Polidicks: The Next 95 Days

So, look, it's not that cool to actually engage in political advocacy. Because, you know, opinions are so passe. But here at Samuel Fuckett, we're going to risk a slide down the hipster scale to say some things that matter between our public displays of apathy. Turns out the youth give a shit after all.

First, we assume you know the news. On your way to this blog, you definitely read a reputable news source. Or at least you saw the headlines on someone else's newspaper while you tried not to spill your coffee on this morning's commute. Comprehension and retention being totally different things during your Fuckett years, however, we'd like to offer some selected notes about what's at stake for the 18-35 set this election season:

International Relations(hips)-- Since we all pubesced along with the internet, we don't let silly things like geography keep us from getting down. But it is so hard to have Skype sex when your significant other abroad can't stop talking about what an embarrassment your country is to the world...

London Boy: Then Romney's team used the phrase 'Anglo-Saxon heritage' like it's Romney for President 1912, and--

NYC Girl: So you haven't noticed that I'm sitting here topless, or you just don't fucking care?

Jobs (Or Not)-- Our generation has been nicknamed a lot of nasty things like "Generation Me", but this summer we can add a new epithet to our odyssey: "Generation Screwed."

"The unemployment rate for people between 18 and 29 is 12 percent in the U.S., nearly 50 percent above the national average." The Daily Beast

Romney and Obama are both keyed into this issue. One way Obama has addressed it is by funding 47 job retraining programs. Romney's plan, as stated on his website, is to shut them all down because the States can do it with less bureaucratic dead weight loss. I'm sure that will put food on the table of all those teachers and administrators while they are laid off, waiting for the bumbling and nearly bankrupt state governments to apply for federal funding, receive it, and use it to implement new programs for which the laid-off may or may not be rehired in order to help other people get jobs, too.

Now, I went to a public high school, but I seem to remember learning that Republicans, in general, prioritize efficiency over equity while Democrats, in general, prioritize equity over efficiency. Theoretically, neither system is better or worse. But if scrapping every federal project because the states are also capable of administering it is the Republican idea of efficiency, it's going to lead to a whole lot of impotency.

Electricity (for our iWhatsis)-- Now, this has been a greatly overlooked issue. When we think about energy, we normally think about tax incentives for hybrid cars, how on family vacations our children are going to be swimming in ninety-degree ocean water along with hairless polar bears who adapted webbed toes after ice stopped being a natural phenomenon, that kind of thing. What we don't think about is how basic electrical utilities are probably the most important thing to our way of life second only to clean water utilities. If we want to be able to continue faffing around on the internet all day, we need the grid. As TIME Magazine points out:

"Nobody notices infrastructure investments when they work, but that’s the point of infrastructure—and power."

While Romney's energy policy lists, "Amend Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview," as a specific goal, the Obama camp has been thinking a little harder. I recently learned about Obama's $100 billion plan for a technologically up-to-date power grid, which was surprising and enlightening. I cannot think of anything the federal government should prioritize higher than upgrading basic infrastructure, especially when it is the kind of improvement that will allow us to put all this "green innovation" crap into effect before the carbon dioxide emissions Romney would like to permit result in our demise.


Equality (and Civility)-- Romney does not address the needs of women in the Issues portion of his website; Obama does. That's really all I have to say about that. Except for this little game-- One of these things is not like the others:

• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for Romney
• Catholics for Romney
• Jewish Americans for Romney
• Juntos con Romney
• Lawyers for Romney
• Polish Americans for Romney
• Veterans and Military Families for Romney
• Women for Mitt
• Young Americans for Romney

It really pisses me off that everybody is for Romney except the girls. The girls, they aren't really serious people, so let's make them for Mitt, don't you think? Well, fuck that.

Mitt Romney is so offended by queer love, happiness, and joint tax returns that he plans to sponsor a so-called Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution. What a despicable moron. You don't have to do anything extra to disenfranchise the gays, Mitt. Plus, the administration of marriage licenses falls to the states. Are you trying to amend the Constitution to give yourself leeway to infringe upon the states' rights? Don't tread on me.

