Ask A Shmuck is my advice column, published in Bridge & Tunnel Crowd (and occasionally in Life Harvester as well if the answer is especially poignant or I’m feeling lazy that month). I tackle topics that run the gamut from “are people really that into being Italian?” (yes) to whether or not a high schooler should sleep around (depends); from quitting smoking (maybe), to supermarket bagels (no).
Use the below form to submit a question. Name and email are not required fields so make it as anonymous as you'd like. Maybe even go ahead and give yourself a cute name so I don’t have to think of one. If you do decide to include an email, I’ll send you the answer, if not, you’ll just have to keep looking out for it.
Past Questions
Dear Shabby,
There are so many ways to eat a bagel, but what is The Right Way to eat a bagel? Also, I have to be vegan now, and that's honestly a drag to delicious bagel eating ways.
Seeking the Hole-y Grail in Secaucus
Dearest Seeking,
As a woman with many unnecessarily restrictive and proscriptive culinary beliefs that I cling to as if they actually matter—an epicurean trad wife, if you will—I’m as shocked as you’re about to be by the next sentence: there is not one right way to eat a bagel.
Bagels are powerful. You can do so many things with them! But before we get into how to eat a bagel, make sure you pick the right bagel to eat. You’ll need to go to a bagel store. You can’t get a good bagel at the supermarket. If you’re outside New York, it’ll be slim pickins, but you might find something decent where you least expect it. A bagel should be slick on the outside, dense, moist, and toothsome within. A good bagel is delicious both raw and toasted.
As for bagel preparations, you’ve got options. There’s the classic cream cheese shmear, the full lox spread, and a spectrum in between. The bagel is versatile. The original pizza bagel, a homemade snack invented by suburban Jewish mothers in which a bagel is topped with marinara and mozzarella, is certainly among the right ways to eat a bagel. And so before I address the second part of your question, Seeking, I’m going to take you on a brief tour of some of my favorite bagels:
Childhood– onion bagel; cream cheese & chives; red onion; lox; eaten open face. The purview of Yom Kippur breakfast, Sunday brunches (Jews invented brunch) with my friend David’s grandma who looked like Joan Rivers, special occasions when my dad would go to two different stores across town from each other because the place with the best bagels had terrible lox.
Teens– everything bagel, toasted or not depending on mood/freshness of bagels; vegetable cream cheese; closed sandwich. Introduced to me by my teen best friend Juan, and most often eaten late night and real drunk from the 24 hour bagel place on St Marks. I was skeptical of classic East Coast shmear vegetable cream cheese as a concept, because I generally only ate bread and sugar as a teen, but it is factually delicious.
Late teens– pumpernickel bagel, toasted; tuna salad; m&ms; closed sandwich. I understand how deranged this sounds but it’s actually really good. I can’t remember why I put m&ms on the first tuna sandwich, probably as a joke, but it was very good. I was doing a lot of speed and it’s hard to replicate whatever logic led to this discovery but I continued to eat it when I wasn’t spun and it was still good.
Early 20s– plain bagel, toasted; plain cream cheese; sliced tomato, cucumber, red onion; open face. My bagel shop order in my early 20s remained an everything with veg cream cheese, but this particular combination cost something like $2.25 at the diner near my house, which was open all night, and so despite the fact that this bagel was atrocious, it was a fine accompaniment for a cup of coffee, was filling, and had vegetables, which my standard diner order (two over medium, home fries, rye toast) lacked.
Late 20s– everything bagel; plain cream cheese; bacon; closed sandwich. This one still feels controversial. My sister told me this is what she ate to cure hangovers in college. “Colin, you gotta try it.” I was skeptical but I’ll tell you, Seeking, it’s really good. The warm, salty bacon with the cold shmear is heaven.
30s and beyond– I don’t really eat that many bagels lately, but when I do I change it up, cycling through an assortment of my old favorites, minus the pumpernickel-tuna-m&m. Not because I don’t like it, but primarily because I’m a grown woman, so there’s never m&ms lurking around the house anymore.
Also, there’s the true classic toasted plain bagel with butter. It’s simple. It’s delicious. It’s my father’s favorite bagel preparation, and he’s a Jew from Williamsburg.
As for your veganism, I’m sorry to hear. Not because I think veganism is, in itself, unfortunate, but because you seem to be making the choice under duress and I think dietary restrictions necessitated by health concerns are tragic. I just wish everyone could eat whatever they want. But also, don’t fret! It’s 2021, and the world may be a toilet, but at least there’s a wide assortment of delicious vegan dairy products. For cream cheese, I think Kite Hill is the best store bought by miles. Bagel shops are gonna be on a trial basis. Here in Pittsburgh for instance, there is a phenomenal house-made vegan cream cheese at Pigeon Bagels, which is coincidentally the only good bagel shop in town. As for smoked fish, they make a pretty good fake lox out of smoked and cured carrot slices, but most vegans I know don’t wanna eat something that slimy.
Good luck! I hope you find everything you seek.
xo, Shabby
Dear Shabby,
When I was a teen I was definitely a nightmare, drinking and doing drugs, sneaking out of the house, totaling a car, etc. So you’d think I’d be ready to parent a teen and I am NOT. She compulsively lies to me, even about some things that don’t matter at all (Did you finish the jelly? No. I just want to know so I can buy more. Oh, yes I did). She sneaks out of the house. The other day a cop came by because she was seen trying to get into a neighbor’s house and she has stolen packages from other neighbors before. I don’t know what to do about all this. I’m worried about her getting in trouble with cops and the law in general. I’m worried about something happening to her when she leaves the house in the middle of the night just to ‘walk around’. But also why do I feel like my own uptight parents when I was also an asshole teen? Maybe I should mention I’m a single mom and my other kid has special needs. I am exhausted and scared and anxious every day. What can I do to make our household more peaceful?
Yours, Former Teen Terror Parenting Same
Teen Terror,
My experience with wayward youths is limited to having been one, and sadly due to my latent transsexualism, I spent most of those years low key dissociated at all times, rendering my memories of that time a dull blur at their most lucid--useless to mine for applicable insights. My gut says that you’re not overreacting AT ALL, as your teen’s behavior sounds genuinely worrying! That said, almost everyone I know was a delinquent, and most of them are doing really well now that we’re in our 40s. But you were also a teen terror, so you know that, which means you also know that some of them aren’t doing so well, while others aren’t around anymore to do anything at all. These, I imagine, are the fates you fear for your kid.
