That last post—it had some promise before I came back at 3 am and hacked away at it like a tired butcher. But for now, it's enough. I'll look at it in the morning. Hope it's better than I think it is.

But the important thing is—I wrote. My promise to myself, my 30-day challenge, these are the sort of nights that make or break you. Come back at 3 am, want to pass out, want to curl up—but no, you write. And it's no good. And you still get something out. And you still get your thousand words. And you're doing it.

Intimacy

Around corners, everyone is fucking. There is sucking in the room above my head, and in the bathroom stall quiet kisses leak away. I think there is an worldwide radio station—90.1 FUCKFM, say—where everyone learns about places for, and who is interested in, fucking. Except I am tuned into 99.9 LAMEFM. I am Cold Showers in the Morning with DJ Lucas. I am your humble radio host.

My dear friend and I share with each other our sexual exploits. Last night I was talking to her on the phone and she was sharing with me a story that happened a few nights ago, where she straightforwardly asked a very attractive guitarist if he wanted to go home with her. And they did.

And I’m back on LAMEFM and I wonder, How am I not a part of this? And how am I missing out? What does everyone in the world know that I don’t?

Even now my brain turns, working through my life and wondering about myself. Count them: I have had sex with six women in a span of five years—about one sexual partner per year. Okay. My friend is going on eight per year—and damn. And I think about this.

It’s not the number I have a problem with—because it’s not a conquest. I am not interested in conquest. If you ever find yourself at an impasse and the solution you come up with is, Sleep with more people, then the question is wrong, or the answer is wrong, or both—but nothing is ever solved by sleeping with more people.

No, I’m interested in intimacy. I’m interested in real connection. I’m interested in being with a woman and being acutely and fully aware of what is happening in that moment, right then—intense and sensual and good. 

My friend goes to a small liberal arts college, where people sprout up through the grass and say hi to each other. I go to Stanford, where life is bleached down. Where’s the funk? And where are the outlaws? And where are the tattooed women and the writers and the artists and the people with space in their mind for looking up at the night sky and wondering—Does the moon look bigger here? And how close is the sky? 

Nope, not here. At least—these people are rare and take time to find, just as rare things do. Here’s how it happens—in Austin you meet a woman with her dog at the park and strike up a conversation because you both like Rottweilers. That woman mentions an art show she’s going to that night and invites you. You go, have a wonderful night of paintings and sculpture and wine, then tag along to a party she’s going to. At the party you meet ten new people who are your people. Doesn’t matter what happens the rest of the night—you could go home and pass out no problem. Thing is, you’ve got a dozen new friends and a wonderful night in your back pocket and wasn’t that easy? And wasn’t that nice?

In Austin, this happens. In Portland, too, and New Orleans and New York City—all the places I’ve spent time in have that sizzle of possibility hovering around my ears at all times. The buzz of spontaneity wraps around every moment like a cat around ankles.

Here at Stanford, it’s grey. There’s no buzz. Most people here are on their track and have no interest in looking up to check for full moons, or running their hands through the wheat grass outside Arrillaga Dining, or whistling back at the birds (am I the only one who does this?). And God, it’s stifling. And God, it’s enough to make a man doubt himself.

See, in Austin or Portland or wherever—you know, places where the whole mainstream, sterile thing is the minority and not the majority—there are women who are attracted to me. Physically, sure, but intellectually and emotionally attracted, too. Here—are you kidding? My kind doesn’t fly here. No one’s interested in bald men. No one’s interested in a man with an earring, who writes fiction, who likes watching good movies and also shitty movies, who likes reading books before bed because he likes reading books and not because he has assigned reading. No one’s interested in a man who’d rather paint houses and write novels than write code for a startup company. And that’s it. And that’s the truth. And really—that’s it.

The problem—it’s spring quarter of senior year. Time to check out. Time for the next big ride. Because I have started discovering some good, honest, fun, artistic people lately. They do exist. They’re just so rare, so hard to find, it’s taken me four years to do it, and now I’m so tired and so ready to go that I think—What’s the use? And it’s a shame. Because I really have met some great people the last couple weeks. But we all feel it—our lives are about to twist away from each other and we’ll probably never meet again. And it fills me with sadness, and it fills me with regret, and why the hell hadn’t I found these people earlier?

The nice realization is that there hasn’t been some terrible flaw in my character that was keeping me from making connections with people. Not that I ever believed that—it’s just, after four years of searching for friendships and connections in the wrong places and having no luck, I started to wonder about myself. But no more.

And this isn’t about sex, either. When my friend told me about her sexual exploits the other night I felt weird. I thought I was jealous because I wasn’t going out to parties and hooking up with women and enjoying being single. And I thought I felt bad about myself because I was completely behind on the numbers game. But it's neither of those things. Now don’t get me wrong—I want sex. But more than that, I want intimacy. And I also don’t want a committed relationship. And that’s what wavelength I’m on. And I know there are a lot of women on that same wavelength—just most of them don’t go to Stanford.

Intimacy is the thing. Slick backs. A fistful of sheets. Reaching out and grabbing a hand, an anchor. Out of breath because it means something and you’re in it. That’s what I want. And more than that—connection. Friendships that mean something, people that mean something. People tuned to my radio station. You’re out there, and I’m coming for you, and it will be like a happy reunion with a person you could swear you’ve always known.

Who's Nuclear?

We read an article in my feminist and queer theory class that used the phrase “designer baby” and I imagined a white butter whip of a baby with a D&G medallion hanging from his creamy neck. And sunglasses, ones that would shade his entire face.

This is not what the author meant.

