Being not-drunk-enough on Bahasa Indonesia

Satu. Dua. Tiga. Empat. Lima.

There's an initial confusion whenever you start doing something you've never done before. That can trickle down into excitement or boredom. Right now, I'm bored. I'm learning to speak Bahasa Indonesia, but I'm not learning to say "more wine please, miss." I'm learning numbers.

I'm taking a break from college to do this, I thought. It was hard to get into adventure mode. Not even Indiana Jones could make repeatedly counting to ten look adventurous.

I took some playing cards out of a deck and was running through them, making small-digit numbers and saying them out loud. Does that work? I don't know yet. I'm doing a lot of things I don't have total faith in. I use Anki most days, I've been using the Pimsleur method on long drives, and I bought a book and a whiteboard for good measure. I've also referenced various apps, youtube videos, and websites, but my unfocused attitude hasn't allowed for much progress. I'm not in class, so I don't have the benefit of an instructor or the built-in routine and exposure i'd get in a class. I haven't found a rhythm for this stuff yet.

Hell, it's almost March and I'm going to fly to Indonesia this June. That makes learning to spit numbers a sort of short-term goal, doesn't it? Not looking dumb overseas? Maybe I can force myself sit at my desk every day, trilling my Rs louder than I have since drinking in Tijuana. 

Tiga puluh delapan. Enam ratus sepuluh. Coffee. I'll need more coffee.

Tow Truck Envy

I only own shitty cars. Ones that have things wrong with them. I’m brave and stupid enough to drive them despite the fact that they break down. Unfortunately, on this occasion, I was three hours from home for a job interview. The car wasn’t going to do me well anywhere around there, and I usually do my own car work, so I figured I’d have it towed it home. The second place I called gave me a $500 deal and we made it happen. The tow truck driver (who we’ll call Rod because I forgot his name) showed up, dragged my car’s corpse the up ramp of a greasy wrecker, and we took off.

Rod was a talker. Before I could feign fatigue and pretend to sleep, I knew all about his love of Duke basketball, bass fishing hobby, two kids (a girl and a boy), and political affiliation. I didn’t talk much, just enough to be polite and keep the conversation going.

The majority of Americans would never share their yearly earnings with a stranger, but Rod did just that. Weirdly enough, I shared my salary with him as well. The kicker- we made the same amount. Why did this give me pause? For the past 4 years of college, 2 years of engineering experience at an international company at the top of the industry, and being interviewed for a job with the title of “consultant”, I was leading myself to believe I was doing better than I am.

Rod was older than and had more relevant job experience than I did, but not by much. He didn’t own his company, just drove one of the trucks for a small towing business. He worked the day shift, so no special pay for slaving through the night picking up dead cars and their bored and stressed owners.

Over the three hour conversation, he completely casually mentioned that he owned his own modest home in an area not far from a major metro area, which he had saved up and bought owned outright with cash. His wife enjoyed working on her tan on the days he went fishing on his boat.

“God damn,” I thought, “does this guy have life figured out?” What was my life missing that made me jealous?

Rod had something I wanted, an autonomy that didn’t depend on some grey-haired suit above him. It wasn’t until just recently that I realized he has another distinct advantage that I didn’t. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s most recent book is called Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. He posits that workers in a large corporate enterprise are actually at a less stable position than those who ‘work for themselves’ or similar situations. Consider people who work on a commission or piece work basis, such as taxi drivers, artists, and yes, tow truck drivers; they have immediate feedback about the worth they create and are able to notice patterns and therefore adapt to maximise their profits.

According to Taleb, a cog in a gigantic corporate machine receives the same paycheck every other week, so they feel awfully secure about their financial position. That same accountant, customer service representative, engineer, assembly line worker, etc, may hear that the company is about to go down in flames, or they may not. In the end, if it makes sense for the whole, or at least for the board of directors, that worker may be cut loose. Suddenly, the corporate worker goes from having steady income, to none at all.

Considering the other view, a prostitute would only see that the economy is in recession via more clients seeking services during the nine-to-five hours they had previously been working. Eventually the johns would become fewer and farther between, but, noticing the decline, the courtesan could move onto greener pastures. There had been no rumors of a layoff at my job - yet.

It seemed that I’d worked hard on setting up a life that had been nothing more than ticking off boxes of a to-do list. High school graduation with honors, a college degree, corporate job, and moving up to something new within a few years in order to ‘keep climbing’. I was pretty well set up for life, and pretty happy, but I wasn’t really much more steady than I had been as an 18 year old, working as an apprentice for a guy with his heating business.

I got the job I was interviewing for. Still, boring moments staring at Excel spreadsheets make me ponder the conversation with the tow truck driver, Rod, and his bass boat on a lake. Coincidentally, I’ve also searched for used tow trucks for sale.

