January 2024

Last year in July my mom got laid off from the job she had been working at for almost 30 years. Following a brief career as a nurse and a few years at the blood bank, she found a gig with her best friend’s husband in 1994 for a startup company that bought and sold used cars. She was on the ground floor, back when there were only like four people working in a small office in San Bernardino CA that I can still picture in my head.

That company ended up in a different office, a much larger one, in Colton CA where it remained until the mid-2010’s. The small company from San Bernardino branched off to a San Diego location, a Sacramento location, Bellflower, even into Las Vegas NV and Medford OR. Coming off my brief college stint, this particular company hired me in July 2009 and I worked there until the spring of 2011.

But my mother, she endured. Early on she was branded with the title of Executive Assistant, which was probably both a blessing and a curse because she was paid — for a time — commensurate to her value to the business. As a former employee I can say as a matter of fact that she did everything, from running the titles department to accounts payable/receivable to payroll to dealing with vendors to handling the petty cash to being on the phone with all the credit card corporations that the company used, etc. And every year money would get thrown away on six-figure male liaisons who had these big marketing ideas that never worked out, and they would inevitably move on elsewhere; younger workers would assume roles in operations and after a few months would make like fifty thousand dollars a year more than my mom did. There was very little justice for her, the woman who was there from the start.

Her and I had a lot of talks about this, especially over the last handful of years, when it seemed obvious that the company was deteriorating. I’m so full of like support all the time and I encouraged my mom to talk to the boss — her once-best-friend’s husband — to just lay it out there, and say, hey, I deserve a raise. Which she did. She didn’t, of course, and never would, because my mom isn’t that type of person. (I’m not, either, for the record, but fair is fair.) So she, my mom, ate a lot of shit over the years, and dealt with a lot of stress, fearing that she had come too far and had nowhere else to go.

Truth be told, around the time she divorced my dad seven or eight years ago she had actually received a 10% raise and had a bonus clause depending on the number of cars sold monthly at the Inland Empire location — which came out to a couple thousand dollars every month — but right when she moved to Riverside (closer to the corporate office in Corona CA) the raise got taken away from her because the company was in dire straights at the time, as well as the bonus, so I ended up having to move out from my sweet little cushy apartment in downtown Redlands CA to help her and my two brothers with money. Eventually I convinced my two brothers to go to dealer school — to do what I do — and so for about 18 months my mom and I handled all the finances for the household.

I remember about five years ago we had basically met the end of our rope, my mother and I. It was December and the two of us had to pretty much agree that there would be no Christmas that year because we couldn’t afford it. We were using our credit cards to pay for bills, completely tapped out of our checking and savings accounts. Then towards the end of the month, I had this day on craps where I struck the biggest score of my ten-year dealing career — I made $5,500 on like a Wednesday of all things — and excited as I was to tell my mom about it, on that very same day, she told me she was getting her bonus reinstated. All of a sudden everything was okay again. A few months later my older brother started working at a casino in Temecula CA. Some months later, after I bought my little brother a car, he joined my older brother at the same casino.

Anyway, that company that my mom had worked at for so long got bought out a few years ago by a Canadian company called E-Block who wanted to take the once-smalltime auto auction company public, and she survived the first four waves of layoffs. She did not survive the fifth. I remember being in the backyard one day and my mom was crying her eyes out because that was the day she got fired. And I immediately went into my natural let’s-get-a-grip problem-solving mode where I’m like consoling on the one hand while at the same time providing the proper motivation for what needs to happen moving forward. I said okay, we’re here now, it’s time to lock it in. It’s time to show the world what you are made of. It’s time.

She was seemingly receptive, but she really wasn’t. I mean I know she had these really good intentions and everything. Her heart is made of pure gold, my mother’s, that is. I wanted her to really use this setback to change her life. I wanted her to start exercising, going on the treadmill, and cut down on her drinking. I figured in my small pea-sized brain that if she could accomplish those two things, it would open up a whole new perspective that she could operate out of. I was wrong about that.

What happened, over the next several months, is her drinking habit only got worse. She wakes up incredibly early — like many sixty-something year-olds — and at the crack of 10:00 A.M. on the dot when the noise-making clock sings its little song every day she pours her first glass of wine and an hour later she isn’t even worth it to talk to because she’s so hammered. She would usually retire around 4:00 or 5:00 P.M. and repeat the same pathetic lonely process every day.

I know it’s probably selfish of me to say, but I got to the point (well before she lost her job) that I didn’t want to talk to her when she was drinking, for she becomes a completely different person. All the vibrancy and coherent-ness gets washed away, drowned out, and what becomes of her is a zombified version of herself that is hardly recognizable. And she gets very frustrated with me, in particular, much more than my other two brothers, because she expects something out of me. Her standards for me are so much higher and they always have been. So when I tell her that I don’t want to talk to her when she’s drinking, or drunk, which are virtually the same thing to me, it affects her.

Over the course of all these months my mother lost her fastball, so to say. She grew discouraged by life, by being ‘old,’ in her eyes, by the prospect that future employers do not want to hire women of her age, things like that. I obviously provided the support I could, but by the time she started drinking at 10:00 she would spiral downwards and nothing I said mattered and she couldn’t even remember anything I said, anyway. And so my brothers and I would just sort of roll our eyes at each other over her drunkenness and she would be in la la land for hours upon hours every day all by herself.

