We've curated a list of our narratives that have the highest and lowest Doe Print scores for the Stability value. Read these to expose you to stories from a wide variety of authors.

Doe Print Value - Stability

Back in 2012, I started taking an interest in Tantra to learn about the capacity for our bodies to transmit energy in subtle and overt ways. As a cis, heterosexual guy, I saw the potential to alchemize my sexual obsessions into powers. I believed these powers could draw women to me and, when interested and open, could even bring them to ecstatic states with little to no physical touch. This was my deliverance, an evolution beyond the trifling games of dating and unfulfilling casual sex and into the mystical magic of deep, real human connection. I took myself, and this exploration very, very seriously.

I would go to workshops and meet Tantricas, breathwork guides, masculinity coaches and energy practitioners who would speak of orgasms occurring in non-physical ways through the sheer movement of energy. I would conspire in my journal and amongst friends to create group touch circles, where we could explore these realms in open, consensual ways. Looking back, I wasn’t sure how consensual I was in sharing these circles with other men but I was definitely keen to find a few ladies to “journey” with.

One day, I followed my curiosity down a Google hole of Tantric videos until I came across a demonstration of “Tantric massage.” I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Here was some schlocky guy, dressed in white, hovering over a massage table where a beautiful blonde woman—also in all-white spandex— was getting a “massage.” The man didn’t touch the woman in a sexual way at all—to my recollection, he didn’t even touch her. He moved his hands up and down her body about an inch to two inches from her skin, waving and pulling air around her, moving it with both hands like he was pushing water from her legs up to her neck, then pinching it away like he was sprinkling salt on her from afar. He held one hand over her head and another moved and swished around her torso and gut. It was all very surreal to watch.  

Slowly, but very clearly, the woman started to move and make noise. Her back arched and she started to moan. There was no doubt she was enjoying the experience and the massage was arousing her. I repeat: I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Without any real physical touch, this normal-looking guy was bringing a woman to orgasm by moving air and energy around her body. I was blown away.

I vowed to figure out how to do what this guy was doing. I wanted to learn how to use my energy to make a woman cum without touching her. This felt like the ultimate power. I began feeling this desire when I would talk to women, trying to energetically bring them into arousal through sheer will. When I had the opportunity, friends or dates would give me the chance to practice with them on the couch. I’d have them close their eyes and then mimic the motions and movements I saw on that YouTube video. After five or ten minutes of movement, I’d inquire, “Did you feel it?” Some said they felt something, or maybe they heard my hands moving around them; others didn’t feel anything. I persisted and kept practicing every chance I got.

One night, I was at my house with a new friend. We had kissed once before but she articulated that she just wanted to be friends and, though a little bummed, I let it go. Somehow in the course of the evening, I mentioned my studies in Tantric massage and her ears perked up—she wanted to try. I was a little hesitant at first, as she said she wasn’t interested in romance, but I thought I could keep things PG and maybe have some energetic success.  

She got on the couch and closed her eyes. I slowly and intentionally brought my energy into my hands by rubbing them together and orienting my attention towards them. Then I began to move them above her body. I swooped and pushed, drew back, held steady and continued for a while, my knees getting sore as I remained knelt over her. After what felt like a while, I saw her beginning to perspire a bit. She was moving and breathing audibly. I could sense a change was occurring. Excited by her body’s feedback and ignoring my physical discomfort, I continued to move my hands and circulate energy from her head to her pelvis to her heart and even her feet.  

Finally, she opened her eyes. “Wow, I really felt that,” she said. Then she asked if she could kiss me. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I get the magic to have an impact on this woman but now she did want to make out. We began kissing and, while fully clothed, the physical touch seal was broken. Through the thick denim in her jeans, I was able to bring her fully to climax. I felt superhuman.

This wild experience motivated me to play with my energy while having conversations with women or just hanging out. Sometimes we’d both be interested in energy work but our definitions weren’t always the same. Maybe we’d move or meditate together and I’d start to raise this out-of-body strength. Once I was sitting in meditation with a friend and she stopped us by saying she felt my energy overtaking her. It freaked her out and she was uncomfortable.  

I realized at that moment that consent still matters when it comes to energy work. Just because we can expand beyond our bodies doesn’t mean we always should. In fact, it’s very important to know when it’s appropriate to use this kind of sensual energy in an interaction and when it’s not. Since that “call-in” with my friend, I haven’t really found myself “playing” with this sexual energy in random spaces.  

Now that I have someone I plan to spend my life with, we occasionally practice “sex magic.” We light a candle and bring intention, breath and our own focused energy into our intimacy. I feel grateful to have someone who is game to exchange energy with me instead of a one-way massage, and we can break the physical touch barrier to deepen our experience from the get-go. 

Nevertheless, I’ll always be proud of my ability to transmit sexual energy without touch.

Doe Print Value - Goodwill

Doe Print Value - Openness

Doe Print Value - Closeness

I Discovered the Joys and Limits of a No-Touch Orgasm

A scarecrow lynched from a West Virginia tree with a “Die, Frackers” sign pinned on it: Now, that’s a sight to see while riding to your first-ever hydraulic fracturing job.

While studying environmental engineering during the Obama years, I opposed fracking. But, after a summer on Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale, I came to understand it. When I returned to class, I could explain it. My tree-hugging roommate’s explanation of the process was that a piston breaks up the rock. There was no mention of the liquid aspect of hydraulics.

I would not call the men I worked with environmentalists. 

We sent plenty of dip spit downhole. Diesel was spilled and not reported. The fracking water was sometimes sourced in questionable ways. However, the crew followed the rules—for the most part.

Oil companies are in the business of extracting hydrocarbons from the ground. They are not in the business of losing hydrocarbons to the neighbor’s drinking water. To understand fracture propagation and flaming faucets (when fracking allegedly goes wrong), we must know basic well construction.

To argue for or against hydraulic fracturing, we must understand basic drilling.

Sticking a straw deep into the depths of this earth can be a wild concept. The weight of a mile deep of rock pressurizes both oil and gas into fluids and, if you punch a simple hole, it could blow. Circulated heavyweight mud provides greater pressure than the rock formation. This prevents a blowout and keeps oil and gas in the reservoir. Overlapping sections of steel pipe cemented in place make up an oil well.

The key is that steel pipe, called “casing.” Casing is the reason you never heard about water contamination before fracking. Drilling wells through water aquifers is nothing new. There is only one easy route through stratified layers of rock and that is a pipe. The basis of a fracked well is this traditional oil well. Hydraulic fracturing is a reservoir stimulation technique that allows more production with less drilling.

The drilling rig is long gone when the frac trucks show up. A wireline crew sends shaped, explosive charges down the cased wellbore. Holes are then perforated at the exact target levels a mile down. The pumps send a slurry of water, chemicals and sand down the straw.

