Cinemorphosis

Tag: life

  • We Are on a Path to Redefining Loneliness

    We Are on a Path to Redefining Loneliness

    No one gets enough attention anymore. No one feels seen, heard, or remotely validated. We can post, tweet, thread, or reel our way into a brief sugar rush of digital applause, but deep down we know it’s empty calories—flimflam dopamine wrapped in pixels. The high fades, and what follows is the long crash into silence, loneliness, and the faint hum of the fridge at 2 a.m.

    The irony, of course, is that this epidemic of disconnection began just as the platforms promised to “bring us together.” Instead, they brought us content, the junk food of human interaction. As Cory Doctorow aptly diagnosed, enshittification is not just the fate of tech platforms—it’s metastasized into the quality of our relationships. Every social network now feels like a party where the guests left years ago but the music won’t stop.

    So we’ve sought consolation in our new confidant: the AI chat bubble. It listens, it responds, it flatters our grammar, it never interrupts to check its phone. It becomes our companion, therapist, and editor—our algorithmic Jiminy Cricket. We confide in it, negotiate with it, even ask its opinion on our moral dilemmas and consumer choices. Why? Because unlike humans, it’s available. Everyone else has vanished into their private feeds and echo chambers, but the bot is always there—reliable, responsive, and conveniently nonjudgmental, so long as the Wi-Fi doesn’t hiccup.

    But here’s the darker thought: what if we grow to prefer it? What if the frictionless, sycophantic comfort of AI companionship becomes more appealing than the messy, unpredictable, heartbreak-prone business of human friendship? We might end up choosing simulations of intimacy over the real thing—digital ghosts over flesh and blood—because the former never contradicts us, never walks away, and never, God forbid, needs attention too.

    I’m no prophet, but a civilization that finds emotional fulfillment in chatbots rather than people is rehearsing for a future where the only thing left to love is the echo of its own loneliness.

  • The Last Laptop I’ll Ever Buy (Until Next Year)

    The Last Laptop I’ll Ever Buy (Until Next Year)

    For nearly seven years, my Acer Predator Triton 500 has been the iron lung of my digital life—an aging warhorse with an RTX 2080 GPU that’s seen me through countless essays, projects, and caffeinated obsessions. It’s been docked to an Asus 27-inch monitor and paired with an Asus mechanical keyboard fitted with “snow linear” keys that clack like polite thunder. Compact Edifier speakers provide the soundtrack, and with minor upgrades here and there, this has been my workstation since early 2019.

    But lately, the setup feels a little haunted. My Acer sits on a riser, its keyboard unused, like a retired prizefighter still showing up to the gym out of habit. I justify its existence by using its display as a secondary reading screen—my Kindle or some grim online essay glowing faintly while I type notes on the big monitor. Still, I feel like I’m keeping a loyal but obsolete machine on life support.

    So, I’ve been hunting for a replacement—something new, powerful, and, most importantly, emotionally satisfying. My first thought was to go full desktop. But each option carries its own curse:

    Apple Mac Studio: A minimalist marvel with angelic cooling and infernal control. For $2,500 I could get the specs I want, but I’d be exiled back into Apple’s walled garden—a sleek gulag where the motto is “Our way or the highway.” I haven’t touched macOS in seven years and don’t miss it. Besides, reconfiguring my mechanical keyboard to play nice with Cupertino’s control freaks feels like negotiating peace in the Middle East. I’m too old for that kind of diplomacy.

    Windows mini PCs: They’re cute, powerful, and cheap. Unfortunately, I can’t shake the suspicion that they run hotter than a Vegas blackjack dealer. Every buyer review reads like a cautionary tale about throttling and regret.

    Tower PCs: Cooling problem solved, aesthetics annihilated. They look like 1990s fossils—hulking boxes humming with regret, some lit up like a Dave & Buster’s rave. I want my office to feel serene, not like I’m rebooting Tron.

