Snapshot of a Warped Man: New excerpt #1 ('Hyattsville House' and 'Avoidant Personality')

This is an excerpt from "Snapshot of a Warped Man," my memoir. I currently have a campaign going on Kickstarter for funds to be able to self-publish it. I'm sharing another piece of it here as part of this campaign.

HYATTSVILLE (Md.) HOUSE

 

In the last year of college, the house I shared with roommates sat on a corner in a neighborhood where the numbered streets tangled around each other. 40th Avenue intersected 40th Street, and then intersected a different numbered street elsewhere after looping around the block—confusing if you didn’t live there. The houses all looked small on the outside and sat close together to each other. Most were partly red brick in front. The house had two floors, but you couldn’t tell from the outside, except for two windows jutting out of the slanted roof.

 

Stepping inside, wall-to-wall grubby brown carpet covered a big main room. To the right, we had a dining room table. I kept my stack of eight or nine Washington Posts on one end of it, and my roommates had odds and ends over the rest of it. On the left wall, toward the back of the room, a 20-inch TV sat on a beat up set of wooden shelves, with a VCR on one of those shelves.

 

Turning left at the front of the main room was the kitchen, where piles of dirty dishes would sit, all the way up to the top of a deep sink. A set of stairs behind the refrigerator led up to three bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. Going up the stairs, mine was the one on the right that had windows overlooking the front of the house. 

 

I graduated early, but still finished out the school year living in this house, while looking for work in D.C. This wasn’t good for me mentally. I’d convinced the inter-departmental copy center where I worked part-time on the campus to increase my hours to full time. But I wasn’t a student anymore, so I couldn’t continue with the student activities groups I enjoyed. So that isolated me. It didn’t occur to me to reach out or do something socially to fill that void for my mental health. 

 

Just six months after my time in L.A. being friendless and isolated, I was in the same boat, and that’s a dangerous zone for me. I’d stopped getting along with my roommates in the house, which worsened my isolation. I would burrow inside my own head. I fixated on finding magazines with pictures of women for jerking off, having learned how to do it from the massage girls in L.A. Even this took some effort, because there wasn’t yet Maxim or Stuff each month, and I didn’t want to buy porn in person.

 

One night I remember coming back to the house after creeping around a local convenience store looking for magazines. I was back to being my 14-year-old self at my hometown Quick Chek, trying to be invisible while looking for what I wanted. I brought home a GQ that had a picture of an actor with a few sexy women (in swimsuits) vamping around him. In my room, laying in bed, gazing at the pictures, I get worked up and start pressing my erection into the bed. Then something stopped me.

 

I could hear a couple of my roommates, who I hadn’t been getting along with, whispering outside my door. “I think he’s masturbating again,” one said. The other replied, “He’s doing that all the time. He’s such a fucked-up creep.” I could hear them and it stopped me mid-stroke, but it wasn’t as bad as being Alex in “Portnoy’s Complaint,” with mom knocking on your door, yelling, “what are you doing in there?”

 

Once the spring semester ended, I was still on the lease through the end of the summer, and I had the campus job, so I stayed there. The roommates all left and sub-let their rooms. Then I got paid communications internship in D.C. for the summer, but I realized once that ended, I’d move back to New Jersey, since nothing else had clicked for me.

 

In the mental state I was in, I didn’t reach out to the new roommates either. I don’t remember their names all these years later, after only being in the house with them for about three months. But I took the opportunity to move to a bigger and better room on the first floor. A couple moved into the other first floor bedroom. They were somewhat “crunchy” people. I haven’t remembered their names. The guy was big and heavy set and his girlfriend was also a little heavier, and also busty.

 

I wondered about her, daydreamed about her sexually, maybe even pictured her while masturbating. Later, once I had a real job, if I liked a girl in the office, I’d picture her just like that. Anyway, at times I’d be in the house alone and everyone else would be out. So I’d creep into the couple’s room and look at her bras in their dresser drawers. I didn’t go beyond that, but I definitely got a charge out of doing that. I was more of a bra guy than a “panty sniffer.”