I lean heavily towards being an extremely empathetic human being as a direct result of my own life experiences, or traumas, as people call them nowadays. I think ‘trauma’ sounds stupid so I rarely describe it that way. Being heartbroken and depressed and anxious — or whatever else make people feel like shit — are all standard operating procedure as far as life goes; I don’t ask for special treatment for going through what most people inevitably go through. When it comes to my mom’s drinking, specifically, I’m like the only person in her immediate universe who imbibes regularly and who in the past has dealt with addiction. I have unintentionally almost killed myself like five different times in my life depending on your weapon of choice — Vicodin, Norcos, mixing them with alcohol, driving under the influence, waking up in a pile of vomit on a slit of grass outside a bar at four or five o’clock in the morning during the wintertime, etc.

But my empathy can only go so far, as I corrected my behavior. I am more honest with my mom than anyone else — we have that son-mother bond that is uncommon insofar as open and free exchanges are concerned — and I made it no secret that I cannot do it for you. Some of the worst advice is telling somebody to ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps,’ which is really an old right-wing theory which implies that if you don’t want to make $30,000 per year you can simply wave a magic wand and make six figures. That ain’t the way life, or the economy, works for 99% of people. If poverty was so easy to get out of, then poverty would not exist.

So while I say the bootstraps bullshit isn’t realistic, at a certain point I was kind of wishing, or expecting, my mom to become so frustrated with her current disposition to fucking get up and do something about it. She never did, though. And that affects me, too; it affects all three of us (her sons), her alcoholism, and her unwillingness to do the necessary things to change her life. It was a strange exercise, seeing my mom, my hero, wither away and dissolve and become a broken woman.

Luckily for her, yesterday [1-8-24] she got a new job. She got hired at some place that leases land and property and she’ll be working in an office again and thank god she won’t have the luxury of waking up early as fuck and tying one on every day. She’ll have to go to work, which is all she ever wanted and needed. She was so happy that she was like crying and even though I had a pretty crazy fun weekend that she wanted to hear about it took her like an hour to come down from it all and by the time she did come down she was on her third glass of wine and it wasn’t even worth it to talk to her by that point.

I remain optimistic about her future, about her happiness, but in the six or so months since she has been unemployed I think she missed a real opportunity to change her ways. I fear that she will get back to work and instead of having an entire day to get drunk she will just get home and go to pound town on the chardonnay and that will be how she continues to live. I guess the real win is that she’ll be back at work, and that’s all that matters, but I really miss having my mom around, present, all the time, instead of this reduced character that she so often becomes.

* * * * *

There was this woman I took an interest to some years ago. At that time she was married (I later learned) and I was in a relationship, so it didn’t make any sense mathematically. It was more so just one of those things where I would be dealing blackjack or whatever and every so often I would pop my head up like a groundhog to surveil all the happenings around the casino, and whether intentionally or unintentionally, voluntarily or involuntarily, she’d be standing somewhere off in the distance, and more often than I’d prefer to admit we would meet each other’s gaze.

Then many months passed and occasionally we would cross paths and say hello; I think one of my first interactions with her we were walking down the hallway en route to the casino floor and I asked her what she did that (prior) weekend, and she told me she did nothing but clean the whole time. I don’t know if it’s my awkward nature or some defect that has yet to be teased out of my own evolutionary biology, but all I could muster in response was ‘Good, that’s what a woman should be doing.’ She punched me in the arm and laughed and we went our separate ways.

One evening I was dealing craps and there were no players on the game and lo and behold she walked up and leaned her elbows against the cushioned leather padding. I was on stick. It feels really strange to like make a move on a woman when your male friends — er, craps dealers — are around, but my interactions with this particular woman were limited and so time was of the essence, so to speak, and, you know, what the hell? So I loaded up my gun and went in for a kill. Men talk about effective pickup lines and best ways to approach the opposite sex, but they have nothing on what I’ve got. I went really deep in my bag for this one. I had the little craps stick in my left hand, leaned up vertically against my left clavicle, fully engaged, ready to pounce. Here it comes, I thought to myself. My heart was racing, which sounds stupid in retrospect. My nerves were peaking. My stomach had that burn like my adrenaline was up. I had the perfect line. I was like: What’s your name? That’s what I said to her.

And so it’s all very strange how people arrive in your life. It’s been a couple years since that night, the one where I learned her name on the craps table, as she is constantly moving properties every handful of months and I didn’t see her for over a year, but the two of us have gone out each of the last three weeks and at the very least I find myself intrigued, even though she admitted she was in a ‘situationship.’

I imagine the thing I liked most about her from afar, years ago, was incredibly superficial. She would wear these like absurdly-oversized blazers, like they would dwarf over her, draping below her ass, and over her wrists, but it made so little sense, the blazers, that it actually worked on her. It wasn’t a mistake. I have always had this soft spot for obnoxious hair, well-done makeup, and fashion choices that are out of the norm.

After we got dinner and drinks the first night we went out we ended up at one of the local casinos (shocker, I know), and we were wandering around and playing all sorts of games and taking care of the dealers and my ex-girlfriend’s mom was working that night so I walked by her table and threw her a black chip and wished her a Merry Christmas. Later on that same woman, my ex’s mom, showed up to deal at my table and I was firing a hundred dollars a hand for her and she was converting them and it was just a good time, overall. I ended up at a baccarat table and some white guy showed up and asked me what side I was going to bet so he could bet the opposite, he said, and I told him That’s Fucking Annoying and later on I looked over and let him know You’re A Funny Guy but I don’t think he picked up on the disrespect.

I got a hotel that night, but the woman I was with was worried about her car which was left parked at the restaurant we were at earlier in the night. I tried to convince her we could just stay at the hotel and I’d take her back to her car in the morning, but she was very concerned so I decided to let it be and not press any harder than that. We stopped and ate at a local Denny’s and then I took her back to her car and drove back to the casino and stayed at the hotel and woke up a few hours later without having a comb to comb my hair in the morning so I looked like a complete hungover scumbag the next day at work.