In a section of his website contained under the issue of "Values," Romney addresses abortion, stem cell research, and marriage. What I gathered from reading this is that Mitt Romney "values" systematic oppression of the following groups: women (in America and abroad... especially China, which is pretty much the Abortionator), scientists (and the businesses who employ them), the ill, the disabled, and the LGBTQAI community. Obama, on the other hand, does not list "Values" as an issue on his website. This clearly means he has none, thank God.


Defense (or Offense)-- Unfortunately, Romney is a bellicose fool and Obama is a secret warmonger, so either way more of our enlisted friends and family are probably going to serve in active combat in the next four years whether the public thinks it's worth it or not. Romney makes a case for pumping more money into the military with some gems like these:

"The U.S. Navy has only 284 ships today, the lowest level since 1916."

"Our Air Force, which had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to 39 today." 

"In the years since 2000, the Pentagon’s civilian staff grew by 20 percent while our active duty fighting force grew by only 3.4 percent." 

Romney is apparently unaware of the following: A submarine armed with nuclear warheads is more powerful than a Woodrow Wilson era battleship. The Cold War was a cold war; we were in a spending race masked as an arms race, so when we reached our goal of bankrupting the Soviets, we got to stop nearly bankrupting ourselves. In the years since 2000, the Pentagon got down with the Internet; it resulted in a redistribution of labor.

At least Obama has proven that he can command the military in such a way as to achieve his stated objectives while making strides to reduce the defense budget. Ugh. Polidicks make me sick. I don't even care anymore.

Fuck Ups: That 'Sex and the City' Moment

Samuel Fuckett has been out of commission for a while. We aren't really sorry that we treated you badly, dear readers, but we are sorry that we missed out on the opportunity to be that guy at the party that everyone crowds around so that they can be exposed to the best stories, the best insights, and the best moustache. To restore the balance, I now bring you a Fuck Up with a happy ending that's totally worth the forty minute wait in line at that extra special Koreatown spa.

...

Face it, we all move to New York because we want to be fucking awesome. We want to go back home to our high school reunions, look around with contempt, and feel all the self-satisfaction we never obtained in our adolescences. It's not just some cool facade we are trying to obtain, though. We truly believe that this city is home to the best and the baddest; if we can make it here, we can make it anywhere.

Now, why--when we live in lead-paint apartments run by known slum lords, spend our days smelling urine everywhere we walk, and occasionally have to pick mystery fish scales off our backpacks on the subway platform--would we believe something so unabashedly stupid? The answer is really simple: Sex and the City. It started when we were in elementary school, and thus completely perverted our worldviews, making us believe that we can, and in fact do, live in the most enriched, erotic, esoteric pop-reality ever projected onto the city of New York.

Even as the sorta-kinda-adults we are now, we still wake up every morning, look at ourselves in the mirror, and think, "This day, goddamnit. This is going to be the day that I leave the house as Samuel Fuckett and return as Carrie Bradshaw. This is going to be the day that I have my Sex and the City moment."

For one lucky friend of Samuel Fuckett's, however, that Sex and the City delusion has just become a sex-in-his-city phenomenon.

A works for one of those megalithic publishing companies that one can definitely imagine held board meetings at coke-dusted gentlemen's clubs in the eighties. Today, the ship is a little more tightly run and a lot more woman-friendly, but they still occupy multiple buildings throughout the city and millions of bookshelves around the world. Rather than buying lap dances for book buyers, A's employer now hosts optional lunchtime seminars on how to streamline shipping costs. (A really missed out on the golden days of marketing. Que será, será.)

A is the kind of guy who knows well enough that picking up a free sandwich in exchange for an hour of texting in the back of a sparsely populated presentation room while somebody yammers about FedEx means that he can buy two extra tequila shots at happy hour, so A skipped the line at Hale & Hearty in favor of the seminar.

The presentation was as boring as anticipated, but between texts of "Le sigh," to his galpals, A noticed a cute face across the room. A cute face with a familiar moustache. "Did this man solicit me for sex in the bathroom at Splash," A thought to himself, "or did I maybe give him a handjob in the sauna when I was on my third free trial at that gym in Chelsea?" Alas, no. After forty-five minutes of instructions about the difference between a DHL label and a courier label, A still could not identify the mysterious Moustache Man.

Disappointed and sorely in need of caffeine before his return to his cubicle, A abandoned the final five minutes of the shipping cost seminar and made a break for Starbucks.

