Walking to Publix

a short story

I want to start leaving the house more.

This is for entirely instrumental reasons; reclusiveness makes a man far less effective in most of the domains I care about, and I'm starting to realize the ways in which it may be foreclosing certain opportunities for me. These days I have the attention span of an iPad Kid and have developed all sorts of weird mannerisms and behavioral compulsions, to a degree I probably won't be rich enough to get away with for another 3-5 years. But to maintain that very trajectory I'll need to nip this shit in the bud.

That's the downside risk of asymmetry: until you reach escape velocity you really do need to maintain a certain floor of normalcy and well-roundedness. Exponential life strategies are terrifyingly powerful, but you also don't want to exponentiate a fraction.

What's annoying though is I'm supposed to enjoy leaving the house for its own sake, and all the people I'd like to impress with this behavior will never be satisfied if I approach it in this utilitarian way that feels most authentic to me. My more genuine impulses connote low status to them, so if I'm ever too forthright they'll typically admonish me for doing everything for the wrong reasons.

This, of course, creates a perverse incentive to be a deceptive narc who optimizes his behavior around impression management. The most instrumentally effective route is always to obfuscate the instrumentality of your own actions, because most people abhor desperation and self-promotion and will brutally punish you for the faintest whiff of these things. And so millions of men take up rock climbing or some shit because they know it’s attractive to women, but only clumsy spergs will ever admit that’s what they’re doing, because to the most desirable women even thinking about SMV in a strategic way like this is low status and disgusting and proof you don't belong inside them.

The most basic rule of the game is you must pretend it doesn't exist.

To achieve my loftiest goals in life it would probably be a lot more effective to lie my ass off and wax poetic about how much I love feeling the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair and the sound of birdies chirping. It would also be a lot more effective to never again talk about power dynamics and status hierarchies in a formalist and reductive way, and instead signal that I find such conversations weird and tasteless and gauche. I'm fairly certain this is what at least 60%-70% of upper middle class guys are doing pretty much constantly on a daily basis.

Fuck that noise.

I could also veer hard in the opposite direction and brand myself King of the Incels while encouraging awkward midstatus guys to lean hard into Asymmetric Maximalism. Honestly job stacking is small potatoes--if I taught Boomers and neckbeards and Indian guys how to reliably fuck college girls on SeekingArrangement I could juice that shit for Andrew Tate money.

But that doesn't feel right either.

To be the man I aim to be I'll need to chart a middle path between these extremes in a way that feels authentic while paying proper deference to tact and diplomacy and artful rhetoric, all of which I value at least as much as authenticity. But by its very nature such a path is far more difficult to tread, as it actually demands you make challenging decisions on a case by case basis, and there's virtually never a clear answer. This lack of cognitive shortcuts means such an approach tends to pay dividends a lot more slowly and a lot less reliably than acting like either Pete Buttigieg or Andrew Tate, which can be done more or less on autopilot.

But to my mind it also seems a lot more sustainable—not to mention significantly less likely to make you want to kill yourself and everyone around you.

---

I've decided I'll walk to Publix to pick up some groceries in person, which I haven't done by myself in years. I've continued to do so with women because there's something quite romantic about grocery shopping with a girl and it feels like an insightful glimpse into your hypothetical married life. But by myself it's hard to see the value add, and ever since it became financially tenable I've mostly used Uber Eats to pay assorted Venezuelans to bring me restaurant food and occasionally groceries from my local Target.

But a few months ago Target stopped carrying my favorite body wash, which includes a very rough abrasive exfoliant I need to feel entirely clean. I’m not a particularly “embodied” person—in fact if I could make all of my body sans hands and penis entirely incorporeal I'd gladly do so—but this is one sensory pleasure to which I ascribe tremendous value and without which my life would become immeasurably worse. There's a sense in which this body wash is my most salient connection to corporeal meatspace, and ensuring I don't lose access to my supply is probably essential to securing my long term mental health.

So with that in mind I set off on my quest.

As I depart my high rise condo through the newly renovated lobby (one cool thing about seldom going outside is whenever I do my building is often visibly different) I remind myself to get that key fob replaced so at long last I can stop relying on the melanated concierge staff to let me up to my unit.