Because the pressure is higher than the fracture pressure gradient of the rock, the rock cracks. Sand fills the cracks and establishes permeability. The isolated pockets of oil and gas now can flow. This is hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

The fracking process is well-designed, efficient and simple. Ten thousand pounds per square inch of pumping will not cause fractures to break through shale that is 390 million years old.

Still, the upward migration of hydraulic fracturing fluids is possible. Concerns with mechanical integrity of the cement and steel casing apply to all oil and gas wells. A poor cement job could provide pathways for frac fluids to reach the water aquifers. A poor cement job is why the Deepwater Horizon released five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

My concern with hydraulic fracturing is not the process, but with human error on the surface. 

Bulk hydrochloric acid and biocide winds through the fertile hills of Appalachia. “Biocide” is Latin for “the killer of life.” Trucks crash all the time.

The wind once blew a cloud of the biocide glutaraldehyde that dropped me to my knees. A container of it has a warning sign with a dead fish and a dead tree on it. This product is necessary for underground microbial control and well integrity. Biocide reduces the downhole production of dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas. It also reduces corrosion of steel casing.

The truck traffic is nonstop. There have been bad spills. The Department of Transportation grants exceptions to drivers in the energy industry such as 24-hour restarts, logging waiting time as off-duty and alternate split-break options. The exceptions sound complicated to lay folks like me. But I saw drivers work these little loopholes in order to haul nasty chemicals in the middle of the night.

If you had to pick a reason to rally against fracking, choose the overworked truck driver. Otherwise, know you are rehashing traditional anti-drilling arguments. Human error on the surface should be everyone’s main concern: When automation becomes fully realized, fracking should be safer than ever.

Environment

Insiders

Mother Earth

People Who Hate Fracking Don't Understand It

I learned from an early age that my mom was adopted. Instability and chaos are what I most remember of my childhood. Mom was a mythical creature that was full of life and had the inexplicable power to attract others. Although she was neurotic, chaotic, irresponsible, unpredictable and at times uncaring, she was absolutely comfortable in her skin. Mom had to have her freedom no matter what the cost. 

But she developed the habit of sporadically abandoning me and my five siblings, sometimes for years at a time, just dumping us off on her neighbors and our Nana. As an infant, my siblings and I were separated. She left one of my older brothers and me with an unknown neighbor. This part of my history seems to be a total blur in my family's memories. 

The earliest memories I have as a child is my time with Nana, my mother’s foster mom. Nana was brave enough to take on the responsibility of raising me and my three brothers in addition to her own adopted son and a niece that was sent to her in Mexico City. Can you imagine what it takes to raise so many children?  She managed to keep her household impeccably clean and her affairs in order. Nana was content with her routines. The sleeveless dresses she wore to stay cool in the hot Sierra Madre desert always exposed her strong brown shoulder. She was a reserved woman who spoke only when necessary. She wore her three gold bracelets and gold ring with a sense of honor. Her jewelry seemed to always have traces of masa from the tortillas she handmade. She was natural and wore no makeup, a thrifty woman who never spent money on herself and always took care of the food and household needs. Although my Nana was not one to easily demonstrate her affection, she never failed to care for our every need.

During this time, I felt like a ghost. As my body moved around the house going from room to room, I felt as if I was floating, dissociated from my environment. As I traveled around the house, I witnessed Nana in her habitual routine moving from the stove to the kitchen table cooking and preparing food for the family. It was like a mirage. I heard her voice, “Mi hija Magdalena ya viene por la niña,'' sharing with them that my mother would be coming to take me with her. These words filled me with anguish, uncertainty and created an infinite whirling that pierced through my stomach and chest. There was no face of this person they called my mom to refer to in my mind. I drew a blank. She abandoned me at such a young age there were no memories or feelings to connect us. This stranger was now coming to remove me from the people who had offered me safety and care, yet, I felt ready to move on. Perhaps because this place represented where I was forgotten, felt no outgoing love and abandoned. I finally landed in my body ready to face whatever may come. Somehow, the news filled me with the courage to take her hand. I was ready to go “al otro lado,” across the U.S. border.

When my mom and I arrived in California, I was introduced to my new stepfather, my new baby brother and was also reunited with my two older siblings. For a while, family life was perfect. I had my own bedroom; we shared wonderful holidays; Mom and Dad were in love. One of the most memorable moments during these happy days was one Christmas when my parents surprised us with new bikes. I learned how to ride my bike faster than my eldest brother and was thrilled. 

Suddenly, everything turned around. My mother was diagnosed with uterus cancer and was hospitalized. During her recovery at the hospital. I was told that my stepdad had asked for a divorce. My mother recovered and moved straight into her new adventure. My brothers and I, on the other hand, ended up back with our Nana. This time, in her wisdom, she reunited me with the man she believed to be my father. At my Nana’s request, this stranger came for a visit to meet me. There was a calmness to him, and I felt comfortable and accepting. It inspired a smile in my heart. It was soon after that my new dad took me to his home to introduce me to his wife and my three new siblings. They were kind, respectful and always treated me with love. I felt like I was family.

News would randomly hit about my mom’s whereabouts—some said she was in California, others thought she was in Australia, while some believed she was here in Mexico. Needless to say, she continued to mystify people's imagination. She was a mystery to us all. I often asked myself “Why does mom behave like this?” Is it possible that her unknown mother also gave birth to children with different men? Did she also feel like I did—unwanted? Did her siblings also share this same pattern? Why couldn’t she just be normal? My mind was often full of questions?

I don't know how I turned out as well as I have. As an adult, my childhood feels like a rollercoaster, full of ups and downs and lots of unknowns. I am happily married now with a lovely adult daughter and a wonderful caring husband. Although I had been reluctant to take a DNA test, I felt compelled when my husband gifted it to me. Initially, I hesitated because of my distrust in the possible unknown uses of my DNA, but my curiosity outweighed the worries. I was fascinated by the results. I was excited by the ethnic breakdown and the geographic tracing of my DNA around the world. 

A few months later I purchased a test for my younger brother. Weeks later we got results and realized he was in fact not blood-related to me. I was devastated, as this also meant that the man I called “dad” until the day he died was not my father. It broke my heart. I recognize this man was brave enough to claim me as his daughter and made me part of his family. After much discussion with my brother, we decided not to inform our siblings and continue to move forward as if nothing had happened. We both realized that love and family are beyond blood.

Weeks later, after receiving my DNA results, I was sent an email from a person who turned out to be my mother’s unknown sister’s son—my cousin. I found out they had always lived nearby, and that for a time, we literally lived on opposite sides of the same freeway. After many exchanges, I discovered my mom and her siblings all came from different fathers and that they too had at times been abandoned by their mother, my grandmother. It became clear that there was a generational pattern with the women on my mother’s side, who were having children in unstable relationships that resulted in them leaving their children behind. 

Despite my past, I consciously chose to nurture and love my daughter and husband. I have broken the ancestral pattern of bad choices and abandonment which has burdened the women of my family. My DNA test results opened many doors to discover my family's history and brought new questions regarding my unfound father. 

