Cinemorphosis

Tag: fiction

  • False Prophets with Great Abs

    False Prophets with Great Abs

    You remembered the first episode of I Dream of Jeannie. Major Tony Nelson—square-jawed astronaut, man of science—crash-landed on a remote island after his space capsule, Stardust One, veered off course. There, buried in the sand like a cursed treasure, he found a mysterious bottle. And then—whoosh—a plume of bluish vapor, and out popped Jeannie: blonde, barefoot, bewitching, and hell-bent on fulfilling his every wish. Tony blinked. Maybe it was a hallucination. Maybe his oxygen-deprived brain was conjuring fantasies. Whatever the case, he wasn’t buying it. He was trained to distrust magical thinking, and Jeannie, glittering and obedient, was the definition of a dangerous shortcut.

    You, on the other hand, were no Tony Nelson. You were a teenage Olympic weightlifter and amateur bodybuilder, sprawled out in your bedroom flipping through a muscle magazine, fully hypnotized by the promise of the next miracle breakthrough. You had just finished an article on “progressive resistance training”—a phrase that gave you a warm little shiver of purpose. You divided the world into two kinds of people: those who were progressing and those who were stagnating in mediocrity. You were dead-set on being in the first camp.

    The article ended, but the real magic was in the ads: potions, powders, pulleys, and contraptions promising titanic biceps, superhuman abs, and the sculpted torso of a Greek statue. One ad hit you right in the hypothalamus—the Bullworker. A three-foot rod of steel and plastic, with green-handled grips and bowstring cables. It looked like a cross between a medieval torture device and a Jedi weapon. A bodybuilder in the ad flexed beside it, veins like roadmaps and pecs like dinner plates. It cost forty-five bucks—a king’s ransom. You had to have it.

    So you marched into the living room where your dad was nursing a beer and watching football. You handed him the ad.

    “What do you think?”

    Your dad—a flinty ex-infantryman with a buzz cut, a jaw like a chisel, and a fading “MICHAEL” tattoo on his biceps—glanced at the page like it was a bar tab he didn’t remember running up. “You want muscles?” he said. “Pull weeds. Mow the lawn. Clean gutters. Chop wood.”

    “Dad, I’m serious. This would supplement my real workouts.”

    He looked again, then sighed. “It’s junk. Slick marketing. But if you want to waste your allowance, it’s your choice.”

    You told him you were short on cash.

    “Then save up. Make sacrifices. And do your research. If you dig a little deeper, I bet you’ll want it less.”

    “Why?”

    “Haven’t you heard of Sturgeon’s Law?”

    “No.”

    “Ninety-nine percent of everything is bullshit. That includes this gadget. Remember that martial arts program you ordered? Twenty bucks for a pamphlet with stick figures doing karate poses. Bullshit. Due diligence, son—that’s your shield.”

    “What’s due diligence?”

    “Thorough investigation. Weighing the pros and cons. Kicking the tires before you buy the clunker. Most things don’t survive scrutiny. Always be quick to save your money and slow to spend it. You got that?”

    “Yes, Dad.”

    Not exactly in the mood for football after that, you trudged back to your room and cracked open another muscle magazine, drinking in the endless parade of promises. “Gain more muscle than you ever dreamed of,” one ad proclaimed.

    And Jeannie was back. Not in her bottle—she was in your brain now. She was the fantasy of every easy answer, every too-good-to-be-true claim. The allure of Jeannie wasn’t just her beauty or her servility—it was her offer of instant gratification, with no price tag except your dignity.

    That was the whole premise of the show: Tony Nelson didn’t trust Jeannie because he was smart enough to know that panaceas always come with fine print. But you weren’t that smart yet. You still believed—just a little—that this or that device, powder, or program might turn you into a demigod.

    You wanted your gains. 

