Boomers, pt. 7: Swingers
(Finally!)
While my friends and I (the guys from the pub in ep. 1, who go to a different school so you wouldn’t know them, etc.) were discussing all this stuff (i.e. the “phones=bad” stuff covered throughout this series, of which I’ll link the most recent installment in case you want a refresher),
we saw that a couple had taken the table next to our booth and begun to play chess (with a full-size set that they’d either brought themselves or had borrowed from the bar, which I didn’t even know was an option). They each had a glass of wine, and were speaking to each other in low, respectful voices as they took their turns. It was all very refined, very dignified. They looked the part, too, both middle aged but in good shape (quite lean, so runners maybe); they clearly looked after themselves and presented well. She was petite, and quite pretty; he wasn’t much bigger, and kind of looked like that one tech-bro guy (who’s definitely not mentally ill!) who’s turned his life into a science experiment, the sole aim of which being to see how long he can live. His every second, every calorie, every movement are all tracked and managed and optimized.
(I didn’t know botox and lip filler and waxing every hair follicle below your eyebrows contributed to longevity… the more you know! It’s kind of funny to think there’s thousands of old fat leathery Greek guys around the Mediterranean smoking a pack a day and eating nothing but olives and feta who’re gonna outlive him by 25 years. Opa!)
Anyway, tech-bro-lookalike’s wife leant over towards us and, smiling, asked if she “could be so bold as to interrupt.”
“By all means,” we said.
“Sorry, it’s just that we couldn’t help but overhear your conversation - about how technology affects the brain, the impact social media has on young people, and all of that. Funnily enough, that’s one of our main areas of expertise.
Our ears perked up. “Is that right? What do you guys do?”
“Well,” she said - and I could tell she was happy I asked - “I’m a practitioner of hemoglobin-centric immuno-therapeutic neuropathology, specializing in macronutritional biophysiology, and my husband is a professor and practitioner of psychobiological chemical-gastro-telepathy.”
(This is how I heard it, at least; I’m giving the best approximation I can.)
My friends and I nodded along, as if we were well abreast of goings on in those fields.
She continued: “And I have three young sons - 13, 16, and 18 - so this technology issue is something I think about a lot.”
“And how do you manage it all?”
“Oh - simple. I don’t let them anywhere near it. Not until they’re 18. At 13 or so, they can have a simple flip phone for emergencies, but only when they’re at school or out of the house. Around the house, I take it away. It’s just too damaging.”
I smirked at my buddies: an unspoken “Told you so.” How thrilling! What were the chances - [what sounded like] some of the worlds’ leading scientists were backing up my claims and suspicions to the letter. I knew I was on the right side of history. Had things ended there, the night could only have been classified as a roaring success. Alas…
Intrigued, one of my friends then asked if they’d like to join us at our table.
“Oh,” she said, “absolutely. If you don’t mind.”
As they stood up, we scooched over to make room. Before sitting down with us in our booth, however, they paused, and began to perform some sort of ritual. They first shared a quick embrace, during which he murmured something (inaudible to us) into her ear. She nodded. He then assumed a T-pose (arms outstretched, palms facing down), with his eyes closed, chin tilted slightly upwards. It was at this point I noticed his necklace, which was a walnut-sized crystal on a piece of twine. He also had a few different rings on; some were signets, others had more crystals of various colors. All looked like stage props, but even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have rung true: he was wearing a plain long sleeve shirt, chinos, and running shoes - standard “vanilla runner dad” clothes - so the “chakra crystals” were always going to be a little incongruous. I got the strong impression she’d helped dress him.
He then started to breathe deeply, with great intent, as if he was gearing up to release a full-throated, window-vibrating, sinus-clearing, chakra-resetting “OMMMMM.” Something akin to a deep-sea humpback whale call (a distressed mother, perhaps, calling to her pod for help or struggling to give birth.)
