October 2024

Pursuant to my last blog, it wasn’t only I who was supposed to make the leap from day shift to swing shift. Joining me was my friend Spencer — my closest and most trusted confidant in the whole casino industry. For months he and I had speculated about switching shifts, and this was for a litany of reasons: vague annoyances with certain yet (for the purpose of this blog) unspecified persons, general fatigue with the cliental and/or the shift itself, or merely for the good old fashioned understanding that we both felt we needed a change.

When the company posted for two positions on swing shift some of my coworkers thought I was joking when I said the position was offered literally with me in mind, and this was obvious because I was the only person who signed it. But then with some hesitancy, because he signed it at the end of the day and wasn’t, like, chomping at the bit such as I was, Spencer added his name to the list.

Casinos are some of the most toxic working environments known to man, and a big part of that is due to the fact that everything is all the time so public. Everybody knows everything about everyone else; drama tends occasionally to fall on your lap for no apparent reason; and I often describe my role being in the so-called loop as the idea that ‘I don’t look for the news, the news comes to me.’

So word traveled fast and everyone within a day or two became aware that Spencer and I were going to be moving shifts. And that’s fine. Like, it was expected. But since Spencer had just come off his weekend and when he came back neither of us shared a break together and we got off at different times so we didn’t get a chance to talk about it. About switching shifts. And then I came to my own personal weekend.

When Tuesday night rolled around I got a text from Spencer asking if he could call me, so I immediately set down the roll of Oreos I was absolutely fucking demolishing and picked up my phone and called him myself. When he started talking he mentioned that he was getting ‘cold feet’ about moving to swing shift and that he wanted to stay on days, and before he could even finish his sentence I just told him ‘Do it.’ Don’t leave day shift.

It’s almost as if those two words by themselves magically lifted some weight off Spencer’s shoulders. It was a palpable type of feeling that I could sense from the other end of the phone. And this probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone because nobody knows the relationship Spencer and I share, but my guy has a lot of pride, and clearly he felt bad for in a way going back on his word, and all those conversations he and I had about leaving day shift together.

And there probably were different points in my life where I would have felt disappointed by such a phone call, or I don’t know if disappointed is the right word but rather a type of bitterness that I, personally, wasn’t getting precisely what I wanted out of the situation. Because obviously I wanted Spencer to go with me to swing shift. I didn’t imagine all the conversations we had were merely of the hypothetical realm.

Yet when he told me that recently his daughter came over, and that both of his sons came over, for dinner, and that if he went to swing he wouldn’t get to have these moments anymore, I can’t relate to that. But I can imagine. I can imagine how one would not want to miss out on such moments. And he didn’t even have to say these things, for without even finishing his first sentence I was committed to him making the best decision possible for his own life.

But this freedom that I offered my friend, where I did not judge him for going back on his word, nor even giving him the sarcastic type of hard time, in a manner of speaking, that so frequently guys tend to give each other for virtually no reason whatsoever, I know it meant a lot to Spencer. Because he and I probably had the most meaningful conversation we have ever had.

And he said something to me, something he admitted that he knew I didn’t believe in, and he told me I have a certain energy about me that attracts good people, and that I surround myself with good people, and that they can feel it, too. And it’s nice, hearing such things, because I know Spencer can’t talk in such a way to just any guy, as so many of our ilk make it weird and don’t really know how to like deal with it on such an emotional, honest level. So what I told Spencer was this: That I was willing to agree with him that my energy attracts good people, because he is the best of people that I have attracted.

It’s not only Spencer, though. There’s this army veteran named George that I work with, and he’s only a couple years older than me, and there was a day a few months back where he didn’t seem to be himself, and in a private moment I just went up from behind him and sort of gave him a soft jab to the ribs and whispered: ‘You good, dawg?’

That was all I said. Then roughly a month later we were all out having some beers — a group of us coworkers — and George joined me outside while I smoked a cigarette and he invoked of me that day not too long ago where I asked him if he was good, and he said he really like needed that to get his mind right on that day. It made him realize, he said, the way he was coming off, and that he, in fact, was not having a good day, and that he was not in fact good. And so it is thus of the true value I offer to humanity. I am good for the collective morale.