    The Bullworker failed you–but it wasn’t just a piece of overpriced cable-tension nonsense. It was a monument to your teenage fantasy: that somewhere, somehow, a portable contraption could carve you into Hercules without the burden of sweat, setbacks, or iron plates. The device itself was a dud—a clunky plastic rod with big promises and no payoff—but the idea of the Bullworker had teeth. A chiseled physique, ready to go, no gym required? It was the dream distilled. What you got instead was a hard truth: even when an idea crashes and burns in practice, some illusions are simply too seductive to abandon.

  • Charlie the Frog at the Temple of Gains

    Charlie the Frog at the Temple of Gains

    By the time you hit fourteen, your sacred sanctuary wasn’t some air-conditioned suburban rec center with eucalyptus towels and Wi-Fi. No, your Mecca was Walt’s Gym in Hayward, California—a rusting cathedral of iron that began life as a chicken coop in the 1950s and never quite shook the poultry vibe. This was not a gym—it was a festering biome of bacteria and dreams, a living organism teeming with unclassified fungi, incurable athlete’s foot, and possibly several sentient strains of black mold. Members spoke of a frog named Charlie who allegedly roosted in the shower stalls—a fat, warty mascot celebrated by the resident pro wrestlers. You never saw Charlie, but you believed. In a place like this, hallucinations could be considered part of the membership plan.

    The locker room? It doubled as a noir film set. Every day, you’d see some bankrupt divorcé in a velour tracksuit and a ship-anchor gold chain, chained to the payphone like it was his last lifeline, ranting to his lawyer about alimony, DUIs, or some tragic time-share dispute in Reno. You listened in. How could you not?

    Out back was a pool—or what used to be a pool. Now it was a soup of moss, dead rats, and unspeakable broth. Walt himself, the gym’s proprietor and part-time pest undertaker, would emerge every so often with a pool skimmer, fish out some bloated rodent corpse, and hold it aloft like it was Simba on Pride Rock. The regulars would cheer. Walt would bow. Then he’d fling the cadaver into the dumpster like he was doing Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.

    Inside, the circus only expanded. You had Wally—an ancient gym relic who claimed to be the anatomical model for some early caveman medical scroll. He’d been there since Eisenhower, possibly since the Carboniferous Period. Wally was a fixture. He corrected your form whether you asked or not. He’d bench the bar, monologue about arthritis, and tell sweeping tales of deadbeat cousins, glamorous ex-lovers, and Eisenhower’s America. His workouts lasted longer than most wars. And when he was done, he’d vanish into the sauna, then reemerge drenched in talcum powder like a ghost summoned by a seance in a health spa. You often thought a foghorn would erupt every time he crossed your field of vision.

    The soundtrack of this chaos? The gym’s radio had a three-song memory: Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” The Eagles’ “New Kid in Town,” and Norman Connors’ “You Are My Starship.” These songs looped like some cosmic punishment for crimes you hadn’t yet committed. Yet somehow, they became the anthem of your adolescence.

    And you were the perfect age—old enough to build biceps, too young to pay taxes. You didn’t know what a mortgage was, but you knew how to crank out supersets. While grown men wept about tuition and liver spots, you were curling barbells and escaping into bliss. The gym wasn’t just a place—it was your church, your escape hatch, your sweaty Shangri-La.

    As Arnold wrote in The Education of a Bodybuilder, the gym was where it all clicked. You felt it too—that moment of transcendence, when iron became religion and sweat became baptism. For you, that epiphany happened in the rot-ridden, bacteria-flecked walls of Walt’s Gym, 1976 edition. A paradise of tetanus and testosterone. A perfect hellhole. The best place on Earth.

  • Curling Ashtrays and Other Signs You’re Destined for Muscle Madness

    Curling Ashtrays and Other Signs You’re Destined for Muscle Madness

    Long before you were twelve and dominating Olympic lifts, before you sculpted yourself into a fourteen-year-old bodybuilder, the signs were there—you were already bitten by the iron bug. Every fiber of your being was obsessed with getting huge. You found strange inspiration in the unlikeliest of places: television commercials for dog food. Yes, dog food. Those ads were less about pets and more about performance enhancement in your impressionable, muscle-hungry brain.