The author meant babies with good and then better and then best genes. Rich people now can shop for good sperm and good eggs. It’s kind of like the film Gattaca, except it’s very real for those with money. You can poke around online and look at your donor’s profiles. Take Ryan: a blonde, well-built, handsome, Ivy League graduate, with no history of genetic disease and strong cheekbones. Now pair his sperm with the egg of a young brunette woman just out of college—Rachel, let’s say—and Rachel is an up-and-coming artist who needed the $20,000 for studio space and art time, who is quirky and has a hawk’s eyesight, who is dextrous and can play Chopin, and who comes from good, Polish stock. Now take that egg and that sperm and put it in the womb of a woman we’ll call Lucille, who lives on the East side of I-35 and takes the bus to her job at the Vick’s Vapor Rub canning plant. Her perfume can never quite cover the menthol that wraps her skin.

Nine months later Lucille gives birth to a baby boy at Seton medical center and Lucille never sees the kid, just goes back to her job canning Vick’s, and a family is made happy. Did I mention the parents? Barbara, early forties, lawyer, with a big mouth and small teeth and sterile since forever. Then Bob, with nervous fingers and a job writing scripts for iPhone games about high school drama.

The kid they name Rigel, God knows why. It’s the name of a star and it’s kind of like Rachel and kind of like Ryan but not too like them, because Rigel’s their own, of course. And Rigel has five parents. And Rigel is a designer baby.

So that’s the question—who are Rigel’s parents? Certainly his biological parents are Rachel and Ryan, though maybe we should add Lucille to the mix because she did give birth, after all. Or was she just a glorified test tube? Just a warm womb with blood and nourishment. A pre-babysitter? Well, 2 1/2 parents let’s say.

Then Barbara and Bob are Rigel’s adopted parents, of course. But are they really? They’ve known about Rigel before Rachel and Ryan ever did. And maybe, probably, Rachel and Ryan never knew about Rigel.

So who the hell are this kid’s parents? If this class has taught me anything it’s that—it’s complicated. I have this image in my head of a silhouette dad and a silhouette mom and a silhouette kid with a baseball cap and they are called the Nuclear Family. Father, Mother, child—that’s close, that’s nuclear. Like a nucleus. Tight, compact, made of just a few discernible parts. But who’s family is like that anymore?

My mom died when I was 12, and my dad partnered with another woman when I was 14. Now, 22, I’ve almost spent half my life with this new woman with whom I am very close, and whom I would even call a second mother. So who’s my mother? What happens when I turn 25, and I’ve spent more time being raised by my stepmom than my real, biological mom? Is she my mom? What about when I’m 40, when my biological mom is nothing but a long faded memory—when she’s from a different life altogether?

The point is—nuclear families are rare these days. Divorced parents, adopted parents, two fathers, two mothers, designer babies, international adoption (paging Angelina and Brad)—who’s nuclear? And does my image of the silhouette family even make sense anymore? I have three parents, some have four, some have more than that.

And wouldn’t it be weird if a guy’s sperm ever became a commodity? Take our buddy Brad Pitt—everyone wants to have Brad’s baby. I know this because I have heard many women say, “I want to have his baby.” What if his sperm was available for purchase? There would be a lot of Brad babies, and there would be half-siblings spread throughout the globe—and then who’s family?

And then who’s nuclear?

30-Day Challenge

I'm nervous. Today is the first day of my self-imposed 30-day challenge. I'm going to write 1,000 words per day, five days a week, for a month.

I've done it before. I've done more, actually, during the National Novel Writing Month two Novembers ago. Then, I wrote 1,111 words seven days a week for six weeks. So it's not unreasonable.

Thing is—I'm nervous. Why? There's a lot behind this. I wrote before about taking my shot. I'm doing it. I've decided to hell with those copywriting jobs—I'm going to focus all my energy on my writing and take a real shot at it, and if I have to wait tables or bartend or work a ski lift, that's what I'm going to do.

What's scary is I'm putting my writing on the line. I've been sitting in a paddle boat with my feed in the water, butted up against the shore. Finally I'm picking my feet up, rolling back—I'm in the boat. And off it goes.

That's what it is—there's no one forcing me to do this. There's no assignment. It's just me making a deal with myself and a deal with the page, saying, Here's where my writing begins in earnest. Here's where the urgency begins. Because the sooner I can get good enough and put out enough work to make a living, the sooner I'm not a waiter.

Damn. How's that for motivation?

I don't know what I'll write about. I liked "Vials of Juliet"—that was great fun to write, it's nice and tight, and I think I'd do well to have more short shorts like that. Build myself up to bigger things.

It's just scary. Only me and the page now. Nothing outside of that. It's a new intimacy. A new kind of closeness. And damn it's quiet here.

A quick thought:

There's no way in hell I'm wasting this life.

In my What The Hell Do I Do When I Graduate class (Thinking Like a Working Writer), we've had a handful of people come in and talk about their jobs. Electronic Arts, The Wall Street Journal, Google, the non-profit flavor of the day. And I got to thinking—I refuse.

Graduation—I'm six weeks out. Everyone around me is flipped. What am I going to do? Will Facebook hire me? I'll work for two years to pad my resumé then I'll really start living.

And to me that's no way to live. And to me it sounds like poison. And I refuse to do it.

The more I heard about writing filler articles for The Wall Street Journal, writing copy for startups, padding and waiting and curbing, the more I think—don't you get it? We have One Shot at this thing called life. Only one. And am I going to wake up when I'm eighty and say, I've had a decent run, it's been a pretty good life, or am I going to say with deep laugh lines in my face and roughed-up hands and a gimp leg—What a rush. 


I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. But if that means waiting tables, Fine! If that means working on a farm, Good! The one thing I refuse to compromise is my writing time. Because that's my thing, that's what makes me happy, and I want to be an author, and I want to make a living off my writing, and all else is waste.