good food, milk, and rest. But, oh, those squats!”

Randall J. Strossen does not throw around exclamation points as lightly as we do. He was fucking serious here.

Before we get to the decade in Super Squats, we must get to the Universality of Super Squats, which is this: First you go to some gym with a squat rack. Then you put a moderate amount of weight on the bar. Then you do 20 reps of squats, which will make you want to die, but probably will not, in fact, make you die, unless you have poor form. Then you do a few rounds of pullups and dips and situps or whatever, boom. Do this three times per week for six weeks. Every workout, you add five pounds to your squat. At the end of six weeks you will squat some weight 20 times which you had never imagined. You will also gain weight — not bad weight, but good weight, particularly if you like to have that Super Squats look. (Which is really mostly a slight thickness in the hips, so don’t expect to be getting lots of ladies with it).

SO WHAT? I hear the scoffing. Randall J. Strossen heard it too. He forged ahead. Super Squats are not about squats. Super Squats are about finding the warrior within yourself. Super Squats are here to show you that you can do things that you did not think you can do. After completing the full Super Squats program, formerly average men and women storm out full of confidence and take on the world! Or even just feel a little more confident that they could kick someone hard.

Let’s say you’re just an average person, and you think talking about “fitness” is mostly for jerks and showoff meat heads or just dumb people, and you never once in your life watched YouTube videos by Mark Rippetoe explaining the finer points of squat form or practiced keeping your weight back and pushing off the heels or got mad at some guy who was doing curls in the squat rack, of all places (asshole). And let’s just say you’re the type of person who probably is just a few seconds from abandoning the reading of this internet writing and going back to something else on the internet that’s more to your taste, like videos of a music band you like, or some other thing that has nothing at all to do with squats, much less Super Squats.

In six weeks you can be a motherfucking monster. With the help of Super Squats.

At some point during the past decade I started doing Super Squats. Before Super Squats, George Bush started an unnecessary war in Iraq and Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s death ensured that our children would never get to see a proper Wu-Tang concert. After Super Squats, I don’t even listen when someone tells me to shut up with the Super Squats talk. The difference is like the difference between the night and the daytime, which is to say very different.

What I want to impress upon you in an inspirational manner is that the time for Super Squats has not passed. As one decade of Super Squats is about to pass into the history books — marked only by this one blog post, it is a pretty safe bet — yet another decade of Super Squats is beginning. When it comes time to make a “New Year’s resolution” in just a few short days, do you know what mine will be? To do more Super Squats. And to try to be less creepy in social situations. Join me (in the Super Squats part), won’t you? You have nothing to lose but a Decade That Sucks.

Hamilton Nolan would love to hear from you but right now-well, you know what he is doing.

by The End of the 00s

When I was younger, Long Island seemed oddly resistant to chain stores, or at least the standalone types that couldn’t be contained by a shopping mall. It was a big deal when, during my high-school years, the Island got its first K-Mart. Wal Mart didn’t arrive in the 516 until 1995. After that, a series of big-box complexes rushed in, as did new streets to lead people inside their hulking parking structures. (I still have to swallow hard before I can give people directions that incorporate “Corporate Drive.”)

It might be this weird arrested development that makes me a bit romantic over the suburban chain store.

And this decade was not kind to them; the rapid expansion of shopping centers led to the perhaps-inevitable demise of chains small and large. Many still have hulking ghosts scattered around this country’s byways. (My sister and I, taking a drive through Suffolk County last week: “What do you think that store was?” “Oh, I dunno. Maybe a Circuit City? Or it could just be the Home Depot that moved across the street.” “I guess it’s good that this year there are no liquidation sales going on.” “Yeah, this year, just the car models are going away.”)

In an effort to further lessen the divide between patriotism and capitalism, I present to you memories of a few stores that shuffled off the turnpikes during this decade. (B. Dalton’s middlebrow book offerings won’t be leaving this nation’s malls until early 2010.) The stories share a lot of parallels; most collapsed under the weight of their own debts, which were racked up during pie-in-the-sky expansion efforts during a bubblicious period that many thought would never end. Never forget-and hey, Five Guys and Zara, please read this as a cautionary tale.