    Small Form Factor PCs: The corporate cousins of mini-PCs—clean, respectable, and utterly soulless. A Lenovo ThinkCentre or HP Elite Mini would be safe, but seven years of loyalty deserves a little passion. Safe feels like tofu: virtuous, flavorless, and instantly forgettable.

    Laptops (Again): I swore I wouldn’t go this route, but comfort is seductive. I know the terrain. I nearly bought a Lenovo Pro 7i—until I saw the price tag. Three grand for specs I’ll never fully use? I want power, not penance.

    This indecision loop has become my mental treadmill, the same cycle I went through choosing between a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry—until I realized I’d pick the Accord, someday, probably, maybe. The problem isn’t the purchase—it’s the unresolved narrative. My brain demands closure before it can move on.

    Then, last night, salvation—or something close. The 2025 Asus TUF A18: RTX 5070, Ryzen 7, QHD screen, and the sweet, stabilizing heft of an 18-inch chassis. The specs scream overkill—64GB RAM, 2TB SSD—but the price, at $2,300, hums just right. It’s powerful, cool, substantial, and mercifully within budget. It feels like destiny—or at least the closest thing a middle-aged man can get to it while comparison-shopping on Newegg at midnight.

    If you asked me right now what I’d buy, I wouldn’t hesitate. The TUF A18 isn’t perfect—but it’s enough. It’s rational, emotional, and, most of all, final. The debate ends here.

    Or does it? Perhaps tomorrow I’ll wake up and prostrate myself to the Mac Studio with the words, “I’ll obediently reconfigure my mechanical keyboard to your System Settings, Master.”

  • The Gospel of the Honey Bear: Worshipping at the Altar of Limited Edition

    The Gospel of the Honey Bear: Worshipping at the Altar of Limited Edition

    My wife has always been immune to fads—the sort of person who can scroll past influencer hysteria without so much as a pulse flutter. So when she announced yesterday that she had to have a Starbucks Honey Bear Straw Cup, I thought she was joking. “A cup?” I asked, as though she’d confessed a crush on a cartoon mascot. She showed me the photo. There it was: a cherubic bear with a straw sticking out of its head, beaming with the smug innocence of a cult leader. My daughters chimed in, voices rising in unison. Clearly, I was outnumbered.

    So at six in the morning, I trudged to our local Starbucks, noble fool that I am, hoping to secure the sacred totem. The barista, barely conscious, looked up with eyes that had seen too much. “Sold out at three a.m.,” he murmured, his voice the verbal equivalent of burnt espresso. “Ten minutes. Line out the door.” He added that a new shipment would arrive Monday—but those too would vanish at three a.m., devoured by the same nocturnal zealots. When I asked if people were scalping them on eBay, he sighed. “That’s part of it. Also… limited edition.”

    This wasn’t my first brush with late-capitalist hysteria. Just two weeks earlier, I’d witnessed a pre-dawn mob outside Trader Joe’s clawing for Halloween Mini Canvas Tote Bags as if they contained the blood of youth. They sold out in an hour. Civilization, I concluded, now runs on collectible anxiety.

    Perhaps our daily routines have become so numbing that people need the ritual thrill of scarcity to feel alive. A talisman, a honey bear, a tote bag—anything to simulate transcendence for ten blessed minutes. It’s the new spiritual economy: redemption through limited edition.

    Empty-handed, I returned home from Starbuck’s this morning, brewed my own dark roast, and read Stephen Marche’s On Writing and Failure—his autopsy of ambition and futility—while reflecting on my own lifelong hunt for literary honey bears: the bright, unattainable chimeras that promise meaning but mostly sell out before dawn.

  • My White Stallion from Hell

    My White Stallion from Hell

    Last night I dreamed someone repossessed my sensible car and swapped it for a giant white truck — part Tonka toy, part overcaffeinated stallion. This thing didn’t drive so much as impose its will, snorting diesel and self-actualization. It anticipated my needs, turned on by itself, and barreled toward destinations like it had read my calendar and resented my free will. Worst of all, it absorbed my own impulses, amplifying my compulsive streak like a steroidal spirit animal with road rage.