The second time we went out was more mild, I guess you could say. We ate at one of the opulent-seeming restaurants in the desert and she said she really wanted to go dancing so we left the restaurant and met up at her apartment. By the time we each finished using the restroom she told me she just wanted to stay in and not go out, so that’s what we did. On her bookshelf I saw a compendium of Edgar Allen Poe’s works, and flipped to page 740 where ‘Annabel Lee’ was, and I read some of that. We ended up falling asleep to country music which was played via Spotify on her TV.

The third time we went out, we did end up dancing. I first took her to eat while the end of the Houston Texans/Indianapolis Colts game was on, then afterwards we did the same thing and met up at her apartment before heading to Downtown Palm Springs. She just wanted to dance. I remember going over to the bar to get another round and over the course of like three minutes two different guys approached her, and when I had our drinks in hand the second guy asked if she was with me and I said yes, she is with me, and he shook my hand and said I’m a lucky man which is I guess a cliché thing to do. I’d never do it, but I guess other people do. I wasn’t bothered because she wasn’t (and isn’t) my property or anything. I take it all in stride. I mean, I’d expect whatever woman I’m with to be desired by not just me.

The only downside to the night, I guess you could say, was that one of our coworkers saw the two of us together and the particular department this woman works in, the one who was ‘with me,’ is a massive conflict of interest. Like, it doesn’t make sense for either of us to be in-cahoots. So the next morning when we woke up she seemed kind of spooked by the prospect of our jobs being in jeopardy. I did the typical male exercise where I said it’s no big deal and that no one cares and if it’s ever time to lawyer up all we’d have to say is that I happened to be in this place, and you happened to be in this place, and there was a dance floor involved. Not everyone has to see it that way, but it’s a Plausible Deniability thing. Pleading ignorance is very underrated, and usually works (at least one time).

Driving home that night from work, the night after, I called her and let her know, because it’s easier for me to get out ahead of these things, that if it makes her uncomfortable, the conflict of interest, that we don’t have to do it. I don’t know how she saw things before that phone call, but I wanted her to know that I am considerate (because I actually kinda am). Since then we’ve been back to normal. Phone calls and Face Times and the plans of future hangouts.

The weird part is I still don’t know if I like her, and I don’t know if she likes me. I know I’m supposed to like her, as in I have been vaguely/passively pursuing her, or at least trying to get her attention, off and on while she has been on property for the last few years. She has a womanly sort of strut and elegance about her that is supremely attractive; she dresses well and seemingly (from everything I have learned of her) has herself put together; she understands my sarcasm and talks plenty of shit in return; she has a slender build with a great body and is like taller than I would normally go for, tall in the way that if she wore some completely slutty pair of stripper heels she would be roughly as tall as I am, that sort of thing.

It just doesn’t make sense right now, I don’t think. I mean setting aside the obvious and potentially detrimental circumstances for the two of us, job/career-wise, my instincts tell me she isn’t worth the risk. In the extreme cases, most notably recently, I never had to ask myself if it made sense or if it was worth it. Like if I had to donate a kidney or fork over every dollar I have or move to fucking Montana, or some shit thereof, I would have done it. Sometimes there are choices that need to be made, and other times there aren’t.

But that isn’t to say I don’t enjoy spending time with her. I do. Of all the prospects out there she is clearly at the top of my list and there isn’t a credible threat beating down the door behind her. She knows how to communicate with me and she knows what I like and I know what she likes. From the first time we sat down at the quiet dimly-lit bar and pulled up our stools and got a couple drinks in us to where our knees and thighs started like touching slightly and we both felt it but neither side moved and just let them be, I could tell she was comfortable with me and I was comfortable with her. All of this is to say: my reservations are not chemistry-related and have nothing to do with my glaring level of shallowness, to where I don’t think she is hot, or isn’t hot enough, because she obviously is right in line with everything I go after.

Timing makes up a large chunk of it, I’d guess. I know it isn’t relevant anymore, but it wasn’t that long ago, in the cosmic sense, or even the real-life sense, that I realized what it felt like to want to drop everything and go. I saw what the top of the mountain looked like. There was a stretch in my life where I would compare every person place or thing to the sensation of how the world felt when I was at my happiest. I spent years chasing that feeling, chasing some reasonable facsimile of the person who made me feel everything for the first time. It was a fool’s errand attempting to replicate what cannot be replicated. I didn’t know that at the time, because even the aftermath became its own thing, its own feeling, which turned into another first.

Fittingly enough, she called tonight [1-12-24] during my drive home from work and told me that her and her kind-of-boyfriend/’situationship’ were going to talk things out and see what’s going on between them. She said she wanted to be honest with me about that, which is something I appreciate. Honesty, that is. I told her I would be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little disappointed, and that was true, too. (Then she said she wanted to go out again tomorrow, so what do I know?)

Alongside said disappointment is also some relief, I think. Like it’s better to thwart any progress that has been made right this second as opposed to stringing it out and continuing whatever thing it is/was that we have/had going, and falling into certain routines where, when it’s practical or convenient, we will go out and end up sleeping over and inevitably she’ll fall in love with me or I will end up having strong feelings for her. Better to just put a cap on it, or a band-aid, that will serve in the meantime.

And who knows what types of discussions she will be having with her significant other. Maybe she’s missed him and was only using me as a placeholder to pass some time. Maybe she was waiting for someone like me who she considered worthy enough to give her the type of leverage she desired to break things off with him. Maybe it’s something entirely in the middle of those two poles and it’ll end up being just as confusing (or even more confusing) for her than it was before. Maybe it’s some other outcome that I haven’t considered.