Circuit City, 2009. My only sentimental attachment to the electronics chain, which had a much colder façade than the friendly blue hues preferred by its rival Best Buy, was its place as my sister’s first stop on our annual Black Friday trip around the local environs, which was only because it was the closest place to our parents’ house that had deals on DVDs. Yet the one thing that lives on in Circuit City’s zombie incarnation is its curiously stoplight-ish branding. Did no one ever think about the subtle “stop before you spend your money” messages that were being sent out there?

Fortunoff, 2009. A northeastern chain that mostly specialized in the type of housewares that could be called “nice,” Fortunoff was a Long Island business that had been established in 1922; in the ’90s its branding was so entrenched in the Island’s culture that it was able to anchor a brand-new mall that was named after its slogan. (“The Source.”) The mall’s mix of outlet stores, upscale casual dining restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory, and a Jillian’s probably should have been a sign that Fortunoff’s premium pricing on jewelry, furniture, and wedding-registry-ready housewares would soon be out of fashion. In 2008 it was sold to the owners of Lord & Taylor, and it fell to liquidation earlier this year. Its anchor space at The Source is still empty, and the mall now claims a Dave & Buster’s as one of its anchors.

Bennigan’s, 2008. OK, so I’m pretty sure I haven’t eaten at one since, like, high school. But you have to feel for poor Butters.

Linens & Things, 2008. A casualty of both the housing bubble and its own debts. The assets of the company went from $1.3 billion to $1 million in the space of three years-because, as in the case of Circuit City, at the end, the only thing worth a damn was the familiar brand name.

Steve & Barry’s, 2009. In 2005, this Long Island-based chain opened 62 new outlets in 3.5 million square feet of freshly leased mall space, which garnered a fair amount of attention from the business press. Steve & Barry’s specialized in super-cheap clothing that was more blatant than fashion-forward; it had racks of T-shirts emblazoned with odes to beer and the logos of local high schools, each of which cost less than your average Value Meal. Steve & Barry’s would eventually try to upscale itself, co-branding its still-inexpensive wares with the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, Amanda Bynes, and Stephon Marbury. (In the mall near my parents’ house the racks of sub-$10 “Federal Body Inspector” tops were placed in a space formerly occupied by Nobody Beats The Wiz, another chain that came to an early demise despite its Seinfeld shout-outs.) The chain capsized under the weight of its debts in 2008; it went under before it could make its mark downtown, where it was slated to occupy the E. 4th St. space that was once the home of…

Tower Records. The most painful capsizing of all, occasioned by some completely dunderheaded corporate decisions, Big Music’s brief, ruinous love affair with serving as electronics stores’ loss leaders and a tanking economy for recorded music. The chain’s last days were characterized by carcass-picking of cheap discs that had once been priced at $18.99 and higher, which only added insult to injury. (Especially when I heard tales of people finding things for super-cheap that I’d purchased at premium prices back when I had the money to do that sort of thing.) Tower had been something of a social space for me, even though I rarely talked to people on the trips that my friends and I would take there; I would stalk the aisles in search of music I’d only read about, band names that were trapped in my memory being unlocked after sidelong glances at divider cards.

When I went to Ireland in September, I was staying around the corner from an outpost of the store’s still-existent Irish arm. The last day of my trip, I finally got there when it was open-and upon walking inside and taking my first breath, I was greeted with the uniquely Tower smell of molding plastic and record-collector folly. It almost made me burst into tears.

Maura, Maura, Maura!

by The End of the 00s

An ort of parlor conversation of the hour regards the question of what we should call the decade presently expiring, the aughties or ohs or what? For a satisfying answer, I turn to the United Kingdom, where they’ve been doing cool stuff with timekeeping forever, and the 00 section of MI6. About 85 percent serious, I submit the Bonds, with its ease and breeze and ready blockbuster appeal. At one syllable, it is efficient. Its homophone ties it into the 00s’ financial, legal, and pop-psychological gists; likewise, the plash of its voiced bilabial plosive aces its aural exams. Ballots, Bush, bomb, Baghdad, bust, Barack, Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Here is the banging bonus: It honors and honours the single most screaming screen siren of the decade, Eva Green as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale.

Troy Patterson is the television critic at Slate and the film critic at Spin. Bonus: Here is his roundup of the 26 best cultural moments of the 00s!

by The End of the 00s

My nominee for Most American Person of the Decade is Lauren Conrad, ex-star of MTV’s “The Hills,” New York Times best-selling Young Adult author, television personality, celebutante, clothing designer and unswerving embodiment of the American dream.