Sexual Morality and Why I Love Black Chicks

My parents raised me Mormon, so my introduction to sexual morality was a list of commandments, handed down from on high to racist old white men in the mid-1800s. It was basic conservative bullshit: nothing even remotely sexual before marriage, and after that, live a life of frustrating sexual dysfunction with your equally frustrated spouse. Since sex was only for purposes of reproduction and birth control was discouraged, Mormons traditionally have big families. And if you’re older than 8 and you masturbate, even just once, you have to go into a room with your bishop (usually a nearby middle-aged neighbor, sometimes the father of a peer) and tell him all about it or Jesus wouldn’t forgive you.

It sounds pretty uptight, but the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had an interesting approach to marriage. Brigham Young, the prophet the most Mormons followed after Joe Smith was murdered, was a bit of a megalomaniac and ended up with 55 wives and 57 kids. (His 19th wife even wrote a book about the experience.) He also had plenty of time to lead his church with godly revelation such as this:

"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so."

Clearly, Ol’ Brigham wasn’t a fan of interracial marriage. Modern Mormons claim that this (thunderously racist, morally indefensible) quote was only the opinion of one man, not a prophet speaking through a trickster god. Brigham himself claimed otherwise. Obviously this wasn’t what I learned growing up, but I did get the watered-down version (look here and ctrl-F “racial background”), while straight up hate-mongering was hidden in deeper scripture. Mormons fear their own history so much, I wonder how long until they start burning their own books.

I left Mormonism the same year I joined the military. Since I was assigned to an all-male infantry unit, no holds were barred in sexual discussions. Just like religion, it disintegrated into a comically long list of don’ts. Don’t fuck anyone else’s wife. Don’t fuck near the trail in a national forest. Don’t use two condoms at once, they weren’t designed for that. Of course, we were not expressly prohibited from doing anything legal except talk about it: back then we had DADT.

Here’s where the [citation needed] tag starts to get sprinkled around. The sexual rules in religion may have started out as good advice in a world where an STD would kill you. They’ve evolved into a way for those in authority to play your god-given sexuality off your social insecurity, foster guilt that only religious leaders can assuage, and guarantee a new generation of tithe-payers. My military orders not to fuck in a movie theater were situation-dependant, practical, and based on legality: as long as we weren’t in jail or facing charges, we’d be free to participate in training and get our balls blown off overseas.

Where does this fit into morality? It doesn’t. Sex is never wrong. Before you accuse me of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I didn’t say “nothing sexual is ever wrong”. This point can be illustrated by my army of straw-men:

Isn’t rape wrong? Yes. Sex is consensual, rape may involve sex or not, but it’s considered a violent act, not a sex act.
Isn’t infidelity wrong? Yes. It’s a breach of trust and sometimes legal arrangements like marriage. Some people enter romantic arrangements where even masturbation is infidelity, because it is part of the terms of the relationship. Those people are either whipped or Mormons. In either case, they're foolish.
Isn’t bestiality wrong? Yes. Animals cannot consent. Treating them cruelly, even slaughtering them cruelly, is also wrong. Not marinating them long enough is insulting, but at that point I don’t think they’d protest.
Isn’t sex in public wrong? Yes, it makes non-consenting people party to your sex act by observation. If your parents walk in on you having sex, the fault lies with whomever didn’t establish expectations of privacy. If the FBI watches you have sex on a stakeout, they’re in the wrong.
Isn’t incest wrong? Well, only when it involve children or produces offspring, because it creates a potential victim and a public health problem. Fuck your dad or grandmother all you want, I don’t give a shit. "Wrong" isn't synonymous with "taboo" or "makes me uncomfortable”.

Unless you’re religious, the only moral absolutes are invented and enforced by humanity, and in this non-utopian world, they differ among cultures. I’m a moral absolutist, because I think right and wrong are more than cultural constructions or god-graffiti on stone tablets. People like me sometimes try to find clues to an inherent morality in medicine, neurochemistry, history, or skin flicks. These are dynamic fields, and as such, morality can be a bit dynamic. It sounds scary, but I promise it makes more sense than feeling guilty about bondage fantasies.

Reciprocity is inherent to morality. Treat people as you would like to be treated. Ideally, you should try to be a little objective and treat people as you know almost all people like to be treated, unless you ask. This is the only kind of sexual morality I put any stock in: it’s simple, it closes up most of the loopholes that piss me off, and yet it allows adult humans to do what adult humans generally like to do.

I like black women. Why? I say, why not? Black women can be gorgeous, eloquent, classy and sassy just like anybody else. But, when I was growing up, I was encouraged to (1) not have sex outside of marriage and (2) marry within my race. Rules that prevent a white man from having sex with a black woman are racist. It poisons the well of all the other outdated rules you’d like me to follow. So I’ll say it publicly and sincerely: if you think fornication, sodomy or orgies are inherently wrong, please check your Flavor Aid for adulterants before you imbibe.

And if you think I shouldn’t have sex with black women, go fuck yourself.