And I had this other friend named Heather — whom also I once worked with — and a couple years ago something very similar happened where I noticed she wasn’t, quite, like, herself one day. It can be hard, you know, working in a casino, because as I said everything is so goddamn public. It is difficult to maintain such an enthusiasm to put on the face and execute the smiles and the fake laughter, and if you are a pretty girl then you are also burdened with having to entertain all manner of drunk idiots throwing caution at the wind for their one chance at glory, at being Remembered.

So this one night I asked her, Heather, that is (who at the time was more stranger than friend) what was eating at her, and she kind of played it off as if everything was fine and then she got back to her business and I went back to minding my own. And then she came back to me a couple minute later and asked if I was an empath — a word I was unaware of but which I was able to piece together via context clues and what not. It was clear that she diagnosed me and who I was in that very brief instance when I asked her, simply, if she was doing all right.

Even though I write this as if it some groundbreaking shit, I know it isn’t. I mean it is, but it really isn’t. The groundbreaking part is actually the easy part, given that the year is in fact 2024 and that everyone to varying degrees is self-absorbed — myself included — and so it’s kind of a throwback, and it kind of goes against the grain, so much so that it does attract certain people, when one asks how they are, the other person, rather than one boasting or lamenting of their own personal accomplishments or struggles.

And I don’t know where it is exactly that I acquired this singular power of mine, but the theory I have is that I got it from my mom. From interacting with her as often as I have throughout my life. Because I know there were many days in my teenage years when I was stressing her out and she didn’t want to deal with me. I know there were times in my 20’s when she was thinking about separating from my dad and I had to help like coach her through it. I know that I saw everything, even when I wasn’t looking for it. I saw enough to know when she was happy, or sad, or in need of crying, or felt some urge of yelling at me or imploring me to do better, etc. I saw every color on the wheel and every shade within every color, and that is what makes me an incredibly empathetic mutherfucker. That’s my theory, anyway.

The funny part is I do happen to operate much better in the Toxic Masculinity department, for it is true I grew up with two brothers who lean heavily towards being distant emotionally, and a father who was emotionally both distant and altogether absent, and I have my pride, and I have my ego, and I have this competition about me which understands that to be a man — at least the type of man I can’t help but being — means I must dominate my own ecosystem and spread my seeds as far out as they must go.

It is in this understanding, however, that allows me to break through not only to females who I can see as if they were my own mother but also of the males who share in the toxic masculinity department such as I do. And I told Spencer, in some way or another, that if I were in his position I would have made the exact same phone call, since one would always rather hear it from the source than in the way that most people in casinos hear such things. Where it is every man (or woman) for himself and most people are pussies. Spencer told me he would be staying on day shift before even he told the boss. That says something about a man.

Of all the things I take pride in, it is perhaps this one, this empathy I possess, this ability to be an empath, as Heather once learned to me, that holds the most weight. Because so much of what I do amongst the people I care about in the casino universe is so fucking public, where I can be my same old arrogant self and get my high fives and ‘atta boy’s and everyone will see and understand who I am, and the lane I occupy, and where I am coming from.

This empathy, though, it’s incredibly private. It is so private that I don’t even have to think about it while it is happening. It is from my end merely a genuine human response, one that prefers to see the people I love to be happy and their best selves as frequently as possible. So when they are not, I feel it incumbent upon me to notice the things that maybe not everyone else notices, or to be bold enough to ask the question that maybe not everyone else is bold enough to ask.

Because it gets kind of weird, you know? Like, when you work a job that is so excruciatingly public — both with your own coworkers and the general public itself — in some way it forces you to become an entirely different person. One where you assume a costume (or in this case a uniform) and everyday you have to wear a certain mask. Ironically enough, it is when my friends break from their masks and remove themselves from their costumes when I realize something is awry.