Does he know I exist? Would he like to know me? Do I look like my father and his children? Is he still alive? I wonder.

Ancestry

A DNA Test Revealed Family Secrets That Changed Everything

Ten out of ten book readers agree books are good, according to a statistic I swear I totally read in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, or possibly some other good and virtuous pro-book book. 

Books! They teach you to be a citizen; they teach you to be sophisticated; they teach you to be moral. They teach you to be cultured and shit. Social media makes you cramped and cruel; the internet gives you the attention span of a goldfish if you put the goldfish bowl in front of Twitter for some reason. (Glug.) Video games make you violent and then you shoot the goldfish and there are goldfish guts on your attention span. 

Television is a vast wasteland, yes—even The Sopranos, even The Wire, even the Kardashians. But books are the real thing, the Smart Art, the healthy vegetables of information transmission. You can't go wrong with books.

But I have read books, and I am here to tell you it isn't all Moby-Dick and Piketty's Capital. For a year or two back around 2016, I worked as a writer for a couple of book summary companies. My job was to write around 3,000-word condensations of the best-selling books of the day. And having done so, I can say with some confidence that what Americans read to improve themselves is not necessarily better than watching television or playing video games or scooping your brain out with a melon baller. 

To be fair, I did read a couple wonderful, interesting and insightful books, like Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, and even Piketty's Capital. But for the most part, according to the algorithms and my assigning editors, the American public spends its time consuming far less elevated fare. 

I read a lot of self-help books about how if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, make your bed and don't let plants with lectin slide through your leaky gut, you will become a tech billionaire with a butt of steel. Unf*ck Yourself tells you to get your get up and go in “fucking” order through positive self-talk and strategically placed asterisks. Or you can try The Tapping Solution, which promises that if you tap on magic meridian points on your body you will unblock energy and heal trauma and cure cancer and make Netflix produce another season of Glow (if you like television, which of course I don't, since I am not a goldfish).

And then after you've removed your boils and gutted your gout, it's time to make yourself proud to be an American with big, honking American biographies about some important white male American: George Washington! Alexander Hamilton! John Adams! Dwight D. Eisenhower! Thomas Jefferson! Maybe George Washington again! They were great men, with flaws, like owning slaves. But don't those flaws actually make them even greater if you think about it? Or alternately, if you don't think about it too hard?

I read and summarized so many terrible books that it's hard to pick a Most Terrible. The right-wing Clinton hate screeds during the 2016 election season were impressively awful. Ex-Secret Service agent Gary J. Byrne's Crisis of Character, an interminable self-aggrandizing memoir spiced with dubious anecdotes from the Clinton White House, was probably the worst of those. 

The book I found the absolute most painful to read though was Steve Harvey's almost incomprehensibly ignorant and unpleasant Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which explains that men are commitment-phobic emotional toddlers and that women need to give them unconditional love and sex or guys will collapse into their component parts of jealousy, ego and greed. It's 230 pages of simplistic gender stereotyping, presented in a tone of unrelenting hectoring self-satisfaction. “Men,” he tells us, “will treat women like one of two things: a sportfish or a keeper.” Yuck.

So the books most Americans read are Founding Father patriot porn or open scams, offering actively harmful life advice and quack cures. And my job was to take these simplistic nostrums and make them even more simplistic—to take the dumb glibness and make it even glibly dumber. I was distilling the vacuous essence of the bestseller list into a truer, more essential vacuousness. The whole point of Bill O'Reilly's Killing England is to make people feel like they've learned something about the American Revolution without actually thinking, or even paying attention. So a 2,500-word summary of Killing England is really even more Killing England than Killing England. It's less informative. It's more half-assed. It makes you feel like you know just as much when you know even less. The summary of the bestseller is really the purer, more Platonic form of the bestseller. I was writing these bad books better (which is to say worse) than the originals.

The publishers of Killing England or Crisis of Character don't see it precisely that way, of course. Selling summaries of books to compete with the original books is pretty obviously an intellectual property violation. To get around the copyright and trademark issues, my employers had us writers include analysis sections, so that the summaries doubled as Cliffs Notes of a sort. 

You weren't exactly allowed to criticize the books in these criticism sections, though, which got me in trouble. My editors cut out the bit where I pointed out that Steve Harvey, comedian and radio blowhard, had no meaningful expertise in human sexuality, human relationships or human anything. Editors cut out the bit where I linked to articles showing that the guy offering dubious weight-loss advice was a fatphobic jerk. And they really didn't like the bit in the summary of Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci bio where I pointed out that Da Vinci's relationship with an underage boy named Salai might well have traumatized the child in question. “Salai means ‘The Devil’, and Leonardo referred to the boy indulgently as a thief and a scamp, always getting into trouble,” I wrote. “Salai may have just been mischievous. But he also may have been acting out in response to a confusing and possibly painful sexual relationship over which, as a child and dependent, he would have had little control.” Those were not sentences that made it into the final draft.

The Da Vinci summary was the last one I wrote. One of my employers discontinued their line because of legal worries. The other fired me. Maybe in part this was because I kept doing things like suggesting Da Vinci was a child abuser. But mostly it was because they decided my work needed too much editing. 

The pay for the summaries was not great—it came out to somewhere around $15/hour for a week of work if I was lucky and the book was short and there were no edits and I lied to myself about how little I was actually making. The only way I could really manage a living at it was to read and write very quickly. It seemed fair to me: I was providing them with a shoddy inferior product, just like they were providing readers with a shoddy, inferior version of shoddy, inferior books. We were all participating as partners in the shoddy, inferior hackwork that makes the American economy go round. Though, alas, as I said, my employer didn't quite see it that way. 

So what did I learn from all this reading? Well, a steady diet of books about how to be a success taught me how to be a failure. I learned I was incapable of working hard enough or fast enough for too little money, and that I was inept even at betraying my principles. In summary, if you want a lesson about the virtues of reading, you should read something by somebody else. Or maybe, even better, don't.

Pop Culture

Why Books Are Terrible: A Summary

When I was younger, I was terrible at dating. Or at least, I felt like I was terrible at dating. Maybe it was just subjective social anxiety, and the women in question were not in fact as bored and irritated as they seemed from where I stood. But I do have at least some objective evidence that it wasn't all in my head. 

I ruined one date by talking about gravity.

It didn’t seem like a topic to avoid on a date. I had just finished a master's thesis focused on the history and philosophy of science, and I was fairly excited about it in a nerdy and arguably overbearing way. 

So when I was set up with Georgia by a mutual friend, and she politely asked me about what I was doing with my life, I started babbling about science and religion and how the two were more similar than you might expect. I may have name-dropped philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whose 1975 classic of contrarian cosmological provocation, Against Method, argues that Galileo didn't really prove the earth went round the sun. 

