My Carly Simon Piece
"You're such an asshole, I bet you think this is about you"
I had a nice dream once. In it, I started a new job at the hottest of tech startups.
I didn’t even apply. I was sitting at my desk at my dreary, publicly-traded corporate job, a cog in a wheel, and the phone rang. A man, a familiar voice, said “What are you still doing there? Come over here and work with me.”
This was the opportunity of a lifetime. I was excited.
Fast forward in the dream to my first day; the founder walks up to my desk in tie-dyed pajamas and an oversize Sisters of Mercy t-shirt. He’s fiddling with those hippie juggle sticks you see in Golden Gate Park. He sizes me up and down.
”What’s with the Elvis get-up?” he says to me, apparently referring to my pompadour or my uniform of a Scully western shirt and 501s.
Suddenly, a man is looming over my desk. His head is unusually large. He says “Are you partners with Rosemary? We used to be lovers.”
He is referring to my wife of nearly 20 years at this point.
Did I say dream? I meant living nightmare. But I also meant this really, actually happened to me.
Awake, on my first day at a new job.
Do you have a personal demon?
Do you have someone in your life who just seems to have it in for you?
Call it what you want. Toxic personality. Arch nemesis. Villain. Asshole.
I have one. He haunts my LinkedIn, like a creepy van parked across the street. But on LinkedIn.
I’m going to do my best to not, in any way, let on who this person is, what they do, anything that might give a hint as to their actual identity.
Ok, *his* actual identity. Because he is very clearly a he, and I can’t imagine a woman who would come close to his level of pettiness, meanness, aggressiveness and general barnacle-upon-the-underside-of-the-world-ness.
No, this is not about naming names or some kind of twisted revenge-core.
But this, this is about trying to understand why these people exist. Why, at our age, we even care enough to let them get under our nerve sheathes, in our skin, in our very being, to the extent that they do.
This person has stolen clients from me. Stolen projects. I have delivered fat checks to his stupid house, and yet, whenever anyone talks to him, they always return to me, gleefully: “Wow, he really hates you!” Like it’s revelatory. Like it’s an epiphany. Every time!
What on earth have I done to earn myself an arch-nemesis? I’m not Lex Luthor. I’m not Ernst Blofeld. I’m not Professor Moriarty.
I generally get along with most people. I’m not particularly, egregiously vain. I don’t hurt animals or cause forest fires. I like chili dogs and Slurpees.
One would think I’d ruined his life, driven him out of business or cut his brake lines. I’m pretty sure I have not done any of these things.
He will have no name because this is my Carly Simon song.
“You’re such an asshole, I bet you think this story is about you.”
Assholes are literally everywhere. Especially now. It’s like it’s asshole season.
Matt Gaetz, his plasticized garbage face, smeared across every screen I open.
Everyone in pop culture is turning out to be a giant asshole.
P Diddy, R Kelly, Weinstein, Armie “The Cannibal” Hammer.
Bad dudes. Sociopath dudes. Psychopath dudes.
Every job you apply for has an asshole in waiting.
Every job you ever had, there was someone who drove you nuts.
Like they say about poker, if you look around the room and you can’t tell who’s the asshole, it’s probably you.
I’ve weathered my fair share of them over the past 54 years.
Managing toxic personalities up and down.
In middle school they knocked your textbooks out of your hands, or threw you into a locker.
In high school they belittled you openly in front of your peers, trying desperately to make you feel small and insignificant.
In your early career they made sure you understood that you were at the bottom of the hierarchy, that you signified and meant nothing, that you were there to do what they said, no matter what.
In your mid career jobs they jockeyed for position, back-stabbing and rat-fucking. The grand pastimes of the mid-career asshole.
Later in your career they stole businesses out from under you, dragged your name, abused you in myriad sociopathic ways of mind-fuckery. “It’s just business,” they say, with the dignification of their abuse, as if to say, “sorry that your existence doesn’t matter, the wheels of commerce dictate you be shredded beneath them.”
Listen, I don’t have it so bad. I’ve had it pretty good, actually.