And it forces me to remove my own costume, and drop my own mask, and show some humility of my own, when indeed I inevitably become again a real human being in asking something so simple as: Is everything all right?

It ought to be understood that I am not in any way the poster boy for being honest when such a question is posed to me. It is my pride that keeps me. And that is fine, too. I feel I am making at least some strides in showing my own brand of vulnerability. Right now I think it is manifesting itself purely through my writing and hasn’t (yet) transcended into everyday life. But so it goes.

The point is: being so impenetrably devout at leading and living selfishly for the overwhelming majority of my time on earth has taught me in these recent years about what my world would look like if I made an honest effort at doing the opposite. Of perhaps once in a while giving a shit about others. For, truly, it is the smallest things that make the biggest differences in the lives of others.

And for once I have, over these last handful of years, earned some of the closest friendships and alliances of my life. Due to those quote small things. Such as asking the questions that can be so awkward to ask. And removing these layers upon layers of costume, those that for so long have offered and granted to me the protection from having to deal and to cope — both with myself and with others. And just being there. That is what I do best and that is and will be who I am, always.

So if I can lighten the load for those around me during the good times, when both my costume and my mask are present upon me, I am going to do that. If it is needed that I take it all off and become a genuine person for a moment or two, if that is the requirement to make someone’s day just a little bit better, I will gladly do that, too.

As phony as such a sentiment comes across, I do it because I can’t help who I am. This is who I am. I am selfish. I am the way that I am because I am self-absorbed. I do it because I am self-serving. Not for any political gain, nor for any interpersonal gain. These things come and go with the wind. They’re fickle. First they love you, then they hate you, then they love you again.

But when I talk of my own selfishness and self-absorption and nature of self-serving, what I mean to say is this: when those around me are happy, or happier, then it makes me happy, or happier. For when they hurt, it is my responsibility to find a way for them to hurt a little less. When they are content, it is my responsibility to find a way to make them further content.

Because I am selfish. And I will make my own way insofar as getting myself back up after I am on a downswing, or of knocking myself back down when I get up too high. With some sense of control over myself, I have no choice but to assist those around me both in the good times and bad, since each and all have an impact on me.

° ° ° ° °

Kansas City Chiefs 17, Los Angeles Chargers 10

Patrick Mahomes threw a first quarter interception and on the run back he tried to make a tackle and instead probably blew out the knee of second-year wide receiver Rashee Rice. Despite trailing 10-0 and without their most important non-quarterback offensive player the Chiefs managed to hold the Chargers scoreless for the rest of the game.

Just so we are taking accounts, Kansas City for probably the rest of the season will be without both Rice and WR Hollywood Brown, and running back Isiah Pacheco. If you made a preseason list of the consequential non-Mahomes pieces on offense, in some order it would involve those three players and tight end Travis Kelce. In other words, this is not an ideal situation for a football team to be in.

° ° ° ° °

It was during the spring of 2021 when I began to take an interest not only in running but in being a runner. This was an easy bet to make with myself since over the course of the previous two years I grew fat and happy in a relationship, and there was no need for me to prove anything anymore. I somehow ballooned over 180 pounds, which is quite hefty for someone of my stature, and in the way I tend always to do things, one morning (or night) I looked myself in the mirror and decided enough was enough.

And I remember how, like, scared I was, the first night I exited my ex-girlfriend’s apartment and took to the streets to run around the surrounding neighborhood. I walked down the block and it actually took some nerve for me to pick up my feet in a bipedal sort of motion only to register thirty putrid seconds or so before I had to stop and walk it off. Then when I caught my breath I continued the run, and so on. I repeated such a process dozens of times before I made it back to the front door.

I stayed so consistent with it, on the nights I slept at my ex-girlfriend’s place, that I began to look forward to the two or three times per week when I would get to test my stamina and progress. Those initial thirty seconds turned into a minute, and then a minute turned into two , and in a matter of a couple months I was able to maintain staying on my feet for some five minutes (or more) at a time.