    Gaines-Burgers looked like prime cuts straight from Mount Olympus. Gravy Train’s magical transformation from dry nuggets to savory stew made your jaw drop. If this stuff could pump a German Shepherd into a jacked beast, what was stopping you from sampling the ambrosia yourself?

    So you did what any logic-defying, delusional muscle aspirant would do: you marched up to your dad and declared—with all the conviction of a beagle spotting a squirrel—that you wanted to become a dog. Not metaphorically. Literally. That way, you could indulge in the canine cuisine of champions. Your father’s face went on a journey: confusion, horror, resignation. He’d seen a lot, but this—this was a new low.

    In a desperate act of culinary intervention, he took you to a local bistro and ordered you a French Dip with au jus, hoping that real food might reroute your deranged protein fantasies. The sandwich arrived, dripping in savory decadence. Your dad leaned in, eyebrows raised, voice tense with hope: “So, how do you like your French Dip?”

    You took a bite. Heaven. Your taste buds erupted like fireworks. And then—of course—you growled, dropped to all fours, and scratched at an imaginary flea with your hind leg, fully committing to the bit. Patrons stared. Your dad’s face turned a shade of red that Sherwin-Williams has yet to name. He looked like a man reevaluating every life decision he’d ever made.

    But you didn’t stop there. No, your devotion to hypertrophy was a full-spectrum obsession. You judged cereals by their muscle-building mascots. Quisp and Quake tasted the same, but you knew who the real hero was: Quake, the barrel-chested, pickaxe-wielding coal miner with a neck like a bridge cable. Quisp? A pencil-neck Martian who probably couldn’t curl a paperclip.

    So when those two faced off in the ultimate cereal showdown, you pledged allegiance to Team Quake. Those gear-shaped nuggets were more than breakfast—they were barbell fuel. Quisp’s saucer-shaped flakes turned to mush in milk faster than your patience at a shopping mall. Quake stood firm, stoic in the milky battlefield of your bowl.

    But then, disaster. America chose the Martian. Quake vanished. It wasn’t just a marketing decision—it was a betrayal. When Quake was discontinued, a part of your soul died. The cereal aisle became a graveyard of broken promises. Eating Quisp felt like betrayal. Worse: it felt like surrender. You imagined Quake crying out from some cereal Valhalla, mourned like a fallen hero.

    Still, the signs of your bodybuilding destiny didn’t end with cereal or dog food. They were everywhere. In your living room sat a ceramic ashtray the size of a manhole cover—your parents’ nicotine shrine. During The Incredible Hulk cartoons, you’d curl that ashtray like you were training for the Strongest Kid on Earth competition. It was your first dumbbell, your sacred relic of strength.

    Family vacations? Gymless wastelands. But you adapted. You curled suitcases, hoisted skillets, deadlifted detergent bottles, and pressed soup cans with religious fervor. You squatted potato sacks and benched dictionaries. Hotel staff stared. Your family sighed. You called it training.

    Eventually, you found a real gym. Barbells. Plates. Chalk. Grunts. It was everything you dreamed of. Your transformation from kitchen utensil lifter to iron disciple was complete. You weren’t just a bodybuilder in the making—you were a walking comic book origin story, forged in dog food commercials, French Dip delusions, and cereal-fueled vengeance.

  • Hulk Couture: The Fashion Crimes of a Musclebound Child

    Hulk Couture: The Fashion Crimes of a Musclebound Child

    Whether you admit it or not, a part of you still wants to Hulk out like a fever-dream escapee from a 1970s television set. Watching the gentle, tortured soul of Bill Bixby morph into Lou Ferrigno’s snarling green colossus wasn’t just entertainment—it was therapy without the deductible. You didn’t want to trudge through life as a tightly wound ball of quiet despair. No, you wanted to erupt, transcend, and become an unstoppable force against loud chewers, bullies, and the guy curling in the squat rack.

    As a budding bodybuilder, you didn’t need gamma rays—just iron. And lots of it. Your transformation wasn’t just about building muscle; it was a sartorial revolution. You hacked off your sweatshirt sleeves, butchered the legs of your sweatpants, and stomped through the gym like a deranged fashion anarchist. You weren’t lifting weights—you were channeling rage into reps, morphing into a DIY Hulk with every guttural breath and dripping bead of sweat.