 

 

AVOIDANT PERSONALITY

 

For four or five months after graduation, I’d hovered around campus, trying to get my life started. That doesn’t seem like a long time now but it’s a much greater percentage of the life of a 21-year-old. Depression was getting to me and I didn’t even know that’s what it was. So I went to a psychiatrist just off-campus, whose office was in a plain, anonymous, tan one-story building.

 

The psychiatrist was a short, thin, balding, bespectacled middle-aged, Jewish man. He seemed meek, but like he might be very smart. He asked about my situation and circumstances. I told him I worked on campus even though I'd graduated.

 

--What do you like to do when you have free time? It sounds like you have a lot of free time now. Do you see friends?

 

--Not really, I shrugged. I’m kind of on my own right now. I’ll go to movies, maybe go into D.C. for the smarter movies. I can’t go around the Hoff anymore since I’m graduated. 

 

--Do you see any of your college friends?

 

--Not really. I’m in a house with roommates but I don’t get along with them. I don’t talk to them or hang out with them like I used to. 

 

--Why not, the doctor asked.

 

He started checking some boxes on a prepared worksheet, but the print was too small for me to see the details of it. Each line had numbers preceding a few words, likely diagnostic codes.

 

--I don't like the roommates. We had been friends, but they don't keep anything clean, and I can't get them to do it. Now they leave me out of whatever things they're doing. 

 

With his pencil, the psychiatrist tapped a few of the codes on the worksheet, and said, “It seems like you have an avoidant personality disorder.”

 

I couldn’t respond, but I did think, in my head, “That’s a disorder? There’s something wrong with me?” 

 

--What should I do with this, I asked.

 

--You could come back and see me again, but first you should start talking with a therapist. There's no medication I can prescribe.

 

Other than that, I didn’t even know enough then to ask for help finding a therapist, or a recommendation. This psychiatrist was cold and blunt. His head was in the paperwork. Feeling lost and numb, I paid the fee, asked if I could get a referral and trudged out of the office.

 

This psychiatrist caught me right when avoidant personality disorder first develops – early adulthood. I've read that this disorder keeps people from pursuing work or educational opportunities, but it seems like the reverse was happening. Being out of the loop of school or a career-track job caused my avoidant behavior. At that time, in 1993, the labeling of this as a disorder was less than 15 years old, having first appeared in the DSM in 1980. The psychiatric profession didn’t grasp the dimensions of this "disorder" yet.

 

Still, that phrase, “avoidant personality,” stuck in my head for a very long time. For years, I’d feel inferior and uncomfortable in social situations because of this “avoidant personality.”

 

Honoring Catie Lazarus, gifted comedy interviewer, podcaster and host

Catie Lazarus, a talent who passed away last month, was not just a “comedian” in the way one might ordinarily define that word. The closest word to accurately describe her could be “host.” 

With her live show and podcast “Employee of the Month,” she left a substantive body of work as a light-hearted and light-footed interviewer who improvised witty, quick and sparkling banter with her guests. 

 

“Employee of the Month” developed over a few years before beginning its run as a podcast. Lazarus talked about a previous live talk show she had done, in this 2007 interview. By 2010, the first live version of “Employee of the Month” ran at the 92Y Tribeca venue, with multiple guests. The podcast captured segments from her live shows that ran at increasingly larger venues in New York, along with some taped interviews.

 

The show ran from October 2011 to November 2017, then returned for another stretch from September 2018 to March 2019. She was first diagnosed with cancer in 2014, so she accomplished a lot of the run of this show while battling it. Yet, as you listen back to some of those episodes, she always exhibited an upbeat, positive tone. 

 

As suggested by the show’s title, “Employee of the Month,” Lazarus focused on aspects of guests’ lives around how they established themselves in their career or their artistic pursuits, including many comedians, writers and actors, but also people from fields outside of arts and entertainment, such as Rachel Maddow, Obama staff member Alyssa Mastromonaco, activists, art curators, scientists, economists and more. Along the way, she uncovered many funny stories and moments, such as “The Wire” creator David Simon’s rebellious high school years, Maddow’s time on a “Morning Zoo” style radio show, and actor Jason Biggs’ fear of Woody Allen finding out he was not Jewish (while making “Anything Else” in 2003). 