What I do know is the two of us had and have a good time together, always. I know that I am gentlemanly in my own way, the type of shit where if boundaries are put up I will acknowledge them and/or adhere to them most of the time.

I can’t be mad at how I saw this whole thing through, though. I mean, it’s been years since I’ve known this girl and I always had a curiosity about her. I never really envisioned a scenario that existed where she would agree to go hang out with me outside of work in the first place, then graduate to the level where the two of us are lying in bed at night twisting ourselves up in these pretzels, those perfect sorts of pretzels where our legs are wrapped up and our arms are around each other and some Chris Stapleton is playing in the background and then it changes to another song once the previous one finishes and then we wake up and I tell her I have to go to work and to give me a hug and then she leans over to me to give this like gigantic hug that says she wishes I didn’t have to leave so soon, and where she understands that I reciprocate such a sentiment to a very similar degree.

* * * * *

I gave up on writing about the Kansas City Chiefs on a weekly basis because, you know, what else is there to say? I ran out of shit to talk about like a season and a half ago and have since (for a time, anyway) just used their final scores as a means to write a weekly blog about my life. Somewhere in the middle of writing about my 2023 campaign — my Year In Review — I realized that that’s what I wanted my writing to be about. Not little sporadic 500- or thousand-word commercials about whatever I am passionate blogging about in that moment, but a real, honest, authentic article about life as I see it.

I did a breakdown of all the blogs I have written on here over the years. I condensed it into a chart and that chart looks like this:

2013: 27 (1 blog every 13.5 days)
2014: 83 (4.4 days)
2015: 52 (7 days)
2016: 113 (3.2 days)
2017: 62 (5.9 days)
2018: 51 (7.2 days)
2019: 40 (9.1 days)
2020: 57 (6.4 days)
2021: 66 (5.5 days)
2022: 55 (6.6 days)
2023: 46 (7.9 days)

Yes, it’s true: in 11 years I have produced 652 blogs on this website. But if we throw out 2013 and 2016 — where I wrote the fewest number of blogs and most amount of blogs, respectively — then we are looking at nine years worth of data points where, on average, I wrote one blog every 6.666 (for infinitely) days.

In 2024 I intend to write just 12, one for every month of the calendar year. These blogs (if January is any indication) will be significantly longer, but by condensing the total number I feel like I’ll be able to cut out a lot of the bullshit and really be able to expand on the things I actually care to write about.

Kansas City Chiefs 26, Miami Dolphins 7

With all that said, let’s go Chiefs!!!

I saw on Twitter the other day that Let’s Fucking Go is a white person’s version of Allahu Akbar, and that shit had me fucking rolling. Back in my post-high-school/post-year-of-Virginia-Tech days in the awkward 2009-’11 window, when every day was filled with like getting high and hanging out with my friends (who supplied the aforementioned narcotics), when obligations were at an absolute minimum, besides the occasional couple days a week at community college and a few days a week at the previously mentioned auto auction company, one of my friends was this younger black guy named Teandre who was a big New Orleans Saints fan.

And so each week, during football season, I would drive over to my good buddy John’s house and hang out with him, his younger half-brother Josh, his older sister Dominique, their parents, and Teandre, and I would always bring a big bag of Hot Cheetos and a bag of classic Nacho Cheese Doritos, which I still contend is the very best stoner mixture/combination of prestige chip brands. And we would all get high all day and occasionally take shots of Wild Turkey — why? no fucking clue — and during halftime or while waiting for our teams to play (they were all Raiders fans, except for T.) we would all play pickup football in the cul de sac. It was a really great time to be alive, honestly. I looked forward to those Sundays every week.

Anyway, the point is that one of those years (and a quick google search tells me it was 2010) the Saints won the Super Bowl against the Colts. And there was this play where one of New Orleans’s corners, Tracy Porter, intercepted Peyton Manning and scored a touchdown, and I remember Teandre yelling Let’s Fucking Go and that was the first time I’d ever heard it. Later on it became popularized by Tom Brady, which is how the whites do what they always have done and steal everything as their own, but on this blog we will never forget T. screaming Let’s Fucking Go in the living room while Tracy Porter was on his run to glory.

As far as the Chiefs go, this is what it’s all about. The playoffs, that is. They have seemed bored and disinterested for years now during the regular season, but the 2023 season (which this is) is the first year during the Patrick Mahomes era (starting in 2018) when it seemingly caught up with them. I mean, their projected over/under win total heading into the season according to betting markets was 11.5, and they ended up 11-6, which isn’t too far away from the (projected) truth, I guess you could say, but it was clear that they had a rough go of it for most of the year.

In retrospect it makes perfect sense. Where I missed, as an outsider, heading into the year, was that I viewed all their cracks or like fissures as individual problems, rather than collectively, as a whole. Whether it was Chris Jones’s contract situation, Travis Kelce dating Taylor Swift, Patrick Mahomes getting the biggest QB contract in the history of the NFL (for the second time in his career), a dearth of talent at the WR position, or simply good ol’ fashion complacency after winning their second Super Bowl in four years, I should have seen troubled waters ahead.

Because, again, any of these items on their own probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But together, all at once, that’s how divisions are sewn and how problems arise. The reason the NFL is the best sport in the world is due to the fact that to win it all, to be champions, everyone on the active 53-man roster needs to be moving in the same direction. Little cracks turn into major issues without much effort. Like small petty annoyances early on in a relationship, over time they will fester, and eventually they will become everything.

Fortunately the Chiefs were good enough to win the AFC West for an eighth consecutive year, thus securing them a home game in the first round of the playoffs (where they dismantled an injury-plagued and battered up Dolphins team in -30 degree windchills). Regardless of what has occurred up to this point, the Kansas City Chiefs are one of eight teams remaining in the playoffs. And next week, they are traveling to Buffalo to face the Bills in what will, remarkably, be the first true road game Patrick Mahomes has had to play in his career.

