Hey, Wait, Is This The Apocalypse?

hanging with friends at the end of the world

Last night, I met up with five friends at a local pub. We were a diverse group, especially for Seattle. Black, Asian, White, Native American. One guy is Korean, Jewish, and Irish. Politically diverse, too, ranging from moderate Republican to the far left. All of us are white-collar successful. We’re all married and own a house. All of us are fathers—nine sons and two daughters among us. I’m the oldest at 56. The youngest guys are both 42. I joked to them, “On the rez, I’m old enough to be your dad.” Our friendships began because we’ve always been half-assed basketball players looking for good competition and comradery on the court.

Upon sitting down, one of the guys—the tallest and strongest—said, “We’re all gonna get Covid.”

We enjoyed four hours of humor, seriousness, and yes, traditional masulinity. We talked sports. Told dirty jokes. Made inappropriate comments that had all of us laughing. Teased the shit out of one another. Shared updates about our wives and kids. Debated Twitter, legalized drugs, and whether LeBron or Michael Jordan is the best basketball player of all time.

“What about Kobe Bryant?” one guy asked. “Isn’t he the third best?”

A few of us loudly scoffed.

I’ve never been a fan of Kobe’s way of playing basketball. As a rat ball basketball player, all you can do is sigh when a dude wearing a Kobe jersey walks into the gym. You know he’s gonna shoot everytime that he touches the ball, no matter the difficulty of the attempt.

“Is it too soon to talk trash about Kobe’s game?” I asked. And everybody silently pondered my question and didn’t answer. Yeah, it’s too soon.

I’m still recovering from my cold so I got sleepy and pondered going home early. But I didn’t want to miss out. It was my first non-basketball outing with those friends since 2019.

It was a great four hours.

On my walk home, I thought about all the friendships in my life. I’d say at least 80% of my closest friends are basketball-obsessed and only a handful of them are in the book business.

And I thought about all the time I have not spent with them.

Over the last thirty years of my highly-succesful literary career, I’ve spent far more time with people in the book world than with my personal friends.

Much of that disproportion has to do with my bipolar illness. Most simply stated, my manic grandiosity compelled me into constantly performing for the adoration of strangers and my depressed darkness pulled me down into silent isolation and despair.

There’s much, much more to write about all the ways in which manic-depression has wrecked my life. And I’ll eventually write and publish my bipolar memoir. But, in this moment, I just want to express gratitude for my friends.

My literary fame isn’t special to them. We only talk about my job in the same way we talk about their jobs. In many ways, their jobs feel more real and substantial to me than my job.

I mean—I spend at least half of my life in a dreamscape that has me forgetting, neglecting, and not even seeing what’s happening around me.

When I arrived home last night, my wife and I shared stories about how we’d spent our respective evenings. I said good night to her and our son who lives at home. And then I sat in my office and shuffled through the news updates on my iPad.

According to many experts and amateurs, democracy is likely to end on this Election Day Tuesday.

Is that true? I don’t know.

I’m worried, sure, but I’m also exhausted by our country’s culture. I’m weary of the political left and right. I’m weary of my own political thinking. I’m weary of trying to define where I fit in the world.

“You sound different now,” my Republican friend said at the pub. “Less of the left.”

I don’t think that’s completely true. But it’s true to a degree that baffles, delights, confuses, and unnerves me.

Who am I now? Who am I now? Who am I now?

In any case, I woke this morning with a slight headache. My throat, still recovering from my cold, was sore from all the talking and laughing last night (with my throat too sore again to record this post). I didn’t get out of bed for an hour or so. Instead, I played video games on my iPad and then read news about the new inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Pat Benatar has finally been inducted but she should have been in many years ago).

Then I looked at Instagram and was algorithm’ed into a Bill Maher monologue from Friday night. Unlike many on the left (am I on the left?), I like Bill Maher. I think he’s a hilarious asshole and I’ve always been partial to hilarious assholes (Ahem, the Indian poet says, as he looks into the mirror). And, yes, it shouldn’t be surprising to people that Maher issued a hilarious and terrifying rant about Election Day Tuesday and its possible or probable or likely or inevitable repercussions.

So I watched it. And I laughed and trembled. And I said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I know that approximately half of our country, no matter our politics, will believe the world is ending when the election results roll in on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

But, for me, as I write this, I think, “I don’t want any of the people who want to run the country to be the ones running the country.” I find myself thinking, “I believe in greatness and nobody in politics now, whether in office or on the street, possesses any greatness.”

I am demoralized.

But, on Wednesday, I’ll still have my wife and sons. I’ll still have my friends. I’ll still have my dreamscape. I’ll still have stories to tell.

And I’ll still be ready to laugh during any small, medium, or large apocalypse.