I feel completely out of my depth answering this question in any meaningful way, so I reached out to my friend Jessica Joy Mills, author of the 2007 parenting guide My Mother Wears Combat Boots (akpress.org/mymotherwearscombatboots.html), and the only member of Less Than Jake who was nice to me when I tried to interview them after a show they played in Port Chester, NY, when I was 14. She had this to say:
Being concerned for your child's safety and well being, wanting to keep her out of trouble with cops/criminal justice system and to keep her safe when she is vulnerable out walking at night isn't being uptight. It's being loving and legitimately concerned, and it's a rational, natural response.
Teen brains are insane brains, akin to the toddler years. It's like fireworks of exponential growth going on in that frontal cortex on the daily. So when she compulsively lies, especially about the minute things, she may not actually be able to help it. It's hard not to take it personally, but it's wise not to. Adolescents need more parenting than when they were elementary school aged because their needs are more and bigger. In short, parenting a teen is fucking hard.
Some questions that might be good jumping off points for how to proceed: are there mental health concerns? Does your teen have access to therapy? Do you have access to support for parenting your younger child that might allow you to be more present with your teen? No behavior exists in a vacuum; there's always a reason why someone is behaving the way they are. Can you think of any unmet needs?
While I can’t predict your answers to those questions, I have a couple parenting ideas to help you down the more peaceful household path:
Family meeting - Agree on a day and time for when you can sit down together to talk. Then, thumb-tack up a piece of paper in a common space where you all can add agenda items leading up to the meeting time. Don’t try to tackle too much in a first meeting (15 minutes is recommended), but as this becomes a weekly routine for your household, you can work up to 30-minute meetings. Make sure to have mutually-agreed on ground rules in place, and if needed, a neutral facilitator could help be helpful. Start with compliments before moving to problems, and brainstorm solutions together. Family meetings really are great opportunities for strengthening communication, building trust, and nurturing positive relationships.
Legitimate vs illegitimate parental authority - Establish yourself as in charge, not in control. When parents take the time to examine the difference between their legitimate authority (being in charge) and the illegitimate authority (being controlling) with which they’ve likely been making mistakes, peace has more of a change to prevail. Two ends of the parenting style spectrum are, in my view, both negatives - authoritarian and permissive (or indulgent), whereas legitimate authority parenting is democratic and rooted in striving for the ideal of mutual respect. As children enter adolescence, they become increasingly likely to resist authority, and that sometimes might look like rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s clear from the research that parental legitimacy matters when it comes to health and safety, but trying to control and regulate kids’ personal choices is exercising illegitimate authority. Parents who exercise legitimate authority will still experience clashes with their kids, but research also shows that we are more likely to resolve these conflicts if we are able to talk to our kids about our needs to balance legitimate parental concerns and our kids’ need for autonomy. They are more likely to grant us that legitimate authority when we stay connected and involved and have open communication with each other.
Hope that helps, Shabby and Jessica (but mostly Jessica)
Dear Shabby,
How to cope with so much uncertainty? Will I ever be able to rock again? I miss shows.
Sincerely, Antisocial Divastancing
Antisocial D,
I’ve been joking since March that punk really prepared us for so much of life during the pandemic. As the last vestiges of civil society began to melt down and the culture of US capitalism was revealed for the craven power struggle that it’s been all along, people in my social circle were saddened but unsurprised. The US has been a death cult since Day 1, so when the shit hit the fan last spring, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work redistributing resources, building mutual aid networks, establishing community fridges in our neighborhoods.
But there’s one aspect of this Historic Moment that punk left us woefully unprepared for—the solitude. The communitarian anarchism that lays the groundwork for almost all of my politics, and possibly yours as well, is collective. It’s like Emma Goldman said, “maybe partying will help.” But, what to do when we can’t party?
There was that one afternoon where everyone got together to watch some herb call out Nader from Haram and we were all glued to Instagram live. Nader was in the wrong, that much was obvious, but it became clear that the nerd was mostly mad because one time Nader hadn’t texted them back. Not only was almost everyone I know riveted as the discussion was happening, it also provided fuel to countless group chats for weeks. We don’t talk often about the social function that totally hopeless herbs play by bringing us all together to roast them. Maybe there should be a holiday where we thank them for their service?
But, the events of that one magical afternoon were like a rainbow—fleeting, nearly impossible to replicate intentionally—how else can we sustain our need to socialize at a time when being together is impossible? Personally, I’ve been writing letters and talking on the phone at a rate I haven’t since high school. I also signed up to be a phone buddy with SAGE Connect (sageusa.org/sageconnect), a service that sets up homos and our allies with isolated queer elders to talk to on the phone once a week. Every Wednesday morning, I video chat with an aging drag queen who truly doesn’t give a shit about me. She brags about telling teenagers that their parents are gonna die one day, or shouting at her neighbor that she should keep wearing a mask even after covid because she’s so ugly. Imagine if George Costanza was a trans woman. And aside from the fact that her style of outer-borough misanthropy is completely up my alley, it’s absolutely wonderful to connect with another isolated person. SAGE has offered their calling service for years, but during quarantine the volunteer-pool ballooned because suddenly, everyone was isolated and in need of connections. Phone hotlines like this have existed for ages because they work. I look forward to my SAGE call every week, which means it not only provides me with a moment of connection and respite from loneliness, but also a fixed point in the future where something good will happen.
Punks are also finding ways to approximate the experience of hanging out. Some friends here in Pittsburgh have a weekly cable access-style music show called Beyond Damaged (youtube.com/mindcurerecords) which features live sets and interviews with bands, plus plenty of footage of the hosts goofing off. It’s great, and feels like being at a show in that I usually start looking at my phone while the band is playing, which says more about me than it does about Beyond Damaged. The truth is, I don’t care about live music. I just love hanging out. Luckily that’s an itch the interviews and the goofin’ really scratch.