    But your Hulk obsession started long before puberty. You were a pint-sized fanatic, glued to the 1960s cartoon version of the green juggernaut. What captivated you most was the metamorphosis: how Bruce Banner’s clothes tore away, leaving only ragged dignity and raw power. So one fateful Saturday morning, with a level of creative genius only a six-year-old could summon, you took a brand-new pair of slacks from Mayberry’s and turned them into Hulk couture—frayed, slashed, and ruined. Then you stomped into your parents’ bedroom flexing, growling, “HULK SMASH!” Lucky for you, your mother’s laughter outweighed her rage.

    This was your first known case of Ferrigno Fever: the compulsive need to emulate Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk physique and fashion sense, typically culminating in destroyed clothing and inflated delusions of grandeur.

    As a teenager, your obsession graduated to the live-action Incredible Hulk. After the chaos subsided and Ferrigno’s beast melted back into Bixby’s sorrowful wanderer, you were left with “The Lonely Man Theme”—Joe Harnell’s melancholic piano elegy—as your personal anthem. It became the soundtrack to your self-pity and your deeply misguided belief that the world had wronged you by not immediately recognizing your divine potential.

    You weren’t just lifting at the gym; you were sculpting a mythic figure, trapped in a fluorescent-lit purgatory of men who looked like overripe tomatoes with toothpick limbs. They didn’t understand. They didn’t see the epic. But you did. You were a tragic hero, a lone star bench-pressing against the gravity of a cruel, indifferent world.

    Eventually, you realized that self-pity is seductive—like opium, but cheaper and twice as cringe. It whispers lies, paints you the tragic lead in a play no one else is watching, and delays the actual work of growing up. It took years, maybe decades, to hush that voice. But for a long time, the Hulk was your muse, your fashion icon, and your excuse.

  • Captain America vs. the Aryan Poster Child

    Captain America vs. the Aryan Poster Child

    On dry land, you were Captain America incarnate—at least in your own mind. A five-year-old freedom fighter in light-up sneakers, flexing your spaghetti arms to vanquish Red Skull stand-ins wherever they lurked. And in 1973, Kindergarten was your battlefield. The enemy? A kid named Teddy Heinrich, your neighbor at the Royal Lanai Apartments in San Jose—a cherubic little stormtrooper-in-training who strutted around with the smugness of a pint-sized Aryan poster child.

    You had no idea you were Jewish, not consciously. But Teddy sure did. He made it his mission to educate you—mostly through Nazi memorabilia and unsolicited history lessons delivered between episodes of The Three Stooges and Superman, which you watched on his living room TV because your family didn’t have UHF. His parents were phantoms—always cloistered in the master bedroom, never cracking a smile, and dressed like they were auditioning for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

    One day, Teddy gave you the grand tour of his family’s closet. Instead of a vacuum or winter coats, he pulled out his grandfather’s SS uniform—complete with a swastika armband, as if he were unveiling a treasured heirloom. “Check it out,” he said, beaming. “The greatest fighting machine the world has ever known.” His father peeked out from the shadows, nodded with ghostly approval, and slithered back into the bedroom.

    You didn’t know what to make of it. Your Nazi education came exclusively from The Sound of Music, and even then, the swastikas were mostly an inconvenience to the yodeling.

    Days later, under the hot California sun, you and Teddy were sprawled on the apartment lawn. He used his magnifying glass to torch a grotesque Jerusalem cricket, its alien limbs writhing in agony. You kicked it away, trying to save the poor thing, but Teddy doubled down—burning swastikas and “Nazi” into a wood block like a miniature war criminal with a hobby.

    You started mimicking him, doodling swastikas like a deranged architect. When your mother caught you mid-sketch, she froze. “Where did you learn that?” You dropped Teddy’s name like a hot grenade.