More than anything I think what I learned, after getting some reps, was that I didn’t have to shoot my whole load right at the onset. Early on I burned so much energy proving to the cars passing me by — because pride — that I could sprint (thinking in my head that everyone who saw me was focused on what I, personally, was doing), when the secret to it all was as simple as continuing to move. Pacing myself. Maintaining a certain speed such that I wouldn’t have to stop and walk and catch my breath. Things of that nature.

So when my ex and I broke up, towards the end of July, 2021, it was a conscious effort on my part not to thwart my progress as a runner. As a consequence I bought a treadmill and went through stretches where I would build myself up to running for 10 minutes at a time, and then 20, and then 30, and then I would get comfortable or start talking to somebody new or go out more often than usual and convince myself that the work had been done. I got lazy. And then my discontent would fester in me once more and I would repeat the process all over again.

What I love about running, though, is that it (also) is so private. It’s private and it is a choice I must make every time to do. Said before I have that a major part of the reason why I happen to enjoy as an adult running as much as I do is because I was so average at it in my youth. And whenever there was something in my youth that I was merely average at doing, I hated it. I was always a frontrunner (pardon the pun): When I was good at something I liked it more, which made me even better at it; when I was less than good, rarely did I try to improve.

It is thus how decades down the road running became an integral part of my life. Because I do enjoy the pain of getting just a little bit better every day. I need the challenge of pushing myself beyond the limits of what I believe I am capable of. Where at the beginning of this journey, in 2021, I thought of running purely as a physical exercise — to shed some weight, or mitigate the harms of some of the cigarette smoke I consume, what I have learned is that running, the heavy majority of it, anyway, is mental. It is about the brain telling the body when to stop, and when to go, and it has been amazing to realize that I can always go just a little bit farther.

And it is important, finding these things out about one’s self. For I do not have a body fit to quote be a runner in the first place; my legs are short and thick, built ideally for crouching down on the balls of my feet behind home plate on a baseball diamond rather than taking long strides; my cardiovascular system is strong save for the damage I do to it from the aforementioned cigarettes; distance I can manage, quick bursts I cannot.

There is a guy named Eric Eager who used to run analytics for various football-related sites online before he was hired as something or other by the Carolina Panthers last year, and he, like me, is a major Kansas City Chiefs fan. And he used to make some comment semi-regularly about the Chiefs over the last couple years how they spend the regular season improving upon their deficiencies, and that losing teams spend the regular season trying to hide them. Their deficiencies, that is.

I treat football as a sport, of course — since that’s, like, what it is — but I never forget that it, football, in so many ways is a microcosm of life itself. Much can be learned from it, in other words, both with the adversity teams deal with on the field, and subtle comments such as the one Eric Eager made, away from it.

To that end, I find that being an adult forces every individual to make certain binary decisions, such as going this way compared to that, diving further into their what they already believe compared to making an attempt at understanding how the other half lives, or making the philosophical decision such as Mr. Eager posited, of trying to get better at what one is not so good at, or simply paying no mind to it at all. Or hiding it altogether.

There are many things that I am not so good at. Running has always been one of those things. But where once I was unable, or unwilling, to put in the effort, nowadays I feel like I could challenge anyone and be comfortable with where I stand. I use running as an exercise, sure, for thirty or forty minutes and two or three miles at a time, but that is merely for my own personal challenge on a nightly-ish basis. I’ve always wondered if I set the treadmill at a certain obtainable speed how far I would actually be able to travel. An hour? Two hours? Five miles? Ten miles?

The most fulfilling runs are never those that I happen to look forward to. When I am on my way home from work and I am a couple stoplights away from reaching pay dirt, another glorious end of yet another workday, I am sometimes stricken by this sensation that work sucked, or that my body is tired, or that I drank too much the night before when I was out with the boys, etc., and only then is my brain giving my body every conceivable opportunity to excuse itself from the night’s labor of again stepping on the treadmill. And often the brain will win such a battle.