Lauren Conrad and the phenomenon of MTV’s “The Hills” is a topic I’ve always tried to elucidate for the benefit of crowds before. Conrad’s ascension began in 2004 when MTV shot a partial-reality series called “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” a riff on the poolside party-fight Orange County of “The O.C.”

I say partial-reality because while the show and its eventual spin-offs featured real-life spoiled kids, the wacky/inane/drunken “events” in their lives were often, if not scripted, then at least heavily-facilitated by the presence of producers. The series was awash in the sunny colors of California and the best in crap rock, and it fed our country’s obsession with wealth and extravagance. When the “Laguna Beach” girls piled into their Hummer limousine in designer prom dresses, inebriated already, we lapped it up.

Lauren Conrad was on the first season and then returned a few times on the more scandalous second, a vague older-woman figure trying for the affections of her high school friend, Stephen Colletti, the oily-haired hero of the show. Stephen was in turn pining after honey-blond queenbee Kristin “bitch is back” Cavallari, while their friends drank and hooked up with each other. During “Laguna Beach”’s run, Cavallari played the blooming starlet, with modeling contracts, bit movie parts promised and the paparazzi in her wake.

But it was Conrad, that initially unassuming figure, who would emerge triumphant: the classic American underdog. While flirty Cavallari pursued fickle Hollywood, steady Conrad landed a deal for her own series of demi-reality: cameras would follow her move to Los Angeles and enrollment in fashion school.

“The Hills” was first packaged as a sort of college-aged, live-action, pantomime “Sex and the City”: Lauren was given an internship at a prestigious fashion magazine, Teen Vogue, and three girlfriends of disparate “personality” to entertain her in a too-expensive apartment in the Hollywood hills. They would also sit around at the best club and restaurant tables, communicating in meaningful stares. Lauren was just like us.

There was the vacant-eyed brunette beauty Audrina Patridge, wispy work buddy Whitney Port (more recently the star of her own lame New York-based spin-off, “The City,” which had the chutzpah to introduce the world to socialite Olivia Palermo), and bubbly blond Heidi Montag. All was well in the fakeish world of “The Hills” for a while. The girls danced in lavish be-seen spots, wore fancy clothes, sat in front of computers at “work,” and sometimes went to class.

But the double attention of the show’s popularity and celebrity magazine industrial complex’s growing interest in the protagonists combined to make them famous, fast. Before long all sorts of people were clamoring to be on Conrad’s “Hills,” eventually leading to the entrance of a person named Spencer Pratt.

This Dickensian figure first appeared as Heidi Montag’s suitor (and himself had the chutzpah to introduce the world to henchman best friend Brody Jenner of the Jenner-Kardashians). Then this sequence of events occurred: Montag began dating the conniving, opportunist Pratt, drama, drama, vacant blinks. Pratt may have started a rumor about there being a sex tape of Conrad and her scummy felonious boyfriend of the time. Drama, cat fights, tabloids, money, TV ratings spikes. Almost as though it had been scripted.

“The Hills” stars have laughed all the way to the bank and back. No one more so than Conrad, who was reported to have pocketed $125,000 an episode, or $2.5 million a year. Heidi and Spencer, who have evolved into a bleach-and-silicone tabloid entity called “Speidi,” were publicly thanked by John McCain for their support of his presidential campaign last year. Montag is paid something like $100,000 episode and Pratt, $65,000. Even minor characters on “The Hills” make more per episode than you ever will: “Lo” Bosworth takes home $100,000, and Audrina the same, which she stores in the space behind her eyes.

Sure, reality TV had been around for a while before Conrad moved to Los Angeles. We’d had “The Real World” and “Survivor” and all kinds of shows in which people did terrible things to each other in unnatural environments, but it was Conrad and her “Hills” clan that first really tapped into the market Paris Hilton made. In their wake would come ever more Flavors and Rocks of Love, bisexual shots with Tila Tequila, infinite Kardashians. Because Lauren Conrad proved that even fake sex tapes sell, we can have a world where Kim Kardashian is a famous person and Ray Jay is searching for his soulmate once more.