Galileo was the only one who could make sense of what he saw through his telescope. Others who weren’t trained by him didn't see clear evidence that his theories were correct. If you were the only one to see gremlins pushing up the sun via your patented gremlin detector, we wouldn't consider that scientific evidence for the existence of gremlins. And Galileo's calculations for planetary motion in a heliocentric universe weren't clearly less complicated than the calculations for a geocentric one. Galileo's vision of the universe wasn't demonstrably better than what people were using at the time. Feyerabend argued that the church's skepticism in support of the contemporary scientific consensus was warranted.

People used to have faith that God made the sun come up. Today people have faith that the earth goes around the sun. It seems like those beliefs are different in kind, but for most people who aren't experts in theology or physics, they work much the same. You're just trusting people in authority to tell you how the universe turns around you, so you can get on with your own, less-cosmic concerns. And those authorities, like Galileo, can be dicier than you might think. Take gravity for example…

Georgia stopped me there. "But people know how gravity works," she said. "That's different than just saying God makes the sun come up."

"Actually they don't know how gravity works," I replied. "Nobody's really sure. There are theories but…"

"Sure they do," she said. "Gravity is caused by the spinning of the earth, right?"

I did a double take. The world moved under my feet, but not in a good, sexy kind of way.

"No it's not!" I shouted. "The earth spinning doesn't have anything to do with gravity!"

There was a brief pause, in which I had time to notice again that she was very pretty as the spinning earth slowed, stopped and then gracefully opened on an abyss.

"I don't want to talk about this any more," she said.

And so, like many a blowhard academic before me, I won the argument, and lost the date.

You could certainly argue that, in this case, the date splattering on the sidewalk like a Newtonian apple dropped from above wasn't necessarily my fault. You could blame it instead on an inadequate educational system that had left Georgia somehow believing that apples would fall upward if the earth started spinning in the opposite direction, just like in the Christopher Reeves Superman movie, where he reverses time by flying around the earth really fast and getting it to rotate backward on its axis. (Kids: Don't try this at home. Reversing the rotation of the earth will not bring Lois Lane back to life. Nor will it allow you to rewind your conversational faux pas and talk about something other than gravity. Like the weather. Or bunnies. Or anything, really.)

In defense of secondary school physics teachers, though, the point I was trying to make overzealously to Georgia was precisely that ignorance and the indifferent assimilation of scientific knowledge by the polity has, like the apple, theoretical weight. We think of science as this set of facts that exist out there, in the universe, regardless of our personal feelings. You don't have to believe in gravity, but you assent to it every time you don't step off a building. Gravity is waiting, inescapable. It could be the spinning of the earth. (It's not!) It could be caused by the actions of quantum particles, though scientists haven't been able to confirm that at all. It might be a result of the curvature of space, though again, no one's really proved it. But it's there, even if you don't know what it is—even if no one knows what it is.

Or is it? After all, refusing to step off a building doesn't tell us anything about the truth or universality of gravity. The reason we don't step off buildings is that we've seen what happens when you drop that apple. We have an ad hoc, experiential understanding that falling is painful and to be avoided. But that's consistent with any number of theories. We talk about gravity, but you could also say, God just made it that way. Or you could say the earth spinning pushes us down on the surface. Refusing to throw oneself to one's death doesn't prove gravity exists any more than the sun coming up proves God cares about us. 

The relationship between fact and theory is more tenuous than we tend to think. For most of us, most of the time, when we rely on science, we're relying on scientists the way people used to rely on priests. Gravity, like other scientific knowledge, is a doctrine handed down to us by authority, not a truth we verify for ourselves. And in this case, when you ask for final causes, the authorities are blundering around in a dark universe with the rest of us. "Invisible gremlins are keeping our feet on the ground," is just about as good an explanation as anything scientists have got.

Of course, science can be an incredibly powerful engine for turning out claims, predictions and blueprints. Thanks to a very fine-grained understanding of how gravity works in practice, we can put a spaceship on the moon, barring the occasional tragic explosion. You can often shoot straight in practice, even if your theories wobble.

And if the wobbling theories don't cause us to fall into space, why make a fuss about them? Feyerabend famously argued that in science, "anything goes." He didn't see science as a rigorous process in which you create a theory as a foundation and then build facts from there. For Feyerabend, science was an exercise in floating from theory to theory, using whichever one worked best for the moment. If "the rotation of the earth causes gravity" is good enough to get you through the day without blowing up in a rocket ship or falling from a height, it's good enough for Feyerabend. Maybe at some point that weird, errant, heterodox idea will even come in useful, as Galileo's did, despite the fact that it didn't quite work as science in its own day, in theory.

I didn't explain all of this to Georgia because she asked me not to, and I'm not a complete bore in every respect. Nor will I ever. I haven't spoken to her or heard about her or even thought of her in decades, save as a character in this anecdote, which I trot out every so often as a joke on myself, or the universe, or some combination thereof. I don't even recall her name, though I'm pretty sure it wasn't Georgia. Nonetheless, I presume she's still out there somewhere on the earth we'd both agree is still spinning. 

She's a somewhat painful memory, even now, though also a precious one. Connection is valuable, and it's what you're looking for on a date, in general. But there's some magic too in being reminded that we're not all tethered to the same ground by the same force, or any force. Every so often it's good to let gravity go, and drift up like Newton floating into the tree, even (or especially?) if from way up there in the clouds you look like kind of a jerk.

Science & Technology

What Not to Talk About on a First Date? Definitely Gravity

The room was spinning. I closed my eyes. The floor swayed beneath my bed. My hands moved through the darkness to turn the dial of my five-disc stereo up, The Wall on repeat, and grab another handful of Goldfish from the bag. Then I lied back down. I hadn’t left my room for days and hadn’t eaten a meal for nearly as many. I’m sick, I told myself. Feed a cold, starve a fever, right? I willed myself asleep, with the thought that I’d wake up when I felt better. I was 14.

My mother had discovered a new diet, the Schwarzbein Principle, similar to Atkins or keto, where anything protein-based and low-carb was king. Our fridge was loaded with local, organic, grass-fed beef and butter. It was supposed to help with digestive inflammation, give you more energy, boost your immune system—never mind the weight loss benefits. Her nurse practitioner said it could even improve her memory. My mother combined this dietary shift with a series of supplements prescribed by her cadre of holistic healers. There was krill oil for her heart and joints from her naturopath; collagen and probiotics for digestion from her nutritionist; St. John’s wort for seasonal depression from her counselor; vitamin K2 and elderflower for allergies from her D.O.; anti-aging herbal tinctures from her energy worker; milk thistle for liver function from her chiropractor; lutein for eyesight from some article she’d read. She took them by the cupful over breakfast, lunch and dinner.

While she stocked the freezer with sides of local pork, I discovered old copies of PETA magazine in my library’s "Teen Corner." Years before the internet, I poured over printed pictures of bloody chickens and pigs crammed into cages. “I’m a vegetarian,” I declared as my mom stuck a London broil in the oven. 