But the blast of sound didn’t come - which I think the three of us onlookers found more than a little disappointing. Oh well. As his wife stood, facing him, she then pressed down on his left hand. He resisted, what looked to be quite firmly; jaw clenched, lips pressed firmly together, trying to stay as level as possible. She then did the same for his other hand. They then stood face to face, eyes closed, and did some more breath work for another thirty seconds or so. I’m sure the three of us would have caught each other’s eyes, had our gazes not been utterly riveted onto the little tantric performance to which we were being treated. It was all very controlled, mechanical, rehearsed. It was abundantly clear that this was not their first rodeo. After this final breath-work/cool-down phase, the couple then “awoke,” and sat down as if nothing had happened.
“Sorry,” she said, smirking, “that’s just a little thing we have to do every once in a while, so that we can re-center and re-balance. I don’t need it myself as much anymore, but Anthony still struggles, so I help him whenever he needs.”
We looked at Antony, who gave her a sheepish little smile. I then noticed he was wearing one of those “earth balance” bracelets that were big a few years ago, the ones with “magnetically charged iron or copper” and with the little capsules of “Ionically Enhanced™ water extracted straight from the north/south pole.” (I remember seeing them in duty free magazines on the plane, next to the neck pillows and 3D models of whatever Boeing model you were on.”)
The glacier water thing was always tough for me to take seriously, because it reminds me of The Waterboy, where he shows Vicki Vallencourt his special vial of glowing, perpetually-cold Alaskan glacier water that’d supposedly been “blessed by an Eskimo.”
I noticed that our chakrally-imbalanced friend was also wearing at least two others like this one:
“So,” one of us asked, once they’d settled into the booth and we’d recovered from our shock, “how’d you guys meet?”
“Well,” she said, smiling coyly, “that’s a very personal question.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“But I’d be happy to tell you the story,” she said, “…if you really want to know.”
“Please.” (It was quite clear that we had no choice.)
“Well, alright then, but be warned - it’s quite intense. I’ve been through quite a lot.”
The [now re-centered] husband nodded, ruefully, as if just the thought of her troubled past got him choked up. She began:
“My ex-husband and I lived out in the countryside. I’d had my three sons, but then something happened. I was struck down. Extreme fatigue. Nausea. I couldn’t get up, exercise, do anything without feeling faint or queasy. I went to dozens of doctors and health clinics. Nobody could figure out what was wrong. I had blood work done, scans, sleep tests, everything. It all came back clean. Nobody knew what to do. I was bed-ridden for seven years…. But then, one evening, a friend convinced me to go see a man who was giving a talk at a conference nearby. He was a very handsome, very charming, very brilliant man who was an expert on neural pathways and toxins and internal biomes.”
At this last bit, she smirked and looked over at her blushing lover, who was back to looking down into his lap.
“After meeting him, I felt reborn. I went home feeling like I finally had the tools to get better. I began to do my own research. The big pharmaceutical companies are set on doing things their own way. They don’t want to hear that independent voices like us are making all sorts of discoveries about how the body works. They [Big Pharma] don’t even have tests for some of the things Antony talks about. Can you believe that? Turns out, micro-toxins - lead and other things like that - had accumulated in my body, and all this buildup was blocking my neural synapses. I decided to look into it, and discovered that our house’s pipes hadn’t been updated in decades - which means there was a good chance they had all sorts of lead and rust and other contaminants. So even when I would take a bath, my body would absorb the poison by osmosis. I was none the wiser. Can you imagine?”
“No, I can’t. How horrible. So was your husband sick then, too?”
“Well, no. Because he was never home, working all the time, traveling. So, he wasn’t ever exposed to the water for long enough for the toxins to build up, you see. That’s the cruel irony of it. His obsession with work not only killed our marriage… but it almost killed me.”
Antony, who was still looking down into his lap, scowled, and chuckled to himself under his breath. His jaw was clenched, and he was shaking his head; it was as if he was coaxing himself count to ten to let the rage die down. I couldn’t see his hands, but I had a feeling they were balled into white-knuckled fists beneath the table. I felt for his drywall at home, which surely got used for “stress relief” (i.e. got the frat-house/punching-bag treatment.)