It’s almost impossible if you watch cable television these days not to be pulled into a reality series or seven. The networks seem to have realized that they’re pretty cheap to make, they sell, and people are sucking them down. It’s a lazy sort of viewership: channels like VH1, MTV, Bravo, Lifetime et al re-play their reality offerings so frequently they’re inescapable (if you turn on the TV). Before you know it, you care about what’s happening on “Tool Academy” and who Real and Chance will choose in their quest for true love. How did we get here? Lauren, of course. Always Lauren.

Surely no one has contributed more to the rise of our reality-soaked culture than Conrad and her cast of characters, having shown how truly bankable inanity can be in America, how spin-off stars can become superstars. And no one has emerged with a better sheen than Conrad herself, who finally, ironically, left the “Hills” in Cavallari’s now-desperate hands for the razzle-dazzle world of literature. Conrad’s first novel, L.A. Candy, a semi-autobiographical tale of a girl who stars in her own L.A. reality show, became a #1 New York Times bestseller, of course. Of course.

Kaila Hale-Stern lives in a self-selected corner of the internet populated by basement-dwelling anarchists and people who write stories about their favorite fictional characters. Her primary concerns are the duplicities of history, the scourge of pop culture, and not letting Mayor Bloomberg win the battle against cigarettes. She can be read here and reached here.

The End of the 00s: A Personal Chronology of the Last Decade Organized Around My Blackouts, by Rod Townsend

by The End of the 00s

Waikiki 2000

Resurface: The living room of my friend Devin’s Waikiki apartment was full of light from a noonday sky. Looking around the room, fully dressed on the couch, I saw my boyfriend on the air-mattress below. I was awash in a feeling of peace right up until I vomited a purple-red gusher.

Remembered: On a rock formation off of Diamond Head that jutted into the Pacific we sat surrounded by water and warm ocean breezes while we waited both for the New Year’s fireworks and for our ecstasy to hit. The lightweight in the group, I was feeling it already as two children approached us asking immediately, “Is the world ending?” After the fireworks and the communing with nature, the subsequent trip to the local gay bars seemed tawdrily mediocre, so I drank heavily and popped even more ecstasy.

Remembered (sort of): Janet Jackson’s entourage was immense, so whether she was at the after-hours club or not was debatable. My mind too busy dancing around lights and looking at music and weaving lovepoems to gods of another realm to be pestered by her presence.

Recounted: While sitting on the floor of the club bathroom, peeling paint off the urinal wall, my boyfriend implored me to leave, to which I replied, “Relax. It’s not a sex thing.” Later, Devin confronted me saying I was not acting like myself, so I pointed to a raver and told him, “At least I’m not playing with a fucking glowstick,” which put him at ease.

Kristianstad 2001

[Redacted]

Las Vegas 2004

Resurface: At an afterhours club in a strip-mall, it suddenly occurred to me where I heard that sound before. My new Razr had the coolest ringtone, this sort of wistful cry of nostalgia and hope, and my boyfriend, who had stayed in, was calling. Noting the 8:30 a.m. time, I wondered how I would be able to get back to The Tropicana, check out, meet Dad for breakfast, and make my 11 a.m. flight.

Remembered: A gay German couple befriended me at Krave. In honor of our new friendship, JÃ¥ger shots were purchased. Locals recommended the afterhours and upon seeing that it was merely a closed restaurant in a stripmall, my flight instinct kicked in, but something edged me inside and straight to the bar.

Remembered (sort of): My wrap-around Romeo Gigli glasses were being admired by a local girl. They ended up missing that night, despite me keeping an eye on anyone with decent glasses-as they were, in my mind, potential suspects.

Recounted: Apparently it wasn’t the first call the boyfriend had made, as I would answer and say that I couldn’t hear him over the music. He would implore me to come back to the hotel. He would remind me of breakfast plans and the flight. He would remind me that I was in Vegas because of Dad’s diagnosis of cancer.

Bonus: Dad was eventually met that morning, and he let me know months later that he could tell I’d been out all night and that he could barely hold back his laughter. My next visit, after he’d moved back home to Evansville, was the last time we’d ever see each other, and he let me know that he’d never seen me so vulnerable as he had in Vegas-not since I was a kid. And he understood. I loved that man.

Puerto Vallarta 2005

Resurface: The bedroom of my hotel room was quiet except for a phone that just wouldn’t stop ringing: “Señor. La policía llamó sobre su amigo.”