“That’s horrible for your body and your mind,” she responded. “You’ll get tired and your muscles and brain won’t develop like they should.”

A holistic approach to health preaches the body-mind connection above all. In my mother’s world, there wasn’t any issue that couldn’t be resolved with nutrition and supplements. When I told her I was feeling sad, she said, “Try St. John’s wort and vitamin D.” When I told her they hurt my stomach, she said, “You don’t get enough protein.” 

If my siblings or I refused supplements, or the ailment persisted, it was time to seek another type of healer. My sorrow came in waves, but my little sister’s anxiety was intensifying. She described spells of disassociation and suicidal ideations. When the chiropractor couldn’t help, shamans were hired to retrieve her soul. Two gray-haired women with heavy New England accents showed up in a minivan, carrying sage, crystals and a drum stretched with deer hide. For an entire afternoon, my sister laid on the floor covered in a blanket while they beat the drum and called for her soul to return to its body. “Your soul is ancient,” they reported. “You have plenty of guides. They say you will never know yourself as well as they do—you’ll be fine. This lifetime is but a fraction in the limitless tapestry that is the universe. Your spirit animal is a mountain lion.” My sister was 13.

My mother’s abandoning of traditional science was a decision developed over her lifetime. Just as my vegetarianism acted as a semblance of control and rebellion in an otherwise cultivated environment, my mother sought alternative healing in a deeply medical household. My grandmother was one of the first women to graduate from Cornell medical school, and my grandfather was the director of a famed New York hospital. My mother’s voice was lost in a household of science, swallowed by doctors that always knew better and never had the time. 

She was raised to believe that if there was a problem, a pill could cure it. Towards the end of her life, my grandmother took pills by the cupful over breakfast, lunch and dinner, for her arthritis, her digestion, her mental acuity—and for the side effects of the pills. She died chasing a cure for the Parkinson’s she battled, never fully accepting a life outside the diagnosis, nor the grown children waiting to be loved by their mother.

My mother rebelled by moving west, a prototypical flower child of the '70s. She found acceptance in a community that stood against war, shunned the Man, preached that love conquers all and believed Mother Earth contained all the herbs and nutrients we needed to heal. For the first time in her life, she felt love and light. Eventually she returned east, got married and had three children. She swore she wouldn’t be like her parents. Believing traditional science was the ultimate evil, she packed our cupboards with herbs and refused to vaccinate her babies. But the paranoia didn’t stop with medicine. It grew into her views of the government and religion. We were not only homeschooled but unschooled—an education without curriculum or rules. In her mind, all she wanted was for us to be held in the same light she had found. She didn’t understand that stepping too far into that light can lead to a life in the shadows.

Last year, the swirling started again. I lost my speech and couldn’t sleep at night, sobbing at random intervals throughout the day. I started questioning if life was worth it, if there ever was—or could ever be—any hope. I was back to the days of Goldfish and wanting nothing more than bed and sleep and an end to it all. 

This time, I sought a psychologist. “You’re having a major depressive episode,” she said. “I expect you’ve had these before.” Now in my early thirties, I thought back to my teen years. “Have you tried antidepressants?” I could feel my palms sweat and my stomach clench. No, but I’d tried St. John’s wort. I was taking vitamin D. I even saw an energy worker. “I can help you with talk therapy,” the therapist explained, weeks later, when I still wasn’t recovering. “But your brain is in a pit right now. The pit is so deep, it’s hard to get out of it alone. I’ve rarely seen people get out without help.” She searched to meet my eyes. “It doesn’t have to be forever, just for right now.”

Okay, I thought. I’ll give this a shot. I found a psychiatrist, and he prescribed a low dose of Lexapro. “See how it makes you feel, and we can go from there,” he said. Slowly, I started sleeping through the night. I upped my dose and stopped crying during the day. I was getting better. I was healing. I kept seeing my therapist, and eventually, when speech became easy and hope returned, I started working with my pharmacist to wean off the drugs again. But I know they are there if the pit returns.

I couldn’t tell my mother I was on antidepressants. I tried to broach the subject once over dinner, and her entire body shifted. “I just don’t feel antidepressants do any more than diet and meditation,” she snapped. “Big Pharma just wants us to believe that pumping our body full of cancer-causing chemicals is the only way to heal. Did you try any recipes from that Heal Your Gut book I sent you? Feelings of lethargy and sadness can be traced back to gut flora. And what about those guided meditations I forwarded from my spirit group? Each session is around an hour, but worth it. Sandy says she cured her insomnia.” I closed my eyes and let the topic drop.

“The way it works,” my sister says when she recalls our upbringing, “is you feel so ashamed of these practices that you keep them a secret from the rest of the world. Like, ‘This is the truth and you’re wrong, but I can’t tell because I don’t want to be ridiculed for it.’ It’s incredibly lonely and isolating. The mainstream becomes the enemy. The only constant is doubt.”

The other day, I watched as my mother counted out capsules that she’d spread across her kitchen table. “I’m adding red yeast rice supplements to the mix,” she explained. “My nurse practitioner says it will help lower my cholesterol. I don’t want to have to go on Lipitor.” She spits out the last word, like an evangelical housewife talking about the devil. “I’m also going to be extra strict with my keto this week—I’ve been so bad recently. No more fruit! No more treats! So if you see me saying no more often, don’t be surprised.”

Even though I’m grown up, it’s still hard for me to untangle my mother’s world from my own. But I also see how much of her waking hours—not to mention her paycheck—are consumed by these alternative regimens. What started as a movement toward acceptance shifted toward exclusivity and control—a dogmatic psychology that can guide its participants toward alienation and isolation in their eternal quest for health. For me, I’m beginning to understand that the concept of “holistic health” only works if it is treated as just that: a practice exploring alternative perspectives and modalities working together as a whole. In that way I can finally accept the gifts she gave me: I will not be scared to question the norm. I will advocate for myself and demand more from the mainstream medical community. But I will also know my limitations and allow medicine to step in and take over when I’m down in that pit.

What Growing up Unvaccinated With Depression Was Like

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

When I was young, I thought sex trafficking was how it looked in movies: young children being snatched from their beds at night, or while waiting for the bus stop, never to be seen again. I didn’t think it happened right in front of our eyes, every single day. I certainly didn’t think that it could happen to me.  

My childhood was far from perfect. My father was absent; my drug-addicted mother left me on my own the day I turned 18. Taking on the world alone for the first time in a new city can be hard, especially when the bills begin to pile up and the debt collectors won’t stop calling. I met a man through Craigslist who said he could be my sugar daddy and help me with my financial situation. I’d dabbled in being a sugar baby before, so I thought: no big deal.

Within a week of our first contact, the man from Craigslist was in a car driving from Dallas to Austin to pick me up for the weekend. When he arrived, he was clean-shaven and well-dressed. He was also accompanied by another woman who appeared to be just a few years older than me. I reluctantly got in the car with them, despite my instincts telling me otherwise, and headed to Dallas, where he said he had “friends” whom I could meet and make a little extra money for the weekend.