My old fob is somewhere in Texas. I lost it at the airport but couldn't bring myself to care because I'd finally gotten the chance to fuck that frigid polack art hoe I'd been thirsting after for the better part of two years. Unlike my sugar babies I wanted to eat her pussy and marry her because she’s mean to me. But naturally that capped my value at rebound dick and she ended things as I soared back triumphantly across the Gulf of Mexico, after which I continued not to care about the fob, but more because I'm a lazy and disagreeable person who thinks taking care of myself is gay.

I make my way to Publix and note the pleasing absence of homeless black people. The hurricanes always do a good job sweeping them off the street for a few days. Gives you a rare glimpse into what a functional civilization might look like. Covid was the opposite; for a few weeks it was nothing but homeless on the streets and it felt like The Walking Dead.

I wonder why serial killers don't target homeless people more—surely it would be much easier to get away with? After pondering a moment I realize I've answered my own question.

Across the street is my old office building. Technically I only ever entered the place a handful of times because everyone had gone remote a few weeks before I joined thanks to covid (PBUH). That of course worked out splendidly for me, because my AWFL boss botched my onboarding and was too unagentic to give me any real work. I met her in person precisely once—not for anything work related, of course, but to pick up several hundred dollars worth of girl scout cookies I'd purchased from her daughter to create a social debt that would it make it prohibitively awkward for mom to give me a bad performance review.

I walk past the club or bar or whatever it is where my old sugar baby's hapless Bulgarian boyfriend works. I actually met her on the same night he did, coupling with her approximately ninety minutes before him by the fair Amanda's recollection.

She and Boris weren't official until several months thereafter, but once they crossed that bridge I'd been with her nearly as many times as him and certainly wasn't about to give her up. And wanting to play the enlightened polyamorist he of course let her keep seeing me for a few months, but kept imposing all these gay rules on it—no cuddling, no cute dates, etc. I never took these rules seriously, but since she didn't have enough composure to lie to him he eventually demanded we break it off entirely. But she kept cheating all the same, and for a good long while was my most reliable rebound girl whenever my latest relationship fell through, as well as my faithful chauffeur and occasional secretary/maid.

In truth she was more than that. Amanda was probably the closest thing I've had to an IRL friend ever since leaving Nebraska. We had some pretty fun rituals together even totally discounting the sexual aspect. Our rapport was great and the two of us had a very similar level of aggression / sleaze, which made a stable and intimate FWB dynamic unusually tenable in a lifestyle where most women would rather just be a girlfriend or low volume escort.

Unfortunately I couldn't stop fucking her whenever we hung out, and she couldn't stop telling her dumb boyfriend about it, so now he's insisting she can't talk to me anymore (though she intimated he'd be okay with it if I gave her a much higher allowance—clever girl). All’s fair I suppose. But neither of them are the marrying type either and eventually we'll get to hang out again. That will be a lot of fun, because if I'm being honest I really do miss her. Maybe I'll just pay the retard off. But that's probably just giving a mouse a cookie. Have I learned nothing from Hamilton? Far better to let the vine wither until the fruit falls into my lap.

I walk past the black barbershop where I got my hair cut during covid when all the wypipo barbershops were closed down. There's a guy with sunglasses sitting in a chair in front of the building. Is he blind or something? Am I supposed to give him money?

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to get a haircut while I'm out. I actually wanted it cut a few days ago but the New York boomer lady who usually cuts my hair had evacuated the city because of Hurricane Milton—totally unnecessarily, I might add, because it was a giant nothingburger. Or at least that's how it seemed from my richfag high rise with a robust network of backup generators. For all I know it probably rekt a lot of people with real jobs. But all these buildings look entirely intact, so I suspect she was simply taking a much-deserved vacation. I'll wait until she's back and give her the business. She's been my barber for years now and is entitled to it.

Halfway to Publix now.

I approach my old apartment building. Lot of memories here. In some sense it’s where I became a man. In another sense it's where I regressed back into childhood and foreclosed the possibility of following any sort of remotely normal life script.

When I moved back to Florida I had a lot of plans to civilize myself. It was like the beginning of a new semester of grade school when for the first few days you take amazing notes and are relentlessly organized. I started cooking for myself every night and was for the most part quite disciplined about Jordan Peterson type shit. But over time most of that faded away.