Remembered: After a very long flight, my boyfriend and I hit the town, making friends with a group of Guadalajara boys (with perfectly sculpted noses) who were very generous with the tequila shots.

Remembered (sort of): At a dance club, the boyfriend was determined to find cocaine, asking around in a sort of embarrassing manner.

Recounted: The boyfriend was offered coke, but the transaction had to occur down the street in an alley. He was robbed of all his money and cards. And clothes. Traumatized and drunk and naked, he broke into someone’s condo and passed out. He was arrested for trespassing. Somehow it was my fault.

Bonus: This sort of counts as two as it is really just an intro to a longer multi-day drug binge and blackout from which I resurfaced while riding in the back of a bulletproof SUV on the outskirts of town with a drag queen, a club promoter and a stripper who also happened to be one of the city’s biggest dealers. The next day I noted that everybody in town greeted me by name and with a smile. And I was fluent in Spanish. And, well, some things you save for a book deal.

Bronx 2006

Resurface: My plea to the driver was urgent, “Where am I and what time is it?” We were heading down Second Avenue on a Friday morning. Eventually I saw a Crunch Gym and told the driver to let me out. All I knew is that I had to be stronger. I just had to be stronger. An hour later I stared into a mirror, doing seated shoulder presses and fixating on the bruises on my arms and wrists. The dumbbells fell hard on the floor as I choked back a sob.

Remembered: My friend Chuck was tending bar in Hell’s Kitchen. That my signature drink was not its signature opaque brown and was instead translucent was less a source of concern and more proof of our friendship. While I knew the Johnny was hitting me hard, it was my plan to just switch over to simple Diet Coke, but then came a smoking hot Dominican guy and his offer to share a coke that was not Diet in the bathroom. When he suggested we get more, it seemed like a good idea so we left the bar.

Remembered (sort of): No one realized that this blue-eyed guy with a red beard understood Spanish, but in this restaurant-turned-cocaine-speakeasy, the words were clear to me. “Who is this guy?” “He’s with me.” “Don’t worry.” “One more.” “He shouldn’t be here.”

Recounted: There was no one to tell me what really happened the rest of that night, just a vague memory of being in trouble and of needing help and of my arms being held and of a gun. A look online at my checking account the next day sort of explained the situation. Eight withdrawals, all within minutes of each other added up to a half-month’s pay.

Bonus: When I arrived home, my boyfriend (the same one that had been bailed out months before) didn’t believe my story at first until I emotionally collapsed. Even then, his reaction would measure into our breakup a month later.

Cherry Grove 2007

Resurface: In my nightmare I was screaming in pain. It was so intense that it woke me, and soon the screams went from inside my head to fill my room and soon my share-house. The housemate with whom I shared a bed (not because we were roommates, but because we were fucking) woke with a jolt and after seeing the blood-covered rags covering my left foot joined me in screaming. The pain was unrelenting, so we rushed to the Cherry Grove Doctor’s House, where my continued screams and my housemate’s knocking woke the doctor, who agreed to open the clinic early to address my wound.

Remembered: While out for drinks, the housemate and I had befriended some very fun lesbians. We brought them back to the house, where more drinks were poured and weed was smoked and the hot tub became a destination for a late night skinny dip by the group.

Remembered (sort of): At some point it was apparent that one of the lesbians was masturbating the housemate that I was fucking. (If there is a term for the “person that has a boyfriend that never comes to Fire Island, but with whom you’ve been having amazing sex for a month”, please substitute it here.) While the relationship with the housemate was completely open, jealousy apparently was expressed.

Recounted: After huffily exiting the tub and stomping through the garden, I wrapped a towel around my waist and went for a walk to calm my temper (and/or find some quick random sex). On returning to the house, something (very possibly a wrought iron chicken doorstop) was on the receiving end of a kick from me, resulting in a massive gash to my big toe. The lesbians had left, and the housemate I was fucking had help in trying to treat me from a houseguest. A Colombian, he insisted on the curative and pain-relieving power of coffee grounds, which he packed into the wound and wrapped it. The next morning the doctor, a calm, patient woman from Long Island, advised me that this was a terrible, horrible, just bad thing to do. While she offered a prescription of Percocet (despite my insistence on Oxycontin), filling the scrip would require a trip to shore, so her opinion of cocaine as a painkiller was requested. She found it contraindicative to the healing of the three stitches in my toe, but it was July Fourth. Hours later, with me in my wheelchair and the housemate I was fucking, who was dressed as dominatrix nurse, we were on the ferry that would soon depart for The Pines.