But it is in those moments when both the brain and the body tell me such an answer is No, and that I reject them both, and put one foot in front of the other, right, and then left, and then right again, to where the sweat pours off my forehead and through my white V-neck and my face is bright red when I look at it in the mirror some forty-five minutes later before I shower, when I realize that such exercises are much more mental and much less physical and why originally I made the choice to become a runner.

This is the story of my life, this mentality in lieu of such humble physicality. Just as the pretty boys who know of no other way but to continue shaping themselves physically, and doubling down on their own strengths; and just as with the pretty girls who never had to, like, learn what it meant to be said ‘no’ to, who continue to make their way by the guile and cleverness that their good looks have for so long afforded them; I, too, have had to make a way of my own. I have done it by being good at what already I am good at: by accumulating hither and thither little pieces of information and of them making the most.

So it would be a betrayal of such a mentality, of my strength, that which has delivered me this far, if I did what ought to be so commonplace and neglected to continue on with the pursuit of progress — even if it is for endeavors that I probably have no business getting any better at, since I am not supposed to be good at them.

Perhaps the truest blessing of staying upright and moving my legs and executing my runs is that it quiets that noise of everything else going on in my life. Because it can be easy after a lucrative day at work here and there, or if I am talking to one of those already discussed pretty girls, to both find and press on the Lazy Button. And it is fine that sometimes such a button does win the battle on certain nights. Not for long, though. I dabble around and imbibe and occasionally intoxicate myself with complacency as if it were some common whore, but it’s my treadmill and running and the pursuit of progress which always I come home to at the end of the day — in a manner of speaking.

I imagine if there was a longterm goal in mind, here (which there isn’t), it would be something so simple as running a 5K in real life and not in private. It would then be to run a half-marathon in private and then perhaps doing so, down the road, in real life. I write these things to affirm the progress that has already been made from such humble 30-second intervals at the beginning, but I don’t, like, care about them.

What is so nice about running is that I don’t have, and don’t have to have, any clear goals. Where I can simply do better one night than I did the prior; where I can do it for as long as I want even on the nights I don’t want to do it at all; where I can break matters down to their absolute bare-bones form; where I have it in my mind that it’s a 30- or 40-minute process; where I have it in my mind to do just one more mile; where I have it in my mind to do just one more lap; where I have it in my mind to do just one more minute; where I have it in my mind, when my legs and my heart and my brain are shot, to take just one more step; one foot in front of the other; right, left.

° ° ° ° °

Kansas City Chiefs 26, New Orleans Saints 13

I don’t know if it is in some way related to switching shifts and being tired as all get out, or what else it could be, but I had a really hard time getting up for this particular game, despite it being a showcase matchup on Monday Night Football. I never thought the Chiefs were in any serious danger of losing this game against the Saints and, even if they did, it would have been such a ho-hum feeling and I am certain of it.

Because the Chiefs have simply played in too many big games over the last five years for me to appreciate a mere MNF tilt. Four Super Bowls in five years. Three Super Bowl wins in five years. Numerous playoff games. Countless fantastic and awe-inspiring regular season games and moments. I sound like a prude because I am one. I can’t say that I care about anything on the football field concerning the Chiefs until it is the playoffs. Give me some pressure, please. Give me some consequence.

I was telling my brothers today on our weekly Facetime call that, as fishy as the 5.5-point spread of this particular game against the Saints, that it really, like, felt like one of those of those games where Andy Reid reminds the world that he is still that mutherfucking guy. No Rashee Rice? No Isiah Pacheco? No Hollywood Brown? No fucking problem.

And so tonight I do what it is that I never do and across all platforms I picked the Chiefs to win by more than 5.5 points. I am not quote superstitious, and yet it always feels like bad so-called juju to actually bet, in a manner of speaking (since I did not put any real money on it), on my favorite team. Tonight, however, felt like one of those nights. Because the way the Chiefs have been playing this year does not warrant them to be favored by so many points against a team still possessing a pulse. And it is thus why I picked them: since it made so little sense.