The one thing that stayed was a concern for fitness—when I lived here I was in excellent shape. I used to see this Puerto Rican trainer three times a week. He found me annoying at times because he wanted me to do dumb shit like calf raises whereas I just wanted him to spot my bench and ensure my squat/deadlift form was immaculate, but generally it was a productive working relationship. He loved to show me all the insta thots he was hooking up with, including at least one seventeen year old. The dude was in his forties but was also quite short and I kind of saw him as 14, so it didn't seem all that nefarious.

I wasn't deeply entrenched in the asymmetrical lifestyle at this point. Back then I wasn't job stacking so much as leisuremaxxing. I also wasn't juicing SeekingArrangement as aggressively as I did in later years so much as using it to get around the more annoying aspects of conventional dating. Even in my overall mindset I still had one foot in the world of linear high trust life strategies.

But once you get a taste for asymmetry it’s hard not to step on the gas pedal… and as your velocity increases it’s vitally important you take care to remain maneuverable as you round life's corners.

Looking back I'm not sure when the dissociation started in earnest. To some extent it was always there after I got deplatformed and lost all my frens. It got worse when life in Nebraska proved isolating and miserable. Then when my first few relationships here in Florida ended I never really let myself grieve, and after every breakup would numb the pain by jumping into increasingly exaggerated spells of promiscuity. It wasn't long before I no longer felt much of anything.

But I'll not be a morose faggot about it. Things have gotten much better ever since I started my Substack and rebuilt my network of likeminded collaborators. Meanwhile podcasting has more or less broken my sex addiction, which is a nice development.

Hell, in some sense my problem is that I've moved too far away from my old habits. Back in my fuckboy era girls were effectively my primary hobby, and that has a lot of obvious downsides, but it also meant that if I had a serious relationship I’d usually prioritize it and give my sheila the right level of attention. But these days it's quite hard for anything to overtake my Substack in importance.

Again the virtuous middle path proves a bitch to tread.

I reach the lake next to my old apartment. All I need to do now is cut through and I'll be at Publix. Though I briefly consider lapping the lake first. I'm getting a little too fat these days, plus I haven't done so in months and the locale holds no small significance for me. I think of everyone who has completed the circumnavigation at my side. My mom, my dad, my old buddy Dylan… plus Natalie, Kala, Kyla, Lexi, Jess, Amanda, Abigail, Alyssa, Isabel, and probably like ten other girls who would have made fantastic wives.

The other day I observed to the girl I’m currently paying to listen to my problems (this time without any sex involved—is that a sign of maturation or does it just make me a simp? probably both) that there really isn't any coherent pattern to my girl problems that can be defended in some tragic pitiable narrative and I'm sort of just a selfish and lazy person. I expected a pat on the head for this profound and self-aware insight but she saw it as utterly banal: ”We all have that. Virtue consists in choosing a different path.”

Fair enough. But it's not as though the dopaminic response to altruism / industry is evenly distributed throughout the population. Nor is everyone socialized in such a way that they develop healthy and prosocial priors for understanding others’ behavior. For some people it's genuinely a lot easier to be a good person and form healthy bonds.

On the other hand you can just high verbal IQ your way into justifying literally any behavior if that's your angle. Ultimately all that matters is that everyone has their own proclivities and their own boundaries and we're all just looking for our market clearing price. I have no more right to social accomodation of my selfish and lazy nature than a black man has any right to leniency on a calculus test.

So with that in mind it seems the only path forward is to hack my mind into being less selfish and lazy. I need to get my hedonic treadmill back in a decent place so it's easier for me to choose taking bae for froyo over finishing that Substack article.

---

At long last Publix is in view. But to enter the store I need to walk past the crowd of Black Hebrew Israelites in front of the entrance chanting about how they the real Jews.

I attempt to make my way past the gents and into the store so I can retrieve my body wash, but as I attempt to do so a sinister voice shrieks out at me like a hyena.

“HO'D ON WYTE BOI!”

Goddammit.

“I knows this cracka. This be Walt Bismarck! He de peckerwood who made all dem rayciss ass Disney parodies back in the day!”

Wait, wha…

“Now this honkey mothafucka think he some kinda profound intellectual just cause he gots this gay-ass blog where he writes pretentious glorified reddit posts about how da brothas be stupid and it be good when de bitches spread dey legs. But he fatter in real life than in his AI generated thumbnails!”

He pulls a glock out of his sagging pants and sticks in my face.

“Any last words, white boy?”

…

END OF PART 1