My Man Crush: A New Temptation

Happy Valentine’s Day to you, dear reader, and my new man crush from The White Lotus, one of the era’s hottest television programs (HBO, of course). It pokes fun at the naivete and politically correctness of elite wealth.

Jack may be a degree or two more handsome, and have an ounce or two more confidence, but I saw a bit of myself in Jack. Jack’s job is to seduce Portia. He does so. I was nothing spectacular in the seduction game, at least not on purpose. If there were as much of an attractiveness differential, maybe I pulled one as quickly and easily, but never on purpose. Always on accident or by luck.

After he closes the deal is where I really saw myself in Jack, when he focuses on the drinking. Jack starts to get hammered. Drinking is more important than hooking up. In fact, even the first night, she’s ready to go back to the room, but he delays. He wants to get drunk first. “Let’s get fucked!”

I’ve lost deals for the same reason. How many times did I drink myself out of a hookup? No idea, but I wouldn’t lose them after closing the deal. I’d lose them before that. I remember a few. I’d say something too loud and/or inappropriate trying to turn up, or spill beer on myself trying to drink too quickly. Or just not read the signals that it was time to close, because I wasn’t done drinking. A few times I drank myself to the point I couldn’t really speak (English or Spanish).

Once upon a time there was an article here by Roosh V about hooking up in Medellin. I remember one detail more than a decade later. They had gotten to know each other over a couple dates. On the evening it happened, she was ready to go at the beginning of the night. Roosh had one drink, and probably didn’t finish it, when they left the bar. And I thought, what a bore! What do you do afterward? You have to hang out with nothing to do, or engineer an escape.

My priority was always getting mad out of my head. Sure, if you’re single you go out instead of drinking at home alone unless you’re a real degenerate. But you never abstain and you don’t take it easy. Not me anyway. When alcohol is in the room, alcohol comes first.

Jack starts drinking so much he loses Portia. He’s drunk and obnoxious. She’s waiting on him, and then she’s suffering him. That’s where I saw myself. How many of my ex-girlfriends had to wait on me? Suffer my drinking and being loud and obnoxious? All of them. That was part of the package. That came with the deal.

My wife put up with more than any of them. She must really love me. Well, her citizenship is coming up soon. That’s when we’ll see if she’s really in it till death do us part!

I thought through all my affairs, wondering if I ever had been with a drunk like me. I haven’t. All my recurring affairs were moderate drinkers at most. I wouldn’t have a bad drunk, female lush. There’s a double standard, for sure.

You know what I felt when I saw myself on television? I wanted a drink. I didn’t feel embarrassment or shame. I wanted to be drunk and loud and obnoxious, slamming cold beer from a glass at a restaurant, or from a bottle overlooking the beach.

I didn’t have a drink, but I felt a new temptation.

There’s one scene where Jack’s drinking my beer, Budweiser, getting tipsy at lunchtime, with a view over the water under the mountains, with a good long session ahead of him. And he gets on a soapbox with a wonderful bit of wisdom. “You should just shut it!”

“It’s a pretty fucking good world I’d say. You’d rather live in the middle ages, would you? … We’re fucking lucky. We’re living in the best time in the history of the world, on the best fucking planet. If you can’t be satisfied living now, here, you’re never gonna be satisfied.”

He had me at “Let’s get fucked.” And he didn’t lose me.

I have not had a drink for seven months. You have to be careful which entertainment you consume if you want to stay sober. I didn’t know this show would throw this man crush at me. But you want to avoid obvious triggers. In 2007 I had a couple months under my belt when I read Rum Diary by Hunter Thompson on a plane to San Francisco. I think I was drinking within an hour of landing. Reading that book was a bad idea.

In Season 3 we’re going to see Jack sober up. And we’re going to learn that the “dark hole” he was in, was in fact a period when he was a smack addict in Naples letting dudes blow him for a fifty spot. You heard it here first.