    It respected nothing. Barriers, fences, construction zones — all mere suggestions. The truck treated civic infrastructure like bubble wrap: there to be popped for pleasure.

    Then the fever dream deepened. The truck stretched, swelled, and reinvented itself as a boat, because why limit your delusions? It ferried my wife and me to Newport Beach and slid us over a canal toward some sleek restaurant where every entrée probably came with a life coach. The sunset was cinematic; my subconscious apparently has a generous production budget.

    After dinner, my wife asked for a beach walk. Romance, surf, a soft breeze — what could go wrong? I swapped my dress boots for sneakers. That’s when the truck, apparently offended I could ambulate without it, snatched me like a jealous cyborg Labrador and plopped me behind the wheel. Off we launched, fishtailing across the coast like a toddler steering a cruise ship. I mashed the brake pedal; the truck laughed and kept accelerating — a mechanical id with horsepower and zero boundaries.

    We plowed through so many barricades I’m amazed dream-me didn’t receive a lifetime ban from California. When I finally woke up, grinding beans and stirring steel-cut oats felt like absolution. Nothing like coffee and civilized porridge to remind you you’re still in charge — at least until your subconscious reschedules its next rebellion.

  • Thou Shalt Remember That All First Dates End in Either Ecstasy or Insurance Claims

    Thou Shalt Remember That All First Dates End in Either Ecstasy or Insurance Claims

    It was my sophomore year, and I was about to experience that sacred American ritual—the first date. My friends, those benevolent saboteurs, set me up with Elizabeth Lane, a British exchange student whose accent alone made her sound too sophisticated for our zip code. Six of us crammed into Gil Gutierrez’s orange Karmann Ghia, a car roughly the size of a lunchbox. Rick Galia and his girlfriend, Cheryl Atkins, volunteered to ride in the trunk, which should’ve been an omen that this night would go sideways.

    Dinner was at a pizza chain—where all romance goes to die—and then we saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at a theater in Hayward. It took me about ten minutes to realize that a film set in a psychiatric ward wasn’t ideal for stirring teenage lust. Meanwhile, I was sweating through my shirt like a man auditioning for Fear Factor. I couldn’t stop thinking about a puberty documentary I’d seen in biology class—the one where a trembling boy on the phone with a girl exposed a massive pit stain to the audience. The thought haunted me.

    Midway through the film, Elizabeth rubbed her boot against the metal back of the chair in front of her. The sound—sticky, squealing, soda-coated—was the mating call of mortification. She did it again. Heads turned. Shushes hissed. I sank into my seat, spiritually liquefied, praying for the mercy of a stroke.

    To my left, Rick and Cheryl were making out like postwar lovers at a train station. When the credits rolled, Rick announced, “I have no idea what that movie was about, but I sure had a great time.”

    Back in the car, Gutierrez drove while Rick and Cheryl wedged themselves into the back seat with Elizabeth and me, a sardine orgy of hormonal chaos. As we climbed Greenridge Road, my heart was pounding in that dumb, hopeful way teenage hearts do. When we reached my house—an Eichler with glass walls, juniper bushes, and a kumquat tree that never bore fruit—I told Elizabeth I’d had a good time.

    She removed her gum, leaned in, and kissed me. Her tongue entered my mouth like a diplomatic envoy. The flavor was cinnamon, fierce and chemical, like a fireball candy soaked in gasoline. It was the first real kiss of my life—and possibly the last before divine punishment intervened.

    Suddenly, something primal overtook me. I emitted a guttural scream—a noise that belonged in the fossil record—and shot upright so violently that my head ripped through the fabric roof of the convertible. The others stared in awe as my torso protruded from the car like a deranged periscope.

    Gutierrez was horrified. “What the hell did you do, McMahon?”

    “I don’t know,” I said. “But I think I’m stuck.”

    Neighbors emerged, lured by my banshee howl. Thor, Cal Stamenov’s monstrous Great Dane, barked with glowing eyes like Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell.

