Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about airbeds, virginity, fighting bears, and more.
Hey now, Why Your Team Sucks 2024 starts TODAY, and submissions are still open. Get your licks in here and we can kick off training-camp season in the proper frame of mind.
Your letters:
John:
Are Democratic consultants actually as incompetent as they appear to be? Biden’s administration capped credit card late fees, a Trump judge blocked it. Biden’s administration banned non-compete clauses, a Trump judge blocked it. Biden forgave student loans, Supreme Court blocked it. A Trump judge blocked Biden’s program to protect LGBTQ+ students under Title IX. And so on. Why aren’t they putting Democratic politicians on TV every day to bring this up?
I can’t believe I have to say nice things about Democratic leadership, but this is the week for doing just that. Up until this week, it was difficult for them to get much traction on anti-Trump messaging because of Joe Biden, who wasn’t able to make the case himself without having a fully intact saltine drop out of his mouth. That’s why the party, and the money backing it, spent a full month convincing Biden to get out of the paint. They had to get the focus off of Biden’s physical and mental deterioration and back onto Trump being a piece of shit.
I could argue that pushing Biden out now, post-primaries, was ruthless, mean, and unfair. But I NEED Democrats to be ruthless. Making a coordinated effort to shove Bernie out of the primaries in 2020? That was ruthless, and it worked out for the party leadership. Now they are banking on it working out again, and I can't fault them for it.
Because while Kamala Harris isn’t the most natural politician to ever exist, she’s a warm body and she knows how to fuck people up on the debate stage, her current boss foremost among them. Trump is gonna duck that second debate like it’s a process server. He knows he has to actually compete in this election now, and there's nothing he hates more than actually having to work. He's fucked. I still resent the Democrats for a lot of reasons, but in retrospect this feels like one of the canniest political moves of my lifetime, if not the canniest.
We’re all scarred from the past decade and change. We’re all bracing for the worst. But when Biden took himself off the field on Sunday, I felt better about the world than I had in ages. I gave $100 to the Harris campaign faster than you can eat a potato chip, and I wasn’t alone. Unlike Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Dianne Feinstein, Biden decided to sacrifice himself in order to hopefully secure future victories (and prevent future losses). For the first time in a long time, it feels like the gerontocracy in America is loosening its grip on me and every other liberal voter. I feel fucking incredible right now. Alive. FREE. Trump is a historically weak candidate who is also old as shit. Meanwhile, there's real enthusiasm out there for his new opponent, and THAT is what will finish off Trumpism, and the doomerism it engendered, for good. I'm ready. Let's fucking roll.
Michael:
If you locked 50 professional MMA fighters in a room the size of a basketball court, and then released a rampaging Kodiak brown bear in there too, could they kill it?
If you put 50 MMA fighters in a room with a bear, they’d make friends with that bear and train it to say the n-word. Force them to fight that bear and they’d go on Rumble to tell everyone that the namby-pamby Wokeocrats needed a bear to do their dirty work for them.
In all seriousness, yes. They could kill that bear. Fifty grown humans could subdue a LOT of wild animals, strictly because of power in numbers. This would not be a clean victory. The bear would Hugh Glass half the room in the taming process. But provided that everyone is willing to charge the bear at the same time (not a lock if 50 action movie henchmen are assigned to the job), that bear will eventually be overwhelmed. What a goddamn mess that would leave. Conor McGregor has a tiny brain, but pieces of it would still get everywhere.
Mark:
What is the largest animal you think you could kill with your bare hands?
A human being. Maybe a cow, but I’d prefer not to test that idea.
Michael:
As a lifelong mayo enjoyer, I slather it as thick as possible on a bacon and tomato sandwich. But I’ve been experimenting with alternatives for regular sandwiches. What I have so far is A) a sour cream base with lime juice and zest mixed with minced cucumber, B) a cannellini or white kidney bean mash base with pesto and water to thin. Salt and pepper to taste in both. What alternatives do you enjoy or have experimented with? What have you tried that turned out horribly?
Not sure why you’d test out alternatives to mayo if you already like mayo. One of the many problems I endure as a mayo hater is that fact that, when it comes to moistening a sandwich, mayo is often the only game in town. Oil and vinegar don’t always work with the sandwich ingredients, and cheese alone isn’t moist enough. This is a fact that mayo bullies unload on me on a daily basis, but I’d still rather eat a bone-dry sandwich than one that’s been contaminated with a milky white discharge.