When I arrived, everything seemed normal. At first, we all hung out at a fancy hotel downtown and got to know each other. The man never made a pass at me, or even seemed to be flirting, which I felt was odd, considering the circumstances. Eventually, I fell asleep alone.

The next morning, they brought me to a dingy studio apartment across town. That’s when my nightmare began.

He woke me up around 8 a.m. He said his friend was on his way to meet me, and that he didn’t have much time to explain, but if I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t have to. I said I’d do it. Within the hour, a strange man was standing in the room, and it finally clicked in my head what was happening. I panicked and asked the man to leave, then burst into tears. I called the man from Craigslist, who I didn’t realize yet was now my pimp, and told him I simply couldn’t do it. He calmly told me everything was fine, and that he’d be headed up to check on me. When he came in, he immediately hit me across the face so hard my lip bled.

“Shit,” he said. “I’m not supposed to mess up the face.”  

My beatings continued for the next three days as I was held against my will, blindfolded and handcuffed. My clothes, phone and money were all taken from me. I was naked, blinded, bound and so, so afraid. For three days, the man from Craigslist raped me repeatedly as I cried and begged for my life. He licked the tears from my face and told me he liked it better when I cried.

At one point, a straw was stuck into my nose. I couldn’t see, but I was told if I exhaled and “blew it off of the plate” that I would be hit. So I inhaled, unknowingly beginning what would become a long battle with heroin addiction. For the remainder of my time with him, he fed me drugs in order to keep me obedient and dependent.

Eventually, I was let free. What I didn’t know was that this was only the beginning, and I wouldn’t actually be free again for a very long time.

After that first incident, I tried to get away, but he knew where I lived. He found out my mother’s address where my siblings also resided. He showed up at my place, asking my roommates where I was. I grew so afraid of him hurting me or my family that I did the unthinkable and went back. I was given an apartment with another girl who worked for him and that is what we did—worked—every day for eight or ten hours. When our shifts ended, he was there to collect our money.

Eventually, he started sending us out to places like grocery stores and bars, looking for girls who might be interested in “modeling,” as we were told to say. Once we convinced them to meet privately, he’d step in and take over. If there’s anything I’ll never forgive myself for, it’s getting other women involved in the same situation that was killing me.

The abuse continued on through this time, and I began withering away from all the drugs. I was less than 100 pounds at one point, and I could barely stand to look in the mirror. 

One day, he tried to kill me over a lost bag of drugs. I wasn’t sure where it was, but he swore I was stealing from him. He chased me around my apartment punching me, throwing me and eventually shoving a rolled pair of socks in my mouth so I couldn’t scream as he attempted to choke me to death. By some miracle, my downstairs neighbor heard the commotion and she yelled up at us that she’d called the cops. He ran out of the door and left town for a while.  

The very next night, my roommate decided she’d had enough of pain, and committed suicide by jumping off a freeway overpass. I lost my apartment and all of my belongings, as it was under her name, so I left town and disappeared.

Eventually, after suffering through heroin withdrawal, getting sober and the constant nightmares of what had happened to me, I made peace with what had happened. It was a beautiful feeling when I was finally set free. I’d spent so long being told that I was worthless, and that no one could ever love or respect me. It was only after I‘d reached the lowest of lows that I could finally see the highs too. This was my life, and there was still so much left to live. I couldn’t let anyone take that from me.

After that, I began using my pain and my experience with body image struggles to help other women. I now operate a photography business that focuses on helping women love their bodies for what they are. We all need someone on our side, a voice to tell us that we’re doing just fine. Sometimes I feel that if someone had just been there to tell me it was okay to love myself and put me first, I would never have ended up in the situation I did.  

I don’t regret a single thing about my life, because it’s made me who I am. But I do wish for all women to know how beautiful and worthy they truly are. My goal in life is to help each and every woman feel that about herself. That’s what will keep me pushing forward. I will rise and be resilient.

Collection

NSFW

What Sex Trafficking Took From Me—and How I Took It Back

In 2004, I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school with a newfound interest in competitive swimming. My swim coach was a young smooth-talker who all the girls on the team lusted after. My friends and I thought I was lucky because he clearly liked me more than the other girls. He used to tell me I was the prettiest girl in school. He was notorious for being inappropriate with the girls’ team. 

What I didn’t realize until much later was how inappropriate our relationship actually was.

He made me feel special, but not in the way a great coach makes you feel special for winning first place or working hard, although I did both. This was a completely different feeling. I would feel butterflies in my stomach when he told me I looked sexy in my new Abercrombie & Fitch skirt, or when he’d ask me to roll his sleeves up for him. I was always happy to be singled out to do small tasks for him, like hold his Mountain Dew while he addressed the team during warm-ups, or help him pick out the team’s new swimsuits. He let me know all the styles that would look hot on me.

It all started when I was in eighth grade. One of my favorite teachers had suggested I try swimming as a competitive sport. I was just coming into my body then; I was long and lean, which is usually a good physique for a swimmer. His wife was a math teacher who was involved with the swim team at the high school I would be attending the next year. I’d already played middle-school soccer, so I was a bit apprehensive to try something completely out of my athletic element. But I really looked up to this particular teacher. He was a very positive role model, kind and caring to all his students. I was also dating his son, who was already a swimmer. So when he suggested I try swimming, I was interested. 

I joined the recreational league over the transitional summer between middle and high school. That’s where I met him. Tall, slim, sandy blond hair, bright green eyes and very tan: a surfer-boy type with earrings in both ears and always in board shorts. I wasn’t a great swimmer at first—no one is. The coach told me I was a natural, though, with tons of potential, and I believed everything he said. He would work with me very—and I mean very—closely. One day he brought a digital camera to the pool deck to take pictures of me, mostly close-ups of my face. When he showed me the pictures he held the camera in one hand and put his other hand around my waist, pulling me into his side. He scrolled through the shots one by one, telling me how gorgeous and photogenic I was.

I wasn’t worried about tryouts or making the team that year, since I had swum in the rec league all summer and gotten so close to him. I made the varsity team, which isn’t the easiest thing to do as a freshman. I had very good times for someone so young and who had just started swimming. When I clocked 28 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle, I was elated. I had found my calling.

Things happened quickly from there: new school, new rules, new teachers and principals. Our swim coach was also a math teacher at our high school. He resided in a trailer classroom way out in the far back corner of the school. I started to realize that being on the swim team had its special privileges. If I was late to class, I’d go to his classroom and have him sign my hall pass. It was filled out front and back with only his initials. If I wanted to leave class early, he’d write me a note to be excused for very important swim team business. If I didn’t feel like going to class at all, I was allowed to skip and hang out in his classroom instead. He would joke that I was a badass freshman and we ran the school together. 