Fire Island Pines 2008

Resurface: Hurricane Hanna was stirring up wind and rain outside and the smell of bacon and coffee wafted into Tommy’s room. As I became more awake I sort of stared at the ceiling a bit, smiling about finally being with this guy with whom I’d had a long and mutually unrequited crush. Finally I turned to look at him and realized that this was not Tommy’s room and this was not Tommy. It was Ricardo.

Remembered: Tommy emailed me when I was approaching the end of my six-year relationship. As I wasn’t a cheater, I didn’t reply to his message with much more than a polite “Thank you for your kind words.” One summer later, we met during my distraction with the housemate I was fucking. He came up to me at High Tea and said in a southern drawl, “You’re Rod. You have a blog, and I think you’re sexy as hell.” I immediately recognized the hot former University of Alabama football player with twinkling blue eyes from the previous year’s email.

Remembered (sort of): Another year later we randomly met up again, strangely enough at High Tea. Unencumbered with any significant other, this time I went for it. We immediately hit it off over multiple planter’s punches and eventually went back in the rain to his place to hit the hot tub.

Recounted: After some good morning pleasantries and a blowjob, I was ready to go home, which was easy, since Ricardo was my island neighbor. Looking around, I asked for my clothes. “You weren’t wearing any when you got here.” While I found his reply funny, my clothes were needed to go home. “No, really. I was in here talking to Brian, and you walked in here naked, pointed at me and said, ‘We’re fucking.’” After borrowing some clothes (which looked ridiculous on me, as Ricardo was six-four), I showed up at my own home-just in time to see the rest of my housemates gathered for breakfast. Sitting next to one of my best friends, I whispered a nervous confession: “Vito. I don’t know where my clothes or my phone or my wallet are. I think I was at a house on Fisherman’s.” Vito would later walk with me from house to house, asking for Tommy. As it would turn out, Tommy didn’t hear us knocking, but had sent me another email with his exact address. His memory held no details either.

New York 2008

Remembered: Standing in Corey’s DJ booth at Aspen, my index finger swinging in front of me at the swirling gay mass: “I’m not dealing with all that right now, Corey.” Next to me stood Steve and Ruggero, who were very lovey-dovey which was confusing as Steve was boyfriend to Tex, not Ruggero. Anyway, Steve was confused too by my wallflowering and asked what was up. “Some twink just blew me in the bathroom, and after, he like, said my name. As in he knows me. So I’m hiding out with y’all for a while.” Suddenly there was another caffeine-infused tequila drink in my hand, awful and awfully strong, but they were the sponsor of this Ali Forney Center “Very Mary Christmas” fundraiser, so it was free and so it went down the hatch.

Remembered (sort of): My black canvas Muji bag had to have been stolen, or at least that was what I was sure of while I was searching through the trash cans of Eighth Avenue Chelsea. Someone had totally jacked my bag and with a glassy-eyed determination I reached into yet another can, right across from the Rawhide. Surely they rifled through it and took what they wanted and then tossed the bag so as to not have to lug around the evidence. It was the last can I rifled through after my hand plopped into warm vomit.

Recounted: When my phone finally found its charger (freaking iPhone) the texts from the night before were mostly mumbo jumbo, but the three a.m. “Need help. Bg stol” to Corey needed to be addressed with a quick call that became not-so-quick as he filled in a memory purge. Seeking to quell the booze, I’d dragged him to secure a twenty-piece McNugget which I devoured as we walked to Barracuda. “Who’s Ricardo?,” he asked. My drunken mouth had apparently chastised Corey for having let me fuck him bareback last summer, and I’d informed him of the anxiety and HIV test that followed. (Corey, standing at least eight inches shorter, looks nothing like Ricardo. And we’ve never fucked.)

Resurface: Footsteps coming down the stairwell in which I was sleeping woke me. Just outside my own apartment, I reached for my keys and put the right one in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. My door had been reported as warped previously and had been a source of annoyance for weeks previous. Measure had to be taken as to which would be the greater sin: waking the super at 6 a.m. reeking of booze and still quite drunk or standing in the hallway and seeing my neighbors while in that state. As I rang the super’s bell, emotions built up. Desperation swelled as the wait for an answer continue. Guilt exasperated my condition to a point that when he opened the door bleary-eyed, I blubbered out, “John, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I… It’s just that my door won’t open and I’ve been waiting on the stairs for hours and I was robbed. They took my fucking bag. I’m tired and I’m drunk. I’m just exhausted, John. I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore.”