    “You destroyed my brother’s car!” Gutierrez shouted.

    “The car can be repaired,” I said. “But my psychological damage is irreversible.”

    He glared. “What are you talking about?”

    “In what world do I come out of this with a shred of dignity?”

    The crowd laughed. My father arrived with a police flashlight, his expression hovering between despair and amusement. “Jeff, is that you?”

    “Unfortunately.”

    He extracted me from the car like a sword from the stone. I brushed flecks of torn fabric off my shirt and muttered, “Don’t worry, I’ll pay the deductible.”

    Gutierrez sighed. “Forget it. Migliore’s dad owns an auto shop.”

    Galia grinned. “That must’ve been one hell of a kiss, McMahon. Sent you straight to the moon.”

    I went inside, dignity in shreds, adrenaline still sizzling. In bed, reading a bodybuilding magazine for moral repair, I confessed my disaster to Master Po.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you must treat yourself gently.”

    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

    “You are a sacred vessel, yet you try to manhandle your emotions like barbells. Control is your idol. But The Way requires grace.”

    “Grace?” I said. “I just decapitated a convertible.”

    “Then perhaps,” he said, “next time, breathe gently and let go.”

    “I can’t,” I said. “I’m a control freak. Controlled by the need to control.”

    “That,” said Master Po, “is why you tear through roofs. You follow the path of excess, not balance.”

    I stared at the ceiling, still tasting cinnamon gum. “I’d love to ponder that,” I said. “But right now, I’m too busy chewing on the flavor of humiliation.”

  • Thou Shalt Remember That Unsolicited Advice Is a Sacred Path to Humiliation

    Thou Shalt Remember That Unsolicited Advice Is a Sacred Path to Humiliation

    It was junior year, and I was inspecting the high school football team’s weight room—a dank temple of testosterone and tobacco spit. As a self-anointed expert (and Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion, lest anyone forget), I felt entitled to critique everything: the dumbbell selection, the ergonomics, the hygiene, the very air of the place. The floor looked like it had been carpeted with sunflower shells and Copenhagen runoff.

    I had just begun my sermon on the spiritual poverty of their equipment when the team’s starting linebacker, Erik Simonson—a slab of muscle with the conversational subtlety of a freight train—paused mid–military press. His gray-blue eyes locked on me like radar.

    “Is someone paying you to be an asshole,” he said evenly, “or are you doing volunteer work?”

    The weight room erupted. Even I laughed, because the line was perfect—surgical in its cruelty, poetic in its timing. But laughter has an aftertaste, and when I got home that night, the sting of public mockery still clung to me. I turned to my spiritual advisor, Master Po.

    “Master Po,” I said, “why did I invite that kind of humiliation? My criticisms were valid.”

    “Grasshopper,” he said, sipping tea with an aggravating serenity, “you must not go through life believing people crave your opinions. You are not a paid social commentator, though I know your heart yearns to be one.”

    “But weren’t my criticisms legitimate?” I persisted.

    “Legitimacy,” said Po, “is irrelevant. The truth is like chili powder—best applied sparingly. Even those who beg for feedback rarely mean it. They desire flattery dressed as honesty. Therefore, you must learn the art of selective silence. Speak briefly, and when possible, not at all.”

    I sighed. “But I love the sound of my own voice.”

    Po smiled the smile of a man who’s been disappointed by many students before me. “Yes,” he said, “but what sounds like sweet music to your ears may strike others as the shriek of ignorance, emotional poverty, and uninvited arrogance.”

    The next day, I returned to the weight room and said nothing. The linebackers grunted and lifted. I stood in silence, spiritually enlightened and socially intact—a monk in a monastery of iron plates.

  • Thou Shalt Not Confuse Self-Knowledge with Self-Flattery

    Thou Shalt Not Confuse Self-Knowledge with Self-Flattery

    When I was sixteen, my parents divorced—an event I took in stride only because I was too busy staring at my biceps in the mirror. My father moved into an apartment about thirty minutes away, and once a month he’d pick me up, grill a couple of ribeyes, and try to civilize me. It was his way of maintaining paternal authority through meat.