He did this for most of the girls on our team, but it was apparent to everyone that I was his favorite. He made up a nickname just for me, and that’s what everyone on the team called me. If I ever got detention, he would sign the slip, saying I had served it by picking up trash before school. Really, I was just hanging out in his classroom, sitting in his chair behind his desk—which no one else was allowed to do. At the end-of-season swim team banquet, he gave out a “Coach’s Award.” Before he named the recipient, he gave a speech praising how wonderful this person was, how proud of her he was and how much she had grown into a beautiful young woman before his eyes. I knew he was talking about me before he even said my name. Everyone did. Our relationship was closer than any of the other students or swimmers.

What might have seemed innocent to everyone else most definitely wasn’t when we were alone. In between classes, before or after school, or anytime there was no one in the classroom, he would pull me from behind and lead my hips to sit in his lap. He would slide his hand over my lower back, massage my shoulders, grab and hold my hands in his, play with my hair—any sort of flirtatious touching, he did it. He would even do this in front of other students, seemingly to make them jealous, because he knew all the girls had a crush on him.

Things only escalated from there. I was raised by a single mom of three, and at the time, my baby brother was only one year old. She was doing her very best, but sometimes would have to drop me off early at practice or pick me up late. Oftentimes I would be the last one to be picked up, and the coach isn’t allowed to leave anyone at the pool alone. So we’d wait in the pool office talking, laughing, leaning on each other. Or we would practice on my dives. He would stand directly behind me as I bent over on the block, and adjust my hips, legs or arms accordingly.

One day it was taking my mom particularly long to pick me up. I was messing around on my new phone and he asked to hear my outgoing voicemail message. He decided it was no good, and that we needed to fix it. For about a year after that, if you called my voicemail you would hear his voice: “Hey! This is [insert coach’s name]. Sorry [insert nickname he made up for me] can’t get to the phone right now. Leave her a message and she’ll call you back!” Everyone at my school who heard the message thought it was the coolest thing.

When it wasn’t swim season I also played soccer and water polo. Practice was always right after school, so I had a huge bag with a change of clothes, cleats, swimsuit, water bottle and other things inside. He told me to leave my bag in his room so I didn’t have to carry it around all day. He said he liked to see me when I dropped it off in the morning and picked it up after school. He made it very obvious that he was going through my bag and looking through my clothes. He made a comment once about how sexy my thong was, and how I must drive the boys wild.

At 14 years old, I was adjusting to puberty and all the feelings that came with it. I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t say anything to anyone at the time. It was probably because it felt good to be paid attention to by someone your peers thought was cool and good-looking. Years later, I realized how much my coach took advantage of that. The inappropriate comments and touching—all of it was flat-out wrong. He was twice my age, and I was just a kid. Not to mention he was supposed to be my mentor, someone I should trust, an authority figure to be respected. 

After my freshman year, he moved on to work at another high school down the road. He sent out letters to all the parents explaining how much the team had meant to him but that it was time for him to move onto bigger things. 

At his new high school, he taught math and coached the swim team for 15 years. Our area’s high school athletic association awarded him Coach of the Year three times, and a local newspaper named him all-area coach of the year four times. My friends and I heard rumors from students at his new school that he was sleeping with girls on the swim team, and that he would go to house parties and hook up with students. We weren’t shocked. In fact, no one I knew was even really surprised. It seemed like the logical next step for someone like him.

In 2018, someone spoke up. A teenage girl on his swim team accused him of inappropriately touching her butt, and another teammate said they witnessed it. She also said he made inappropriate comments about rubbing lotion on her inner thighs. After taking a sexual harassment class, the girl decided to report him. He had previously been investigated twice before this incident.

He was charged with—and pleaded guilty to—a simple battery charge. He was removed from his teaching and coaching roles, and no longer works for the school board. He paid minimal fines—under $700—and was assigned community service. This man had been working as a teacher and swim coach to young girls and boys since 2003. It took 15 years for someone to call him out. I can only say that I didn’t know any better at 14 years old, but I do now. I’m thankful to the brave young girl who spoke up and finally ended it.

Athletics

My High School Swimming Experience Was Marred By Sexual Misconduct

Most men I’ve ever slept with own a Carhartt jacket. Most women they’ve slept with have the same haircut as me. 

We’re all watching: watching ourselves, watching others watch us, watching each other, repeat. To be honest I find the L.A.-versus-New York debate to be over. We all live on the internet. We’ve all memorized the same Twitter dogma, and live in fear of not abiding by its rules, to be caught slipping. We share the same memes, Spotify screenshots and infographics. We’re all going up for the same jobs. 

We are the reason your local grocery store is sold out of oat milk.

“Mimetic desire” is a theory first introduced in René Girard’s 1961 book Deceit, Desire and the Novel. It’s the French historian’s attempt at a question that extends as far back as ancient Greece: Why do we mimic each other? “Mimesis” is a term of various meanings, often relating to imitation and the ways it bubbles up in our self-expression. Girard makes a distinction between “imitation” and “mimesis.” The former is usually understood as the positive aspect of mimicking someone else’s behavior, whereas the latter implies the negative aspect. Rivalry. According to Girard, we are a species that cannot help but imitate. It is, after all, a basic human tool for learning. We can’t help it. We are ashamed of this interconnectivity. 

I first discovered the term in a short story written by a friend. We mostly keep in touch via Instagram. In one of our IRL meetings, we got together to sit and chat in a public park. The simplicity of the moment was not lost on us, or the masked crowd surrounding us, six feet away. Sitting as closely as the current health regulations allow, I couldn’t help but admire her. She cut an elegant shape in all black: miniskirt, thigh high stockings, tailored blazer. Weeks later, after the image had time to sink into my subconscious, I purchased my own stockings. I didn't recognize her influence until I posted them in my story and she replied, ‘Twins! <3.’’ 

Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between liking someone and wanting to be them.

Remember the summer of 2018, when Fila re-released the chunky Disruptor sneakers? Retro-'90s “dad style” had reached a zenith, and the reissued shoe exploded it into the mainstream. Every influencer wannabe owned a pair, like a training bra for fame. They were unleashed upon every major city, a meme for a certain “type”: self-described “creatives” with an airplane emoji and a minimum of two cities in their bio. I bought a pair in the spring, and by fall I had grown to loathe them. I detested them for what they said about me. Was I more “basic” than I originally suspected? Definitely. 

Who isn’t? We’ve been stuck in an era of endless pastiche. We can’t stop rehashing the past four decades. We’re afraid to fully enter the 21st century, and with good reason. The question of having a liveable planet has made us all want to crawl back into the womb. So we drink our single-origin cold brew coffees, binge the same shows, share the same articles—the same intersectionality piece, the same gender piece, the same race piece. We remind ourselves of terrible things as collateral for our own pleasure-seeking. The cycle has become so airtight it feels impenetrable. 

What is the purpose of a writer, then? I try to write about what it’s like to be alive today, without much luck. My peers feel mostly the same. It seems as though editors, or maybe magazines, make it their business to make writers feel bad so readers can feel smart. Let’s regurgitate their political beliefs back to them, every click an affirmation. 