I got the feeling this part, the “backstory” was also a performance they gave often (in fairness, countless other self-satisfied couples do the same sort of thing): as she spoke, he mouthed certain bits/punchlines he knew by heart, smiling and chuckling to himself at all the right times. He made sure to look sad/reflective/supportive as needed, and nodded whenever she said something like “Isn’t that right, darling?”
“What about your sons? I’m sure they suffered, too.”
“Well, actually they didn’t get sick because they were still young at the time - they still had their neuro-plasticity. And obviously they were at school a lot, doing sports and things, so they weren’t home as much. So they were spared the worst of it.”
“Oh, okay. Well, that’s a silver lining, I guess. They could help you when they were around the house. Still, things must have been tough for you during Covid - you know, if you had a compromised immune system from all those years of toxins and stuff in your synapses. I’m sure you had to be really careful.”
She scoffed. “Ha. As if I was going to trust a government and pharmaceutical industry that had LEFT ME FOR DEAD for the past ten years. They refused to help me find a cure for my illness, so I wasn’t going to play their little game.”
“Sorry - what game?”
“Pretending there was anything I needed to worry about. That game. For all I know, it was their vaccines that helped caused my sickness in the first place. Lesson learned. None of my children are vaccinated, and Covid wasn’t going to change that.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
She leaned in, pleased with our apparent sympathy. “It’s so nice to be in ‘safe circles’ like this one,” she said. Lowering her voice, she continued, “…where we can talk about real issues. Things like the plan-demic.”
I waited for her to wink; smirk; anything. I’d never heard anyone say this unironically before. To be honest, it was kind of thrilling, like seeing a supposedly extinct animal in the wild, or something. (If anyone up there is listening, I’d like to hear “scam-demic” live, too, before I kick the bucket - that, and lame-stream media.)
On this occasion, though, we didn’t get into the scam-demic stuff. I could see she wanted to get back to her spiel; all these questions were slowing her down. It was clear we were to accept all of this as empirical data. This was a “safe circle,” after all; certainly no place for cynicism/skepticism (directed at one another, that is. Skepticism towards Big Pharma or The Government was obviously kosher).
She carried on with her life story: she divorced the neglectful husband, she told us, and whisked herself and the kids away to a place with better water, before embarking on a recovery journey to cleanse her synapses and get back to living a dynamic, active life. This took her another seven (7!) years. (For those keeping track, that’s 14 years lost to suffering/healing from a nameless, impossibly rare ailment which, incidentally, sounded like it manifested almost identically to “general depression.” A tragic coincidence, diagnostically speaking).
Once she was back on her feet, she reached back out to her guru [her Antony, who’d calmed down and was gazing at her lovingly], who was doing another speaking tour at the time, and was soon going to be in town. Luckily, he’d just gotten divorced, too, and was more than happy to meet up with her after the show for a drink. One thing led to another, and they were married soon afterwards.
We then got a quarter-hour lecture, this one delivered by him, with her playing the willing side-kick. Although I guess it was closer to 51/49, power-dynamic-wise: she still answered any and all questions we had, instructed him what to talk about next, and reminded him if he’d forgotten to add any detail or statistic (about the various holistic health techniques, up-and-coming breakthroughs/studies, etc.).
Eventually, one of us asked “What brought you two here?” (At some point, they’d mentioned they lived an hour away, out in the countryside.)
“Well, we needed a break, so we came into the city. We like to rent an airbnb for a couple of nights every few months to… freshen things up. To meet some new people, try some new things.”
This was it!! I was positive they were about to ask at least one of us if we wanted to come back and check out their apartment, come up for a tea/coffee/nightcap: “It’s only a couple of blocks away… come on! Antony makes a mean martini. We really, really like your vibe. You won’t have to do anything with my husband, if you don’t want - just with me. He prefers to watch, in fact. He says it helps keep his neural synapses unclogged, and his chakras balanced. He’s quite insistent about it, actually - aren’t you honey? [He blushes and looks down at his feet.] Aww, look, he’s shy.”