Some of my most contented moments have been sitting quietly at a party listening to other people chat, and I find that podcasts can verge on feeling like I’m in an intimate convo. Regular readers will know that I don’t typically shill for my own work in this column, but I’ve heard from multiple people that they’ve been especially enjoying my podcast, Life Harvester Radio (colinhagendorf.com/audio), in quarantine because it feels like being around friends hanging out. I’m flattered, and I can relate, because I get similar satisfaction from Nicole J. Georges’ Sagittarian Matters. Nicole chats breezily with friends about vegan food, comics, and whatever else they want. She’s funny and quick-witted (when asked by one guest, for instance, if she was afraid of getting electrocuted by her plug-in Hitachi, she quipped, “live by the sword, die by the sword”) and the guests are mostly people she’s known for years, so their conversations have the rapport of long-term friendship. I also love two comedy podcasts: Bodega Boys with Desus & Mero, and Double Threat with Tom Scharpling & Julie Klausner. I typically don’t like comedy podcasts. But in both of these cases, the hosts are actual best friends and their chemistry is electric. There’s something so satisfying to me about hearing people really delight in each other’s company.
Is any of this as good as hanging out with your friends? Not even close. Hanging out is literally the best thing in the world. But, like, think of it like this: if you were out walking one day and fell down a sinkhole into a pit full of rats and you were trapped down there, you’d ring the sweat out of the armpits of your t-shirt or chew on your belt or whatever to survive, right? You wouldn’t think your sweat was an ice cold Ting and your belt was an ackee patty, but you’d know that if you could stay alive until you were rescued, you might be able to enjoy Ting and patties again. You get what I’m saying, Antisocial? This moment is about figuring out how to survive because there might be a generator show under a bridge we want to go to in 2022.
As for whether or not you’ll be able to rock again, I’m not Walter Mercado so I can’t say anything with certainty, but I fucking hope so.
Xo, Shabby
Dear Shabby,
My dog eats EVERYTHING. Chicken bones. Bread. Poop. When we go on walks, it's all my lil pup cares about - dive bombing everywhere. Mostly this is due to people throwing food all over the place, whether they're done with their apple core or, in extreme cases, trying to feed the birds. Pierogi, hotdogs, donuts. I've seen it all. Do I avoid places where the food seems to be most prevalent, or ask people not to dump their snacks? Help!
-Dive Bomber
Dear Dive Bomber,
Sometimes when we’re in the middle of what feels like a crisis, it’s hard to see the clear way out. We look for complicated exit strategies when, in fact, there’s a glowing red sign right in front of us telling us exactly where to go—we’re just too overwhelmed to see it. This is where a trusty friend or an altruistic advice columnist can be truly beneficial. And based on the problem you’ve outlined and the solutions you’ve proposed, it seems like you’re in such a predicament. So let’s get to it.
Your dog eats snacks on the road while you’re out. A true pain in the ass. Having recently come out as a dog person (after publicly identifying as a cat person for over two decades) I now know a thing or two about canine companions. I saw a tweet the other day that said something like, “I never realized how many chicken wings are on the ground until I had a dog,” and chuckled knowingly. It’s true! Even during the years I spent looking at the sidewalk hoping to find money or an ipod (2005-2009), the chicken wings, hot dog butts, burger shards, and pizza bones didn’t even register. But once I had a dog to walk, I was suddenly in a very similar situation to yours, Dive Bomber.
So let’s address your solutions. I absolutely don’t think you should ask people not to dump their snacks. I mean, if you see someone in the middle of littering and you wanna say something, you do you, but otherwise, you’ll be speculating on who to ask and that’s gonna get weird! You are trying to exert control over something you cannot instead of controlling what you can, a classic recipe for resentment and failure.
Which brings us to your next solution, avoiding the places where the food seems most prevalent. Sure. Do this. Don’t walk your dog in the alley behind the pizza place, Chinese takeout, and donut shop. Skip the block that was closed for an Italian Saint Festival yesterday. Doy. But if you’re talking about like, avoiding a certain block because you think the people on that block throw too much food in the street, you’re missing out on the real solution.
Train your dog. Training a dog is a delightful activity. It will give you a sense of pride and accomplishment, allow your dog to lead a more fulfilling life, and bring the two of you closer together. I don’t know your dog, so I don’t know what training method would work best for you. With Rubi, our troubled pit bull, we used a system of strict regulation and reward. For a few months, she was not allowed on any couches or beds. She had to wait at all doorways for us to invite her in like a vampire. She had to sit before we would pet her. This was difficult for my hot Italian-American girlfriend and I. We’re two aging anarchists and we don’t like rules. But Rubi, it turns out, does. She thrives in a structured environment. We’ve relaxed most of these in the year we’ve had her. She’s allowed on the bed and couch, we don’t make her pause in every doorway, we pet her without making her do a command first. But we still perform “training rounds” a few times a day. This entails a sequence of “come, sit, down, stay,” rewarded by a treat each time, repeated six times or more. She gets so excited to do what she’s told. I honestly can’t relate, but I love her so much and it makes me feel good to make her happy.
If you train your pup better, it’ll be easier to control their behavior out in the world. Also quit looking at your phone when you walk the dog. I don’t mean to be harsh, but 75% of this problem is probably that you’re not paying enough attention.
Xoxo, Shabby
Dear Shabby,
What do we do about Israel?
--Empire Dwelling Ashkenazi
Dear EDA,
I don’t know which empire you’re dwelling in, so I’ll assume it’s the US, same as me. Regardless, your invocation of “empire” as a concept serves as a reminder that Israel is a settler-colonial state, like the US. It is built on the blood and toil of the Palestinians who occupied the land before Zionist appropriation, who were displaced in the Nakba, and who still wish to return home. Israel claims to be a secular state founded for the Jewish people, yet its “we were here first” claim to the land is biblical, not historical. This is not Israel’s only hypocrisy.
So we’re assuming you’re a US jew, and you’re asking me what your responsibility is to Israel. In my opinion, the only response to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people is BDS, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement, which has been going on for nearly 20 years and has concrete goals: an end to the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, full equality for Palestinians who live in present-day Israel, and right of return for those who fled since the Nakba, as well as their descendents.