    She banned the symbols and told you they were evil. You nodded, swore to behave—and went right back to etching them at school, seduced by their sinister geometry.

    Then came the day Teddy called you a “dumb Jew.”

    You didn’t even know what the word meant. You just knew something flared in your chest like a lit fuse. In an instant, you were on top of him, pounding his freckled face into the grass. He didn’t fight back. He just took it—limp, passive, stunned. You clawed at his cheeks, turned them into raw hamburger. It was an out-of-body experience. You were rage. You were justice. You were five years old and seeing red.

    You walked home calm, maybe even proud. An hour later, Teddy and his mother showed up at your door. She was full of righteous German fury. “Your son did this?” she said, pushing her bruised child forward like Exhibit A. “I almost had to take him to the hospital.”

    Your mother, stunned, sent you to the kitchen. You listened from the other room as she said, “Did he really do all this?”

    “Yes!” the woman barked. “Your son should not be allowed to play with mine anymore.”

    Once they left, your mother turned to you. You explained the swastikas. The Nazi closet. The slur.

    She didn’t ground you. She didn’t raise her voice. Instead, she nodded with a quiet, ancestral gravity—as if somewhere in the back of her mind, ghosts had nodded with her.

    In her eyes, you weren’t a delinquent.

    You were Captain America.

  • Drunk on Barbara Eden

    Drunk on Barbara Eden

    You grew up in VA housing—repurposed army barracks known as Flavet Villages—in Gainesville, Florida. The buildings sagged with humidity and history, not far from an alligator swamp and a patch of forest that always smelled like something prehistoric had recently bathed. Perched on a branch at the edge of that forest was a Mynah bird, the same one, every evening. It became a ritual—your father and you, walking out at dusk to visit the bird and carry on what felt like real conversations with it. The swamp behind you would breathe out its musk, that potent stench of low tide and alligator dung. Most would gag. But for you, the smell was oddly soothing—earthy, primal, even sublime. It made you feel tethered to something vast and mysterious.

    One evening, while chatting with the Mynah bird under a bruised pink sky, you heard a distant radio drifting through the humid air. Juanita Hall was singing “Bali Ha’i” from South Pacific. Her voice wrapped itself around you like vapor. The song, with its haunting promise of a paradise just out of reach, was meant to stir longing—but you didn’t feel any. Your paradise was right there, next to your father, speaking to a magical bird on the lip of an enchanted forest. No ache. No yearning. Just presence.

    You didn’t understand longing—at least not yet.

    Longing came for you in 1965, when you discovered I Dream of Jeannie. Barbara Eden appeared on your screen in chiffon and sequins, smiling from inside her genie bottle—a velvet dream chamber lined with pink and purple satin brocade, the walls glowing with embedded glass jewels like shards of a pearl sky. You didn’t just want to meet Jeannie. You wanted to live with her. Inside that bottle. Forever. The ache you’d been spared during “Bali Ha’i” finally found you. You didn’t just want the bottle—you needed it. Later you learned it was actually a painted Jim Beam decanter. Appropriate. You were drunk on Barbara Eden, intoxicated by the fantasy of never having to grow up.

  • The Road Trip That Made You Possible: An Origin Story

    The Road Trip That Made You Possible: An Origin Story

    Everyone has an origin story. You are no exception. Yours begins with your father. Without your father’s sheer audacity and competitive determination, you wouldn’t even be here today. Long before you were a glint in his eye, your father was locked in a battle of epic proportions—an all-out, no-holds-barred contest for the affections of your eighteen-year-old mother. And this wasn’t just any competition. His rival? None other than John Shalikashvili, future United States General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their battlefield? The smoky, beer-soaked bar scene of Anchorage, where the stakes were higher than a highball glass during happy hour.

    Their duel for your future mother’s heart took a brief Christmas ceasefire when Shalikashvili retreated to his tactical command center in Peoria, Illinois, while your father returned to Hollywood, Florida, to soak up some sunshine and plot his next move. But as he lounged by the pool, your father realized that victory in this romantic Cold War required swift and decisive action. So he cut his vacation short, crammed himself into a cream-colored 1959 Morris Minor—a vehicle that looked like it had been assembled from the Island of Misfit Toys, complete with a coat hanger for an antenna and door handles barely clinging on by the grace of duct tape—and embarked on the most high-stakes road trip of the 20th century.