Sadly, an “after-party” invitation didn’t come, although I’m certain it would have had we stayed for even one more drink. From a ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ~purely journalistic~ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) perspective, I regret not hanging in there a little longer to see what would’ve happened. But the child-having friend had to go, and since it was a weeknight the third guy and I decided to head off, too, and thus say goodbye to our new friends.
Oh, well. So maybe burying the swingers lede for this long was a little bit click-baity. But I really do feel there was a nugget of truth. But let’s not dwell on it; there’s a more important takeaway here:
In our earlier installments, we talked about some of the other subgroups I also had to be wary of once I’d acquitted myself of any boomer allegations [for my “phones=bad” stance]. Namely: attention seeking Contrarians; folks who get off on performing their non-conformity (i.e. the guy who stands by the drinks table at a party just so that he can tell you he doesn’t drink; or the guy who brings a book to a pub desperate for someone to comment on how quirky and different he is).
We also covered the Boot-Lickers; folks who side with the “phones = young people = bad Boomers” in supplication, as an attempt to suckle at Master’s teat. (One thinks of the Plover bird who cleans the alligator’s teeth, or the Remora fish who suctions onto the whale’s underbelly waiting for scraps.) They know where their bread is buttered.
What I failed to account for, on the pub night in question at least, was the existence of another group. Based on the chess players’ appearance, demeanor, and their impressive-sounding qualifications, I trusted that they were neither attention-starved Contrarians, nor Boomer Sphincter-Lickers. I was lulled into a false sense of security. And for that, I hold my hand up.
Sure enough, when I later looked these “practitioners” up on the website they gave us, I learned that despite all their impressive-sounding qualifications, neither of them actually had anything close to an official medical degree. Nada. (So keep that in mind if you hear anyone call themselves a “practitioner” - it could mean anything.)
Just when you think you’ve found some safe ground and found some worthy, respectable allies, you realize you’re actually in bed (almost literally, in this case!) with the “Scam-demic”/“I concoct my own homeopathic medicines, thank you very much.”/Flat-Earther crowd. Welp. Back to square one. If we look at it this way, fighting the good fight isn’t worth the trouble.
Maybe, though, it’s worth thinking of that evening as a parable: teaming up with the Swingers (/flat-earthers/boot-lickers/drinks-table guys/et. al) is just something we’re going to have to come to terms with. As romantic as the idea might be of forming a coalition whose other members’ ideals/moral compasses are all “impeccable” (from our point of view), it’s never going to happen. We’re going to have to figure out how to cooperate - even just temporarily! - with people who may disagree with us on fundamental issues (or even basic facts). This may mean, in my [iPad-kids=bad] case: standing arm in arm - with the crystal-wearers, if that’s what’s called for.
But this will also require that we be realistic about what our core values actually are; what are the non-negotiables, and what can be put on the back burner. (And I’m not talking about whipping the votes in a self-righteous, transparently cynical way, such as the “YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR BIDEN OTHERWISE YOU’RE A TRUMP-LOVING RACIST” argument as discussed in our Hillary post.)
![[almost president] [though not as "almost" as longtime friend of the Jackuzzi, Al Gore] Hillary Clinton gives us some timely, thoughtful advice](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F78194f80-d32e-490c-b8bb-5d58f731f4fa_1024x1024.webp)
So long as my neighbor and I agree that everyone should have food, shelter, and water guaranteed, for example, is it really worth shaming/alienating him for his other, potentially questionable interests/beliefs? The quicker we can figure out how to do this, the better; the people on the other side [of the “shelter/water=basic human rights” argument, for example] figured out how to align their interests and set aside religious/cultural differences in pursuit of their larger goals long ago.
Hmmm… What will our (jackuzzi/phones=bad) version of those meetups look like, I wonder? Luckily, we don’t have to imagine it. I commissioned a local artist to do a couple of mock-ups:
…But it’s not all work and no play. Here’s us unwinding at the post-War Room VIP afterparty:
