Receipts
How do I know we're writing our own futures? I kept the receipt.
Welcome to The Experiment, where we, unlike Matt Gaetz, are happy to find old receipts. Robin Whetstone has a crazy travel story about the time she was the only passenger who wasn’t with the band, and Jack Hughes has a surprising theory about who might challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic Party nomination in 2024.
As always, we remember who we’ve lost (3,600 health care workers) and offer recommendations on what to do (showing up for racial justice in the workplace), read (how Black culture becomes White resentment), watch (30 Rock), and listen to (Benny Sings).
And if you want to support The Experiment, check out our merch, and if you’re new here, consider signing up for a free subscription.
But first, did I tell you about the receipt I found in my pocket?
Recently, I started a new job for the local school district. I was excited about the challenge and the mission. I would be leading a big team and helping a school district during a historically challenging time for public education in a city undergoing extraordinary growth. This would be hard. I liked that.
More immediately, I would be commuting to an office again, which meant wearing office clothes again. Dress shoes and belts. Fitted shirts and neckties. Wrist watches and tie bars. Sport coats and slacks. Some look ahead to a return to office and dread the requirements of business attire, but the prospect of buttoning the cuffs of a dress shirt excited me. Tightening a tie around my neck has never felt like a noose. A suit has never seemed confining. I love all of it.
I had an outfit picked out, but when I put the tie on I realized it would not fit under the collar of the new shirt I’d bought. I didn’t want to be late on my first day, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax and focus if I was bothered by what I was wearing. Adrenaline surged, and sweat popped out on my forehead. Obviously, I managed. Pants. Shirt. Tie. And a trusty blue and gray plaid jacket.
It was a receipt for lunch on February 20, 2020.
Sometime that morning I stuck my hand into the right pocket and pulled out a receipt. Did you ever see Somewhere in Time, the romantic time travel movie starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour? There’s a scene when Reeve’s character reaches into his suit in 1912 and pulls out a penny from 1979, and he’s immediately pulled out of the past and into the present day. It happened the other way with me. The receipt yanked me out of an intensely focused present into a hazy past.
It was a receipt for lunch at a restaurant downtown on February 20, 2020. I used to meet people there often, and I couldn’t be sure who I had lunch with, but the amount was north of $50, well more than two people need. It was probably that time I took a junior staffer to lunch with my friend Emily, a big deal journalist. Maybe, I couldn’t be sure. I could see ink through the faded paper. There was writing on the other side. Maybe I’d written some names down to justify expensing the lunch later.
There was a name, but it wasn’t of anyone I knew or had any memory of.
“Letter to the lady of the house,” read the note. “Richard Bausch.”
A memory more faded than the printing on the receipt rose in my memory. Emily and I had discussed this newsletter. I cringed at the memory of bragging about open rates. Perhaps, I guessed, a letter that this Richard Bausch wrote to his wife reminded Emily of my newsletter. Because of course this was a clue to some flattering truth about me. When I googled “Letter to the lady of the house” and “Richard Bausch,” a post on Medium, a bougie blogging platform, came up. Medium and Substack are more similar than different. This was about my newsletter!
Now, some of you are reading this and marveling at my ignorance. Just keep the reveal to yourself and don’t ruin it for everyone. The letter, which I’ve included below in the featured readings this week, was written during a sleepless night from an old man considering ending a long and recently unhappy marriage. It’s an extraordinary letter in which he traces the change of a treasured cousin’s once-happy marriage into one filled with intimate alienation.
The trouble was simply that whatever she had once loved in him she had stopped loving. And for many, many years before he died, she’d felt only suffocation when he was near enough to touch her, only irritation and anxiety when he spoke.
She said all this and then looked at me, her cousin, who had been fortunate enough to have children and to be in love over time and said, “John, how have you and Marie managed it?”
But had they? “Lately we’ve been more like strangers than husband and wife,” he wrote, describing a truly inane, petty argument that had led to “an evening of mutual disregard” marked by “this feeling of being trapped together.” The only happiness remaining in the marriage were memories of better times. In place of a happy ending or even a shadow of hope, Bausch leaves his wife with the tired acceptance of the consequences.
My wife and I are one of those annoying couples that clearly still adores each other.
My wife and I are one of those annoying couples that clearly still adores each other after more than a decade of marriage. The other evening she was pacing the living room to get her steps in, and she started to dance with playful charisma. I could only stare in helpless wonder. But sometimes I catch myself parroting inanities to fill silence. “That’s a pretty bush” is a sentence I uttered during a walk some months ago. Could our love sour like milk. Does our happiness come with a secret “best by” date? The idea terrified me. After weeks of preoccupation about what my new job would entail and what I would wear, my whole mental landscape was cleared but for one thought: What if my happiness was behind me? Could I really fall out of love with my wife?