The Bills are currently [1-16-24] 3-point favorites and the point total is 45.5, meaning betting markets expect something in the range of a 24-21 win for Buffalo. I can’t really speak on who I think will win or what I think is going to happen next Sunday at 3:30 Pacific Standard Time, because if truth be told this has been the whackiest Chiefs season since Mahomes took over the starting QB role and immediately ascended to becoming the best/most talented player in the sport. But there is a lot to like, I believe, insofar as how a Chiefs fan should approach this game.

• (1) Being that Kansas City beat the Dolphins on Saturday night, and that the Bills had their game against the Steelers pushed back to Monday due to inclement weather, the Chiefs have a full two-day rest advantage. According to Warren Sharp, Kansas City had the most difficult schedule in the NFL in 2023 due, ironically, to their opponents having the rest advantage over them over the course of the season.
• ‘It would be one thing to have the third-worst net rest edge in the NFL. But for there to be six games in a row where they are dealing with (most often) multiple days rest disadvantage, and for them to come late in the season as they do, will be extremely challenging on the Chiefs.’
• (2) All week long the media will, as I mentioned earlier, be talking about one thing and one thing only: That this is Patrick Mahomes’s first true playoff road game (sans the Super Bowl against the Bucs in Tampa Bay, which was predetermined like three years earlier) of his career. During press conferences and pregame media functions the Chiefs, and Mahomes, as an extension of the Chiefs, will say the right things and credit the Bills for a great season and say their work is cut out for them, etc.
• But the Chiefs are petty. Mahomes is petty. Whether it’s a credit to the organization or not, that Mahomes has played all 14 of his playoff games at Arrowhead Stadium, due to the Chiefs being so fucking good over the last five or six years, somewhere silent within that fact is an inkling that Patrick Mahomes can’t win on the road, that it’s been easy for him because he is always playing home games.
• I am probably projecting a bit by saying that, but that’s how I would take it. And I am not a professional athlete who spends their life playing football games. Competitive, sure, that’s me. That’s how I can relate. And I think it gives both Mahomes and Kansas City a reason to have a chip on their shoulder heading into next week’s AFC Divisional Round.
• (3) Let’s be honest, this is the first time in a long time that the Chiefs are going into a playoff game playing with house money. Maybe one of you can check me on this, but I am pretty sure the only time since Mahomes has played QB that Kansas City has been an underdog in a playoff game was last year’s Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles, where Philly was -1.5. Literally every other game they have been the favorite.
• As a Chiefs fan this offers me so much leverage in the coming week. I’ll be able to tell everyone that my favorite football team is probably going to lose — they are expected to lose — and it’ll be great because if they actually do end up losing I can say, yeah, that’s what was supposed to happen, and if they win then I’ll be happy and humble and get to say the same thing to everyone next week when Kansas City would likely be a 3-point underdog against the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens. I am personally in a great position at the moment, and I love that.

Gun to my head, I am going to continue telling everyone that This Isn’t Our Year, but why would I ever doubt the Chiefs so long as Patrick Mahomes is playing quarterback? I never turn my back on my boys, and at the same time it’s going to be kind of nice not having the weight of the proverbial football world on my shoulders, going into every fucking game expecting victory, and having to explain it off to my friends at work and in real life whenever KC gets upset. This is exactly where I want to be.

* * * * *

I don’t mean to be crass, but desperation is a terrible look. I referenced in my Year In Review this particular sentence which nearly made up an entire paragraph, and it went like this (emphasis mine):

Since none of it matters, though, I feel that I have kind of graduated to the level where I can tell these women, point blank, on our first date, or whatever the kids call it these days, that I am emotionally unavailable and that they are going to end up liking me (or worse) and that I don’t want to hurt them and that I always just want us to be ‘cool,’ and I know it probably sounds like a joke when I say it — because after all, it is me who is saying it — but I’m actually deadass serious.

So there’s this woman. She’s 39 with blond hair and she’s pretty and has a nice body. She wears all black every day and is one of the managers in a certain department at the place I work at. Her style is like always on the go; she walks fast; she talks fast; she is really good at her job, the type of person I would be enthusiastic about hiring if I owned a business. She is friendly and well-spoken and all of that jazz.

Following my somewhat tumultuous 2023, mid-year she was there. We ended up going to Downtown Redlands one night where I offered her my spiel (from above) and she shrugged it off like I was being arrogant or full of myself or whatever way you choose to describe it. I felt good about my approach because it was honest. That’s me. Honest guy.

Anyway, over the coming months the two of us went out a handful of times. A couple drunk evenings I found my way to her house and even met her kids, both teenagers and teetering on the edge of where I am like still able to speak their language. We had these nights where we would end up at the casino (that she used to work at) and we would make late-night trips to eat and sometimes we would run to the local Walgreens to pick up some White Claws (for no particular reason) and just hang out on her front porch listening to music and chatting about life and what not. Then I would go home.

A couple months ago she had to make a run to the local casino to do something called price checks, comparing prices of certain items to the prices at the casino we work at, per her job, and I committed like two weeks in advance, telling her I would join her whenever she ended up going.

After ten days or so the deadline was like three days away. And so one night she told me she was going, and I told her I had a massive hangover from the night before, like my head was still bumping, and I said why don’t we just go the next day, or the next. But she lets it be common knowledge, whenever she is texting, what kind of mood she is in. Even without necessarily meaning to she telegraphs her feelings. Examples include, primarily, sending short texts, or using periods to end sentences instead of exclamation points (where the latter is generally more common on her end), etc.