Boycott. The big name companies in the boycott include Hewlett-Packard, Sabra Hummus, Sodastream, Ben & Jerry’s, Caterpillar. You can find out more online if you just google BDS List. You can make the scope of the boycott as broad as you feel comfortable. Maybe you practice BDS in the home, but you can also advocate that your place of work participate. Maybe your office uses HP printers. Suggest that they switch. Or the warehouse you work in needs a new forklift. Maybe your union can pressure them to purchase one from a company besides Caterpillar.
Divestment. Encourage institutions you have access to to divest their money from Israel. This means disinvesting endowment and retirement funds from Israeli Institutions such as banks and corporations, as well as from companies that support or profit from the ongoing occupation. There have been robust on-campus divestment campaigns at many universities since the BDS movement formally began in 2002.
Sanctions. Probably the most difficult of the three to impact individually. The call for sanctions is a call to nations to stop ignoring Israel’s constant human rights abuses. You can call a local representative and encourage them to speak up in whatever governmental body they’re in, or you can join an organization, such as Jewish Voice For Peace or If Not Now.
What else can you do? Don’t go on birthright. Talk to your Jewish friends and family about the occupation. Talk to the people at your synagogue. I had a friend in the early 2000s who used to shout “Free Palestine” every time he exited a subway car, and while I was embarrassed by the corniness at the time, he had the right spirit.
Even with the myriad tangible answers that the BDS movements provides for your question, I was still left feeling like there was a component missing from my answer. I asked editor Win for his thoughts, and he suggested I call a rabbi he knows. As I was discussing the question with her, she cut me off to say, “I don’t go there.”
I was a little annoyed, thinking that she was refusing to talk about Israel. “What do you mean you don’t go there?”
“I don’t go there. On vacation, to study, for religious reasons. I refuse to go to Israeli. I went there when I was young, as a Zionist. I lived there, I supported it all. But when I saw the suffering of the Palestinians there, I changed. I fundamentally changed. So I would say, tell the letter writer not to go there, not to spend money on their companies. Because that’s all people in power listen to, dollars.
So there’s your rabbinical advice, the same as my secular advice. When I pressed her for a religious perspective, she simply said “I’m not a very knowledgeable Rabbi. Nice talkin to ya. May your name be written in the Book of Life,” and hung up. I don’t claim to be any kind of Jewish scholar, but I did spend some time in Elul (Jewish December) reading about my people’s notion of repentance, or t’shuvah (pronounced choo-vah). Basically, there are three steps for t’shuvah. First, you have to earnestly regret your actions and own up to them publicly. Next, you have to make amends for your wrongdoing to the best of your ability. Finally, you have to change yourself fundamentally so that you will never cause the same harm again. To quote the Mishneh Torah, a 12th century text by Jewish philosopher Maimonides, “what is complete t’shuvah? He who once more had it in his power to repeat a violation, but separated himself therefrom, and did not do it because of repentance, not out of fear or lack of strength.”
How does this apply to Israel? Well, in the 3rd chapter of the book on t’shuvah, Maimonides says, “each and every one of the sons of man has virtues and vices. He whose virtues exceed his vices is a just man, and he whose vices exceed his virtues is an evildoer; if both are evenly balanced, he is mediocre.” Mediocre. So savage. He continues, “Even so is a state. If the virtues exceed the vices, it is a just state; but if the vices exceed the virtues, it is a wicked state.” By all accounting, Israel is a wicked state, and they haven’t even taken the first step towards atonement.
Shana Tova, Shabby
Dear Shabby,
It seems like school openings are the battering rams cash-strapped governors are using to re-open the economy. Should teachers initiate a nationwide general strike? Asking for a friend.
Yours, Chalkboard Chuck
Dear Chalkboard Chuck,
I showed this question to my hot live-in girlfriend, Italian-American punk icon and two-time skanking competition winner Rebecca Giordano, and said, “the answer is just ‘no duh,’ right?” And she was like, “Shabby, don’t be lazy. This is a great opportunity to talk about the history of strikes and the fact that they have been about more than wages. They’ve often been about health and safety concerns.”
Chuck, that hadn’t occurred to me. My brilliant lover is not only far more intellectually rigorous than me, she’s also right. I’m no labor historian, but even I know that strikes are about more than wages. Labor strikes have been responsible for rights that many of us have taken for granted, though even those are currently under attack. The Pullman Strike of the 1880s led directly to the 8 hour workday, and many of the current health & safety regulations established through OSHA in 1970 were fought for by striking steel workers and coal miners for 100 years before they were codified into law. More recently, we’ve seen strikes for workplace health from workers at Amazon and Instacart.
There was a tweet going around recently that succinctly outlined how unprepared the school system is to manage COVID outbreaks, and what the potential implications of that are. I can’t find the tweet right now, but it was structured as a series of questions that went something like this: “If a high school teacher tests positive, will they be expected to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Will they be given paid sick leave? If they teach 5 classes per day with 30 students per class, will all 150 students be tested? Who will pay for those tests? Do the students’ families need to be tested? Who pays for those tests? What if a teacher’s roommate tests positive? Does the teacher quarantine for 2 weeks? Is that paid sick leave?” Etc etc etc.
In-person learning is clearly dangerous and unethical. But as you so astutely pointed out, Chalkboard, local governments are risking the lives of teachers and parents in their districts to bludgeon the economy back “open,” because a large portion of the workforce depends on the school system for child care. This puts teachers in a position of immense power, and now more than ever, teachers unions are poised to seize that power. According to Education Week magazine, there were 99 US teachers strikes between 2010-2018, with a full quarter of them happening in 2018. In February of that year, 20,000 West Virginia teachers walked off the job for 2 weeks, leveraging their labor for a wage increase and a freeze on health insurance cost increases. Their success inspired a wave of strikes across the country, leading to statewide action by teacher’s unions in 7 states.