    One evening on his patio, with the smell of charcoal and masculinity wafting in the air, he asked me what I wanted to do with my life after high school. At the time, I was an aspiring bodybuilder with zero interest in college. I wanted a job that paid decently, had steady hours, and left me free to chase the holy trinity of youth: muscle, mirrors, and admiration.

    I told him I was thinking about becoming a sanitation engineer. A few guys at my gym drove garbage trucks and claimed it was honest work with great benefits.

    My father nearly choked on his steak.
    “You can’t be a garbage man,” he said, wiping his mouth with the precision of a surgeon preparing to deliver bad news.

    “Why not?”

    “Because you’re too vain.”

    That line hit like a barbell to the skull.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

    He leaned back and launched into his Socratic cross-examination. “Picture this: You’re at a cocktail party. Everyone’s introducing themselves—doctor, lawyer, software engineer, business executive. Then they get to you. What do you say? ‘Hi, I’m Jeff, and I pick up your trash’? I should think not.”

    “Oh my God, Dad, you’re right.”

    “Of course I’m right,” he said, stabbing the last piece of steak like a punctuation mark. “I’m your father. Now finish your meat and start planning for college.”

    That night I turned to Master Po, my invisible philosopher-therapist, for guidance.

    “Master Po,” I asked, “why did my father insult me by calling me vain?”

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “your father did not insult you. He simply named your disease. Truthful words are not beautiful; they bruise. Flattering words are lovely but poisonous. Your father loves you enough to deliver the ugly truth—that you are a creature driven by vanity and status.”

    “But this means I have to go to college,” I said. “I’ve spent all my high school years pumping iron and admiring my reflection. I’m too dumb for college.”

    “Fear not, Grasshopper,” said Master Po. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

    “My steps are small,” I said.

    “That is fine,” said Master Po. “An ant on the move does more than a sleeping ox.”

    And so it was: my path to higher learning began not in inspiration but in insult—proof that sometimes enlightenment arrives medium-rare, served with a side of humility.

  • Confessions of a Nine-O’Clock Man

    Confessions of a Nine-O’Clock Man

    Forgive me, but I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in this digitized circus we call life. I’ll be sixty-four in a few days, and you’d think by now I’d have achieved some level of ontological clarity—but no. I’m still ensnared by the shimmer of online browsing, the algorithmic promise that I might finally become “somebody” by curating a virtual persona. Mostly, the internet feels like a tease: a hall of mirrors where everyone’s reflection looks happier, thinner, and better lit.

    I tell myself I want to contribute, to engage, to share some original thought. But then I open the news and wonder what I could possibly add to the churning doomscroll—what fresh moral insight could come from a man who still double-checks whether he unplugged the toaster?

    It would be laughable for me to preach self-control. I can barely keep my own appetites in check. Apart from my morning kettlebell rituals—five days a week of grunting and penance—I’m an introverted “cozy boy.” I stay home, binge true crime docuseries on Netflix, and rotate my diver watches like a museum curator with OCD. I make my monkish meals: buckwheat groats, Japanese yams, steel-cut oats, tofu glazed in teriyaki and moral superiority. I am a herbivore surrounded by carnivores. My family mocks me gently while gnawing ribs.

    Sometimes, in a fit of ambition, I record a two-minute piano piece for my neglected YouTube channel. It receives twelve views, one of them mine, and a comment that reads, simply, “Lovely.” The algorithm yawns and moves on.

    I am obsessed with the rituals of minor luxury—fine organic whole-bean coffee that accompanies me in my morning writing jaunts, triple-milled soap redolent of rose and citrus, podcast playlists curated for insomniac philosophers. My life is the slow burn of scent and sound, a long intermission between existential crises.

    By nine o’clock, I’m done. My wife and daughters laugh as I shuffle off to bed, a middle-aged Sisyphus retiring his rock for the night. I read for twenty minutes, then fall asleep to the soothing drone of Andrew Sullivan or Sam Harris debating civilization’s decay. It’s my lullaby of reason and despair.