Not a minute into his wait on line, someone said to A, "How about those statistics on how many employees make typos in the addressee's zip code?" A jerked his head up to look at the speaker. Moustache Man. In the flesh. And flirting.

"I know, right?" A said, and the men's feeble attempts at coy witticisms continued until both of their cappuccinos were hot and frothy.

Here, I could end the tale and let you think, "Ah, the beginning of a beautiful office romance." But alas, it was not to be. A and Moustache Man walked out of the Starbucks together, and each started walking in different directions only to realize that their big-ass employer occupies two buildings across the street from one another. Like the Romeo and Juliet of mass market paperback, they said, "See you around, I guess," and went their separate ways.

A returned home that night, put on a mud mask, looked in the mirror and thought to himself, "Tomorrow maybe. Tomorrow I will meet my Mr. Big." Ten minutes later, he crawled into bed with his laptop, cruised his favorite New-York-centric intellectual queer porn blog, read a few revolting messages on Manhunt, jerked off, and fell asleep.

A went back to Starbucks at the same time every day for the next week, looking around sheepishly for Moustache Man. After a while, the combination of coffee and consternation was giving him stomach pains, so he called it quits. Moustache Man was just another missed connection in the big city, and A was going to have to get the fuck over it. He spent the weekend binge drinking at straight bars and eating tacos with his girls. It worked moderately well.

The following Monday, A came home from work, put on a face mask, and curled up with his laptop for yet another night in alone. He opened up his favorite New-York-centric intellectual queer porn blog again, and clicked on a video interview with a gay performance artist so he could have something to talk about if he was ever fucking asked on a date.


There, right on screen, holding a microphone out to the artist, was Moustache Man. "Oh. My. Sonofabitch. Jesus," A thought, "I knew I recognized him from somewhere."


A thought some more: "What would Carrie Bradshaw do?"

Thirty minutes and two emails later, A had leveraged his sexy-city serendipity into a breakfast meet-up with two of his gay coworkers and one of his favorite geeky porn stars. Forty-five minutes and four emails after that, A had a date with Moustache Man that promised to end with a lot more than company-approved instructions for package weighing and envelope-licking.

When A woke up the next morning and looked at himself in the mirror, he thought, "Damn, Carrie Bradshaw, you doin' it up right today."

Fuck Ups: Tending the Bartender (Part 1)

My local bar is a nice Brooklyn neighborhood dive with a pool table, a back garden, and a cocaine pusher named Ken. I know every single one of the bartenders who works after nine by name. None of them seem to mind that I am underage, and they consistently buy back everyone's third round as long as the customers tip. For me, they buy back every other round until closing time, after which they buy every round until sunrise. The owner drops by and stays for a few drinks with his girlfriend every few nights, and he always buys my drink for me if I order next to him at the bar.

Needless to say, my gal pals and I have spent many a wondrous night (and morning) of binge drinking at this poet-girl haven. And over the course of those nights, some of us have gotten friendlier with the staff than others. I tend to go for the bartenders no matter where I am (notice the Part 1 attached to this article's title) because I find that chatting them up helps distract them from carding me, and once I'm chatting, I turn into Vilma Kaplan, Bundle of Lust. This Fuck Up is one of my own tales:

It all started out good. The girls and one or two of our male friends met up and gathered at our usual table in the back for a rousing night of liquored-up hijinks. We chit-chatted the night away, the group dwindling as we blurred into the wee hours, until finally, it was just me and my friend Z left. We moved up to the bar to hang out with the two bartenders and the last few hooligans trying to catch a pussycat to pet before close.

Bartender 1 was a hot Irishman with a manly platinum wedding band that somehow managed to increase his sex appeal. Around forty, he was the kind of older man I always fantasized about and was slowly working my way up to.(I'd made good clean strides from 18 year olds to 30 year olds, but not yet beyond that.) For the sake of this Fuck Up, let's call him The Fantasy.

Bartender 2 was a new guy, we all called him The Kid, even though he was 28, much older than me. I struck up a nice conversation with The Kid about college degrees and homelessness while my friend Z made her move on The Fantasy. He'd been oggling her for weeks, and the tension was driving her nuts. She knew if she could keep him interested, she could keep herself in a veritable fountain of free beer.