If teachers around the country strike en masse we could see a mass labor movement the likes of which the US hasn’t seen in my lifetime. In order for it to succeed, teachers will need to build solidarity with working-class parents, many of whom depend on the school system for subsidized meals for their children, and who are less likely to be able to stay home, work remotely or tutor their children privately. Local mutual aid networks that have sprung up in the wake of COVID provide a model for some of the ways that solidarity could look. The South Brooklyn Mutual Aid Network feeds 400-500 families a week through volunteer efforts and small donations. There is also an opportunity here to work in coalition with abolitionist movements finally gaining traction. The common refrain from lawmakers seeking to avoid increasing school budgets has been a harried, “we’d like to but where will we get the money?” Calls to defund and abolish police departments have increases in school budget and teacher wages baked right in. There’s no reason these two powerful forces for change couldn’t work together. The possibilities are only as limited as our imaginations. As harrowing as this moment is in so many ways, there is a potential for radical hope.
In Solidarity, Shabby
Dear Shabby,
I'm struggling with not being able to dap up my people. The physical greeting—particularly the firm handshake that transitions into a strong armed embrace—is an integral part of how I communicate allegiance, affection, and respect to my friends and I am struggling with how to find verbal or non-physical ways of communicating these feelings without it. It's one thing with people who you have the time and relationship with to verbally express this stuff to: your mother, partner, mentor. It's a whole other thing with people who you have fleeting encounters with. Any suggestions for replacements or coping mechanisms?
—Dapless on Davenport Ave
Dapless,
I feel your pain. At the onset of the COVID pandemic in its current form, many of us simply stopped going outside and seeing people. But with the introduction of mass mobilization and protest into the mix, what do we do when we run into an old friend? Twice I instinctually performed an “air hug” upon seeing a friend, and let me just say, it sucked. I had replaced “the grasp of friendship in front of the fire,” to borrow a phrase from Flann O’Brien, with a cutesy-poo gesture that left me feeling like I had clowned myself.
My initial advice to you was going to be simply to tap elbows like you do when one of your coworkers in the restaurant kitchen is getting off shift and your hands are too full to dap properly. But when I mentioned that to my hot Italian-American girlfriend Becca, she was like “oh like Bernie and Biden did at the last debate?” And that advice was out the window. What we’re left with is the simple head nod. It’ll have to do for now. The world is in crisis and we all have to make sacrifices. Embrace your discomfort. Maybe add a smize for good measure.
But also, why can’t you earnestly tell an acquaintance that you’re happy to see him? I’m assuming that you’re a man, Dapless, and that a majority of the friends with whom you wish to communicate “allegiance, affection, and respect” via “a strong-armed embrace” are other men. To me, this letter speaks to the paucity of the masculine imagination and the confines of acceptable male behavior. Confines that are starkly familiar to me because I was once constrained by them. As it turns out, I’m a woman. And a majority of the friends with whom I have wanted to communicate affection in these strange times, have been other women. Despite my instinctual “air hugs” being an abject failure, I ultimately had no trouble communicating reciprocal affection with my friends. This was done with sustained eye contact, as well as matter of fact statements such as, “it’s really good to see you,” and “I’ve missed you.” Simple communication of our respective emotional truth that made us both feel the rush of warmth that only friendship can provide.
I understand that these may not feel like options to you, Dapless, homosocial male customs being what they are, but I think they should. This is not an indictment of you in particular, but of our entire culture. And perhaps in this liminal moment where the realm of the possible seems to be expanding every day, men can begin to carve out the space within themselves and their interactions with each other for a more full and fulfilling emotional awareness.
xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
How much should people tip for takeout during quarantine?
Sincerely, The Westport Wallet
Listen Wallet,
The rule is tip 25%, AT LEAST. This is based on the fact that the rule used to be that you have to tip 20% unless you’re a piece of shit, but things are nuts right now. We’re in the midst of an unprecedented crisis and our government is dropping the ball on taking care of us. The most precarious members of our society are stuck doing dangerous work for low pay to people who are making more than them doing Zoom meetings in their pajamas. And on top of all that, restaurants are getting gutted by predatory rates from the VC startup middlemen behind Grubhub, et al, making employment even more precarious. You can’t work at a restaurant that went out of business. If you can afford to, tip more than 25%. To paraphrase the Best Show’s Tom Scharpling, the only radio personality I like more than Angie Martinez, no one ever went broke leaving a tip on a table. Are you picking up your order in the restaurant instead of having it delivered? Same rules apply. The last time I picked up dinner I tipped 50%, but I don’t get take out that often.
I’ve spent nearly all of my working life either serving food in diners or delivering it on a bicycle, and I didn’t always have the best attitude. Once someone left me a pile of pennies as a tip during a busy brunch at a restaurant that didn’t keep pennies in the til, and I followed him into the street, throwing pennies and screaming, “I THINK YOU FORGOT SOMETHIN PAL.” Once in a blizzard I delivered some frat boy his food and he tried to shut the door in my face without tipping, but I wedged my combat boot in the frame and forced the door open and said quietly (which I think was scarier than if I had been boisterous), “I walked a quarter mile here in 2 feet of snow and I’m not leaving until you give me $10.” That was close to a 100% tip. If he had tipped me in the first place I would’ve accepted far less than that, but I was feeling brazen because he tried to play me for a chump. He gave me the $10 and I still hocked a big splatter of phlegm all over his door. Depending on what the statute of limitations is for larceny in New York City, one time I might’ve gone with a friend back to an address that had stiffed him (as in zero bucks on huge orders) multiple times that week and stolen the bikes in the hallway outside their apartment, but come to think of it I can’t really remember where I was or what I did that night.
Those stories are not for you, Wallet. The fact that you’re asking how much you should be tipping means that you care, and that’s great. My suspicion is that you’re probably already tipping enough. But there are people besides you who are gonna read this column, and among them there’s bound to be a few bad tippers. Those tales of my unhinged youth in the service industry are for them. I want every bad tipper out there to know that every time they skimp, it’s a roll of the dice. Kindness and compassion are noble principles, but if a little fear is what it takes to put some cheapskate’s money in a worker’s pocket, so be it.
To anyone who feels called out by this advice, know that deep down in the bottom of my heart, I think you’re a scumbag. If you got something to say about it, feel free to address all complaints to win.vitkowsky@gmail.com.
Xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
I quit smoking when I got covid and I haven’t started again. I really miss it and it’s hard not to have it at a time when I’m under a lot of stress and am otherwise unmotivated to go outside. I know that for physical health I shouldn’t start again—I have lasting asthma-like damage from COVID, and a mysterious mass on my chest wall I’m waiting to get checked out. But also, mental health seems more important than ever and smoking made me more active and less dissociated, even gave me pleasure. My friends are all pretty unsympathetic and scoldy about the situation which is surprising because I thought like...we were all down with harm reduction man??? Is it ok to use risky crutches in a short term? How do I get my friends to be nice to me?
Yours, Virginia Slim
Virginia,
In the course of my life, three different people who had already quit smoking went out and bought a pack of cigarettes after hanging out with me because of how euphoric I looked while smoking. Just sitting there telegraphing pure and complete joy for all the world to see. I’ve known cigarettes were bad ever since the libertarian/communist cusp history teacher in my high school told me that smoking and wanting to Free Mumia were at odds, but I still do it, because it fucking rules. A few years ago I was staying at my friends Mikey & Caroline’s old house in Providence. Neither of them smoke and at one point when I stepped outside to do my 500th cigarette, Caroline was all, “why do you still do that?”
I thought about it long and hard while I was outside and I when I came back in I was like, “look, I’ve been smoking since I was 14. Let’s say I smoked a pack a week from when I was 14 til I was 16, that’s 104 packs, which is 2,080 cigarettes. And then let’s say when I was like 16 to 18 I smoked half a pack a day. That’s 10 cigarettes a day for 730 days, which is 7300 cigarettes, bringing the total number to 9,380. Now let’s say, on average, I’ve smoked a pack a day in the 10 years since then. That’s 73,000. All told let’s round up to be safe and say I’ve smoked 85,000 cigarettes in the past 14 years. Caroline, of those 85,000 cigarettes I can remember maybe 6 offhand that I didn’t enjoy. What else do I do in my life with such good odds of absolute satisfaction? Not eating. Not hanging out with my friends. Not watching bands. Not even masturbating. Why would I give this up?”
As smokers go, I’m lucky. Somehow my body just naturally tapered my addiction down. A few years after I quit drinking I went from smoking about a pack a day to less than a pack a week without really trying, and that amount doesn’t worry me. I don’t have any underlying health conditions that I know of, though. And this gets back to your original question about harm reduction, a principal that I’ve been guided by since before I knew what it was called. For the two years that I was mostly vegetarian, I ate a lox bagel every Sunday and a single pastrami sandwich a year. No other exceptions. My rationale was that the harm caused by my continuing to eat meat willy nilly was far greater than a weekly brunch and an annual trip to Ben’s Best Delicatessen. Same with my current smoking. I’m fairly certain I understand the risks of smoking less than a pack of cigarettes a week, but I also understand that indulging in the self-destructive joy of nicotine is a big part of maintaining my sobriety. It’s like my old therapist used to say, “everyone’s gotta touch the void sometimes.” The obstacle I’m facing in giving a definitive answer to your question is that it’s really hard to know what the stakes are since your condition is, in many ways, completely unknown. But that being said, I’ll always default to a conscientious YOLO mindset. Do what you gotta do.
As for your friends, having them be nice to you is overrated. It’s way more important to nurture relationships with true ride or dies or who will not just hold you down, but aren’t scared to let you know when you’re fucking up. If they’re bummed at your decision to keep smoking it’s more likely because they care about you than puritanical hand wringing. Let them know you appreciate their concern but aren’t going to be swayed by scolding and they can keep it to themselves from here on out.
Xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
I’m at a point in my life where I have a lot of opportunities to have sex with people. (High school.) However, I’m conflicted over whether to just have fun and make memories by screwing whoever whenever, or only have sex with people I truly love and care about. I was gonna ask my mom but she’s Catholic. How should I decide what I want sex to mean to me?
- Uncertain in Union City
Dear Uncertain,
I think you know that I can’t help you decide what sex should mean to you. But, I can share some of my own experiences, and, hopefully, give you some things to think about. The good news, right off the bat, is that you’ve already gotten over one of the biggest obstacles in thinking about your own sexuality: the notion of virginity. Virginity is made up patriarchy stuff and it isn’t helpful to anyone.
The other good news is that the binary you’ve established in your letter (Whoever Wherever vs Only True Love and Care) is also made up. I can think of some short flings and one-off hook ups I’ve had that were full of genuine care. Some have developed into friendships that have lasted for literal decades! I’ve also had years-long relationships that were ostensibly of the “True Love” variety that I’m still unpacking the residual trauma from in therapy. And so my advice, in short is, “porque no los dos?” You can’t decide in advance what the emotional stakes will be of sex you haven’t had yet, because that’s not always something you can know.
The important thing is to try your best to stay present and keep tabs on whether or not you’re into what’s happening. Stop if you’re not. Consent is not a contract. Even if you verbally agreed to something, it’s okay to change your mind if you’re not into something. Sex can provide an incredible feeling of embodiment, an unparalleled sense of connection with others, but it can also be a source of pain and the site of trauma, so just like, be gentle with yourself and your future partners.
There’s just no simple answer to your question, and the fact is, you’ll likely be figuring it out well past high school. That’s because desires change throughout the course of a life. Desire can be exhilarating and it can be scary. Being desired can feel powerful and it can feel absolutely dehumanizing. Your task is only to figure out what you want right now, not to worry about what it will or won’t mean later. And sometimes you can only figure that stuff out by doing it. Sometimes that involves another person, but masturbation is a great way to figure that stuff out too! Where do you like to be touched? How? Desire is morally neutral. What kind of sex you want or don’t want doesn’t mean anything about who you are, just like any other arbitrary preference.
This is a good time to think about what you mean when you say sex, which you don’t really specify. Are you talking strictly about penetrative intercourse? If so, I would encourage you to broaden your definition. Whether your desire feels queer or not, there’s a lot to be learned from queer sex, both in terms of acknowledging desires that have been historically frowned upon, and also in terms of opening up the field for what sex can mean. I’m not sure if kids today still talk about the old baseball analogy (first base is kissing, home plate is penetrative sex), but approaching sex with that kind of dogma, or an expectation that it can only “progress” in a specific linear fashion, forecloses on a lot of possibilities, a lot of opportunities for fun and pleasure, and creates a sense of momentum for both partners that can be extremely limiting and lead to some pretty uncomfortable outcomes.