 

That upbeat tone Lazarus had helped bring out the silly in her interview subjects, even ones you might expect to be pretty serious personalities. In a December 2016 episode featuring highly respected actor and director John Turturro, Lazarus leads him to share funny memories of James Gandolfini (who he directed in the movie “Romance and Cigarettes”) and the origins of the foot problems his character had in the HBO series “The Night Of.” She also chooses a couple of the more outlandish moments in Turturro’s career to share with the live audience, including a penguin-killing scene from “Four Corners.” That all culminates in a discussion of how Turturro staged and appeared in sex scenes in both the Gandolfini movie and in “The Jesus Rolls,” the movie that revisits Turturro’s character from “The Big Lebowski.” Listen to the episode for yourself – these are funny stories that she brings out of him, and shouldn’t be spoiled.

 

Other interviewers or podcast hosts may go deeper with guests or be more serious, but Lazarus’ willingness to be corny and showing a sense of whimsy made her shows fun throughout, making them truly entertaining and unique. 

In It For The Long Haul: The "Over The Road" Podcast

The enduring lesson of the 2020 US election might be that while the Democrats won the presidency, they will at best break even in Congressional races. Some pundits and analysts are attributing that to a lack of understanding of rural concerns in the country. As a window into those concerns, political strategists might do well to listen to the “Over The Road” podcast from Radiotopia, about the trucking industry, which ran from February through May 2020.

Trucking, as discussed in this podcast, is a good example of a number of issues of importance for rural areas – anything that might involve tension between regulation and freedom to conduct business in ways that make sense. In the first episode of the show, which checks in with attendees at the biggest trucking expo of the year, in Kentucky, the host, “Long Haul Paul” Marhoefer, finds out why truckers don’t like the electronic log book systems that have been required and installed in recent years. A lack of flexibility in enforcement, in truckers’ view, encourages them to stop short when they hit a time limit, even if that puts them diagonally across many parking spaces in a lot, or to deploy other workarounds to avoid losing time that should be counted toward being on-duty. The intention of the electronic log might be to improve safety and provide a resource to investigate accidents, but the purpose may have been lost in the letter of the law.

 

This issue is also, in turn, a recent manifestation of the overall historical and structural tensions within the trucking industry, covered in another episode “A Brief History of Trucking In America.” Here, Marhoefer and his guest, “The Long Haul” author Finn Murphy, explain the difference between corporate trucking where drivers are employees subject to more rules and regulation, and “wildcat” truckers, or independent owner-operators, who can set their own schedule. Also, there are truckers who just haul food including produce, and livestock, who need not be bound by an electronic log book, since they must do whatever they have to get their cargo to its destination, without spoilage or damage to farm animals.

 

Along with these concerns, other episodes and shorter interim mini-episodes during the show’s first season cover trucking culture, making it accessible to unfamiliar listeners, with coverage of how Covid-19 has changed the trucking business, a history of CB handles, truckers’ favorite music for the road, and more. 

 

In “Over The Road,” Marhoefer and his guests offer those willing to listen an education about a working class subculture, exactly the type of people who felt ignored and turned to politicians who told them what they wanted to hear. Listening to the show will educate you on how society’s institutions could deliver what truckers need. 

Rewatchables: "Apex Mountain" for movie podcasts?

 I love movies and I embraced the Ringer’s Rewatchables podcast before it was even on its own feed, listening to early “Hall of Fame” episodes covering “Jerry Maguire” and “Heat.” Bill Simmons and his Ringer colleagues get at the great scenes in the movies they choose, and unearth interesting trivia about the films, like casting choices that were made, especially if notable actors were turned down for parts or declined them. 

What really makes me tune in over and over again to episodes of this show is the banter. In the most recent episode I listened to, covering “Caddyshack,” Simmons and colleague Sean Fennessey make semi-mocking, semi-admiring references to how much cocaine all involved in making this movie were doing at the time it was made. I’ve seen the movie more than once but I can’t remember how long ago I last watched it, probably at least several years. Now that I’ve listened to this episode, I don’t really need to go back and re-watch it, though, because Simmons and Fennessey made the funny scenes they describe really come alive, particularly Ted Knight’s performance. As they observed, it’s unclear whether Knight was really in on the jokes of the scenes but his tone as the heel of the movie worked perfectly. 