New York 2009

[Redacted]

Rod Townsend wants to do a memoir organized around his blackouts, including those redacted here-and more! He also has a new website debuting in early 2010 which will change your life.

by The End of the 00s

by The End of the 00s

Blanca, a 50-something nursing assistant, was sitting across from me at the nurses’ station at the Intensive Care Unit inside of a Tenet Healthcare Corporation-owned hospital in downtown Los Angeles. It was midnight, and this was 2004. Blanca’s patients were gurgling, asleep or comatose. I was there talking to Blanca on behalf of workers at Kaiser, who were bargaining away benefits because Tenet, the for-profit, non-union hospital chain was driving down wages in the county. The argument was that every one would be better off, Blanca and Kaiser workers, if they were all in one union.

During advanced pneumonia the lungs fill with fluid so there’s a wet gurgling sound emitted during exhalation. The respirators made a swoosh-pffft noise as they breathed for people who can’t. Every thirty minutes or so there’d also be a moan; some sort of agonized cry. If the moan lasted for more than 30 seconds, its owner would be visited.

Blanca made $13.25 an hour after 12 years of being a nursing assistant. Her main issue was pension. She wanted to retire in ten years. Tenet offered no such deal. Blanca eventually became a leader in her department. She signed up her co-workers on a petition to organize, proudly wore her “union: yes” button, and put her face on a flyer with a pro-union quote. The risk of going public in support of a union in a hospital of 700 hundred employees when you’re an immigrant whose job it is to wipe asses from 7pm to 7am should be self-evident.

The union won the election a month later by a narrow margin. Blanca and her co-workers got a solid contract, complete with 401k plans and 14% percent wage hike.

Four years later, Blanca and her co-workers would be picketing outside my office at the union’s headquarters in Washington D.C.

It was an extremely ugly fight. It went on for more than a year. It was essentially was a war over who had jurisdiction to organize sectors of the healthcare market, between the local union chapter and the international union. It was turf war cloaked in the language of ideology, union democracy, progressive organizing and political purity. Any one with the smallest sense of organizational acumen could see it for what it was: a naked power struggle between two union bosses that employed the rank and file to carry out their competing agendas.

So, there’s Blanca’s and other union members holding picket signs, chanting ‘SHAME ON YOU’ at anyone who crossed the picket line. I crossed without a second thought. By 2008 I shrugged at any symbolism that act held; I was completely disillusioned and numb and just wanted to get to my WiFi connection.

* * *

My disillusionment was not inevitable. It’s not a story about a boundless idealism that could only rot when exposed to the mendacity of ‘real politics.’ Actually I’m a pragmatist to my core: I was well aware that I was part of an imperfect institution that was trying to solve a very big problem. 91% of the American workforce did not have the right to collectively bargain their wages, job security or retirement. My belief was that I could have a fulfilling career by trying to fix this problem. I knew that any bureaucracy or institution would be clogged with deadwood, indolence and dysfunction. But I also knew there those who were capable of transformational leadership.

The problem was that most of the decision makers-whose salaries were funded by the 1.2 million dues-paying members-were made up of baby boomers. And today, I can tell you that I will never work for an institution that is lead by that generation, never again.

* * *

Those who make a career of professional do-gooding, do so because it fulfills some psychological need; altruism, guilt, vanity, ego. Obviously, there is no problem with that. Whatever motivates someone to get into public service, or any profession, is immaterial when compared to their accomplishments.

But the psychological needs of the Boomer generation are not something I can suffer.
And suffering is a big part of it. Their ideological hangups are infecting every aspect of life. As they age, they are only getting worse.

Politically, their numbers and self-regard are basically the reason why our ‘idealistic’ generation is disenfranchised by the political process. The left has ceased to be an agent of social change for the past forty years; the right is cannibalizing itself. The political battles between the two have, as the battle has gone on, become symbolic, rather than being about actual, tangible benefits for real-life people.

This is not a fight worth my time. I don’t plan to squeeze any humans from my womb. What problems and solutions exists now are the only ones I will ever know.