This is why my advice is also to over-communicate. Talk about what your feelings and intentions are. This will be awkward at first, but will maybe avoid some instances of having your feelings hurt, or worse yet of hurting someone else’s feelings. But truth is, once you start having sex you are beginning an inevitable journey towards both having your feelings hurt and hurting the feelings of others, and it’s totally worth it. Good luck.
Xoxo, Shabby
Dear Shabby,
There’s a man in the JCC with a tattoo that says “Prima La Famiglia” and a shirt that says “Italian Stallion.” I’m so ignorant, are people really that into being Italian?
—Confused By Ethnic Whites
Dear Confused,
When I was about 15, I was at my friend’s house hanging out in the kitchen with his mom, Cecilia, shooting the shit about our family gravy recipes. If I remember correctly, Cecilia used whole peeled tomatoes whereas my mom used crushed tomatoes, a fact which Cecilia was shocked by. I was like, “But take it with a grain of salt, my family’s not Italian.” Cecilia was shocked, “you’re not Italian?”
“Nope.”
“What are you then?” she asked, stunned.
“I’m Jewish and Irish,” I replied.
Cecilia stirred the sauce and thought, took a pull on her cigarette and said, “that’s basically Italian.”
Which is to say, while I may be the common law wife of an Italian-American woman and have some friends who grew up in Bensonhurst, I’m not Italian myself so the following answer is based on observation rather than experience: yes, people are that into being Italian.
xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
Do you have a go-to for store bought bagels?
—Man Hands in Willamantic
Man Hands,
Listen, the real answer is that the go-to for store bought bagels is “the bagel store.” My editor here at BAT Crowd, however, insists that the bagels at Stop & Shop are good, because they make them fresh every day and something something Harry Lender blah blah blah I don’t remember what else he said because I stopped listening. If you live in a place without bagels and really want a good one, make friends with someone in New York and get them to overnight you a dozen. Bagels freeze and thaw incredibly. If that’s not an option, just eat a different bread, it won’t kill you. If you insist on eating a bagel, and you’re content knowing you’re consuming something substantially inferior, more power to you, Go wherever you want, find the bagel that’s right for you. You are the master of your own destiny.
Stay strong, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
How do I talk to mutual friends of abusers in my community?
—Exhausted With Casual Complicity
Dear Exhausted,
My short answer is this: it ultimately doesn’t matter how you talk to mutual friends of abusers in your community, it matters that you do it. As for the actual discussions, there are so many variables, but the most important thing is that you stay present, and make your feelings and expectations known. Depending on your friend’s comfort with the subject (taking into account their own survivor status/trauma history, their familiarity with this kind of discourse) I might try to set aside a time in advance for the conversation, rather than bring it up as a surprise. Begin the discussion with simple, factual questions and statements—How close are you to So-and-so? Have you known them for long? Are you aware they have been called out for abuse by multiple partners?You get the drift.
At this point how you proceed will depend on how your friend responds. Are they receptive? If so, then you can discuss what this knowledge means about their relationship with the abuser. If they seem tentative or freaked out, maybe you can offer them some time to process while clearly stating that you’d like to continue the conversation at a later point. If your friend seems hostile or defensive, this might be a time to think about how important their friendship is to you. At the end of the day, you may be nervous about these conversations, but you’re hopefully doing a small part in keeping other people in your community safe and making things better for the survivor.
Xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
What is the correct balance between “what we do is secret” and sharing punk skills and talents with the civilian world?
—Trying to Draw the Line
TDL,
I think this one is pretty intuitive. We should avoid sharing things that are illegal or private, but otherwise go ham. Teach squares how to screen print, sew, play drums. Give out your black bean recipe. But remember in like 2005 when that straight edge kid from Minneapolis wrote about his wild scam life for Harper’s and included stuff like switching out your old shoes at Walmart or Home Depot receipt scams and then those companies made it harder to do those things so punks and junkies and other people who relied on them for income had to find a new way? Don’t do that. Or like, maybe don’t tell just anyone how you get free copies (although feel free to DM me cause I been PAYING ever since Staples upgraded all their machines and I’m frankly sick of it). Stuff like shows at houses is a little more of a grey area, but like, just don’t invite squares. There was this lady way back when who was always asking me to tell her when shows were happening so she could write about it for Vice and I kept being like, “I’m happy to invite you to shows but you can’t write about it for Vice because they’re happening at my friends’ houses and they don’t want their addresses out there like that.” Eventually she got really upset and said “good job protecting your precious little punk scene” to try to make me feel bad but like, I was doing a good job and my precious little punk scene needed protecting and she was being a narc!
In short, do tell people about skills, but don’t tell people about scams and never give a poser your friend’s address.
Our Lips Are Sealed, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
If you are dating someone and both tend to be shy, who makes the first move? It gets awkward.
—Nervous In Newark
Dear NIN,
I have a history of taking “way too long” to ask someone to kiss me. Me and Becca’s first date was like 10 hours long before we kissed. It was obvious that we both wanted to but neither of us asked (until one of us did and we’ve been kissing ever since). On my end it was a mixture of being super conscientious about consent due to years of work with the accountability collective, being somewhat recently sober and not knowing how to initiate kissing without being wasted, and genuine cowardice. Before dating Becca I’ve had so many nights like that. Hanging out for hours and hours with someone who I explicitly asked out on a date and not making a move until like the last possible second, or relying on them to do it. At the end of the day, aside from the excruciating/exquisite torment of waiting to kiss, I’ve never like, lost a date over being slow on the take. Also my being anxious around sex is completely tied to my overall anxiety around gender and my history of sexual trauma. Those are two good, valid reasons to take a long time to kiss someone, and they’re far from the only ones. And those reasons are almost never transparent!
I think it’s fine to take things at whatever pace is comfortable for you. In my experience, talking a lot is a good way to ease tension. Asking a lot of permission can be fun and kinda hot. I also really like the system Cindy Crabb outlined in Learning Good Consent where her and a partner found talking about sex explicitly triggering in a way that made sex seem impossible, so they developed a number scale for their boundaries where like, 1 was simple physical proximity, 2 was nonsexual massage, 3 was kissing, 4 was sexual massage, etc. I have practiced this at times and when it hasn’t been helpful it hasn’t been harmful, but when it has been helpful it’s been like, really helpful.