 

The show has its own esoteric award categories that help bring out the hosts’ views of why the movie was rewatchable even if it’s not necessarily a great movie. These include an overacting award named alternately after Mark Ruffalo in “Spotlight” and Saul Rubinek in “True Romance,” a “heat check” award for the actor who appears briefly but makes the most impact in their short amount of screen time, most rewatchable scene, an “Apex Mountain” award for which person in the production (this can include the director, writer or even inanimate objects or themes in the movie – you’ll see – for whom this movie was the peak of their career or saw them at the peak of their powers in the entertainment business), and a “that guy” award for the cast member who is such a familiar face turning up in lots of movies without the public really knowing their name. The nature of these categories really make the discourse about the movies a lot of fun.

The show occasionally has notable guest panelists. Quentin Tarantino recorded three episodes with them in one fell swoop about a year ago, covering "Unstoppable," "Dunkirk" and "King of New York." Issa Rae joined in for the "Groundhog Day" episode some months ago.

 

I could go on and on about moments I have enjoyed from the Rewatchables but the simplest thing to do here is completely let my nerd flag fly, and give you a list of the episodes I’ve listened to, and bolding the ones that inspired me to actually go rewatch the movie that was covered, or in some cases, go watch it when I hadn’t seen it before (bold & italics). And now, the tale of the tape. I've listened to about 36 episodes, if I haven't forgotten any with this list. Of these, 10 of them inspired me to go rewatch the movie again in recent months. (Maybe this is a function of our long-running pandemic lockdown).

Caddyshack

Groundhog Day

Back To The Future

Boomerang

Say Anything

Basic Instinct

Total Recall

Pump Up The Volume

Usual Suspects

Seven

Rocky IV

The Exorcist

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Talented Mr. Ripley

Unstoppable

King of New York

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Edge of Tomorrow

Cast Away

Do The Right Thing

The Shining

Beverly Hills Cop

Dead Poets Society

Proof of Life 

Dave

Taken

The Godfather

Jaws

Midnight Run

Michael Clayton

Heat & “Re-Heat” 2^nd episode on same movie

The Departed

Zodiac

Jerry Maguire

Titanic

Yes, I had not ever seen "Jaws" until more recently. A big hole in my movie fandom, I know.

Recommendation: "Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen"

 It’s been some time since I found and listened to a multi-part limited documentary podcast, but I’m into one now I can highly recommend, “Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen,” from Campside Media, which is smaller than the giants like Wondery, Gimlet and Spotify. It reminds me a bit of “The Shrink Next Door” and “S-Town,” in that “Chameleon” unspools an odd type of crime story or fraud story that reveals itself as the episodes unfold.

“Chameleon” tells the tale of a bizarre Hollywood scam in which someone posing as a movie producer convinces aspiring personal trainers, make-up artists and other rank-and-file craftspeople who are trying to get established as film professionals, to travel to Indonesia for what looks to be a big blockbuster style epic production. The marks were convinced to front their own airfare and expenses with promises of reimbursement, and when they arrived in Jakarta, were driven around in a hired car, mostly aimlessly, to production meetings that would get canceled and location sites where no work was yet underway.

 

For male marks, like Eddie, a L.A.-based personal trainer, this would be frustrating, annoying and aggravating, but female marks, like Heather, a U.K.-based make-up artist, started wondering if they were in danger of being abducted for human trafficking, because of the way the scam manifested itself by putting them into a state of confusion and uncertainty about what was really going on, which made this a terrifying experience.

 

That’s the opening two episodes, but please do listen for yourself. I’m now on episode five out of eight, and as this podcast continues, the hosts drill down on whether the scam was the work of a network of people or just one mastermind. The evidence from the accounts of some of the marks who were victimized for relatively small amounts of cash (in the range of $500-$3,000 a piece) mounts, and the hosts, journalists Josh Dean and Vanessa Grigoriadis, examine it in depth to uncover what is really going on, and how and why it is being done.

 

The appeal of “Chameleon” is its binge-worthiness. Each epsiode centers on one personality involved in the story, including professional investigators who get involved, and some of the real Hollywood players whose identities were being stolen to carry out the scam. The episodes each run between about 30 to 45 minutes, so they are nice digestible chunks, and often will leave the listener wanting more and ready to go right on to the next one right away. 