Thus, like Michael, I’ve experimented with lubricating alternatives, to varying degrees of success. I haven’t tried using diluted white bean hummus, because that sounds awful. But I have used the following:
- Italian dressing
- Mustard
- Softened butter (ham and butter sandwiches were a staple of my childhood)
- Tzatziki (in deviled eggs)
- Pesto
- Jus
Let’s talk about that last one for a moment. Whenever I see a French dip sandwich on a menu, I pinch my nipples in ecstasy. I have seriously considered traveling to Chicago solely to have a dipped beef. And why is America suddenly horny for birria tacos? That’s right: because it comes with a side of jus. [Rob Schneider voice] I like-a the jus. In fact, I’m disappointed that jus isn’t a more common side condiment across this great country. I want a table of jus with every meal, so that I can dip anything into it: sandwiches, bread, fries, salad … anything. As Kamala Harris’s vice president, I will make this the normalization of jus my top priority.
Also, shoutout to labneh and crema. Other countries know how to make mayo without the mayo. God forbid we follow their example.
Emily:
I need the male perspective on this. In college, I dated this guy who was kinda odd. One night we went to the local pizza place and I ordered a calzone. Not being a big sauce person, I had a substantial amount of marinara sauce in a little plastic cup left (approximately the size of a dixie cup). I went to throw it out, but the boyfriend stopped me and asked, "Are you just going to throw that away?" Then he took the marinara down like a shot. We broke up a few weeks later. Was it because of the marinara shot? Not directly. But if you had taken that out of the equation, I would have had less of a reason to break up with him. It's a moment that baffles me to this day. All of my girlfriends say that's really weird behavior. That was weird, right? Am I overreacting in retrospect here? Was this just normal for a 21-year-old dude?
Shit, I would chief your marinara sauce right now, and I’m not 21 years old anymore. I’m not even your boyfriend. Doesn’t matter. I’ll never let good marinara go to waste. I even eat a few spoonfuls of it right out of the jar before dumping the rest into a saucepan. If that’s weird, I don’t give a shit. I just wanna go to flavor country, and plenty of other guys have the same ambition.
With that in mind, I don’t consider what your ex-boyfriend did to be symptomatic of any larger condition. It just sounds like you didn’t like him, and that your friends had no interest in defending him even if the marinara incident was a dumb thing to get worked up over. If you two weren’t meant to be, you were always going to find some tangential reason to break up with him down the line. That reason just happened to be a tiny-ass cup of marinara sauce. Find a guy you truly love and you won’t be as prickly about his bro-ier habits. You’ll still find them annoying, but they won’t be a dealbreaker. Ask my wife! She’s caught me eating that marinara right out of the jar, and we’re still married to this day! Amazing.
Chris:
My wife and I are in our late 30s. She typically falls asleep on the couch around 9:00 p.m., which means I need to find a movie to play on very low volume with closed captioning. Right now Fury Road has become my go-to for films to watch very quietly. Do you have any other suggestions?
I am biologically incapable of watching Fury Road without the volume set to punishing levels. I need the vrooms. To watch that movie discreetly feels like a direct insult to George Miller. So if I have to watch something on low volume or mute, it’s not gonna be a kickass action movie, and certainly not one I’ve seen before. It’s gonna be something that isn’t adversely affected by the lack of sound. That means sports, especially ones that aren’t football. I’ll watch a regular season basketball game on mute no problem, occasionally goosing the volume if it’s a clutch moment, or if the crowd just erupted after a fat-ass dunk.
I might also watch a TV show, but my wife makes mom sounds anytime she sees violence or boobs on the screen, so even then I prefer to go downstairs for a more private screening. I’m assuming Chris here doesn’t have the luxury of a second TV, so he has to resort to less appealing options. If I were you, Chris, I’d just watch TV on my laptop, with headphones on. Or I’d tell my wife to get up and go to bed so that I can watch TV the way I want to. She might kick me if I do this (and in fact, has), but it’d be worth it.
Michael:
If someone took you hostage and demanded a ransom for your return, who would pay it and what would be the maximum they would pay?
My wife would pay it, and she’d empty out all of our accounts to pay it. Please don’t get any ideas from this answer. It’s not like she’d enjoy having to bail me out of Buffalo Bill’s hostage pit.
HALFTIME!
