American Isolation

[Philadelphia, 6/4/13]

On 2/5/22, a reader, Troy, left a comment:

I’ve been living alone in a subsidized apartment on a subsidized pension due to a severe tick born illness. This happened to coincide with COVID, so it’s been weird to say the least. I’ve never experienced this much isolation before and have always considered myself a loner. At times, this is flat out neurological torture and I can feel the lack of personal interaction to my core. I’m blessed to recognize this. I don’t have a t.v. and have recovered enough to walk again in order to relax and think better. I’d rather be back in a shelter with other men than alone in this apartment. The isolation is killing me and I know it.

JustPlainBill responded:

I, too, always considered myself a bit of a loner, and at work I interacted with people all day long for most of my career. But then I retired, a couple of years before COVID began, and although I had some time to get used to having far fewer people around, the difference now is stark. I used to laugh at people who went back to meaningless jobs just because they couldn’t stand being at home, and couldn’t wait to get away from the workaday world. But although I’ve never been even a little bit tempted to go back to work, I now I understand a lot better why some might feel that way.

I’d say most Americans know all too well that predicament. They are among the loneliest people on earth.

When I moved to Philadelphia in 1982, just shy of my 19th birthday, I noticed personal ads for the first time. Like any young prick still vain enough to think he’ll never sink that low, I thought they were amusing, but listen, dumbshit, there’s always another subbasement with your name stenciled on a dark, corner bunk with a stone hard pillow, so go ahead and laugh!

In the City Paper and Welcomat, nearly all the lonely hearts were above 40. Gradually, though, the ages dipped, and the ads became much more numerous, so that, by 2005 or so, there were 21-year-old men and women advertising for companionship, and these weren’t tinder type sex ads. Sick of doing everything alone, the untouched and unlooked at sufferers just wanted anyone to adore and laugh with, if only for a season.

In Philly, I had an apartment in a rather grim rowhouse. Thousands were cheaply built in the early decades of the 20th century, to absorb immigrants from Europe. My two windows looked into a small concrete courtyard that had a BMW belonging to the owner’s son, Elio, who lived in the next building.

Unlike his younger brother, Elio didn’t have a job. Tall, good looking and with a thick enough wallet, he had a girlfriend but no social life to speak of. I never saw Elio on the sidewalks or inside any neighborhood bar, Ray’s Happy Birthday, The Dive or Friendly, etc.

What’s most telling, though, is that Elio’s BMW was nearly always there. Instead of driving it around, he merely washed his baby, a loving ritual which killed hours at a time. All those hard gleaming curves demanded endless foreplay. Hearing water, I’d look out to see Elio with his hose and rag at, say, 2PM, and by 6PM, he was still there, I kid you not, to dreamily buff his BMW.  

Otherwise, Elio was lost in his room, to stare at a screen, we can assume, for what else was there to do? Porn and combat games likely drained his days. I seriously doubt Elio read. He just seemed too vapid. With hardly any life experience, Elio was basically a boy, so to mask this, he always deepened his voice to utter his trivia. “I don’t think the Eagles will go very far this year” or “The Sixers need a new center.” Each time his girlfriend, Gina, returned from a shopping trip, Elio couldn’t even bother to help her carry all those bags to the second floor.

Voluntarily, he had screened himself out of life. With so much genital variety online, his lovely girlfriend became a ghost, and an annoying one at that, for she often interrupted his pixelated lovemaking. Sharing them with millions of other oglers, he’s virtually dating a Thai, Ukrainian, Colombian and Congolese, most likely. Tipping them mere coins, he activated their lovesense knobs.

In the same courtyard, there was another man driven insane by loneliness. Appearing usually at night, he was dressed like Tarzan, with a homemade loincloth. Around thirty years old, he had a crew cut, five o’clock shadow and was in pretty good shape, so no beer belly or any flab. With three three-story buildings looming over him, there were at least a dozen windows staring down, and that was the thrill. Lit by amber lights, he could be seen clearly enough. Nervously looking up, especially at bright windows, he would lift his loincloth just enough to show bits of pubic hair or, turning around, his buttocks, which he seemed particularly fond or proud of, for he would torque his body to admire them himself.