Then I noticed the tags at the bottom of the letter: “aging,” “birthday,” and “relationships.”
Also: “short story” and “fiction.”
A quick and admittedly belated search confirmed Bausch’s status as a novelist. It wasn’t an actual letter, of course, but a short story. The illusion fell away, and reality reasserted itself. I might not be able to predict the future, but I could darn sure create it. Sonia and I didn’t end up together; we affirmatively made vows, said “I do,” and are intentionally living happily ever after.
Initially after accepting this job, I was filled with anxiety. I punished myself with worries about being forced out of my cocooned quarantine routine and thrown into traffic, into the pressures and visibility of public service. But I didn’t end up in this job; I applied for this, interviewed, and took the offer. What I wear and how I present myself to the world is also a conscious choice. There is no hidden novelist putting me through a series of obstacles like a character in a story, or if there is I am the novelist, writing my own plot.
We are writing our own lives, and the rest of the book is blank. The only mystery is how many pages are left. Over the next few months, as we become immune to the plague, we’re all going to have to make choices about how to relate to the world again. We might not always like the results, but they’ll be our choices.
Air Efx
by Robin Whetstone
Robin Whetstone, the Pride of Athens, once had a surprising plane ride from Athens to Jacksonville with Das Efx, the seminal hip hop troupe. She was the only passenger on the plane who wasn’t part of the band, but by the time they landed, she had an entourage.
Biden Should Expect the Unexpected
by Jack Hughes
The idea that Joe Biden has not ruled out running for re-election should surprise no one, and neither should someone running against him for the nomination. But exactly who Jack Hughes thinks might challenge Biden for the Democratic Party nomination might shock you.
Who we’ve lost
3,600 health care workers in the U.S.
3 million people worldwide
How we’re getting through this
Braising kapama
Identifying as Democrats
Considering “smart brevity”
Not looking at the scoreboard (h/t Rowley)
Showing up for racial justice in the workplace (h/t Ali)
What I’m reading
Richard Bausch: “Letter to the Lady of the House” - Breathtaking story.
It’s exactly 20 minutes to midnight, on this, the eve of my 70th birthday. And I’ve decided to address you, for a change, in writing, odd as that might seem. I’m perfectly aware of how you’re going to take the fact that I’m doing this at all, so late at night with everybody due to arrive tomorrow and the house still unready. I haven’t spent almost five decades with you without learning a few things about you that I can predict and describe with some accuracy. Though I admit that, as you put it, lately we’ve been more like strangers than husband and wife.
Lyn Lenz: “Meditations on Axios’s smart brevity longform” - Am I doing more thinking about Smart Brevity than is necessary for an adult? Yes. Yes I am.
Axios has also received criticism of the smart brevity format, which is supposed to “get rid of all the shit that’s distracting” about other journalism. All “the shit that’s distracting” is, apparently, paragraphs and complex sentences.
Clyde McGrady: “The strange journey of ‘cancel,’ from a Black-culture punchline to a White-grievance watchword” - This is worth knowing.
“Cancel” and “woke” are the latest terms to originate in Black culture only to be appropriated into the White mainstream and subsequently thrashed to death.
Dan Zak: “Goodbye to Gate 35X, cursed portal to the rest of America” - I wish I had not read this so I could read it all over again for the first time.
Washington loves to complain, to pile on, to obsess about problems in order to feel above them. Our time is too sacred to be bused to a plane, only to be bused back when a mechanical difficulty is discovered. We cannot be bothered, when maybe a good bothering is what we need.
What I’m watching
I needed something to watch when I worked out, so for the first time I’m watching 30 Rock all the way through. When it was on originally, I’d dip in and out of the show. It hasn’t aged well but remains as joke-dense as I remembered.
What I’m listening to
A few weeks ago, I featured Benny Sings trippy collab with Mac Demarco, “Rolled Up.” The rest of the album, Music, dropped today, and it’s nothing at all like that song. Music is funky yacht rock. It sounds like a very chill pool party, and I’m here for it.
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If your new year’s resolution was to lose weight, try Noom, and you’ll quickly learn how to change your behavior and relationship with food. This app has changed my life. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works.
Headspace is a meditation app. I’ve used it for a couple years and am absolutely shocked at how much it’s taught me about managing my inner life. Try it free for a couple weeks. Don’t worry if you’ve never done it before. They talk you through it.
I now offer personal career coaching sessions through Need Hop.
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Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself comes out June 8 from Penguin Random House. There is no better way to support this book than to pre-order a copy. You’re going to love reading what really happened at the Alamo, why the heroic myth was created, and the real story behind the headlines about how we’re all still fighting about it today.