° ° ° ° °

Over the course of this month’s writing extravaganza on Future Bets I spent two large chunks talking about care, and sacrifice, for a particular woman — whom on here I referenced during September 2024 — and tonight I deleted both sections. Part of it was for normal redundancy purposes, and the other was because by now, in the middle-end stages of October, it is already mostly outdated information.

As for the care and sacrifice portion: it was real. Based on the drop-everything nature I had (and still have, to a large degree) for this woman, the immediate impression I gave was that I, you know, like her. And that means something.

The most obvious example of this revolved around a date we had a few weeks back where we intended to do something, and then a few days before Our Day together she approached me and asked if instead of doing something that we did nothing at all. She wanted simply to hang out with me, in a manner of speaking, all day at my condo and be lazy and watch movies and play games. Yes, I thought to myself, finally there’s something I know how to do: Nothing.

But the reason I understood how I actually gave a shit about her was because of how thoroughly I cleaned my place upon her arrival. I swept the floors and went over them again with the wet Swiffer power mop device I have hanging out in my living room closest. I used that blue Lysol shit and scrubbed both the shower and the toilet. I wiped down the restroom mirror. I did the dishes and took out the trash and recycled all the recyclables. I sprayed disinfectant and went over all the countertops. I went on the Amazon app on my phone and ordered a new shower curtain and a new comforter for my bed (just in case).

And we had a wonderful time, just doing nothing. . . together. I bought us a bottle of red wine and we drank it while we ate the spaghetti that she cooked in my kitchen and I turned off all the lights and lit a candle that my mom got me for Christmas like two years ago and set it between us on the dining room table. When we were finished and I tried to take the dishes to the sink she wouldn’t allow it. She took them and washed them on the spot.

In other words, I really like her style. She is beautiful and graceful and more intelligent than the average bird and, for whatever reason, despite being the current It Girl in the table games department at such and such casino that we work at, and having coworkers making their moves in the same way the general public does, she seems wholly invested in having and keeping my attention only.

So I have this pretty, smart, very womanly woman who checks most of the important boxes, who is head over heels for me, who I can sense is like begging me to make her mine, and yet over this last week or so my instincts have began again to yell and scream at me just as they always do and just as they always have — to run away.

In lieu of the two large sections, those which have since been deleted, where I talk about my own fondness for this particular woman, as well as my experiences loving people, in general, what everything boils down to, and gets concentrated by, is this idea that I have really never understood what renders me so incapable of loving another person who loves me more than I love them. Because that is all this is, I fear.

What I mean by that is this: The overwhelming majority of the time throughout my life I have gone about relationships — even brief ones, those that never had any sort of label — in the willy-nilly fashion that lets the other party know that I do not care (which somehow makes them like me even more) and so I break a heart here and there and continue on my way. In much rarer occasions I am on the opposite end of such a paradigm, where I enter into my own personal episode of The Twilight Zone and my laissez-faire tactics are used against me and it is my heart being broken.

Nevertheless I have been labeled before as a quote dog, and there’s this thing about dogs: they enjoy the chase. They enjoy (as an old cliché says) catching the mailman and then having no idea what to do next. They sometimes enjoy fucking anything that moves. And they enjoy when they are rewarded for their good behavior. Dogs, that is.

It has been a very conscious sort of effort on my end over these last two or three months to remove myself from the perpetual interpersonal struggle of either chasing or being chased. And I say it’s been a conscious effort because for a time I did get involved in these streets with all manner of hoodrats, so to speak, and what I found was that I was being met either by a feeling of emptiness for partaking in short-lived moments of bliss, or putting myself in a position where I was affecting and impacting the feelings of somebody else — those who actually cared for me, who thought something was there even though it wasn’t.

And I did this strictly as a means to distract myself from all my feelings that were created from a void I left myself — or that left me — while I was on my road to recovery. Once I filled the void I had manufactured for myself, or seemingly, anyway, the logical conclusion I found was to keep myself out of harm’s way. Don’t pursue, and don’t allow yourself to be pursued. That sort of thing.