    Halfway through this odyssey, the car’s fuel filter decided to go on strike, leaving your father stranded in the middle of nowhere. When the local auto parts store couldn’t supply a replacement, your father—who would later perform engineering miracles at IBM—pulled off a MacGyver-level feat of mechanical wizardry. Armed with nothing but a prophylactic and a paperclip, he fashioned a makeshift fuel filter that was equal parts creative desperation and mechanical blasphemy. This duct-taped miracle kept the fuel pump from either flooding the engine or abandoning ship entirely, depending on its mood.

    Driven by the urgency of love and the fear of losing ground to Shalikashvili’s brass-polished charm, your father powered through the journey, ignoring his growling stomach like a man possessed. Subsisting on loaves of bread devoured like a feral squirrel, he soldiered on, skipping meals because, who needs food when you’re racing against the clock to prevent a military coup over your future wife?

    After a ferry ride that probably felt like crossing the River Styx, your father finally arrived in Anchorage, a full forty-eight hours before Shalikashvili could swoop in with his military swagger and irresistible authority. Nine months later, you were born, the ultimate trophy in this love-struck arms race.

    Even before you took your first breath, your father’s victory over Shalikashvili imparted some crucial life lessons: The competition is fierce, and life is a zero-sum game where you’re either a winner or a nobody. To survive, you must find a competitive edge, and if you ever get complacent, rest assured, someone will move in on your turf faster than you can say “ranked second.”

    As a teenage bodybuilder obsessed with becoming Mr. Universe, opening a gym in the Bahamas, and silencing your critics, you often thought about bodybuilding great Ken Waller stealing Mike Katz’s shirt before a competition in the movie Pumping Iron. Something as trivial as a missing shirt could send your opponent into a tailspin, disrupt his focus, and rattle his confidence like a cheap shaker bottle. Like Mr. Universe Ken Waller, your father taught you that power is a road paved with relentless cunning, ruthless strategy, and a healthy dose of underhanded shenanigans. 

    But underneath the shenanigans and Machiavellian flair, your father taught you one core truth: sweat more than everyone else. Out-hustle, out-grind, outlast. In his gospel, sweat wasn’t just effort—it was currency. The person who left the biggest puddle won. 

  • Watch Island: Where Grown Men Click Bezels and Call It Meaning

    Watch Island: Where Grown Men Click Bezels and Call It Meaning

    After twenty years tumbling down the horological rabbit hole, I’ve come to one conclusion: the watch hobby is a paradoxical fever dream held together by delusion, desire, and just enough self-awareness to laugh before crying.

    If Alec Baldwin’s mantra in Glengarry Glen Ross was “Always be closing,” then the watch nerd’s version is: “Always be laughing at yourself.” Because let’s be clear—none of this is serious. And yet, it’s also deathly serious. That’s the contradiction we live in: a tension between cosplay and existential weight.

    At its core, watch collecting is elaborate roleplay. Grown men strapping on wrist-bound fantasies, each timepiece a character costume in a rotating lineup of imaginary lives. We cosplay as deep-sea divers, fighter pilots, Arctic explorers, NASA engineers, rugged survivalists, or minimalist monks of Japanese restraint. We don’t just wear watches. We become them. Just as fans dress as superheroes at Comicon, we show up to Bezel-Palooza with Seikos and Sinns, flexing our sapphire crystals and ceramic inserts like badges of forged identity.

    And don’t get me started on the straps. We favor models named after desserts: waffles, chocolate bars, and tropic vanilla-scented rubber. We’re just high-functioning children in the horological wing of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. But instead of licking the wallpaper, we post lume shots under moody lighting and argue about clasp tolerances.

    It’s cosplay for the emotionally overcommitted.