All that said my answer to your actual question applies to both you and your date, NIN. Who makes the first move? You do.
Xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
What are pros/cons of getting a partner to move to a city for you?
—Bored With Cowards (Like Björk)
Dear BWC(LB),
I’ve never gotten a partner to move for me, but I moved across the country to live with Becca. I was ready to pack the uhaul on our second date, but I lived in New York (where she was visiting), and she lived in Texas. We continued to see each other long distance, but after a little over three months I put most of my stuff in storage and the rest of it in the back of my station wagon and I sang along to “Oui” by Jeremih on repeat for 30 hours while I drove from NYC to ATX.
Though I’d never lived outside the New York metropolitan area, I spent a substantial amount of time travelling when I was younger and I assumed I knew how to acclimate to a new city. Turns out sleeping under the stairs at the punk house for three weeks as a single, wasted, twenty-something, borderline oogle is MUCH different than moving in with a monogamous partner as a sober thirty-two year old. For starters, the ambient friend-making that occurs while people are all going out trying to get laid is an immense social resource that I had never considered. Also, moving into an apartment with your girlfriend and her roommate is a lotdifferent than sleeping in the common space at a punk house because in the former case group hanging out is something that has to be planned and doesn’t happen organically. We all know the platitudes about making new friends in your 30s and while some of that is heteronormative bullshit, some of it is true! I’m just busier!
I went into my first cross-country move a completely naïve fool and the reality of it hit me hard. My first year in Austin I had a really hard time adjusting. Despite the fact that I was ready to leave New York and had been daydreaming about it since before Becca and I started dating. Despite the fact that I was (and still am) madly in love with the person I moved for. Despite the fact that I was mentally healthier and had my shit more together than ever before in my life. Inevitably, there were moments where I was sad and lonely, and I started to resent Becca “making me move.” This wasn’t fair, but it happened, and the best defense against those feelings of resentment taking seed and festering was to remind myself that it was my decision. That it was something I really wanted.
And so that’s why I’m sticking on the word “getting” in this letter. “Getting someone to move” sounds like that person needs to be goaded, and that seems like a recipe for disaster to me. If I had moved to Texas with anything short of clear eyes and a full heart, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to weather that.
I think the pros are many: you get to see each other every day if you want, no more buying expensive plane tickets or taking lengthy bus rides. Just like making friends and socializing can feel different as you get older, being in a LDR in your 30s can sometimes feel like too much work. When Becca was reading this over for line edits (which she does every issue, praise be) she left me this note: “one important pro you leave out is the reason we decided for you to move so early in our relationship—that for Grown And Busies like ourselves, it's nearly impossible to figure out if you really want to be together in a long distance relationship. The ultimate pro is that you really get to be together and thus to see if the relationship works, which, of course, it may not.”
But in my estimation the main con—that if someone needs to be talked into making such a major decision the likelihood that they will grow to resent you if that decision doesn’t pan out the way they imagined increases exponentially—eclipses any of those.
Xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck
Dear Shabby,
Do you have any advice on how to gently correct ignorance in others?
—Smart Kid Dumb City
SKDC,
I used to have a job where I worked with only cis dudes doing mostly physical labor and the culture of the workplace was, to paraphrase Spike Lee, “not my cuppa tea.” Most of them seemed like sweet men who professed revulsion towards racism, sexism, homophobia, etc that I fundamentally agreed with, but due to the strictures of masculinity, they leaned heavily on butts as a subject of small talk. Specifically, talking about other people’s butts. Other people who were right there but not participating in the conversation.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with appreciating a butt in the wild. Many people passively appreciate butts and are able to do so respectfully even when out in public. My issue is that when more than one person begins to actively appreciate a butt, out loud, in a space shared with strangers, it creates what some might consider a hostile environment for the person who’s butt is being appreciated, as well as other butt havers who may overhear and begin to fear that their butt might also end up being appreciated in a similar way. I don’t know why I’m being so coy with my language here, but what I’m discussing is exclusively men talking about women’s butts. And lets be real, oftentimes that kind of objectification is a prelude to direct, unpleasant interaction or outright violence.
I didn’t know how best to deal with the disjuncture between these men’s stated beliefs and their behaviors, and it was mostly something I witnessed in passing, conversations between coworkers that took place in my vicinity but which I was not part of. Finally, one day someone appreciated a butt to me and invited me to appreciate it with him and I said something like, “look, I like a juicy butt as much as the next person, but I never want to talk about it with you.” My coworker looked kinda confused for a second then asked me about the book I was reading. I had similar interactions with a couple of the other guys on staff. Some involved longer, deeper conversations about why I think talking about butts is a wack behavior. Eventually, it seemed like butt talk among these dudes had diminished overall. At least one person privately thanked me for saying something because that kind of attempted bonding had always made him uncomfortable but he hadn’t known how to intervene.
I think my intercession was successful primarily because it was not deeply confrontational. When I was younger, I would have seethed about these dudes until I finally burst and confronted one of them in a way that would’ve made me feel good about myself and possibly involved me dunking on them in some way, but wouldn’t have really worked in connecting or productively addressing his actions. Now that I’m an old crone, I’m less concerned with feeling like the most righteous person in the room and more concerned with minimizing whatever behavior I think sucks. The thing here is that I didn’t have the kind of intimacy or trust with most of these men where I could question their intentions off the rip, but what I could do was set a boundary for their behavior around me and be open to discussing why that boundary existed. I may not have stopped all of them from ever leaning over to another dude and remarking on a butt, but I did tangibly cut down on the number of those conversations in my workplace/in the world, and caused at least a few dudes to think. I also think my nervous decision to use the phrase “juicy butt” in talking to these dudes was disarming in it’s absurdity and also made it clear that I was not judging them just for liking a butt.
I think I would be lax not to acknowledge that some forms of ignorance need to be dealt with more expediently and directly, but I gathered from the word “gently” in your original question that you weren’t talking about that kind. Hope this helped.
Xoxo, Shabby the Shmuck