At four a.m., the bar officially closed and the middle-aged, male regulars got kicked to the curb to wait for their cabs. We, the cute young thangs, were invited to smoke indoors, and have our pick of drinks as long as we could keep the bartenders entertained. Quickly, however, The Fantasy got that gleam in his eye that meant he'd figured he could swing me and Z for a threesome, and he started grumbling at The Kid to clean up and get out. I made a few joked with The Kid about how I wished he could stay, but..., and he made a few jokes about what a slut The Fantasy was. We both said, "Duh!" to each other's jokes, and The Fantasy hustled The Kid out the front door and pulled down the window gate behind him.

After that, it was a lot of slinky smiles. The Fantasy went in back to put up the chairs and turn off the lights, and Z and I popped open the antique cash register to pilfer quarters for the juke box. I put on Bruce Springsteen or some other such suitable fodder for young Fucking Up. Z came up to me and said, "Watch me?"

"Huh?" I asked, very confused by her request.

Z said, "I don't want to sleep with him.

"So let's go home," I said, seeing no dilemma.

"I don't want to go yet," she said and peeked into the dark back room where The Fantasy was prowling around.

"Okay, so let's stay. If you don't want to sleep with him, don't sleep with him." It went on like this for about half a song before I got frustrated and said, "I have no idea what you want me to do."

To this, Z replied, "I'm going to go into the back. I want you to stay up here. If I don't come back up here after two songs, come back. Whatever's going on, just go with it."

"Go with it?" I asked, trying to get her to tell me whether or not we were going to fuck The Fantasy in the back of the bar.

She scrunched up her face, through her hands in the air and huffed, "Go with it," as she walked into the The Fantasy's lair.

I sat at the bar, toyed with the idea of pocketing a few bucks from the till, poured myself another Jack rocks, squirted some club soda in the sink out of the nifty beverage hose, changed the lineup on the juke box, blah,blah, blah. Then, it was time. Two songs were up, and I made my way into the back, ready to play dumb.

"Oh, oops," I said, rather sarcastically, as I approached The Fantasy, who was pretty involved in grabbing Z's ass while she jerked him off with a nonplussed expression on her face.

He leered over at me and said, "Come here."

"Would your wife like this?" I asked because I'm a bitch and wanted him to be sure I knew exactly how base the whole situation was (but I was damn well going to enjoy myself anyway). The Fantasy ignored me and grabbed me by the front of my shirt to kiss me when I obeyed. As far as kisses go, I'd rate it a ten out of ten for pornographic fantasy and a three out of ten for real life fun. But I was not deterred. I am a girl who likes sex, especially sloppy, fairly anonymous sex, and I take on the task of hooking up with a lot of enthusiasm. I kissed The Fantasy with willful abandon, and even started to warm up a little as his hands wandered over to my body from Z's.

Z was still fairly expressionless as she cupped The Fantasy's balls. She said, "Yeah, grab her tits. She has epic tits," to which we all responded with murmurs of agreement.

The Fantasy was clearly overwhelmed by the two women in front of him, though and as he fumbled, I was starting to understand the unexcited look on Z's face. He kept pushing on the top of my head and whispering, "Get on your knees, baby."

I said, "No, stop pushing on my head," so he started begging, which really annoyed me. But I was all about making the best of the situation, so I kissed him to shut him up, and he got over the fact that I wasn't going to suck him off. (Sorry I'm not a better feminist. I aspire to be one.)

Z frowned at me and pointed at The Fantasy's cock with her free hand while he was busy eyes-closed groaning. First, I sighed with disappointment, then I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. "Let me," I said, taking over the manual activity while Z went to work making out. I thought he was just having a hard time getting it up. He was an older guy, and he'd had his fair share to drink. But when I got his dick in my hand, I had to admit that there just wasn't anything there. The Fantasy was no fantasy at all. He wasn't even a reality. He was barely a thumb. And a flaccid, bumbling thumb at that.

(A side note for fairness: Size is not everything. I have had satisfying encounters with many men with any number of penis sizes. But there is small, and then there is, "Oh, my God, I cannot believe I have been fantasizing about fucking this man against a wall only to realize that his dick is not a dick at all." And if he'd been a better guy, not a cheating scuzzball, I would have had inventive, pleasurable, non-penetrative sex with him for hours. There is so much more to fucking than pentration, I know, and it can be so much more fun. All of that is beside the point. It is situational irony. The Fantasy had the Least Fantastic Cock Ever.)