    But the strangest contradiction? For something so clearly un-serious, we treat our collections with a kind of medical gravity. The annual “State of the Collection” post feels like a cholesterol screening—an attempt to gauge whether we’re healthy, balanced, evolving, or simply delusional. We don’t just love watches. We debate the proper ways to love them. We agonize over whether we’re rebuying the Willard out of longing or self-sabotage. We assign spiritual weight to which dial shade of blue best reflects our soul.

    This isn’t just madness. It’s structured madness. With forums.

    We are a niche tribe of adult males—many of us husbands, some of us fathers—who transform into Man-Babies the moment we utter the words “bezel action” or “ghost patina.” Our wives, bless them, want no part in our obsessive monologues about case thickness and end-link articulation. To them, we are overgrown children clinging to our G.I. Joes and Tinker Toys, slowly sprouting donkey ears like Pinocchio and Lampwick on Watch Island, while they look on with bemused pity.

    We know we’re ridiculous. That’s the beautiful tragedy. And still, we dive deeper. Because in a world that often lacks identity, silence, and meaning, we find it in brushed stainless steel and micro-adjust clasps.

    And yes—we’re probably overdue for an intervention.

  • The Confessions of a Hot Tub Messiah

    The Confessions of a Hot Tub Messiah

    You were twenty-six in the hot August month of 1998 and for a shimmering chlorinated hour at a friend’s pool party at a lavish apartment complex in Livermore, California, you became the mythical, magical Hot Tub Stud. Your girlfriend wasn’t there. It was August, and she had already packed her bags to start her fall semester at Scripps College in Claremont California. It was ridiculous that you and your girlfriend Pamela would attempt a long-term relationship. You were each other’s first romance. You both were surely naive. Neither of you knew how doomed and unhealthy your relationship was. There were things about you–your neediness and lack of spontaneity to name two–that Pamela hated about you. Deep down, you knew she hated you, but you were too needy to acknowledge how repulsed she was by your neediness. You were also too needy to acknowledge that you weren’t so hot about her either. Sure, the chemistry was great. You guys desired each other every second, but it was impossible for you to truly love someone who recoiled at your broken, immature self. Deep down, you wanted to be admired and adored, and you knew Pamela would never be that person.

    Around 3 p.m., in the steamy, chlorine-scented haze of suburban hedonism, she appeared: Rachel, a petite brunette with long, flowing hair, skin like burnished chestnut, and dark, soulful eyes that suggested she’d read Anna Karenina and wept at the right parts. She wore a green bikini. She had depth. She had presence. And she was—unbelievably—into you.

    And not just into your pecs and biceps. She was drawn to your languid ease, your temporary state of post-Pamela serenity, that rare moment when you weren’t apologizing for your existence or scanning the horizon for emotional threats. You exuded something you rarely possessed: confidence. You didn’t try to be charming. You just were.

    You talked. She was an Ashkenazi Jew, like you—except fully, whereas you were only half, your dad a gruff Irish Catholic whose idea of spiritual intimacy was yelling at the TV. You told her it was a miracle you weren’t in therapy. She laughed. The real kind. She told you about growing up in a Jewish enclave in Dallas, her econ degree from San Francisco State, and the Marina District apartment she shared with roommates and dreams.

    In the swirling warmth of the hot tub, you slowly cradled her as she floated on her back, spinning gently in your arms like a sun-drunk naiad. You gazed into each other’s eyes like characters in a perfume commercial—if the perfume were melancholy, the top note regret.

    And in that moment, Pamela ceased to exist. You were ready to let Pamela become a dot receding into the horizon, propose to Rachel, adopt a rescue dog, and buy Rachel a two-bedroom Marina District condo with French doors and jasmine on the balcony. Your soul whispered scripture: “And the two shall become one flesh.”

    But just as you leaned into that soon-to-be-legendary kiss, your guilt, or maybe your emotional cowardice, threw a wrench into fate. You stood her upright and mumbled something about having a girlfriend.

    The look on Rachel’s face—that soft, diplomatic devastation—has haunted you ever since. She gave you a gentle out: “You’re probably confused.” And then she disappeared into the changing room like Eurydice stepping into the underworld, and you never saw her again.