The problem with being a so-called dog who was exhibiting so-called good behavior is that it becomes easier to convince one’s self the first time an exquisite creature arrives that that is the reward.

In a long-winded sort of way what I am essentially trying to explain is the notion that nothing this woman did was her fault — the reason I am feeling such a way. Her problem is that she is so fucking gorgeous that she has spent her entire life as the one being chased rather than the one chasing, and since (for whatever reason) she chose me, and made early on her feelings clear, it never gave me the opportunity to have a sense of wonder. Of wondering how she felt about me. Of wondering if I was good enough. Of wondering if I was handsome enough. Of putting in the work. Of playing the game. Of being the one chasing, rather than the one being chased.

Regardless of any of that nonsense, where now I find myself — on top of everything I have already said — is a different sort of place, or dilemma, I guess you could say. As much as I thought, over these months, that I was keeping myself away, what I found is I truly do like this girl. And upon liking her, and her liking me, I’ve realized that I am not in a place emotionally as I once believed.

I guess I imagined that I was already over myself. I was sad. And then I wasn’t sad anymore. And then I took my time off and finally was able to hit the reset button. That’s where this particular woman showed up, during an interval where I felt as if I was over all my own bullshit only to see that I’m not. I mean I am, but not enough. And it took somebody that I really like, who I know I could eventually love, and be in love with, to show me that I am not at all ready for it.

Even though that isn’t any consolation to her, she who would lay down and be at my beck and call and have my babies if I told her to, it really is the highest compliment I could give a woman. That I care so much about her that I don’t want to involve her in my misgivings. That I don’t want to leave her questioning herself or wondering about me or feeling insecure when she truly has nothing at all to feel such a way about.

Alas, the existentialist in me says everything I know and everything I have ever known is either that which I have done or that which has been done to me. I have spent so much of my life experience leaving others with the questions, and the confusion, and the doubt, and I have greatly appreciated the results because it has been me at the end of nearly every day holding and possessing as if it were a lifeline in itself the leverage over each relationship.

It is in these moments, however, that I am reminded by a text exchange I had with my first love, named Caitlin, which came about some 12 or 13 years ago, well past the days when we had broken up from our time together, when out of the blue she texted me after a particularly extended hiatus we had, back when I was sleeping on a brown leather sofa in the living room at my parents’ old house off of Mountain View Ave in San Bernardino CA, and towards the end of such an exchange I asked her a simple question: ‘Do you think I’m a good man?’

And by then we were not anymore in love as we once were, but still we shared, her and I, an obvious amount of love for each other given that she would a few times per year return to California from Austin TX and we would spend so-called quality time together even if she was in a relationship with somebody else, and so she responded to the question I posed by asking of me one in return, and such a response looked something like this: ‘That depends,’ she wrote, ‘Do you want to be a good man?’

Emphasis was obviously on the want, as far as that went, but I’ve thought about such a question over the years more times than I would rather admit. I don’t know what type of answer I was supposed to expect. But she, like anyone, or perhaps the only other that I would use the capital L version of love for, always knew me better than I knew myself. She offered the perfect response to the little simpleton question I asked of her.

I don’t recall what it is I said back to her, but I do know how I feel right now. I do want to be a good man. I do think I am a good man. And what being a good man demands of me in this current state I am in is to do what perhaps no significant other of mine has ever done for me, nor what I have done for any significant other of my own, and bow out. Cut the cord. Call it quits. To do something new and fresh. Something existentialism has thus far never granted me: The ability to take a path separate from what I have done and/or what has been done to me.

Only time will tell if I actually have it in me. Right now — this second — I am trying to be a grownup and not allow this impulsive thought to dictate how I may feel tomorrow, or next week.

In the meantime, I am not sure if it is the healthiest of practices to speak of love and invoke the applicable names such as Caitlin’s and Heather’s, especially so given that this blog is literally titled Future Bets — which, you know, is supposed to lean directionally a certain way — but I generally have utilized my blogging space avoiding and shying away from the pain, as is also true for Trey, whom I wrote about last month, yet as of now I find that my only way forward is to go back.

