Total Gross Suffering

Sunday morning.

Went down to 79th to watch Liverpool lose the league title with my friend Y. Tried to go to Crossbar on 86th - bad vibes - and ended up at Blondies on 79th. They aren't open yet but the bartender was there early for the game and he's personable af. Cool spot.

After the game, we walk north on Amsterdam and Broadway. Everyone is out enjoying this fine spring Sunday morning. We have a bunch of bright interactions. Several people tell us how great we were. 😎

Then I stop for the Jumbo slice at Koronet Pizza and we got into a fight about men and women.

Y is a short Black woman. I am a tall white man. We have a lot of overlapping experiences as sensitive, globe-trotting types, but we often see things from almost opposite perspectives.

Furniture is too big for her. Too small for me. Bad for both of us. As she says, we're nice mirrors for each other.

But today we're getting heated. In my mind she's ignoring the suffering of men. In her mind I'm ignoring the suffering of women. And we're both pushing each other's conversational buttons.

People are looking and hoping to see it escalate so they can tell their friends about it later.

Y claims I'm not listening, and she's right.

I finish this stupidly big Jumbo slice and we get up and argue our way across the street, then stop and talk for a long time in front of Walgreens. Things start to calm down.

She pulls out a joint, and we go around the corner onto W 111th and smoke it in the sun, her leaning on a green transfer box, me leaning on a parking sign. We're there for a long time talking it out. Asking questions and listening. We come to a resolution. There's a clear moment when the air goes out of the balloon, and we're both calm and compassionate again, and better for the argument.

And right as we're basking in the sun and the joint and the resolution of a well-fought, well-resolved argument, this young guy creeps past us going really slow. Is he drunk? Just high? Something worse?

"Hopefully he's almost home." Y says.

He's wearing a decent leather jacket, but his pants are ripped to fuck. Both cheeks are blown out and his boxers are showing, and his knees and thighs. We watch him go by, and then a minute later realize he's basically stalled about 100 feet up the sidewalk. We look at each other and at the same time "Should we help him?"

We go up the sidewalk.

"Is he peeing?" Y asks.

"If he's peeing we abort." I say.

But then we get there and this guy is in trouble. He's clutching his chest and moaning in pain. I put my hand on his back and keep it there. Y confirms that he wants us to get an ambulance (because America), then calls one when he says yes. The dispatcher recommends we get him a chair, so I run up to the doorman at the nearest building and ask him if he's got a chair. He does. We let this guy sit for a minute, but we're just a few blocks from St. Luke's and the ambulance is there quick.

While Y is on the phone, the guy tells me that he did a bunch of coke and then "some bad shit happened" and his heart has been hurting and that they weren't listening to him at the hospital.

The ambulance comes. They don't even look at Y or I. They don't say a word to us. They put this guy on a stretcher, ask him a few questions, and have him in the back of the ambulance within a minute.

Do they see him as a person? Or just another drug user?

It feels like it's the latter. But for us, this is a big deal. We're invested in this guy. For the EMTs, this is just another dude who took too much.

They leave but just pull around the corner, and double park on Broadway and the driver jumps in the back. Y and I wait to see what happens. Is he ok?

Another FDNY guy shows up. Wanders up the sidewalk. Is he getting a snack? When he comes back, Y asks him what's going on... He goes and talks to the guys in the back of the ambulance, but doesn't say anything to us. Doesn't look at us. We wait and wait. We want to know this guy is okay.

Then they go to leave, disappearing behind a truck. Y goes over and is like "At least tell us something!" And on cue the EMT pokes his head back from around a truck and gives us a thumbs up. He's ok. We can go on with our day.

We walk a block back downtown to get on the train.

As we walk down the steps she says, "At the end of the day, no matter who it is, it's all suffering. We gotta do what we can to minimize it."

I agree. But I also just ate this huge slice of pizza that brings harm to cows, pigs, humans, and me, the guy that ate it.

At a planetary level, humanity should be focused on reducing Total Gross Suffering.

Why aren't we?