Quick Story

I had a buddy. I use the word buddy for lack of a better term. We were neighbors in Brentwood, LI where I grew up. I suppose frenemies more accurately described our relationship.

I think I was two years older. I remember when I was about 16 his family moved to Vermont. To make a long story short, I didn’t see him again until I visited LI, circa ‘16-‘17. He had moved back to LI from New England with his family. He and his wife lived in Setauket, an old, quaint village on Suffolk County’s north shore and they owned and operated a temp labor business in the medical industry.

I suppose what made me curious to see him again was because I was becoming enamored with Setauket after watching The Turn: Washington’s Spies, on AMC. A dramatization of President Washington’s spy ring during the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t until a future visit did I get to explore the town a little.

To the point. The maga cult was just taking root and my Frenemy, let’s call him the original hawk tuah boy, in reverse; because as a kid he used to suck the snot back into his throat all while carrying a briefcase to school. I suppose the dichotomy irritated me and made me not want to hang with him as kids. That, and his Dad was a NYC cop who took a mini bike off the city kids and brought it home to the suburbs so his kid, and only his kid could tool around on it.

Even though that struck me as grossly unfair, to anyone that wasn’t him; the sound of that little horse and a half Briggs & Stratton motor flying around the neighborhood got me intrigued with combustion engines. And that has never changed. For the record, I liked his dad. He had a sophisticated, worldly feel about him that my old man didn’t possess.

We met in Port Jeff for a meal two days in a row. Different restaurants, he paid, I paid sort of thing. He picked both eateries as it was his stomping grounds and I was the well transplanted visitor. Of course he wound up paying the two star bill while I paid the four star. To be real, he didn’t cheap out, we pigged out. I guess I felt a little guilty for treating him like the dick that he was. I could have been nicer.

And, I was. I called his wife stunning during that waterside brunch. It just came out. She had the complexion of a porcelain doll and couldn’t help but to comment. Unfortunately, my second wife was in attendance.

Anyway, we stayed cordial for a while on the Facebook until the maga movement started to gain traction. Our disagreement stemmed from differing opinions on immigration.

First off, he was getting rich off the backs of someone else’s labor. That never sat well with me. But it wasn’t that. To each his own. If you want to abuse people, that will eventually come back to bite you in the ass. It’s just a matter of time.

His claim was immigration was bad because in his words, “undesirables and terrorists” would enter the country. Build a wall and keep them out, he claimed. This seemed like an odd stance to me coming from a New Yorker who’s mother spoke with a thick German accent and was Jewish.

I said to him, I’m paraphrasing based on my recollection, that maybe he’s been away from home too long, but the WTC was bombed in ‘93 and home grown terrorists brought them down in ‘01. So, the only thing a wall will do is keep ‘them’ in. Them being the people that don’t like America for whatever reason.

We haven’t spoke since. And he wasn’t the first or the last non-friend maga detachment.

There’s a silver lining to this maga cult, flag flying fucker (FFF) movement that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. This faction of the population, we’ve been trying to get along with them our whole lives. Giving while they take. The fact of the matter is, an overwhelming majority of the cult are greedy narcissists just like their leader. Just my opinion. Yeah there are plenty of victims who deserve the benefit of the doubt and as Bill Maher says, he can’t alienate half the population. Well, he has a job as a TV host and has jammed his own ass into a corner so he has to say that.

What I say is I’m glad these FFFers are showing their true colors as it helps the rest of us know who to avoid.