And so perhaps it is part of my problem, whether or not it is agreeable to my feelings and emotions, that I am helpless to comparing each friendship I am in to the friendship I once had with Trey. I am helpless to comparing each relationship I am in to the relationship I once had with Caitlin. Since Heather became in some way abstract the culmination of everything I had experienced hitherto, from friendship that was more than friendship but which was less than an actual relationship, I am helpless, there, too, and a slave to comparing each person hereafter to that feeling. Of love.

It’s been a blessing to have surrounded myself with — and been surrounded by — such a special (albeit brief) collection of characters. I can lament the wedges and chasms that drove us all apart from one another. The wrongs that were done to me and the wrongs that I delivered with full agency. The choices they made which acted against me. The choices I made which acted against them. The state of having them, and then not. And finding a way still to live with it, and with myself.

The truth, however, is that I try to remember not only the good times but the best of times. The times I was able to share with them. The smiles and the laughter. The moments of consequence that were both magical and traumatic. The days of sacrifice that, with these precious few, were never in doubt. The ability that they gave me to feel again such as a little boy would on Christmas morning, whether I was surprising them while coming home from college for winter break, or simply waiting for them to get on any common break at work while I sat doing something very similarly to what I am doing now, writing these words, on any random day of the week.

It will forever be a burden on those who enter into my life to live up to this impossible standard that has been set for me. My only hope is that I too have provided for them — this particular troika — with a similar standard for those who enter into theirs. Because they were the ones who taught me what it is supposed to feel like.

So, again, it should say something that this new girl I have in my life broke through such a high threshold. When I write of her and my own issues of commitment, and discussing whether or not I am ready for it — er, her — it is of mine an admission that so many women never made it to this juncture. They were not worth the words. They were not worth the contemplations I make in private. They were there, then they weren’t. They merely passed the time while I was on my way to finding a person who was worth it.

Those people have come, as some cliché which holds true, few and far between. This is quite frankly responsible for why most of the time I feel so dead inside, for why I find most people and places and things to be so worthless, for what has given me justification for living selfishly, and which acts as such a hinderance against me for putting in the effort and actually trying whenever somebody new comes around.

It is probably also directly responsible for why I oftentimes maintain an interest in so-called crazy girls, because if nothing else at least they keep me engaged. At least they are different. To be fair I don’t like seek them out, the crazy ones, and there is some serious chicken and the egg theory bullshit there since in retrospect I am never quite positive if they were crazy to begin with or if that is what I bring out of them based on my own attitude and nature. Nonetheless.

I accidentally took today off from work a couple months back because the Chiefs were playing the 49ers and it was when I was on day shift and now that I am here and working swing shift I don’t really need the day off since it starts at 1:25 P.M. PST and I could’ve watched it at my place, but since I am here I decided to drive out to Riverside CA so I could watch the game with my brothers. It is currently 3:34 A.M. (PST) and I am out in the backyard where I spent the bulk of the last five years writing these words. I have missed it.

This is the spot I was at when I took a walk around the block when I found out Trey was trying to sleep with my mom, and so he and I had a conversation about it en route to our break up. This is the spot where a few years back I texted Caitlin to let her know our cat died in her sleep. This is the spot I used to come home to and stay up really late waiting for Heather to get home so we could talk on FaceTime until I fell asleep.

And I am real sentimental mutherfucker. This is the place I called home for a long while, longer than I thought I would. Where Super Bowls were won by the Chiefs. Where I went from day shift, to swing shift, and then back to day shift, and now back to swing shift. It holds some secrets and many memories. This backyard of ours, where my brothers and I threw around the football. Where my mother and I talked and talked and talked, and laughed, and sometimes cried.

The memories I make and the secrets I keep heretofore can and will be made only elsewhere. But the standard has been set. The people will come, but mostly the people will go.

Q.E.D.