By this time, Z's dress was on the floor and my shirt was around my waist. Z made a frustrated, disgusted face, and I that was it. I made an executive decision. I dropped The Fantasy's dick to pick up Z's dress and pull it over her head. "We have to go," I said. The Fantasy looked dumbfounded. I took Z's hand, and dragged her up front.

We grabbed our purses just as The Fantasy emerged from the back. "You don't even want another drink?" he asked.

I said, "No," very sternly while Z fixed her hair. I looked at the clock on the wall, which read 7:42 AM, and cringed, "We have class in less than two hours." The Fantasy sighed and let us out the front. As we crawled out of the dark bar into the morning sun, I caught my shirt on the security gate and ripped a hole in it. Once on the sidewalk, we ducked our heads as we walked past shiny moms and dads drinking their morning coffee at the shop next door.

As soon as we were a block away, Z and I both started cracking up. "What the fuck did we just do?" I asked.

"Nothing," Z said, "There was nothing there to do."

Two hours later, I sat in class, still pleasantly drunk, and argued about and obscene Arthur Miller story that somehow paled in comparison to the morning I'd had so far. The Fantasy was ruined for Z and I forever, but he still pitches our free drinks over the bar like a trooper. Even though it was a completely dissatisfying encounter for all three of us, there is something to be said for the simplicity of post-hook up interactions with an older, sluttier, married man.

Fuck Ups: Emergency

The year my friend, Y, swore off men was long. Very long. So long that it accidentally became fifteen months.

Her first fishing trip back in the big sea of dating, she found herself set up with a friend of a friend. He was Dominican, sang in a band, felt no qualms about taking her into his bedroom for two hours of making out and abandoning their friends in the living room. All attractive qualities.

But his moves pretty much ended there, and Y was left feeling... not much.

Y, however, being an intrepid young dater, feeling rejuvenated after her love-sabbatical, did not give up. One lucky Saturday, she found yet another friend of a friend to hook on her line.

He was an Air Force Reservist with shoulders she couldn't wait to dig her fingernails into. So she did, and that was that.

Left with fine memories and a little skin under her fingernails, Y went home expecting nothing more from her one night stand. By the next night, however, Y had received numerous texts of "High five!" and "Get-it, get-it girl!" from her friends. Apparently the Air Force only teaches homosexuals not to tell.

Y kept her head up high, however, and made little grins of satisfaction whenever she thought no one was looking. One night, while on duty for work, she received an emergency page. When she dialed the number and asked, "How can I help?" the Air Force Reservist confusedly said, "Who is this?"

Y's boss had (ever-so-kindly) paged her one night stand's number to her emergency work pager. By doing her job and responding to the page, she came out looking like a cling-on. I said, "Remind your boss that you only like abuses of power in the bedroom," but I'm pretty sure she didn't tell him in those exact words.

Books You Should Be Reading But Aren't: The Dead

Okay, okay, so "The Dead" isn't a book. It's a short story. In the "Dubliners." We've written about its last sentence, and it truly is a remarkable one. But the story in and of itself stands alone as an exemplary example (is that redundant?) of Joyce's more coherent work (that is, in a traditional narrative). In the last two years, I've read this story about four times, and it's been a pleasure each and every time. It's one of the few stories where a dinner scene is both necessary and executed well. The dinner table has often been a trap for writers, as conversation becomes action with seated guests. Joyce does not fail here. For starters, start simply with the foods on the table, each so fraught with symbolism, it seems overwhelming if you think about it, natural if you don't (also, a perfect example of how food can enhance a story without the story being about food). Familial and social dynamics are explored and exploited as if you were witnessing your own family's last Christmas party.

And the devasting ending, when the narrator is convinced that his wife is still in love with a (now deceased) boy from her adolescence, he looks out into the snow, seeing the great equalizer. Snow covers both the living and the dead, something that he had previously tried to protect his wife from (by buying her snow boots, etc.).

I could go on, but this is a story I refuse to summarize. Please read it. You'll be glad you did.