In this instance she treated it like it was now or never. She had that type of text-tone that let me know she wasn’t happy that I was trying to put it off — for understandable reasons, I thought. So I did the thing where I thought to myself that I gave this person my word, and above almost everything I don’t want to backtrack on that, my word, so I bit the bullet and made the half-hour trek and joined her.

What was so stupid about it all was that, upon arrival, we spent absolutely zero time doing ‘price checks.’ That’s when I knew she just needed an excuse for me to come see her. Rather than letting me do what I want to do — which is all I ever want to do — she decided it was worth it, headache and hangover and all, to drag me out just to have another night out in public with me. I didn’t appreciate it while it was happening, but after a few beers I forgot about my headache and all was well with the world. I saw it happening in front of me, though. And I didn’t forget it.

When I was past the point of giving a shit, several drinks later, she asked if I wanted to stay the night at her place, and it seemed like fun so I agreed. We made the half-hour trip back to her house and ended up having a sleepover. We were making out and touching each other and doing all of that, then she pulled my dick out and started sucking on it and a couple minutes later she took off her pants and put it inside of her and after like a stupid amount of drinks earlier in the night we both experienced that depressing realization that I was out of commission. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I fought the good fight. But it wasn’t going to happen, because it was never going to happen right then and there. She felt bad, thinking it was her fault, and I tried to convince her that it was me, which it was, and the next thing I remember I was awake because the alarm on my phone went off at 9:00 A.M.

I don’t know if it’s some psychological thing within me, or what have you, I just have a hard time (pardon the whatever it is) leaving women disappointed. Like I normally can’t get myself off until I know the other party has been satisfied. This has been true forever. So when I woke up, next to her, lying there, she was, with those tired eyes, the first thing I did was sit on top of her, with a firm hard-on, right in front of her face, and I just shoved it straight down her throat. And she woke up right away.

Then I just, like, gave her the business. It all stemmed from the night before — or early morning — to finish what was started. All the build up, all the Me Being Emotionally Unavailable shit, all the dragging me out against my wishes the night before, all the everything, I still felt bad for making her feel bad that she wasn’t like pretty enough or capable enough even though I was three sheets to the wind. I wanted her to be okay. And so we kissed a little in her kitchen before I left to get my haircut at 10:00 A.M., and I knew right there that that was going to be the last time I saw her in that type of setting.

Since then, she has felt the emptiness of me not being around anymore. She has yet to come to the realization that I was never there, never really there, that I was being as honest as I possibly could have been on that first date, or whatever you want to call it, when I told her that this was only going to end for her in one way, and that people like me only exist to remind them, the other party, whoever it is, that the much better, much safer option, is somebody who is chasing them, rather than the other way around.

The funny thing about it is she hasn’t convinced herself of anything at all. She has been as clingy as ever, as desperate as desperate can be, sometimes texting me five or six times in a row before I finally implore her to Get A Grip, and then she’ll pawn it off to declaring that all she ever wanted was to be ‘friends.’ I can accept such a sentiment to a certain degree, but not when the texts and double- and triple-texts fly so freely from her end. I have had friends before. I have not, however, traveled to lengths anywhere near where she has traveled for someone whom I considered to be just a ‘friend.’

My first love had this cliché she liked to use. Whenever I would like shit on her or belittle her or tell her I didn’t really mean it that way, whichever way it was when I was 18 years old, she would say, simply, that ‘actions speak louder than words.’ That’s all this is. That is all this ever was. You can tell me we are friends, you can tell me being friends is all you ever wanted it to be, but when you act like a child, when I don’t text you back for like five hours and you are responding within a couple minutes, it betrays your true feelings.

I don’t know a lot of things, but something I do know is that interpersonal relationships require balance. When two people like each other, they generally want to hear from each other as often as possible. When one side is taking hours to respond, and the other is taking mere minutes, it is obvious which side has the upper hand. And if the losing end cannot compute within their brain that maybe it makes more sense to wait — insofar as writing back is concerned, as an example — then they have lost everything before the battle has even begun. Our brains have this dopamine chemical that gets released, to where it’s like a drug to see that message from a certain someone pop up, and if it’s too easy or if it’s not exciting anymore, to our brains, then it becomes an annoyance.

Maybe there is some vague generational divide between a 39 year-old and a 33 year-old, which is what I am, but the annoyance compounds upon itself when figuring that someone older than I am does not understand such a dynamic. I don’t consider myself a game-player, or a player of games when it comes to the opposite sex, but I do possess the type of intuition necessary to configure that if a woman I am interested in takes like 40 minutes to respond to me, then I am going to take at least 40 more to write back. When her interval shortens, so too does mine. If her interval lengthens, best believe I am going to get the message that is being sent — so to speak.

[1-18-24] To be clear, it isn’t as if she did anything wrong, per se. I think our brief and inconsequential tale is painted in broad strokes by the irony of her (being the elder amongst us) lack of experience. And this is coming from someone who has only been in what I would consider two legitimate relationships in my lifetime. Over the last decade-plus most of my prolonged interactions with women have ended, in various shapes and forms, and to a wide range of varying degrees, very similarly to how this particular one played out. We went out, got to know one another, then somewhere along the line I lost interest or got bored, typically after they too easily gave me what I wanted to work a lot harder for, and in time their frequency hearing from me dissolved until the point where they either gave up or I stopped responding altogether.