Derek:
When I was a kid, the birthday boy or girl would always open all the presents their friends brought to the party while everyone sat around a big table waiting to eat cake. Real brutal moment for the other kids and parents. Now I have a kid with a busy birthday party schedule and I’ve never seen presents opened during the party. In fact, presents from other kids are often actively discouraged. What are some other moments of positive cultural learning that we can share? I also think arena concerts and stadiums have gotten much better at reducing lines.
No one under the age of 60 makes a voice call unless they’ve either just been in a car accident or need the Capitol locked down to prevent a hillbilly invasion. Going by my daughter and her boyfriend, men are no longer expected (nor do they expect) to pick up every check. Online chat support is now widely available and is far less torturous than phone support. Schools often let you retake tests if you fuck up. And tuna casserole is no longer acceptable as a family dinner option. Those are all signs of true progress in American etiquette. Oh, and homosexuality is no longer just a sitcom gag. That’s pretty cool.
Certain products are improving too, namely airbeds. This is an odd time for me to sing the praises of airbeds, because I had to spend all Friday night trying and (failing) to sleep on one that had a hole in it. I was already sleeping with one eye open, because I was in a rehab room with my old man and making sure he was all good. But then I had to deal with my bed slowly wilting into the floor. “Fuck me” played on a loop on my head from roughly 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. Anytime I got back down into the bed after taking a piss, the sides popped up on me like I was a fat dude in a cartoon sitting on a vulnerable, unsuspecting couch. Not the greatest night of my life.
And yet it did nothing to hurt my enthusiasm for modern airbeds. I spent years, if not decades, sleeping on airbeds that were not only leaky, but a true pain in the balls to set up. To blow the mattress up, you had to affix a fucking leaf blower to it. To put the mattress away, you had to open the valve and then roll the air out of the thing, like toothpaste still stuck in a tube of Crest. All for a bed that wasn’t even all that comfortable when it worked right. Fast forward to today and there are airbeds that have headboards and pillow tops. To inflate them, all you gotta do is plug one in, turn the knob to INFLATE, and off it goes. They even give you firmness settings to calibrate how much air you want the bed to take in. Then you wake up in the morning, turn the knob the DEFLATE, and you’re done. This is a goddamn miracle. If I’d been born in 2000, I wouldn’t have purchased an actual bed frame until marriage.
Zach:
I just turned 33 today. To my great shame and embarrassment, I have never had sex. I’m not even 100% sure if I am attracted to women or men (or maybe both?), since I have never had a romantic experience with anyone of either gender. At this point I feel like the old dog who can't learn new tricks, and that I am destined to wander the Earth a hopeless virgin. The longer I wait to put myself out there due to fear and embarrassment, the more awkward it becomes and the less I want to try. As someone who had a relatively late start in the sex game, any advice on what I can do? Is there any way to push through this? I did attend a few therapy sessions, but the onus is still on me to take the initiative if I really want to experience sex.
I’m tempted to go the full Biloxi Blues and hire a professional to help you out with this, because I was exactly in your headspace from ages 11 to 20. If a got a date with a girl back then, it was a roaring success. Getting a kiss, much less sex, felt like a million miles away. I worried I’d never find anyone, and that I’d die alone. In retrospect, this is somewhat amusing. “Here lies Drew: he never scored.” But it was dead serious at the time. I didn’t even want love. I just wanted to see a girl naked. I thought real hard about paying for the privilege, but I didn’t have the funds, and it felt like cheating.
My friends all sympathized, and thought of a way to split the baby. They took me to a strip club in New Haven called Backdoor Johnny’s, which is where I saw a woman undressed for the first time. The stripper knew I was a virgin just by looking at me and said "AWWWWWW." That was me, the “You’re so sweet!” loser, even in the dumpiest strip club you could ever imagine walking into. Not the way I had envisioned reaching that milestone, but sometimes life forces the issue. The stripper took my dollar and moved onto the next guy.
Zach, you are not alone in being alone. While I managed to cobble together a love life for myself toward the end of college, there are still plenty of other people out there right now who are still looking, and still despairing. The fact that you can meet people online in 2024 only makes the sense of failure more acute than it does boost your hopes. It’s not hard to find other single people, so why can’t I find one of them that likes me? Is there something wrong with me? Why does everyone hate me? I know that thought pattern well. A lot of people do. You allow your loneliness define your self-image, and that it turn puts you into an even deeper hole with romantic prospects who are looking for someone a little more confident. To fix that, you need to think about what you like about yourself, and then live in that space as much as you can. Then you’re more than just an available body. You’re a whole person, one whom other people might naturally gravitate toward.
