Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 15

“She woke me up the other morning and was like: ‘Daddy, it’s...

“She woke me up the other morning and was like: ‘Daddy, it’s nail polish day.’ And it was on. I was like OK, let’s do it. Just dive into it. She did a sloppy job on Daddy’s nails, but I enjoyed it. Well, I didn’t enjoy it. Not like that. You know what I mean; I enjoyed her enjoying it.”

“She could be mean. But I don’t think it was malicious. A lot of...

“She could be mean. But I don’t think it was malicious. A lot of it came down to insecurity. Anytime I was happy outside of our world, it made her uncomfortable. Both of us were actors. And if she ever needed to travel for work; we’d be fine. More than fine. I’d be happy for her. But whenever I got an out-of-town gig; it was always a problem. Some of my friendships made her uncomfortable: women, always. But also friends I’d known for a long time. Any time she detected an intimacy that she wasn’t a part of, she’d feel threatened. So I withdrew from a lot of my friendships. It just wasn’t worth the risk of setting her off. I became a caretaker. Everything flowed one way: keeping her away from negative thoughts, and negative places. I felt sympathy for her. I thought: ‘She can’t help her insecurities. Why should I punish her for them?’ So I committed myself to making it work. Everything made so much sense on paper. We moved into a nice apartment, and got a dog. I had a great relationship with her parents. It was hard to let go of all that. But mostly I just didn’t realize I could be truly happy if I did the brave thing. Right before the pandemic I got a gig in Germany. I spent most of my free time in the hotel room, waiting for her to wake up in New York, because if she ever called and I was doing something, she’d be super upset. On the last week she came to visit. One night she got drunk and jealous. And the next morning I caught her looking through my phone. After six years, after all the counseling, we were back at square one. Worse than square one, because the wedding was coming. It wasn’t the end. But it was the beginning of the end, because I finally started to confide in people. I remember one of my friends telling me: ‘You deserve to be happy.’ Such a simple idea, but I needed to hear it. Now I have a new fiancée. And it’s a completely different feeling. When I used to envision a future with my ex, everything was so vague. It was so detached from the present. It all had to be so different from the way things were. But with my current fiancé, it’s a straight line. Nobody has to change who they are. It’s just building on what’s already there.”

“One lesbian couple drove up from Philly and I handed it off to...

“One lesbian couple drove up from Philly and I handed it off to them in the car. Not my favorite way to do it, but it works. That baby was born yesterday. And I’ve got another one being induced in six hours. That’ll be my twelfth in two years. Then there’s three more on the way. I’m what they call a ‘known donor.’ It’s a whole community, a whole thing: there’s forums, websites, apps. It’s like a parallel economy. A viable sperm sample is $700, just for a little bit. And the fertility treatments can be thousands. Not everyone can afford it; that’s where I come in. Everything is kinda handshake. I don’t charge the mothers. And they don’t expect any financial support. As for the insemination, there’s different ways of going about it. Some use IVF. But it’s like fish. Fresh is better than frozen. Menstrual cups work well. I’d say 25 to 35 percent of the women I’ve actually had sex with. There wasn’t romance, exactly. A couple times they’d never been with a male before. The last one said: ‘Let’s soldier up, and get it done.’ But not everyone meets my criteria. Some women want it to be anonymous; I don’t want that. I want to be involved. I explain to each one: ‘This child will be born into a larger family. I have eighteen other children.’ I’d like as many as God will give me. Why put your entire bloodline into one child when you can spread it out? Eighteen is a holy number in Judaism. And the next one is thirty-six, so I’ll reassess then. My ultimate goal is to find two or three of the mothers who will be sister wives, because I’m gonna need help with all this. But I know one thing: it will never be boring. It will be fun. I play in a softball league. And I’m hoping twenty years from now, I’ll be able to field an entire team of my kids.”

“I’m not really someone you call a planner when it comes to...