    Years passed. Decades. And when life feels like a cruel joke told by someone with bad timing—when you’re depressed, flabby, or existentially irrelevant—you return to that hot tub. You imagine yourself sweeping Rachel off her feet, performing impromptu piano recitals, meeting her doting parents, and becoming the man you wanted to be in that moment: the Hot Tub Stud who followed through.

    But you didn’t. You blinked. You let Eden slip through your fingers, and like all paradise stories, it ended with exile.

    Still, for one hour, you were perfect. You were desired. You were whole.

    And you’ve been chasing that hour ever since.

  • “This Is the Other Place”: Twilight Zone Parenting and the Parking App of Doom

    “This Is the Other Place”: Twilight Zone Parenting and the Parking App of Doom

    Of all the Twilight Zone episodes that have taken up residence in my psyche, none clings more tenaciously than “A Nice Place to Visit.” A petty crook named Rocky Valentine gets gunned down during a botched robbery and wakes up in what appears to be paradise. He’s greeted by Pip, a genial, rotund guide played by Sebastian Cabot, who grants him everything his larcenous heart ever wanted: money, women, luck, luxury. No struggle, no stress. Every desire fulfilled on command.

    At first, Rocky revels in this frictionless dreamscape. It’s Vegas without losing streaks, heaven without requirements. But gradually, pleasure without purpose curdles into a thick, syrupy dread. He realizes that gratification without resistance is just another form of punishment. Bored out of his mind and desperate for meaning, Rocky pleads with Pip to send him “to the other place.”

    Pip laughs and delivers the gut punch: “Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place!” And then, with glee, Pip cackles like the well-fed devil he is.

    Which brings me to paid parking.

    There is a hell, and it lives in the infrastructure of modern urban parking. It’s a realm of QR codes, license plate entries, and apps that want your soul—or at least your email and billing zip code. Some kiosks accept coins, others demand smartphone apps, two-step verification, and an MFA code just to stand still without being ticketed. My wife, tech-literate and cool-headed, usually handles this logistical hellscape while I loiter nearby, pretending to study the map of downtown like it’s a sacred text.

    But this week she’s out of town at a teaching convention, and I’m taking our twin daughters to Laguna Beach. This means I have to drive, find a parking structure, and—here’s the true horror—navigate the digital rigmarole of paid parking without her guidance. The thought of it has me sweating harder than Rocky in his silk suit.

    The absurd part? It’s not the traffic, the tides, or the teenagers that unnerve me. It’s the parking meter. The existential shame of standing in front of a digital payment kiosk, poking at it like a confused ape while my daughters wait patiently (or impatiently) beside me. I don’t fear the unknown. I fear looking like an idiot in front of my kids.

    But here’s the deeper, darker realization: this is just a symptom. My wife, through years of effort and mental load, has become the de facto logistics commander of our household. She knows which airport lines move faster. She’s the one strangers approach at terminals, sensing her Jedi-level calm. Meanwhile, I shuffle behind her like an NPC in a bad video game—directionless, frictionless, practically translucent.

    Frictionless living has a cost. It breeds detachment. It robs you of engagement, resilience, and presence. And like Rocky Valentine, I’ve grown too used to being served instead of showing up.

    Ironically, I’m obsessed with watches—those exquisite tools designed to remind you where you are in time. And yet, I’ve spent years drifting, distracted, floating outside the dial. It takes a solo day trip with my daughters—an hour drive, some shopping, a good lunch, and possibly a tantrum or two—to pull me back into the present.

    When my wife heard about my plan, she said, “You don’t know how happy this makes me.” And I believed her. She wasn’t just relieved that I was giving her a break. She was glad to see me step into the friction. To stop spectating and start parenting in real time.

    No, I don’t want to be Rocky. I don’t want a life where every parking spot is perfect, every line is short, and every meal arrives on time. I want the chaos. I want the curveballs. I want the real thing.

    Even if it means downloading the stupid parking app.