As a result, we’re all collecting unemployment and doing online sex work to get by, waiting for the moment we can get on the mic. Now that the media’s biggest cash cow is on his way out of office, what will be left for us? The culture industry that was born in resistance to Trump gave start to many careers that might never have happened otherwise. I am fearful of returning to the hazy neoliberalism of the Obama years, when we believed racism and sexism were neatly solved. 

What if we did name this interconnectivity. What if we admitted the things we want, and it wasn’t cringe? If we all desire to live in the same world, why is it perpetually out of reach? I assume that is by design, but I am trying to remain hopeful. Frankly, I’m bored. The global creative economy has confused itself. It’s malfunctioning and losing shape: reboots, remakes, relaunches. Anything for the comfort of a time that wasn’t as peaceful as we remember—but that’s part of the past’s charm. We all know the ending.

Leaders of the Creative Economy Are Out of Ideas

On March 14 of this year, as the coronavirus started to spread all over the East Coast, and a slow, methodic panic began to settle into the greater Brooklyn area where I lived, I was on stage at the Crystal Springs Resort in Hamburg, New Jersey, telling jokes about anal sex to middle-aged soccer moms drinking tea out of tiny, porcelain saucers. 

That was my last “normal” stand-up comedy show of 2020. 

One of the many reasons why stand-up comedy is so intoxicating is that much like 2020, you never actually know what’s going to happen, and you have to prepare and be on guard for the fact that literally anything can happen: chaotic talking, clanging dishes, unexpected music piping in from the ceiling, microphones breaking, ornery hecklers, happy hecklers, supportive hecklers, horny hecklers, patrons screaming drink orders across the room, sound systems short-circuiting, cappuccino makers that sound like NASCAR engines and, oh yeah, more hecklers. 

And what makes dealing with this alchemy of insanity even more challenging is that you can never predict what kind of response you will get from the audience. No matter how much you think you know, an audience will prove you wrong just as much as it will prove you right. 

Right before I went on stage at the resort in Nowhere Fuck, New Jersey, I took one look out into the crowd and said to myself, “Well, this isn’t going to go well.” The show took place in a dimly lit, giant unused ballroom, (venues of this stature are categorically terrible for comedy), and making matters worse, it was impossible to find and completely tucked away in the corner of an even bigger and more sprawling resort. 

We were also competing with a professional magician, who just so happened to be performing at the same time in a nearby, extremely well-lit and easy-to-find ballroom in the hotel. Spoiler alert: In the comedian vs. magician same-night show standoff, magicians win 90 percent of the time, especially with the clientele at a hotel in Nowhere Fuck, New Jersey. And oh, by the way, there were also some minor rumblings of a global pandemic coming our way.

To add even further drama to the mix, I brought Emily, a woman I had just met on Hinge a few weeks prior, as my date. We had been out a few times to some slick Brooklyn bars and restaurants and I thought it was time to up the ante for our third date. “Hey, you wanna come out and watch me beg for stranger’s attention in a deserted golf resort filled with magician-hungry tourists?” And as a massive credit to Hinge and dating app matching accuracy, she said, “Sure!” 

The host went up and did 15 minutes on smoking weed and video games to a very tepid but expected response. Then it was my turn. As I approached the stage, I glared out at the 13 or so 60-year old women, scattered throughout the cavernous ballroom, all of whom just so happened to look like my mom, and winced to myself, “Fuckin’ magicians.” 

I go onstage and open with my standard jokes about having a dad bod and getting older and the crowd is giving me a light smattering of laughter. The best outcome for a comedian is a riot fest of boisterous laughter, the worst outcome is silence, especially dead silence. The kind of silence where you can hear yourself think so much that your mind actually travels back to a time when your parents told you to go to grad school. As a comedian, nothing is worse than silence. So I’ll gladly take a few charity chuckles.

I then launch into my joke on modern dating and relationship bases and even before I start the joke, I’m convinced it’s a huge mistake. “These women are all married and probably think ‘sex bases’ is the name of a new boyband,” I thought. I initially got a lukewarm response on my joke but it wasn’t until I uttered the word “anal” that the crowd completely erupted. And I mean a Def Comedy Jam meets The Golden Girls-style eruption of laughs. I was floored and shocked and thought, “Even with everything going on in the world and in this room, people are still laughing.” 

In Dave Chappelle’s November 19 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, they ended with a philosophical discussion about the implications of COVID-19 on society. And the two comedy icons basically came to the same conclusion about life in a pandemic: “You find a way.” 

And “finding a way,” is exactly what the New York City comedy scene has managed to do since the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic. In mid-to-late March, all comedy clubs, bar shows, rock venues and arenas announced the cancellation of all comedy shows. I personally had several dates on my performance calendar completely wiped out. 

The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, the comedy Mecca and central pipeline for famous comedic talent, announced its closure on April 21. Indie stand-up venue the Creek and the Cave soon followed suit, announcing its closure in mid-November. 

But despite the pandemic’s massive blow to the live stand-up and improv comedy world, comedians quickly adjusted, starting a series of virtual shows via Zoom and Instagram. In late March, I performed on an Instagram Live show for the Stand Comedy Club with anywhere from 20 to 30 fans logging on to see me perform from my uncle’s toy room in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. 

Brooklyn comedian Aaron Kominos-Smith continued the tradition of his weekly stand-up show at the Postmark Cafe in Park Slope, Brooklyn, by hosting it live on Zoom at 8 p.m. every Friday. Kominos estimates the weekly show gets up to 100 views per week, an impressive number considering the live show would net anywhere between 20 and 40 attendees.

“It’s amazing that we can have comedians from across the world all performing for an audience that couldn’t otherwise make it to a little coffee shop in Brooklyn. We try to keep that same vibe and have a lot of repeat audiences who chat before the show, almost as if we really were in a coffee shop right before a show,” Kominos said. 

Manhattan-based comedian Lance Weiss decided to put his live stand-up comedy dates on pause to focus on performing “Zoom bombs,” where Weiss would crash corporate Zoom meetings to bring in some much-needed humor to spice up the endless cycle of dull and dreary online work meetings.

Once the weather began to turn warmer in mid-spring, comedians started producing their shows in outdoor environments and venues. Newark comedian Justin Williams hosted a few shows at outdoor venues in his city and was thrilled with the response. “The vibe was great,” he said. “Both of the shows were sold out and people in Newark were happy to see things return for a brief moment.”

As many comedy clubs continued to struggle, moving shows to the front of their establishment or, like the Stand-Up New York Comedy Club, producing events in Central Park, comedian Sam Morrison found that outdoor post-COVID comedy was ripe with a whole new slew of challenges. “Comedy was too easy for me. Paying audience members in buildings? No, no, no. Give me six strangers spread out over 40 yards and a Sheepadoodle barking over us all. That’s real comedy.” 

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