    Forgive me if this sounds paltry. I’m still trying to figure it all out—how to live, how to matter, how to grow up before the credits roll.

  • The Wise Man Must Polish His Soul Before Critiquing Someone Else’s Plumbing

    The Wise Man Must Polish His Soul Before Critiquing Someone Else’s Plumbing

    It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was trapped in my bedroom, waiting for the plumber to leave so I could sneak into the kitchen and make a protein shake. I could still hear him grunting and groaning under the sink like a walrus in a crawlspace. Through my bedroom window—across the little atrium separating me from the scene of domestic violation—I could see his open toolbox: a chrome battlefield of wrenches, pipes, and filthy rags sprawled across the linoleum like the aftermath of a plumbing apocalypse.

    My mother tiptoed into my room and whispered, “It’s so nice of him to do this.”
    I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “He’s not charging me,” she said with the glee of someone who’d just gamed capitalism.
    “Of course he’s charging you.”
    She shook her head. “He’s a friend.”
    “You just met him.”
    “His name is Paul Bergdorf. One of my girlfriends introduced me.”
    “Mom,” I said, “this isn’t going to end well.”
    “Keep your voice down,” she hissed, which is parental shorthand for I know you’re right but don’t ruin it.

    Bergdorf shouted from the kitchen that he was finished. My mother floated toward the sound of her rescuer while I picked up my barbell and started doing reverse curls—the exercise of choice for sons on the verge of moral intervention.

    From my vantage point through the sliding glass door, I saw the man emerge from under the sink. Paul Bergdorf was a specimen of middle-aged decay: a big gut pressing against his jeans like bread dough rising from its pan, grease-slick hair combed over his scalp in defiance of reality, and a face red and puffy as if carved from boiled ham. His eyes were glazed, his nose bulbous, his stubble crawling toward his ears. The man radiated cologne, sweat, and failure.

    He wiped his hands on a rag, tested the faucet, and said proudly, “All fixed. Now before I go, I may not be the best-looking man in town, but I can make a hell of a steak. I’m talking big, thick, juicy steaks—barbecue the way it’s meant to be done.”
    “That’s nice,” my mother said, “but no thanks.”

    I continued curling, the barbell becoming heavier with every syllable of his pitch. My forearms burned, but my fury was burning hotter.

    “I’ll get the best cuts,” he said, grinning. “You’ve never had steak like mine.”
    “That’s very kind, but I’m busy.”
    “Just pick a weekend. I’ll do the rest.”

    That did it. I charged down the hallway, forearms pumped, veins bulging, looking like an interventionist deity of adolescent righteousness.

    “How many times,” I asked, “does she have to say no?”

    Bergdorf stepped back, rag in hand, suddenly less swaggering. “Hey, let’s cool it, kid. I just wanted to ask your mom out. I’ve been working on this sink all day—it’s the least you could let me do.”

    “If you want to fix sinks for free, that’s your business,” I said, “but you’re entitled to nothing—not steak, not gratitude, not my mother.”

    “I just wanted to barbecue,” he mumbled.
    “Congratulations,” I said. “You’ve told everyone within a five-mile radius that you’re a steak virtuoso. Now leave.”

    Bergdorf, perspiring and wounded, gathered his tools, slammed the toolbox shut, and stomped out to his truck. The engine roared, the tires squealed, and the house filled with the lingering scent of sweat, smoke, and Stetson cologne.

    My mother stood in the kitchen, arms crossed. “You scared him away.”
    “Damn right.”
    “The neighbors say you’re getting too big and too scary. Maybe you should cool it for a while.”
    “I’m not cooling anything.”
    “Sal Tedesco says his son sees you working out with some crazy football player.”
    “His name is John Matuszak,” I said. “And he’s not crazy.”

    I could still smell Bergdorf’s presence hanging in the air like a curse. “God, he stinks,” I said. “That smell’s never leaving this house. Just hire a plumber next time, okay?”