But we had our time together. That’s what is ultimately of import. I can’t like describe exactly what it is that I am seeking — because, largely, I don’t even know what that is until it arrives, and by the time it’s there it is too late for me to control matters — yet I am confident that it involves some level of chase on my end. If it’s too easy, too soon, I’ll be out. If the intellectual gap is too wide I’ll run out of reasonable material that’s worth discussing. If I don’t have a certain physical attraction that fills me with wonder then there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have gotten started in the first place, which is fucked up to admit but true nonetheless. And you could give me everything I want on a silver platter and sometimes the timing isn’t right, so that won’t work, either.

I’m sure I make it sound a lot more complicated than it actually is, because generally these types of scenarios begin in the simplest ways. I think you are cute, you think I am handsome, and the ball starts rolling. It always gets tricky after that. I’ve been down the road enough times that I’m beginning to believe that flirting can be/is better than sex. Holding hands can be/is more intimate than taking that initial plunge. The less we know, the more possibilities and potentialities exist.

This girl, specifically, was never going to work, which is why I told her with absolute honesty exactly where I was coming from and exactly what was going to happen if she continued on within 20 minutes of our first rendezvous in Downtown Redlands. To that end, I really can’t muster the emotional sensitivity or compassion or empathy in the midst of whatever crisis she is going through when I am failing to respond to her fourth or fifth text message while I am off high playing video games pondering what it is I am going to have for dinner at 11:30 at night.

I don’t have the heart to tell her ‘I’m talking to someone,’ because I am not, and I have no interest to make up some lie that will let her off the hook. My only intention is to get her to give up on her own. To make her realize that the dream is over. To use my actions (or lack of action) as a sort of vehicle that will offer her a learning lesson. To make her better prepared the next time someone like me comes around. To implement gently some understanding that the two of us are in different points in our lives. That she has two teenage kids. That I am 33 and childless and would one day like to make some babies of my own. That she is not that girl. That she was never going to be that girl. That she couldn’t be that girl.

The year 2023 showed me that being honest is the only way forward. As I look outward on the impact I have on other people’s lives, I feel an ever-sharper grasp on my own level of self-awareness. Like I don’t look at myself in the mirror every day thinking Goddamn, Every Woman On Planet Earth Who Says Hi To Me Wants To Fuck Me. I don’t believe I carry with me vast amounts of interpersonal leverage over the opposite sex. I don’t think everyone should only be so lucky to have the privilege of being in my presence on a day-to-day or text-to-text basis. That is not how I operate.

Instead, I am my own worst critic and I always have been. I stand at 5’7″ tall. I have an average- to skinny-average build. I have a good job and some money in the bank but nowhere near the sum it would take to walk down the street and point my finger at someone and tell them to do whatever I say. Goals. I can’t throw very hard, but I can throw far. I can’t run very fast, but I can run for a long time. Taking everything into account I’m probably like a 7/10, which really means to the average superficial viewer that I’m a 5.5.

So, no, I am not god’s gift to humanity. What I am is what people say when they mention that The Devil Is In The Details. My own personal understanding of reality is knowing some sliver of human nature, the things that we all feel, universally, that bind us together. I create sparks, and most of the time those little flashes produce very little, they just fizzle out into nothingness, and other times, to those who know, and can really appreciate it, they turn into flames. And those flames will usually burn out, eventually, as well. They will. That’s the way flames work.

You will never catch me, however, sending bulk text messages to someone that won’t write back. You won’t catch me trying when the game has already been decided. I’ll be in the corner, by myself, reading my book. I’ll be in my room playing video games. I’ll give the smile, or the wink, or whatever it takes to let everyone know I am completely unaffected by everything that’s transpired. I’ll take my ball. And I’ll just go home.

* * * * *

Kansas City Chiefs 27, Buffalo Bills 24

[1-23-24] I don’t know why I wanted this one so badly. Probably because it was the Bills. Probably because it was Josh Allen. Probably for all the reasons I outlined when I sort of previewed the game earlier in this article. Something about the Chiefs in the playoffs just wakes me up and gets me going.

I didn’t get the day off from work and I did not call in sick. I showed up, got out at 5:30 P.M., and listened on the radio as Josh Allen threw a touchdown pass to Khalil Shakir on 3rd-and-goal from the 13 yard-line while I made the four- or five-minute drive to a local bar/restaurant. When I got in I found a seat at the end of the bar and honestly had the best intentions of keeping calm and controlling my emotions and not like revealing that I am a Chiefs fan.

Then all of a sudden Patrick Mahomes bought some time in the pocket and fired a seed like 35 yards down the field to WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling and involuntarily my hands started clapping and some version of ‘C’mon!’ or ‘Let’s Go!’ came out of my mouth, and that’s when I knew. That’s when everyone else in my immediate surroundings knew. I either had money on the game or I was a massive Kansas City Chiefs fan.

My phone lit up like a dozen different times from a dozen different people when Buffalo’s kicker, Tyler Bass, pushed a 44-yard field goal — which would have tied the game at 27 apiece with a minute and 40 seconds remaining — wide right, essentially securing the win for the Chiefs. And I was as happy I have been over the result of a football game since last year’s Super Bowl.

I kind of outlined earlier in this article all the reasons why I liked the spot the Chiefs were in, but that didn’t make it any less surprising that they actually did it. I don’t know why both of their playoff wins have come across as such a shock to me; I just never really believed, like truly, that this was going to be one of those years where the Chiefs ended up where they inevitably have ended up in each of the last six years: in the AFC Championship Game. Maybe I’m surprised that I was right in my assessment. Maybe that’s all it is.

Anyway, if it’s true what I said, that the Chiefs were playing with house money against the Bills, then it’s doubly true in next Sunday’s matchup against the Baltimore Ravens. Baltimore is, at current, four-point favorites, playing at home, owners of the overwhelming favorite to win NFL MVP — Lamar Jackson — and were undeniably the best team in the AFC in 2024. This is supposed to be their year. There is no way the Chiefs walk in and capture their second straight Lamar Hunt Trophy and play in their fourth Super Bowl in five years, right? It can’t be so.