“I’m not really someone you call a planner when it comes to writing books. Sometimes there’s just a feeling, like: ‘I know I’ll be able to make something really good about this.’ Right now I’m working on an adventure book called The Adventures of Sloth about a sloth that goes on an adventure. My mom is helping me edit. I get stuck on the editing part because I just want to keep writing; it’s like, ugh, can I do it later. I’m quite busy in my everyday life but I’ve written like eight to ten books. My favorite genre is fantasy because so many mythical beings just pop into my head every day. One time, I think in art class, I thought of a mythical being that combined a tiger and a bird and I called it a Terd. A Terd has the features of a tiger like the stripes and the jaw, but also wings. And it can breathe in outer space. Every time I write a story I focus on three elements: suspense, action, and dialogue. And I try to think of a lot of good surprises. Like what if it turns out that the Terd is actually part turtle too, and can breathe underwater? That’s called a plot twist. Dialogue is the hardest because you have to make it seem like a natural conversation that could happen in real life. You can’t just make it blibber blabber like ‘how are you,’ or ‘how was your day,’ or stuff like that. It has to have some juicy parts, like: ‘Did you know there’s a giant Terd on your back?’

“Coming out of COVID I decided to own it. Instead of saying:...

“Coming out of COVID I decided to own it. Instead of saying: ‘Nobody likes me,’ I flipped it around. I said: ‘There’s got to be a reason I haven’t met someone, and I’m going to figure it out.’ One of the first things I did was ask my fashionable friends: ‘How do I present to you?’ That’s when I learned my pants were baggy in the butt. That doesn’t seem like a huge deal. But first impressions matter. And if you present as the ‘baggy butt guy,’ that’s who you’re gonna be: the baggy butt guy. So I got some better-fitting pants. I never used to care about stuff like that. I thought: I’m a good person, that’s what matters most. And if someone hangs around long enough, they’ll figure that out. But nobody hung around long enough. And that sort of thinking made it easy to become a single guy in his late forties. So I owned it. I worked on making it easier for people to know me; so that it was more of a downstream experience. I practiced being chit chatty. I started saying hello to people more, looking them in the eye, asking: ‘How was your weekend?’ I went on a dozen or so first dates. I even kept an excel sheet; trying to figure out if there was a through line, when things didn’t work out: how long before I followed up, how many days between the first and second date, things like that. The excel sheet was a little much, I’ll admit. And it turned out to not be necessary. I ended up meeting my girlfriend at a catering gig we worked together. And she had no problem swimming upstream. I guess I made a good impression. Because later she told me that the moment she saw me, she was sneaking pictures to her sister, saying that she’d met her future boyfriend. Last Friday we had a legit conversation. We said: ‘OK, we’re no longer saying we’re dating. We’re in a relationship.’ I’m trying to teach myself guitar at the moment. Because I’d love to have kids one day, I’m working toward that. And when that happens, I’d love to have some hobbies we can do together.”

“One of my first days in New York, I went running with a friend...

“One of my first days in New York, I went running with a friend in Central Park. I pointed at one of those big apartment buildings on 72nd Street, and said: ‘God, I’d give anything to live there.’ But the devil hears your prayers too. Ten years later I was jogging home to that very same building. I could see the light on in our apartment, and I didn’t want to go inside. I was in a marriage that I didn’t want to be in. A job I didn’t want to be in. I was drinking daily, way too much. I said: ‘God, I’d give up everything if I could just start over and be happy.’ That very night I got in an argument with my husband; and that was the end. When I first applied for this job, I felt like it was beneath me. I was angry at my situation. That first day they tried to send me to pick up trash along the Hudson. I said: ‘No, no, no. Anywhere but there.’ I used to jog along the Hudson; I was afraid some of my old friends would see me. So they sent me to Times Square instead. I worked there for awhile, but one day I got in trouble. And the boss said: ‘It’s the Hudson or nowhere.’ My phone bill was due. I didn’t have a choice. I’ve been here for a couple months now, and I can’t believe how long I was avoiding it. I love the sun. I love plants, I love water. The funny thing is, no matter how many times I used to jog down here, I never really saw it. I’d be so focused on me, or what I was trying to achieve, or the person who was in my path. Now I see the greens and the blues and the yellows. The view is just different when you’re picking up trash.”

“I call it God’s Gift; it’s priceless. 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass,...