 

Just in case you haven’t had enough of politics in the past few weeks…

In the interest of posting more regularly here, by sticking to podcast content itself, I’ll share that even following Election Day, I’ve been seeking out and finding some political podcasts to throw in to my listening mix.

I’ve been a big follower of the political documentary series “The Circus” on Showtime, which features journalist John Heilemann (who co-authored the “Game Change” books about the 2008 and 2012 presidential races). This year, Heilemann founded a new website and podcast concern called “The Recount,” hosting its flagship show “Hell & High Water.” I’m recommending the Nov. 7 post-election episode, where he’s joined by Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, and Democratic strategists Jennifer Palmieri and David Plouffe (who each have their own shows on Recount). The foursome break down the election results at a time just before most rational sources and observers called the race for President-elect Joe Biden. In particular, check out a portion around the 22 minute mark when Schmidt diagnoses the problems with Trumpism in the Republican party.

 

Secondly, respected journalist Kara Swisher, who migrated over from the Recode Decode website and podcast to the New York Times starting in 2018 through early 2020, debuted “Sway,” a new podcast for the Times, in September. I’m recommending episodes from Oct. 9 featuring election law expert Trevor Potter, and from Oct. 26 featuring an interview with Hillary Clinton. In the Potter episode, Swisher unearths the intricacies of campaign finance law (Potter had helped out on a Colbert Report stunt several years ago where the host started his own PAC). The Hillary Clinton episode is notable for the way Swisher rapid-fires tough questions at the 2016 Democratic nominee about that race and the 2020 contest (before Election Day), including a frank assessment of the earlier Democratic primaries.

 

Lastly, an interesting one, albeit tough to recommend, is “5-4,” hosted by the Stitcher network, which critiques Supreme Court decisions and news developments concerning the court from a left-leaning perspective. The notable episode is one immediately following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in which the hosts gave no quarter in criticizing her decision not to step down back in 2013 at a time when it was likely President Obama could have filled her seat with a justice of similar philosophy. That critique rankles RBG’s fans, but is a fair one. However, the hosts undermine their point by descending into profane rants about that situation and how Trump was going to nominate her replacement, rather than staying level-headed and focused in presenting their views.

A Podcast For Every Season

I have written entries in this blog, sporadically, off and on, not as much as I would like. It started out in 2016 with sustained regular entries about the business aspects of podcasting. I can’t do that job as well as people like Nick Quah do it, who are able to dedicate themselves full time to the endeavor.  

So I may just try to return to this with some musings about content and recommendations. The constraints of time have shifted my listening from setting out to explore every new or recommended podcast that sounds interesting, to just enjoying listening to certain favorites depending on my mood and interest. In the past several months of pandemic lockdown, that has become, as ever, Marc Maron’s “WTF,” but also Bill Simmons’ “The Rewatchables” and “Tabletop Genesis,” the podcast that features a different album by the band in each episode, going into a deep-dive nerd-alanche of discussion truly for the diehard fans of the group. With occasional detours to other indulgences of entertainment fandom, such as Amy Nicholson and Paul Scheer’s “Unspooled” podcast covering classic movies. 

 

One develops a relationship with the hosts of these shows, appreciating and being entertained by the nuances of their style and thoughts about the subject, by narrowing one’s listening from a broad spectrum of podcasts to multiple episodes of the same few shows.

 

My past pattern had been to check out mini-series style podcasts, such as “Slow Burn,” Rachel Maddow’s “Bag Man,” and “Crimetown,” but I think my habits have drifted to bingeing TV shows rather than narrative podcasts, because it’s harder to get into a running series on headphones while doing chores around the house. With a finite interview or recap style show, it’s easier to come and go and catch what you can. 

 

Sometimes it’s more promising to listen to something like “Bizarre Albums,” where they get in and out of the subject matter in 20 minutes or less, while some of the aforementioned shows typically run more than hour, so it’s a bigger commitment. For instance, the “Boomerang” episode of “The Rewatchables” was two full hours, as long as the movie itself, and it takes time to complete that. If it’s good, that goes by quickly in just a couple sittings, or more accurately “standings,” because you’re listening while working out or doing chores. The ones I tune into time after time are the ones that have a rapport between the hosts that stays engaging and carries you along.