But only if you’re around, physically speaking. The nation’s much-ballyhooed loneliness epidemic has been the result of isolation: people retreating into the digital space and never stepping outside. That’s how you end up fucking your phone twice a day and never getting a date. You have to do things, go places, and meet people, and you have to do all of that without getting laid being the priority. That’s counterintuitive if you’re hard up, but I swear it works better than open thirst.
Alternatively, find another single Defector reader. You guys could bond over Wings Week.
Amanda:
What’s the latest you’ve peaced out on a book? Like, have you ever chucked a book you were 90% of the way through? If so, what was it, and why did you put it down?
I’ve never bailed on a book that far in. I think the latest I’ve gone is somewhere around 6 percent (for Augustine Sedgwick’s Coffeeland, which is very good but punishingly bleak). But if I’m almost done with a book, I’m finishing it. I wouldn’t have made it that far otherwise, and I’ve never had a moment toward the end of a book where I was like OH THAT IS THE LAST STRAW! I’ve never thrown a book across a room. I’m told that the ending of The Hike caused a few readers to do exactly that, but that was more of a OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE DREW PULLED THAT ENDING OFF than I FUCKING HATE THIS THING. I think. Don’t tell me if I’m mistaken.
Michael:
Would you get a tattoo from a tattoo artist who has no visible ink? And how many tattoos would you need to see before the question doesn't at least cross your mind?
I swear to you that the thought probably wouldn’t cross my mind. If I ever got a tattoo, I’d be way more thorough about the work that artist has done on other people, and what kind of cool designs they might be able to offer my epidermis. If they themselves had a bunch of ink that looked like shit, that might give me pause. But if they had clean skin, I’d be like, Oh wow, they’re probably so particular about their work that they only have a tattoo on their inner asscheek.
I have secondhand experience here, because my daughter got her first tattoo in London a few months ago. I made sure she’d researched the artist thoroughly beforehand (translation: I asked her many times if she liked the artist and she said yes), and the girl promised me that they could pull off the exact design she wanted. She was correct. She came back to the Airbnb sporting not one tattoo, but two. Both tasteful. My wife cried the whole night, but was over it by the next day. How she reacts when I get Dallas Turner’s jersey numbers and nameplate inked onto my back will be another matter.
Email of the week!
Brandon:
In the years leading up my marriage, I put on weight. After the birth of my first daughter, I made several lifestyle changes (read: stopped eating out daily and curbed the constant, heavy drinking), and that weight started coming off. By her first birthday, I had dropped from a peak of 210 back down to 170. But one of the side effects was that my fingers had also thinned out and my wedding ring was now quite loose. And of course I ignored my wife's admonishments about getting it resized until one day, poof, it was gone.
How long had it been missing? I had no idea. It's not like keys or a wallet, where you can at least narrow the time frame down to when you last used them. I was pretty sure I’d had the ring the day prior, but I couldn't be certain. I tore the house apart: bathrooms, kid's room, play room, trash bags, garbage disposal, compost bin, sofa cushions, microwave, fridge, etc. It turns out rings are small, so every nook is a suspect. I had no luck. Earlier that day I’d taken my daughter to the nearby park. There was a lot of walking around and pushing of swings and climbing of tubes. It must have been there, buried somewhere among the woodchipped grounds.
So I drove 45 minutes to a Dick's Sporting Goods and bought a metal detector. Now I'm not sure if you've ever walked around a park full of parents and small children as the lone middle-aged man wielding a giant metal detector, but believe me when I tell you it's exactly as awkward as you'd think. There I was, just swinging that long, stupid wand back and forth waiting for beeps. If I got close to any parents, I'd mutter a quick explanation. They just stayed away. There was the occasional false positive from a coin or structural beam, and I would drop to my knees and futilely dig around a bit. I combed the whole park twice. Nothing. I came back later that evening when it was empty to try again. Nothing.I gave up. I considered buying a replacement ring, but it didn't feel right. So I just let it go and moved on.
Six months later, I'm hanging with my daughter who's playing with some of the toys she hadn't quite grown into before. And sitting at the bottom of the big box of Duplo Legos is my goddamn ring. I got it resized the next day. Then put on 10 lbs, just to be safe.
I always put on 10 pounds just to be safe. Need that blubber shield.