“I call it God’s Gift; it’s priceless. 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass, right? I got a great deal on it. And I knew it matched my vibe. In the beginning it was all about the exterior. Visual stuff, you know what I mean: add-ons, and new rims, and new tires with fresh white walls. But I ended up losing my first engine. Because I never paid much attention to things like maintenance, and oil changes. How clean it should be on the inside. When they lifted the old engine out of the car, I remember thinking: it looks just like a mechanical heart. It made me think about the food I was eating. There were never many healthy choices in my community. It was McDonald’s every day after school. Either that or corner store food: powdered donuts, sunflower seeds, bag of chips. I grew up on that, heavily. Those are low vibrational foods. And I think they were responsible for a lot of my most negative behaviors. Right now I’m in transition to a plant-based diet. And I definitely try to stay away from anything man-made. People in my community see me in the street, just by my panache, my verve. They notice it. And they want to know: what can they do to obtain it? I tell them the truth: the diet. Then I invite them to stop by my place for a juice. I make it every morning in the kitchen. All my ingredients come from a local market in Yonkers. I choose rare, exotic fruits: things that can be out of reach: passion fruit, dragon fruit, sour sop, purple carrots, golden beets. My specialty is sea moss. Sea moss has 92 out of the 100 minerals that your body needs. And I mix it right. A lot of this stuff is new to the people in my community. But I can tell you right now, never had anyone yet, make a funny face about one of my drinks.”

“He tried to be a life coach. One time he brought a green screen...

“He tried to be a life coach. One time he brought a green screen into our apartment, and filmed a video advertisement. I could hear him saying: ‘Do you want to change your life? Do you want to make better decisions?’ I remember thinking how funny that was; him wanting to be responsible for other people’s lives. Because he could never take responsibility for his own. There were times he would break things, because of his anger. He’d punch doors, or throw things across the room. But even when he apologized, he’d shift the blame on us, for making him so angry. I was the oldest sibling, and there always seemed to be a special anger reserved for me. I could never explain it. Then one day he sat me down. He said: ‘I have to talk to you about the way I used to behave.’ He used the words: ‘used to behave.’ Even though it was the way he still behaved. He said: ‘You have to understand: your birth wasn’t planned. We weren’t ready. And after you were born, that’s when things got difficult.’ I guess he’d figured that out in therapy. But I have no idea what therapist told him to have that conversation with an eleven-year-old. After that day I felt guilty for even existing. Part of me feels sorry for him. He’s pushed everyone away. He separated from my mom a few years ago. Even my youngest sister doesn’t talk to him anymore. When I turned twenty-one he kept sending me texts, asking to meet up for my birthday. I ignored him at first. But finally I agreed to meet, because part of me wanted to see what he was going to say. We met at a coffee shop. He said: ‘I’ve been reflecting a lot. And I finally understand that it was never your fault. It was your mother. I think she got pregnant on purpose, because she wanted to keep me.”

“Our teacher has no hair and he really wants everyone to...

“Our teacher has no hair and he really wants everyone to be quiet.”

“I was visiting a friend in New York. By then I was like bones;...

“I was visiting a friend in New York. By then I was like bones; I was using all the time. And at some point she finally told me to leave. It was 5 AM. I had nothing but a hoodie, and it was negative degrees. In one hand was a bottle with 45 pills of Xanax. In the other was my cell phone, with my Mom’s contact open. It was either make the call or take the drugs. That’s when I got my higher power push. My friend came outside to see why I was still standing in front of her building. I said: ‘I’m talking to my Mom,’ and I quickly tapped the ‘call button.’ When she picked up the phone I broke down. I told her that she was right, and that I’d been using this whole time. I apologized for everything. She told me: ‘It’s ok, I just want to get you help.’ She bought me a flight home to California. It was five days of detox then straight to rehab. It’ll be nine months sober on Sunday. In a lot of ways I feel like a child again. I started using when I was twelve, so there’s a lot I never learned about being a person. I’m learning how to talk to people. I’m learning how to be bored. I’m going back to school; I never thought I’d be back in school again. My sister used to say that it never felt like she had a brother. But we’re closer now. That’s something to be proud of, for sure. Same thing with my parents. I used to never call my Mom. Or if I did, it was something negative: I need something, or I want something. Now I’ll just call her to see what she has going on. She tells me about her interior design stuff, or maybe a house that she’s trying to sell. I enjoy hearing about that stuff. My relationships feel real now. For the longest time, I wasn’t even a person. There was no Jake Black; it was just drugs. Now I’m actually a person. And that’s a big motivation to keep going to my meetings, and to keep picking up my phone. Because if I relapse now, it’s going to hurt everyone who’s gotten to know this side of me.”