Culturally, I find the Boomers tedious and unhelpful. Their confused notions about counterculture have infected our generation. The kind of water bottles you buy, car you drive, fair trade coffee you slurp: can this serve as some kind of political action? This idea is laughable. It gives the false illusion of social engagement. It leads us to the conclusion that you fight the structural problems of capitalism by buying non-mainstream things: like leggings or a Prius! But capitalism loves counterculture. It thrives on it! Just flip on your TV at 3 a.m. and watch Peter Fonda hawk the TIME LIFE GOLDEN 60S music collection!

Economically, the Boomers have devastated the country. We inherited debt, a shredded safety net; pensions went the way of the horse and buggy; largely, no one born after 1982 will ever have a full-time job. I don’t know what the new economic model is. We are a waning empire that has seen unparalleled progress and expansion in the modern era. That’s unraveled.

This was the same critique that was leveled at the stultifying Eisenhower generation by the Boomers. Maybe my disappointment is just a product of being young. Or maybe the Boomers were right then and they are wrong now.

* * *

Mine is, I suppose, a transitional generation. Things may get worse; they may get better. I don’t have any interest in butting against the structures of the previous generation any longer.

My father, Marc, told me a story about his anarcho-syndicalist reading group in college. Their leader was Farhar, a British-educated Iranian who loved to wear silk scarves and crushed velvet blazers. He was from money, his speeches were entrancing, and he loved Marx. One day my dad and his dirty finger-nailed crew asked Farhar why he traipsed around campus dressed like a Victorian aristocrat? Why, if he believed in the power of the proletariat, did he live his life like an elite? Farhar expelled a plume of cigarette smoke and said, “Marc, just because I know the workers will take over the means of production doesn’t mean I have to join them.”

Best of luck, tweens.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper works for herself now.

by The End of the 00s

2000: Read Atlas Shrugged; was insufferable.

2001: Crafted mopey journal entries; was insufferable.

2002: Derided third wave feminism in college newspaper editorial; was insufferable.

2003: Lay awake contemplating Being and Time; was insufferable.

2004: Wrote several “ask me any 5 questions and I’ll answer them!” MySpace bulletins; was insufferable.

2005: Used the word “postmodern” with no regard for context; was insufferable.

2006: Discovered blogging; was (really) insufferable.

2007: Broken heart; was insufferable.

2008: Fell in love; was insufferable.

2009: Thought about and wrote this list;

Regina Nigro is a writer and editor. She probably disagrees with that thing you just said.

by The End of the 00s

Needless to say, the most famous date of the 00s was a terrible day for lots of reasons. The death and destruction, the fear, the realization that people hated Americans enough to kill themselves in order to kill us too. Looking back, one of the terrible things that followed that terrible day felt, at the time, like the most comforting thing-the only comforting thing, really, about it at all. It was the great respect and affection I felt for Rudy Giuliani.

That day, while-well, you know what happened-and while the United States government was exposing itself as confused and incompetent and of no help at all, the mayor of the city where I lived came on TV and made feel better. I watched him on the screen-this man who I thought was a closed-minded, freedom-squelching, paternalistic bully of a politician-and I thought, thank you, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, racist despot, thank you.

Worst of all, it was just that paternalism that I was thankful for. Someone, on this frighteningly chaotic day, was taking control. Calm, strong control. And that’s what I wanted. Not knowing what was going on, not knowing what to do, I wanted someone to tell me what was going on, and to tell me what to do. While so many other people on the TV that day spoke in grave tones and struggled to project an air of authority, the mayor spoke plainly and honestly, and did project an air of authority. He stood up.

This is not fun to think about. It gives me a clearer understanding than I would probably want to have of how a public could fall under the rule of fascism. What if, in the ensuing days, planes had kept flying into skyscrapers? What if terrorists had kept blowing stuff up? How quickly would we have, would I have, lined up and, I don’t know, registered for an ID card, put on a uniform, submitted to retina scan? I’d like to think “not immediately”? But I don’t really know.

This is one of the very grimmest things about remembering that grim, grim day. For the rest of my life, I think, whenever I see Rudy Giuliani’s face on the television or in a magazine or wherever, along with all the anger and disgust and other appropriately negative emotions, I will remember again, and feel a sense of gratitude. And that sucks.