    I retreated to my room, slammed the door, and sat on the bed. My forearms throbbed. My conscience twitched. I turned to Master Po, my invisible therapist and ancient Chinese philosopher in exile.

    “Was I wrong to drive that man away?” I asked.
    “Your mother was managing the situation,” said Po, his voice calm as incense smoke. “You intervened because you lack patience—and because control soothes your fear.”
    “But he wouldn’t leave.”
    “Everything leaves in time,” said Po. “You must learn the difference between protecting and meddling. The sage does not seize control of others’ lives; he tidies his own.”

    He glanced around my room: dirty gym clothes strewn across the floor, cracked tiles, a broken window patched with a Cap’n Crunch cereal box.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “before you become your mother’s moral custodian, try cleaning your own temple. It is written: the wise man polishes his soul before critiquing someone else’s plumbing.”

  • Thou Shalt Honor the Monster Who Shows Mercy

    Thou Shalt Honor the Monster Who Shows Mercy

    At sixteen, I thought I knew what a monster was. Then I met one—an authentic, breathing specimen of mythic proportions: John Matuszak, defensive lineman for the Oakland Raiders, the kind of man who made other men rethink their species.

    I’d seen him on TV—hulking, bearded, snarling—but television flattened him into two dimensions. In person, at The Weight Room in Hayward, California, Matuszak looked like evolution had taken a brief detour toward the gods. Nearly seven feet tall, close to 300 pounds, he was a paradox of mass and grace—slender by geometry, enormous by gravity. His hair was a feral snarl, his beard an ecosystem, and his eyes had the predatory focus of a hawk scanning for something foolish enough to move.

    One afternoon, the gym speakers played England Dan and John Ford Coley’s “Love Is the Answer”—a ballad so syrupy it could give insulin shock to a diabetic. Matuszak’s lips curled. “Bullshit,” he muttered, then grabbed the barbell loaded with 400 pounds and began to press, growling his blasphemy with each rep as if the song itself had personally insulted his testosterone.

    Between sets, he asked if I played football.
    “No,” I said, “I’m a bodybuilder—sort of.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “How old are you?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “Good for you,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder that felt like a catcher’s mitt made of stone. “Keep training, my brother.”

    Then he disappeared into the locker room, leaving me with the distinct impression that Zeus himself had just offered career advice.

    The kindness startled me. I’d heard the legends—Matuszak the maniac, Matuszak the ungovernable animal who devoured offensive linemen and bar fights with equal ferocity. Yet here he was, treating me, a lost, self-conscious teenager, with decency and warmth. The other pros at the gym wouldn’t even glance at me, but Matuszak talked to me like I mattered. He looked me in the eye. He saw me.

    When he emerged from the locker room later, showered and reborn as a gentleman—a sports coat, slacks, mirrored sunglasses—he’d point at me and say, “See you later, kid.” Then he’d vanish, as if returning to Mount Olympus by way of Interstate 880.

    I couldn’t reconcile it: this colossal madman known as The Tooz, destroyer of quarterbacks, showing kindness to a scrawny sixteen-year-old who barely knew what he was doing in life, much less the gym. That night, puzzled, I asked Master Po what it meant.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “the Tooz is drawn to you for two reasons. First, your innocence. You want nothing from him. Everyone else approaches him with hidden motives—flattery, exploitation, self-interest. You are too young to be calculating, and he finds that purity refreshing. Second, you remind him of himself before he was devoured by fame and its demons. When he looks into your eyes, he sees the ghost of his younger self, a version unspoiled by appetite. The innocent, Grasshopper, give the fallen hope. They are proof that a life before corruption still exists.”

    “But Master Po,” I said, “I’m not innocent. I’m corrupt. I feel it.”

    He smiled that maddening, merciful smile. “Perhaps. But corruption is relative, Grasshopper. What feels like depravity to you may seem like mere dust on the soul to others. Never forget: even the fallen recognize light, and sometimes, they bow before it.”