Responding to Troy’s comment, I said, “It’s heartbreaking to read about Troy’s isolation, but even before Covid, Americans were lonely enough. James Howard Kunstler talks about how badly laid out American cities and towns are, with almost no spaces for casual interactions or just loitering, so one can watch others without having to buy anything. In many parts of New Jersey, the parking lot of the local Wawa convenience store has become a de facto town square. A woman told me she wouldn’t even think of moving anywhere without a Wawa nearby! There are walking clubs that meet in shopping malls, but you have to drive there, then walk across a vast parking lot just to enter a charmless space filled with chain stores.”

Emailing me, Troy confided, “I was staring at a wall, wanting to be anywhere else, at the tail end of an alcoholic stupor in July of 2008 when I thought, ‘Hey there’s a war going on, I bet they’ll take me.’ Of course they did. I was in Ft. Knox, Kentucky within three weeks.”

I responded, “I understand perfectly that feeling of being trapped, with no decent job available, especially one suitable for a man.” Nearly all the factories are gone, and sweaty jobs such as house painting, roofing, plumbing and kitchen work, etc., increasingly go to illegal immigrants, of which there is an endless supply. Even legal immigrants are priced out, for they, too, must maintain a family, and not live five to a room. “Socially, there’s nothing to do but sit in a bar, but it’s expensive, and you can’t even talk much, with the loud music and several TVs on at the same time. For a young man with little money, a crappy job and few experiences beyond his small town or city neighborhood, enlistment to go overseas doesn’t sound too bad.”

Bored to death, Troy signed up to kill or be killed, just to have a life of any kind. In no time, he was a gunner on convoys in Afghanistan, “It was the best summer of my life. I hated it at moments but knew for certain that it would be a ‘peak experience (ugh)’ in comparison to my provincial American reality which can suffocate me if I let it. I never fired a shot in anger and am truly grateful for that. I simply tell people that I was a ‘tourist with a machinegun’ and that it was a beautiful country. Both true.”

In too many countries, American tourists with assault rifles and machineguns have far outnumbered those with just a camera. 775,000 American troops “served” in Afghanistan, and we’re not even counting the private “contractors.” 1.5 million Americans “served” in Iraq. Though Americans gripe often about unwanted or dangerous illegal immigrants, they should remember that their country is, by far, the biggest source of illegally lethal visitors.

What Troy did, thousands of others have just done in Ukraine. On 3/6/22, Kiev announced that +20,000 people from 52 countries have volunteered to fight for Ukraine. Around a thousand were training in Yavoriv on 3/13/22 when 30 Russian missiles struck, killing “up to 180 foreign mercenaries,” according to Moscow, or just 36 Ukrainians and no foreigners, according to Kiev. Adding to the confusion, The Mirror stated three Brits had died, and the Austrian Heute quoted a German who claimed there were no survivors among the +100 foreigners in a blown apart building.

Seeing charred and mangled corpses of so many nationalities so soon after arrival, most surviving legionnaires are trying to flee Ukraine in terror, it is said, but are prevented from doing so, for they ain’t done nothing yet. So far, their war experiences have consisted of some cool selfies, posted on Instagram, then, just like that, a series of pants soiling explosions, so rude, just as dawn was breaking.

Away from bullets and bombs, Troy has returned to his solitary confinement, in a country increasingly isolated from the rest of the world through its serial criminality. Two days ago, Troy sent me a dark photo of a parking lot, with two dumpsters at its edge. Since it’s still winter, most trees are barren, though there are some brown leaves on the scraggly lawn. Behind indigo clouds, a feeble sun sinks.

“May have a chance to plant tomatoes this spring,” Troy explains. “Time under the sky is where it’s at.” 

[Philadelphia, 6/4/13]