I’m willing to make the argument, however. The argument is actually a pretty simply one. It goes like this: There was a stretch, before Joe Burrow arrived and sort of elevated the Cincinnati Bengals to being the best team in the AFC North (in 2021 and 2022), where the Chiefs and Ravens played each other every year. That’s how the NFL works. If you play in the same conference, which the Chiefs and Ravens do, and if you win your division, which the Chiefs and Ravens did in 2018 and 2019, then you play each other the following year. Moral of the story: the Chiefs became very familiar with playing Lamar Jackson. Below is another chart of lifetime matchups between Jackson and Mahomes:

12-09-2018: Chiefs 27, Ravens 24 (OT)
09-22-2019: Chiefs 33, Ravens 28
09-28-2020: Chiefs 34, Ravens 20
09-19-2021: Ravens 36, Chiefs 35

It’s very real, this was supposed to be the Next Great Rivalry in the NFL. It was supposed to be Patrick Mahomes vs. Lamar Jackson, once upon a time. The sport was searching for its next pairing of great young quarterbacks once Tom Brady and Peyton Manning either retired or fell out of relevance, and it was the natural cycle to transition from two old white pocket passers to Mahomes and Jackson, who stretched the boundaries of what was possible regarding the quarterback position.

The original matchup, in 2018, was perhaps the most famous. That was the day Patrick Mahomes set the world on fire by throwing a no-look pass, but that wasn’t the most impressive on the day. Down 24-17 late in the 4th quarter, on fourth down Mahomes was under duress and found Tyreek Hill downfield for a crucial conversion which ultimately led to a 4th-and-goal touchdown pass to RB Damien Williams, which sent the game into overtime.

The second and third matchups were both sort of blowouts; the 33-28 Chiefs final score appeared a lot closer than the game actually was. And the truth is, Baltimore’s lone victory was sort of fraudulent; the Chiefs were driving and already in field goal range late in the fourth quarter when RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire fumbled and the Ravens ran out the clock. That makes me sound super homer-ish, saying Baltimore’s only win against the Chiefs during the Jackson/Mahomes rivalry was fraudulent, but what I described is literally what happened. It’s facts.

[1-24-24] Now, let’s not get it twisted. It’s been not one but two NFL seasons since the Chiefs and Ravens have played one another, and essentially two-and-a-half calendar years since a Kansas City defense got to see what the unicorn named Lamar Jackson is all about. When I say ‘unicorn’ that is exactly what I mean to say: No other quarterback can do what he does, particularly with respect to his speed when plays break down or designed QB runs. He is one of a kind.

Via a basic Google search of the 2021 roster, the Chiefs carry over just four defensive players who remain on the roster present-day: DT Chris Jones, linebackers Nick Bolton (who was a rookie) and Willie Gay (who wasn’t on the field very much back then), and CB L’Jarius Sneed. Perhaps Kansas City’s biggest advantage, if you want to call it that, in their previous four matchups against Baltimore and Lamar Jackson was their familiarity having seen him so much. Fragments of those (much weaker 2018-’21 Kansas City) defenses are still on the team, but the bulk of the current defense consists of players who have never been on the field and felt the speed, and dealt with the stress, that Jackson puts on the opposition.

Furthermore, Lamar isn’t the same quarterback he was two years ago, so it’s hard to say how applicable familiarity even is anymore. I imagine it has to count for something, but like so many other Chiefs football games there’s a good chance Chris Jones is going to have to be the difference if Kansas City has a chance of containing Baltimore’s offense. Interior pressure, that’s what Jones has made a borderline hall-of-fame career providing and that’s what was once Lamar Jackson’s kryptonite.

Listen, I have made bold proclamations in the recent past about the Chiefs beating the Bengals in the AFC Championship last year, the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl last year, and whether or not I was right with my assessment of last Sunday’s Bill’s game, at worst I would say I was warm. I have much less feel for this coming Sunday’s AFC title game against the Ravens, but I spend a decent portion of my life taking educated guesses as they relate to the future and exhaust sizable chunks of this blog doing my best to predict right and wrong.

When it comes to this game — Chiefs (+3.5) at Ravens — I think it is going to be a street fight. I think pads are going to be popping. I think both teams will be trying to out-physical one another. I think, just as I do most games, that the winner at the line of scrimmage will have the upper-hand in deciding who leaves the field as AFC Champions. And I think there is good reason why the Baltimore Ravens enter as the biggest favorite against a Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs team in the playoffs, ever.

I say all that, and I also say that no one ever went broke betting on the best player in the NFL when the moment matters most. Should the Ravens win this game, which I believe they probably will, it’s going to be because they take some lead — 7 points, 10 points, 14 points — at some point during the first half, or early in the third quarter, and are able to lean on their power running game to salt away the clock and force Mahomes and the Chiefs to get desperate and out of character. If the Chiefs are to win, which is entirely conceivable given Mahomes’s playoff history, it will be a similar script. Playing from ahead. Forcing Lamar Jackson to throw the Ravens back into the game.

At any rate, I can’t be mad if this is to be the end of the 2023 Chiefs campaign. It was a sloppy year. It was a work-in-progress pretty much from the start. It’s true that they have hit their stride when it’s counted, but Baltimore has been the team of the year and it won’t be a major disappointment if Kansas City can’t win on the road for the second time in a clear down year for them. They’ve won two of the last four Super Bowls. They have been to three of the last four. As much as I love the Chiefs, I understand, philosophically, intellectually, that they can’t win it all every year.