My friend Ian likes to point out that there is a pattern here, of men with overwhelming personalities with whom I find myself in borderline dysfunctional, symbiotic, vampiric relationships.
Maybe it is me
Do I allow myself to be treated like absolute garbage?
No, of course not, it’s they who are the problem.
I look back at where I put my energy. I was always trying to be everyone’s friend.
What did this translate into?
No good deed goes unpunished. I find myself saying this pithy thing all the time.
I feel like I should join over-askers anonymous.
My wife was saying, just yesterday, how proud she was that I was putting up boundaries and not just saying yes to everyone who asked a favor of me.
I’m a 54 year old man. Is this something to be proud of, or regretful for?
My friend Jim Stanley tried to show me how to throw a punch once outside the Continental Club. I was saying that I’d never been in a physical fight. I think he thought I was admitting to being a coward.
A drunk Sunday night and he’s just staring at me sadly, shaking his head
“Make a fist,” he said.
I complied.
Whatever I had done with my hand did not fulfill his instruction.
“No! Make a fist. Jesus Christ, Nick.”
I did again.
“Why are you holding your fingers like that? That’s not a fist.”
In a fight I’d just fold and become small, like a collapsible laundry bin, just fold in on myself. I have a recurring dream that I’m being confronted by a mugger, and I try to throw a punch, but I can’t put my weight into it. I’m just flailing.
I don’t really have the capacity to get small or shrink. I’m 6’ 3”, even without the pompadour. I was always a good bouncer because I’m big and people think I’m frightening. If push came to shove I’d probably try to yell my way out of it, and call the police on my phone.
I once told my pal Steve I’m not good at stealth games. He said “You think?”
Let’s return to that first day at that fabled new job. I lasted a year. The company went in a different direction. B2B. I was in editorial and product. First head on the chopping block.
That large headed fellow? He made the mistake of telling me he was deathly allergic to pistachios.
No, I didn’t take him out by surreptitious nut replacement. But I did walk by his desk all the time, casually eating pistachios, stopping to chat. Then I, maybe, got his ass fired.
The hippie juggle stick CEO is still at it, somewhere in crypto land. He’s not so bad.
And what of our personal demon?
He checked out my LinkedIn yesterday. He has 1 connection on his LinkedIn account.
It’s absurd, but I think it’s also just part of my ever expanding circle of goofballs.
Back in San Francisco, I woke up one morning. This is going to be triggering, so if public nudity and masturbation are offensive to you, stop reading, but if not, this will tie this up in a nice little bow.
We lived on Market Street, next to a transient hotel. Twin Peaks Hotel.
I was letting our miniature schnauzer, Estro, out in the back shared courtyard. I made the mistake of looking up at one of the windows of the hotel.
There he was, in all his naked, unshaven, transient glory. Random shirtless dude. Whacking it. His extended, flesh-colored salt-water taffy weiner outstretched in one hand, his other smacking it with his open palm in some sort of self gratification ritual that I still shudder to think about.
I hustled up the dog and went back inside. I called the police. A few minutes later an officer showed up, short, Italian, friendly. We walked into the back. The window was empty.
But no, here came our jerkin’-it junky again, penis fully extended, staring at me and my new cop friend.
“There he is! What can you do?”
The cop considered the man, considered me. Paused.
“Eh,” he said, taking a breath. “It takes all kinds.”
Thanks for reading Are You Experienced, a newsletter by Nick Tangborn. It’s about aging, media, culture, career, purpose, all though the eyes of 54 year old Midwesterner transplanted into various cities over a 30 plus year career in music, movies, tech and pancake batter.
You can find me at nicholas@areyouexperienced.co
By the way, that shared courtyard in San Francisco was regularly littered with needles and full adult diapers. Oh, San Francisco.
If you have a similar arch nemesis, or a super villain, in your life, let me know! I want to know I’m not alone. Desperately. Hit me up at the email above.
A funny thing about the making a fist story is that I’m a pacifist.
It's funny - I actually thought this story -- about my arch-nemesis, and the presence of the arch-nemesis in our lives -- would inspire more horror stories from folks, but they've mostly shown up in social media, not in the Comments. Curious if anyone else has seen this happen.